March 31, 2025 • 22 mins
COLD CANNING. It's our new cookbook out in the summer of 2025. We're so excited about it.
Get this: small batches, no steam canner needed, no pressure canning, a few jars to preserve, well, jams, jellies, chutneys, chili crisps, conserves, ketchups, salsas, mustards, dessert sauces, sauerkrauts, kimchi, pickles, relishes, and much more!
We're Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough, veteran cookbook authors who are about to publish our thirty-seventh cookbook. And maybe our best one yet. We can't wait to tell you about it.
Want to snag your own copy. Check out this link right here!
Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK
[00:35] Our one-minute cooking tip: Soak dried chilies and puree them rather than grinding into a powder for many rubs and marinades.
[03:15] Our new cookbook out in the summer of 2025: COLD CANNING!
[17:37] What’s making us happy in food this week? Hard cider and fresh, local eggs!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Bruce (00:01):
Hey, I am Bruce Weinstein and this is the Podcast
Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Mark (00:04):
And I'm Mark Scarborough, and together with my husband Bruce, we have
written three dozen plus one cookbooks.
In fact, this episode of the podcastis gonna be about that plus one,
or at least introduce you to whatthe plus one is, which will be
published this summer of 2025.
We were very excited about itand we don't wanna make this too
commercially or advertising Lee.
So we wanna kind of tell you theprocess about how we came to write.
(00:26):
This book that is coming out this summer,we've also got a one minute cooking
tip as we always do, and we'll tell youwhat's making us happy in food this week.
So let's get started.
Bruce (00:35):
Our one minute cooking tip.
Now this one is from KenjiOur one minute cooking tip.
Now this one is from KenjiLopez Alt, and I just love it.
And I do love his work too.
So he says, rather thangrind, chilies into powder.
When you're making chili or anydish that requires chili powder,
soak your dried chilies in hot wateruntil soft blend them into a paste
(00:59):
and then stir them into your dish.
You'll get more flavor, more heat inevery mouthful and no ground chili grit.
But what if
Mark (01:07):
you need dry ground chilies for a rub?
You can't do this for a raw No.
This
Bruce (01:11):
is like if you're putting it into a chili, you're making chili
with ground beef or with diced meat.
Okay.
Or you're making Paola.
Yeah, I can see that.
Or you're making an enchilada sauce.
So his
Mark (01:20):
claim is that if you rehydrate them under hot water and turn them into a.
Paste.
Mm-hmm.
You'd have to stem them.
Mm-hmm.
And then you can or cannot seed them.
Mm-hmm.
Depending on your preference for heat.
Yep.
If you don't seed them, they'll be hotter.
Mm-hmm.
Um, then his claim is that youget more flavor, and here's
Bruce (01:39):
why.
When you grind any dried herb, itstarts to lose its flavor oils Right.
And starts to lose.
That's true.
All of its aromatics.
That's true.
So you don't know how long thatground chili you're buying is now.
He says, do this insteadof grinding your own.
Most people don't grind their own.
No, I know, but I wasn't even
Mark (01:55):
gonna point that out.
But
Bruce (01:56):
it's a great idea to keep dried chilies in your house for this And we're
talking about, yeah, I guess when you
Mark (02:00):
dry, when you grind, wait, wait.
I just wanna say, I guess when you, Dr.
Grind, dried chilies, it does stand toreason that some of the flavor, estrogen,
even what are now the dried oils inthere, but they're still present as oils.
Mm-hmm.
That they would volatilize.
In some way and escape the process.
Whereas if you soak them, they're gonnabe, uh, more weighed down and kept intact.
(02:21):
That does stand to reason.
Mm-hmm.
Bruce (02:23):
I trust him.
His recipes always work.
And the guy's pretty smart.
Mark (02:26):
Yeah.
Yeah.
The guy is pretty smart, so.
Okay.
If you need, uh, ground dried chilies fora recipe and don't eat a powder for a rub,
consider rehydrating them and then addingthem straight to the sauce from there.
All right.
Before we get on to the new cookbookthat's coming out in July, let
me say that we have a Facebookgroup cooking with Bruce and Mark.
We'd be glad to connect with you there.
(02:48):
We'd be glad to further talk aboutChili's or whatever you wanna
talk about in that Facebook group.
You can also find us on Instagram undercooking with Bruce and Mark, and you
can find us under our own names onInstagram, Facebook, and Blue Skies.
So check us out wherever you can find us,and we're glad to have you as a friend.
Up next, let's talk about the newbook that is coming out this July.
Bruce (03:15):
Let me start with the name of the new book.
Mark (03:18):
Okay.
Bruce (03:18):
It is called Cold Canning.
Mark (03:21):
It is cold canning,
Bruce (03:23):
and the reason we called it cold canning is because you are going to make.
Everything that you could possibly imagineputting into a jar to set up for the year.
From jams and jellies andchutneys and salsas, chili crisps.
We even have reli cheese, fermentedfoods, pickles, sauerkrauts, Kim cheese,
Mark (03:41):
dessert, sauces, strawberry sauce, chocolate sauce.
We have laurs like yourown homemade, triples sec.
We have all kinds of ketchups andmustards and barbecue sauces, and
Bruce (03:50):
the reason it's cold canning is none of those.
Get hot water processed.
Yep.
So it's all small batch everythingmakes one or two jars and it's
all designed to go right in yourrefrigerator cold or freezer cold.
Mark (04:04):
Okay, so Bruce set it up, what the book is, but lemme tell
you about how this book came to be.
So, we, as you know, have written a lotof cookbooks at this point in our life
and our, we're lucky enough, I shouldsay, that our publisher is also our.
Editor.
So our publisher at LittleBrown is also our editor.
And it's easier that way to sell a bookbecause ultimately you have to sell it
(04:24):
to a publisher, not to an editor anymore.
I don't know if you know this, buteditors do not have acquisition
rights in the publishing industry.
So editors no longer buy books.
They have to present the book wellto their publisher and a whole
marketing team and then sell it.
And when you've already got arelationship with your publisher,
who's your editor, it's just onestep closer to selling the book.
. So in the end, we end up goingout to lunch with our literary
(04:46):
agent and our publisher editor,and we talk through book ideas.
We always come with some ideas.
At this point, he's always gotsome ideas and I have to say, isn't
Bruce (04:56):
that nice when your publisher has ideas that he wants to use?
I have to
Mark (04:59):
that he's a little bit cagey sometimes because he says
if he's got some ideas in his.
Back pocket and he pulls themout during the course of lunch
and throws them out on the table.
Even though we've come with someideas, he's, he, he hasn't yet told us
what they are and then they come out.
So we were sitting at lunch in a Manhattanrestaurant with our literary agent in him
and we were talking to the Chinese food,
Bruce (05:19):
if I remember right.
Mark (05:20):
Yeah.
And he didn't really like anyof our ideas, which is fine.
Uh, listen, this is just abrainstorming how to sell a book.
Possession.
So we started talking about it and he'slike, his mandate has changed, and this
is, maybe you'll find this interesting.
So our publisher's mandate haschanged from the corporation and it's
changed in a really interesting way.
He's been mandated not.
(05:42):
To buy any more books frominfluencers and to turn away
from social media laden accounts.
So people with 10,000, a hundredthousand, a million subscribers
on TikTok or YouTube or whatever.
He's been instructed not to buytheir books anymore, and instead he's
been instructed to go back to an.
Old way of publishing books, which isto look for books that will exist on
(06:05):
what's called the backlist, meaning afterthey're published, they continue to have
a sales life long after they're published.
And you might not know this, but rightnow in publishing, most people look
for the first three months of sales.
Yeah.
And that's it.
But he's been instructed to look forbooks that will sell over five years.
Bruce (06:25):
And the thing is.
Even if you have a millionfollowers, it doesn't guarantee
you're gonna sell a million books.
In fact, our agent was telling uswhen we had dinner with her last week
about some influencers she knew andthe publishers paid huge money for
their books and they sold 5,000 copies.
Right?
So there's no guarantee they lost like
Mark (06:42):
a ton of money on the book.
And this is the problem is thatthe Bruce is saying there's
no guarantee and he's right.
And also the problem is that if you area hot influencer right now, it takes
about two years to publish a book.
Yep.
So you gotta write it.
It's gotta get.
Photographs, it's gotta getprinted mostly in China.
It's gotta come back here,be shipped back here.
That shipping back takesfour to six months back here.
(07:05):
And then it's gotta get distributed inthis country, in the United States and
in Canada and other places as well.
So it takes about two years.
Mm-hmm.
And listen, if you're aninfluencer, you're probably.
Out of favor in two years.
That's true.
You're no longer an influencer.
Bruce (07:18):
And Mark says it takes so long to ship it back.
'cause things come on.
Container ships.
They do.
And if you're lucky, they get back.
We know about some authors whoseunfortunately the containers containing
their books fell off the ship.
Yep.
And went right to the bottom of the ocean.
Yep.
So they miss their pub date with no books.
Right.
And that's real problem.
So
Mark (07:37):
we're sitting there with our publisher editor at lunch and we're
talking through this whole thing and.
Of course he's got an idea in his backpocket, and he comes out with this idea
because he's talking about longstandingbooks, about how long canning books last
that is Ball, uh, cans, you know, balljars published a series of canning books,
(07:57):
I don't even know, 10, 15 years ago.
Mm-hmm.
And those are still inmprint and still selling well.
So he's like, well,let's do a canning book.
Both Bruce and I have to say.
Backed up at the idea and we didn't backup up 'cause we were afraid of canning.
Bruce is an inveterate cannerand cans all summer long.
Mm-hmm.
We backed up from the idea 'causewe thought, well isn't this market
completely saturated by bulk canningat other big homesteader cookbooks?
Bruce (08:21):
It is.
And so what happens then is Mark and Ihave to take this idea that's thrown down
on the table that we are not afraid of.
Mark (08:27):
Why don't you guys write a canning book?
Bruce (08:29):
Yeah.
Okay.
So, and if you've seen any of our TikTokvideos, you know that I never say no.
And you do whatever they want.
But you do it in a way that you want.
So we had to sit back and think, well,how can we write a book about canning
that's not like every other book outthere, but that will still be something
that will last and be around forever.
Mark (08:47):
As you can see, this process does in fact take months by the time you
develop ideas and we pass all our ideas.
Through our agent before weever go to this lunch and she
s out what she doesn't like.
Then we go to the lunch, then we all talk.
Then this idea, let's say canning comesup and we've gotta go back and this is
gonna take us six weeks, two months.
(09:09):
Mm-hmm.
To think through this idea, to jotdown a million notes and think it
through to figure out how to write.
And let me just say, you may notknow this part of the process to
ultimately write a 40 to 50 page.
Business proposal.
Mm-hmm.
Pitching the idea and how it will sell.
Bruce (09:25):
And the book itself has 425 recipes.
Yeah.
So we also in that proposal, haveto create a working recipe list.
Right.
So what do we imagine isgoing to be in this book?
And this is after we've now convincedour publisher editor that the
kind of canning book we wanna dois all small batch and you don't
have to use hot water processing.
(09:46):
That was the key, right?
That was the idea for usthat no one has really.
Done that.
Mark (09:49):
The old name for this is refrigerator canning, and we wanted to
expand the book beyond what refrigeratorcanning, because refrigerator,
canning sounds like blueberry jamand peach jam and pickle, apricot
preserves, pickles, and maybe pickles.
Yep.
But it doesn't sound like the fullrange of ketchups and mustards
and sauces and barbecue sauces.
And.
All this stuff that we wanted toput in the book, 'cause we wanted
(10:10):
to make it anything that you canmake in a small batch, put it in
a jar and keep it in the fridge.
Or better yet, the freezer, the fridge fortwo to three months or the freezer for a
year or more until you're ready to eat it.
And indeed, you can put blueberry jam.
Or ketchup in the freezer for a year.
Bruce (10:28):
So as we came up with the recipe list, our inspiration
came from so many places.
And one of my favorite jammakers, is from Maine.
Mm-hmm.
And that's nervous.
Nelly.
We've talked about her about that.
I probably thought he was
Mark (10:40):
gonna say Stonewall Kitchen, didn't you?
But No.
Bruce (10:43):
Okay, well, we'll talk about that in a minute.
Uh, Stonewall Kitchen makes jams.
Yep.
But nervous Nelly makes.
Incredible jams.
It does that taste like fruit.
They're not that sweet.
They're great
Mark (10:53):
flavors.
You've actually been to her factory.
It's actually her home.
Yeah, her home where she shipseverything out of from her own kitchen.
Bruce (11:01):
And we've talked about her before on this podcast, and people
have gone and bought jams thatsaid they know about her through.
So her hot tomato chutney is mm-hmm.
Absolutely.
Ex.
And her raspberry.
Just her raspberry jam.
And maybe it's the raspberry.
She's growing.
'cause she does growmost of her own fruit.
Yeah.
It's truly amazing.
So we were thinking about all thedelicious things we had from her.
And then when it comes toStonewall Kitchen, well we
(11:24):
wrote their first cookbook.
We did.
And so we had a lot of experiencecooking with condiments.
We did.
And we wanted to try and bring thatexperience to this whole process.
Yeah.
And also the other one that is.
In my memory from even before I knew Markwas a jam maker that's at the Union Square
Farmer's Market in New York, and she'dbeen there, like I said, 30 years ago.
(11:47):
We were, we just saw
Mark (11:48):
her there.
Bruce (11:49):
We were just in New York a week ago and they were still there.
She was selling some ofthe same amazing flavors.
It was bets.
Farmhouse.
It was really good stuff.
So the inspiration for alot of recipes came from our
experiences with these people.
Yes,
Mark (12:03):
it's true.
But I wanna come back to what Isaid before, since we're talking
about how this book got formed.
We are not, as you probablyknow, social media influencers.
Yes.
Do we have a TikTok challenge?
Yes.
Do we have cooking with Bruce and Mark?
Right.
Do we have a Facebook page?
Of course.
Do we have an Instagram page?
Of course you have to in today'spublishing marketplace, but we're
not big influencers, and so becausewe're not big influencers, we still
(12:23):
have to write cookbook proposals.
If I were an influencer with200,000 followers two years ago.
A publisher would just approach me andsay, uh, just we want a book named after
your TikTok channel, or named after,uh, whatever you're doing, like the
baking yester yearbook, which is great.
His channel is very amazing and funnyand interesting and all that stuff, but
(12:44):
he doesn't have to write a proposal.
We still have to write.
Business proposals forour books and submit them.
And then believe it or not, I submitthe business proposal to our agent.
She rewrites it, gives it backto me with all her comments.
I then rewrite it from that point,then it goes to our publisher.
He rewrites it with all of his comments.
Doesn't really rewrite,writes a lot of comments.
(13:05):
It's so glamorous, isn't it?
It's so glamor.
It's totally glamor, glamorous.
It goes.
Back then to me, I then rewrite itagain, and now he's ready to present it
to the marketing team and to his boss,the CEO and all that kind of stuff.
He's ready now to present andsay, I want to acquire this book.
So it takes a long timeto make a proposal happen.
And again, we thought we hadcome up with this kind of wild
(13:27):
idea, cold canning that wasn't.
Like any other canning book, but allowedus to blow out long beyond canning
because when, again, when I say canning,you probably think grape jelly or
strawberry preserved or stuff like that.
And they're in there andthey, they are in there.
But so, uh, a range of conserves,which are lower sugar, fruit and
concoctions, usually with nuts in them.
(13:49):
Chutney, relishes.
We make pickles, we make refrigeratorfermented kimchi and refrigerated,
uh, fermented sauerkrauts.
It takes longer to ferment inthe refrigerator, but it is so
much safer in the end to do this,
Bruce (14:08):
and they're so delicious and they
Mark (14:09):
are.
So delicious.
And this is the other thing that weloved about this coal canning idea and
how we pitched it, is that when you canfor shelf stability, so you're gonna
make something to sit on a shelf for ayear like my grandmother used to, you
have to adjust the pH and you have tobe very careful that all of this is
absolutely perfect to avoid botulism andother horrible things that can kill you.
(14:32):
In cold canning.
You don't have to do any of that.
Nope.
We didn't have to worry aboutthe pH of a single thing.
'cause going straight from the stoveinto the fridge or into the freezer.
No.
Yep.
Steam canner.
No pressure canner.
Mm-hmm.
No difficult ceiling of the bottles.
Nothing.
You screw the lid on a bowl of bottleand stick it in your freezer and
you're essentially done an amazinglyquick process to make three jars,
(14:56):
let's say, of strawberry preserves.
Bruce (14:57):
One of the things I learned in, in writing this was the
variety globally of chili sauces,
Mark (15:05):
right
Bruce (15:05):
of chi from chili crisps to sandals.
There's kind of West
Mark (15:10):
African chili
Bruce (15:11):
sauces in there.
Yep.
To salsa matcha.
And I was not that familiar withsalsa matcha when we started this.
This Texas boy is, yeah,I wasn't, and I was.
Undo by it.
So it was so much fun for me tolearn a new technique, a new style
of chili sauce, to create five orsix variations using different dried
chilies, different seeds, differentnuts, different dried fruits in it.
(15:35):
And I had so much fun writing this book,
Mark (15:37):
right.
And I think that that's.
All how this book came about.
It's gonna be out in July.
If you wanna see us making one of thesechili crisps, that's a Chinese condiment
of dried chilies in a billion aromatics.
We're gonna make it on amNorthwest Morning television.
Um, probably it will have.
Aired about a week after this podcast,episode drops, and you can check out
(16:01):
AM Northwest from Portland, Oregon.
They have a YouTube channel withall of their segments on it, and
you can watch us make this chilicrisp on air with them, right?
Right from our own kitchen.
We do this once a month with themand we shoot the whole thing.
We don't shoot it.
It's live in the studio.
We do it live with two iPhones and
Bruce (16:19):
Zoom.
Mark (16:20):
Zoom and the host in Portland, Oregon.
So you can see us makea chili crisp there.
You got to the YouTube channelam Northwest and, uh, see us
make this chili crisp there.
That is a recipe from the book.
So that's a little introductionto what's coming out in July.
You can tell we're super excitedabout it because it really is an
interesting and new venture for us.
We've moved away from air fryers andinstant pots, and we've moved into
(16:42):
something that we feel is incrediblycreative, both for us and maybe for
the people who might buy this book.
Okay, so that's all that wecan say about the new book.
At this point, we probably bangedon enough about it to let it go, but
let's say that it would be great ifyou signed up for our newsletter.
We have a newsletter that is, uh,sometimes directed toward this podcast,
sometimes, uh, it's other things beyondthis podcast, lifestyle stuff, stuff
(17:05):
about our life in New England, et cetera.
You can find that on ourwebsite, Bruce and mark.com,
or cooking with Bruce and mark.com.
By the way, you cannot sign up for thisnewsletter anywhere but there on the
landing page of our website, I cannotcapture your email from social media,
from Instagram, from Facebook, et cetera.
Just remember, it's reallybad, even in dms to post your
(17:26):
email address on social media.
It's capturable.
At that point by bots and by otherswho are, let's say, nefarious intent.
Okay.
That's enough for this bit.
Let's move on to what's makingus happy in food this week.
Bruce (17:43):
Roxbury Russett Hard cider.
Mark (17:46):
Oh, right.
Bruce (17:46):
We were recently in the smack dab middle of Pennsylvania, and if you
Mark (17:52):
listen to us, you heard about our road trip to Gettysburg
Bruce (17:54):
and they grow a lot of apples there.
It's a, a big sixth largest applegrowing region in the country.
Mark (18:00):
That cracked me up when he said that it's the sixth largest.
I was like.
Not the largest or nextlargest, but the sixth that was.
So instead of just saying it's one ofthe largest, you had to like quantify it.
Yeah.
Sixth largest apple growing regions.
Bruce (18:13):
So we'd been out to dinner and we ordered a bottle actually of Arkansas,
black apples hard cider with dinner.
And we love Arkansas.
Black apples, we can getthem here in New England.
We can, but we love that ciderso much that it's made by
Plowman's Cider that we found.
They had a store of tap room, atasting room in downtown Gettysburg.
(18:33):
So we went in and we bought likea case of the Arkansas Black.
We bought out,
Mark (18:37):
we bought out the last of last year's supply.
Then
Bruce (18:40):
we saw on their shelf.
There were six bottles ofRoxberry Russett cider.
Now we love Roxbury, Russettapples too, and he said they
only made a few cases this year.
That's all that was left, so we tasted it.
We loved it once again, and we bought
Mark (18:56):
them.
We bought out their yearly supply.
They have to wait until the fall andapples come in to make any more cider.
I don't know if you know this,but a hard cider is quite a thing.
Oh yeah.
The kids are totally into it.
If you go to Asheville, NorthCarolina, you'll see CEAs
everywhere downtown and then.
All out in the mountains around Asheville.
You could spend days goingfrom cidery to cidery.
They, they're like wineries.
Mm-hmm.
(19:16):
You go in, you get smalltastes of each of the ciders.
They make, they often have food available.
They have patios, beautifulplaces to sit and drink the cider.
They, it's a, it's a really funthing to do around Asheville
is to make a cider tour.
We should do that sometime.
We should put together a whole cidertour around Asheville, North Carolina.
Okay.
With other
Bruce (19:36):
people.
People pay us to go.
Sure.
Mark (19:38):
People pay us.
How about we just all get a group ofpeople and go, but sure people pay us.
We could put together a cider tourof North Carolina around Asheville.
That sounds like a lot of fun.
Okay, so what's making mehappy in food this week?
And it's a bit of a surprise.
It's eggs.
Now I know this is kind of funny,but, uh, eggs are a source of
political and social discontentright now in the United States, but
Bruce (20:01):
social discontent over eggs.
Mark (20:04):
It well, it is and it's quite the issue.
And I don't wanna get into politicsright now, but I just wanna tell
you that in our part of New England.
Eggs are still $5 adozen from local farms.
Mm-hmm.
Organic.
Bruce (20:16):
You see the chickens running around the yard.
It's really nice.
In
Mark (20:19):
fact, recently around us in New England, the egg producers,
these are all small local farms,began an egg war, and so you could.
See some of them cross at the five ontheir signs and put four because they were
on an egg pricing war with each other.
So we actually go to an organicfarm and buy two to three dozen
eggs at a time, at $5 each.
(20:40):
It's kind, it's amazing.
Now I wanna tell you that theseeggs are not fully washed, not at
all washed, don't have chicken.
Um, stuff on them, and they still havelittle pieces of hay stuck on them, so you
do have to wash them before you cook them.
And because they're not washed,they'll actually stay longer.
(21:02):
It's a whole thing aboutthe coating on the shelf.
They can even
Bruce (21:05):
stay at room temperature.
Yeah, like
Mark (21:06):
they do in Europe, they can, because you keep this coating on the shell that
is washed off in industrial production,but we don't, uh, I have to say, we
bring 'em home and put 'em right in thefridge, but the local eggs are so tasty.
They're so beautiful to look at.
In the pan, they have a gorgeous,dark yellow, or even orange color.
They are extraordinary.
(21:27):
Easy dinners.
Uh, we just had a dinner the othernight of I had an omelet and Bruce had a
couple of fried eggs and that was dinner.
Uh, I know we usually do these elaboratemeals and I had an omelet and we had
fried eggs and toast and that was dinner.
But eggs make me very happy, and I'mglad that we live in a world, part
of the world where in fact, eggs arenot a source of political or social
(21:48):
contention, but rather an egg war amongstthe producers to reduce the price.
So that's our podcast for this week.
Thanks for listening into us.
We appreciate your support.
If you can rate thispodcast, that would be great.
If you can write a review ofit, that would be greater.
We appreciate your support because weare otherwise unsupported, except through
your listens, likes, and comments.
Bruce (22:07):
And every week we tell you what's making us happy in food.
So go to our Facebook group, asMark said, cooking with Bruce
and Mark and tell us there what'smaking you happy in food this week.
Because we want to know, and ifit sounds really delicious, we
may try it and talk about it hereon cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Hey, I am Bruce Weinstein and this is the Podcast
Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Mark (00:04):
And I'm Mark Scarborough, and together with my husband Bruce, we have
written three dozen plus one cookbooks.
In fact, this episode of the podcastis gonna be about that plus one,
or at least introduce you to whatthe plus one is, which will be
published this summer of 2025.
We were very excited about itand we don't wanna make this too
commercially or advertising Lee.
So we wanna kind of tell you theprocess about how we came to write.
(00:26):
This book that is coming out this summer,we've also got a one minute cooking
tip as we always do, and we'll tell youwhat's making us happy in food this week.
So let's get started.
Bruce (00:35):
Our one minute cooking tip.
Now this one is from KenjiOur one minute cooking tip.
Now this one is from KenjiLopez Alt, and I just love it.
And I do love his work too.
So he says, rather thangrind, chilies into powder.
When you're making chili or anydish that requires chili powder,
soak your dried chilies in hot wateruntil soft blend them into a paste
(00:59):
and then stir them into your dish.
You'll get more flavor, more heat inevery mouthful and no ground chili grit.
But what if
Mark (01:07):
you need dry ground chilies for a rub?
You can't do this for a raw No.
This
Bruce (01:11):
is like if you're putting it into a chili, you're making chili
with ground beef or with diced meat.
Okay.
Or you're making Paola.
Yeah, I can see that.
Or you're making an enchilada sauce.
So his
Mark (01:20):
claim is that if you rehydrate them under hot water and turn them into a.
Paste.
Mm-hmm.
You'd have to stem them.
Mm-hmm.
And then you can or cannot seed them.
Mm-hmm.
Depending on your preference for heat.
Yep.
If you don't seed them, they'll be hotter.
Mm-hmm.
Um, then his claim is that youget more flavor, and here's
Bruce (01:39):
why.
When you grind any dried herb, itstarts to lose its flavor oils Right.
And starts to lose.
That's true.
All of its aromatics.
That's true.
So you don't know how long thatground chili you're buying is now.
He says, do this insteadof grinding your own.
Most people don't grind their own.
No, I know, but I wasn't even
Mark (01:55):
gonna point that out.
But
Bruce (01:56):
it's a great idea to keep dried chilies in your house for this And we're
talking about, yeah, I guess when you
Mark (02:00):
dry, when you grind, wait, wait.
I just wanna say, I guess when you, Dr.
Grind, dried chilies, it does stand toreason that some of the flavor, estrogen,
even what are now the dried oils inthere, but they're still present as oils.
Mm-hmm.
That they would volatilize.
In some way and escape the process.
Whereas if you soak them, they're gonnabe, uh, more weighed down and kept intact.
(02:21):
That does stand to reason.
Mm-hmm.
Bruce (02:23):
I trust him.
His recipes always work.
And the guy's pretty smart.
Mark (02:26):
Yeah.
Yeah.
The guy is pretty smart, so.
Okay.
If you need, uh, ground dried chilies fora recipe and don't eat a powder for a rub,
consider rehydrating them and then addingthem straight to the sauce from there.
All right.
Before we get on to the new cookbookthat's coming out in July, let
me say that we have a Facebookgroup cooking with Bruce and Mark.
We'd be glad to connect with you there.
(02:48):
We'd be glad to further talk aboutChili's or whatever you wanna
talk about in that Facebook group.
You can also find us on Instagram undercooking with Bruce and Mark, and you
can find us under our own names onInstagram, Facebook, and Blue Skies.
So check us out wherever you can find us,and we're glad to have you as a friend.
Up next, let's talk about the newbook that is coming out this July.
Bruce (03:15):
Let me start with the name of the new book.
Mark (03:18):
Okay.
Bruce (03:18):
It is called Cold Canning.
Mark (03:21):
It is cold canning,
Bruce (03:23):
and the reason we called it cold canning is because you are going to make.
Everything that you could possibly imagineputting into a jar to set up for the year.
From jams and jellies andchutneys and salsas, chili crisps.
We even have reli cheese, fermentedfoods, pickles, sauerkrauts, Kim cheese,
Mark (03:41):
dessert, sauces, strawberry sauce, chocolate sauce.
We have laurs like yourown homemade, triples sec.
We have all kinds of ketchups andmustards and barbecue sauces, and
Bruce (03:50):
the reason it's cold canning is none of those.
Get hot water processed.
Yep.
So it's all small batch everythingmakes one or two jars and it's
all designed to go right in yourrefrigerator cold or freezer cold.
Mark (04:04):
Okay, so Bruce set it up, what the book is, but lemme tell
you about how this book came to be.
So, we, as you know, have written a lotof cookbooks at this point in our life
and our, we're lucky enough, I shouldsay, that our publisher is also our.
Editor.
So our publisher at LittleBrown is also our editor.
And it's easier that way to sell a bookbecause ultimately you have to sell it
(04:24):
to a publisher, not to an editor anymore.
I don't know if you know this, buteditors do not have acquisition
rights in the publishing industry.
So editors no longer buy books.
They have to present the book wellto their publisher and a whole
marketing team and then sell it.
And when you've already got arelationship with your publisher,
who's your editor, it's just onestep closer to selling the book.
. So in the end, we end up goingout to lunch with our literary
(04:46):
agent and our publisher editor,and we talk through book ideas.
We always come with some ideas.
At this point, he's always gotsome ideas and I have to say, isn't
Bruce (04:56):
that nice when your publisher has ideas that he wants to use?
I have to
Mark (04:59):
that he's a little bit cagey sometimes because he says
if he's got some ideas in his.
Back pocket and he pulls themout during the course of lunch
and throws them out on the table.
Even though we've come with someideas, he's, he, he hasn't yet told us
what they are and then they come out.
So we were sitting at lunch in a Manhattanrestaurant with our literary agent in him
and we were talking to the Chinese food,
Bruce (05:19):
if I remember right.
Mark (05:20):
Yeah.
And he didn't really like anyof our ideas, which is fine.
Uh, listen, this is just abrainstorming how to sell a book.
Possession.
So we started talking about it and he'slike, his mandate has changed, and this
is, maybe you'll find this interesting.
So our publisher's mandate haschanged from the corporation and it's
changed in a really interesting way.
He's been mandated not.
(05:42):
To buy any more books frominfluencers and to turn away
from social media laden accounts.
So people with 10,000, a hundredthousand, a million subscribers
on TikTok or YouTube or whatever.
He's been instructed not to buytheir books anymore, and instead he's
been instructed to go back to an.
Old way of publishing books, which isto look for books that will exist on
(06:05):
what's called the backlist, meaning afterthey're published, they continue to have
a sales life long after they're published.
And you might not know this, but rightnow in publishing, most people look
for the first three months of sales.
Yeah.
And that's it.
But he's been instructed to look forbooks that will sell over five years.
Bruce (06:25):
And the thing is.
Even if you have a millionfollowers, it doesn't guarantee
you're gonna sell a million books.
In fact, our agent was telling uswhen we had dinner with her last week
about some influencers she knew andthe publishers paid huge money for
their books and they sold 5,000 copies.
Right?
So there's no guarantee they lost like
Mark (06:42):
a ton of money on the book.
And this is the problem is thatthe Bruce is saying there's
no guarantee and he's right.
And also the problem is that if you area hot influencer right now, it takes
about two years to publish a book.
Yep.
So you gotta write it.
It's gotta get.
Photographs, it's gotta getprinted mostly in China.
It's gotta come back here,be shipped back here.
That shipping back takesfour to six months back here.
(07:05):
And then it's gotta get distributed inthis country, in the United States and
in Canada and other places as well.
So it takes about two years.
Mm-hmm.
And listen, if you're aninfluencer, you're probably.
Out of favor in two years.
That's true.
You're no longer an influencer.
Bruce (07:18):
And Mark says it takes so long to ship it back.
'cause things come on.
Container ships.
They do.
And if you're lucky, they get back.
We know about some authors whoseunfortunately the containers containing
their books fell off the ship.
Yep.
And went right to the bottom of the ocean.
Yep.
So they miss their pub date with no books.
Right.
And that's real problem.
So
Mark (07:37):
we're sitting there with our publisher editor at lunch and we're
talking through this whole thing and.
Of course he's got an idea in his backpocket, and he comes out with this idea
because he's talking about longstandingbooks, about how long canning books last
that is Ball, uh, cans, you know, balljars published a series of canning books,
(07:57):
I don't even know, 10, 15 years ago.
Mm-hmm.
And those are still inmprint and still selling well.
So he's like, well,let's do a canning book.
Both Bruce and I have to say.
Backed up at the idea and we didn't backup up 'cause we were afraid of canning.
Bruce is an inveterate cannerand cans all summer long.
Mm-hmm.
We backed up from the idea 'causewe thought, well isn't this market
completely saturated by bulk canningat other big homesteader cookbooks?
Bruce (08:21):
It is.
And so what happens then is Mark and Ihave to take this idea that's thrown down
on the table that we are not afraid of.
Mark (08:27):
Why don't you guys write a canning book?
Bruce (08:29):
Yeah.
Okay.
So, and if you've seen any of our TikTokvideos, you know that I never say no.
And you do whatever they want.
But you do it in a way that you want.
So we had to sit back and think, well,how can we write a book about canning
that's not like every other book outthere, but that will still be something
that will last and be around forever.
Mark (08:47):
As you can see, this process does in fact take months by the time you
develop ideas and we pass all our ideas.
Through our agent before weever go to this lunch and she
s out what she doesn't like.
Then we go to the lunch, then we all talk.
Then this idea, let's say canning comesup and we've gotta go back and this is
gonna take us six weeks, two months.
(09:09):
Mm-hmm.
To think through this idea, to jotdown a million notes and think it
through to figure out how to write.
And let me just say, you may notknow this part of the process to
ultimately write a 40 to 50 page.
Business proposal.
Mm-hmm.
Pitching the idea and how it will sell.
Bruce (09:25):
And the book itself has 425 recipes.
Yeah.
So we also in that proposal, haveto create a working recipe list.
Right.
So what do we imagine isgoing to be in this book?
And this is after we've now convincedour publisher editor that the
kind of canning book we wanna dois all small batch and you don't
have to use hot water processing.
(09:46):
That was the key, right?
That was the idea for usthat no one has really.
Done that.
Mark (09:49):
The old name for this is refrigerator canning, and we wanted to
expand the book beyond what refrigeratorcanning, because refrigerator,
canning sounds like blueberry jamand peach jam and pickle, apricot
preserves, pickles, and maybe pickles.
Yep.
But it doesn't sound like the fullrange of ketchups and mustards
and sauces and barbecue sauces.
And.
All this stuff that we wanted toput in the book, 'cause we wanted
(10:10):
to make it anything that you canmake in a small batch, put it in
a jar and keep it in the fridge.
Or better yet, the freezer, the fridge fortwo to three months or the freezer for a
year or more until you're ready to eat it.
And indeed, you can put blueberry jam.
Or ketchup in the freezer for a year.
Bruce (10:28):
So as we came up with the recipe list, our inspiration
came from so many places.
And one of my favorite jammakers, is from Maine.
Mm-hmm.
And that's nervous.
Nelly.
We've talked about her about that.
I probably thought he was
Mark (10:40):
gonna say Stonewall Kitchen, didn't you?
But No.
Bruce (10:43):
Okay, well, we'll talk about that in a minute.
Uh, Stonewall Kitchen makes jams.
Yep.
But nervous Nelly makes.
Incredible jams.
It does that taste like fruit.
They're not that sweet.
They're great
Mark (10:53):
flavors.
You've actually been to her factory.
It's actually her home.
Yeah, her home where she shipseverything out of from her own kitchen.
Bruce (11:01):
And we've talked about her before on this podcast, and people
have gone and bought jams thatsaid they know about her through.
So her hot tomato chutney is mm-hmm.
Absolutely.
Ex.
And her raspberry.
Just her raspberry jam.
And maybe it's the raspberry.
She's growing.
'cause she does growmost of her own fruit.
Yeah.
It's truly amazing.
So we were thinking about all thedelicious things we had from her.
And then when it comes toStonewall Kitchen, well we
(11:24):
wrote their first cookbook.
We did.
And so we had a lot of experiencecooking with condiments.
We did.
And we wanted to try and bring thatexperience to this whole process.
Yeah.
And also the other one that is.
In my memory from even before I knew Markwas a jam maker that's at the Union Square
Farmer's Market in New York, and she'dbeen there, like I said, 30 years ago.
(11:47):
We were, we just saw
Mark (11:48):
her there.
Bruce (11:49):
We were just in New York a week ago and they were still there.
She was selling some ofthe same amazing flavors.
It was bets.
Farmhouse.
It was really good stuff.
So the inspiration for alot of recipes came from our
experiences with these people.
Yes,
Mark (12:03):
it's true.
But I wanna come back to what Isaid before, since we're talking
about how this book got formed.
We are not, as you probablyknow, social media influencers.
Yes.
Do we have a TikTok challenge?
Yes.
Do we have cooking with Bruce and Mark?
Right.
Do we have a Facebook page?
Of course.
Do we have an Instagram page?
Of course you have to in today'spublishing marketplace, but we're
not big influencers, and so becausewe're not big influencers, we still
(12:23):
have to write cookbook proposals.
If I were an influencer with200,000 followers two years ago.
A publisher would just approach me andsay, uh, just we want a book named after
your TikTok channel, or named after,uh, whatever you're doing, like the
baking yester yearbook, which is great.
His channel is very amazing and funnyand interesting and all that stuff, but
(12:44):
he doesn't have to write a proposal.
We still have to write.
Business proposals forour books and submit them.
And then believe it or not, I submitthe business proposal to our agent.
She rewrites it, gives it backto me with all her comments.
I then rewrite it from that point,then it goes to our publisher.
He rewrites it with all of his comments.
Doesn't really rewrite,writes a lot of comments.
(13:05):
It's so glamorous, isn't it?
It's so glamor.
It's totally glamor, glamorous.
It goes.
Back then to me, I then rewrite itagain, and now he's ready to present it
to the marketing team and to his boss,the CEO and all that kind of stuff.
He's ready now to present andsay, I want to acquire this book.
So it takes a long timeto make a proposal happen.
And again, we thought we hadcome up with this kind of wild
(13:27):
idea, cold canning that wasn't.
Like any other canning book, but allowedus to blow out long beyond canning
because when, again, when I say canning,you probably think grape jelly or
strawberry preserved or stuff like that.
And they're in there andthey, they are in there.
But so, uh, a range of conserves,which are lower sugar, fruit and
concoctions, usually with nuts in them.
(13:49):
Chutney, relishes.
We make pickles, we make refrigeratorfermented kimchi and refrigerated,
uh, fermented sauerkrauts.
It takes longer to ferment inthe refrigerator, but it is so
much safer in the end to do this,
Bruce (14:08):
and they're so delicious and they
Mark (14:09):
are.
So delicious.
And this is the other thing that weloved about this coal canning idea and
how we pitched it, is that when you canfor shelf stability, so you're gonna
make something to sit on a shelf for ayear like my grandmother used to, you
have to adjust the pH and you have tobe very careful that all of this is
absolutely perfect to avoid botulism andother horrible things that can kill you.
(14:32):
In cold canning.
You don't have to do any of that.
Nope.
We didn't have to worry aboutthe pH of a single thing.
'cause going straight from the stoveinto the fridge or into the freezer.
No.
Yep.
Steam canner.
No pressure canner.
Mm-hmm.
No difficult ceiling of the bottles.
Nothing.
You screw the lid on a bowl of bottleand stick it in your freezer and
you're essentially done an amazinglyquick process to make three jars,
(14:56):
let's say, of strawberry preserves.
Bruce (14:57):
One of the things I learned in, in writing this was the
variety globally of chili sauces,
Mark (15:05):
right
Bruce (15:05):
of chi from chili crisps to sandals.
There's kind of West
Mark (15:10):
African chili
Bruce (15:11):
sauces in there.
Yep.
To salsa matcha.
And I was not that familiar withsalsa matcha when we started this.
This Texas boy is, yeah,I wasn't, and I was.
Undo by it.
So it was so much fun for me tolearn a new technique, a new style
of chili sauce, to create five orsix variations using different dried
chilies, different seeds, differentnuts, different dried fruits in it.
(15:35):
And I had so much fun writing this book,
Mark (15:37):
right.
And I think that that's.
All how this book came about.
It's gonna be out in July.
If you wanna see us making one of thesechili crisps, that's a Chinese condiment
of dried chilies in a billion aromatics.
We're gonna make it on amNorthwest Morning television.
Um, probably it will have.
Aired about a week after this podcast,episode drops, and you can check out
(16:01):
AM Northwest from Portland, Oregon.
They have a YouTube channel withall of their segments on it, and
you can watch us make this chilicrisp on air with them, right?
Right from our own kitchen.
We do this once a month with themand we shoot the whole thing.
We don't shoot it.
It's live in the studio.
We do it live with two iPhones and
Bruce (16:19):
Zoom.
Mark (16:20):
Zoom and the host in Portland, Oregon.
So you can see us makea chili crisp there.
You got to the YouTube channelam Northwest and, uh, see us
make this chili crisp there.
That is a recipe from the book.
So that's a little introductionto what's coming out in July.
You can tell we're super excitedabout it because it really is an
interesting and new venture for us.
We've moved away from air fryers andinstant pots, and we've moved into
(16:42):
something that we feel is incrediblycreative, both for us and maybe for
the people who might buy this book.
Okay, so that's all that wecan say about the new book.
At this point, we probably bangedon enough about it to let it go, but
let's say that it would be great ifyou signed up for our newsletter.
We have a newsletter that is, uh,sometimes directed toward this podcast,
sometimes, uh, it's other things beyondthis podcast, lifestyle stuff, stuff
(17:05):
about our life in New England, et cetera.
You can find that on ourwebsite, Bruce and mark.com,
or cooking with Bruce and mark.com.
By the way, you cannot sign up for thisnewsletter anywhere but there on the
landing page of our website, I cannotcapture your email from social media,
from Instagram, from Facebook, et cetera.
Just remember, it's reallybad, even in dms to post your
(17:26):
email address on social media.
It's capturable.
At that point by bots and by otherswho are, let's say, nefarious intent.
Okay.
That's enough for this bit.
Let's move on to what's makingus happy in food this week.
Bruce (17:43):
Roxbury Russett Hard cider.
Mark (17:46):
Oh, right.
Bruce (17:46):
We were recently in the smack dab middle of Pennsylvania, and if you
Mark (17:52):
listen to us, you heard about our road trip to Gettysburg
Bruce (17:54):
and they grow a lot of apples there.
It's a, a big sixth largest applegrowing region in the country.
Mark (18:00):
That cracked me up when he said that it's the sixth largest.
I was like.
Not the largest or nextlargest, but the sixth that was.
So instead of just saying it's one ofthe largest, you had to like quantify it.
Yeah.
Sixth largest apple growing regions.
Bruce (18:13):
So we'd been out to dinner and we ordered a bottle actually of Arkansas,
black apples hard cider with dinner.
And we love Arkansas.
Black apples, we can getthem here in New England.
We can, but we love that ciderso much that it's made by
Plowman's Cider that we found.
They had a store of tap room, atasting room in downtown Gettysburg.
(18:33):
So we went in and we bought likea case of the Arkansas Black.
We bought out,
Mark (18:37):
we bought out the last of last year's supply.
Then
Bruce (18:40):
we saw on their shelf.
There were six bottles ofRoxberry Russett cider.
Now we love Roxbury, Russettapples too, and he said they
only made a few cases this year.
That's all that was left, so we tasted it.
We loved it once again, and we bought
Mark (18:56):
them.
We bought out their yearly supply.
They have to wait until the fall andapples come in to make any more cider.
I don't know if you know this,but a hard cider is quite a thing.
Oh yeah.
The kids are totally into it.
If you go to Asheville, NorthCarolina, you'll see CEAs
everywhere downtown and then.
All out in the mountains around Asheville.
You could spend days goingfrom cidery to cidery.
They, they're like wineries.
Mm-hmm.
(19:16):
You go in, you get smalltastes of each of the ciders.
They make, they often have food available.
They have patios, beautifulplaces to sit and drink the cider.
They, it's a, it's a really funthing to do around Asheville
is to make a cider tour.
We should do that sometime.
We should put together a whole cidertour around Asheville, North Carolina.
Okay.
With other
Bruce (19:36):
people.
People pay us to go.
Sure.
Mark (19:38):
People pay us.
How about we just all get a group ofpeople and go, but sure people pay us.
We could put together a cider tourof North Carolina around Asheville.
That sounds like a lot of fun.
Okay, so what's making mehappy in food this week?
And it's a bit of a surprise.
It's eggs.
Now I know this is kind of funny,but, uh, eggs are a source of
political and social discontentright now in the United States, but
Bruce (20:01):
social discontent over eggs.
Mark (20:04):
It well, it is and it's quite the issue.
And I don't wanna get into politicsright now, but I just wanna tell
you that in our part of New England.
Eggs are still $5 adozen from local farms.
Mm-hmm.
Organic.
Bruce (20:16):
You see the chickens running around the yard.
It's really nice.
In
Mark (20:19):
fact, recently around us in New England, the egg producers,
these are all small local farms,began an egg war, and so you could.
See some of them cross at the five ontheir signs and put four because they were
on an egg pricing war with each other.
So we actually go to an organicfarm and buy two to three dozen
eggs at a time, at $5 each.
(20:40):
It's kind, it's amazing.
Now I wanna tell you that theseeggs are not fully washed, not at
all washed, don't have chicken.
Um, stuff on them, and they still havelittle pieces of hay stuck on them, so you
do have to wash them before you cook them.
And because they're not washed,they'll actually stay longer.
(21:02):
It's a whole thing aboutthe coating on the shelf.
They can even
Bruce (21:05):
stay at room temperature.
Yeah, like
Mark (21:06):
they do in Europe, they can, because you keep this coating on the shell that
is washed off in industrial production,but we don't, uh, I have to say, we
bring 'em home and put 'em right in thefridge, but the local eggs are so tasty.
They're so beautiful to look at.
In the pan, they have a gorgeous,dark yellow, or even orange color.
They are extraordinary.
(21:27):
Easy dinners.
Uh, we just had a dinner the othernight of I had an omelet and Bruce had a
couple of fried eggs and that was dinner.
Uh, I know we usually do these elaboratemeals and I had an omelet and we had
fried eggs and toast and that was dinner.
But eggs make me very happy, and I'mglad that we live in a world, part
of the world where in fact, eggs arenot a source of political or social
(21:48):
contention, but rather an egg war amongstthe producers to reduce the price.
So that's our podcast for this week.
Thanks for listening into us.
We appreciate your support.
If you can rate thispodcast, that would be great.
If you can write a review ofit, that would be greater.
We appreciate your support because weare otherwise unsupported, except through
your listens, likes, and comments.
Bruce (22:07):
And every week we tell you what's making us happy in food.
So go to our Facebook group, asMark said, cooking with Bruce
and Mark and tell us there what'smaking you happy in food this week.
Because we want to know, and ifit sounds really delicious, we
may try it and talk about it hereon cooking with Bruce and Mark.
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