Plumnluvfoods on WICC ep 60 Preserveing the harvest

WE chat about making those amazing summer veggies last year round! PLus we are joined by fermentation expert Terry Walters! Get her newest book "Nourish" at www.terrywalters.net

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Come you in, installing a world of sound. Chef Pull
on the.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Mic, making Heartstown, the Jeff Jeff Brown a.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Shotguns My soul life.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Chef Dead in the background, making new beats.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Down talk Girl's a peace they us down any night.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
The time, and the conversation song the day nights and
bull made dishes the streets, bootstal sides, these chef Springmates,
Monice to it soon and podcast a chess.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Can't bed cord me snuck you off? The dead conversation
so the fast say.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Sun on the Nie, Chef.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Fum in the list.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
And Happy Saturday, ladies and gentlemen. What's happened? Welcome to
Plumb Love Foods right here a wye see the voice.
Look Connecticut, I am Chef Plum hanging out with you
today talking all about food, flavors and fun. That's three f's,
the triple F of food. I don't know, Jeffy. I
thought I was trying to come with up. Theyre joining
me out, so is my good friend, Chef Jeffy.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
The triple F food flavors and fun, food flavor and
fun here Plumb Love Foods.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Hey, Yes, well that doesn't really counts an F there,
but you know, watch F that's an acronym.

Speaker 4 (01:31):
Somebody call that a literation? No, what would that be
called literation? Yeah, when they're all the same letters. Yeah,
food flavors, fun and fantastic families.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah, we go five f's. That's five f's for you.
Right there. We're all very hot but happy to be
hanging out with you guys. They hope you're having a
fantastic Saturday. Jeffy, how is your being back, you know,
from after the summer, like you know, because I have
the summertime is a busy season. It's good.

Speaker 4 (01:58):
So this last week I had off and you know,
here at the Oysterfest and back to back to Manhattan
actually on Monday.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Oh there you go.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
I'm actually relaxing, having a beautiful time.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Mellows out. Well, I'll tell you what also is a
beautiful time because we are in two places at once
right now, Jeffrey, two places at once. We're using magic
right now. Magic because currently, friends, if you haven't done
so yet, turn this show on, get in your car
and come down to the Norwalk Oyster Festival, a Veterans
Memorial Park. Friends, that's where we're hanging out at today.

(02:34):
We are doing some stuff with our friends from the
Mohegan Sun Online Casino. Come down Joys the VIP Tent.
We're gonna makeing some amazing steaks and oysters and we
got a beautiful corn sold we're doing. We're gonna be
hanging out in there all weekend long, right, gamble, have
yourself a delicious cocktail. You know, it's gonna be a
great place to come and plus the sun's out. You
can got the sun for a little bit, have some

(02:55):
great food. I'm telling you, it's awesome. All you do
is gamble. You gamble, you get all this stuff for
free for them. I don't know how they do it, Jeff,
but they do it. They do it, and we're happy
to be part of it. We're happy to be there
and put smiles on faces at the park. The Oyster
Fest is an awesome time.

Speaker 4 (03:08):
Honestly, it's like there's an amusement park there. There's like
music playing.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
We're there. I mean, there's no reason not to be there. No,
it's like a nice celebration end of summer situation, you.

Speaker 4 (03:17):
Know, absolutely, it's it's it's literally it's like everybody's back
to school. But it's a fun thing to do on
the weekend. It's it's like a it's a great fall event.
Everyone needs to come down, especially to see us.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah no, I mean listen or come down and hang
out at Mohigan Sun with the online casino intent because
it's the online casino is so much fun. I keep
using it all the time on my phone. John, I'm
not even trying to make a commercial. I'm just being
serious like I was doing it last night, sitting on
my phone at night, listen to music gambling.

Speaker 4 (03:41):
Does that mean it sounds like do you have a problem.
I mean we need to is No, No, it's not
a problem. Okay, it's good. It's good.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
I like to win, and I'm you make money on this, yeah, yeah,
you make money. I'm in. Yeah. If you come to
the online casino, the VIP tent with Mohgan Sun's on
like casino, all you do is gamble and you can
come in and hang out and have some steak and
have some oysters and have some you know, just delicious
food that we're making. To hang out with us, it's

(04:07):
gonna be a lot of fun. So you got to
come by and join us. If you're not now there today,
you can also come tomorrow because it's going on all
day Sunday as well, Jeffy.

Speaker 4 (04:15):
That's right, that's right, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the Oyster Fest
is gonna be on fire.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
It's gonna be a lot of fun. Come see us.
Veterans of Mortal Park in Norwalk. We're hanging out with
Mohican soun Online Casino the VIP Tent. Come join us.
It's going to be a great time. Today's show is
a great time too, also, Jeffy, wonderful time. I'm super
excited about it. I know this is the show you
wanted to do for a while. You're a big fan
of this sort of stuff. We were talking all things, yes,
fermentation and canning, and I like how you told me.

(04:40):
You're like, let's do a show about We've been talking
so much about, like you know, farming and vegetables and growing.
You're like, let's talk do a show about preserving the harvest.
And I was like, that sounds like a song that
our band would make preserving the harvest. Oh they did.
Don't worry, it's gonna be I'm sure they did.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
No.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
But yeah, so it's it's something you're you're a big
fan of. I'm a huge fan of it.

Speaker 4 (05:03):
I love canning, freezing, pickling, fermenting, dehydrating, all the things
that you can do with food to stretch it out.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
You know.

Speaker 4 (05:14):
I love fresh food obviously, I love it when it's
fresh and it's delicious. But the flavors and the different
textures and the different things you can kind of achieve
with food by manipulating it, but also preserving it so
you can have it on the shelf or have it
out of the freezer, or have it out of a jar,
you know, anytime of the year.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
To me, that's priceless. Yeah, I think that's a great
way to look at it, to it particularly with you know,
one of things like it's tomatoes, and you know, I
mean you could just I mean, preserving stuff to be
so simple, even just freezing it, you know, as a
way of preserving you know.

Speaker 4 (05:46):
Yeah, that's what I'm saying, Like just just just collecting berries,
right Like, if you go out and you go to
a berry farm and you pick a ton of blueberries,
You're not gonna eat them all right away.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
The best thing to do is just put them in
the freezer, yeah, and then you pull them out or whatever.

Speaker 4 (06:01):
Smoothies you can make a pie out of a frozen
berry really easily. You know, you can make a quick
syrup for a drink out of a frozen berry very easily.
It's just like, so preserving food doesn't have to be
completely unapproachable. You know, there's there's just things we can
do to preserve food that everybody can do at home,
super easy to do.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Well, that's one of the things I was thinking about,
and you said this, I was like, is this a
scary thing for you know, for the for my average
Joe to do? You know, I mean, because it does
sound like a little bit daunting canning, preserving, pickling, it
does sound a little bit daunting for people who maybe
haven't done it at home. That's why I kind of
opened up with saying freezing is a way of preserving stuff,
you know. I mean, we freeze backwards tomatoes here at
my house, like I said, and it's and we use

(06:39):
them later on the season, which is, you know, when
we don't have great tomatoes. We saw, I have some
in the in the freezer which comes out great. But
you know, you think about some of these other ways
of preserving stuff, you know, it can be daunting for people. Yeah,
So the way I like to think about it, which
helps me really wrap my head around preserving and how
I kind of like don't get scared of it is
I think, uh, before science, people have were using these

(07:04):
techniques to survive, Like, you know, if we landed on
a deserted island, knowing just a handful of leaves techniques,
what kind of dessert, Like we're talking like cherry pie and.

Speaker 4 (07:15):
I just know deserted, Like yeah, yeah, if we landed
on a cherry cake island, a cheesecake island, Oh my gosh,
it would be incredible.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
That would be incredible cheesecake. Oh but in the sun cheesecake.
I don't know. All right, well there is yeah, never mind,
go ahead, Yeah, there's flaws, those flaws of my story,
all right, So continue three.

Speaker 4 (07:40):
What I'm trying to say is that like before there
were science and before people knew how to do too
many things, these are things that people were doing. And
now that we know so much about science and that
we can like you know, talk to people and understand,
I feel way safer about even just learning something from someone,
not reading it out of a book, and then using
that technique. So it's like, yeah, these things to me

(08:01):
are are really fun, you know, because I feel like
you're tapping into something that's like, you know, ancient, like.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Your roots sort of.

Speaker 4 (08:09):
Yeah, everybody comes from a place where they preserve food
at one time.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, even like you know, people who are traveling on
these boats crossing oceans back in the day, they would
you know, preserve these things and big barrels and take
it with them so they had food. And one of
the fun things we're doing today too is our friend
Terry Walter. She's an expert on fermentation and preserving Stuff's
gonna join us in the break too, where side to
have her back on the show. She's a good friend
of ours. She's a Connecticut local. She's got a great
book out. She'll tell you all about that the next break.
But so we do have experts coming in as well.

(08:35):
But Jeff, before we you know, get to our second break,
I'm kind of like, let's talk about some of these
methods of fermentation and excuse me, methods are preserving and
how how it can happen, and maybe you can kind
of give us the the the one oh one and
a couple sentence of each one and we can start
with fermenting. Because I just said fermenting.

Speaker 4 (08:52):
Sure, fermentation is simply done. The vegetables are broken down
by lack of app said, but they're basically beneficial, uh,
I guess. Uh probiotics, you know, and if there's so
much acid is to acidic back here, you can't grow exactly,
so like the bad stuff can't grow because you grow

(09:13):
the good stuff, and that good stuff is it's actually
great for gut health all sorts of things. And just
to give you an example of fermentation of something that
everybody's had at least once in their life or at
least heard of it, sour kraut. M Like everyone's tried
sower kraut, right, at least once. Somebody's tried souer kraut.
That's fermat hope. So right, what kind of if you've
never had sauer kraut.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
That's fermented, you know what I mean? Like that's that's
a fermented cabbage.

Speaker 4 (09:38):
So uh, that's like the the most like common I
think ferment that in America that everyone might know because
it goes hand in hand with the hot dog.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
And I'm sure our friend, our friend Terry will tell
us a little bit how you can do at the house.
And it's really really easy to do. What about canning,
The canning is also a way of preserving. Yeah, canning
another thing.

Speaker 4 (09:57):
So there's the thing about canning that's interesting is that
there's like novice canning and then there's canning that is
what I would say a little bit more intermediate to
like expert level where you have to use pressure cookers
and things like that to can depending on what you're canning.
But like things like tomatoes kind of very easy to can.

(10:18):
You know, they're high in acid, so not a lot
of bad back to here, it grows in them as
long as you're working in a clean environment and you're
you know, boiling them to you hear the the lids
kind of pop and then you pull them out and
then let them come to the room temperature. You hear
everything suck down and kind of it creates a seal.
So basically what you're doing is you're heating a vegetable

(10:38):
in a jar with a lid, and once you pull
it out, the heat as the heat dissipates, it contracts
in and makes a like a really heavy duty seal.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Yeah, it's just a way of kind of keeping things.
You use heat to kind of get the excess air
out of there essentially exactly. Yeah, that's that's how I look.
I mean, I could be wrong. That's what I think
of it, you know. Yeah. Okay, So what dehydrating. We
talked about freezing of course too. You you can freeze
things very smile, but dehydrating and drying is also away.

Speaker 4 (11:10):
Yeah, yeah, another super I mean, you don't need a dehydrator.
You can use your oven on proof and keep the
door cracked.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (11:17):
Dehydration is just removing the water out of something, taking
it all the way out. Like you can actually hang
herbs in a window and dehydrate them a lot of times,
Like I used to do that with a big rosemary
branch if it broke or something in a storm. I
had a huge rosemary bush outside and they would always
break big pieces, and I would just hang them in
the window and they would just get you know, bone dry,
and then I would shake them all off and put

(11:37):
them in a jar and use that for the year
for the rosemary.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
And it was It's super easy to do. You can
do it with a regano as well.

Speaker 4 (11:44):
You can, like if you grew a regue outside, you
can cut it, you know, tie in a bundle and
hang it in a window that gets a lot of
sun and it'll completely work straight that.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
I do the same thing with mar you know, we
have our cilantro that we take and I take the
seed and it goes to seed. We drive them out.
And for Korna, oh, that's.

Speaker 4 (11:59):
Awesome of your own coreander. That's amazing, very very simple.
It's a good one too. What else is there?

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Pickling? Obviously you all know what pickles are, you know,
I mean, that's that's a simple one. Then I think
sometimes pickling and fermenting can kind of get confusing. Well,
there's there's lacto fermented pickling, which is a type of
fermented fermented pickle. And then there's pickling that we know
that everyone, which is vegetables that are preserved in a
vinegar based brine. So the vinegar raises the acid level,

(12:28):
which keeps the bad bacteria is out and helps preserve
the vegetables. But a lot of times vinegar based pickles
and Brian's have to be cold, they have to be
at a certain temperature. Yeah, And for me, I mean
I think pickles are the biggest you know, the first
thing I think of dill pickles, bread and butter pickles,
all that stuff. It's it's oh yeah, the same thing,
you know.

Speaker 4 (12:48):
Oh yeah, I listen, man, I love pickled anything, pickled peppers, pickles,
you know, I mean, the list goes on and on
and on.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
I just you name it. If it's pickled, I'll probably
try it. Yeah. I have one time had somebody ask, well,
I heard a story the summer was hilarious where someone
came into obviously this person's not a food person. They
came into a farm store and asked the gentleman run
the store. They said, do you guys have any cucumbers,
cause that are already sliced, Like it's already sliced cucumbers.

(13:18):
He had never seen a whole cucumber before because he'd
only seen them in a pickle jar. Hilarious anyway, takes
he's only seen them in the pickle jar. Yep, that's
a that's a wild one. I mean takes all kinds.
And pickling's fun too, and we'll get more into it.
You can make a quick pickle. You don't to like,
you know, you don't have to like overthink it when
you're pickling a little bit of salt and vinegar over

(13:39):
top some you know, red onions or some shallots or
I mean, if you can pickle something very very quickly,
super easy. This I mean there's quick pickles. There's just
pickles that you don't have to do that.

Speaker 4 (13:49):
You can just stick stuff in vinegar and throw it
in the fridge and leave it there for a week
and then it'll become pickled and it tastes delicious.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
Then you can have it in an hour. Actually it's quick.
I mean I've actually even used lemon juice to pick
up before. Oh, definitely. Yeah. I guess almost any acid'll
pickle something. You got it, chef. Let's talk about curing
and salting. You know, I used to cure my own
pork belly to make my own bacon. And you know
this is another one that's actually really simple to do.

Speaker 4 (14:13):
Yeah, and you can do it with vegetables, Like you
can use salt to cure and remove things and store
them in salt and have them dried out that way.
Like there's a famous Japanese cherry blossom that they take
and they put it in salts with a little bit
of vinegar and then that, but it's like packed into

(14:35):
the salts, like they soak the flour and a little
vinegar and then pack it into salt and let all
the moisture kind of draw out of the flour, and
then you use the salt in the flour as like
a seasoning for all sorts of dishes. But it's a
it's kind of a neat way. And then there's also
a way to take grains and salt and kind of
make a a bed that you take vegetables and you

(14:57):
put them in this bed and it kind of draws
out some of the moisture.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
It's like if your phone falls in water putting it
in a bag of rice. Kind of.

Speaker 4 (15:06):
Yeah, it takes out a little bit of the moisture,
puts some of the salt in the vegetable, but it
leaves it a little bit crisp. I can't remember the
name of the technique. Look to ask she'll know all
about that. Yeah, it's very very very cool.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
I know Dan Barber was doing it for a while
on one of was cru to tape platters, is how
I read about it, and I was like, ooh, that's
really awesome. Root cellaring was something that you would also
mention that I don't know a lot about. That's just
storing a vegetable right, Like I think my father in
law he grows dark like on onions. I think he
does that where he just takes them and ties them
up and kind of hangs them in the basement. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (15:37):
Well, so root cellaring is basically it's where you store
vegetables in a cool, dark, humid environment, so like in
the cellar. So a lot of times it's it's usually
a cellar off the side of the cellar. They would
they would dig out like a closet in the basement
and have a door there and then like a and
they would fill it with apples squashed a root like cellars,

(16:01):
all onions, all sorts of different stone fruits. And it
was just a way to kind of like let things
not rot as fast because they were in a place
where you know, all these different bacterias won't grow, or
they'll grow a lot slower. I guess you know, things
will rot a lot slower and then those kind of
things ripen a little bit.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
I do think that way.

Speaker 4 (16:23):
I mean, apples, for instance, will last almost a year
this way. This is like a common way. They root
cellar apples all over the place, like it's a it's
a very common way to store.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Apples yeah, Freeze drying is also kind of one of
the other ways that we don't see a lot of anymore,
but you'll see a lot of that now. I remember
as a kid growing up and we would go to
the Museum and Washington, DC, and we always get the
Astronaut ice cream the freeze drive, you know, yeah, and
like that was like the greatest thing ever, like the
greatest like that. It's like the Neapolitan, the chocolate, strawberry
and vanilla, even though it all kinds of tastes of

(16:53):
the same, but like that was the jam back in
the day, that freeze dried ice cream. That was amazing
and you'd bite into it and then like it was
it was like chalky for about three seconds until it
kind of gets, you know, wet and kind of re
cross back to life to free tried ice cream is
a way it is. That's the only thing I think
of when I see things like freeze drying. I just
think immediately back to that freeze ried ice cream. So
so free drying is a is really cool.

Speaker 4 (17:15):
It is like advanced kind of science technology. It's it's
a little bit more expensive, but it lets vegetables kind
of retain a bunch of their flavor. They don't lose
a lot of the I can't think of the name
of the word, but not really something you can do
it your house that easily though, No, well, now you could.
I mean I think they're like five or so. They

(17:35):
sell them at Costco. I saw the Sears dryers at
a Costco. Yeah, and a home version. You can put
about five trays in it and it'll freeze dry all
sorts of stuff.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
And then the other thing with freeze drying that's kind
of neat.

Speaker 4 (17:46):
I mean it's not you can it'll last forever anyway, candy,
but you can take things like candy and freeze it
and then put it in the freeze dryer and it'll
remove like all the moisture and make it kind of
like blow up because it's under pressure.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
You know.

Speaker 4 (17:58):
That's the thing about a free drier is it freezes
really really really cold and then it uh evaporates, uh
the the all the moisture out of whatever it is
under pressure, like so it it kind of like will
pull and make the candy stretch out into these like.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
Almost like mouth balls, you know, so like yeah, like
moth balls, but or a molt ball. You know, you
know what I'm talking about. The multiple Yeah, like I said, mothballs,
was like, that's not I meant malt molt balls, like
like a mothball, like like a yeah, I don't try
whopper exactly, so you know, oh that's like from Burger

(18:36):
Maybe I don't know. Oh you could freeze dry, but
Burger king whopper for sure, I mean it would be weird.
Not everything freeze dry is the same too, which is interesting.
See now I want to buy a freeze dry. This
kind of sounds awesome. I have one at work. We
can play. Of course you do, do you really? Yeah,
we have one. It's a lot of fun. I've done
a lot of really cool dishes with it. Could you
freeze dry like a Snicker's bar? Like you freeze dry

(18:56):
and then you take all the moist dry and then
once it's done it's free dry, take it out and
powder it and use it as like like a powder.
You could part of it.

Speaker 4 (19:05):
Yes, yes, I haven't done a Snickers bar because like,
I don't know if nuts freeze dry that well. And
also chocolate doesn't freeze dry super great it doesn't.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yeah, yeah it doesn't. The fat content you think, I
don't know.

Speaker 4 (19:18):
I think it is something to do with the fat content.
Things with a ton of fat don't really freeze dry
as well. It's got to be something with like a
lighter moisture, like things that are like super wet or
hard to freeze dry. Like I've heard of people reducing
stocks down to really really really thick to crease off
sludge and then putting them in a freeze dryer and
then freeze drying it to try to like make it
last forever and making their own sort of like instant.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
Powders interesting like a bouleon, yes exactly, but like an
instant bouleon.

Speaker 4 (19:46):
So it's like because then have to pulverize the freeze dried,
it becomes like a'm super super fine powder and it
sorbs really fast.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
I mean, there's lots different ways of doing this stuff,
which is great, and this is you know, we just
kind of covered a few of them there to kind
of you know, set the tableever, I know what we're
talking about. But you know, at your house you want
to try something simple. Quick. Pickles are easy. You can
do a quick and our friend Terry Walters will be
on here in the next break and she'll tell you
all about how you can do it easily too at
the house. That's really simple. But it's a fun way
to play with your food. Basically, you know, you're kind
of doing a science experiment science, you know, and you

(20:15):
can learn a lot about food that way. And you know,
just because you think something looks like it's going bad
doesn't always mean it is. Yeah, And also pick up
yourself a cheap one hundred dollars dehydrator or a cheap
one hundred dollars.

Speaker 4 (20:27):
You can get on a vacuum thirty bucks. Yeah, get
a vacuum steeler. That's another great way to be able
to put your food in the freezer. Yeah, I mean freezy.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
It'll definitely stay longer in the freezer if you vacuum
steel it, that's for sure. You get that moisture out
of it. That's a big deal.

Speaker 4 (20:40):
Yeah, you get all the moisture out of it. And
then all of a sudden, you're in the preservation game.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
I like that. You're in the preservation game. You're not
watching the game, Jeffy, you're in You're in the game now,
that's right. You're preserving the harvest. We got to go
to break here in a second. But you also make
vinegars too, which we love to talk about later on
as well.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
Yeah, well that's another form of fermenting. I like to
use a lot of scraps to make all sorts of things, vinegars.
I'm really getting into trying to make my own aminos,
kind of like a brag's you know, aminos crazy crazy.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
The things you're talking about right now are crazy to me.

Speaker 5 (21:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
Well, you know, you go deep on this, You go
much deeper than I do. Well, I get.

Speaker 4 (21:14):
Excited about doing kind of making my own new flavors.
You know, it's a mad scientist work. It feels like
sometimes that strawberry vinegar you were making last year was
pretty incredible. Yeah, it's a fun one and I think
things like that just kind of come out of just
playing with these techniques. And so if you're a chef
and you want to do it, great, get in there
and make some fun stuff. But if you're a home cook,

(21:35):
it's really not that hard. And we'll talk about it
later on. Actually, I think we'll have some tips about
how to do that.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
I can't wait. It's gonna be a lot of fun.
You're checking out Plumb Love Foods right here on WYCC.
The Voice of Kinectic. I hope you're having a fantastic Saturday.
Thanks for joining me and Jeffy here. We appreciate you.
We come back our friend Terry Walters, she's going to
come on and tell us all about waste of ferment
and preserve your foods. We're right back looking my plumb

(22:23):
love foods right here on WICC. The voice of Connecticut
Chef Plump. Chef Jeff's sitting here with you on a Saturday.
Hope you're having a great weekend. And like I said
before in the first break, Jeffy, if you're just hanging
out the house, listening to the radio or driving in
your car, come on down to the Norwalk Oyster Festival.
Jeffy and I are down there having a great time
making mistakes, making some grilled oysters, you know, kissing babies,
shaking hands, doing all the fun things. Come hang out

(22:44):
with us with the Mohegan Sun Online Casino VIP tent.
That's what we're gonna be at. You can come in
for free, just gamble a little bit on the appy
down on the app that let you in. It's a
lot of fun. It sounds like work, but they will
walk you through every step of the Jeffy. And then
once you do that, you can come inside and hang
out with us there. Oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (23:00):
And once you're in the back, the drinks are flowing,
the food is there. We're having fun.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
Can we say that there's free drinks and there's free drinks.

Speaker 4 (23:08):
Well, it's it's it's it's VIP, baby, you're VIP when
you're with us and you're backstage.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
We may be wearing crush velvet outfits. I'm just pointing
that out. I didn't want to crush it out loud
to people. I didn't want to say it out loud, Jeffie.
But it is possible. It is totally possible. It is funny.

Speaker 4 (23:25):
I'm getting pirate sleeves put on all our show, are
you yeah, ruffles, Yeah, I'm ready around the neck really yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
Well definitely a few down that down the center. All right, Well,
come to see us. If you're hanging out, come see us.
We'll be here Saturday and Sunday this weekend. You know,
come check us out. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Jeffie.
We're spending the time here today talking about preserving the harvest,
about keeping things right a little bit longer. We spent
the all summer long talking about how much fresh vegetables
from the farms and farmers and how things you know
are just delicious for the farm, the favorites.

Speaker 4 (23:56):
Yeah, No, that that's what it's about. Listen, summer is
about everything coming in right, we're getting.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
The first of it. Yeah, And well, here's the thing.
All that's fantastic news and great problem is when it
starts to get cold. Guess what happens, Jeffy, We started
to lose that stuff. It's gone. It's gone or or
is it Jeffy?

Speaker 5 (24:14):
Or is it?

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Well we deserve it. And the good news is this
fun thing about doing the show is that we've made
so many friends. And one of our good friends is
going to join us right now and talk all about
all kinds of great fermentation. Her latest book is called Nourish,
Eat Clean, and Live Well. She is a fantastic human being.
She's a genius when it comes to this sort of stuff.
Actually went to her house a couple of years ago
and we made all kinds of fun things that bubbled.

(24:37):
We made bubbly things in the jar. Jeff you're joining
us right now, is our friend Terry.

Speaker 5 (24:41):
Wat How are you all sorts of bubbly things.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
It was bubbling. We made bubbly things.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
Totally did make bubbly things.

Speaker 5 (24:53):
And it's so funny because you're talking about like, you know,
you get all this from the harvest and it's gone,
but like, you know, we get I did when everything
starts to come come from the garden.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
And now like I don't know about you guys, like I.

Speaker 5 (25:05):
Have a garden and I cannot keep up, Like I
see another tomato, I'm gonna like, I can't eat another tomato.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
Oh my god.

Speaker 5 (25:14):
And now they're like going crazy. I have so much
so like we have to do other.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
Things with them.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
Well, the funny thing about tomatoes, I think as a
season goes on and on the outside skin of the
tomato seems to get tougher because I'll, I mean, you know,
I'll just have a piece of bread and tomato and
some maa level and I'll be dinner for me because
we have my wife has this massive garden in the backyard.
But you know, we get a bunch of them and
we end up you know, I said in the beginning
of the show here before you were here, one of
the things I like to do is for preserving. It's
very very simple because anybody can do this. We cut

(25:40):
our tomatoes up and just throw them in a ziplock
bag or vacuum steal them. I put them in the freezer, yeah,
piece of cake, and then take them out later and
just it's it works great for everything. It's it's an
easy way to you know, preserve those tomatoes for later.
You may be sick of them now, but you might
want them in January, right, And you can.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
Also one of the other things I love doing.

Speaker 5 (25:57):
I know you want to talk about fermentation, but you
can to place them in half and then throw them
in your oven and like put your oven on low,
like one hundred degrees. Or if you have a dehydrator,
that's what I do. I have a dehydrator. Yeah, just
I just dry them and when they're done, throw them
in a bag and then you have them.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
That's beautiful right there too, very very stuff. Well, you
can buy dehydrats now on Amazon off like thirty bucks.
They're not expensive anymore, No, they're really I.

Speaker 5 (26:22):
Mean you can buy a small one for yeah, really reasonable.
It might not get you through the season or through
another season, but like even the more expensive one isn't
much more than.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
Like one hundred bucks.

Speaker 5 (26:35):
So they're really it's so good and you can make
like fruit, leather and all sorts of things out of them.
I use them to dry all my herbs from the
garden because like you know, like my.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
Herbs are doing really well.

Speaker 5 (26:47):
But again, like I have so much, but I can
bring them in like one herb at a time, one
bunch out of time, fill the dehydrator, take it out,
put in a bag, and now I've got to last
through the entire year.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
And there's so much better too when you do that
as well, especially at the house, because you think about
if you buy dried parsley from the grocery store, which
is no reason what should ever do that, But if
you were to buy that, the flavor from what you
dried at the house versus what you bought the store
is completely different night and day, because that stuff from
the store could have been dried twenty five years ago.

Speaker 5 (27:19):
Yeah or yeah, not only that, but like I I
when you buy it in that little jar and it
costs you, like you know, small mortgage to get what
two three ounces right came through the shipping of the jar,
and then you smell the parsley and it doesn't really
have much aroma, and like and then you're using a teaspoon,
Like I don't ever use a teaspoon of parsley in anything.

(27:41):
I like stick my hand in a big jar and like,
you know, just throw it into a recipe, like make
it like really big and pop, and I don't want
to be like parceling out my parsley.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
Wait, you guys actually use that dried parsal to cook with.
I use that as a fire starter when I'm making
a fire pit. That's what I thought it was for.
Is that not much? Jeffy, you were you were putting
a finger up, like you have a comment.

Speaker 4 (28:03):
Well, I was just going to say, you know, the
thing I love about drying herbs is that sometimes herbs
have a different flavor different times of the year. Like
my early basil compared to my late basil is like
a really different flavor. And I like drying them and
then labeling that because you know, I like to like
nerd out with the flavors and be like this later
one is you know, really lends itself more to like

(28:25):
Thai food because of the stronger flavor to it. And
this this one over here is this is for the
pasta sauce.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
You can get crazy with it. Yeah, but I'm just
saying like that.

Speaker 5 (28:35):
I don't know if you have like early season chives,
like I make a chive pesto and in the beginning
of the season, like look at, you got to add
spinach or kale or something to it to neutralize it
a little bit, because it's like fire, those early season
shives and chibes.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
You're like, where's the heat?

Speaker 1 (28:52):
You know, but you can't so good.

Speaker 5 (28:56):
You can dehydrate the chivees and just put them in
like a little herb grinder and have like chive powder
to use to sounds great.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
I mean, I think I knew a chef who used
to take it. Wasn't a chef, was a chef, or
was a gardener. It might have been my brother in
law who does this. He takes a lot of his herbs. He'll,
you know, put him in the processor, which I don't
like that either, but if he's got a lot of them,
he'll put it all the process. Then he puts them
in like ice cube trays and then freezes them, and
then he takes them out and then vacuum seals them,
which seems like a lot of steps, but I've never

(29:26):
actually just taken whole herbs like that and done that
with it, because there's a lot of moisture in them.
But I guess that would freeze, but it would break down.
H Terry, How do you feel about freezing stuff?

Speaker 3 (29:34):
I love freezing stuff. I just run out of freezer space.

Speaker 5 (29:37):
Yeah, so you know, but if you're freezing stuff, it
lasts really well. You retain most of the nutritional value
if you.

Speaker 3 (29:46):
Have a good freezer.

Speaker 5 (29:47):
Yeah, I'm all for freezing.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
You know what I love?

Speaker 5 (29:50):
Are you know the like mega ice cube trays. They're
like really big and they made them for like really
fancy cocktail.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
Old fashion, right. Ye.

Speaker 5 (30:00):
I like feeling that filling those because now you have
a really good amount of something and and you freeze
it in them, and when they're frozen, you just pop
them out and throw the cubes in a bag.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yep, that works too. That's great. Yeah, that that's like
for me.

Speaker 3 (30:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (30:17):
Or you know, the small cubes with those silicone freezer
trays make freezing herbs, pasta sauce. They make freezing everything
really really easy because they just pop out so quickly.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
Right. How are you with canning, like what do you
think about canning stuff? And how hard is that to
for someone who isn't like that great at it canning.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
I'm the worst canner in the.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
World by myself. Here, I'm like, yeah, yeah, you know,
very patient.

Speaker 5 (30:44):
I think canning is great if you like have a
whole community and you're like, you know, three or four
people come in and they like, let's just say you're
using beats, like, you know, you wash the beads, you
prep the beads, you prep the can't the bottles, right like,
and you like work everything in and a line and
just have everybody play their role and then everybody gets
a little bit and it makes the work a lot

(31:07):
easier and more fun. But you know, that whole botulism
thing kind.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
Of gets to me.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
You get nervous. Yeah, no, it's easy.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
With fermentation.

Speaker 5 (31:17):
You don't have that issue, right, Like, you get a
little air bubble in there, like it fills in it's
salt water and the salt actually kills the toxins and
allows the good bacteria to grow and and so it's
like it's magic. But you just have to have someplace
to store your ferments.

Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah, it's just it's got to be cool and like,
you know, dark in that hole. It just feels like
come to my dungeon and look at my fermented cabbage
and it's you know, that's funny because I was at
your house too. You do have like just jars of
things and little clay pot situations that just there's like
like I don't want to say there's smoke coming out
of it almost.

Speaker 5 (31:58):
Well, no, there there certainly isn't roma coming out of it,
not out of the crock.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
The croc retains the aroma.

Speaker 5 (32:07):
But when you're fermenting in bottles, but you know, you could,
like things with high sugar ferment really fast, right, and
so you just you need to have a slightly higher
brine solution. But like tomatoes, if you were making salsa,
you could ferment tomato salsa in twelve hours, right, and
then you could freeze.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
It interesting like a ferm. That's right.

Speaker 5 (32:31):
So now you're getting like you're getting those really fresh
flavors in the middle of winter, and all that good
gut bacteria because it was originally fermented. It's really kind
of cool.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
And I the only person hates the term gut bacteria
just sounds gross.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
But I don't know. My kids call it gut bugs.

Speaker 5 (32:48):
So that's worse.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
I want to backtrack a little bit here and just
talk about the basics of fermentation at home, like something
that someone eases how you could do it at home,
Like what has you talked about the solution, like talk
about all that, Like what is necessary to make that happen?

Speaker 5 (33:04):
So a really big bottle and salt water, like I
use sea salt and water, and for most produce it's
a three percent brine solution. So like a teaspoon of
salt in a cup of water, and if it's higher
and sugar, it's a five.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
Percent brine solution.

Speaker 5 (33:24):
It'd be much easier if we didn't use teaspoons in
this country. So if you scale, you know, that's even better.
But like five percent. The American way would be like
a tablespoon of salt in two cups of water. And
basically you can put everything in your jar and cover
it with salt and then you know it's salt water.
So everything's going to want to float to the top.

(33:46):
So get either a weight or you can take Like
if I'm making sour kraut, right, so I've got all
the sour krout in the jar, and I cover it
with brine. I might take the core of the cabbage
and like wedge it in to hold everything down and
so or you can take a bottle and put some
stones in it and put it into the jar and

(34:07):
then fill it with water so that you have plenty
of brine in there, and your your ferment is held
down below the top level of the brine, and then
cover it up.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
There you go and how long how long does the sit?

Speaker 5 (34:21):
Well, it depends who you ask, and it depends on
your taste. There are three stages of the fermentation. So
the first one is actually killing off the bacteria, and
then the second one is growth. Like then you get
into growth and it's more anaerobic and so like.

Speaker 3 (34:39):
It depends on what you're fermenting.

Speaker 5 (34:42):
But there are health benefits to eating a ferment.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
If you threw.

Speaker 5 (34:47):
Let's just say, some beans and some dill and some
garlic and peppercorns and red pepper flakes in a jar,
covered it with your three percent brine solution, and sealed
it up, there'd be health benefits to eating that if
you fermented it for two days, And there'd be health
benefits in eating it if you fermented it for a month.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
And when it's done.

Speaker 5 (35:09):
Fermenting and it's too however you like it, just put it,
move it to the refrigerator, so it can really take
as long as you want. You know a lot of
people tell me, oh, I gotta go, I'm going away
this weekend and I don't want to leave it. Okay,
then move it to the refrigerator and call it a day.
You know, if you run, your brine starts to evaporate
and your produce starts to stick out from the brine,

(35:30):
then you want to move it to the refrigerator, because
any produce that rises to the top of the brine
is going to rock. Anything below the brine is gonna
just keep fermenting.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
And that's because we're basically taking the oxygen out.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
Of the equation, right, exactly, yep.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
And you can do this so pretty much anything, right, yeah,
I mean vegetables, I mean.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
Yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 5 (35:52):
I mean, yes, we use salt to cure too, right,
we use meats and fish.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
Oh yeah, yeah, So that's actually headed next to talk
a little bit about that I'd mentioned before, how you know,
making bacon. You know, I would salt cure of pork belly,
and you know, it works great I mean, same kind
of idea there, right, get the moisture out of it, exactly.

Speaker 5 (36:10):
Same idea, get the moisture out, kill the bacteria, ye right,
harmful bacteria.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
Someone was telling me.

Speaker 5 (36:18):
I taught in Boston last weekend, and they were telling
me about the history of salt and how in you know,
in olden days, there was a salt tax and so
like the royalties, the rulers would have no idea how
many people even live in their kingdom.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
But the way that they would know is how much.

Speaker 5 (36:43):
Tax they collected on the salt because they used everybody
needed salt to preserve their food.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
That's interesting.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
I thought that was fascinating.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
That's interesting.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
It was like the most valuable commodity that I.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Don't think that's that's interesting. I didn't know that that's crazy.
It makes sense because as we said, you people, I mean,
you got to cure all your food. You got to
like preserve it, you know, because when it gets cold,
that's that's your food You're gonna right.

Speaker 5 (37:08):
We have refrigerations, so we're like we're sitting here talking
about like how long can you keep it like that?
But like truly, we as long as no bad bacteria enters.
If it's fermenting in a really safe coal spot, it
can just keep fermenting.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah, that's interesting. How about that, Jeffrey.

Speaker 4 (37:23):
Yeah, no, I it's funny you say that, because like
during the pandemic when everyone was kind of freaking out,
I bought a ton of weird stuff. And some of
the stuff that I bought that my wife thought I
was crazy for is I bought five gallon buckets of salt,
like tons of them, and I had them and my
wife was like, what are you?

Speaker 1 (37:41):
And I'm like, we'll survive. I will be able to
I'll cure squirrel. It'll be a don't worry, babe, Everything's
gonna be fine.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
Got books on Tempe, all this crazy stuff, and just
started like I went down the rabbit hole deep and
so I I.

Speaker 3 (37:59):
Yeah, did you make Tempe?

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (38:02):
Yeah, Actually I've made Tempa. I've I made my own kog.
I've done a bunch of pretty cool stuff. I got
really into. I was just saying earlier, I've lately I've
been really trying to make my own aminos, kind of
like a brag situation. And I've been working with a
cannabis farm and there's a lot of wasted undergrowth that
you know, we don't we kind of pick early sometimes

(38:22):
when we big leave them, and I'm kind of trying
to work up a recipe to use some of the
We have a huge farm there too that we do
gardening and stuff some of the waste from the farm
and using some of the underleafs to come up with
our own sort of like hamp Amino situation, which can't know,
We'll see how it works out.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
That's awesome on my radar. That's like, I gotta go there.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
But like you know, in my fun, it's fun.

Speaker 5 (38:46):
It is fun, Like it's all fun on Meso too,
it would be.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
Really fun Meso super fun.

Speaker 4 (38:52):
I was me and my friend Adam worked on a
few projects together that came out really great, and then
we met our own memory uh you know, soy Memori
sauce and then had the Memori paste, which is like
in me so kind of it was like, I mean,
it's just such a neat thing to watch happen, you know,
to go from just like a bunch of grains and

(39:13):
salt in a box or in a jar, and you know,
a year later, you know, we you know, we shared it.
It was at his house and he went on vacation.
Then it moved to my house, you know, and I
had it in my area and we're stirring it and
keeping it, and then magically it becomes this beautiful you know.
I still have some it's a year old, you know.
And that's the other thing I was going to say.
Once you forment things, it becomes crazy. I have kimchi

(39:35):
that's over a year old. That's delicious. That's that's like,
I still eat it all the time.

Speaker 5 (39:41):
I think kimchi is really cool because it I mean, well, one,
it's freaking delicious, but.

Speaker 3 (39:47):
Also it changes so much, does it for mens?

Speaker 5 (39:50):
Like sauer Kraft changes too, but it kind of goes
on a more linear path where let's expected, whereas kimchi
in the beginning it gets like really fiery spicy, and
then it totally mellows and the older it gets, it
gets sweeter, and that always surprises me.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
I think that's the coolest part.

Speaker 4 (40:10):
I love what you're saying there because I started with
really really hot peppers and then after a year everyone.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
Can eat it.

Speaker 5 (40:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (40:16):
Like my boss was like, did you when did is
this the Brussels sprout stuff you made last year? And
I was like yeah, and he was like what you know,
like at first, like you just couldn't believe like that,
like that no doubt it was, but you know, kept
under the right conditions and and and it just like
like we're saying that flavors develop, you know, like think

(40:37):
of wine. I mean, you would drink a thirty year
old bottle of wine.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
So we only got a couple minutes left here, Terry,
and I want to just get in there and ask
a question to you, because Jeff makes a lot of
vinegars too, at at his client's house and doing at
his job making vinegar to you, is that is that
something you like to do do as well? And then
is the process hard?

Speaker 3 (40:56):
The process isn't that hard. I like to flavor vinegars.

Speaker 5 (40:59):
I tend not to make a lot of vinegars, but
you know, I like, I'm a little bit of an
apple cider vinegar because because yeah, because it's so healthy,
and like I work with regular old people like myself
who are just trying to do something good for themselves,
who aren't restaurant chefs, who aren't doing fancy and they're like,

(41:21):
how can I help my health? And raw apple cider
vinegar even like as little as like a tea spoon
a day, diluted, always diluted in water or anything, apple
cider or anything is so beneficial to the gut and
to gut health into digestion, into our immune system, which
is another reason to have it going into the fall.

(41:44):
And it actually connects with our central nervous system and
is cognitive function and behavior and our emotional health. So
like every all of that starts in your gut. And
so that's me like the call for why the fermented
foods are so important. And apple cider vinegar, raw apple

(42:04):
cider vinegar with the mother in it is such a
great point of entry for most.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
People taste terrible.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
It doesn't.

Speaker 5 (42:12):
Like put a half a teaspoon in some regular apple
cider or orange juice and it's like, oh, that's kind
of cool. Maybe like add like a little dash of
kayan and now you're like, ooh, not.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
Half a teaspoon. That's it. Just half a teaspoon sounds
all you need? Yeah, how about that.

Speaker 5 (42:29):
It's like better to start small when it's something new
like that, just to make sure it agrees with you,
Like half a teaspoon and in eight ounces of something
you know, in the morning at the end of the day, like,
that's a great way to improve your health. And the
stronger your gut, like the more nutrition you're gonna get
out of everything else you're eating.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
So it's kind of just a win win, all right, Well,
I might just start doing this. I'm goen I do it.
I'm gonna think of you, Terry, because I think you're
teaching me something fun here I didn't know about and
I was a little worried. I mean, one time I
try to take a teaspoon of vinegar just to drink it,
thinking that would help me with an iggestion. It doesn't.

Speaker 5 (43:03):
No, don't do it straight, because you'll you'll your soft
igets your gut like it'll it'll be hell.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
But we're joined by our friend Terry Walters. Her book
you guys got to get It's called Nourise. You can
get it at Terry Walters dot net right Terry, you
got it and or other stuff also on Amazon as well.
So make sure you check her out. You see her
on TV sometimes doing fun stuff. I'm telling you go
check out Terry Walters dot nest. She's awesome. Terry's got
some events coming to Jeffy. What she got coming.

Speaker 4 (43:31):
She's going to be at Ellington Farm on the thirteenth
between one, nine and nine and twelve, nine and twelve. Sorry,
I got a little confused there at my best guy
in the business. Yeah, best here Ellington Farm nine thirteen,
nine to twelve. And then she's gonna put the Hula
Center in Burlington, Vermont on the twentieth, eleven to five.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
Tickets only, edge Fest Vegg Fast Terry. We appreciate you.
We'll see you next time. All right, thanks for trying
to you guys. Well stay right there, guys, we write
back this week. Am plom love foods, preservations. I love food.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
Save the harvest?

Speaker 1 (44:30):
How we do Chef Berman, Genie Booh.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Special guests Terry Walter talking about fermentation, now water, save
the harvest known.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
I was allowed to get your preservation. My brother freeze
d Hadrie can't pickle from make jail. Freeze d Hadrie
can't pickle from make jail. Get your preservation. Love foods.

(45:30):
Right here on w I s see the Voice of Connecticut.
I'll tell you what. Our house band, the Flames, have
outdone themselves again. It's like a dance song. What do
we call that? What's the music? Is that I meant
make jam? Yeah, yeah, I feel like you wrote the
lyrics to this this one. Did you know? I just
I usually this, I have so little time.

Speaker 4 (45:51):
I send them links and like a handful of like
you know, coffee, people's from people's like I g's and stuff.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Oh my gosh, that's hilarious. This part is the best
on Oh people don't right now get excited, oh preservation.
I wish you guys could see his face right now.
He's wearing a sweat like a sweatshirt hoodie, and he's

(46:21):
just pumping his fist. It's hilarious. Pumping my fist, getting
back to my roots, pumping my fist. I've never seen
somebody gets so excited about a preservation song. Oh boy,
Plumber of foods. Right here on W I s chef Plumb,
Chef Jeff talking all about preserving the harvest and kind
of getting a way to make that those wonderful vegetables
last just a little bit longer until next season. We
just were joined in the previous break by our friend

(46:42):
Terry Walters her Burke. Book Nourish is available. Terry Walters
net Burke, I did say, Burke her Burke, that's my
my Minnesota accent. Her Burke here Burke. Her book Nourish
is available Terry Walters dot net. Uh it's funny, Jeff,
because she's great. She's a she's a genius when it
comes to stuff. She's very and easy to talk to
you about. These things were nerding out there, we were

(47:03):
getting really into it. Were I was like, oh boy,
there's a lot of words we got tofine here, and
we're running out of time, bully. But Yeah, she's great,
love having on the program. Make sure you check out
her stuff, make sure you check her out on her Instagram,
and of course, like I said, her website, you can
get all her books. Got a couple of books available
on Amazon too. But I think some people don't like
to have their books on Amazon anymore. Uh. Yeah, I don't.

(47:25):
I don't know. I don't have a book, so I
don't know the I don't know the story. But you don't. No, No,
But what would you book be about I you had
a book, Jeff, Ah, I'd probably be like, look at
me I can cook. Look at me I can cook.
That would be the title, look at me I can cook.
One hundred and one short cuts that will make you
a gourmet chef in three minutes in your kitchen.

Speaker 4 (47:49):
All right, it would yeah, yeah, maybe shortcut parazis one
hundred and one cuts that.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
Shortcut chef Parazi, Chef Parazi shortcuts. No, chef Paraze is
one hundred and seven seven hold on, it's chef quote
shortcut unquote Parazi. Ah, okay, recipe one. You can make
this beautiful dinner or you just go out super eats.

Speaker 5 (48:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (48:16):
No, there's gonna be all sorts of tips in there.
Like listen, I'm not against it. You need chopped vegetables,
you don't have a prep cook You go to the
grocery store, you find a pre cut keep it moving,
shortcut Parazi with.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
Every recipe is finished with you're saying shortcut Parazi exactly.
I love that. Alright, this is another rabbit hole we're
about to fall down, which is not good, but hilarious.
That's hilarious. No, But books are good, listen, books are good.
You're right, And I think you could write a cookbook,
and so could I. I just wonder if I think
cookbooks are still actually a purchase. People still like to
have an actual paper cookbook, don't you think, Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 4 (48:54):
That's all you got what No, I thought something was
happening there. I wasn't sure you made a face that
I thought you wanted me to stop talking.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
I don't know. Basically had I had a little cough
and like you were like yes, because well because when
you made this, like I thought you were yes, I'm
so sorry. He's shortcut Parazi and short answer Parazi. Yeah,
short circuit Parazi. If you want to co host your show,
who's just the wires fall loose occasionally and you need

(49:24):
short answers, shortt chef par Sorry, yeah, I'm only good
for twenty three minutes. And apparently this all falls apart
from that. Oh so sorry, folks. And you're gonna write
a book that's gonna be great. I can't wait for
this book to come out. Well, I've been working on
it for about sixteen years. Well here's the thing, Like

(49:45):
I said, people like to have a paperback version of
a book. I think they like to have us They
can write and it, do make notes on it, all
that sort of stuff, particularly when you're doing things like
you know, preserving or fermenting and stuff. And Jeff, you've
got a couple of books that are probably worth checking out.
Here for if you're interested in doing this sort of
stuff A great you know resources almost yes, well, and
with my my vast foresight, I believe or not, Jeff,

(50:06):
I know you've heard the past three minutes the show.
Jeff can read, I promise you, yes, I can. Uh,
you know, the songs are, the words are big or
and I'm wearing glasses now. But that's true. Yeah, it's true.
It's terrible true.

Speaker 5 (50:19):
But the.

Speaker 4 (50:21):
I knew we were going to be getting into some
terminology that was going to be way over Plumb's head
and a lot of your head. Yeah, because you know,
we weren't going to use words like my lard.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
I could. Yeah, she already butchered my joke. Damn. I know,
well I will tear apart someone's joke and a heartbeat.
I know you got me and it just if you
mess up one word, I am going to attack, all right. Well, anyway,
I wanted to define a bunch of big words that
we were using earlier.

Speaker 5 (50:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (50:50):
I figured the way to define those big words was
to tell you how I learned about all these big words.
And I didn't go to culinary schools. A lot of
you know, we've talked about it before I learned from
reading tons of books. So I had a handful of
books that I've used in the past that have helped me. Uh,
and I just wanted to touch on a handful of things.
So the first one I wanted to talk about was fermentation.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
Okay, well, why did you say, like that is how
the book is written? Like fermentation, Like it's an angry title.
Oh no, I was trying to make it like like
an exclamation. Oh, fermentation, like it's exciting. That's the name
of the book. No, that's not the name of the book.
That's the name of the topic of the books. Okay,
let's do it. What man? All right?

Speaker 4 (51:31):
The art fermentations a lot of words. I'm getting confused,
Like we just it's a talk show. It's supposed to
be words.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
What is going on? I don't know. It's like I'm
going to get a trash bag. Oh man, go ahead,
come on, tell about it anyway. So Affirmation Books on Fermentation,
So Books on fermentation. Three books that helped me immensely
to learn about fermentation and make it pretty easy. The
first one is like the godfather of fermentation, Sandor Cats
they call him Sandor Kraut is a joke. I've heard

(51:59):
the Art to fermentation.

Speaker 4 (52:01):
This is like a super deep info, easy to follow
a book like it teaches you all sorts of stuff,
like anything you can think of that could be fermented.
This book has it in there, and he touches on it,
and he touches on the science of why, and he
gives you basic recipes so that you can branch off
of those once you get the basic recipes down. And
it's a great book just to kind of, like, you know,

(52:23):
learn about the things we were talking about, like two percent,
Like why is two percent a big deal? You know
what's two percent even mean? When we say two percent?

Speaker 1 (52:31):
Well, yeah, like what you like? What is that? Can
you say that? Now? It's just as truely, that's what
that's what?

Speaker 4 (52:35):
So like when we're saying two percent or three percent
or five percent, I think is what Terry had said
is these are percentages of salt to weight. So right,
so if I have if I have a pound of vegetables,
let's just keep things simple. Yeah, I need I need
a three percent solution. How much salt would that be?

Speaker 1 (52:54):
Three percent of a pound? Which I don't know. You
may put me on the spot. I have to think
of like whenever Jeff does Matthew leans away from his microphone,
everybody hear that, Yeah, the almost sixteen ounces through the math.
I'm just curious. I'm asking because if a home cook
wants to do this, like, how do they figure that
part of it out? Like, obviously you do the math.
By the math, I mean three percent of sixteen ounces basically, yeah,

(53:18):
or three percent of a pound, so you know, I
mean you're looking at two ounces of assault, three ounces
of sault. Yeah, something like three ounces. I think it's
like three ounces of sault. But what if your number
is not exact? Like what if you just kind of
estimate is that? Okay? Can you can you over assault it?

Speaker 4 (53:34):
I think you could over sault it for sure, and
it'll be too salty. But I think as long as
you're within that two to five percent range. Is something
I wanted to mention when we were talking to Terry,
but we got talking about a whole bit into different topics.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
She's such a great guess. We should have actually had.

Speaker 4 (53:46):
A run for the whole two hours, honestly, because we
could have just really just talked with her about all
true things too. She's just just anyway, I appreciate your time.
These uh, two percent to five percent is the basic
range that will keep things healthy and in my opinion,
palatable to do a lacto fermentation, which is the basic

(54:09):
fermentation that's gonna You're going to grow the healthy gut
bacteria and the healthy things that you want to grow,
and that it.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
Will help kill off any of the bad things. Okay,
so it just kind of kills them and keeps it away.
And then being in that solution also keeps the oxygen
off of it, which can also be a bad guy.

Speaker 4 (54:25):
Yes, oxygen is definitely a bad guy. You want to
weigh things down. Another great thing to weigh things down
with that people don't talk about. And I mentioned another
thing I meant to mention, but she was. I take
just like a bag, like I'll get like a court
zip lock bag and I'll put it in the top
of whatever jarm trying to weigh whatever down in and
then I fill it with water until it weighs it

(54:46):
in there, and then I seal it and then it
makes like it creates its own lid that burps on
the side, you know, because it's like when things need
to get out, it just pushes past the water, but
it weighs down whatever the jar.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
So it keeps it. Like we just said something else
that we don't know that we don't know about. Like
you said, it burts the what does that mean? Well,
it burts Like so when when you're lacto fermenting, one
of the cool things that happens is.

Speaker 4 (55:10):
That there's a gas that has to there's a gas
that's created in the process as they eats. Yeah, and
the carbon dioxide needs a place to escape. So the
if you have it in a full jar without it
with a lid that has no hole in it, it
will just eventually burst because the pressure will get so great.
Believe it or not, it's like wild but if if not,

(55:30):
you'll just see bubbles that will just rise up. And
then there's all sorts of lids you can buy for
these things. I mean, you don't even need a lid,
Like you can just put a coffee filter over in
a rubber band and a lot of these cases, once
things are way down, you put a coffee filter and
a rubber band over it, and that just keeps like
bugs and critters from kind of getting in there. Because
a lot of places that you're going to keep these
things sometimes flies and things like that might come around

(55:52):
because of like a sweet smell or something that might
come off interesting.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
Yeah, so you learned all this in that one book.
I learned all this from this book.

Speaker 4 (55:59):
This is like it seems like the basics kind of
it's it's it's a very very great, basic, awesome book.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
All right, what's the name it again? Just so we
can they might fermentation, all right, it makes sense the
art of fermentation. And listen. Another great book you can
get too is Nourished by our friend Terry Walters at
Terry Walter's dot net. Great book has a whole whole
chapter about fermentation in that book. Actually, she's a big fan. Yeah,
big fan.

Speaker 4 (56:24):
Great all about gut health obviously, I mean I didn't
even know all that about gut health. And the fact
that you can just do that with apisode of vinegar
to bring that back half a teaspoon. Apisode of vinegar
does all that we're doing.

Speaker 1 (56:35):
It sounds crazy, but yeah, I guess we're gonna try
that too, But all right, at least, yeah, let me
give it a go.

Speaker 4 (56:40):
So, yeah, you have another book you like, Jeffy another book.
This one's a little more for once you get the
first book. This book is a lot of fun. It's
a wildcrafted fermentation by Pascal Bud Bud b a U
d A r's.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
Even fun fun fermented name too, like Pascal uh pickles
or something.

Speaker 4 (57:00):
No, I don't think so, but he definitely is well
known in the fermenting community, which is interesting to say.
There's like a ton of blogs to in Reddit's about
all these kind of fermentation things, so you can find
them all over the internet. But Pascal Pascal is also
well known for forging, so he talks a lot about
wild forge ingredients things you can find all over the

(57:20):
place that go together that become these amazing ferments. And
again it's like a bushcraft thing, so it's like these
people were doing these crafts before there was refrigeration, before
these things, all these other things before there was like farming.
And it's just a neat way to kind of tap
into your roots and learn a lot about how things work.
It's a lot of methods, which I think is important

(57:42):
whenever you're doing this kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
Fun. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (57:45):
The last book about fermentation, which is another one that
I think is great and it's just he makes it
very approachable, is the Noma. Noma's a restaurant in Denmark.
The Art of Fermentation by Renee ren Zebby and David
zilb Or such a great book. The way they break
down the methods of how they make things. This is

(58:06):
actually the book that taught me a lot about how
to make vinegars, the way they do it, the way
he broke it down, how to do it. You know,
they have it down to a science literally where it's
like this will take this long.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
I mean if you do it this way.

Speaker 4 (58:22):
Well it is, but there's a lot of like old
school vinegar ways of making vinegar where it's like you
just let it sit and wait, which they talk about
in his in his their book as well, but they
also show you their method how they do it at Noma,
and it's you know, they actually use a fish bubbler
to aerrate the vinegars for a surfish at a time,

(58:42):
you know, like a you know, you know, like a
little pump that you put in the bubbles. Yeah, so
you get one of those and you put it into
your jar of the vinegar that you're starting to aerrate
it to make it, you know, grow faster and grow.
The it talks all about book he explains.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
It really well.

Speaker 4 (59:01):
It's just a really, really, really cool book and they
talk all about lacto fermenting and all about it's just
it's just a really cool book.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
The easiest place to get these books, Jeff on just
on Amazon, you think.

Speaker 4 (59:13):
I think Amazon is probably one of the easiest places
to get books around. Honestly, if there's a local bookstore
that you can go to, go to your local bookstore
if you want to support them, and just ask them
for any of these books, and I'm sure they'll get
them for you.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
Yeah, no doubt about it. And you can also go
to Terry Walters dot net and get Nourished. It's a
book that she did, and she's got a lot of
stuff on there about this as well. Jeff, It's it's
all very interesting to me. I've only done you know,
my experience doing this is minimal compared to what you've done.
But I think it's really cool and I love. One
of the things you were doing this past year that
I kind of was just way into is we would

(59:44):
you know, we're serving strawberries at a party. We cut
the tops of the strawberries off to make them, you know,
nice and pretty, and quarter them and make them look great.
But then you know, most people would either like you know,
use those and throw them in a sauce or something
like that and keep it simple. But you would put
them in a bag and you would assault them, and
it t into this like magical situation. Yeah, I basically
lacto fermented them.

Speaker 4 (01:00:05):
Excuse me for the lactose fermented strawberry juice, which was
kind of like a sour sweet strawberry juice.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
Is it right now?

Speaker 4 (01:00:14):
It's it's a it's it's like almost a vinegar. I mean,
it's definitely an acidic solution. I wouldn't say it was
it's a it's a total vinegar, you know. I mean
maybe it's a type of vinegar.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
It really was strong smell of strawberries like it was.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
It was.

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
It was pretty cool how it works. But again, everything
we talk about when it comes to this sort of fermentation,
it's all about salt and how much salt, you know,
percentage of weight that you put in with the uh
liquid or even you don't even need it with this one, right, No,
So I like.

Speaker 4 (01:00:44):
To vacuum seal a lot of my ferments. So when
you vacuum seal them, a lot of times, you just
have to salt whatever you're using and it'll release its
own amount of moisture. The salt will draw out moisture
that will coat whatever you're trying to ferment.

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
So, now, why would we do this? I guess this
is my question, Like if I'm if I'm at homeless thing,
I'm like, so, why would anybudy? Like what do you
do with that? Like, what's the point of it? It's
not like you're you're preserving the strawberries till later.

Speaker 4 (01:01:08):
With this, Well, for me, it's to come up with
a new flavor of something. So I love the flavor
of Harry's berries, right. Harry's berry strawberries is a strawberry
from California. It's very very sweet, very distinct as a
very interesting flavor. And I was just like, I've eaten
them sweet so many times, and I was like, is
there anything I could do to make these savory? Is

(01:01:28):
there something that I could do to kind of change
this a little bit? And I was like, okay, I'll
salt it with two percent.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Then it was I did.

Speaker 4 (01:01:35):
It ended up being like three and a half percent.
Was the solution that I fell on that I really liked.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
So we could take the strawberry pieces you had and
you would weigh them to figure out how much it weighed. Yea, right,
and then you say, okay, so it's it's seven hours
to do the math. For me, it would tell me
that's a great idea. Yeah. I would just be like, hey, Siri,
you know, you know what's the two percent of this number?
It would tell me.

Speaker 4 (01:01:58):
I'd weigh that out real que put the salt on it,
mix it up really good, put it in my bag.
Another reason to use the bags is they're brand new,
so they're sterile. I keep them in a nice clean environment,
so they're like a sterol bag.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
So the bag talking about all the vacuum seal bags,
the vacuum seal bags, Yeah, they're like envelope kind of
clean bags that come in up all the box. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:02:19):
Anyway, I just put them in that I vacuum seal
it down and then I leave them on the shelf
for about seven days and uh, you know, the gas
in there builds up and they become like thick pillows
and then I'll pop them and then strain them really well.
Or sometimes I'll pop them and then take them and
put them in another bag and then put them in
their fridge and let them age for another certain amount
of time.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
Yea, how much time does it take this to happen?

Speaker 4 (01:02:41):
Seven days is what it takes for the lacto fermented
juice to be there. And then that lacto fermented juice
I just used ended up making a like a ponzi
out of it all mixed it with a little bit
of uzoo and soy sauce and coambu and ginger, and
then let it age for like another month like that
and then use that as a pond zu sauce.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
So when you age something like that to preserve it,
is it the same idea? Well that I'm not. I'm
aging it that second time to flavor it, But doesn't
it doesn't do much for the preserving of it.

Speaker 4 (01:03:13):
No, No, it's already like the fermentation that took place
took place when I would put the salt on the
strawberries to get all that liquid out of it. And
I'm sure I could use those like the pulp of
that strawberry to do something like it would probably taste
a lot like uma boshie. You ever have an uba
boshi pum so it probably tastes a lot like like
an numaboshi plump paste, but like.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
It almost take a juice strawberry like a SATs sour
straub strawberry ice cream clas situations you wanted.

Speaker 4 (01:03:38):
To Definitely, it definitely would work in a in a
sour ice cream, or it would work in a you know,
it's great cocktail or something like that. Yeah, you could
also do it with sugar, you know, so you can
like cover it like the same as I do. I
do the same weight when I do it with sugar,
So I'll take strawberry tops and then I'll preserve them

(01:03:59):
in sugar.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
You'd a couple of minutes left here before we had
to run the break. I was curious about doing this
with like carrots, or doing it with like cucumbers or
something like that. I try to think of just other
vegetables or something that you could do this with. Is
it just fruit? Have you ever tried it with anything else?
And once you do it, does it change the flavor
of the actual vegetable? Do you think?

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
Well?

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
Absolutely?

Speaker 4 (01:04:16):
I Mean one of my favorite things about cucumbers in
the summer is that they come from a farm, and
when they come from a farm, stand close to me,
they're not waxed. And when they're not waxed, you can
take the peels. Whenever I peel a cucumber, I take
those peels and I wave them and I put them
by salt and add a little bit of chilis to
them and ginger, and then I throw them on a
shelf for three or four days, and then I throw

(01:04:38):
them in the fridge after they swell, and that becomes
this like cucumber skin kimchi that is absolutely different than
a plain cucumber. And it changes the texture and it
changes the flavor and it's it's just it's so delicious
to me. And it's like, I mean, I honestly barely
serve it because I end up eating it all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
I'm going to call you firm to Jeffy from now on.
You got this whole thing figured out, Jeffie, it's kind
of crazy, man. I do dig it.

Speaker 4 (01:05:03):
Well, it's like I said, reading books, man, and then
like you know, then canning, I think, like you know,
she said she was a little nervous about canning, But
I think you can get out there and learn. Like
ball ball jars, the people who make the jars have
been writing books and writing recipes on canning for over
one hundred years for people at home. So you can
go out there and find any of those books, any
of the ball drops fall back to basic canning books

(01:05:24):
or the expert canning.

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
Yeah, it's not that hard, but I do get the
bit of a hesitance on it because it's but you know,
if you have someone to teach you how to do it,
you can then do it. That's that simple. That or
you have to really follow the steps. You can teach yourself,
but you have to be very clean.

Speaker 4 (01:05:37):
You have to really, really really follow the recipes and
follow the steps. You know, being sterile is a big
part of preservation because you don't want to grow any
bad bacteria. You don't want to introduce any bad bacterias.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
No doubt about it. We come back, Jeff and I
got some recipes. We're going to give you a couple
of takeaways and a little bit more because I think
there's a list that always as you're checking out Plumb
of Foods right on wccqus right back Plumb Love Foods

(01:06:23):
right here on wy see the voice of Connecticuts Chef
Jeff Chef Plump hanging out with you here on a Saturday.
I hope you're having a great day. If you're just
hanging out trying to figure out what to do after
the show, here's what you should do. Get in your car,
Come to the Norwalk Oyster Festival down a Veteran's Memorial Park.
Come see us. We'll be at the Mohican Sun Online
Casino VIP tent. Come hang out with us. We're making steaks,
we're making oysters, we're making scramps. We got salad. They

(01:06:46):
may have cocktails there, Jeffy. I mean, I'm not saying
there's cocktails. I'm not saying what coind of cocktails. I'm
just saying cocktails. I may or may not have been
told therese cocktails. Yeah, I mean allegedly there's cocktails, cocktails,
food and gambling. What do you want in us?

Speaker 5 (01:07:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
I mean so I think probably goes cocktails, gambling, food
than us.

Speaker 3 (01:07:03):
I know.

Speaker 4 (01:07:04):
I think it's Chef Plumb and Jeffy cocktails, food and gambling.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
Do you think? So? All right? All right, all right,
either way, come see us. It's gonna be a lot
of fun nor Walk, Connecticut. We're out there oyster fast
veterans too. He loves I will I am, and I am.
You'll bet, I bet you don't come. I'm a slightly
mediocre gambler.

Speaker 4 (01:07:27):
Yeah, if you show up, tell me that because Plump
bets you won't come, and then means he'll owe you
five bucks.

Speaker 1 (01:07:32):
Ooh, five dollars American. That's what we're talking about. Person
who comes and says that, that's right, that's what we're
gonna do. You know, Jeffy, we're talking all about fermentation
and pickling and preserving the harvest on this episode of
the program. And you know, one of the things I
talked about up front was taking tomatoes and freezing them
that are from the garden. I'll tell you one of
my favorite things to do with these said frozen tomatoes
is I'll take them out when I'm when I serve them,

(01:07:55):
especially in January. Or something I did for Super Bowl
US here was great. Pulled a bunch of garden tomatoes out,
put them in a you know, like a baking dish.
I put a whole bunch of sheep's milk feta cheese
in there with it, and just put the whole thing
in the oven with some garlic, a little bit of
time and let it go. Let it cook awesome and
then pull it out, put it all into one big
like crock and use it to dip like bread in

(01:08:15):
It was amazing, so delicious. Great way to use the
frozen the frozen stuff there, because when you do freeze it,
it does break down a little bit. It does start
to break down a little bit. You can't help that.
That's what's gonna happen with things freeze. But yeah, it's
still delicious and you're still getting that flavor that you
remember from the summertime. So it's one of my favorite
things to do. It's like a roast a tomato and
feta dip it. It's really delicious with you know, sliced bread.

(01:08:36):
One of my favorite things to do. Just makes you
put those time in garlic in there. It's great, sounds awesome,
fresh time very important. Yeah, I'm not playing games with
this dry time nonsense. I don't ever freeze tomatoes. I've
always canned them.

Speaker 4 (01:08:48):
I don't know why, probably because of the freezer space thing,
like I always get nervous about it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
But the uh, the I feel like if I had
frozen tomatoes, I would make a super a sauce at
it works great.

Speaker 4 (01:09:01):
Yeah, that make like a like a probably super easy,
super easy to make it into a delicious tomato soup,
and it would probably taste like a summer tomato soup.

Speaker 1 (01:09:09):
It does. It comes out fantastic doing it that way.
I have to put them too. I'll take a whole
handful of or a ziplock baggy full of sung golds
and throw them in chili. Oh oh, you freeze your
sun goals. I freeze all of them we have so yeah. Absolutely,
we have so many tomatoes from the garden. We freeze all.

Speaker 4 (01:09:24):
So you freeze them like they're almost like the way
you would freeze berries. You just like clean them, lay
them out on a shoot pan, put them in the freezer,
and then put them in a bag after they're frozen.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
I mean, you're you're adding so many extra steps. I
wouldn't do it. We will clean them and then you're
throwing on a ziplock and put them in the freezer. Yeah,
but don't don't they get stuck together and clumps that
way though. No, oh no, you're not getting smushed. They're
not getting smushed.

Speaker 4 (01:09:44):
I get crazy about it, and I'm always like I
want to lay them everything out, freeze it. So it's
separate and then put it in a bag.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
Man put it in the bag so that way it's
not you know, there's separation there. Yeah, it works well.
I mean it really doesn't work well. And sometimes people
even do what's called a concass concass as we take
the skin off of the tomatoes. It's it's important where
you dip them in. You put a little slit on
the top, like like a like an X on the top,
and then you put them in hot water and then
put them in cold water right away. I don't know

(01:10:12):
that was called concasse. I thought it was like a
dice of a tomato or something. No, no, no, no, no.
Concasse is me take the skin off of it, you know,
which is awesome. So you might maybe thinking of brunoir
or something like that.

Speaker 4 (01:10:24):
Maybe you're like when you leave them, you know, you
cut it into the leaf and then take the when
you cut them into the leaf and you take the
seeds out of it or something right right right in
my mind. I don't know why I thought that. I mean,
I don't know anything about culinary terms.

Speaker 1 (01:10:37):
So yes, you do, stop acting like that, Yes you do.
I mean I know a handful, but not concosse, I guess,
but freezing I think is a great It's it's a
great way to do it. It's an easy way to
do it. You know, it's it's a great way to
make things last. And then you know pickles also is
a great way. Jeff, you talk about making some quick pickles,
quick pickles, like quick refrigerator pickle, like super easy with vinegar.

Speaker 4 (01:10:55):
Is you want to penning on which what you like?
If you want like a bread and butter pickle, you
want your vinegar solution to be sweeter, If you want
it to be more of like a classic dill pickle,
you want it to be a little saltier.

Speaker 1 (01:11:09):
Still, you put a salt, sugar into vinegar, a little
bit of water. It's usually like what do you think
fifty to fifty water to vinegar. Yeah, and then probably
like a quarter cup of sugar and like a.

Speaker 4 (01:11:23):
Eighth cup of salt, throwing a handful of mustard seed
and piece of dill boil that take your sterile container
to take a whole bunch of chopped pickled chips or
cucumbers that you sliced chopped pickle chips. Isn't that what
the guy asked for? At the grocery store. He did, Yeah,

(01:11:46):
he wanted to. He can only find the unsliced cucumber. Oh,
the unsliced cucumber. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I mean, I guess,
go to your deli and ask for a slice cucumber
and get them and then you fill them into a
jar and you pour your boiled solution. I like to
pour it right over them while hot, and then I
just put that right in the fridge, or I leave
it on the counter till it comes to the room
temp and then put in the fridge, cap it, leave
it in there for like I mean, I like to

(01:12:08):
leave them in there for at least a few days.
Some people eat them the next day. Some people can't
wait and lead them as soon as they're cold.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
How do you feel about that? Yeah, I think as
it's so many ways to do it quickly, which I
think works great. You know. One of my favorites is
to take onions and I'll just slice up some onions,
right onions, shouts, whatever you got, put them in a
small bowl, salt them a little bit, let them sit
with the salt for three or four minutes, and then
literally I'll throw a garlic clove in there. I might
slice up the guaric cloth I'm feeling fancy, and then
I'll just pour some red wine vinegar off the top

(01:12:35):
of it. Let it sit. And you can have those almost,
you know, fifteen twenty minutes. You can start eating those
right away and put them on stuff. You put them
on a salad something like that. Really, don't boil a vinegar.
You just put it on there, just room temp. Yeah,
you just throw it on a room tent. Let it hang. Oh,
that's awesome. It works so quick. Lemon juice also works well.
Lemon juice and salt can also. You can do a
lemon juice pickle, which is pretty cool. I do it

(01:12:56):
with onions all the time. You know.

Speaker 4 (01:12:58):
You know one thing I don't think we talked about,
and that's jams. You ever to make jam jams and jellies?
Like yeah, And it's like it's such an.

Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
Easy, great way to preserve food. And it's super duper easy.
And you can make them in canem and you can
make them and put them in the fridge. I like
using it with the natural pectin though pectin is that thickening,
uh that kind of makes it jellyish, you know, And
a fruit has natural pectin in it. I don't like
to add stuff like that to it, but yes, completely agree. Yeah,
I think there's a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:13:26):
There's a ton of recipes, like the old school recipes
for like different berry jams and stuff like that. You
usually call for one apple just to add pectin, you know,
to to those to those recipes to help them thicken up.
Otherwise you have to add more sugar, I think. But
it's very simple though. It's not hard to do. Yeah, no,
super super easy to do. It's just sugar fruit, a
little bit of water, bring it to a boil, puade

(01:13:48):
a little bit or don't, and then put it into
a sterile jar and you've got jam. You've got to
preserve for the next year. It'll last in your fridge
for how long, indefinitely preserved.

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
So there you got the whole name of it. You know,
it's great. Those do come out and you can do
so much fun stuff with the two. Apple butter is
one of the other ones. I used to love to
make apple butter is so easy to make it, so good,
so delicious, right right, so delicious. You can actually do
that with bananas, you know that. I have a great
recipe to do that.

Speaker 4 (01:14:14):
With just you cooking bananas down with a ton of
sugar and a little bit of cinnamon, all spice and nutmeg,
and it comes out Oh really, Oh it's like banana
bread spread or something.

Speaker 1 (01:14:23):
It's just like so good. It's just I mean, apple
butter is great in a crockpot, and you can do
it in a small like you know, in an instapot.
You do it there too. It works out. It's such
an easy, fun thing to do and just taste delicious
and it feels like it makes it sounds really fun
Fney crisp, apples, pink lady. You know, whatever you want
to use there is great, super duper easy. You know,
regular blenders work too. You don't like a lot of

(01:14:44):
people want to they think they have to have an
immersion blender to do it. You can do it in
a regular blender as well. Mm hmm. So anyway, that's
I just love apple butter. I'll keep talking about aple
butter all day long.

Speaker 4 (01:14:53):
So you know, I think we talked about drying herbs earlier. Yeah,
but one thing we didn't talk about doing she touched
on it was you like to Terry said, infusing vinegars.
One of the things I love to do with extra
herbs is to just put them into old school white
vinegar in a jar and put them in my fridge
and I'll mix it with all sorts of extra herbs.

(01:15:14):
So like you know, when you buy a bunch of dill,
it's a huge bunch of dill, and like you never
need that whole bunch of dill. Well in the stalks
at the end of the walks, whatever you don't use,
I just chop that up. I throw it in the
mason jar that has the vinegar in it, and I'll
do that with my basil stems and chunks of basil.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
I'll do that with parsley stems.

Speaker 4 (01:15:31):
I'll do that with what's left over the chives, sometimes
scallion pieces, and I just let it sit in there
and then as I go to use it, I strain
it out and it's just delicious herby, you know, just
just a cool flavored vinegar.

Speaker 1 (01:15:46):
And it's such an easy, easy thing to do, and
you can do that with anything. Yeah, I think you're right,
And it's a great way to add You're like confusing
the flavor, which is awesome, you know. Yeah, and it
probably gets that beautiful color too.

Speaker 4 (01:15:58):
Yeah, and it's super easy, and you could do it
with fruit tops or fruit ends, you know, or you
have like some fruit that's like too soft and you
don't want to serve it, Like raspberries, for instance. There's
always those bunch of soft raspberries in your fridge that
you forgot to eat, and they're not quite white, but
you don't want to eat them because they just look mushy.
I take those and throw them right into some vinegar.
Next thing, you know, you're this delicious. You know, fruit vinegar.

Speaker 1 (01:16:20):
How long is that? That's it? I let them just
sit in the fridge until I use it. Interesting, all right,
So you have all these bottles are just random things
in your fridge. Label stuff. I can only imagine I
do sometimes label things. I mean, we're talking at home.

Speaker 4 (01:16:35):
No, my wife hates me for that part of the back,
our back fridge that no one likes to go in it,
and everyone yells at me that it smells.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
It probably does.

Speaker 4 (01:16:45):
There's some smells in there that aren't traditional, but there
are delicious if you think about what they're making.

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
So one of the things we touched on loosely too,
which I liked. We talked a little bit about using
salt to cured meat and things like that, but I
don't think we've touched on smoking meats as well and
making jerky, which is another great way of preserving things
that I'm kind of into. I was I was working
with a jerky company for a while as as a
consultant and came up with this awesome chicken jerky which
which actually worked out really really well. Chicken jerky. I

(01:17:12):
would love to dry that, yeah, and we actually would. You.
I'd mix this whole thing up and then I had
kale to it and a bunch of stuff, and we
had a jerky gun and you were like pipe it out,
dehydrate it, smoke it dehydrated. You know, it was great
and it comes out amazing. That's another way. You know,
once you smoke something like that or dehydrate that, I mean,
it'll last forever, it feels like.

Speaker 4 (01:17:31):
So you remember probably beefstick you were making like beef
stick type jerky. Yeah, it was like a rather solution
and then you kind of pumped it out or like oh,
like that's how you make fruit leathers kind of like
with that gun.

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
Same thing. Yeah, Yeah, we did it that way too.
That's kind of what I was doing. Because we were
making we were adding things to it, making a healthy thing.
You know, we're put in the Yeah, no, that sounds cool,
kale and shallotte, just adding all these different flavors, chili's
you know.

Speaker 4 (01:17:52):
Yeah, there's like a Native American traditional paste like that.
That's like it's with like cranberries and and by and
something else, you know, salt and spices.

Speaker 1 (01:18:03):
Yeah. And it's like the FDA was not a fan
of the chicken part of it. They were very unhappy
with the chicken part of it. We had to deal
with that, and now there's all kinds of chicken stuff
out there. They were like, we'll never have this. I guess.
I eat turkey jerky all the time. It's one of
my favorites. It's delicious. But like that's again when you
think about where jerky comes from, it came from pioneers
and people who were going to be traveling long distances.
That's how they would bring their protein. Oh definitely.

Speaker 4 (01:18:25):
And it's it's such a great snack. It's just packed
with protein. It's such easy thing to carry along, like
it doesn't take up too much weight. Like if you're
a backpacker or someone who likes hiking, it's just such
a great thing to throw in your bag.

Speaker 1 (01:18:37):
Sure, yeah, I'm with it. I'm with it too. I
also think that you can do the same things that
you know, we're talking about drying and stuff and smoking,
you can do with vegetables as well. And it worked great, definitely.

Speaker 4 (01:18:50):
You know a super easy thing that I think people
don't talk about and that it's really fun to do,
is to using salt to preserve lemons.

Speaker 1 (01:19:00):
Oh yeah, you know. You take a lemon and you
basically I cut them.

Speaker 4 (01:19:05):
This is a really cool thing because it doesn't have
to be like by weight or any of this kind
of stuff. I just cut a big box of kosher salt,
a big clean steel bowl, and I take some lemons,
and you don't cut them all the way open. You
cut them like slits down every like you turn them
a quarter and cut a slit and kind of pinch
it open so it kind of opens up so it
has four holes around the lemon, and I fill the

(01:19:27):
inside with You just pack the inside with salt, and
you put them in the bowl until you have them
all together.

Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
And then you put a little salt in the bottom
of a big jar or a big crock and you
stack them in there and you just keep sprinkling salt
as you stack them in there, and then you weigh
them down and it'll push up so much moisture. You
have to make sure you put it on a pan,
but you can leave that out.

Speaker 4 (01:19:47):
I've left them outside for months and then I really,
oh absolutely, and you just peel the top a little
bit off and the ones that are underneath are so
fragrant and amazingly, it's like I do them with all
different types of lifelemons as they come in and I like,
so I have like sorrental lemons, and I have lemons
from the Caribbean, and I get these like variegated lemons,

(01:20:07):
and I do all these different things with it to
preserve it. Because of the flavor of a preserved lemon,
we're actually going to use it. It'll be at this
event and some of the lemon vinagrette we're using some
that's absolutely amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:20:18):
I'm just thinking as a home cook, you know, Okay,
I want to preserve lemons. How do I do this?
What's the easiest way to do this? All right, So
get yourself. What's the biggest mason jar? They sell?

Speaker 4 (01:20:29):
Like a two quarter? Sure, say like a half gallon.
Like that's so you get your halfjalon mason jar, get
about eight lemons.

Speaker 1 (01:20:37):
Get a box of kosher salt.

Speaker 4 (01:20:39):
Scrub your lemons, make the Take a lemon and cut
one slice from the top to the bottom, but don't
cut all the way through. Then turn it a quarter,
make another slice, turn it a quarter, and make it
another slice. Turn it a quarter, make another slice, so
you have four slices in each lemon. Do that to
each one of your lemons. Then squeeze them open over
your bowl. Put the salt a salt inside the lemon

(01:21:01):
and all around it a little bit, and put it down.
Go ahead and do that to all your lemons. Then
take those lemons, pack them into that mason jar, put
a weight on top of it, put a piece of
cheese cloth over it, and a rubber band. Put it
over in the corner.

Speaker 1 (01:21:16):
Put it on.

Speaker 4 (01:21:17):
There's no liquid inness yet, but that salt is gonna
draw out more moisture than you've ever seen.

Speaker 1 (01:21:23):
It'll overflow, probably not almost all the time. It overflows.

Speaker 4 (01:21:28):
So you put it on a bowl and put it
in the corner, and after it overflows, you just kind
of clean it up and just let it sit and
it will you know, in a month, in a week,
you'll have preserved lemons where you can put them in
the fridge and they'll last thing definitely, like you know,
put a top on it and put it in the fridge.
Wow if Yeah, But you can leave them outside of

(01:21:48):
the fridge. I mean like in parts of Middle least,
this is done and they're left like in a root
cellar situation for you know.

Speaker 1 (01:21:55):
Ever, until I've preserved lemons, I got them ready to
go to come out. How do you tell? How do
you know? What they're done?

Speaker 4 (01:22:01):
The insides like become super mushy, and the lemon itself
becomes sort of soft, you know, like like like hard
but also soft. It's kind of hard to say. The
liquid itself becomes kind of like viscous lemon juice, like
salty viscous lemon juice that kind of like covers them, Okay,
And you know, like I said, you just kind of

(01:22:22):
fish them out, and then I like to scrape I
still use sometimes the flesh, the meat part, and then
I'll still scrape away the pith and then it just
I kind of blend them together and make a paste
and then use that paste and all sorts of stuff,
Like I can't even anything. I want to add lemon too.
Sometimes I won't squeez lemon, I'll add a little tablespoon

(01:22:45):
or a teaspoon of this preserved lemon paste.

Speaker 1 (01:22:48):
Well that's awesome. I feel like I just learned something.
I'm gonna try that. That seems like a pretty good
way to do a lemon, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:22:53):
Yeah, No, it's a super fun way to use lemons.
It's like you can make sauces out of it, and
you're gonna add it to like vinaigrettes, I mean literally anything.
It's like it's it's preserved lemon and then keeps your
lemons around forever. And like if you want to nerd
out like the way I do, you can get like
there's great lemons that when you taste a lemon from
a certain like a like a special lemon, like a
Sorrento lemon, or a lemon from like or like the

(01:23:17):
first time I try to mier lemon, for instance, Like
you know, it just has like such a different, unique
flavor to preserve that it kind of like accentuates those
flavors that you you pick up, like you get all
those nuances concentrated in a preserved lemon.

Speaker 1 (01:23:31):
Interesting and using for Bennegrett's using to make. I mean,
I've done a preserved lemon chicken, which is awesome. Yeah,
very very simple ones. They're really common in Moroccan cuisine.
I love this. This is all fantastic stuff, Jeffrey. There's
a lot of stuff here. I feel like there's a
lot of things that I need to spend more time learning.
I was kind of leaning on you for this show
because you do more of this than I do. But
there's a lot of things I think I'm interested in now. Yeah,

(01:23:52):
I think I think you should be doing some more
of this kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:23:54):
And I think, honestly, you probably do a little bit
of it without realizing that you're preserving it. You're just
doing it to get a flavor or it's a method
that you used to cook something.

Speaker 1 (01:24:02):
But I smoke things, I do quick pickles, all that
sort of stuff, you know, but it's actually done the
weighted you know, Okay, it's three percent five percent they
had done all that stuff yet.

Speaker 4 (01:24:11):
Yeah, but I think it's a it's a fun thing
to do, and and and the cool thing is like
your wife has an amazing garden so it's like you
could literally help her preserve.

Speaker 1 (01:24:20):
Her harvest for the entire year. Yeah, we should do more.

Speaker 4 (01:24:24):
Just a handful of uh like, and you could ferment them,
and they're such good for gut health, like fermented beans,
like green beans. You know how many green beans come
off of a green bean?

Speaker 1 (01:24:32):
Playing for sure? You must have thousands? Yeah, for sure them.

Speaker 4 (01:24:35):
Yeah, you pickle them and vinegar is great, but you
can you can lack to ferment them with a two
percent salt solution and a quart with like a clove
of garlic, a handful of peppercorns and a big sprig
of dill and let them sit out for a week
and then put them in the fridge. And they are
absolutely delicious. And they're great for gut health.

Speaker 1 (01:24:56):
That's great, that's great. I just I think we stop
the term gut health. I don't know, it feels like
gross to me. They're great for your good bacteria in
your stomach. That's good. That's the better way. I just
think the word gut health is grossed. Don't you.

Speaker 4 (01:25:08):
You'll find it's good for your digestive system. It promotes
healthy digestive function.

Speaker 1 (01:25:16):
I'm gonna say something a little polarizing too. I'm thinking
about it all week, and I figured I can say
anything about hot dogs. I'm just gonna walk out. I'm
not going to bring up hot dogs. Okay, that's a
whole o the story that we should tell at some
point to everyone, because that's hilarious. I thought I would
like to go ahead and make a stand here, take
a stand here. A little bit of polarizing thing I'm
gonna say. But I've been thinking about it. I want
to bring it up. When it comes to flavors of things.

(01:25:38):
You go to the store, you'll find salt and vinegar chips,
You'll find barbecue chips. Right, you know I'm talking about
different flavors. Yeah, chips. Salt and pepper is not a flavor.
Stop calling it a flavor, stopping. These are salt and
pepper chips. It's not a flavor. Stop saying that, yes
it is. No, it's not salt and peppers. It's not
a flavor. Barbecue is a flavor. Pepper is a flavor. Seasoning.

(01:26:02):
We covered in our seasoning show. It's a seasoning. It's
not a flavor. Pepper.

Speaker 4 (01:26:06):
We never said pepper wasn't a flavor. If you go
you said, Salt's not a flavor. Salt and pepper. Salt
and pepper are are seasonings that you put on something.

Speaker 1 (01:26:14):
Right, when you go and get like a sour cream
and onion chip, right, that's a type of chip. That's
a flavor of chip. We all know. So what's salt
and pepper? Shrimp? Just seasoned shrimp. It's not a flavor
of shrimp. Yeah, season shrimp. No, let's stop it. What
do you see? I know you get mad at me.
You're gonna think about this though. Next week you're gonna
be like, you know what, chef, you were right. I
don't think you're right. But how is that even a thing?

(01:26:34):
I'm just saying. It's not a thing. It's salt and
pepper is not a flavor. It's a seasing. I have stances.
I have very thing. I thinks. I'm very, very passionate
about Jeffy, and this happens to be one of them.
How does this I don't even understand why you're because
of a potato chip. You think like salt and pepper.
Potato chips aren't flavored. No, it's a seasoned potato chip. Yes,

(01:26:55):
it's not a man that it.

Speaker 4 (01:26:56):
Doesn't say seasoned potato chip. You're mad and it says
salt and pepper flavor potato chip.

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
I'm mad that it's a salt and pepper like you
like you look at the flavor of chip. It's a
salt and pepper that bothers me. It's not a seasoning.
It's a seasoning. It's not a foot that's all it's
on the chip. Well, then this calm chips. Keep it simple,
all right, friends, We appreciate you hanging out here on
a Saturday. Chi love foods wy you see. Friends, Remember
food is one of the most important things we have
in life. Everything important life revolves around food. Let's make

(01:27:22):
sure we get the time it deserves. And friends, remember,
salt and pepper is not a flavor. It's a seasoning.
Trust me out right here, that's a hot talk sandwiches. Friend,
That's what I think too. You guys later and the

(01:27:44):
rest