Cooking with Jack in 2026 – Epi-3896

0:00There's a better way to do this. Let me show you a better way. You don't have to be another face in the crowd. And we are live folks. Welcome to... Episode 3896 of the Survival Podcast. It is Tuesday, September of the 8th. This show I was originally going to do last Tuesday. And it slipped my mind that last Tuesday was the first Tuesday. So that was a John Nichol show. So I got to really early start today with this show. About two hours earlier than typical for a live stream during the week. Because it was 90% done last week and ready to go. Anyway, we're going to have fun day. We're going to talk about one of my favorite subjects in the world cooking. And whatever I do a show on cooking, you know, with a title like the Survival Podcast, I guess for certain people have to re-interrate.

1:02Cooking is a survival topic because you have to eat every day. I've only ever been shot at once in my life. Like somebody actually shot at me. I didn't actually care for it. It's back when I was a young man in the military. It was not combat situation. Somebody still decided to turn it into one. But I've eaten most days of my life. I've gone some days fasting and whatever. But you know, we have to eat. If we don't eat, we die. So it's a survival topic. I'm also going to reiterate something else about this show. And what it's always really been. The Survival Podcast is before anything else, a lifestyle design podcast. And it's always been that. Preparedness is a piece of lifestyle design. If you have any design without redundancy built into it, any engineer will tell you what. You have a design that is not only going to fail, but will eventually fail catastrophically. And so that's the approach that we take. Things like generators, backup food, being smart about having some hard assets for hard times. And all of that are just ways to make sure that we stay on track in our lives no matter what goes on.

2:06And in 2026, man, this is more than a lifestyle design topic for some people. This is literally a modern survival topic. No, it's not because the zombies are coming. It's because the zombies came in the form of inflation. And it now costs of ever loving fortune for a small amount of crap food at a restaurant. And that restaurant is just reheating Cisco shit. I mean, really, it's like it's like a really good version of the TV dinner at a lot of places. And I'm talking like all your chains. Like all your big changes that your upper tier chains, you know, for Mexican, like your obwellows or your glorias, or, you know, like a stake place, like you were talking about like an outback or something, they're pretty good still for those mid tier change. Anything below that though, your chili is your apple v's, all of that shit. It's all frickin' reheat and Cisco food, and that's all that it is. You know, all it changes is maybe the sauce they put on or something like that.

3:08So you spend a huge amount of money, and even when you go to the grocery store, if you don't know how to make the most out of things, it's still incredibly expensive to eat well, and to eat nutritiously in 2026. But it doesn't have to be, if you get creative, if you learn technique over recipe, and you learn how to take the things that cost less and make them better higher quality. And if we learn to embrace a trend, we're going to talk today about how many foods that, you know, even 25, 30 years ago was foods of the pours. And certainly 40, 50 years ago. You go back to, like, when I was a kid in the 80s and the 70s in Florida, some of the food that was like, my, you know, I went to a Catholic school, and we had a mix of people that were kind of middle class like we were and upper affluent, and we had some people in that school that were actually pretty damn poor, had to really stretch to be able to go to a private school. Though it was pretty cheap back then. To wish and to go to private school when I was in grade school was $70 a month.

4:11I think that's what it was. And I think my sister and I both went and they gave us like a break, it was like 110 for both of us, right? But, you know, these families were going out of their way to get their kids but they thought it was a better education, and they had to stretch. And we'll talk about it today, but like shrimp and grits, was they ate fish and grits or shrimp or grits all the time. Today, it's in most elevated restaurants. So, a lot of things that we can take from the depression error cooking and the foods of the poor, and even slave foods of, you know, a couple centuries ago, have become considered extremely elevated cuisine. But you don't have to be a Michelin star chef to make that happen. So, we're going to be talking about all of that and more today. Before we do, though, I want to remind you about our sponsors of the day today. A sponsor of the number one today is KnifeKits.com, where you can literally build an heirloom for your family. You know, go there, pick something out really cool, get a KnifeKit, if you need some help, get a book or a video or whatever to go with it,

5:11and build a Knife with your son, your daughter, your nephew, your niece, your grandson, your granddaughter, et cetera. If I had a knife I had built with either of my grandfather's, I don't care if it didn't come out perfect, I would never, I would never part with it. You know, and then you build a couple more and you get a little better, maybe you go and build a few and then do another one with the kids and create something a little more lasting. There's some pretty cool stuff during KIT form. Also, if you are a master bladesmith, if you're someone that's already got a lot of experience, there's your Beyond the KIT. They have all the raw materials too, and some really cool exotic stuff, mammoth tusk, buffalo horn, buffalo bone, lots of cool stuff, plus kitex leather, everything you can think of for making your sheath making, holster making, check them out today. And these guys are loyal, they were became a sponsor in 2010, that's 16 years ago. So I don't know many podcasts the last 16 years, let alone podcast sponsorships that do. Next up today, the caseplace.com, protect your preps, add up to 80% off retail.

6:12This is like Pelican hard to SKB and more, inspected field running price for the serious prepper. And these aren't like, again, military grade law enforcement grade cases. Some of the best that there is in the business, and because of the way they do business, they're able to offer them to you every day at 50 to 80% off. Now, on top of that, if you're a TSP listener, you get another 5% off your order, use code TSP for that. If you're an MSB member, that's the member support brigade program that I have, you get 10% off your order. And so you can just log in your MSB to get those discounts. And that's a good time to remind you guys about the MSB and why you should become a member. You get discounts of things like this with the MSB. The MSB is really not a paid program. You got to pay to be in it, but if you use it, it pays you. I don't know anybody that has an MSB membership that uses it two or three times a year. That doesn't say, I get my money back.

7:12It's 50 bucks a year. I use cannabis products, just things like discounts from a cure of a tanacles and some of our other sponsors that do that business. Man, Angie's garden, right? You want to order and you're done. And there's a bunch of stuff above phone those discounts. If you're not a member, consider becoming a member. Help support my show. Make sure I'm here for you for many more years to come and get your money back plus some. Just before we get all the way into it and start talking about this stuff. Let's talk about the fall workshop real quick. 19th of September, take its go on sale, 9.30 a.m. That's all I'll say to you. Don't miss it. Pay attention. If you have never come to one before, please consider coming to one of these. I love putting it in a different way. If you've always thought one day I'm going to go to one of these events. One of the jacks workshops. Make this the year.

8:12Make this the year. We do business like 60 plus percent of people that come have been here more than once. They come back because it's so special. But if you get up at 9.80, you know, get up at 8.00 a.m. and be ready to go when we drop the link in the telegram channel. That's central time. You'll probably get in and we want to bring new people here. Even if it's at the expense of some of the guys to get a little bit slow. They want to be returning. Yes. All right. So let's start talking about this. Again, I want you to understand where we are in like the timeline. When it comes to what I coined the phrase of as modern survivalism. And that is a phrase that I absolutely believe that I created. When I started this show back in 08, I was like, I need a concept. That I can hang my hat on. That's really mine. That's not, you know, proper whatever doomsday this or apocalyptic that.

9:16I wanted something that uniquely set us apart. As, you know, a place where you could learn to live a better life if times got tough or even if they didn't. Like to really meet our credo. And again, this was always about lifestyle design. And so modern survivalism incorporates all of it. It is about surviving the modern age and thriving in the modern age. And it doesn't limit itself to things breaking and it doesn't throw out technology. Like a lot of the prepper concepts are all about like when they turn the internet off, like they're going to turn the internet off. If the internet goes off, someone wrong for everybody. They control you with the internet. They make all their money on the internet. They, whoever the hell you think they are, are not going to turn the internet off. But they will jack up the price of beef, you know, two acts over the last four years. They'll do that. They will take all kinds of policies and practices that make your money worthless.

10:21And as I said in the lead up to this, you need to eat. We want to eat and we want to eat good. The first thing that most people take to high food prices is to buy the shittiest, pre-made, low-end, crappy, carbohydrate intensive, additive food that there is that's cheap. But your mind thinks it tastes good because it doesn't taste good. We slowly ramp into these things like hot pockets and pizza turnovers and shit. You know, if you're a gen X, you probably ate a lot of those as a kid. Because you came home and you threw them in the oven. And I guess maybe that's part of our training that let us down this road. We were kids. We didn't know how to do so little stuff I'm going to talk about today. So we just made do with what we had. But that became the go-to for everybody. Everybody's tired. Everybody's working their ass off. People are cash-drapped. Generally when they get home, they just want to... So if you can grab something with a brand name on it out of the freezer and throw it in the microwave or the oven. And feed everybody. You feel pretty good about it.

11:22But the quality of the food is crap. And that means your health will go to crap. I'm often said, if you think good foods expensive, why do you see what insulin costs? Where do you see what dialysis costs? Where do you see what cardiothoracic surgery costs? You know, like, what do you see what being on 12 maintenance medications in your 50s or 40s now costs? Then maybe you'll understand that this isn't really expensive, especially if we think about it more like our grandparents. So some of the things I want to just kind of hit on today are some of the real values. And the values you can gain by using them. And so to me, the two biggest values, and I am not going to try to stick to like grass fed only, organic only today. By the quality that you can afford in the class that you can, but all of these things are going to be less expensive than a lot of their counterparts of the same level.

12:25So if it's per, you know, like, KFO production stuff, you buy in the grocery store. Okay, fine. These things are in a cost less than something like that same class of thing for a New York strip. But if you go to organic grass fed, whatever, depending on where we're talking or you know, past your a's, and you're going to be amazed, these pieces will still cost less than the other pieces parts, right? So to me, one of the best values, and I'm going to amend my own notes here and add drumsticks to this as well, but chicken thigh chicken thigh to me is one of the best values in protein on the planet. If you have to go to the store and buy food, you can, there's nothing you can do with the chicken breast that I can't do with the chicken thigh. Unless you are wanting to, like, I know people like, you like me shut up, shut up. If you didn't, if somebody blindfolded you and two people made you want to chicken breast and the other made you a thigh, the same way, you're going to pick the thigh every time. It has more flavor. It's juicier.

13:27It can handle higher heat without drying out. And the big thing is, because we're busy, the eye has the ability to be cooked on a weekend and reheat it on a Wednesday and not dry out on that second reheat. That's the, that's one of the bigger pieces of the magic to it to me. So here's what I mean. I can make you something with chicken breast. It will be juicy. It will taste amazing. You'll be like, this is great. But when you cooked that, basically heating up as a second cooking, it will just not be right on that heat up. Or if I do the same thing with thigh, it will be the one thing that you can learn that I think will make all of this work better is basic meat cutting principles and how to bone a thigh. If you do not know how to bone a chicken thigh, you need to learn. You basically flip it on its back, follow the bone, peel the bone off of the tip of the knife, cut it off and cut the little piece of carloge off the end. If that doesn't make sense to you, go look up a video, how to bone a chicken thigh.

14:29If you want it skinless, then you just pull the skin off of it. Don't throw the skin away. Don't do that. That's dumb. If you are doing something with chicken thigh, where you need it skinless, peel all the skins off and then put them like on a cookie sheet, roast them in the oven on like a cooling rack, nest it into a sheet pan. All that fat that drips down there, that is some of the best cooking fat in the world. It is amazing. If you want it to be a flavored fat, when you roast that chicken, take four or five cloves of garlic, and then you can add a little bit of fat, and then you can add a little bit of fat, and then you can add a little bit of fat. That should be the nice, leave the paper on them. Put them in the pan under the chicken thigh skins. When the fat melts down on them, it will roast that garlic. You can take that garlic and do something else with it, but it will infuse garlic flavor into the chicken schmalt. Now you have a fat to cook with. Now we have gone from buying $6 a pound breast to buying $1 something pound thigh, and we have already got multiple products out of it. We deboned it, or you can make a bone broth. We made a crispy chicken skin, which is just delicious and straight up eating, cut it into strips and put on top of other things like a chicken to your own.

15:40Plus we have a schmalt for cooking it. We have started it, and we have got more product. But thigh, if you want to do something that is more like where you would pound a breast out, once you deboned it, you can put it in a plastic bag and pound it out to a cutlet. You can do anything, but you want to do a nugget type thing or a stir fry. It all works. I also love to just cook thighs with the skin on, bone out, they cook faster that way, because you spread them open, and cook them skin side down first. Bring up a nice crisp on the skin, flip them over, flat top, frying pan, oven, any of it, or bone in. All of those things are valid. What I love to do with legs, the chicken legs, and this is why sometimes quarters are a good deal too. You just break them in half yourself, you don't want to cook them all. Take your chicken legs, go to the side where the meat is closest to the bone, and go like you're going to bone it, but don't take it all the way off the bone.

16:42Butter fly it out, so it lays flat, it'll cook evenly. Whatever you season it with, we'll get into the meat. You've got a crispy side for skin, so you can sear the skin, and then flip it over after the seasoning has cooked in or the marinade or the sauce is cooked into the leg. That way when you turn it over, the skin finishes crisp because it can air dry as it cooks. You want to do something really cool with those, make those that way, and use walkers, wood, Jamaican, jerk seasoning, as you're... That's all, literally, the only thing you need. Rub it on the skin lightly, and rub it deeply and heavily on the backside again. Cook skin side down, flip over to finish. They will finish in about half the time if you don't butterfly them open. So, chicken dark meat pieces, one of the best prices on the market. And I'll also add this, if you like chicken breasts and you want chicken breasts, buy whole chickens and learn to break them down.

17:47I've done the math, and usually it works out this way. The price of two boneless chicken, boneless skinless chicken breasts, is about the same as the whole chicken. You get the boneless breasts, you get the rest of the chicken for free. It's about the same price. So, that's one of my big value cuts. Another is pork shoulder. And the place I know to get the best deal on pork shoulder is Costco. Yes, it's commercial pork, but it's super good. High quality, very inexpensive. I think I just smoked eight pork shoulders for the workshop, and I just broke down another four pork shoulders to make your make a jerk sausage for the workshop. I paid $2.29 a pound for boneless pork shoulder, big old twin packs at Costco. Let me tell you some things that you can do them. Question, okay, I'm going to answer this question mid-floor question workshop tickets sale yesterday was 9 a.m. today 9.30. 9 a.m. If I said 9.30, it's a mistake. I'm sorry 9 a.m. Central standard time. So I'll dig that question off. All right. So anyway, when you get those four shoulders, you open it up. And if you're going to smoke the whole shoulder, open that flap up, put your rub inside, then close it back up and do the rub outside.

19:06Get some butchers twine and tie that roast up if you're going to smoke it roasted whatever. And the reason is because it's kind of flappy, you end up with thin and thick parts and it cooks at different rates. So you can overcook some and undercook some others and it makes it harder to keep an even low and slow for that smoke. That's the basic thing there. But the stuff that you can do with it, I had friends come over last time. And when I was breaking down the shoulders for the sausage, the top of the shoulder, the pork shoulders that you buy from Costco is the muscle that comes up to the neck. That's the copa. Like copa ham, like really high end expensive Italian cured ham copa. So what you do is if you set that shoulder kind of like this, you know which way the head goes. That whole top back strip there, the forward half of it anyway is going to be the about half of the copa, the rest that's going to end up with the rest of the big somewhere else.

20:06You cut those into like three quarter to one inch chops and you'll get four to five out of one of those, depending on how big it is. There is no better pork chop on planet earth. They actually look more like little pork steaks incredible marbling season how you like it. Good hard here. Cook it to about 150 degrees. Right. It's pork. It does not need to be 165 or whatever. Cook it to 145. It'll be fine. And I've served that to my guest last night and all it was a basic rub like garlic salt pepper, etc. A little bit of paprika, a little smoked pepper. And everybody said it's fantastic and all it was just fried like in a pan because it was too hot to go back outside. I was like I'm not going back outside to lock over. It's too hot out there. And so I did it just just frying pan a little bit of olive oil and like a teaspoon of butter, the oil and the butter together keep the butter from over scorching. Incredible. The value of that piece of meat at two two dollars and 20 something cents a pound.

21:10You can do anything with it. If you do like a beef pork mixture in chili, it's great for that. If you like sauce, it's great for that. One of the best things you can do though, if you're going to break it down into cuts. So you have that copa, then you have the big thick piece. It's nice and stable. It's not flappy and sloppy like that other side is. You just cut steaks out of that. However you want. Call them pork steaks, call them chops, call them country style ribs. You can make it like that. You can do them thin or thick. You can do any kind of marinade or seasoning. All of it is just its tender. It's got enough fat in it to stay juicy. It's so much better than a loin that cost twice as much. It really is. Then that flappy side. The best thing to do with that in my opinion, if you're not going to do like a whole roast or something, go ahead and take that flappy side off and cut it up and either do stir fry with it or do grind with it. One of the really great things you can do is learn how to make a basic breakfast sausage.

22:15So I'm going to put this up on my screen, but you can find everything in the show notes today. This is my basic sausage recipe. This is like a sage flavored breakfast sausage. I'll go ahead and give you the ingredients real quick, but again you can come to the site and get this. Then you just scale it up or down. One pound of ground pork, one teaspoon of fennel, one half teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes. If you don't like spicy eliminated or mitigated, you know, but use less about a half a teaspoon of salt. I usually use like a Himalayan pink or a red man's with this, a half teaspoon of black pepper. In this recipe, I called for a half teaspoon per pound of chef Keats northern Italian seasoning. He doesn't make it anywhere. That's how old this recipe on the side is, but any good like Italian seasoning, a teaspoon of garlic powder, a teaspoon of onion powder, and four finely chopped fresh sage leaves. All you do is just mix that together until it gets sticky. That's how you know it's sausage is done when the fat and the protein begin to molstify together.

23:21You can make that so quickly. You need absolutely no, and I mean no specialized equipment for that all other than a grinder. And you can use something like a food processor for small amounts of mints as the British would call it. So basically you dice up your meat, you put it in a food processor and you pulse it until you get the consistency you want. You know what season it first before you do that will be mixed in in Gratowon go. But it is hard to be for an investment, the little grinder that I have on my site, the little grinder that it could until it couldn't anymore. The STX 3000 Turbo Force Grinder, it's about 160 bucks brand new on Amazon. When you open yourself up to getting these larger cuts, chuck rolls, pork shoulder, et cetera, and taking all that extra trim and be able to do your own grind. That grinder will pay for itself, you know, in a couple months, like three or four months of use it will pay for itself.

24:23And I just finally upgraded to a Kavella's Carnibor. I got a number 22 grinder. It will grind a chicken leg quarter with the bones in it like it's nothing. It is amazing. And it was almost 650 bucks shipped. And I kicked myself for not buying one sooner. I bought the one horsepower one. And I wanted to go out to like the number 32 one that was, but that was like $800. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. In spite of the fact that I'm glad I finally bought it, that little Turbo Force I've had for over 10 years, I have put hundreds of pounds through it. And if you're using it like we're talking about today, not when I did yesterday, yesterday I ground 32 pounds of sausage with the seasoning added already. Okay. That would have put a beaten on this little guy on one go. But when you're grinding, you know, five pounds or less per run, these things are fantastic. Moving on from there and also a good case for a grinder is your chuck rolls, your chuck cloth.

25:26Those are two of the best beef primal RRIs. So your chuck roll is like kind of like the neck upper shoulder and your chuck clot is like the lower shoulder off of the cow. These cuts off of like a lamb or a deer or a smaller pig would be like a one big cut. We're talking about beef cowl. That's a big kind of meat. A chuck roll is going to be 20 pounds or more sometimes and a clod the same. But the chuck roll is probably the best value. You can literally take one of those and just run the back going forward, start cutting giant freaking Flintstone steaks out of it and cut them in half if you want to. Your first couple will basically be a chuck guy on one side and a Denver steak on the other, but you can cook them all together if you want to. And you can go up to your about halfway through it before it will start to kind of not really be a good steak anymore. Now, I'm not saying that the first half of it, these steaks will be equivalent to like a filet mignon or a ribeye. But they're really damn good, especially if you treat them right.

26:27The rest of it you can do all types of things. Stir fry, grind, you name it, you can do roasts, right? Your typical pot roast, which is your typical thing that they sell in the store they call pot roast. It's just a piece of chuck roll. And they generally just bust those things in a big giant like two inch thick slabs and say pot roast. So you can also when you go to the store and they have pot roasts on sale, just look at it. And the ones that are nice that you see something that looks kind of like a little ribeye. And then you see this thing almost looks like like short ribs around it. One size chuck eye, one size Denver, you can literally buy that, pull it apart and portion it as you want. Like usually when they're two inches thick, you can take that chuck eye side, bust it in a two on its steaks, poor man's ribeye. And then your Denver, you decide how you want it to break that up. But those are incredible values. The chuck quad will have the terrace major, which is one of the most incredibly delicious cuts of meat.

27:28It kind of looks like a smaller filet mignon, like a whole filet mignon. It's not quite a standard, but it's damn good except a lot of times now when you buy a claw, they're taking the terrace major off and they're marketing it as a separate cut. So you're getting ripped off for that. But the thing that's always in the claw, the flat iron steak. The flat iron steak is one of those things that they found when the beef union was trying to find more ways to make more value in a cow. Flat iron is everywhere now in steak houses, in places like Boomer, Jackson stuff that are doing like a small portion, five to six ounce portion of steak with something like steak and shrimp or what have you. This is amazing. It tastes a little time to learn how to do it. It's basically a long rectangular strip and there's a piece of like fat and cartilage and membrane going down the middle and you take it off both sides. And again, you'll get about three per side so you'll get, depending on the size of the claw, four to six of these per claw. Most of the rest of the claw is better to cut into things like slow brazing cuts like mock short ribs and stuff like that or turn it around.

28:34But it's an incredible value and I'll throw one more at you. If you go to like Costco business center and in place they have these a whole top butt surly. Those tend to be incredible values as well. You take the top off that's your pecania, that's your cap. You just thought how you want to process that. And then the rest you can make basic surly like top surly your baseball steaks and stuff like that. All of these things can be had for between six and eight dollars a pound or you can go to the grocery store where somebody's cut them for you and pay eight to twenty two dollars a pound. It's as simple as learning how to use a knife. Okay. And we got that question answered. You know, I mentioned the meat grinders and I'll tell you another really great investment is a meat slicer. If you if you want to pick up a meat slicer, I have one I recommend by the war and it is a ten inch commercial meat slicer. I'm going to say something.

29:35If I had this to do again, I would have spent the extra like eighty bucks and bought the twelve inch one. Not so much because it performs better but because when you have a bigger meat slicer, you have a longer throw for baking. So I would have to have another two inches of throw on the arm. I would definitely be willing to spend a little bit more money on them. I looked them up today and on V4 site, both the ten and twelve inches are sold out. They have none in stock. However, I would really recommend a product like this if you're going to buy one anyway from the V4 brand. I would buy it on Amazon. So I have links in the show notes. They do have someone's stock of both sizes on Amazon. The reason I say that is before sometimes you might get a lemon and they're not great on customer service. But Amazon is great on customer service. So you might want to take that approach anyway. But the reason the meat slicers are so valuable, let's give another really great example. You go out and buy an eye or a whole eye of rounds. One of the cheapest cuts of meat there is.

30:37Everybody says, it's just junk or whatever. It's too lean and then they cut the fat off. What are you doing? You cut your ends off, your little pointed ends. You do a Chinese-type marinade with that where you tenderize it. Because most of what you're eating in Chinese restaurants like beef and broccoli is either eye around or top round or bottom round. And they do the velvety thing and all that I won't get into today for that. But you do whatever you want. You can throw it in your grind, your trim, whatever. But now you have a nice round squared off roast. It's pretty damn big. If you really want to get it to roast evenly, learn to do a butcher's knot and put about four or five your string wraps on it and tie it up. And then you season it however you want. Throw out the oven, make a roast beef. Cook it to a hundred and thirty degrees maximum. I like to cook it to about 125 with a remote thermometer plugged in so I know what the temperature is. And at 125, I shut the oven off and I leave it closed for like four hours.

31:41And that will do carry over up to about the one thirty range. You can even do like one twenty. You'll still carry over to about one thirty three, nice and rare. And unlike cutting into a hot piece of meat, it's not going to bleed. It's going to look like beautiful roast beef from the deli. Throw that on a slicer and you just made roast beef better than they're selling you for eighteen dollars a pound of the deli for about six dollars a pound. It's that simple. If you want that fat cap that's on there, after you've made your roast beef and before you put on the slicer, go ahead and take it off with a knife. Throw it back in the oven under the boil or till it crisps. Because your roast people need it on a sandwich just be a little thin strip. You take that I'm talking about an untrimmed one. That fat will curdle up and be one of those beautiful things you've ever eaten in your life if you try it that way. But again, you get a flavor that you want on your roast beef and your temperature to do what I just said, you're going to want to run that oven at about four hundred degrees.

32:45Preheat four hundred throw it in, bring it up to a hundred and twenty hundred twenty five depending on what your final done this as you want. Shut it off and unless the world ends do not open the door for four hours. That's all you got to do you end up with a beautiful promise you beautiful piece of meat on the cheap. Let's also talk about like soups. You know my grandmother's both anything that was left over that wasn't going to get eaten was turned into a soup. Anything that was processed and had some trim and bones was turned into a soup when we did like carrots and all they didn't bite a little bags and like the baby carrots that are on a little lathe or something to make them all the same. You know about carrots. When the tops and the ends that went into a broth the bottom of the celery into a broth like the bottom piece of an onion into a broth. Everything went into a broth and like any leftover meat or any cheap piece of meat could be turned into a soup and all chicken turned into a soup and I'll tell you that my two grandmother's.

33:55We're very different people one was first generation Ukrainian immigrant the other was a first generation Italian immigrant. They made very different foods. My grandmother from Ukraine was big on parois, parogies and holocies and delumquies and all Eastern European foods lots of potatoes baking bread stuff like that my Italian grandmother lasagna right. Chicken parmesan eggplant parmesan right hardly ever baked anything except cookies at Christmas very very different people my my my Italian grandmother and my my grandfather and I was a retired military officer a little bit more affluent actually a lot more affluent than my other grandparents who grew poverty region cold region very very different people but they both made soups all the time. You know what their commonality was they both lived through the Great Depression in World War two.

34:57And so you don't throw away food I told my wife the other day I found this jar add some seasoning and shit in it's just like small ball jar and it would have taken you know half an hour of getting everything out of it and making a clean again I threw to it some migrate my Korean grandmother would have frickin flipped her shit but I threw that char away she throw jelly jars away right they didn't waste things. A milk carton was rinsed out so think should be frozen in it because it was a free container to put in the freezer right people that live through that time that so they thought if foil could be reused you didn't throw it away you reused it that type of thing this is okay there's one of those people will get rid of you later anyway moving on. So everybody who lived through the depression made soups and so I encourage you to learn to make a good soup and the first step is learning to make a good base.

36:00This is taking all of your vegetables and doing like a mirror process of free throw or whatever then you add your bones and everything to make your stock you're going to get a much richer soup that way and I'm telling you it can be super easy you don't have to become a French cook to do this when I had Josiah as an intern here way back if you remember like those were the best. His mom was down here for about three weeks from Montana and anything we had left over she threw it all like rock pot through some herbs the seasoning and it ground up some rosemary and time and through that in there and whatever it was was always good. So don't let stuff go to waste I have so many people you know they have leftovers and they don't put them to use and then you don't want to read him up and by the end of the week you look at it that's not very nice they soup out of it. And this is where I want to start talking about some of the depression area of arrow foods the people foods of the pores things like that that we now go to very expensive restaurants and pay a lot of money for but because they're foods of the pores they're actually really easy to make now some of these restaurants have definitely elevated them especially with some of their seasonings sauces and techniques.

37:14But the basics are still really easy the first one that I think of is shrimp and grits whenever I think about this and I have been to some really great restaurants and almost all of them today have a shrimp and grits thing on the menu especially if they're kind of like low country carolina southern cooking things like that one place I've been to in Fort Worth if you ever get a chance to go to a little place called little red wasp they do a shrimp and grits that's fantastic. The lunch menu at a restaurant downtown Fort Worth called riyotta which is a super high end place they do a shrimp and grits it's freaking fantastic but what do I remember about shrimp and grits I remember again being a Catholic school and having this this family that we were close friends with that they really struggled. I mean they they had three boys and they had to make sacrifices to send those kids to Catholic school serious sacrifices. And at the low price that I gave you now again you're talking to early 80s but still like I'm just saying they were on the edge financially and almost every Catholic you don't eat meat on Fridays right so almost every Friday if you ask them what you're having the answer was either fishing grits or shrimp grits why grits are cheap right by big giant box of them they're cheap big giant bag of cheap and in Florida at the time every time you were driving down the road and you went past the

38:43people like an inlet where you have like an overpass that people fished on that was like that went out to the St. John's River or went out to the ocean there's somebody there with a cast and a catch and shrimp and there'd be a guy with a cooler selling them right off the side of the road and you could buy shrimp I don't remember exactly what was under a dollar pound live shrimp and big old live shrimp so super cheap. Now you add some you know really good sauce you add something like a cage in blackening season like pulpit ohms cage in black and season you cook your shrimp separately and you bring them to the grits and you do a good sauce oh my god and use lots of cheese and your grits of course all I make in the point of here is you're taking a food that this family ate all the time where they were like the fishing grits again because it wasn't treadmill grits. You went somewhere and caught some catfish or some you know spectra or something like that and you did it with fish again very high end today how about short ribs and also musco right short rib is gotten very expensive right and that's you know your your bottom part of the rib primal and the other problem with short rib today is that they take so much of the meat off the meat off the meat.

40:04So you don't want the ribs that there's not really much there and or they go ahead and bone it for you and then it's like 14 $16 a pound meat okay here's the thing you go back to that that chuck roll that I talked about and when you're learning the part that out look for the stuff with lots of fat grain in it cut that in the shape of the short rib and do your favorite short rib recipe with it now you have short ribs will be a good one. Way more meat on them for six bucks a pound see how quick that works now here's the secret when you go to that nice upper end Italian restaurant that has a red wine braised short ribs with like baby portabella mushroom or something with it right you know what you're eating you're anyone I just told you none of these places are doing that another thing that makes really great short rib stand-ins if you buy a whole pack your brisket if you can if you can do it because I like to cook it separately as its own thing the point of the brisket the part they make the chop brisket out of if you cut that into into that kind of shape and strip it's fantastic but this was always that bottom rib plate it was a poor people to now it's

41:23considered one of the most like desirable pieces of beef there is also busco literally means small hole and it is the shank of a beef it can be front or rear and it's basically everything like if you were a cow and you were on all force everything for your elbow down to your wrist that piece would be the shank right and it's a very tough cut but it's very very flavorful has a lot of marble fat in it it does have some membranes and fashion stuff like that but it's designed it is perfect for long slow cooking a braise again a red line reduction something like that this is still relatively affordable especially if you pay attention this is a cut watch for them to put it on sale and when they put it on sale that's one to pick it up. Cokovin is a classic French housewives use for an old rooster it literally means cock and wine is what it means not that kind of cock the rooster cock right and it's basically a slow cooked chicken dish it can be served over noodles or potatoes it's made with red wine it's a

42:33slow cook that way the chicken becomes tender even though it's designed for older bird top restaurants are selling this I'm talking Michelin star restaurants now have Cokovin on the menu there's a restaurant if you don't follow these guys you want to learn a lot about cooking they they run a restaurant in London it's like the hottest restaurant in London right now it's called FALO F-A-L-O-W they do a Cokovin that is just so super elevated but it's not even the super elevated versus the heart and so a lot of you guys have birds and every so often you need to bring in new birds and if you keep chickens to lay eggs you know that they're not a great um a great meat product like chicken really is easy you got to meat chicken or you got an egg chicken and there's some dual purposes that are okay but neither excels but when you have a year and a half or two and a half year old hen

43:33it doesn't matter if it's a dual breed it just doesn't really make a good fried chicken or something it'll make a fantastic Cokovin in fact the older and tougher the bird is the more suited to Cokovin it is and I'll give you a hack for cleaning so you don't have to be out there plucking all of a chicken dispatch your bird however you do that I use either a killing code or just hang them from a tree with some TA-50 cord and next lice and a bucket to bleed them out once they're blood out pluck the breast the breast will pluck super easy take your knife take your breast cutlets off the breast with the skin on now you've got skin on right then pop the joints out of your leg quarters and pull the skin back cut the foot off and take your leg quarters from that bird and the rest of it if you want to go through all the grief to get what's left of it out of a culberg go ahead I don't that's it I take the I take the liver I take the heart and things like that it

44:35goes to the black soldier flux at that point let them take care of it turn it into something useful but that'll make a great Cokovin a fantastic and when you do it right with the red line the meat is almost stained with the red line and it is a fantastic meal okay um ox tail ox tail was literally slave food like the master slaughtered the cow and they gave the slave the tail it's a super popular thing down in the Caribbean because it was slave food so like Haiti Dominican Republic Cuba Puerto Rico but it's now it's on the menus of top restaurants if you try it you'll see why my granddad used to make an ox tail soup that was amazing it's more like a stew it's so gelatinous it the the the broth thickens just from what renders out of the cut it's it's a fantastic fantastic cut and and I don't necessarily want you to go start making ship and grids and cook of

45:36it and also loose going ox tail I want you to just start thinking about the fact that these things that used to literally be considered not good enough for the table of a proper gentleman are now sitting in Michelin star restaurants another example's pork belly nobody even has a stigma against pork belly because we only bake it right but pork belly again this was like you know you slaughtered the hog and you just cut the belly flat away hair slave that's how it's like Chinese roasted pork belly skin on with a crisp cheater on skin oh my god uh teaglicious says lobster was that way too yeah that ship's gone but yeah lobster was prison food in New England the lobster population was so high in New England when we first began to settle here from Europe that you could walk the beach and find lobsters I think it's almost not really to believe that right like it doesn't make any sense to me like why would they be they're their deep water animal

46:37but apparently they were I've never even dug into that I'm not even sure maybe they were a little bit different species of lobster that we don't have anymore or what but yeah lobster was prison food there's so many things that we're like shrimp was basically look at the same way it was like what you ate to survive you know wasn't what you know because it's all you could get at the time it's basically an ocean roach or something uh let's talk about some techniques to look because I think techniques are way more important uh than than recipes so using fresh herbs and knowing how to use fresh herbs so what you don't want to do with fresh herbs if you're making an herb crusted roast that is not the place for your fresh herbs so we're going to crust let's say a rib like a a prime rib and then we're going to slow roast it and then we're going to serve it like a proper prime rib at a restaurant there's your place for like your dry roast Mary your dry time maybe you put a little bit on top of it to kind of baste in the meat but that herb is going to be completely cooked out by the time it comes

47:43fresh herbs are for finishing fresh herbs are for let's say you're making a pizza right you make a pizza I don't care if you go to the grocery store and buy a freezer pizza okay do a little pizza surgery frozen peach surgery anybody you know what I mean when I say frozen peach a surgery that's where you kind of like rearrange all the toppings and maybe you add some more pepperoni or something and you cook that pizza and just a plain old oven you want to take it to another level get some fresh basil stack your leaves together like you're making a cigar roll it up tightly and then cut it so their long thin strips really really thin let's call the chef an eye and then when that pizza comes out sprinkle the fresh basil on top of it after it's done cooking it'll take a freezer pizza to another level so if you make your own or you just do torn leaves the same type of thing when you do a soup throw your herbs on at the end you know chives just any cut in me finally chopped onion chives fantastic so simplistic and what I love about the

48:49herbs it opens up growing some of your own food to everybody you can have an herb garden that's you know six to twelve pots that are you know big enough to just pick up a move around oregano chives time rosemary basil like those five alone we'll do a ton for you with fresh herbs parsley is another great fresh herb you know those six the fact I should probably do a whole show on just herb gardening again pretty soon so fresh herbs salt-crusting thick cuts of meat before searing so this is a new one on me I've always done the salt to meat thing I've always done the dry browning of refrigerator thing we'll talk about a minute but I recently was watching the the fallow guys and you know you're talking if you're going to do this you're talking like one inch minimum thick cuts and what they were doing it was a a flay that was probably an inch and a half thick maybe a thicker even but to get the best

49:49sear you put down a fine salt like on a cutting mortar a plate and you take the flat part of the meat that's going to go on and get seared and you just like you're breading a fish flay stick it on top of the salt flip it over stick it on top of the salt it seems like a lot but when you're talking about a thick cut of meat it can only penetrate so far to that meat the sear you get when you do that is absolutely freaking amazing absolutely freaking amazing so start crusting your thick cuts proper cutting like you do all this work and then I'm talking I'm not even talking about when you're preparing the cut to cook you bring the cut of meat off the off the grill out of the frying pan whatever you let it rest you're ready to cut it you want to be cutting across the way the grain flows on that cut because your meat will then pull apart the grain where if you cut it long ways here's a classic example of where people screw this up all the time with skirt steak for fajitas it's natural that you kind of want your fajitas steak to be like long thin strips that's

50:52very classic and if you want to do that when you bring if you use flank steak to make fajitas when you bring your flank steak off they let's say it's it's 12 inches and you want your strips to be about six inches long but in half with the grain turn it and cut your strips across the grain it will heat so much better because you cut it differently there's cuts of meat where it's not that big of a deal like a ribeye the whole thing's tender the whole thing's marbled the grain kind of does all kinds of things going on there but there are many cuts of meat that one simple change will do so much for you simple sauces and a lot of simple sauces can just be broth reductions with some herbs and butter so one of the things that I'm going to be making for you guys we're going to have a small bites porch probably at two hours on Friday at the workshop chef cam's going to help me with it I talked him on the phone yesterday I'll tell you some more cool stuff about that near the end but we're going to be making like four different things for you that are pre-made

51:58and one is called potato fondant potato fondant and fondant basically means melt so it's a potato that melts when you eat it and it's a very easy thing to do I'm not going to get into how to do it right now but it takes a long time and so it's something sort of that very elevated restaurants and what it involves doing is browning these pucks like you basically make a potato puck that's really thick you brown both sides you bring a broth up to just cover it like you're doing a braise you cover it with what's called a cartouche which is basically a piece of parchment paper to slow evaporation and you slow cook it in the oven for about an hour then you bring it out you reduce down the broth you glaze the potatoes and you serve it's amazing and it's not hard it's just time consuming I came up the way I can make you know 80 in a day and take them out of the freezer and make them whenever I want to I made a scale and I I'm finally dialed the recipe and we had friends over last night that ended up for chops for and I did a potato fondant and the sauce

53:02that was on the potatoes was right in with them when they were made I won't say how but you might imagine CVS I'm gonna do with this and all I did was reduce that beef broth with all the herbs and garlic and it down until it was thick like a glaze well you can do that you don't have to make a fondant to do that you can do that with anything if you take sage and butter and you take the butter to look browns and then you incorporate in in a most of why a broth like a beef broth or a chicken broth and you reduce that down to a thick place it's good on anything to quote guy theory be good on a napkin I mean it's that it's that simple and it's a combination of meat flavors herbs salt and some spice that's always what it comes down to and I don't believe that any sauce is hard by the addition of garlic I'll put it that way it little thing on your garlic right I got more on your garlic here in a second but when you're doing sauces and stuff like that and you want

54:04to flavor the sauce with the garlic batch the garlic leave the paper on it throw in the pan it won't over roast the garlic and get that burnt and then you can if you want to use the garlic you can pull it out with a pair of tongs and that garlic will pop right out of there I mean nice soft which brings me to my next one roasting garlic into a paste this is one of the best food hacks in the world and I don't know why more people don't do it it is so simple to do you take your hole head of garlic you lay it on its side so you got your roots like to your your your holding hand and you take your knife and you cut the top right off it you want to take just enough of the top of the garlic a whole bowl off that when you look at it you can see into the individual cells of all the little garlics you put that in a piece of aluminum foil you pour some olive oil on it or you can use beef tallow you can use any kind of a good quality fat big pinch of salt and pepper close the foil around it throw it in the oven at 350 until it's soft let it cool down

55:08because it will be scream and hot when it comes out whatever you want to use it on you open the foil you grab the bottom of the bulb and you squeeze and it comes out like a what it is roast a garlic paste nice and salted and peppered and already seasoned and it's good on everything tell you what it's good on you take a piece of just simple sourdough toast and you squeeze that onto it and you smear that you get the way that it is but if you add any like like take to a mackerel the canned mackerel that I recommend from wild planet you take that and you add some the garlic to it and you just saute it briefly in a pan with like some jalapeno peppers and you smear that garlic on the sourdough and then you put the mackerel crumbled mackerel on top of it and then get some really good parmesan cheese and like a microplane grater and let that palm just melt into it let it cool for just a second one of the most amazing things you have a

56:10couple bucks into that and it'll take a person that says I like fish if you don't tell them what it is and they eat it it's on you could have a little brisketta to that which is basically chopped tomatoes and I'm not gonna get into how to do that one today but you can look up how brisketta brisketta are both proper ways to say it add that to that or just do the garlic smear and the brisketta holy crap this stuff is easy it's super easy you notice something I'm not trying to be keto today because not all of you are and that's okay and we have a few cheat days a week right if you want to call it that but what I'm also not doing you're not hearing any garbage food you're not hearing any junk food you're not hearing like a potato is one thing you know a mixed up batch of crap with potato slop in it is another you're not hearing anything that's come out of a box here this is all the way you think about this this is the way we ate and I've always said this about the car and we're keto thing even somehow our grandparents and our parents ate all the things that we don't

57:16think we should eat anymore and they didn't get fat they bred they potatoes like my euphrenia and grandmother if it was a potato it went in some a bulini a parogi whatever thing in fact you don't think didn't eat they didn't eat shit the came in a box that you look at her 57 ingredients and you can't pronounce 50 of the 57 they didn't eat seed oils they didn't eat high fruit just corn syrup they didn't eat food dies that's where we have to be at you know in our world I think today to at least get headed in the right direction also marinate learn to do good marinades and another item that I think is a fantastic ROI very very quickly is a good chamber vacuum sealer now I know a lot of people use like the food saver vacuum sealers and all and they're very cheap but they're really not a good food saver is going to cost you about 70 bucks

58:17and a that's the wrong item I have up there for you let me find the right one okay um so you if you buy like a typical vacuum sealer you're going to end up paying about two times as much for your bags as if you buy a chamber back sealer this particular one here by the vor is one of the most affordable ones now I bought one over a thousand bucks these are on sale right now for $336 I don't see how you don't get your money back out of these just in the quality of being able to do a better job saving your food because here's the other thing I always hated food savers for this inevitably one little drop of moisture goes up into where the seal is and you put the food in the freezer and you look in there a week later and the bag is failed and you got freezer burned on the food so you didn't actually you'd have been better off with a ziplock bag then then you know vacsilling it so or it fails so you stick it inside another bag and another bag you know like three bags to do the job one back these chamber bags as long as

59:18there's nothing sharp that pokes a hole in it they're pretty foolproof because you can set how long you pull a vacuum how long you cool how long you seal and so you can adjust to the thickness of the bags you buy the bags cost about half as much and it opens up so many more things because you can vacuum seal liquids now if you vacuum seal a liquid it needs to be cool like a hundred degrees is not cool lukewarm is not cool liquid boils at much lower temperatures in a vacuum then in a non vacuum in fact a lot of times even with a cool liquid you'll get a little bubbling in there but nothing bad happens when you put like hundred degree you think it cooled off enough liquid into a vacuum seal bag and put a chamber back you get a mess ask me how I know but if you if you follow those rules you can vacuum seal you know stuff with two cups of moisture to liquid marinade in there with it so what happens when you do a marinade with a chamber back because you are pulling

1:00:21all the air out and creating a vacuum the meat itself pulls the marinade in much faster and I would tell you I think in many instances a lot of marinades are more effective at 30 minutes to an hour in a chamber back bag then they are overnight number freezer with that that's how good it is and then the beauty is you can marinate meats with a chamber back you can label them yeah throw them in the freezer they're ready to go when you pull them out now you're doing your own freezer section and it unlike the garbage that's in the freezer section at the supermarket you know exactly what's in you can pull that marinade a piece of meat up you can defrost it and cook it however you know on a grill open charcoal flat top pan roast whatever or you can throw it to sous vide and sous vide it and then go ahead and sear it off it's up to you you have flexibility these are a fantastic fantastic tool I used to say you know if you can't afford one just get a food saver and I still

1:01:23say that to agree degree but now that we're not talking a twelve hundred bucks now you're talking three hundred bucks you see what I mean and then the beauty of these is when you buy these bigger cuts and you're breaking them down yourself and all you can store that food in your freezer in a way that you know it's going to be protected and again I'm back to okay if I buy the the food saver 75 bucks I buy this for 330 if I'm paying twice as much for the bags and you will how long does it take before I'm I've spent the same money and now every single bag I buy for the food saver when I get less performance less flexibility less capability I'm in the hole I don't think it makes sense anymore unless you just have no alternative I would save up and use things like ziploc bags and butcher's favorite before I buy a food saver today if I run the market for a new vacuum sealer there's just like I should do a show on all the things you can do with a chamber back because it's pretty amazing next is you want a good meat thermometer and you want that meat

1:02:28thermometer not for the main reason people think that you do which is it's very dangerous to eat undercooked meat and you could die that's probably not going to happen now there are certain things that you really don't want to eat undercooked pork being chief among them constricting noses is bad however the number that is given to you for trigonosis prevention by the the government is ridiculous I think they recently reduced pork to 145 is the temperature you can cook pork to which is still a little over to me for a lot not all but a lot of cuts the number that you need to reach and hold for about five minutes to make sure that's not a problem for it is 137 degrees so I'm back to if you sous vide you can hold it there for 30 minutes and it's going to be fine and then you can sear it off and not even come back to that temperature if you let it cool down before you sear it and you can have really juicy slightly rare pork and not worry about

1:03:31it and it's very very good that way but you cooked any temperature you want I guess but the main thing that a good meat thermometer does is it prevents you from over cooking the meat because people especially people that didn't learn to cook by somebody that knew what they were doing tend to be paranoid about me you know I mentioned my two grandmothers I'll tell you another difference they had when I'm talking a little kid here give me some grace I'm talking like 11 years old 12 years old I said to my dad one time why does grandma spear go make a beef roast and grandma moire makes a roast beef he said they're the same thing I'm like no they're not see my grandma spear go makes a beef roast it tastes like jerky and not good like you put gravy on it and it absorbs it it's completely gray it's cooked to death and my grandma spear go I'm a grandma moire makes this roast beef and it's a little pink in the middle it's all juicity like you can never say that out loud

1:04:32to either of your grandmother you cannot say that like okay explain it to me he said your grandma spear go that's his mom is from the old country you're up when she came to this country they didn't have refrigeration yet when your granddad went to World War II they had just gotten electricity she's old school and she's afraid to under cook meat your grandma moire doesn't have that that's why you think they're different but it's the same thing like wow that stuck with me right I'm so done with story today what 46 years later you know and but that's that's reality like when you overcooked meat you ruined it and people that will you cook me in a long time to make a tender depending on how low and slow and moist then you get tender hot and fast or roasting you really don't want to you want to cook meats that way that you do not want to overcook so I really recommend

1:05:34that everybody have a good meat thermometer the one I recommend is made by a company called thermo maven this is my favorite meat thermometer it's incredibly accurate I only like three of them because I bought one for somebody who didn't need one because I already bought them one and then Dorothy thought she gave it away when she didn't so she ordered me another one did not have some three of that's allowed me to put three of them in the same piece of meat side by side and read them all within one degree of each other excellent the other thing most of these instantly meet the mom and is they kind of open like a switch blade knife they use some weird little f up like hearing aid type battery which is fine I have them for like optics and things like that they're all the same I can't remember what they're called now the the number on but in these the mom it's like you need a degree in engineering to replace one they just don't want to stay in there whatever these use a freaking it's either a double layer triple A I don't I don't remember which but it's take one screw out throw battery in it you're done and I love that about they're accurate they have a bottle opener on them and a magnet so that you can keep what I now that I

1:06:37have extras I keep like one on the side of the refrigerator and I keep one out with the grill just on the on the side of the stand for the grill because they're magnetic the most valuable thing in the world if you like meat is being able to make sure you're not overcooking so get a good meat thermometer and learn how to use it dry-brying dry-brying to me is superior to wet-brying I don't even consider wet-brying-brying I know I'm a terracy to me it's more like a type of a marinade than it is a true brine and what I mean by that is like you have to deal with all this liquid and if you think about something like Thanksgiving is really a lot closer than it feels guys dry-brying a turkey is so much easier than wet-brying a turkey you have a 22 pound bird you like a small garbage pan to get it in to the the liquid brine fully or you have to party out to do it and then maybe you're multiple containers and it's at a time of year when your

1:07:39refrigerator space is out of premium it would have you dry-brying is simple you mix up your dry-brying and you cover it with it and dry-brying basically always includes salt and then what other other flavors you want to work with the brine helps tenderize the meat it helps flavor the meat it helps dry the meat out one of the things you'll learn is you cook if you want beautiful myard reaction where you get the nice golden brown and delicious skin surface sear whatever you want dry and you want tacky and you get that in spades with a good dry marinade and I use dry marinade constantly in or I'm sorry dry rubs or dry-brying constantly with like even steaks because almost every piece of meat I make gets a coating of salt maybe some other things and goes to the refrigerator and gets turned a timer to on a cooling rack nested in a sheet pan you get that tacky nature a couple things happen one if you're searing you get a much better sear

1:08:41two if you're smoking that tackiness when that smoke is rolling over that piece of meat that you're smoking more of the flavor components and characteristics of the smoke stick almost like a sauce to the meat like if you talk to a real pit master barbecue guy in like south Texas and you say what's your sauce they'll say the smoke is the sauce what do you flavor your meat with a me like salt pepper garlic that's it a lot of are just salt they don't even use pepper and they're like you put whatever you want and when you eat it the smoke is the flavor without that tackiness though that doesn't happen so when you do a brisket a dry brine on a brisket is money and again flip it and get one of the little fans I didn't have it in the show notes maybe I'll add it the little fans have been marketing little uh fourteen dollar rechargeable fans set that in your refrigerator when you dry brine that'll help keep that service moisture off because we usually happens like a steak or something you flip it over in the bottom sweat and so then the top gets nice and tack

1:09:43in the bottom's wet again because it's still drawing moisture out of that meat right now it's not gonna make it dry unless you leave it there for like a week or so shit right where you have a super thin cut of meat where you're basically they salted meat don't do that thick piece of meat good dry brine and then this is a little chemistry with a lusmotic chemistry right if you put some seasonings like let's see some time garlic ground up fennel and you do this with a thick cut board job what happens is that salt starts to pull water out of the meat and then some service water forms and then eventually you have an automatic reaction where everything seeks equilibrium and so when some of the moisture goes back into the meat it takes the flavorings and the herbs and the essential oils in them with it into the meat and you get a deeper penetration so you get all that tackiness that pellico on the outside of the meat but you also get more flavor deep into the meat and you get a really great cross with that flavor as well um then resting meat resting your

1:10:44meat is important don't make jokes don't go rest your meat right don't do that right all I mean is that when that meat is done being cooked and you pull it out of the oven out of the pan off the grill whatever put it on something like a cutting board and leave it alone leave it alone usually a rat depending on how thick it is how much it's going to cool down around 10 minutes especially anything with some thickness to anything you're going to go into in slice like if you're talking about like a super thin cut like charred like Korean barbecue or something you don't really have to worry about it very much but anything it would be like a steak a chop something like that a roast letter rest now if you watch TV cooking shows they will say the most moronic stupid recorded reason for this so the juices can go down back inside if the juices can go back down inside this would not be that important the juices never go back inside when it comes out it's done what happens is all your fats all your oils and your your your your limit amount of water

1:11:46that's in that meat is now under heat and pressure and the fats in particular have a more viscosity right they're thinner so if you think about it as an extreme example if you have a jar of olive oil sitting on your countertop and you have a jar of olive oil in the refrigerator for a few hours the stuff of the refrigerator will look like a piece you won't be able to pour it and the stuff on the on the counter will pour pretty easily if you put the jar that was on the counter and the microwave for 30 seconds it'll pour almost like water it'll get very very thin so when you cut into that hot meat the pressure and the heat and the low of the the high viscosity of that oil flows and all your juices come out so it's not that the juices go back down inside which is again it's a something that whoever started that should be found and beaten with like a large frozen fish something in the salmon family for the the misery they've caused to people and the misinformation that they've caused to people it is nonsense it is absolute bullshit however what

1:12:48you're waiting for is so that when you cut into the meat not everything runs out the other thing is when you cook especially like your red meat like your beef's and all to a very rare temperature when you cut it like that it looks like blood pours out of it now it's actually called myoglobin it's not blood it's the meat's been bled out and the technical name for complaining about myoglobin on your plate is you're being a little bitch but it doesn't look good and if you serve it like something that's something like mashed potatoes it really when it bleeds into the mashed potatoes it doesn't look good at all I you got this red goo and you're okay when you let the damn thing rest that doesn't happen so now you can have that nice medium to medium rare or even rare pieces of meat and you don't have a bloody plate which turns a lot of people off all right learn to rest your meat and and here's the thing the reality of living in 2026 especially for young people that if you want to eat well and succeed economically at the same time you to learn this stuff

1:13:53you know we have we've had about a 30 year period where oh there's a lot of people to cook almost no food at home and and and that means that we have a lot of 30 year old people you know that that was a 30 year span of that they were 10 when they started paying attention they've gone 20 years and and that's been their lives and they've never learned to cook this shit has to end this shit has to end why do you think people are spending almost as much for a taxi ride for their food as they are for their food and over paying for the food to boot they don't have to cook and if they do know how to cook what they mean by that is they know how to microwave something or take something with a ride on it and open a bag and put it on a pan and stick it in the oven at 350 for 25 minutes this is not cooking this is reheating if you want to eat really really really really well right today then you need to learn how to do this stuff and the other you are probably the more true that that becomes because generally speaking people who have been around a little less

1:14:58time make a little less money like I mean I had so nobody tell me recently like you know what you think you're all that with your podcast and all that most of your audience is old and by old they mean like 40 right like I'm like 50 say I'm like that's good and they're like why I'm like is old people have money right people my audience like a bison I'm being a sell-em-something you know I don't want a bunch of people like they're about a million followers and they're all broke you can't make a buck but that aside like we do need to learn how to put money back in our pocket by not spending in the first place and that doesn't mean eating garbage that doesn't mean eating junk food that doesn't help us and again if you think that good foods expensive where you see how much you know medication where you see how much dialysis costs go look at the five biggest lifestyle illnesses in the United States chief among them will be type 2 diabetes look at the cost of maintenance medication for those and real quick you realize that food is not expensive at all it's just about where your money gets

1:16:02spent and that is why our poor are fat in America have you ever thought about the fact that like the most obese population in America are people on food stamps you know if they're also on Medicaid throw Medicaid they have free healthcare they don't pay for all that shit we do so they buy their fudge rounds and then you know in the words of the song and what have you and they get incredibly morbidly obese eating and they say I don't eat that much they're starving while they're obese there's no nutrient density the way we talk about cooking a extremely nutrient dense delicious right so anyway let's go ahead wrap things up I do have a couple like question comments just two if you have one and you are not coral haul or no censorship 22 2002 go ahead and ask him out last fall for questions or comments Carl says please show I I on herb gardening okay I

1:17:02think what he wants is a show on herb gardening and we'll do that again soon I haven't done that for a long time maybe we'll do that next Tuesday it's a real easy show to put together and there's like about 12 herbs that if you just container garden nose or plant them in your you like if you have a suburban home you can do a lot of herb gardening gardening in your front yard right with your ornaments you know myths uh chives are a great ground cover super easy super hearty onion chives I'm not a huge fan of the may I was gonna rip them out I can't get rid of them uh they I like the onion chives better than garlic chives but those are freaking weed I've pulled some out through them on the ground and came back and they rooted and started growing again uh there's a lot we can do with that so uh I will make that have before you Carl and then no censorship says why do people worry about trick and noses with confinement raised commercial pork they're not rooting or eating other contaminated animals wild ones and bears yes do you would think that the United States

1:18:06commercial pork supply has the highest trick in those as percentage when tested in the world now it's about 2% but it is definitely a thing because you don't know what they're feeding them and a pig will eat anything including you know confinement yeah you don't think there's any rats right or any garbage that gets drugged in there or whatever so it does happen I will tell you that trick and noses can also be killed with freezing I believe the number is something like negative five for at least 30 days so when I've done like cured meats like capricolas and stuff out of pork that's what I'll do I'll I'll put it in my deep chest freezer I'll set a thing on the calendar leave it in the bottom or the coldest area is for 30 days as kind of a stopgap measure it is a low risk with confinement pork it is not a no risk just so that you do know that when I started getting into curing meats I checked into that because I thought it was important

1:19:08I don't see any more questions so I'm gonna wrap up again I want to remind you guys the fall workshop on the 19th goes on sale at 9 a.m. if I said 9 30 earlier it was a mistake it's been 9 30 the past 9 a.m. the 19th Saturday morning central standard time if you are on the telegram group or channel I'm gonna drop that link there exactly at 9 a.m. that's the best way to make sure you can sign up but there will also be posted to the blog so you can just check the blog at 9 a.m. and you'll be able to sign up for it I think this year's gonna sell out really fast just based on chatter and feedback and people asking me about things and what have you and again I'm gonna tell you that if you've never been to one of our workshops and you've always been like one day I'm gonna do it remember we don't we don't get to choose how many how many days we have in life and we don't get to choose our future we get to choose our present and we get to target our future

1:20:09so hopefully everybody will be around for a long time and hopefully everybody will be able to do things like this for a long time but if you can make it happen this year please consider coming I am telling you this event will change your life and I know that's a big claim to make and when I started doing them I would have never made that claim nor would I have ever said that's what they're gonna become if you'll come here and learn some stuff about permaculture you come here and you'll learn some stuff about aquaponics or hydroponics or whatever or you know making IMOs or whatever doing home studying stuff and making we've done herbal medicine classes all kinds of stuff you'll learn stuff that's the same as every other event you ever go to like this this is different the people here are your people this is your tribe you just if you have never been you haven't met him yet I'm gonna tell you what happens on Wednesday with the people that have been here before and I want you to understand that even though what I'm about to say is true you will be welcome you will not feel like an outsider at all we go out of our way to be sure that doesn't happen for people but you will watch people start showing up about 130 even they're not supposed

1:21:11to show up to two you know about 130 that I start trickling in they start coming in by parking Nazis are doing their job getting everybody apart you start seeing people come in they start matriculating over to the porch and setting up their tents and everything like that and the number one thing you see people doing each other is hugging each other and if you're not a hugger it's okay you don't have to I'm just saying these are people that have been coming here some of them since 2013 and the way I've heard it put and this is one of the biggest compliments I've ever had this is where I go to see my friends once a year there are people they take some of their vacation time every year to come here what we do here is different than anything else you've experienced at any other type of event like this by keeping the head count to 50 we keep it you know we keep it small if you don't get to talk to me during this event it's because I didn't know that you were hiding from me I am make myself available I'm usually up like the first night I've started to go to bed a bit earlier but you know like Friday and Saturday I don't have to like two o'clock in the morning and then I'm up first thing in the morning getting everything ready for you guys again I

1:22:17stay I don't run in the house I don't hide I don't have you know people walking around keeping you away from me I am right in it with you I cook for you let me tell you one of the reasons like I like doing shows about cooking but while I cook for you you guys have done so effing much for me in my life and I think when you cook for people you serve them and like we say that you like being a server at a restaurant but I think when you actually cook for people you're serving them at a high high level and I want to do that for you guys I want you to come experience it I want you to experience chef Ken doing that for you the thing we're gonna come up with so Nicole sauce is probably gonna bring down her kaha chena which is a big the china box for roasting like whole pigs and shit we're gonna roast like a whole lamb maybe we're gonna like a lamb goat next thing like we haven't figured out yet that's gonna be just the Saturday night meal one of the things on the menu you're making your chicken saw the Jamaican pork sausage that I'm making right now that will be on the Saturday night menu we have smoked pork shoulder opening up a nine one a

1:23:21burger bar we have sandwiches chef Ken is gonna come in I've been making I've been growing a bunch of golden mushrooms golden oysters chef Ken's gonna do a mushroom soup to go with so we're gonna have soup and sandwiches on Friday Friday night we're doing fajitas cooked on site catered by a place called loopay tortilla they're amazing this is not your typical thing that you go to like a permaculture thing and they charge you $800 and then you eat broccoli and frickin tofu or some crap like that we have tastings usually we do like either a rum or a whiskey tasting some fountain you multiple so those bar blanket guys if you've never been hum experience something totally different and I'm gonna make you a promise if you bring the right attitude like you're actually here to listen to learn to meet people to to become part of the bigger group you won't want to leave when it's time to leave that's the biggest compliment I've had is the small group of people

1:24:24still hanging out at the gate it's five minutes till off the property time and I have to send somebody to push them off and they go down to a donut place or something have breakfast for everybody drive some they don't want it to go away please consider coming another announcement as I write off today we are launching the how to find a business that matches you course there's an article will come out about it today that is going to be nine a.m. Monday next week so that's the 14th I think we're launching that that will not sell out because it can't as many people who want to buy it can but we are doing the first hundred get it for 69 bucks this second hundred get it for 79 bucks and then it goes to 99 it's gonna be a really great course I'll have more information for you on it tomorrow take care I see no more questions again please consider coming to tsp fall

1:25:37let me show you a better way you don't have to be another face in the crowd don't have to live the way till you do you here you