Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Mastering Meat Science and BBQ with Jess Pryles Ep. 183

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Mastering Meat Science and BBQ with Jess Pryles Ep. 183 · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs, this is chef's PSA and I'm your host Andre Natera.
• 0:03
  Today I'm joined by Jess Pryles, Australian born, live fire cook,
• 0:07
  author, TV host, meat science graduate, and founder of the
• 0:11
  hardcore carnivore brand. She's taught at major events,
• 0:14
  judge competitions around the world and become one of the
• 0:17
  leading voices on beef and barbecue.
• 0:19
  In this episode, we dive into meat science, how to cook a
• 0:22
  perfect prime rib, the art of dry aging, and everything you
• 0:25
  need to know about beef from selection to service.
• 0:28
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• 1:21
  This is our third time trying to do this.
• 1:23
  That's what people don't know is the first time we were at, was
• 1:26
  it live fire? Yeah, live fire we were supposed
• 1:28
  to do when we got rained out. Cancelled.
• 1:29
  Cancelled. The second time we were supposed
• 1:31
  to do this. We made it all the way.
• 1:32
  We made it. We were in the studio and then
• 1:35
  there was a leak. It was.
• 1:36
  Raining. It was pissing down rain and it
• 1:38
  started to come down directly on this table.
• 1:41
  This is the third time, yeah, like in in two years that we've
• 1:44
  tried. To and it's not raining out.
• 1:45
  No, it's nice outside. I want to be outside.
• 1:47
  I'm hopeful. It's good to see you.
• 1:49
  You too. I were you?
• 1:52
  You were just in Las Vegas? Yeah.
• 1:53
  Were you at the LA BBQ? I did.
• 1:56
  I saw Ally at the LA BBQ thing, but I went because it was a
• 1:58
  National Finals Rodeo. Oh, it's like the whole Vegas
• 2:02
  turns West, and it's a lot of fun.
• 2:03
  What was that? What the The rodeo?
• 2:06
  Yeah, it happens every. It's like it's basically that
• 2:08
  Super Bowl of all the rodeos and the best of the best go.
• 2:11
  And they do this final in Vegas and it's on for 10 nights.
• 2:15
  Yeah, so everyone's in cowboy hats.
• 2:18
  That's why they had the low BBQ. OK, that makes sense.
• 2:21
  I was wondering why she was there.
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  I just thought like, oh, that's a cool experience.
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  But when I was looking at her, her Instagram stories, yeah, I
• 2:27
  was like, well, these look like Texans in there, like people in
• 2:30
  cowboy hats. I was like, what's going on?
• 2:31
  I didn't put 2 into the. That's why that makes sense.
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  That's cool that she got invited though.
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  Yeah, she, she's awesome. So I went, ally's a good mate of
• 2:38
  mine and we went and and said hi to her and then actually ended
• 2:41
  up on the same flight back, which was just hilarious.
• 2:44
  She thinks I'm stalking here now.
• 2:45
  Yeah, but she she got treated really well.
• 2:49
  Like they treated her like the rock star that she is.
• 2:51
  I mean, she's a Michelin starred pitmaster, right?
• 2:53
  Yeah. So it was cool.
• 2:55
  It was cool to see her where we were staying.
• 2:58
  We could see this, I don't know, like 10 floor billboard that
• 3:00
  just had Love BBQ pop up on it. So that was neat.
• 3:03
  What's interesting is I've had Alley on on the pod.
• 3:06
  I've had Leonard, he was on. We recorded yesterday.
• 3:10
  I don't know when it'll be released, but we recorded
• 3:12
  yesterday from Truth Barbecue. And then I've also had Evan
• 3:16
  Leroy I. Love Evan.
• 3:17
  He's he's such a good guy. All three of them cook brisket
• 3:20
  very differently. Yes, and have strong opinions.
• 3:25
  Not strong opinions like they respect the way the others do
• 3:27
  it. They have strong opinions as to
• 3:29
  why they do it. Allie is hot and fast.
• 3:34
  You know, Evan has his foil boat method.
• 3:37
  Yesterday we were, we were talking about how, you know,
• 3:41
  there's different temperatures when you're cooking brisket.
• 3:44
  He said during the winter he's going to cook it to about 212.
• 3:48
  But during, you know, in warmer months it might be about 190.
• 3:50
  And it has a certain feel to it. And, and he's, he's, he's very
• 3:56
  methodical in his process and how he cooks brisket, but he's
• 3:58
  also very intuitive, like the feel and the touch and the
• 4:01
  smell. And he's talking about how you
• 4:02
  could smell the fire and he could hear the fire and he
• 4:06
  understands the fire much differently.
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  That you can't just explain to someone you have to live.
• 4:11
  The repetition, it's the repetition.
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  And I think that, you know, I think, and I say this is
• 4:17
  somebody who does not work in a kitchen, so I'm putting the
• 4:20
  umbrella over it, that I think everybody who does is a rock
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  star, OK. But I think that what pitmasters
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  get to focus on with like a narrower scope of proteins on
• 4:32
  sort of 1 piece of equipment allows them to become experts
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  faster than a chef with all of the different tools they have to
• 4:41
  have in their arsenal, if that makes sense.
• 4:43
  Yeah, because if you do anything and I guess like working a
• 4:45
  station, right? And and that's how you you split
• 4:48
  it up. But if you do anything over and
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  over and over and over again, it just becomes intuitive.
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  And I think that's where a lot of sort of wannabe your
• 4:55
  backyard, which is what I am backyard pitmasters have a have
• 5:00
  a steeper learning curve is that we don't have that natural like,
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  Oh yeah, I just, I just know, I just know how it feels.
• 5:06
  I just know how it's supposed to feel.
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  And the other cool thing is, you know, meat is not a widget.
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  It doesn't matter. You can get try and get the same
• 5:14
  genetics. You can try and get the same
• 5:15
  grade, but it is a natural variable source.
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  So it absolutely makes sense that you would need to feel it
• 5:22
  and and look for this certain certain key, I don't know
• 5:28
  textures because they're not all going to happen just at the same
• 5:31
  temperature. So from a meat science
• 5:33
  standpoint, if you if you had to look at all, well, let's take
• 5:40
  the example of Ally who cooks hot and fast and take the
• 5:43
  example of of Leonard who cooks a little bit longer.
• 5:47
  Or you take the example of wrapping it with butcher paper
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  versus making the foil boat. In your experience, why are they
• 5:57
  all right and where could they all be technically wrong?
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  So the caveat of course being that they'll have cooked more
• 6:02
  briskets in their life that I will.
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  But I think that I have an interesting sort of dual
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  perspective on it. And I actually think that what's
• 6:11
  happening in modern BBQ is less about the cooking and more about
• 6:13
  the resting. There's more happening in the
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  holding phase. And I think it started from a
• 6:19
  place where it was a necessity to hold for service.
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  You know what I mean? Like because that doesn't happen
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  at home. It's ready when it's ready and
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  you feed people, but you have to now they have to make these
• 6:31
  briskets lost at the ideal texture all through service.
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  And so that's where I think this sort of accidental like, oh wow,
• 6:38
  we've got this insanely like overdone rest that has really
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  changed everything here. It's a whole different type of
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  carryover cooking that of course needs to be accounted for in the
• 6:48
  different seasons. So, you know, I don't, I don't
• 6:52
  know, maybe they're all resting in the same way or they're all
• 6:55
  resting for the same variation, even if their cook times are
• 6:58
  different. And that has a lot to do with
• 6:59
  it. I mean, I know Evans boat method
• 7:01
  is more to promote the crunchy bark on top than anything else
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  because obviously you're not going to get that moisture
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  penetration if you're not wrapping it.
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  But I don't know. Does he wrap it when he holds
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  it? I don't know.
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  I'd have to ask him. You know, it's funny.
• 7:14
  We were saying yesterday's like we should do a a panel like on
• 7:18
  this podcast was like, let me get Ally, let me get Evan
• 7:20
  Leonard. And I was like, maybe you want
• 7:22
  to be on here with this side with me really making them fight
• 7:24
  like, OK, who has the best barbecue all?
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  Right. Can we be?
• 7:27
  Out for the challenge. Yeah, I think that would be fun
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  when it comes to cooking meat in general.
• 7:34
  Well, actually, let me go back. What's funny is that BBQ
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  specifically is so controversial.
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  Everyone has opinions. What I I did a little real with
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  Ally and fucking everyone was losing their minds that she
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  doesn't know what she's talking about.
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  You can't cook a brisket in six hours and it's not good.
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  And well, she's from Austin so it doesn't matter.
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  That's not real BBQ. I was like holy fuck, like I
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  didn't realize how you know and they're all right, right?
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  And they cannot be proven wrong and they have 0 open mindedness
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  a new idea. It's funny because I sometimes I
• 8:09
  read your comments. I know I was like this sounds
• 8:12
  very. Family.
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  Yeah, sometimes I read your car, but sometimes you clap back to
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  It's great. I love it.
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  You got it. You got to stand up for
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  yourself. I had one like that yesterday.
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  I was like. I saw that.
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  Yeah, some guys like, I don't know you right, doesn't change
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  that. I'm telling you scientific fact
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  bro, but bury your head in. This what was his issue because
• 8:29
  you were talking about milk. Right.
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  So there's a couple of people have done it now, but a really
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  big influencer did this thing where they took a primary, put
• 8:37
  in a Cambro and poured a gallon of milk on it.
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  And then they poured a ton of their like whatever seasoning
• 8:42
  they were selling and then started injecting the primary,
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  which really like please, I've never stopped.
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  Never even seen that by the way. Yeah, it's a.
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  What was? What was the logic behind
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  wanting to do that? I I have no idea what was
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  happening in his head I've seen before.
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  The point is that it tenderizes in the same way that buttermilk
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  or yogurt does. I think that's that's the theory
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  that they're working on. In the same way some hunters try
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  and use milk to to remove gamey flavour or neutralize flavour.
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  But. Like soaking liver and milk or
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  some or sweet bread stuff like. That exactly.
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  But The thing is so here, here's the key thing.
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  The key take away from that video.
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  So yogurt and buttermilk have a much lower pH and much more
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  acidic pH than milk. Milk is nearly neutral.
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  So it's, it's at a a 6.7 and sevens obviously neutral.
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  So it doesn't have enough acid in it to actually tenderize.
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  So I mean, from my perspective, in my world, I've got tons of
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  people telling me at the moment, like, please give us more
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  economical recipes and better ways to cook your meat and come
• 9:43
  into the holidays. I can't afford a prime rib.
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  I can't afford a brisket. Like, what am I going to do?
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  And now you got this guy who's like, I'm going to take this
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  $200 prime rib and, and, and inject first soak it and then
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  inject it with milk, right. And like, we all know that you
• 9:56
  can have curdled milk pork and that's that's a a delicacy.
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  But I don't know that I would want curdled milk pockets in my
• 10:04
  prime rib. In fact, I know that I wouldn't.
• 10:07
  I don't. That actually sounds gross.
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  Yeah. What was the logic?
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  And it just doesn't make sense. What were they, What were they
• 10:13
  trying to say? That it's going to be more
• 10:14
  tender? That's going to be juicier.
• 10:16
  They didn't make the claim was just that it's the best way
• 10:19
  they've ever had prime rib. And I guess it's just one of
• 10:22
  those things if, you know, we're living in a real click baity
• 10:25
  time right now. Yeah, but but I just look, I put
• 10:30
  out a video every Monday that I call Meat Science Monday and
• 10:32
  it's a little factoid and this fit.
• 10:33
  In I love your meat Science Monday, but thank you.
• 10:35
  Yes, I look forward. To that, I just, I, I just felt
• 10:39
  like it was like, look, at the very least I'm going to save you
• 10:42
  5 bucks worth of milk. Yeah, if nothing else.
• 10:44
  Well, you're going to save the $200 worth of prime rib.
• 10:47
  There's also that, yeah, that's that.
• 10:49
  That seems like part of it as well.
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  So I don't know. People just see things and they
• 10:52
  get, you know, they get defensive of creators that they
• 10:56
  follow already. And some people want to learn,
• 10:58
  some people don't. Well, and I guess that's the
• 11:00
  thing when you live in that creator space, the economy of
• 11:05
  attention, you have to do some stupid shit sometimes.
• 11:08
  I I know that cuz sometimes I like OK, my engagements going
• 11:11
  down. I gotta say some stupid shit.
• 11:12
  Let me find the most ridiculous thing I've said on the pod.
• 11:15
  Or like picking that thumbnail. Yeah, yeah, it's like, OK, I
• 11:17
  gotta figure this out cuz I know that might do a little bit
• 11:19
  better. But I, I look at and I'm
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  tangent, I look at social media right now and it is like, at
• 11:29
  least my feed, it's fucking ridiculous.
• 11:32
  And I'm like, when did social media get so ridiculous?
• 11:35
  Like it's, it's skits, it's fucking corniness.
• 11:39
  I like to say it's sucker shit. And I'm like, and it's and it's
• 11:43
  just offensive too. Because we're all babies lying
• 11:47
  in our crib with a three second attention span.
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  And so they're all the adults standing above us going, yay,
• 11:53
  look at me, look at me, right, that's what it's.
• 11:55
  Become. I mean, last night I was
• 11:56
  watching this, this, this thing. It was like this, I don't know,
• 12:00
  60 year old man with his like 90 year old mother making a tick
• 12:03
  tock, embarrassing her. And I'm like, dude, what, what,
• 12:06
  how did we get to this point? So when I think about social
• 12:10
  media for myself, I'm like, I, I just, I don't know.
• 12:13
  I just can't do it. I can't.
• 12:14
  It's like. To take it back to brisket,
• 12:16
  Right. Sorry.
• 12:17
  No, no, no, I'm. No, I'm going to take you social
• 12:19
  media back to brisket. Right.
• 12:21
  So if you think about it like this, I think the people are
• 12:23
  fascinated with making things more complicated than they need
• 12:26
  to. Like, they want to know all of
• 12:27
  these extra steps and secrets to barbecue that that aren't maybe
• 12:31
  necessarily there. And I've heard people who shall
• 12:33
  remain nameless. Like, I know that they've taken
• 12:36
  people on wild goose chases. Like I've heard someone say,
• 12:39
  well, you can smell when there's hormones in the beef, which,
• 12:42
  Yeah, no, no, you can't just to kind of like get people.
• 12:47
  Oh, well. And I make sure that I trim the
• 12:49
  corner of my briskets at a very precise angle so that the
• 12:52
  airflow something, something, you know, Yeah.
• 12:54
  And it just becomes, it becomes this white whale that they're
• 12:58
  chasing. So I think people look to find
• 13:00
  these like pro tips online. And there's only so many pro
• 13:04
  tips. So I think people just started
• 13:05
  making shit up. And when this stuff with the
• 13:07
  milk happened, I people were in the comments like, OK, well,
• 13:10
  what if I don't? What if I use whiskey and I'm
• 13:13
  like, I thoroughly recommend eating a piece of prime rib and
• 13:16
  drinking your whiskey on the side?
• 13:18
  Like when did we decided we need to inject everything into
• 13:22
  everything else? Right, right.
• 13:23
  And and that, and that's your point.
• 13:25
  And that's similar to what I was saying about social media.
• 13:27
  It's gotten to the point of ridiculousness that you're
• 13:30
  seeing people soaking their prime ribbon milk or you know, I
• 13:35
  like to call it in the chef where we call it chef thirst
• 13:38
  traps because they they just make the most ridiculous looking
• 13:42
  beautiful food. But does it taste good?
• 13:44
  Yeah. Is this something that that's
• 13:46
  practical that you want to eat? That's delicious, chef their
• 13:49
  straps. And you don't really cook like
• 13:50
  that in your restaurant. Come on.
• 13:51
  No. Well, I don't have a restaurant,
• 13:53
  so I definitely don't. But you know what I'm saying?
• 13:55
  I get it. Yeah, yeah, just chef their
• 13:57
  straps that's. Yeah, I love that.
• 13:58
  Yeah, I love that because I see it.
• 14:00
  It's absolutely true of the meat industry as well.
• 14:02
  Yeah. Or the meat side of creators
• 14:05
  too. And that's I think why I've got.
• 14:07
  I would describe myself as a little bit left behind because
• 14:10
  I've refused to play the game. So I still have really decent
• 14:12
  numbers and I still have decent engagement, but I'm not into the
• 14:15
  millions like those guys who came up during COVID because I
• 14:18
  just refuse to, like I refuse to, to use meat glue to glue a
• 14:23
  pork belly onto a beef rib and deep fry it, you know?
• 14:26
  And yes, I have seen that done. It's like, yeah, I don't even
• 14:31
  know what you'd call that. Going back to meat science, one
• 14:36
  of the questions that comes up a lot is the scientific process
• 14:41
  that's happening with dry aging and why, why does it make things
• 14:46
  better, you know, arguably better in terms of in terms of
• 14:51
  the quality of the beef, in terms of flavor.
• 14:53
  Can you for people that are listening that don't know dry
• 14:56
  aging like one O 1 what what's happening here and what can we
• 15:00
  learn? So the whole process of aging
• 15:03
  meat, whether it's dry aging or wet aging, and I assume most of
• 15:06
  your audience will know the difference, but ones just hang
• 15:08
  in there and ones in vacuum cell.
• 15:11
  It's it's enzymatic autolysis, which is a nice way of saying
• 15:15
  controlled decomposition. So basically once the animal is
• 15:19
  slaughtered, eventually as all of the energy of the cells runs
• 15:23
  out and they they run through everything that they've they've
• 15:28
  got to get rid of, you go into rigor mortis.
• 15:32
  The muscles go into rigor where they're locked in place by actor
• 15:36
  myosin bonds that just hold them there.
• 15:38
  So that's when everything gets really stiff and tough.
• 15:40
  Now some slaughterhouses can debone the meat before that even
• 15:46
  happens. Usually in pigs usually can't
• 15:48
  get to be fast enough before rigger sets in.
• 15:51
  They do that in some pork slaughterhouses.
• 15:54
  That's called hot boning. And usually that stuff goes to
• 15:57
  breakfast sausage because it has really good water holding
• 16:00
  capacity and it's really tender. So there's different ways that
• 16:03
  they can do things in the plant before it even reaches you,
• 16:06
  right? But not super common.
• 16:08
  More common is the animal is slaughtered, it's exsanguinated,
• 16:13
  it's cut up, it's chilled in beef, it's turned into a side
• 16:16
  and it'll hang in a chiller. And during the onset of rigor,
• 16:21
  the pH starts to decline. And you wanted to decline at a
• 16:25
  very certain rate because that's going to affect the water
• 16:28
  holding capacity of the meat and also the tenderness as well.
• 16:32
  So that's why we talk about the animal not being stressed.
• 16:34
  It's not because it puts, a lot of people say it puts cortisol
• 16:38
  into the system and you can taste the cortisol.
• 16:40
  That's not what's going on. It's because that spike is going
• 16:43
  to affect the rate of the pH drop, which is going to affect
• 16:46
  the final pH once the animal goes into rigor, right?
• 16:49
  Why that's relevant is because the pH in meat affects color,
• 16:54
  tenderness, it can even affects water holding capacity.
• 16:58
  So we look at things like if you heard a dark cutter you might
• 17:02
  have heard of. So it's the beef that's really,
• 17:04
  really dark, it's really deep pink and it's really dry.
• 17:08
  Or in pork it's, we call it PSE pale, soft and exudative because
• 17:12
  it can't hold onto water. So pH is really, really
• 17:14
  important, which is I guess where that whole milk
• 17:16
  conversation came from. So once that animal locks in and
• 17:20
  goes into rigor, you want to try and start to undo that.
• 17:24
  So everything we do when it comes to meat tenderization, be
• 17:29
  it smashing it with a mallet wet aging it, dry aging it, manual
• 17:34
  tenderization or using things like pineapple or Kiwi fruit for
• 17:38
  enzymatic tenderization, all of that stuff is to undo what
• 17:46
  happened in rigor. But aging is a super efficient
• 17:49
  way of doing it. So what that what's happening in
• 17:52
  the meat at that time is there are natural enzymes in it called
• 17:56
  Cal pains. There's Cal pains, cathepsins
• 17:59
  and calpastatins amongst others. So the calpastatins are the
• 18:05
  inhibitors and the calpanes do the work.
• 18:07
  Calpanes are good and we want them to happen.
• 18:09
  So when we start aging, the calpanes kick in and it's the
• 18:13
  natural enzyme that starts. It doesn't break those actomycin
• 18:16
  bonds that I mentioned, but it breaks the structure around
• 18:19
  them. So I'm getting super nerd level.
• 18:22
  No, no, no, no, I don't like your, I'm fully engaged.
• 18:26
  So when they say like, oh, it breaks the bonds, it doesn't
• 18:29
  actually break the bonds, but it breaks the structure around the
• 18:31
  bonds, which gives us the perception of tenderness and
• 18:34
  does increase the tenderness of the meat.
• 18:36
  So once the Cal pains get started, it's the cathepsins
• 18:40
  that continue that process. And whether you're talking about
• 18:44
  wet or dry, that is what's happening when you just leave
• 18:48
  meat to rest. That's the aging process.
• 18:52
  Wet aging happens in an anaerobic environment.
• 18:55
  It it can smell a little bit because it's sealed in with
• 18:57
  bacteria, but those aren't the bacteria that necessarily cause
• 19:00
  spoilage. So that's why you can wet aging
• 19:02
  get that extended shelf life because you're giving yourself
• 19:06
  time just like us and our skin and putting antioxidants on it.
• 19:10
  It's the, it's the oxygen that's ultimately going to cause the
• 19:12
  degradation in meat. So putting it in a vacuum seal,
• 19:17
  we'll stop that. By the same token, what dry
• 19:20
  aging does, in addition to the natural enzymatic process that's
• 19:25
  happening, is you can concentrate the flavor through
• 19:28
  controlled water loss. So as the meat dries out, it's
• 19:30
  made-up of 75% water. So as you lose some of that
• 19:33
  water, you're going to concentrate the beefy flavor
• 19:37
  because it's less diluted. And then on top of that, and
• 19:41
  this is the real sort of what I'd call cowboy territory,
• 19:44
  because it's really unknown. It's very, there's not a lot of
• 19:49
  science on it yet and it should be something that should be a
• 19:53
  little bit more controlled than it is, which anytime you play
• 19:55
  with mold should be like that. But there's the introduction of
• 19:59
  specific types of mold, much like cheese making, that can
• 20:02
  also alter the flavor so you can start getting into territories
• 20:06
  of nuttiness and funkiness and really sought after unusually.
• 20:14
  Gourmet flavours that you can't. Get on its core territory.
• 20:17
  I think it will. The problem is that you don't
• 20:21
  know until you run it under a microscope which is good mold
• 20:25
  and which is bad mold. OK, so I've had meat.
• 20:29
  Generally, the rule of thumb is if it's black, it's not a good
• 20:32
  sign. But the mold, the mold, yeah,
• 20:36
  the. Mold.
• 20:37
  I didn't know if you're talking about sometimes the meat on the
• 20:40
  exterior starts to look hard. Black, yes, that's the pellicle
• 20:43
  and you do not wanna eat that so that that gets trimmed away.
• 20:46
  But the black mold is not a good idea.
• 20:48
  This is the the white mold can be a good thing.
• 20:51
  Like again, she's making penicillins, things like that.
• 20:55
  The greens are the ones that are like, you might want to look
• 20:58
  that up under a microscope. And the problem with mold that a
• 21:02
  lot of folks might not be aware of is that mold is a toxin.
• 21:08
  It's not a bacteria, so or so meaning if it's present on the
• 21:14
  outside and you heat that meat to 165 or to 12 or whatever
• 21:20
  temperature you take it to, that would normally kill a bacteria.
• 21:24
  The toxin is always present because it can't die with heat.
• 21:28
  It's just there, right? OK.
• 21:32
  So that's that's the issue. We've got two different types of
• 21:34
  food safety going on here and and it's it's nothing to be
• 21:41
  messed with. My wheels are turning by the
• 21:43
  way. But do you know what I'm saying?
• 21:44
  Like, so it's we know about pasteurization and we know about
• 21:48
  safe temperatures, but that's only relevant to things like
• 21:52
  salmonella and, you know, trichinosis and bacteria,
• 21:58
  harmful pathogens. This is a toxin.
• 22:00
  It's a different story. I'm sorry.
• 22:05
  No, you're right. My mind went one.
• 22:07
  I just dumped the whole bunch. Yeah, you did.
• 22:10
  Thank you. You weren't Christmas.
• 22:13
  Why have you been trying? No I haven't, someone told me
• 22:16
  this a long time ago and I don't know if it's true and honestly
• 22:19
  it's not my background to know if it's true or not but they
• 22:22
  said that's why you shouldn't smell mushrooms.
• 22:26
  Because of the spores. Yes, yeah, they said, you know,
• 22:28
  it's that's why you have to cook mushrooms in general and that's
• 22:31
  why you don't smell them. I don't know if that's true or
• 22:34
  not because I'm not the mushroom gal, but I can imagine how that
• 22:37
  would work for the same reasons, yeah.
• 22:39
  Yeah, I don't know. And again, that's just, you
• 22:42
  know, old wives tale that I had heard from so on and so on.
• 22:45
  Yeah. But going back to dry aging a
• 22:47
  lot, 1 of the, you know, what the cool, what the kids are
• 22:50
  doing today is they'll take, you know, let's let's just say it's
• 22:54
  a strip and they're dry aging it in beeswax or in beef tallow or
• 23:00
  bill in the blank, right? What are your thoughts on that?
• 23:02
  What's happening? Is that a good move or is it
• 23:05
  just it's not really affecting the the the outcome?
• 23:09
  So it's interesting, I was just in Stockholm earlier this year
• 23:12
  and there's a, it's one of the top 10 steakhouses in the world.
• 23:16
  It's called AG and they have an amazing beef program.
• 23:21
  And what I would like to see happen in more American
• 23:23
  steakhouses that does happen in steakhouses in Australia and
• 23:25
  Europe, and I think we're a little bit behind here, is much
• 23:29
  as you get this really varied wine list that lets you explore
• 23:32
  all these regions. A really good steakhouse should
• 23:35
  have steak from a lot of different regions.
• 23:37
  And that doesn't just mean an American and a Japanese and, you
• 23:42
  know, a fillet with the bone and fillet without the bone.
• 23:46
  I I want to see, you know, interesting grass fed product,
• 23:49
  Ruby Agayega out of out of Spain, or I mean, they're
• 23:53
  raising it in different places in Europe now as well.
• 23:55
  Or, you know, there's incredible barley fed beef coming out of
• 24:00
  Australia or grass fed Wagyu even because the quality of the
• 24:03
  grass is so high. I'd love to try some Irish beef
• 24:06
  like because that's collecting flavours, right?
• 24:10
  Like that's the true meat nerdery of trying all these
• 24:13
  different things when you go and you have a Bisteca Fiorentina in
• 24:17
  Italy like. That what's the cow for that?
• 24:19
  Do you know off the top of your? Head, yes, but I've just a
• 24:22
  keyanina, yes, so it's a keyanina.
• 24:24
  Cow's like just forgotten. Got it.
• 24:26
  What's really, really cool about Bisteca Fiorentina is it is a 2
• 24:30
  year old animal that has never been pregnant.
• 24:34
  Now, when you get the animals pregnant, which you do
• 24:37
  traditionally in, you know, in beef industry, because you want
• 24:40
  to produce a lot of calves, the hormones change the meat.
• 24:46
  So you're talking about an animal that's been raised.
• 24:48
  So now it has to be even more expensive because you're never
• 24:51
  going to get progeny out of it. And you're raising it purely to
• 24:53
  slaughter it. And it looks really lean and it
• 24:56
  looks like it should be tough. And everything in your brain is
• 24:59
  telling you that this is going to be a tough stay because it
• 25:01
  looks like the worst type of where's.
• 25:02
  The Where's all the marbling? Right.
• 25:03
  But it's completely different because of the breed, the sex,
• 25:08
  the fact that it has never been pregnant and it's been
• 25:11
  purposefully bred for that purpose.
• 25:14
  So like, those are the experiences that I want to
• 25:17
  collect, right? I know I've just, I, I know I
• 25:19
  was getting back to a point, but I'd like to see that happen a
• 25:22
  little bit. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, if I
• 25:25
  had hero side quests, obviously I'm, I'm not an active chef
• 25:28
  anymore, but I love steakhouses. I I mean, I've, I ate a lot of
• 25:33
  steak to begin with, but if I would ever go back, I would go
• 25:36
  back to do a steakhouse. Yeah.
• 25:37
  That's like the one thing that's like, OK, fine, dine all that.
• 25:40
  Yeah, it excites me, but that's not how I eat every day.
• 25:43
  Yeah. I would love to do a steakhouse
• 25:44
  if I ever go back. So if anyone ever wants to open
• 25:46
  up a Mexican steakhouse or I'm in.
• 25:49
  But everything. Did you see that he's doing it
• 25:51
  as sortay? Yeah, yeah, I did.
• 25:53
  Yeah, sortay. This month I've got I'm, I'm,
• 25:55
  I'm. I'm excited to go try it when he
• 25:56
  does it. Yeah, I think it'll be sick.
• 25:58
  Yeah. And he was just in Monterey
• 26:00
  cooking like on a bigger ass offset smoker.
• 26:02
  He's one of my favorite people. He's also incredible at what he
• 26:06
  does, but. So we were talking about, yes,
• 26:09
  beeswax and. Thank you.
• 26:11
  You're going to need to you're probably going to need and
• 26:12
  tallow. All right, the agent with that.
• 26:14
  So that AG they have this really broad range of beef and they do
• 26:21
  a lot of tallow aging as well. In my opinion, as soon as you
• 26:25
  encase the meat in anything, it is no longer dry aging because
• 26:28
  you're not. The surface isn't dry and you're
• 26:31
  not allowing liquid to or moisture to evaporate because
• 26:36
  it's now effectively sealed right?
• 26:39
  So it's just a different form of wet aging.
• 26:43
  Interesting. Because it's sealed in the
• 26:45
  tallow. Right, Yeah, yeah.
• 26:47
  And I think that's the thing that we were experimenting with
• 26:52
  it. We I think we did a tallow dry
• 26:54
  age. We taste it was it was good,
• 26:56
  but. I've had I've had it done with
• 26:58
  butter as well. I think it is a really
• 27:00
  interesting high quality grass fed butter that has like more
• 27:03
  flavor than the the sort of traditional Creamery stuff.
• 27:08
  You can pick notes of that up. But if I'm going to be real with
• 27:11
  you, I think the reason it started to get popular is just
• 27:14
  because there was just too much loss with dry aging.
• 27:17
  Yeah. And and it's really hard to
• 27:19
  convert that when you're looking at at pricing.
• 27:22
  Not not only that, but from a chef standpoint, there's two
• 27:25
  things going on with dry aging. And I think one of the things
• 27:29
  that people don't talk about enough if you've never cooked
• 27:32
  dry, dry edge meat as it cooks faster and you think it's like,
• 27:36
  oh, that should be, I'm used to cooking this.
• 27:38
  It's meat and rare. It's not until you tend to, when
• 27:41
  you first start cooking dry edge meat in a, in a restaurant
• 27:44
  setting on the grill or wherever, you tend to overcook
• 27:46
  it until you figure out it's not the same.
• 27:49
  That's number one. Number two is the American
• 27:53
  palate isn't that familiar with dry aging.
• 27:55
  And so a lot of times you send them a dried steak and they're
• 27:59
  like this doesn't taste good and it does taste good.
• 28:02
  It's just they're not familiar with dry aging.
• 28:04
  Yes. So there is a point of education
• 28:06
  that has to go with it. I think maybe there is a point
• 28:10
  of diminishing returns to the general of flavour.
• 28:15
  Yeah, after so many days, maybe you don't want to.
• 28:17
  Serve 100% and my husband's really into extended dry aging
• 28:20
  because he really likes those funky flavours and he knows what
• 28:22
  to expect. But it is if you never tried it
• 28:25
  before and I think, you know, I think that's what confuses
• 28:28
  people. It's like the Wagyu thing,
• 28:30
  right? Once I started producing
• 28:31
  American Wagyu, which is a 5050 cross, and you start losing some
• 28:35
  of the hallmarks of what makes Wagyu Wagyu because now you've
• 28:38
  got Angus genetics in there. And so now the fat has changed
• 28:42
  because when you're talking about purebred Wagyu, there's a
• 28:45
  different texture and melting temperature to the fat.
• 28:48
  So it coats your mouth differently, really is a
• 28:50
  different mouth feel. And when you split it, you start
• 28:54
  to lose some of that nuance. And then and then the next level
• 29:00
  of that is you start seeing it pop up everywhere.
• 29:03
  And they're finding ways to try and extend it, extend it because
• 29:05
  people know that they want Wagyu, but they don't want to
• 29:07
  pay for it. And then you've got the public
• 29:09
  who are like, I don't see what all the fuss is about because
• 29:12
  they've had a diluted product. And so dry aging is nearly the
• 29:16
  same. Like if you put two weeks on on
• 29:18
  a steak, like, yeah, you'll get some tenderness benefits on it,
• 29:22
  but you're probably not going to taste like what everyone is
• 29:24
  talking about when they're like dry aged, dry aged, which is the
• 29:27
  delicacy of it, right? Because it's not for everyone.
• 29:31
  Where is your sweet spot when it comes to dry aging?
• 29:34
  I like to have a little bit of that Tang in there.
• 29:37
  I would say, and I was going to say like I would say somewhere
• 29:42
  between 30 and 60 days. But I also have to tell you that
• 29:45
  that's the other big problem that you just you cannot assign
• 29:48
  it a day number because if you walk into Lone Star Meats here
• 29:51
  in town that have a great dry aging facility, I have a dry
• 29:55
  ager. Shout out to Lone Star Meats.
• 29:59
  Yeah I used to love their I know they're they used to be on.
• 30:03
  Are they still on 6th? St.
• 30:04
  No. They have a big facility on 71
• 30:05
  now. I used to love touring their
• 30:07
  facility. Yeah, I was fine.
• 30:08
  I was like, yeah, I love those guys too.
• 30:10
  About to lone. Super, super nice.
• 30:11
  So he has a whole about. To Edward and Franklin.
• 30:13
  Ed, Ed is a Ed's one of my one of my peeps.
• 30:16
  Yeah, he has a dry aging facility there at Lone Star.
• 30:20
  And they have, you know, hundreds of strip loins and
• 30:26
  short loins and rib rolls in there at any given time.
• 30:30
  So I have a dry aging fridge at home and I usually have one or
• 30:35
  two pieces in there. So he has a lot more water in
• 30:38
  his. He has a lot more green product
• 30:40
  and he's cycling through two weeks in his room.
• 30:44
  Tastes like 4 to six weeks in mine.
• 30:47
  Okay, so yeah, age is irrelevant.
• 30:50
  Anecdotal, but Edward taught me how to cook brisket.
• 30:53
  Really. Yeah, yeah, years ago.
• 30:55
  So I don't know, like almost 15 years ago, almost 20 years ago,
• 30:58
  I needed to to cook barbecue and I was like, I'm like French
• 31:02
  European chef. Yeah, I don't know how to cook
• 31:04
  BBQ. So he's like, I'll show you.
• 31:06
  He brought his smoker because he would do competitions.
• 31:08
  I don't know if he still does. I don't think so.
• 31:10
  He used to do smoking competitions and he came over
• 31:13
  and he brought a smoker and he parked it on right next to the
• 31:16
  fucking dumpster and taught me how to.
• 31:18
  That's badass. Yeah, yeah, Edward.
• 31:20
  Yeah. Shout out to Edward, Edward
• 31:22
  Hall. They don't sponsor the show, but
• 31:24
  check out Lone Star Meats. Yeah, they they're they, they do
• 31:28
  a lot of restaurants in town, He say.
• 31:29
  We just I just shot my cookbook. Yeah, we just shot the pictures
• 31:34
  for it. Doesn't come out till next year,
• 31:35
  but it's my second one and he saved my ass.
• 31:39
  I got most of the meat from HEB, who were also awesome.
• 31:42
  They donated meat, but there was a day where where they're like,
• 31:45
  I can't get these last three things for you.
• 31:47
  And I call it. I'm like, listen, I need a
• 31:49
  tomahawk with the seven inch bone minimum.
• 31:52
  Yeah, I need a pack of Terrace Major and I need a full hanger
• 31:55
  steak with all of the membranes still on.
• 31:57
  He's like, yeah, no problem. You want it in an hour?
• 32:00
  Like yes. Yeah, he's great.
• 32:02
  He's got everything. He's great.
• 32:03
  I love, I love those guys. Someone told me I went to dinner
• 32:06
  the other day with a friend and he was telling me about maybe
• 32:09
  you've heard of it cuz I've never heard of it.
• 32:10
  That this there's a five that is Angus Wagyu breed.
• 32:18
  Have you heard of this? So you're saying that there's a
• 32:22
  there's a crossbred that is marbling at A5?
• 32:24
  Yeah, yeah, marbling at A5, but it's like again half the cost or
• 32:28
  whatever. Have you, have you seen it?
• 32:30
  Have you tried it? I've not seen.
• 32:31
  It I haven't seen it, I just heard about it.
• 32:33
  I don't know. I don't think that it's going to
• 32:35
  be half the cost because if they can get it to marble like that,
• 32:38
  they're going to increase the cost.
• 32:40
  That's the whole point, yeah, I'm, I remain.
• 32:44
  Skeptical. I'm going to have to take it.
• 32:46
  Like I said, it was just a brief conversation.
• 32:48
  I was like, OK, it piqued my interest.
• 32:50
  I want to see if you knew anything about.
• 32:51
  It it can happen. I mean A5 is just the grade
• 32:53
  right? So if they get the genetics
• 32:54
  right it's possible to reach that grade without it being full
• 32:58
  blood. But I'm I've never seen an F1
• 33:02
  like that before, which is the cross.
• 33:04
  Can we talk about your book or No, Yeah.
• 33:06
  Tell us about your book. I want to know about the process
• 33:09
  because I geek out on the process of when did you get the
• 33:13
  idea? What was the writing like?
• 33:15
  What was the cooking like, the recipe writing?
• 33:17
  And then you know, you were a year out.
• 33:19
  How close like is it done? And it's still going to take a
• 33:21
  year. Yeah, it's such a pain in the
• 33:23
  ass. You know, I feel like I don't
• 33:25
  have any kids, but I think this is what it's like when women
• 33:27
  have children and they, they enough time passes and like
• 33:31
  being, I guess being pregnant sucks.
• 33:32
  And they're like, oh, yeah, I could do it again.
• 33:35
  And then when they're having the second kid, they're like, I'm
• 33:36
  never doing this again. That's what the second book felt
• 33:39
  like. Like, why the fuck did I get
• 33:41
  myself into this again? Because the last one came out
• 33:45
  nine years ago. And I think if any of us are
• 33:48
  asked to speak to our nine year old, nine year prior selves,
• 33:54
  like there's some cringe in there, you know, there's some
• 33:57
  moments we've all. That was funnier nine years ago.
• 33:59
  Were you less acerbic? Less tired.
• 34:02
  No, it's funny. I was, I was going to post
• 34:04
  something on social media and I was looking for a photo and I
• 34:07
  scrolled back to like 2 years ago.
• 34:09
  I was looking at my old chef's PSA posts and like fuck, this
• 34:12
  stuff was so good and funny. Where did I lose my sense of
• 34:15
  humor? Now I'm like trying to.
• 34:17
  Before the Internet crushed your soul.
• 34:18
  Yeah, before the commenters just fucking couldn't take a joke.
• 34:22
  And I was like, man, I used to be so much funnier.
• 34:23
  And I feel that that feels very real and I feel seen.
• 34:28
  Sorry, we digress. We're.
• 34:30
  I so it is a super long process. So this one I decided to really
• 34:36
  not just make it a cookbook. I wanted it to be really
• 34:38
  functional. And one of the biggest things
• 34:40
  that I see in my career is kind of being that we connect between
• 34:45
  people who don't know anything about meats, people who know
• 34:47
  something about it and then the cooking side and the industry
• 34:50
  side of it, whether that be industry sort of butchery or
• 34:53
  industry meat science. And it's always like, well,
• 34:58
  what's that cut called here? And, and why can't I get that?
• 35:01
  And questions that are so hard to understand about why meat can
• 35:05
  vary so much in market to market, availability,
• 35:09
  everything. And so I designed this book
• 35:13
  where the each chapter is a different kind of subprimal or
• 35:17
  cut. And within that chapter you see
• 35:21
  so like the pork, the pork butt chapter, there's, you know, bone
• 35:26
  in pork butt, Copa boneless pork butt, take it down like that.
• 35:30
  And there's a recipe for each of those.
• 35:32
  So if you want to just use it as a cookbook, there's a hundred
• 35:34
  recipes in there. Go for it.
• 35:36
  If you want to work your way. It's it's probably made more
• 35:39
  filet people. If you want to go to the store
• 35:41
  and buy a cut that you've never tried before, you will be able
• 35:43
  to find it in this book and you will be able to make something
• 35:45
  with it. Although I don't do any awful.
• 35:47
  That was like a little too obscure for this one.
• 35:51
  But then the front of the book is everything I've split it into
• 35:55
  everything you've ever wanted to know about me.
• 35:57
  So choose it. Prep it.
• 36:01
  Cook it, store it, and within that is tenderness, aging, why
• 36:08
  different cuts have different names, what it's called, where
• 36:11
  you might be, and even on every page.
• 36:14
  So I've tried to make it not like not like a modernist
• 36:19
  cuisine, kind of like encyclopedia or anything like
• 36:22
  that, but just like this really useful but functional tool I
• 36:28
  have. So much I want to talk to you
• 36:30
  about. My brain is firing.
• 36:33
  That's good. Yeah, I know, but it's like, I
• 36:36
  don't know. Where to?
• 36:36
  I don't know where to begin. Let me control my thoughts.
• 36:38
  My my ADD is kicking in. How?
• 36:43
  Different. Are your opinions now versus the
• 36:46
  9 year old not not 9 year old, the nine years ago you in terms
• 36:49
  of meat science and meat cookery?
• 36:51
  Has a lot changed in terms of the way you think it should be
• 36:55
  done? Not a.
• 36:58
  Lot has changed a lot of the. Techniques are pretty similar,
• 37:00
  I'd say. I'd say it's more that the
• 37:02
  recipes are a little bit more sophisticated and I'm at the end
• 37:04
  of the day, I'm still a home cook.
• 37:05
  So it's still very achievable. You know, there's no, like,
• 37:09
  intense Demi in there or anything like that.
• 37:12
  But. But I'd say the finished dishes
• 37:16
  are a little bit more refined. Back then.
• 37:19
  It was also the rise of, like, the peak of food blogs where
• 37:22
  everything was sort of a casserole.
• 37:24
  Not that there was any casseroles there, but I had,
• 37:26
  like, the first book had like, cheeseburger pretzel buns.
• 37:29
  Yeah. You know, that's the second book
• 37:32
  has, like, chili caramel fish sauce wings.
• 37:36
  Yeah. Right.
• 37:37
  Right. Right.
• 37:37
  Right. We've come places.
• 37:41
  And I think also still obviously growing up in Australia, even
• 37:43
  though I live in Texas now, there's a lot of, there's a lot
• 37:46
  more, there's a lot of Southeast Asian references.
• 37:48
  There's a lot of like Middle Eastern references in there.
• 37:50
  We did awesome sort of lamb and rice, Levantine style with
• 37:56
  pomegranate tahini. You know, we're not complicated,
• 37:59
  but just not a flavor you used to seeing.
• 38:01
  I think over here for a lot of standard American cookbooks,
• 38:04
  especially ME cookbooks. So the knowledge heart is still
• 38:11
  mostly accurate. Like I would say not much
• 38:14
  changed there, but it just got expanded on.
• 38:18
  So like the first one had just very basic things like here's
• 38:21
  why salt's really important to me.
• 38:23
  And now it's like here's why meat color is the way that it is
• 38:27
  in very long format. Explanation.
• 38:30
  Got it. There's even a troubleshooting
• 38:32
  section from a process. Standpoint of writing a book.
• 38:36
  What is your process to get idea on paper or on computer screen?
• 38:41
  I'm very much a notebook person. Like I love having different
• 38:45
  physical notebooks around me. And so it starts by I started
• 38:50
  this, I knew. That the information was going
• 38:53
  to write. Itself, it was really more about
• 38:55
  editing back stuff that was, you know, like I started to get into
• 38:59
  territory of back in the day when the railway way way was
• 39:03
  invented, beef went to being shipped out in seven boxes.
• 39:07
  And I'm like, maybe too specific, like we're getting
• 39:10
  into the 300 page territory. Let's wind it back a little bit.
• 39:15
  So from that perspective, the the front part Rd. itself, I
• 39:22
  started with this one by making the map.
• 39:24
  So I identified all the primals, identified all the cuts I took
• 39:28
  out the ones I have a section called rare steaks.
• 39:30
  So the ones that are like how to define like terrace major or
• 39:33
  beef cheek or beef tongue, just less, less common.
• 39:37
  And it did a fat section, bone section.
• 39:40
  And then I split that out into the, the cuts that come out of
• 39:44
  there that should be featured. And then I started developing
• 39:47
  recipes for each of those. And I would kind of work off 2
• 39:50
  lists. Some of them just immediately
• 39:52
  wrote themselves and like, oh, I want to try and do this.
• 39:55
  And then others I would sort of try and write concepts down.
• 39:58
  So like, oh, I think it would be fun to do something with like a
• 40:02
  black garlic oil. So you just write that idea
• 40:05
  down. And then when you're looking
• 40:06
  through the list of the cuts that you've got to do.
• 40:07
  Like, oh, maybe that, oh, you know, I'm going to do, I'm going
• 40:10
  to do a cheetah short rib ramen. So like we're going to use ready
• 40:13
  made ramen cakes, but we're going to do this sort of like
• 40:15
  boil and broil method on the short rib and then hit it with
• 40:18
  this black garlic oil. And, you know, and that's how it
• 40:22
  sort of came together. Interesting.
• 40:23
  Yeah. I, I I.
• 40:24
  Like to write also. So I'm I'm curious about your
• 40:27
  your writing process and how you get from here to there.
• 40:30
  One of the things, and this was back, if you were remember, you
• 40:34
  know, a linea, not a linea next, they wrote a cookbook and it was
• 40:38
  a digital cookbook. I don't know if you, I don't
• 40:39
  know if you saw those. So they, they were the first
• 40:41
  ones. Well, maybe the second ones
• 40:42
  because I think Laurent Gras put out a digital cookbook first,
• 40:45
  but Grant Ackets put out a digital cookbook for next, this
• 40:50
  scoffier series when he they first started next.
• 40:54
  And I remember I downloaded it because I was like, you couldn't
• 40:56
  buy it. You just get the digital
• 40:57
  version. But there was like videos
• 40:59
  embedded in the digital cookbook.
• 41:02
  I thought that was super cool. And I've never really seen
• 41:04
  anyone do it since then. I mean, digital cookbooks exist,
• 41:08
  but not with video recipes we could play in the digital
• 41:10
  cookbook. I think that's cool.
• 41:12
  Are you again, I don't want to rant, but are you thinking about
• 41:15
  maybe attaching like the the YouTube video to the recipe in
• 41:21
  the cookbooks? Not necessarily.
• 41:22
  And I think. I was going to say, I think
• 41:24
  that's the reason you haven't seen it come up because it's
• 41:26
  like there's just, you know, social media right now is, is
• 41:30
  trying to ask us to produce 5 videos a week, which I just
• 41:34
  can't, I can't do that. I've got too many jobs, but I'm
• 41:38
  trying to, I try and do at least three a week and.
• 41:41
  And you're expected to do it for free.
• 41:43
  So I think some people have done that.
• 41:46
  Some people have done it behind a subscription or payroll, but
• 41:49
  like a master class channel or something like that.
• 41:52
  I like the tactile nature of the book.
• 41:55
  They send a team over to do the photos.
• 41:57
  Actually, the photographer did Josh Nyland's book.
• 41:59
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 42:01
  So I kind of got there. They sent their A-Team, which
• 42:03
  was really exciting. His book's great.
• 42:06
  And. And so it was.
• 42:10
  You know it's it really is going to.
• 42:12
  Be a beautiful, beautiful book. How excited?
• 42:14
  What are you thinking when it's coming out?
• 42:16
  It's coming out October 2026. Awesome.
• 42:18
  So to your point, you, you usually have one to two years to
• 42:23
  write the book. I had way less than that because
• 42:25
  we were working back on the timeline once you hand it in.
• 42:29
  So my manuscript was due 1st of September, photos in November.
• 42:33
  We're working on 1st pages now. So that's that first layout.
• 42:36
  Yes, you can make. Changes.
• 42:38
  To first pages, then it and then once that's finished, nothing
• 42:42
  can move in the layout. Second pages is just checking
• 42:46
  for typos and things that are like really, really wrong, which
• 42:49
  shouldn't be any and then it goes to print needs six months
• 42:52
  to print and they all all cookbooks print in China and
• 42:55
  then they need to be shipped via C Wow that.
• 42:59
  That's a, it's a, it's a hard just process.
• 43:03
  And I remember when we were going to record and, you know,
• 43:05
  we had a leak and he said we'll schedule after I'm done with the
• 43:09
  book because I got a lot of shit on my play right now.
• 43:11
  Oh my God, it was such. A push.
• 43:14
  Because you can't put your life on hold, right?
• 43:16
  You still have to. You still have to see your
• 43:17
  friends. You see it to see if your family
• 43:19
  still have to do your job. You still have to do all of the
• 43:22
  things that make your life your life and somehow find time for
• 43:27
  another full time job in addition.
• 43:29
  So I mean, my husband is a very patient man and he would, I
• 43:33
  would finish my work during the day and then open up a laptop
• 43:37
  for my night work and usually try and I would try and make,
• 43:41
  you know, recipe tests for dinner so you're at least
• 43:43
  getting A2 Fer. But I had to schedule out.
• 43:48
  I knew I was going to travel because I traveled for work too.
• 43:50
  And I had to schedule out like all of January and all of May to
• 43:55
  just recipe test and write. Like, I did not accept any
• 43:59
  travel. I did not accept much work
• 44:01
  during those months because I had to clear the calendar.
• 44:04
  So I was stressed. Yeah, I can imagine.
• 44:06
  I I. I can imagine like the amount of
• 44:09
  work that I have to do as a, you know, entrepreneur with, with
• 44:13
  this, with chefs, PSA and everything else, the amount of
• 44:16
  stuff that I do. And I don't think people fully
• 44:18
  realize the amount of work that goes into, into this business.
• 44:23
  From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed, I am
• 44:26
  working. I mean, yes, I'm, there's a
• 44:29
  dinner, but even when I go out. But your brain never switches
• 44:32
  off. Yeah.
• 44:33
  I'm I'm usually going out and. It's like, can I make this a
• 44:36
  work dinner? Like is there a business aspect
• 44:38
  to this? Is there someone here that I
• 44:40
  should have on the show? Right.
• 44:41
  Is there someone here that I can, you know, who knows someone
• 44:45
  who can help, right? There's find an advertiser.
• 44:47
  I don't know. There's so much that that goes
• 44:49
  on. Always on, always on.
• 44:50
  And it's difficult for me to turn even like on.
• 44:52
  Like, OK, I'm just saying, for example, it's like it's Sunday.
• 44:56
  I should take the day off. I'm only going to work 1/2 a
• 44:58
  day. And then I look at the time as
• 44:59
  like, shit, yeah. The day's gone, so I'm curious.
• 45:03
  About you as an entrepreneur because you also have a lot of
• 45:10
  business with way more than I got going on.
• 45:12
  I mean you got you got hardcore you got which by the way we
• 45:15
  haven't even talked about. And your hardcore black is
• 45:18
  great. I love it.
• 45:20
  Do you know if Fermin's using it at the restaurant?
• 45:22
  Is he? Yeah, I didn't.
• 45:23
  What's? He using on.
• 45:24
  He uses it as suerte they. Use it on they've used it on the
• 45:27
  carne asada and actually the chicken.
• 45:28
  It's great. I love it.
• 45:29
  I love it. It's.
• 45:30
  It's my go to steak seasoning for for for everything.
• 45:34
  It's like I cook a lot of meat at home.
• 45:35
  So like that's that's what I do. Thank you.
• 45:37
  That means a lot. But you.
• 45:39
  Do a lot how? Do you, from an entrepreneurial
• 45:42
  standpoint, if you can give us the, I guess the short version
• 45:47
  because, you know, we're kind of towards the end of the episode,
• 45:49
  but what does it look like when you said, OK, this is what I
• 45:52
  want to do to OK, I'm going to scale, I'm going to keep
• 45:55
  scaling, I'm going to keep growing.
• 45:57
  And then it's like, oh should I need help?
• 46:00
  I still feel like every day. Is, oh shit, I need help quite
• 46:03
  frankly. And, and honestly, that's one of
• 46:06
  the things that I struggle with the most is delegating.
• 46:10
  And it's really, really important.
• 46:11
  And I, again, I feel like a lot of your listeners would know
• 46:15
  that because if you worked in a kitchen, you understand, like
• 46:17
  there has to be stations to make it work.
• 46:19
  Like one guy can't do everything or if he, and if one's
• 46:21
  overloaded, like it's going to back up the whole system.
• 46:24
  And I think it's the same thing whatever you do.
• 46:26
  So I have multiple companies hardcore is is is is probably
• 46:34
  the jewel in the crown hardcore carnival.
• 46:36
  We have, you know, 9 permanent seasonings, a chili mix and a
• 46:40
  fried Turkey that comes out seasonally.
• 46:42
  We've got grilling tools and accessories or an Academy,
• 46:47
  Bucky's HEB Bass Pro. Like, I mean, we're, we're
• 46:52
  places where we're all over the world.
• 46:55
  I was just in Sweden in the summer, like I said, promoting
• 46:58
  it over there that they're kind of crazy about it too.
• 47:02
  So. About.
• 47:04
  That and then I've got a lot of stuff that I do under my own
• 47:06
  name, so I'll do the book is obviously under my own name and
• 47:10
  I'll do a lot of appearances and hosting events and things of
• 47:13
  that nature. And then I've got social stuff.
• 47:16
  So I do get paid as a creator to do some branded videos as well.
• 47:24
  Do you think that social? Is absolutely necessary for for.
• 47:32
  Emerging entrepreneurs at this. Point, at least in our world, I
• 47:36
  don't know. Yeah.
• 47:38
  I'm really I'm. Not I'm not exactly.
• 47:40
  Sure. Because The thing is I'm I'm
• 47:42
  sitting so my account is over 10 years old.
• 47:45
  That's considered a dinosaur right now.
• 47:46
  And it has, it has what we call time decay on it, which is we
• 47:51
  used to live in a society where the more experience you had, you
• 47:54
  were rewarded for having experience.
• 47:57
  And social has now swung the opposite direction.
• 48:00
  So when I first joined Instagram, it was that that the,
• 48:03
  you know, the longer you use your account and the more that
• 48:05
  you grew it, the more seniority you had.
• 48:08
  Now, because of a desire to keep bringing in new users, it's
• 48:15
  easier than ever to take off really quickly.
• 48:19
  And then you spend the rest of your time on social, like trying
• 48:22
  to get back to that one, right? Because it used to.
• 48:26
  Be. Like before TikTok, you never
• 48:28
  would get into 1,000,000 views on Instagram.
• 48:30
  It just was not possible. It did not happen unless you
• 48:33
  were a Kardashian. And now it is possible because
• 48:36
  they opened the algorithm up and changed everything.
• 48:39
  Particularly during COVID. I think when people stayed home
• 48:42
  and made a career for themselves doing that, it also spiked
• 48:44
  again. And I'm seeing a lot of those
• 48:46
  people struggle now because they have the numbers there because
• 48:49
  they never lost the numbers, but the engagement has completely
• 48:52
  tagged because now they now you're old, you've been here for
• 48:56
  at least two years, You're ancient.
• 48:59
  And so I don't know. Where it's going for new?
• 49:01
  Businesses, to answer your question, I don't know whether
• 49:04
  that is something. I mean at the very least, yes,
• 49:07
  it's free. So claim it like don't if you
• 49:09
  have the name, claim the name and at least pockets.
• 49:15
  But I don't know. I don't know what's going to
• 49:17
  happen. It's interesting.
• 49:18
  So 2 days ago. And you know, so this may be a
• 49:21
  month ago when people are listening, I was on Instagram
• 49:25
  and you have the meta verified blue check mark, right?
• 49:28
  And it said get the check mark. And I was like, well, I have it.
• 49:31
  So why is it selling it to me? So I clicked on it because I was
• 49:34
  curious and it said, well, you have the basic package.
• 49:38
  There's now the, the, this package over here and this
• 49:42
  package and this package. So there's four packages now
• 49:45
  above my package. I was like, what?
• 49:47
  It goes up to $500 a month for the, for the check mark.
• 49:52
  I was like, well, what is, what are the tiers?
• 49:54
  What did you get? And one of the things like
• 49:56
  visibility and to become a recommended account for people
• 50:00
  to follow. And I'm like, it was the shit
• 50:01
  that we used to get for free, they're now making it paid for.
• 50:05
  Right. So I'm like, wow.
• 50:06
  It's crazy to see and I've never paid for it, which is probably.
• 50:09
  Where a lot of that time decay comes it it it's it's crazy
• 50:12
  like. If you try and if you try and
• 50:15
  grow organically without, you know, paying, paying your, your
• 50:19
  fair share of what you know what the social media companies need.
• 50:22
  Yeah, it's not enough that we're creating.
• 50:24
  Free content for them to sell the ads Well, and what now?
• 50:27
  What's what's crazy? Is what you do where you're
• 50:30
  cooking a, a prime rib, you have to go buy it, you have to prep
• 50:35
  it, you have to shoot it, you have to edit it.
• 50:37
  And that's a, that's probably a all day, an all day thing.
• 50:39
  Yeah, yeah. And then compared to doing a
• 50:43
  makeup tutorial. Yes, right, right.
• 50:45
  A lot more work. Well, it's funny because a lot
• 50:47
  of people and you have to nail it, right.
• 50:49
  Yeah, right, you don't. Fuck it.
• 50:50
  Up if you don't get the payoff. You should have a lot 1 of the
• 50:53
  things that I realized. For chef's PSA for me is like, I
• 50:58
  did a like I dabbled in a little cooking and then I talked shit
• 51:02
  and talking shit got way more views and it was way easier to
• 51:06
  stand in front of a camera and talk shit.
• 51:08
  I was like, yeah, this is lower barrier edge meat Science
• 51:11
  Mondays. Take me. 30 seconds to film.
• 51:13
  It's no cooking, it's just a little factoid, right?
• 51:15
  Yeah, it's really awesome, but people are gonna want to see
• 51:18
  cooking. And then you mean inevitably I'm
• 51:21
  going to have to start repeating meat facts at some point because
• 51:23
  there's only everyone wants to like secret, you know, like
• 51:26
  that. Who would tell me this one easy
• 51:28
  trick that I can do like everything all better and, you
• 51:32
  know, make my prime rib turn out awesome.
• 51:34
  So as we get closer to. Closing up, I want to ask you
• 51:37
  what because it is holiday season, if there was a your
• 51:41
  perfect way to cook a prime rib, what is it if you could walk us
• 51:44
  through the process my perfect way I.
• 51:47
  I do love smoking them because I just I feel like it's more
• 51:52
  forgiving. I even if I do the exact same
• 51:55
  method in the oven, inevitably the spinalis gets dried out on
• 52:00
  or starts overcooking a little bit in the oven just because of
• 52:03
  that radiant heat And look, if you ever call me, it's fine.
• 52:06
  I'm dealing with the home oven right?
• 52:08
  So please. But I, I usually make a compound
• 52:15
  butter and I in case you can, you can dry brine it.
• 52:18
  That helps a lot too. And then you encase it in the
• 52:21
  compound butter. I put it in the smoker on a rack
• 52:23
  over foil pan and then the butter melts off it and I keep
• 52:27
  basting it with the compound butter as it smokes and the I
• 52:33
  crank. So I'm smoking about 2:50, about
• 52:35
  30 minutes a pound. I crank it at the end, take it
• 52:38
  out. So it's nearly like a reverse
• 52:40
  here, hold it for about 30 minutes while I take the smoker
• 52:43
  up to 450, and then just blast it for 10-15 minutes just to get
• 52:47
  a little heavier color on the outside, which you could do in
• 52:50
  an oven as well. Yeah, and it's gorgeous.
• 52:53
  Like, especially if you use herbs in the compound butter as
• 52:56
  well. You just get this lovely visual
• 52:58
  crust. And it looks fantastic.
• 53:01
  It's bright pink on the inside. It's just gorgeous.
• 53:04
  So David Breeden, former chef at.
• 53:05
  The French Laundry was there for 13 years as the head chef.
• 53:08
  He has a very interesting way that he cooks meat and he, and
• 53:12
  he came here and explained his process to me.
• 53:14
  And he had been explaining it to me off, you know, not not on the
• 53:18
  podcast, but you know, in our, in our private conversations.
• 53:21
  And when I cooked meat, the way he explained it, it was honestly
• 53:24
  the best way I've ever cooked meat.
• 53:26
  So I'm going to share it with you.
• 53:27
  And then I'm I'm curious what you think so.
• 53:32
  He. Starts with steam, so think sous
• 53:35
  video without the bag in the combi oven for the restaurant,
• 53:39
  right? So let's just say it's and I'm
• 53:42
  and I'm. This is his method.
• 53:43
  So some of the temperatures might be wrong, but let's just
• 53:45
  say you're cooking at 140° for a little bit longer than you
• 53:50
  normally would. Fahrenheit, by the way, 100140A
• 53:54
  little bit longer and a little bit higher than you normally
• 53:56
  would be told to. Yeah.
• 53:59
  And then he rests it for 1/4 of the cooking time that it was in
• 54:03
  the in the in the steamer. And he says after he he came to
• 54:08
  this because one day he was in the shits and he had to steam it
• 54:10
  without the bag because they didn't have time to vacuum.
• 54:12
  And what he realizes that you don't really need the bag to
• 54:15
  cook it in and it when the steam comes off, it forms like this
• 54:19
  nice pellicle on the meat and then after it rests to the
• 54:24
  quarter of the cooking time that it was, it was poaching, then
• 54:28
  it's arose step. So searing it, baste it with
• 54:31
  butter, let it rest and then slice, you know, cooking a steak
• 54:35
  or whatever. So I did that.
• 54:37
  I don't have a steamer at home, but you know, I I just did, you
• 54:40
  know, lower temperature oven. So, you know, it was amazing.
• 54:43
  Yeah, it was. I was like, fuck, I haven't
• 54:45
  cooked a steak that good or a piece of meat that well, even
• 54:50
  sous video and it doesn't have that smell sometimes when you
• 54:54
  open up the bag when you cook meat sous video, which I don't
• 54:56
  like. And it was really perfect.
• 54:59
  But anyway, I'm curious if just me telling you that, and
• 55:03
  obviously I'm probably not explaining it as well as he can,
• 55:06
  if anything is like, OK, I could see why that would work or that
• 55:08
  shouldn't work. There's two things that
• 55:10
  immediately. Come to mind from a meat science
• 55:13
  perspective, and I will say before I get into that, one of
• 55:16
  the reasons that we don't have all the answers in meat science
• 55:18
  is that there's a couple. 1 is that most meat science
• 55:22
  experiments have to be sponsored by something.
• 55:24
  So the universities need money to run these experiments, and
• 55:27
  usually it's someone in the industry getting them to run it
• 55:31
  to prove their point or so that they can develop a new product,
• 55:33
  right? Which is why we're really,
• 55:35
  really good at chicken Nuggets because Tyson is paid for much
• 55:38
  of those, but we don't have as much on dry aging, right, Right.
• 55:43
  So. That's that determines.
• 55:44
  Really what what we look at, but the other thing is, is can it be
• 55:47
  recreated? And is it worth like recreating
• 55:50
  on a scale where we can get definitive data.
• 55:53
  So another example being when you talk about resting meat and
• 55:57
  the big debate that goes on there, like is it carryover
• 56:00
  cooking is a juice redistribution.
• 56:02
  Well, there are scientific articles that both support and
• 56:06
  refute that. So that can complicate things as
• 56:09
  well when things are inconclusive because they're
• 56:11
  contradictory for that technique, 2 things come to
• 56:15
  mind. 1 is just we know that the low cooking process stops like
• 56:20
  that contraction that happens with high heat.
• 56:23
  When you see the stake of a super high heat, you can see it
• 56:26
  physically start to shrink in size from the muscle
• 56:29
  contraction. Whereas the low heat and the
• 56:32
  lower you go the less pronounced it is, is going to change that
• 56:38
  tenderness through I think that cooking mechanism right?
• 56:43
  But the other thing is that particularly based on the cut,
• 56:47
  and This is why BBQ works well for brisket, especially if
• 56:50
  you've got to smoke a loaded full instead of 1 smoke 1
• 56:53
  brisket in your home pit. It takes the presence of
• 56:59
  moisture to convert collagen to gelatin.
• 57:02
  Like we know that and not a lot of people talk about that.
• 57:05
  So you need moisture to make that magic happen.
• 57:09
  And so I'm wondering if there's something in the steam that's
• 57:12
  relating to the cooking process. Maybe some of the the just brain
• 57:22
  farted, the maybe some of the silver skin, like the connective
• 57:27
  tissue is cooking in a different method because it's got all of
• 57:33
  that steam in there. And because that's also just
• 57:35
  collagen. So it could be affecting how
• 57:38
  that is responding to. And it's really interesting.
• 57:41
  Like that's what's frustrating to me as a home cook.
• 57:42
  Like I just don't have access to those methods.
• 57:45
  I think there's so much fun that you can have with it.
• 57:47
  Yeah, it knows. It was one of those things that.
• 57:49
  When he told me, I was like, OK, that's super interesting.
• 57:51
  And then I tried it and I've tried it since multiple Times
• 57:53
  Now, and it's like, yeah, it'd be hard for me to go back to
• 57:56
  cooking proteins a different way.
• 57:57
  Really. Yeah.
• 57:58
  It's so laborious. Well, yeah.
• 58:00
  But I mean I have time. Yeah, I have time to do it.
• 58:03
  I mean, when I'm, when I'm cooking for others, I should say
• 58:07
  if I'm cooking for myself, it's a hot pan.
• 58:08
  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So like I, I.
• 58:10
  Ended up pioneering this thing called not pioneering it but JKF
• 58:14
  just keep flipping right when I grill.
• 58:16
  I love to grill hot and fast. I get it done really quick.
• 58:18
  I keep flipping, keep flipping, get really aggressive crust and
• 58:22
  I love it because I'm impatient. So you get super good crust,
• 58:27
  really good sort of char grilled flavor and it's ready really
• 58:30
  quickly. And sometimes they're a nice
• 58:33
  when that's a good thing too. I want to ask you.
• 58:36
  Just as we get wrapped up if there was a.
• 58:40
  Bucket list person. That you would love for them to
• 58:42
  cook for you. Who would it be?
• 58:45
  Living or dead, I should have thought about this.
• 58:47
  In advance, huh? Yeah, don't offend anybody.
• 58:51
  I'm going to offend everybody. Now this is the problem.
• 58:54
  My answer would honestly be, I nearly feel like I want to take
• 58:58
  you back to that beef place. Yeah, be like.
• 59:01
  I would really rather sit down and eat like the world's part in
• 59:05
  the pun rarest beef. Yeah, like a really interesting
• 59:08
  or like an OROC, which is where all beef descended from.
• 59:12
  It would be cool to try a beef from an OROC, which they got
• 59:16
  killed out sometime after the the dark ages in Europe.
• 59:21
  Really. Yeah.
• 59:23
  I mean, was that like? A cow like looking a cow looking
• 59:26
  animal was bovine. Bovine.
• 59:27
  Yeah, it was a bovine. Animal and and the the Germans
• 59:32
  tried to experiment in bringing them back Germans the
• 59:36
  experiments. At that time.
• 59:41
  But it was it was phenotypical, so it wasn't actually true
• 59:45
  genotype. Well, I love your channel.
• 59:48
  But for people that don't know, where can they, where can they
• 59:50
  follow along? Where can they, where can they
• 59:51
  listen? Where can they get your book?
• 59:53
  Where can they see the prime rib that you just talked about?
• 59:56
  Because I've seen that video. Yeah, right.
• 59:58
  Yeah. And then the just keep flipping.
• 59:59
  Where can they follow? So everything of mine is at.
• 1:00:02
  Jess Priles, my website isjustbrowse.com and then
• 1:00:05
  Hardcore Carnival has its own channels if you wanna check that
• 1:00:07
  out too. But hopefully you have me back
• 1:00:10
  on next year before the book comes out.
• 1:00:12
  Yeah, of course, of course. Well.
• 1:00:13
  We should do that BBQ episode where we get and we could grill
• 1:00:17
  them. That sounds even.
• 1:00:19
  We'll make them fight. All right.
• 1:00:20
  Good seeing you. Thank you.
• 1:00:21
  Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode if you want.
• 1:00:23
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• 1:00:24
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• 1:00:30
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• 1:00:32
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• 1:00:35
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• 1:00:38
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• 1:00:50
  Hit the porno music.