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Episode 85

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Published on:

20th Mar 2023

Spicy Food, Our One-Minute Cooking Tip, Common Food Myths, Rice Cookers, Duck Eggs & More!

Hi! We're Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough, authors of three dozen cookbooks. If you want to check out our latest, it's here.

This is our food and cooking podcast. We're delighted you've chosen to spend some time with us.

In this episode, we're talking about spicy, hot food, now a global taste, although it wasn't for centuries. We've got a one-minute cooking tip about cooking with wine. Then we debunk some common food myths. And we let you know what's making us happy in food this week.

Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:

[01:02] We love spicy food--and so does most of the world!

[14:35] Our one-minute cooking tip: Skip the cooking wine.

[16:53] We debunk some common food myths.

[26:27] What’s making us happy in food this week: rice cookers and duck eggs!

If you want to watch a video of Bruce making his chili oil, check it out here.

Transcript
Bruce:

Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein and this is the Podcast

Bruce:

Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

Mark:

And I'm Mark Scarborough.

Mark:

And together with Bruce, we have written 36 cookbooks, including

Mark:

the latest, the Instant Air Fryer Bible out for all Air Fryers.

Mark:

A great way to make all kinds of delicious air fryer food.

Mark:

Just had a friend write us the other night and said that he had.

Mark:

Made the tuna melts and what, what else?

Mark:

And the classic Rachel.

Mark:

The Rachel, which most people don't even know what that is,

Bruce:

that's like a Ruben, but made with Turkey and coastal

Bruce:

instead of, uh, corn, beef and Sare.

Bruce:

Mm-hmm.

Bruce:

. Mark: He made the classic Rachel

Bruce:

melts, which are really unbelievably decadent and delicious with an.

Bruce:

Easy, microwave, beel poured over the top of them.

Bruce:

Mm-hmm.

Bruce:

, delicious stuff.

Bruce:

Always round.

Bruce:

But we're not talking about anything air frying in this episode of the podcast.

Bruce:

Instead, we're gonna talk about hot stuff and Chili's got cooking dish.

Bruce:

We got what's making us happy in food this week.

Bruce:

So much coming up.

Bruce:

So let's get started.

Bruce:

Spicy food.

Bruce:

When you think about it, you probably like me think about places like

Bruce:

China, Southeast Asia, even India.

Mark:

So weird.

Mark:

So weird.

Mark:

so weird because for this Texas boy, I do not think about any of those things.

Mark:

, you think about Mexican food.

Mark:

I, when I was a kid, we ate a lot of TexMex and when I lived in Dallas

Mark:

when I was a kid, but TexMex was never as, As new Mexican food.

Mark:

Right.

Mark:

When I think about hot food as a kid, like New Mexico.

Mark:

New Mexico, interesting.

Mark:

Yeah.

Mark:

I think about our trips to Santa Fe.

Mark:

When I was little that food was hot.

Mark:

Well, we all thought that food was super hot.

Bruce:

Yeah.

Bruce:

But it's funny cuz all the world's chili peppers, whether from the Philippines to

Bruce:

Sri Lanka, to New Mexico to New Mexico.

Bruce:

Came from the first domesticated chili plants in what is now Mexico.

Bruce:

Yeah, that's So you think about these places all over Asia and other parts

Bruce:

of the world, but really hot stuff.

Bruce:

Hot foods started in what is now Mexico.

Mark:

Well, this all speaks to the age of colonization.

Mark:

The age as it used to be called of exploration.

Mark:

But now it's better to say, I think at the age of colonizations, since

Mark:

that's what it was, it speaks to the way that the global markets changed.

Mark:

I mean, listen, you.

Mark:

Potatoes, we all know are an anden Right.

Mark:

Root vegetable.

Mark:

And yet now the world's largest producer of potatoes is China.

Mark:

Yep.

Mark:

So it, it is part of the growing global commercial nexus that happened in the.

Mark:

Age of colonization, and it is still with us.

Mark:

And chilies of course, have now gone all around the world.

Bruce:

Before the 16th century.

Bruce:

Places like Southeast Asia where hot food was treasured, didn't have chilies, but

Bruce:

they had ginger and black pepper, right?

Bruce:

And that's where they got their heat, right?

Mark:

Lots and lots of heat available there.

Mark:

I mean, there's all kinds of reasons why we like the burn of Chili's, and

Mark:

I have to tell you that when I was a kid, Going back to those Santa Fe

Mark:

trips in New Mexico and all that stuff.

Mark:

I didn't like hot food and I didn't like it.

Mark:

It burned my mouth.

Mark:

And actually, I used to have a chemical reaction.

Mark:

My lips would blow up bright red and big, and my mother would put Vaseline.

Mark:

Your mother and her Vaseline on my lips to cool them down.

Mark:

Seriously, and it's funny, it wasn't until I was in college that I ever

Mark:

thought I could even eat a jalapeno.

Mark:

But in college my roommates would go out, they'd all sit at this Mexican restaurant.

Mark:

I went to Baylor in Waco, Texas, and we'd sit at this crummy Mexican

Mark:

restaurant, really downscale what college kids could afford.

Mark:

And my roommates and friends would all sit there eating all of the

Mark:

jalapenos out of the jar when they would bring the Little Bowl.

Mark:

Mm-hmm.

Mark:

that was separate of jalapenos.

Mark:

And they would all, you know, be sweating and screaming and eating them.

Mark:

And I thought, well, heck, I should try this.

Mark:

And sure enough I did.

Mark:

And now.

Mark:

Good grief.

Mark:

I seem to pour Bruce's chili oil over everything.

Bruce:

Growing up, we didn't have Mexican food and we would go out

Bruce:

for Chinese all the time, but my parents like Cantonese food.

Bruce:

Oh, shrimp and lobster sauce.

Bruce:

Yeah, basically they love shrimp and lobster sauce and chicken chow mein and I

Mark:

shrimp and lobster sauce in a kosher home.

Bruce:

We were not a kosher home.

Mark:

Oh my God.

Mark:

It's a double negative shrimp and lobsters for, so it cancels it out.

Mark:

You can eat it.

Bruce:

oy gevalt . So there are theories to why people like spicy food.

Bruce:

I mean evolutionary biologists, posit that are propensity towards spiciness is born

Bruce:

out of necessity cuz yeah, chilies do have some natural antimicrobial properties.

Mark:

And let's also say that the capsaicin, we'll get to this in a minute,

Mark:

which is the only burn in any chili.

Mark:

All across the world, the chemical it makes, the capsaicin, the

Mark:

capsaicin also causes you to sweat.

Mark:

Mm-hmm.

Mark:

. And ultimately sweating is a cooling mechanism for the body.

Mark:

So you sweat a pit and that sweat evaporates.

Mark:

Just like if you're working out in the yard.

Mark:

And that's.

Mark:

Sweat evaporates and it keeps your skin temperature down.

Mark:

It does.

Bruce:

Which is why a lot of hot weathered cultures like spicy food.

Bruce:

But it's funny, psychology researchers say rather than out of necessity,

Bruce:

our love of chilies is based on our thrill-seeking behavior as human beings.

Mark:

Oh, maybe it's hard because thrillseeking and pain

Mark:

seeking often go over each other.

Mark:

Mm-hmm.

Mark:

, um, you know, it's like riding a rollercoaster.

Mark:

I love roller coasters.

Mark:

Bruce hates them.

Mark:

I find the thrill in them and he finds a headache in them.

Mark:

So it's, it's again, we've stepped over from thrill seeking to pain seeking.

Mark:

Right.

Mark:

And that of course, most people don't want a pain seeking behavior.

Bruce:

No.

Bruce:

Most people are not gonna stab themselves in the eye voluntarily.

Bruce:

No, no.

Bruce:

But they do give themselves chemical burns,

Mark:

not even involuntarily, I hope.

Bruce:

But those same people would give themselves a chemical burn in their.

Bruce:

On purpose by eating chilies.

Mark:

But, well, again, it's is all about thrill versus pain, right?

Mark:

Yeah.

Mark:

And we do know that chilies increase endorphin loads.

Mark:

They do.

Mark:

They make you feel good.

Mark:

Yeah.

Mark:

Right.

Mark:

And we know that they bring on the endorphin in the brain, which

Mark:

is why, you know, when you eat something really, really super hot

Mark:

and you think, oh my gosh, I am gonna sear myself to death here.

Mark:

And then you wait about three minutes and it kind of starts to subside.

Mark:

You think Oho, I, I think I want more of that.

Mark:

Well

Bruce:

see, you just said the key word there.

Bruce:

You think it's going to sear myself to death, but you

Bruce:

know it's not going to Right.

Bruce:

You know that this is not deadly then unless you, I mean, unless you eat

Bruce:

20, you know, scorpion hot peppers.

Bruce:

Yeah.

Mark:

But if you're just.

Mark:

Eating hot ghost chili.

Mark:

So I don't know.

Bruce:

No, but just eating super, super hot food is not going to kill you.

Bruce:

Wait, I have to tell you this story.

Mark:

So bruce and I, I went to this Chinese restaurant in Manhattan years

Mark:

ago, and there was this fish soup, and it was kind of the thing we'd read about

Mark:

it, this thing to order this fish soup.

Mark:

And it was, as I recall, lots of fish and vegetables, but in a pretty clear broth.

Mark:

It wasn't cloudy at all, but it was unbelievably hot.

Mark:

I mean, searingly hot,

Bruce:

there was.

Bruce:

sliced green, fresh chilies throughout it.

Bruce:

It was just like a sea of fish and chilies.

Mark:

I mean, I mean, searingly hot, so we ordered it on the waiter.

Mark:

She, she said to us that white people were not allowed to send this back

Mark:

. Bruce: Oh, so, so if you're

Mark:

I guess.

Mark:

But she said white people cannot send this back.

Mark:

So I was like, well, okay, well we're in, we're in for penny in for a pound.

Mark:

So we ate it and it.

Mark:

Unbeliev, a melting face.

Mark:

Meltingly hot.

Mark:

It was unbelievably hot.

Mark:

I, I gasped through it, but let me tell you, we ate the ball down

Mark:

to the bottom so that there was not even any broth left in it.

Mark:

And when she came back to our table, she was dumbfounded because

Mark:

she said, told us Chinese people only eat the fish out of it.

Mark:

They don't drink the broth and.

Mark:

Eating the whole thing.

Mark:

It was, oh, what did we know?

Mark:

Uh, uh it was hot, but it was that thing, you know, like you sit there

Mark:

and you have so, and you think, oh my gosh, my face is melting off right now.

Mark:

And then you sit for a couple minutes, you have a drink of beer,

Mark:

you sit a couple minutes, you think, I think I want more of that stuff.

Mark:

I think I, I want more.

Bruce:

Well, I want to talk for a second though, about the

Bruce:

pain versus the flavor, right?

Bruce:

Mm-hmm.

Bruce:

Because chilies can give you heat, but they also can give you a lot of

Bruce:

flavor, and how do you get in general?

Bruce:

Now, there are some.

Bruce:

Very hot chilies that will be very flavorful.

Bruce:

But in general, in my opinion, that the hotter you get, you start to mask all the

Bruce:

fruitiness and the other flavors of chili.

Bruce:

So I like chilies that are both flavorful and warm.

Mark:

Yeah, because again, let's go back to this.

Mark:

There is only one chemical across all chilies that brings on the

Mark:

burn, and that is kept saying, but that doesn't mean that Chili's,

Mark:

various kinds aren't full of flas.

Mark:

All kinds of compounds that bring all kinds of other flavors to them.

Bruce:

They are a fruit, basically.

Mark:

They are a fruit.

Mark:

So how, and I think jalapenos are incredibly fruity.

Mark:

Mm-hmm.

Mark:

in the way that bell peppers are fruity.

Mark:

Bell peppers are of the same.

Mark:

Sort of family, but botanical family as chilies, except they

Mark:

have no capsaicin in them.

Mark:

Or sometimes you can find bell peppers, which just does slightest.

Mark:

Little bit of capsaicin in it, but not much.

Mark:

Right?

Mark:

But bell peppers don't have any.

Mark:

Um, and let me tell you anecdotally, this is another anecdotal thing.

Mark:

I sometimes grow jalapenos in pots out on our deck in the summer here in New

Mark:

England, and I have to tell you, Older.

Mark:

The plant gets the hotter, the jalapenos get.

Mark:

We've discovered that over the course of a summer, they get hotter and hotter.

Bruce:

Well, the longer they stay on that vine that kept Saing grows.

Mark:

Well, it's, it's not even the long, it's, even when we pick the

Mark:

small green ones, if we pick them in late August, it's like, wow.

Mark:

Oh my gosh.

Mark:

They're gonna take a face off where.

Mark:

In mid-June, they're still relatively sweet.

Mark:

It's very funny.

Bruce:

It is really funny.

Bruce:

Now let's talk about that capsaicin for a minute.

Bruce:

It is a chemical that is both alkaline and fat soluble.

Bruce:

So those are two important things to know about it.

Bruce:

So let's say you eat that hot chili and you burn your mouth and you need

Bruce:

something to get rid of that burn.

Bruce:

Most people grab a beer.

Bruce:

They grab an iced tea.

Bruce:

This is wrong and it's wrong.

Bruce:

You need to grab.

Bruce:

Or butter or tortilla cuz the fat will dissolve it or go for at least lemonade.

Bruce:

Something acidic, right?

Bruce:

Cuz the acid right will counterbalance the alkaline and help neutralize it.

Bruce:

We knew

Mark:

this in Texas growing up because when I would get really hot, uh, from

Mark:

a jalapeno, let's say, you know, my parents would take the jalapenos off

Mark:

the nachos at El Phoenix in Dallas where we ate and because I couldn't deal with

Mark:

the jalapenos, but you know, some of the residue would still be on there

Mark:

and I would get a reaction from it.

Mark:

I.

Mark:

Always pick up and eat the lemon out of my mother's iced tea.

Mark:

And it seemed to calm the burn.

Mark:

And I think that speaks to the acidic and alkaline problem.

Mark:

We didn't know so much about fat, and I learned that as an adult, but again,

Mark:

like Bruce says, Capin is fat soluble.

Mark:

Mm-hmm.

Mark:

. So what you need to do to get it off your lips and out of your mouth is,

Mark:

as Bruce says, butter, a tortilla drinking glass of whole milk.

Mark:

Get some.

Mark:

Listen, this will even work is just a teaspoon of olive oil.

Mark:

And by the way, that Capen doesn't come off your hands very well

Mark:

when you soap doesn't do it.

Mark:

When you cut chili's in the kitchen and you know that you

Mark:

can get a burn from touching then your mouth, your eyes, whatever,

Mark:

when you're working with Chili's.

Bruce:

But whatever part's really bad, trust me.

Mark:

Yeah.

Mark:

So anyway, uh, we don't wanna go there, but, uh, one of the ways you get chili

Mark:

off your hands is you put a little bit of olive oil or vegetable oil,

Mark:

some oil of some like in your hands.

Mark:

All right.

Mark:

Rub that oil all over your hands and then wash them.

Mark:

Now the capsaicin will come off.

Bruce:

There you go.

Bruce:

That's a great way to not burn yourself when you're eating chilies.

Bruce:

And I wanna put one other thing.

Bruce:

I know that there's a myth out there that spicy foods can cause ulcers.

Bruce:

, but it is not necessarily true.

Bruce:

True.

Bruce:

It's not true that most ulcers are actually caused by a bacteria by h Pylori.

Bruce:

Not all, but some.

Bruce:

And it's not the spicy food.

Mark:

No, it's not.

Mark:

Now I, but I do believe the truth is that if you have an ulcer, really

Mark:

spicy food can exacerbate the problem.

Mark:

We can make it hurt.

Mark:

Yeah.

Mark:

Yes.

Mark:

And I think part of the problem is, The that spicy foods are often incredibly rich

Mark:

and complex because of fat and acids used to balance the chilies inside those super

Mark:

hot foods and all that stuff will really aggravate an ulcer big time it will.

Mark:

So it's, it's a little bit of a horse and cart problem there.

Mark:

But no, in general eating chilies will not give you ulcers.

Bruce:

No, I'm not giving up chilies anytime soon, but I.

Bruce:

Eat with caution, right?

Bruce:

Yeah.

Bruce:

When foods are labeled super, super hot.

Bruce:

Yeah.

Bruce:

Something is labeled with seven chilies on it.

Bruce:

I do be careful.

Bruce:

So I always say, eat all the chilies you want.

Bruce:

Yeah.

Bruce:

But eat them at your own risk.

Mark:

And, and, uh, one more risk thing before we finish

Mark:

off this chili extravaganza.

Mark:

One more risk thing is that, Uh, you wanna probably limit the extremely

Mark:

hot leash you eat if you have high blood pressure or hypertension because

Mark:

chilies do the capsaicin and the heat does raise your blood pressure.

Mark:

So it's an interesting thing that.

Mark:

Often high blood pressure diets will tell you to lay off the chilies, and

Mark:

part of that has to do with the way that the endorphin rush is pulling your

Mark:

blood pressure up from the capsaicin.

Mark:

So it's all things to consider.

Mark:

Listen, uh, I, I, I telling you way too much.

Mark:

I have hypertension and I take an alpha blocker and, uh, I'm

Mark:

still eating really hot stuff.

Mark:

So there you go.

Mark:

I guess it's just the trade off,

Bruce:

but it's under control.

Bruce:

But yours is under control.

Bruce:

It

Mark:

is under control.

Mark:

Before we get to our next segment of the podcast, let me

Mark:

say that we have a newsletter.

Mark:

It comes out once every week, once every other week, something like that.

Mark:

We have lots of fresh recipes, lots of new content.

Mark:

We do not rehearse the podcast in our newsletter.

Mark:

No, we don't.

Mark:

Instead, it's original content.

Mark:

There's knitting, there's reading, there's recipes, there's bits about our lives,

Mark:

there's bits about life in New England.

Mark:

All that kind of stuff comes out again, once every week, every two weeks.

Mark:

You can find it by going to our website, Bruce and mark.com,

Mark:

m a ark.com, and you can.

Mark:

By that sign up, I will not see your email.

Mark:

And furthermore, we promise, in fact, I've set it up this way.

Mark:

We cannot access your email and I cannot therefore sell it to

Mark:

anyone for any reason at any time.

Mark:

You can get off the newsletter simply by clicking the link at

Mark:

the bottom of each newsletter.

Mark:

Check that out if you're interested.

Mark:

Up next, as his traditional are, one minute cooking tip.

Bruce:

There is no such thing as cooking wine, right?

Bruce:

No.

Bruce:

I wanna repeat that.

Bruce:

There is no such thing as cooking wine.

Bruce:

No.

Bruce:

There's wine you would cook with, but no cooking wine despite the fact

Bruce:

that you may find cooking wine in your supermarket near the vinegars.

Bruce:

Think about where it is.

Bruce:

It's basically there because that's what it is.

Bruce:

It's a sweet and salty vinegar with a little bit of alcohol added.

Bruce:

Not enough that they can't sell it in the supermarket, but gross.

Bruce:

Now I am a firm believer and you should.

Bruce:

Cook with any wine you wouldn't drink.

Bruce:

But that doesn't mean cook with a $30 bottle.

Mark:

Okay.

Mark:

Well, I'm sitting here thinking about how funny this is because I think

Mark:

we're old enough that we grew up in a world in which cooking with wine in the

Mark:

United States was considered innovative.

Mark:

Remember that old guy, the Frugal Gourmet?

Mark:

Mm-hmm.

Mark:

. And I don't, Jeff Smith, I don't want to talk to you about his sexual peccadillos.

Mark:

Huh.

Mark:

But, um, Jeff Smith had this.

Mark:

Frugal Gourmet on pbs.

Mark:

He was very, very popular and one of his books was actually called

Mark:

The Frugal Gourmet Cooks With Wine.

Mark:

Yes.

Mark:

It was a whole book about recipes with wine

Mark:

and it was because people in the United States didn't cook with wine.

Mark:

People abroad cooked with wine, but people in the United

Mark:

States did not cook with wine.

Mark:

And this was considered like cutting edge.

Mark:

You and I grew up in an age in which cooking wine was the wine that people

Bruce:

Holland House.

Bruce:

It was at Holland House.

Bruce:

Salty.

Bruce:

You got the marsala, the sort.

Bruce:

I know.

Mark:

So gross.

Mark:

It's so salty, it's so sour.

Mark:

It has no complexity to it whatsoever, and we grew up at a

Mark:

time in which this was not the case.

Mark:

I think a lot of people who are younger than we are, let's say if

Mark:

you're 30 years old, you may not even know what we're talking about when we

Mark:

say cooking wine . You may not have ever even actually seen this thing.

Mark:

It's still in the grocery stores.

Bruce:

You can still find it.

Bruce:

But cook with wine that you think is good enough to drink

Bruce:

and maybe that's two buck, Chuck.

Bruce:

I don't know.

Bruce:

It's doesn't have to be super fine wine.

Bruce:

No, but as long as you are comfortable drinking it, then you

Bruce:

should be okay cooking with it.

Mark:

Before we get to our next segment of the podcast, let me see.

Mark:

It would be great if you could subscribe to this podcast.

Mark:

If you'd rate it, it's even better.

Mark:

And if you could drop a comment, that is the best of all possible worlds.

Mark:

Thank you for doing that.

Mark:

We really appreciate the ratings and particularly the comments.

Mark:

Really help us on this unsupported and passion project

Mark:

cooking with Bruce and Mark.

Mark:

Okay, up next we usually do a food interview with a celebrity

Mark:

or a cookbook author or somebody.

Mark:

Bruce has been so great at getting all kinds of wild

Mark:

people on food entrepreneurs, business owners, kind of crazy.

Mark:

In this episode of the podcast, we're gonna skip the interview and go straight

Mark:

to one of our favorite topics, food myths.

Bruce:

We are gonna debunk six of them Now, if you remember, mark and I wrote a

Bruce:

book called Lobster Scream when you boil them and 100 other myths about food and

Bruce:

cooking, so we know what we're talking about when we say things like brown

Bruce:

eggs are not healthier than white ones.

Mark:

Yeah, it's true.

Mark:

Let lobsters scream when you boil them is the only cookbook we've ever written.

Mark:

There's only a few recipes in.

Mark:

The only cookbook we've ever written for which there is an audio book.

Mark:

There is an audio book, so you can download it for your commute.

Mark:

It's unbelievable.

Mark:

There's an audiobook of Lobsters Scream when you boil them in a hundred other

Mark:

myths about food and cookie anyway.

Mark:

Brown eggs are not healthier than white

Mark:

eggs.

Mark:

No way.

Mark:

No.

Bruce:

The color of a chicken's egg is based on the chicken's dna N.

Bruce:

Not their diet.

Bruce:

Now what they eat can affect the flavor and color of the yoke.

Bruce:

Yes.

Bruce:

And that we know firsthand.

Bruce:

We once rented a house in northern Vermont and there was a,

Mark:

when we say northern, we mean a Canadian border.

Mark:

The Canadian

Bruce:

border and not far from the house was both a chicken

Bruce:

farm and a strawberry farm.

Bruce:

And they were the same farm they is a glued chickens and strawberries.

Bruce:

And they would throw the strawberry hus and the rotted strawberries to the

Bruce:

chickens when strawberry season was up.

Bruce:

and those chicken eggs, the yolks were like sunset, orange, and they actually

Bruce:

had a little flavor of strawberry that was, they were, so it does affect,

Bruce:

they did the inside of . The egg.

Bruce:

Not the outside of the egg.

Mark:

No.

Mark:

I mean, it's nice to get brown eggs and green eggs and blue eggs.

Mark:

They're beautiful, but the ones that healthier, right.

Mark:

Beautiful.

Mark:

And you're gonna pay more for them because people think they're

Mark:

healthier but not and right.

Mark:

It is true that by and large industrial chicken eggs are.

Mark:

Are white, but there are industrial brown, there are chicken eggs

Bruce:

and they cost more at the soup market because

Bruce:

people think they're healthy.

Mark:

Yeah, don't be fooled.

Mark:

Buy up.

Mark:

If you're gonna buy organic or local, don't buy up just because of the color.

Mark:

Okay, so what is our second food myth that there are.

Mark:

What bogs in your strawberry Frappuccino?

Mark:

What?

Mark:

What does it mean?

Bruce:

Starbucks used to use the cochineal bug based red food coloring.

Bruce:

Now it's called Carmine coloring, and it is, it's an insect based

Bruce:

food coloring in their coffee drink.

Bruce:

But they stopped using that in 2011.

Bruce:

But people still say you're getting bugs in your strawberry frappuccino.

Bruce:

No.

Bruce:

What?

Bruce:

But the bigger myth,

Mark:

wait, but anytime you eat xantham gum, anything with xanthe

Mark:

gum in it, you're getting, well, you're not getting bugs, but you're

Mark:

getting bug residue in your food.

Bruce:

You're getting bug excrement but the, this is, you have to grind,

Bruce:

you have to grind up these bugs to get the carmine food coloring,

Bruce:

but they don't use it anymore.

Bruce:

I think the bigger myth is calling a frappuccino a coffee drink.

Bruce:

. That's what I,

Mark:

that's, that's huge.

Mark:

And, uh, people are gonna add us over that.

Bruce:

We'll have a whole segment on that.

Bruce:

Uh, yeah, we're gonna do a whole segment on that.

Mark:

There's no way that a frappuccino is a coffee drink.

Mark:

Come on.

Mark:

You may break you like coke, you don't like frapp, you don't like coffee.

Mark:

So, Oh, come on.

Mark:

Come on.

Mark:

Gimme a break.

Mark:

You like coke?

Mark:

You don't like coffee?

Mark:

I mean, gimme a break.

Mark:

Okay, our next food myth is the five second rule.

Mark:

And let me just say, we all know this rule that you dropped something on the floor.

Mark:

You have five seconds to forget up, okay?

Mark:

I want to tell you a little secret.

Mark:

Bacteria and germs.

Mark:

And viruses in any other matter on the floor doesn't.

Mark:

None of it owns a stopwatch.

Mark:

, not any of it owns a stopwatch.

Mark:

So if you drop it on the floor, whatever's there's on it,

Bruce:

they're not gonna wait five seconds and then jump on the food.

Bruce:

No.

Bruce:

So it is contaminated the second it hits the floor.

Mark:

No, it's so ridiculous.

Mark:

In fact, there are all kinds of studies about this shouldn't go on along.

Mark:

They come up that basically say that if you drop a piece of toast,

Mark:

not buttered toast, but just plain dry toast on the floor.

Mark:

And you leave it there five seconds, it's no different than

Mark:

if you left it there 20 minutes.

Bruce:

Now that doesn't mean you can't eat it.

Bruce:

I mean, it depends where you're dropping it.

Bruce:

I mean, that's right.

Bruce:

I, I eat things from the F floor all the time, but whoa,

Bruce:

certainly seriously at home.

Bruce:

Not necessarily if I'm out, but, eh, that that's, we can get onto other things.

Bruce:

So the other.

Mark:

Okay.

Mark:

I don't want to know . I really, I don't eat things off the floor.

Mark:

Really?

Bruce:

One of my favorite food myths is this kills me.

Bruce:

Flat water is more hydrating than sparkling waters.

Bruce:

Wait, what?

Bruce:

I've read it on so many memes.

Bruce:

I've seen it all over the internet.

Mark:

Well, okay, now wait, wait, I gotta think about it.

Bruce:

Look, this is clearly a big enough myth that the

Bruce:

International Journal of Sports Medicine ran a study to test it out.

Bruce:

They studied this of whether you got more hydrated by drinking

Bruce:

flat water than sparkling water.

Bruce:

Okay?

Bruce:

Okay.

Mark:

Here's my thoughts is that it's not true.

Mark:

This my completely unscientific, but graduate school educated brain talking,

Mark:

it can't be more hydrating than Flatwater Sparkling water can't be more

Mark:

hydrating than than Flatwater, but.

Mark:

There are bubbles.

Mark:

In sparkling water, which do take up space that would be filled with water

Mark:

molecules with H two oh in flat water.

Mark:

So my hunch is you have to drink more sparkling water to

Mark:

get the same hit as flat water.

Bruce:

That could be what's going on.

Bruce:

Also, that you can't drink as much sparkling water, which

Bruce:

is the same theory, the same.

Bruce:

You can't chug it because it's sparkling and it gives you gas.

Bruce:

So eat, drinking, fly water.

Bruce:

I love these things.

Bruce:

It's.

Bruce:

You know, watermelon too.

Bruce:

Oh, it's so hydrating and coconut water.

Bruce:

It's so hydrating.

Bruce:

You know what else is hydrating?

Bruce:

Water, water, water, water.

Mark:

And yeah.

Mark:

This leads to another myth, which is actually not on our six sixth

Mark:

myth list today, but it's one of Bruce's my favorite pet peeves.

Mark:

It's when people on television shows drink champagne out of the bottle.

Mark:

. Have you ever tried to do that?

Mark:

Because if you do, it'll explode in your face.

Bruce:

It'll, you can't.

Bruce:

Bottleneck is so small that, and the carbonation hits

Bruce:

your lips and explodes back.

Bruce:

Yeah, no.

Bruce:

You know, you can't do it.

Mark:

Now people are always picking up bottles of champagne and down and

Mark:

on some H B O show and I'm like, oh,

Bruce:

but it's not champagne in there bottle.

Mark:

No, you can't do that.

Mark:

It's like sparkling water.

Mark:

It'll explode all over your face.

Mark:

Gimme a break.

Mark:

Okay, this here's another actual food myth that we talked about.

Mark:

Um, you cannot refreeze meat.

Mark:

That's a myth.

Bruce:

This is not true.

Bruce:

It's a myth.

Bruce:

It's a myth.

Bruce:

You can refreeze.

Bruce:

The safety issue is if meat is thawed in the refrigerator where it is kept

Bruce:

under 40 degrees Fahrenheit, 40 or under, it is safe to refreeze, right?

Bruce:

If it's thawed at room temperature or anything warmer than 40 Fahrenheit, then

Bruce:

it is not safe because it's too warm.

Bruce:

Bacteria could have grown and then you refreeze it, and then on the next

Bruce:

door the bacteria really proliferates.

Mark:

And let me say there's a second caveat.

Mark:

Is that if you have thaw it in the fridge, not on the counter,

Mark:

but on the fridge, yeah.

Mark:

And it has thawed out from the freezer in a 40 degree or less

Mark:

fridge for under 48 hours.

Mark:

It has been thawed for under 48 hours.

Mark:

You can still refuse.

Mark:

So if you take that package ground beef out tonight, and you're gonna

Mark:

make it on Wednesday and you put it in the refrigerator and it thaws.

Mark:

And on Tuesday night somebody calls up and says, go ahead to dinner

Mark:

tomorrow night, on Wednesday.

Mark:

And you're like, oh, okay.

Mark:

You can take that package ground beef, and I put it back in the

Mark:

freezer, put it right back in.

Mark:

You can, no problems asked.

Bruce:

So that whole myth that you can't refreeze meat is just a myth.

Bruce:

And for the last one we're gonna talk about, and this one, Cracks me up.

Bruce:

People still believe this.

Bruce:

Oh, if you want to eat healthier, shop the perimeter of the supermarket.

Mark:

This is because of Michael Polan and this was his idea.

Mark:

And it is really honestly one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard.

Mark:

Shop.

Mark:

You speak so highly of you, oh God, you.

Mark:

It's so idiotic.

Mark:

Shop the perimeter.

Mark:

Okay.

Mark:

Yes, I agree.

Mark:

The produce is on the perimeter.

Mark:

Okay.

Mark:

I

Bruce:

So is the fish and the meat and all that.

Mark:

And so is the cream.

Mark:

So is the heavy cream and the butter, which, okay.

Mark:

I'm not saying should And the bakery, you shouldn't eat these things.

Mark:

Yes.

Mark:

When I walk into my big Y in rural New England, the perimeter of my supermarket

Mark:

is the bakery with the chocolate

Bruce:

cakes and the prepared foods and the fried chicken.

Mark:

Right.

Mark:

This is so silly.

Mark:

in the center aisles of the supermarket.

Mark:

I'm not saying that there's not healthy stuff on the perimeter at the soup market.

Mark:

Mm-hmm.

Mark:

, but in the center of aisles are great things like whole grains.

Mark:

Yep.

Mark:

There are beans there are there canned tomatoes, brown

Mark:

rice, there's canned tomatoes.

Mark:

There are all kinds of healthy foods.

Mark:

Inside the supermarket as well as on the perimeter, and there's all kind

Mark:

of junk on the perimeter as well as in the center of the supermarket.

Mark:

It's really garbage advice and it really, wow.

Mark:

You're

Bruce:

really,

Mark:

oh, it makes me really feel about it.

Mark:

It makes so mad because somebody has a giant platform and they put this thing out

Mark:

that sounds so intuitive, and you think, oh, well, you know, that sounds great.

Mark:

And then you walk in your big wine and you're like, well, the per or my cha uh,

Mark:

supermarket is chocolate covered cake.

Mark:

So I guess I should just.

Mark:

Those and I'll be really healthy.

Mark:

It makes me, can you tell how mad it makes me?

Mark:

It makes me just furious and you know, I mean, yes.

Mark:

Is there great yogurt on the perimeter of my supermarket?

Mark:

Of course.

Mark:

Is there also great yogurt with a cup of strawberry jam in it?

Mark:

Uh, yes.

Mark:

Mm-hmm.

Mark:

, there's also that sitting right there.

Mark:

There is.

Mark:

So I, I think that this is written for really high end tech, California people

Mark:

who go in really fancy supermarkets like Dragers, and they're beautiful

Mark:

and curated and fabulous, but honestly, they're not how most of us live.

Mark:

No, they're not.

Mark:

There's healthy food throughout the supermarket.

Mark:

Okay.

Mark:

Up next, as is traditional, our last segment, what's making

Mark:

us happy in food this week?

Mark:

So, uh, you get to go first.

Bruce:

My rice cooker, it continues to make me happy week after week, after week.

Mark:

I was thinking about this morning.

Mark:

I love my rice cooker.

Bruce:

I, I, because it cooks every kind of rice you can imagine.

Bruce:

And Mark even has it going right now with spell berries in it.

Bruce:

Yeah, I, and he soaks them and then he puts them on the brown rice setting.

Bruce:

It cooks everyth.

Bruce:

Perfectly.

Bruce:

I love the rice cooker.

Mark:

I, I, I saw somebody post on Facebook a couple weeks ago

Mark:

about, should I get a rice cooker?

Mark:

And this is a very prominently great cook.

Mark:

He makes fabulous food.

Mark:

He works in the food industry, but he's not a chef, but he cooks like a

Mark:

chef and he makes fabulously good food.

Mark:

And he wrote, should I get a rice cooker?

Mark:

And so many of the responses were so snotty on, oh no, I know how to cook

Mark:

rice on this stove, and, and I thought to myself, holier than thou, oh my God.

Mark:

I thought to myself, yeah.

Mark:

1 billion Chinese people are wrong.

Mark:

You're right.

Mark:

Rice cookers are just absolutely unnecessary.

Bruce:

I mean, all through South Asia too, India and China and Japan,

Bruce:

every household has a rice cooker

Mark:

and it makes rice so perfect.

Mark:

It makes perfect brown rice, perfect fluffy white rice, and it.

Mark:

Yes.

Mark:

Can I make white rice on the stove?

Mark:

Of course I can.

Mark:

Of course I know how to do it.

Mark:

Of course, I could set it all up and let it go.

Mark:

But in this case, in a rice cooker, all I have to do is put the rice

Mark:

in, add the water to the line on the side of the cook, right?

Mark:

Push the button.

Mark:

Push the button.

Mark:

It sings me a little song,

Bruce:

and then it keeps the rice warm, you know?

Bruce:

We've been feeding one of our dogs a lot of rice for his digestion.

Bruce:

He's an older dog, and I put rice up for him the other night, and I had left

Bruce:

it overnight and I had forgotten him that I'd even put the rice cooker on.

Bruce:

And in the morning the rice was still warm.

Bruce:

The rice cooker kept it freshest.

Bruce:

Beautiful, of course.

Bruce:

So it's great.

Bruce:

I mean, you go into a sushi restaurant, they've got.

Bruce:

Big things of rice and rice cookers that have been there all day.

Mark:

It's just the snot effect on Facebook about, I knew

Mark:

how to cook it on the stove.

Mark:

That just drove me crazy.

Mark:

But good for you.

Mark:

All these food bloggers and influencers and all, and being so snotty about

Mark:

not having a rice cooker, and I just thought, what is wrong with you that.

Mark:

You are so down on these things.

Mark:

Of course, we all know how to cook it on the stove.

Mark:

That doesn't mean that this isn't a great product table.

Mark:

Okay, so what's making me happy in what is making you happy in this week?

Mark:

I'm really on a tear this week about rice cookers.

Mark:

Okay.

Mark:

What's making me happy this week is laminated biscuits, and I have

Mark:

to tell you this little story.

Mark:

Okay?

Mark:

So Bruce went to Boston and he taught some cooking classes in

Mark:

Boston last weekend for butcher.

Mark:

And I was left to my own devices.

Mark:

And if you know us, you know that I, mark am the writer of the pair

Mark:

and Bruce is the chef and I know do a lot of cooking for myself.

Mark:

But he was out.

Mark:

And I told you in the last episode of this podcast that I love duck eggs.

Mark:

So I got myself some duck eggs for dinner.

Mark:

And then I wanted to make buttermilk biscuits and I, you know, I love Natalie

Mark:

Dupree recipe, and I've used it a billion times for her food processor biscuits,

Mark:

and I think it's a brilliant recipe.

Mark:

Really nice.

Mark:

The cream recipe, food processor, it's delicious.

Mark:

But in this case, I wanted to make buttermilk biscuits and I wanted

Mark:

to make them slightly differently.

Mark:

But I looked at this recipe and you could find it online on Bon Appetit, and it's a.

Mark:

Lamination process for making biscuits.

Mark:

It's wild.

Mark:

You roll it out, then you cut it into quarters and then you know, you

Mark:

basically stack the quarters and then you pat it down and then you cut it into

Mark:

quarters again, and you stack them and then you roll it gently out and then

Mark:

cut it into biscuits, which are mostly squares, and you bake them and it.

Mark:

Did come out really wild.

Mark:

It doesn't have that soft, velvety center that many southerners

Mark:

like me love in biscuits.

Mark:

You know how they guess that creamy, velvety center Instead,

Mark:

they had thousands of layers.

Bruce:

It did even in the

Bruce:

photo, it looked like it was layered.

Bruce:

It looked beautiful online.

Bruce:

It was gorgeous.

Mark:

It was really an odd way to make biscuits.

Mark:

I don't think I've ever made a laminated biscuit before.

Mark:

I'm not sure that in the future, I won't just go back to Natalie Dupre's

Mark:

recipe because it's the tried and true favorite, but, and it's, you know, it's

Mark:

much more like my southern heritage.

Mark:

But this was a really interesting technique of making biscuits

Mark:

and they ended up really layered and really crunchy.

Bruce:

Wow.

Mark:

It was, it was kind of interest.

Mark:

Beautiful.

Mark:

Interesting.

Mark:

Yeah.

Mark:

And you had that with your duck egg for dinner?

Mark:

I did.

Mark:

And a chicken and and kale sausage.

Mark:

Just perfect.

Mark:

Yeah.

Mark:

Yeah.

Mark:

A perfect dinner.

Mark:

Okay.

Mark:

That's the podcast this week.

Mark:

Mark.

Mark:

Thanks for joining us.

Mark:

Thanks for being on this journey with us.

Mark:

We really appreciate it.

Mark:

Connect with us on Facebook, under the Group Cooking with Bruce and

Mark:

Mark, or under our own names, mark Scarborough or Bruce Weinstein.

Mark:

We're also on Instagram as Bruce a Weinstein at Mark Scarborough.

Mark:

You could find us all there.

Mark:

If in their life you want to have more literary things, check out my

Mark:

podcast Walking with Dante, A slow walk through Dante's unbelievable poem,

Mark:

which most people know as the Divine Comedy by which he only titled comedy.

Mark:

So check out that podcast.

Mark:

Otherwise,

Bruce:

we will see you next week and the week after, and the week

Bruce:

after that on another episode of Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

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About the Podcast

Cooking with Bruce and Mark
Fantastic recipes, culinary science, a little judgment, hysterical banter, love and laughs--you know, life.
Join us, Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough, for weekly episodes all about food, cooking, recipes, and maybe a little marital strife on air. After writing thirty-six cookbooks, we've got countless opinions and ideas on ingredients, recipes, the nature of the cookbook-writing business, and much more. If you've got a passion for food, we also hope to up your game once and a while and to make you laugh most of the time. Come along for the ride! There's plenty of room!

About your host

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Mark Scarbrough

Former lit professor, current cookbook writer, creator of two podcasts, writer of thirty-five (and counting) cookbooks, author of one memoir (coming soon!), married to a chef (my cookbook co-writer, Bruce Weinstein), and with him, the owner of two collies, all in a very rural spot in New England. My life's full and I'm up for more challenges!