In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the comedian and food nerd chats with the owner of Danny Boy's Pizza in Los Angeles, Adam Goldstein. They talk about wood-fired pizza, cooking over a fire, and the benefits of using a propane torch to cook over a hot fire. Plus, a new cookbook from Food IQ, cookbooks, and cookbooks. And, of course, there's a new episode of the Food IQ cookbook, cookbook series, which is out now. Food IQ is a cookbook and cookbook written and published by J&R Restaurants, and is available for pre-order now. You can get a copy of the cookbook on Amazon, or you can buy it for just $19.99 at your local grocery store or your local liquor store, and get 20% off with code: FOODIQ at checkout. It's free and includes shipping, handling, and handling fees. You won't want to miss this one! It's a must-listen episode, and it's worth the price of admission to get your very own copy of Food IQ's cookbook. If you don't already have one, you can get your own cookbook or cookbook! or buy a copy at Amazon for $99.99, or use the link below to get 10% off for a limited time, plus shipping and handling, plus free shipping throughout the rest of the world, plus an additional $10.00 off your purchase at Amazon Prime membership and Prime membership. You'll get free shipping worldwide, plus a free copy of my book, and I'll get it for free, plus I'll send you an extra $10% off your first month, plus they'll get you an ad-free version of the book and an additional shipping address, and you'll get an ad on the book review, and all other shipping and shipping, and a free shipping offer, plus all other perks, plus you get an additional 7 days of VIP access to the book is shipping worldwide. you'll also get all of that plus a $10,000 shipping and a 5-day shipping policy. I'm giving you all a chance to read and subscribe to my podcasting membership and get a $5-day VIP membership, plus get a personalized course, plus the chance to access to all my other perks like VIP + 7 other places I mention in the book, plus other VIP gets a discount code
00:00:32.000So if you're a chef, anybody that lives in the world of food, you just get, like, you probably get pitched ideas all day long because you're an entertainment guy.
00:00:42.000If you're a chef, you get the, like, What's the best way to cook the chicken?
00:02:40.000I got it from Sunterra, Sunterra Pro, but I'm having a whole outdoor system installed with brick and mortar and everything by a company called Grillworks.
00:03:08.000The only thing that I would say is, you know, there's one piece of the puzzle that I've learned recently from these guys at J&R. J&R make really great grills as well.
00:04:30.000So if I'm cooking four different steaks, I have them numbered.
00:04:34.000And it tells me where everything is at.
00:04:37.000And what I love about doing it that way is, because since I've been cooking a lot over hardwood, is I'm getting all this smoke from the hardwood.
00:05:25.000That as a chef, it feels like cheating sometimes.
00:05:27.000Like, people use the sous vide, you know, you put the probe in there, and it's like, it's not too easy, but it feels like you don't get the...
00:05:35.000Part of it is the, you know, like, I made this over fire, I just threw it in the fire.
00:05:40.000And you ever throw it right on the coals?
00:05:46.000I work for this French guy, Laurent Monrique, and he...
00:05:52.000He basically was like, we were cooking these quails and the quails were dripping fat into the fire and the fire was flaming up and it was like starting to burn the skin and he's like, you know.
00:09:00.000Someone explained to me that steel and cast iron, they're much better conductors of heat than coals.
00:09:08.000And then if you actually, you would think that laying something down over the coal would make it cook quicker, but that's not necessarily the case.
00:11:05.000Whereas a steel pan, if it's a little thicker, it'll react to the flame below and transfer that heat maybe so you can heat it up quickly if it's a little hot or cool it down.
00:11:45.000It's like, you throw, you're like, I'm going to sear these mushrooms.
00:11:47.000You throw them in, and then it's just like a pool of water, like, boiling.
00:11:50.000And that's because, you know, the heat in the pan gets sucked out, and then there's not enough energy to boil off the moisture that's getting pulled out of the mushrooms, and you get, you know, boiled mushrooms, which are delicious, luckily.
00:12:31.000Like, if Danny's got a go-to method, I'd give you a two-pound cowboy ribeye.
00:12:37.000So that's what I feel like what happens is depends upon the piece of meat.
00:12:42.000That's what's so beautiful about, you know, a cow's got all these different pieces and they all need a little bit of different cooking style.
00:12:50.000I mean, when you cook a ribeye, you don't cook it the same way as you cook a New York steak.
00:12:54.000Maybe a ribeye's got, you know, if you think about a ribeye and a New York steak are coming right off the back strap.
00:13:48.000I like it more on the rare side, and I wouldn't mind even a thick steak cooking it a little bit faster, having it maybe just be warm in the center.
00:13:57.000So I think it really depends on the steak, man.
00:14:00.000Do you tend to cook over fire, or do you sometimes cook a steak just on a cast iron, if it's a thinner steak?
00:14:26.000So moving out to Los Angeles, being able to cook over the fire, it's like an obsession.
00:14:30.000It's like all I want to do because you didn't get that.
00:14:33.000But you can definitely cook great steak in a frying pan for sure.
00:14:38.000Classic French technique with you throw butter and herbs and garlic in there at the end and Maybe you do a pan roast where you cook it over the fire and you throw it in the oven.
00:14:48.000That's a delicious way to cook a steak.
00:15:36.000You ever drive through Pennsylvania, the farm country, it smells like...
00:15:40.000My parents used to live in Harrisburg.
00:15:42.000When I used to go to visit them, I used to drive through farm country, and it just smells like fucking death.
00:15:47.000It smells so bad, but the people that live there don't smell it at all, because your nose sort of detects changes in its smell more than it detects smells.
00:16:08.000And when I got really into it, once I got this Argentine-style grill and I started cooking over hardwood, I'm like, I mean, regular steaks are great.
00:16:16.000But cooking a steak over fire, over just wood, there's something better.
00:18:55.000They know what the fuck they're doing out here and apparently the history of it is explained to me by my friend Adam Curry is that it was German settlers that came here like way back in the day and they were, you know, they smoked meat.
00:19:08.000They smoked a lot of sausages and smoked a lot of meat.
00:19:12.000You know how Italian food on the East Coast is very different than Italian food in Italy?
00:19:17.000The German food in Texas became very different than the smoked meat that they would cook in Germany.
00:19:25.000And they developed with all the spices and the sauces that they use out here and the rubs.
00:19:30.000And they just developed this amazing method using those big old barrel smokers.
00:22:07.000He shows how to tend to an offset grill and the whole deal.
00:22:11.000His rib recipe, like all those recipes, there are very few cookbooks like this, like where if you follow a recipe, you get the result like you would get at the restaurant, you know?
00:22:59.000So basically, like, you know, I obsessed over, there are these amazing bread baking ovens in India that the way that they funnel the smoke from below allows them to be extremely, extremely even, you know?
00:23:13.000And I just, I don't know, I dorked out on it.
00:23:15.000It's like, you know, I get very excited about something, I want to make the best of it.
00:23:18.000You're making it one time, it's 3,000 pounds, so you're not making it again.
00:23:22.000And I ultimately screwed up, like we all do.
00:23:27.000But I ended up saying, you know, I want to have something that's a little more versatile than just a grill that I can only do one type of barbecue on.
00:23:36.000So I put the fired below with the idea that I can get it raging hot.
00:23:42.000I mean, I can get this thing up to like 800 degrees and I can do classic pizza or I can do bread baking.
00:23:47.000And it's got stones that I can slide in and out of it.
00:24:08.000This is my latest kind of like obsession with this thing is I like to get a fire going, cook on the grill right above the fire, and then close the door.
00:24:19.000Smoke roast like a hotter like barbecue like you're barbecuing at whatever it is, you know a hundred and instead of like a 275 your barbecue barbecue like 550 for grilled steak because you get that intense smoke flavor But you also get a more even like oven heat around the whole thing that that for me is really special And so,
00:24:43.000have you experimented with offsets and done it this way, and you just decided that...
00:24:49.000I've definitely smoked meat on an offset.
00:30:35.000Well, as long as it would, it would have to be good, and I'm not much, well, I actually do like vodka martinis, but I like them extra dirty, so what I'm having is like a lot of olive juice and liquor.
00:32:32.000Stone fruit, like anything with a stone pit, like it starts with cherries early in the season, then like, you know, peaches and plums have that hard rock hard pit.
00:35:28.000I've worked in restaurants and been the chef of restaurants that have pizza programs.
00:35:32.000So I've definitely been like pizza adjacent.
00:35:35.000But the thing about it is, until you live and die day in and day out and do it, and it's your responsibility to build it, you don't really...
00:35:43.000So this was like, I want to learn how to make pizza.
00:35:45.000About four years, three years ago, I went out to Vegas and I started asking Vincent questions.
00:35:50.000I've got like four friends all named Vincent that are pizza analysts.
00:36:00.000I grew up on 83rd Street and first and right across the street was Gino's Pizza and the guy that worked there, Vincent.
00:36:07.000And I asked Vincent and I kept on asking these questions and he was like, yo man, you gotta talk to this guy John Arena.
00:36:14.000This guy is the, like, he's the Pizza Yoda.
00:36:17.000And any time I would start asking people, like, questions that got into, like, the science of pizza and really you needed to know, always pointed back, you gotta talk to this guy, John Arena.
00:36:26.000So, Vincent hooked me up, and he takes you on as an apprentice, like...
00:36:31.000He wants to make sure you're going to respect the craft before he starts talking to you.
00:36:35.000Because so many chefs are like, disrespect what goes into making pizza great.
00:37:09.000And then it just really, really deserves a lot of respect.
00:37:13.000I would just say that it would be, I was going to say that rather, that would be akin to baking or being a great pastry chef or something like that.
00:37:20.000So, I mean, this guy, John Arena, he's the guy that can explain and knows the history of it.
00:37:27.000But, you know, the baker was, the brewmaster was, the pizzaiola in the town when, you know, before that, those were separate jobs.
00:37:35.000Like, it is very much being a baker and...
00:37:54.000Well, it's just, cooking is so exciting.
00:37:57.000Now I think what's going on is, you know, you have this incredible history of cooking, right?
00:38:02.000But now what you have is a lot of people sharing stuff online.
00:38:06.000And I follow probably 30 or 40 cooks and chefs online and, you know, there's a bunch of pages that have like these very quickly edited, almost like a one-minute cooking show of how to put together a great meal or a great dish.
00:38:21.000It's exciting and I think it's because of the cooking shows on television and the cooking shows on the internet and all these small little shows that are on TikTok and for me it's Instagram that I watch.
00:38:33.000It's really exciting because it's making people enthusiastic about cooking and I think it's introducing the option of becoming a cook, becoming a chef to a lot of people out there.
00:38:45.000I feel like today more people want to cook than ever before.
00:38:50.000And fewer people know how to cook than ever before.
00:41:27.000And I was writing this, so the cookbook was a pandemic project where it was like, so I was testing out the recipes and writing the recipes for the book.
00:41:37.000So it was like we had to cook, you know, the whole time.
00:41:48.000Do you think that people starting out, like if you've really never had any experience cooking, do you think that a culinary school or some sort of a class is the way to go?
00:41:57.000Or do you think you should just start simply and slow from a book or an online tutorial?
00:42:50.000As a non-matriculated kind of class by class, that's a great opportunity.
00:42:55.000Taking some cooking classes as a home cook, you learn a lot.
00:42:59.000If you want to be a chef, it's a hands-on experience in the restaurant that's going to get you there.
00:43:03.000But I think there's definitely a use for taking cooking classes as a home cook.
00:43:09.000You're not the only one who's told me this.
00:43:11.000That sentiment has been echoed by a lot of great chefs that I've talked to, said the same thing.
00:43:16.000My problem is also, though, you know, there are a lot of culinary jobs out there.
00:43:22.000And think about all the hotels and all the cruise ships and all the corporate cafeterias.
00:43:27.000There are so many culinary jobs out there.
00:43:30.000And if that's a goal, if you want to work in one of those jobs, then culinary school can be a great road to give you the needed, you know...
00:43:41.000That can be a great route to get one of those jobs.
00:43:43.000If you want to have a standalone restaurant, maybe something more avant-garde, maybe something where you're a little more creative, then culinary school might not get you there.
00:43:52.000And it can put you at a disadvantage because you get...
00:44:05.000But for so many folks, you go to culinary school, you come out with big debt.
00:44:09.000And then you can't afford to take a job at a restaurant that's paying minimum wage because you need to pay back that loan.
00:44:17.000So if you get a job at a restaurant, the restaurant will essentially give you a task and then if you show effort and show that you have work ethic and show that you're really interested, they'll slowly train you to learn new techniques and cook things?
00:44:34.000And this gets into a whole other issue that's going on right now with the labor laws and how they've really kind of changed the way that people in restaurants learn how to cook and cooks come up in the business.
00:44:49.000So I kind of came up as the last of the world where the apprentice system was still kind of a piece of the puzzle, if that makes sense.
00:44:59.000So I went and worked at Le Bernardin, super fancy French restaurant.
00:45:03.000I was like, You know, 15 years old, 14 years old.
00:45:07.000And, you know, his chef was like, I can't pay you.
00:45:10.000You know, you're not legal to work, but you can come and work for free.
00:45:13.000So did you always know that you wanted to be a chef?
00:50:29.000Well, you're a black belt under Henzo.
00:50:31.000I'm a black belt under Henzo and I laugh because, you know, everybody's got like the one story, the one time that recently they got into some fight and like, I've been in like 20 fights and I've never won a fight in my life.
00:52:08.000He definitely pushes really, really hard in his life.
00:52:12.000He's not a young man, he pushed really hard.
00:52:14.000He was like, every now and then you're like, there's somebody that you vote most, you least want to get in a fight with that guy.
00:52:22.000I'm like, Kurt would just eat my heart out.
00:52:24.000It doesn't matter how good you are, how much better you are, I'm like, that guy's going to beat me up, because he's going to raise the level of violence, he's going to eat my heart, I'm scared.
00:52:31.000And he's going to have a smile on his face.
00:52:37.000So I went in there and he put me together with this girl that had been training for like two years and he was like, you know, give it a try, see what you think.
00:52:46.000And like 30 seconds later I was like twisted over, you know, yelling uncle.
00:52:50.000And I was like, he's like, yeah, she's been training for two years.
00:52:52.000I was like, if I'm here for two years, am I going to be that good?
00:53:34.000You meet a lot of those characters in jujitsu, like people that you would see on the street and think nothing of.
00:53:41.000There's a guy named Jeff Noodles at Hanzo Gracie in New York, and he's like, he's just such a nice guy, and he's not a big man at all, and he would just kill you.
00:58:20.000The Italians came to America through New York, and so that's where the first kind of pizza came on the scene.
00:58:25.000But then as the Italian diaspora starts to spread across the country, you see different ingredients being incorporated in different towns, and then the pizza starts to change based on the local food.
00:59:21.000So when you say, like, is it better or should it have the wood?
00:59:25.000It's like, well, if you're going to make a Neapolitan-style pizza, you should do it in a wood-fired oven because that's what was traditionally done.
01:00:20.000Does the wood, does the flavor of the wood, like, I'm always interested in this, and I do this at home all the time, like I get, I've got orange wood, I've got almond, I've got oak.
01:00:30.000And I've really been trying to tell, like, can I taste the difference between the smoke from one of these woods versus the other?
01:00:36.000Some of them, like mesquite, has a really distinct flavor.
01:00:52.000You know, like almond wood in California is super traditional because, you know, the almond farms have to change over their trees every however many years and they sell off the wood, right?
01:01:04.000So I feel like, or post oak in Texas is like, you got post oak.
01:01:36.000And that for like trying to maintain a steady temperature over a long period of time, I would imagine something like post oak, because that's why Terry Blacks probably uses it.
01:01:45.000They have these enormous smokers that they have to maintain, you know, at a steady 250 for, you know, 24 hours a day they're cooking.
01:02:40.000They're going to make everybody have electric in their houses pretty soon.
01:02:44.000Yeah, they're stopping fireplaces because apparently that's a big issue in terms of pollution, particulate pollution and what smoke from a fireplace does, which really sucks because it's the best smell.
01:02:56.000When you go into a house and the fireplace is cooking and it's warm out, like if you're in Colorado and you've got a fireplace and it's January, that's amazing.
01:03:04.000You get inside the house, you smell the fireplace and it's cool.
01:03:08.000You smell it outside when you're getting close to the house.
01:03:11.000I think the thing that's, you know, you just run into this all the time now because everybody's so, like, staunch in their politics and everybody's got their opinions, but it's like, you know, I'm in L.A. I'm like, I don't give a shit about the fireplace.
01:03:21.000It's like a thousand degrees all year long.
01:03:35.000I think the thing is, it's fine if you live in a small town, and you're not really contributing that much.
01:03:41.000But if you live in a large city, you have a few million people in your city, and a few hundred thousand of them are burning fires at the same time, you might have a problem.
01:03:51.000And maybe if you're a firefighter, you're like, these jackasses are just burning their houses down.
01:04:04.000Sometimes when there's high wind, like the Santa Ana's and it's dry out, they're worried about embers flying from someone's barbecue and starting a fire.
01:04:31.000And so in LA, you're like, I mean, I am that annoying neighbor that makes my whole block smell like wood fire.
01:04:37.000And I love it when someone else is doing it, but I can understand how if you're like, you know, if that's not your favorite flavor.
01:04:42.000I don't think the problem is the smell.
01:04:44.000I think the real problem is the pollution.
01:04:45.000People are worried about what it's actually doing to air quality.
01:04:49.000For whatever you want to say about long-term environmental impact, there's a real air quality issue that exists no matter what, no question about it.
01:04:59.000You're in LA, your lungs start aching downtown.
01:05:03.000It's like you can't even see the mountains through the haze, and then it'll rain.
01:05:06.000You're like, holy shit, there's mountains out there.
01:06:19.000And I was inspired by this restaurant.
01:06:21.000This restaurant called Echabari in northern Spain, which is like...
01:06:26.000Probably one of the most famous grill restaurants in the world.
01:06:30.000And they do their grills like this where you can pick them up and put them down.
01:06:33.000So the pieces from the inside of the grill can come out and they can't lever off of any height there and you can stick them in.
01:06:43.000So you can raise or lower your grills like that.
01:06:46.000And then you can also, I liked it because you see that basket with the peppers in it there?
01:06:51.000Like I built that out of stainless steel and the idea is I built all those grills out of stainless steel so you can kind of like put different pieces of equipment in.
01:09:55.000And a massive homemade smoker slash grill with multiple cooking surfaces outside.
01:10:02.000I mean, that alone would get people excited about, like a guy who likes grilling, who's looking at your house like, holy, that would be a giant selling point.
01:10:11.000It's a buck a piece of wood these days.
01:10:26.000So most of the time if I'm cooking a thin steak, like a steak that's, you know, regular inch thick steak, I'm cooking, I'm creating a fire.
01:10:34.000And this was what I was talking about with that Grillworks grill, which I think are phenomenal grills.
01:10:38.000But if you look at the base of my grill space, not the barbecue space, but the grill space, it's lined with fire bricks and it's got a round.
01:10:49.000And what I like to do is get a big fire going that heat up those bricks and get a lot of heat in there that even if I were to turn the fire off, I could cook the steak on there.
01:11:00.000Because the heat is going to continue to...
01:13:11.000Kamado Joe's is very well designed because they have the way they use the upper, you know, the baffle when it changes the temperature and adjust things.
01:13:20.000They've got a bunch of like very smart sort of improvements.
01:13:24.000Also the way it opens and closes is a little easier.
01:13:27.000Yeah, they got springs on the lid and everything like that.
01:13:30.000They took like the existing Kamado's and they made them better.
01:13:34.000I feel like, you know, again, like, you've got traditional barbecue, and then you've got, like, grilling.
01:13:40.000Two completely different things, although often conflated.
01:13:44.000And then these are kind of these hybrid, like, you know, barbecue ovens, which you can grill on, and it's confusing for people how I'm supposed to use this stuff.
01:13:55.000Yeah, luckily there's plenty of tutorials online on how to smoke on a Kamado or how to grill on a Kamado.
01:14:02.000But, you know, the thing about the ceramic, for most of them, it's the ceramic is what's retaining heat.
01:14:09.000But like I said, Weber makes one that's way easier to move around.
01:14:12.000And it's, I think they call it the Summit.
01:14:15.000And it's just a thick insulated steel, but, you know, it's like a fraction of the weight.
01:14:20.000And there's another company that makes one that's aluminum.
01:14:24.000They make an aluminum insulated Kamado that's supposed to be the same thing.
01:14:32.000Although, I mean, I feel like there's two pieces because one of them is insulating so that the coals last longer, you're not wasting the energy.
01:14:42.000But then the other thing is that the actual, the thing heats up and it holds the heat so that it radiates its own heat.
01:16:35.000But one of the beautiful things about it is you go there and you can see, they have it like as a centerpiece, these grills where you can watch them cook on it.
01:16:43.000So as you walk in, you're taking the smell in of all the burning wood and the meat, and it's all being done like right in front of your face so you can see it.
01:20:02.000Everybody comes over and, you know, some days it's like we're rushing home from the beach in the summer and we're just making whatever we can.
01:20:10.000But other days it's like we go to the farmer's market in the morning and we make it a whole day affair.
01:20:19.000There's a thing about, like, preparing for a meal and, like, looking forward to it over the course of the day and getting ready and getting everything set up.
01:21:49.000Well, I love cooking on them because I'll use those oftentimes for the reverse sear steaks because I'll set it at 225. I'll set that to super smoke.
01:22:07.000Yeah, I'll pull it at 110 and then I'll sear it.
01:22:10.000The only thing that they don't have that I really wish they would do is make a direct fire option so that you could sear in the same thing.
01:22:18.000Like, there's a company called Lone Star Grills, and they make phenomenal offset smokers, but they also make a really good pellet grill, but it has a setting where you move this grate aside, this plate,
01:22:35.000It exposes the fire, and then you crank it up with the lid open, and then it has direct flame.
01:22:41.000So then you're cooking literally right over the fire, and it's still just wood and fire because you're using these pellets.
01:22:49.000The pellets are essentially compressed sawdust from hardwood, And so that option I wish Traeger would figure out how to do that because Lone Star Grills has it and they make amazing just traditional offset smokers too.
01:23:52.000The more an animal uses a muscle, the tougher it gets, the more sinewy, tough stuff is in there, the longer and slower I have to cook it to break it down.
01:24:03.000And the leaner and the less used a muscle, the more tender and the faster I cook it and the more I can eat it rare.
01:24:41.000That flank steak is a good example, right?
01:24:45.000Because it's a thin cut and you really want to just sort of sear it quick on the outside and Like I said, they all have their different things that work well with them.
01:24:55.000You know, I really like Traeger's and any kind of pellet grill for game meat because it's so lean and you just really want to just sort of get it up to temperature.
01:25:05.000And then I generally sear it on a cast iron skillet.
01:25:08.000So that reverse cooking technique that you're talking about, you know, it's very safe.
01:25:16.000Because I don't want to – this is where – so when I think about the temperature at the inside of the meat, like I want to cook a piece of beef to 125 degrees, let's say, or like 120 degrees, I want the final temperature inside to be rare, medium rare.
01:25:32.000If I cook it at 400 degrees, by the time that it gets to 125 in the very middle and it's right, it's going to be really overcooked on the outside.
01:25:47.000Whereas if I cook it at 130 degrees, really, really slow, maybe 270 degrees very, very slowly, and let it come up to temperature, it's going to be perfectly cooked all the way through.
01:25:59.000So for something like either very, very lean game meats, or like we were saying, for a thick piece of ribeye where I really want that fat on the inside to have a chance to liquefy.
01:26:41.000Yeah, it's just slowly and taking in all the smoke and they get it up to, I forget what their internal temperature is, and then they drop it down and put it over the flames.
01:26:49.000So that was like, when we're writing this cookbook, I'm like, okay, well, I've heard of them.
01:27:33.000We had a restaurant called The Meatball Shop back in New York.
01:27:36.000Visited all the farms and we got all of our pork from these guys.
01:27:39.000So I've been to all these farms, like Amish farms where they're growing these incredible, like, you know, close to extinct species of animals, like keeping them alive on the planet.
01:28:53.000You know, really scientifically, like, say, I'm going to cook different types of meat different ways and really try and get, is this working?
01:29:00.000And I always have steak from Patrick in my freezer.
01:29:05.000And I think they're the best steaks in the world.
01:29:07.000Like, I really think, like, best steak in the world.
01:29:49.000That's when you get a little older, and you're like, dude, this guy's 23 years old.
01:29:52.000He's got a purple belt, and he knows that if he taps me in front of the instructor, he's going to get his brown belt, so he's just coming at me.
01:29:58.000I'm like, dude, I've just eaten pizza for three months, homie.
01:30:37.000Many people say that you should bring a steak to room temperature, but I've heard many other people say, no, you should actually put it on cold, that way the middle of it will cook slower.
01:30:47.000I think for a thinner steak, it's very helpful, right?
01:30:50.000Because if you want to keep a rare, like, I don't know, I used to go to, well, Moon's over in Miami, what is that place?
01:31:57.000So I had this restaurant called Meatball Shop, and we were talking about expanding to a different city because we've got a bunch in New York.
01:32:05.000And I went to Philly, and I was like, shit, man, we can't come here.
01:32:58.000These people are really, like, they're not the, I wouldn't necessarily say that I want to be best friends with every person I've met on the street here, but I know that if I was in trouble, I'd want this guy to come bail me out.
01:33:33.000When you have bears in your backyard, you're a different person.
01:33:36.000It's also like, the winter, it's surviving through the winter there, you're planning ahead, but that, and there's a sense of like, Real camaraderie where if you don't pull over when somebody is in a ditch on the side of the road, you're killing that person.
01:34:39.000Well, that was the thing about New York post 9-11.
01:34:42.000Like, post 9-11 New York was a beautiful place.
01:34:44.000Like, I hate that that's what brought it out of people, but there's a thing about 9-11...
01:34:50.000After the attacks where it felt like people were more friendly, more connected to each other, it felt just different.
01:34:58.000It felt there was more love in the air.
01:35:00.000I think about this all the time when I think about, like, if we were to define some of these terms, like in the kitchen, you know, amongst restaurateurs, people are always talking about, like, I care about my employees.
01:36:10.000I wish that, you know, but we're never going to, or hopefully we're not faced with an opportunity to like really where the rubber meets the road.
01:36:16.000But every now and then you're like, okay, shit's hitting the fan.
01:36:52.000There was no, you know, you got lucky.
01:36:55.000Or you were skillful, rather, and you got an animal and the whole tribe eats, but then next thing in the morning, you're back to work again.
01:37:05.000And, you know, that kind of life is a brutal, vicious way of life where it's, you know, there's no hospitals, so if you get hurt, you don't survive, generally.
01:37:16.000If you get an infection, you don't survive.
01:37:19.000If you get an attack, you don't survive.
01:37:23.000But that finality of existence probably brought people closer together.
01:37:28.000And I think one of the things that's...
01:37:30.000It's contrary to what you would think.
01:37:34.000The logic would be that if life was easier, you'd be happier.
01:37:38.000But I don't necessarily think that's true.
01:37:41.000I think there's something about life being too easy that...
01:37:46.000It fucks people's heads up because they need a certain amount of struggle in order to have a meaning for their existence.
01:37:51.000I think that's how we're hardwired because of hundreds of thousands of years of hardscrabble living to try to get by.
01:37:58.000And then within the last, you know, X amount of years, it's been pretty fucking easy to coast.
01:38:05.000You know, I mean, there's more fat people now than there ever been.
01:38:08.000This is the first time in history where poor people are fat.
01:38:11.000It's, you know, back in the day, fat people were super attractive.
01:38:15.000They would paint these Rubenesque models because it was so rare that a woman was so opulent that she had the ability to get overweight.
01:38:23.000Well, there's also a different definition today of what, quote-unquote, what being fat is, right?
01:38:30.000I think that back in the day, there were fewer people that were really morbidly obese, which is, you know, I went to the doctor a few years ago.
01:38:38.000Doctor said, you know, you're morbidly obese.
01:38:42.000And if we look at what that means from a medical, forgetting all the other...
01:41:32.000I think, you know, I mean, in a perfect world, It would be a normal part of everyone's day to exercise instead of this thing that people dread and people procrastinate about and most people put off.
01:41:46.000If you look at the percentage of people in America that are like legitimately obese, not by the body mass index but by percentage of body fat, it's unusually high.
01:41:58.000I feel as though visually from what I... If you were to look at 10 years ago, it was the first generation of children who had a shorter life expectancy than their parents because congenital heart disease was just such a massive killer.
01:42:13.000And it felt at that time, just from observation, that folks in the last...
01:42:20.000I mean, certainly in the last 10 years, health...
01:42:23.000And health-related exercise has been way more popular.
01:42:27.000The gyms are constantly all over the place.
01:42:29.000Whether or not people are following through, there has been a rebound.
01:42:35.000I think there has been a popularization of exercise, but in terms of the amount of people that are fit, I don't think there's been that much of a change, unfortunately.
01:42:45.000And during the pandemic, I think it's actually dropped off.
01:42:48.000You know, one of the things that we were talking about recently was children during the pandemic.
01:42:53.000There's been a big upswing in obesity amongst children, unfortunately, and big upswing in the amount of fat gained and weight gained for kids because, you know, for two years- You can't go outside.
01:43:08.000You know, the hope is that that turns around now and that we see the light at the end of the tunnel and we're getting out of this thing.
01:43:17.000It's an amazing opportunity during the pandemic for people to take care of their health and realize that that's one of the primary factors of whether or not you have a good outcome versus a bad outcome from COVID. I mean, there's many factors, right?
01:47:24.000Lighter roasts are actually, they're less time in the roasting, it affects the bean less, the flavor is different, and you get more caffeine.
01:47:32.000Actually, I'm wearing a, this is a black rifle jacket.
01:47:34.000You got the black rifle, you got the Fuji match shirt on?
01:48:05.000I bought a $170 gi and you didn't wave the math fee?
01:48:10.000People are like, this is obscure talk here, kids.
01:48:13.000Your coffee thing, if you're really into it, you get into the flavors, and you get into drinking it black.
01:48:23.000I used to always add cream to my coffee, and I still do if I get Starbucks, because, no offense, Starbucks, but generally speaking, their black coffee does not taste that good.
01:48:31.000A lot of it is like overcooked and burnt.
01:48:34.000I read that Howard Schultz's biography, and it turned me into a huge Starbucks fan, because the guy is just so inspirational.
01:49:09.000No, he partnered with, it's part of his book, he like found this guy that was doing this thing and he was like, I want to partner with you and bring this to the world.
01:49:16.000It's like, It's a genius piece of kit.
01:49:18.000There was a Starbucks near my house in California that had one, and I used to always get that.
01:49:47.000And there's a vacuum process that creates the coffee, and it's the perfect temperature coffee, and then you got this weird hockey puck of grounds that come to the top, and then they just sort of scrape that hockey puck off.
01:50:01.000Yeah, they've got their little squeegee.
01:50:29.000Is that a blooming process really matter?
01:50:32.000Like, how long before I grind the beans?
01:50:34.000And we came to the conclusion that like...
01:50:37.000Some of the things are, and look, if you've got a morning tradition that includes putting on your monocle and putting on your bow tie and fucking hand grinding your beans.
01:51:10.000So, Matt wrote the recipe in the cookbook, but basically it's like, you know, an old school glass drip coffee maker actually makes really great coffee, like an old bun machine.
01:51:24.000Where the drip comes down slow so it gets the ground coffee wet and it gives it a chance to like absorb the water and then the flavor to filter out.
01:51:38.000Whereas if you just pour all the water over dry beans right away...
01:51:43.000Well, French press, it steeps it in there, right?
01:51:45.000Like French press, you pour it in, you let it steep in there and then you strain it out.
01:51:49.000But a lot of people, when they do like a pour-over coffee or whatever they're doing, they just put the beans in their filter, ground beans in their filter, pour the hot water over and let it drain through, and you leave a lot of the flavor behind.
01:52:02.000Whereas if you get it wet, let it sit for a minute, and then pour the rest of the water through, you get more extraction of the flavor.
01:52:39.000No, everything for me is—that's the way you get great consistency, and that's the way you can really figure out what you did wrong and get it better is by adjusting it incrementally, right?
01:52:50.000Like— So that 21 grams of ground coffee for whatever it is, a full-size cup of coffee.
01:53:35.000I don't like to drink my coffee super hot, so I don't mind that extra time to cool it down a bit.
01:53:40.000But I think you just want to give it about two minutes for the coffee to bloom, for it to...
01:53:44.000For the whatever, you know, there are scientists that would explain like the starches absorbing the water, which is allowing them to release.
01:53:50.000Because if you think about pouring coffee over, it's like little ground pebbles of coffee beans.
01:53:56.000You pour the water over and you want the water to have a chance to leach out the flavor that's inside of the ground.
01:54:02.000And like espresso is really fast and you grind it really, really fine, right?
01:55:08.000And then they had to deal with a bunch of issues like coffee rust, like mold growing on coffee and stuff like that.
01:55:14.000Ethiopia is a very arid climate, and they would just dry the beans out in the sun.
01:55:19.000But you couldn't do that in these very moist South American climates, so that they had to come up with a completely different method of processing the coffee.
01:57:41.000We spent a year on this book, Matt and I. The writing, because there's 120,000 words in there.
01:57:47.000So listen, you work in a restaurant, you teach people how to cook for a living, and the way I think about it is...
01:57:56.000Most cookbooks explain how to do an individual task, but don't really take the time to explain the why behind what you're doing is important.
01:58:07.000And kind of like if you lead a horse to water and you beat it over the head and you can't keep it alive necessarily, but if you teach it to drink or fish, it'll feed itself for years, you know what I'm saying?
01:58:15.000I think you fucked that thing up, but I know what you're saying.
01:58:22.000If you explain the why behind what they're doing, it gives them the entrepreneurial authority to make decisions in the kitchen and gives them the confidence to cook without being so...
01:58:39.000People are scared a lot of times of changing one thing because they think they're going to ruin the dish because they don't understand what they're doing.
01:58:47.000So we were like, we want to not just write a cookbook, but we had this column together where it was 100 questions for my friend the chef, and it was like, I got a question.
01:58:59.000Can you explain what's going on here so I really can understand it?
01:59:03.000And this was an expansion of that where we were like, we take a question, we have an article that explains what's really going on.
01:59:09.000And then the recipe for me is very delicious, but the real goal of the recipe is to help illustrate.
01:59:16.000For instance, you go to the supermarket, there are all these different types of olive oil.
01:59:21.000They're like $30 for a little bottle, and then this one's like a gallon for $10.
01:59:36.000Like, what is the difference in olive oils?
01:59:38.000So there are, depending upon the extraction and the yield from the crop and the real estate price of where it's being grown, etc., etc., etc., The different olive oils have different strengths,
01:59:54.000different flavor, you know, strengths of flavor.
01:59:57.000So some of them are very, very light flavored and neutral and they're great for salad dressings and for cooking with.
02:00:03.000And some of them are extraordinarily pungent, like can be spicy and fruity, and they're really like a seasoning for finishing something with.
02:00:10.000So we then explain that, you know, how that process works, why a $30 olive oil, if you were to, you know, $30 for a small bottle of olive oil, if you were to cook with it, it's just like a big waste.
02:00:22.000Or make a salad dressing, it can be really...
02:00:26.000It'd be very spicy, bitter, and unpleasant.
02:00:29.000And then we illustrate it with a recipe that says, hey, we got this pasta where we're going to saute the garlic in the light-flavored olive oil.
02:00:37.000And then at the end, we're going to finish it with this finishing expensive olive oil.
02:00:58.000How do you know what's a more robust...
02:01:02.000It's $10 a liter basically for the lighter flavored stuff and $30 a liter is the expensive stuff is basically what it comes down to for restaurant pricing.
02:01:13.000So you see a bottle of Cola Vita or whatever it is and it's a big bottle for $8 and it's always extra virgin olive oil that I'm using.
02:01:22.000But the less expensive stuff has got a bigger yield.
02:02:37.000The first time like that beefsteak of Fiorentina, the first time I had olive oil and lemon and salt on steak, it was like.
02:02:44.000I got obsessed with, before I got this Argentine grill, I got obsessed with watching Italians cook steak over wood.
02:02:51.000Because there's, believe it or not, and I don't know a fucking word they're saying, because they're just talking in the native tongue over there, and they're cooking these steaks over wood, and then eating it and going, oh!
02:03:10.000And there's a bunch of restaurants in Florence that specialize in just steak, which you think of steakhouses as being very much an American thing.
02:03:20.000But in Italy, this is their thing, and they almost universally are cooking over wood.
02:05:07.000Do you prefer a grain fed steak or grass fed steak?
02:05:10.000So, like, if I want a thick-ass ribeye and it's going to be delicious, like, American experience, it's a grain-fed steak is the American steak experience that I know and love.
02:05:23.000The flavor of grass-fed beef is, you know, is phenomenal, right?
02:05:29.000It can be rich and fuller, and you've got this.
02:05:31.000I also really like a toothsome Texture on a steak, whereas we put a high price on tenderness here, Americans generally, whereas I like a toothsome steak,
02:05:46.000and grass-fed can have a great texture, chewy texture, which I like.
02:05:49.000Yeah, I don't get that whole need for everything to be something you can eat with your gums.
02:07:36.000It melts at a low temperature, and it can be very moist.
02:07:41.000It's like- You almost never see cold preparations of meat with a lot of fat except for pork and duck because that fat melts at a low temperature and it gets like...
02:08:01.000Yeah, because what I do is I'll cook like, because I'm on this wacky diet and I don't have a lot of time, so I'll set aside, like, I'll cook like four or five ribeyes.
02:08:12.000And then I slice them up and I'll put them in like a sealed glass Tupperware type deal.
02:08:17.000And then in the morning I do my training and then I'll eat.
02:08:21.000And I eat, I just pour some hot sauce on a plate and I dip the cold steak into the hot sauce and I eat it.
02:11:42.000Well, because if you're going to ferment something, they're worried about bacterial growth, not doing it right, and killing a bunch of people, which, frankly, I should be concerned about as well.
02:13:02.000Yeah, let's Google that, because I remember watching this thing, maybe I was reading something, where a Japanese sushi chef was talking about how foolish Americans are to eat sushi without wasabi, and that wasabi actually helps protect you from the potential bad bacteria of the sushi.
02:13:21.000I imagine a world where that Japanese man believed what he was saying was true and said it with great enthusiasm.
02:13:26.000But I always thought, like, if you think about places where it's like hot, hot temperature, you know, like...
02:13:32.000But they'd also grow, that's where chilies grow.
02:13:35.000It kills a specific bacteria, H. pylori, which can cause digestive problems, but it doesn't kill all bacteria and it doesn't kill parasites or anything like that.
02:14:10.000Yeah, this says sadly you're not getting real wasabi at your average restaurant because it's difficult to make and very expensive, so it's a mixture of horseradish with green food coloring.
02:15:22.000Including chiles and other hot peppers are in the middle of the antimicrobial pack, killing or inhibiting up to 75% of bacteria, while pepper of the white or black variety inhibits 25% of bacteria.
02:18:39.000Like, the spice of these chilies, especially when you're talking about some, like, habanero, which is so spicy, it's got a really special, like, floral, fruity flavor.
02:18:48.000And then people just want to kill it with the spice.
02:18:50.000You're like, yo, man, it's a seasoning.
02:19:06.000My sister-in-law, my brother's wife, Stephanie, she loves spice so much that I'm like, there's something about your tongue that's different.
02:19:16.000She likes spice so much that as a little kid, she heard that her aunt had pepper spray in her purse.
02:19:23.000LAUGHTER And this is a legitimately true story.
02:19:26.000She went down, after everyone went to sleep, at like seven years old, and sprayed herself in the face with pepper spray.
02:20:11.000She'll, like, pour it on, like, she'll, like, we'll have, like, chicken, and she'll dip, like, drumsticks into this hot sauce and be chewing on it.
02:23:32.000I was just on some show the other day and I said something and they were like, well, Neil deGrasse Tyson was on here last week and he said...
02:23:37.000He doesn't know jack shit about wheat.
02:27:37.000We had some CM Smokehouse, another fantastic place in town.
02:27:42.000Nick, the owner of the comedy club that we work at, Vulcan Gas Company, he went to CM Smokehouse and brought a ton of fucking insane tacos back to the green room.
02:29:32.000They grew the tomatoes in the backyard.
02:29:34.000I mean, I remember to this day, my grandmother rolling out the flour and rolling out the dough to make pasta, make lasagna and make all different kinds of pasta.
02:29:46.000And there's something about those meals where the whole family's together just going, oh, this is incredible.
02:29:52.000It's like there's an emphasis in a lot of Latin cultures, like Italian being one of them and Mexico being another one of them, where the emphasis is around these family meals.
02:30:03.000And there's something about Mexican cuisine that is...
02:30:10.000Like I said, I'm a giant fan of spicy, which is also a factor for sure, right?
02:30:14.000Because like a fantastic carne asada with like a little bit of a kick to it and it's like there's something about like mole, delicious flavors and I'm just, I just, I think there's so many different exciting flavors that come out of Mexican restaurants and Mexican cuisine.
02:30:33.000And there's a guy in America that's like, the guy out of Chicago, you know, Rick Bayless.
02:33:02.000I don't want to be in trouble for something...
02:33:05.000When the rules change out from under me so like if someone could help me to understand better Exactly where the line between appropriation and you can't let them do that here It's called frontera grill.
02:33:17.000You can't ask that question Because the people they're gonna answer are assholes the people that are gonna be the ones that want to tell you what you can and can't do or assholes Because generally speaking reasonable people are gonna understand exactly what you're doing You're not an Italian guy, but you're making pizza.
02:33:32.000There's not a fucking Italian that gives a shit about that.
02:33:50.000It would be a few really noisy people that just want to get attention and just want to be negative and complain and just shit on people for no fucking reason.
02:34:01.000And it's just because they know that it's a hot button.
02:34:05.000You can press it, and you can get attention.
02:34:40.000But the fucking thing about cultural appropriation that's so crazy is we live in a giant melting pot of cultures, and that's one of the cool things about America.
02:34:51.000We're both experts in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, right?
02:34:54.000I mean, we literally learned a martial art that was created in South America, or it was...
02:35:03.000For sure, the difference between the way the art was practiced before, when Count Maeda came to Brazil, versus when Elio Gracie and Carlos Gracie perfected it, when they went over it and really Worked on the ground game and concentrated more on the ground game and then went Hickson and Hoyce and all these people took it out to the rest of the world.
02:35:37.000Both of us are black belts in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
02:35:40.000You know, I have a black belt in Taekwondo, which is Korean.
02:35:43.000I mean, we're involved in this melting pot of ideas.
02:35:47.000In all fairness, you would definitely see that like, you know, think about like the cultural appropriation of playing cowboys versus Indians where you're like, Okay, that's insensitive for somebody to be like, let me play this game where I'm pretending to shoot Indians when you're like,
02:36:06.000dude, these are Native Americans that were slaughtered while we just like...
02:36:14.000There is clearly a line where some stuff, like there's a gray area maybe, but there's definitely some stuff where you're like, yeah, man, that's not okay.
02:36:22.000Well, here's why that's not okay, right?
02:36:24.000Also, like even Germans shouldn't be playing Holocaust guards.
02:36:43.000But you know, when we think of cowboys and Indians, we don't think of genocide.
02:36:48.000We don't think of the fact that this entire culture of Native Americans was eradicated off of a continent, which it- Actually, in real life was, yeah.
02:36:57.000We think of it in terms of the films that glorified this sort of Western trek.
02:37:06.000But that's a good point in that we're talking about a different thing because you're talking about tragic.
02:37:11.000Like if you made a funny movie about the Trail of Tears, people would be like, what the fuck is wrong with you?
02:37:17.000Or just perpetuating some sort of a negative stereotype about a people where you're like, yo, man, like, I can completely understand where there's a line.
02:37:27.000Right, but you don't get that from being an American person who loves Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
02:37:32.000But there's a difference between being like, I'm going to open a Chinese restaurant because I love Chinese food and I want to cook the food and I want to learn about it.
02:37:40.000And I'm going to open a Chinese restaurant where my waiters have to use a fake Chinese accent and pretend to be Chinese.
02:37:46.000So you'd be like, well, one is inappropriate, one is.
02:37:56.000First of all, the evolution and it being better was put to bed years ago because they did it.
02:38:03.000They were like, let's get those two guys in the ring and see who wins.
02:38:06.000I mean, really, it's the most important moments in the history of martial arts, really.
02:38:10.000And then Horian created the UFC. The UFC was created by Horian Gracie.
02:38:16.000And he did it literally as an infomercial for the effectiveness of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
02:38:22.000And he decided to do it with his brother, Hoyce, who wasn't even the best guy in the family.
02:38:28.000Hoyce openly admits that his brother, Hickson, would tap him left and right.
02:38:31.000But Hickson was like the nuclear bomb.
02:38:33.000It's like, we're going to go in, we're going to shoot you with bullets for a little bit, and then if this doesn't work out, if somebody beats Hoyce, then we're going to bring in Hickson.
02:38:41.000That game that I used to play of, you know...
02:38:51.000I went through my own version of it because I was a black belt in Taekwondo.
02:38:58.000I won the state championships and the US Open and a bunch of tournaments and I thought I was pretty good at fighting.
02:39:24.000So as soon as there was a way where someone could corner me, then I realized, okay, there's a lot of effectiveness in learning how to punch.
02:40:15.000And eventually he crumpled to the ground and his legs were destroyed and Rick became a practitioner of Muay Thai and his brother Duke is one of the best kickboxing coaches on earth right now and he runs his academy in Milwaukee.
02:40:30.000But this was like this progression of trying to figure out what worked.
02:40:34.000So at first, I realized, well, you've got to learn how to use your hands.
02:41:03.000Nobody knows what to do once we get them to the ground.
02:41:05.000Yes, but now there's guys who can do everything and that's the beauty of what mixed martial arts is.
02:41:13.000What mixed martial arts is, it's like you can't just know jujitsu now because you won't be able to take certain guys down and they'll fuck you up standing up and and certain techniques that even we used to think were kind of useless in Taekwondo When people started doing the UFC and getting taken down,
02:41:32.000now people can utilize those techniques as long as they know other things.
02:41:35.000Like, there was a brutal knockout in Bellator this past weekend with a spinning back kick to the body.
02:44:46.000And I love getting to be part of that training camp when the guys are getting ready for these fights and seeing them and getting to work with professionals.
02:44:53.000Like no other sport in the world do you get to work as an amateur.
02:45:00.000Could I be like, oh, I'm thinking about playing a little basketball.
02:45:02.000Let me just hop on with the Knicks and help them out with their training camp.
02:45:06.000But, you know, going down to that basement in New York and being part of, you know, the training camp for these guys was an extraordinary experience.