Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff dot com. Taylor, everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I've jobbed in strict list. We have a podcast for
Speaker 1: you that I'll give you a little food for thought. Yes,
Speaker 1: the tech of food, food, tech and science. And it's
Speaker 1: all gonna be science, tech and food. And unfortunately both
Speaker 1: Lauren and I have already eaten before we gave in
Speaker 1: today podcast room or else it would also become an
Speaker 1: episode where we just say, I'm really hungry now knowledge
Speaker 1: of cannibalism, I would totally eat Jonathan's eyeball. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't even have my glasses to protect me right now. So,
Speaker 1: you know, back in the day, the day, like way
Speaker 1: back in the day, like like like the cave day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even before I was born, Lauren. Back in that day,
Speaker 1: food science was essentially all about sending out an unlucky
Speaker 1: gave man to try and eat a particular mushroom and
Speaker 1: find out if that's going to make if it's for
Speaker 1: recreation or for nutrition or for dying dying one or
Speaker 1: the three right if if if if he comes back
Speaker 1: and talks about how the dinosaurs were jamming out to
Speaker 1: uh to fish, then obviously that would have been in
Speaker 1: the recreation category. If he said that was very tasty,
Speaker 1: that would clearly be food. And if he didn't come
Speaker 1: back at all, well it could be one of several things,
Speaker 1: but possibly means probably we shouldn't eat. Yeah, so today
Speaker 1: food sciences is more about well, it's still about safety,
Speaker 1: but it's also about nutrition. It's about the taste of food.
Speaker 1: It's about the presentation, preparation and preservation of food, keeping
Speaker 1: it fresher longer to right, and food science really right
Speaker 1: now when we when we use that term, it tends
Speaker 1: to be used in relation to keeping food fresh and
Speaker 1: safe longer so that we can get it from and
Speaker 1: one massive quantities right in an industrial sense, is usually
Speaker 1: what food science means, although we wanted to point out
Speaker 1: that all cooking is really technically food science because it's
Speaker 1: physics and chemistry is what makes it go. In fact,
Speaker 1: one of the shows that we talked about before we
Speaker 1: came in Here to podcast was Alton Brown's Good Eats,
Speaker 1: which really he focused very much on the science angle
Speaker 1: of cooking and explained what the food was going through
Speaker 1: when you would actually cook to explain, you know, why
Speaker 1: food comes out a certain way when you prepare it
Speaker 1: one way versus another, right right kind of kind of
Speaker 1: You know, if you've never seen the show a go
Speaker 1: go find it. It's terrific. But you know it's it's
Speaker 1: very Mr Wizard and Mr Wizard meets Julia Child, It's
Speaker 1: it's great, it's great, and that I mean that completely.
Speaker 1: Brown is more of a scientist than a culinarian, and um,
Speaker 1: you know self admittedly he's learned about cooking through his
Speaker 1: love of science and so as books are very much
Speaker 1: the same way. So you know, it's all about chemistry, biology, physics, engineering.
Speaker 1: It's all about making sure that the processes you are
Speaker 1: going through are keeping the food in its most nutritional,
Speaker 1: tasty and safe format as possible. But we've kind of
Speaker 1: developed beyond that, I mean, beyond just the here's what
Speaker 1: happens when you introduce eggs to a hot surface. You know,
Speaker 1: we've gotten to a point now where we've got some
Speaker 1: mad scientists getting involved in the preparation of food like crazy.
Speaker 1: I just imagined these guys in in their kitchens which
Speaker 1: look a lot like Dr Evil's laboratory, and just cackling
Speaker 1: as they as they move one molecule of substance into
Speaker 1: a vast vat of boiling liquid and it just the
Speaker 1: smoke comes up and then you you know, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where if you get a whiff of it,
Speaker 1: you do that little cartoon thing where you float through
Speaker 1: the air following the odor. Yeah, that's kind of what
Speaker 1: always goes through my mind. But I don't think that's
Speaker 1: exactly what happens. But but but there are some really
Speaker 1: cool things being done in UH in A and food
Speaker 1: science UH and be in molecular astronomy, right, Like, like
Speaker 1: one of the things we talked about in food science,
Speaker 1: one of the things that perplexes us is the whole
Speaker 1: cake mixing, right, cake mix It's science, cake guys. The
Speaker 1: fact that you can take this this box of questionable
Speaker 1: carbohydrate and flavoring substance and add like oil and then
Speaker 1: it's cake. I don't I don't think that that I
Speaker 1: this this is something that I'm not positive that we
Speaker 1: should be eating as human people. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: it counts as food, But the fact that it exists
Speaker 1: is some kind of feat of chemistry that I do
Speaker 1: not personally understand. When you think about when you think
Speaker 1: about the actual you know, making cake from scratch, right
Speaker 1: if you were to do it yourself. A lot of
Speaker 1: that includes a large number of dry materials, right, flour
Speaker 1: and in that kind of it's a basic flour and
Speaker 1: leavening agent. Really, the the leavening agent and the protein
Speaker 1: and the facts that go into a traditional buy hand
Speaker 1: cake are what is going to make these chemical reactions
Speaker 1: to make something rise, right, Right, So, so when you
Speaker 1: think about it that way, putting all of it in
Speaker 1: a box, is it quite as mysterious. Although you might say,
Speaker 1: like what about the eggs, and uh yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of these these cake mixes that don't require you to
Speaker 1: add eggs have dried eggs in them, in fact, to
Speaker 1: the point or some other kind of powdered protein site
Speaker 1: that will have a similar effect, right, you know, some
Speaker 1: some mixes require you to add fresh eggs and some
Speaker 1: do not. And there were lots of interesting theories on
Speaker 1: why the kind that did not require you to add
Speaker 1: eggs didn't sell so well. One of the theories, which
Speaker 1: I think is or maybe I should say hypotheses, which
Speaker 1: I think is a little apocryphal, is that in the
Speaker 1: nineteen forties, when cake mixes were first being introduced. By
Speaker 1: the way, this is all based upon the theory and hypothesis.
Speaker 1: I it's gonna start sounding really misogynist, and I want
Speaker 1: to apologize, but cast yourself back into nineteen forties America
Speaker 1: and here's how it goes. The thought process was the housewife,
Speaker 1: she needs her her world to be efficient so that
Speaker 1: she can do the most with the least amount of
Speaker 1: time because she's caring for a busy family. Her kids
Speaker 1: are in school, and her hubby is off bringing home
Speaker 1: the bacon exactly. Um, So the you know cake mixes
Speaker 1: were thought of as being this great time saver. However,
Speaker 1: there was this you know, the hypothesis was that women
Speaker 1: did not want to buy the cake mixes that didn't
Speaker 1: require you to add eggs, not because of anything different,
Speaker 1: any kind of perceivable change in quality, but because they
Speaker 1: felt like they weren't doing enough work. So they had
Speaker 1: cake guilt. Yeah, like, this isn't real food because it
Speaker 1: didn't require any real effort on my part. Therefore, this
Speaker 1: is bad food. That was the hypothesis. Now, from what
Speaker 1: I've read, it seems like that's kind of apocryphal because
Speaker 1: the sales don't really reflect that, and also that a
Speaker 1: lot of the the the ones that didn't require you
Speaker 1: to add eggs into the mix had dried egg in them,
Speaker 1: which meant that the taste was a little eggy. So
Speaker 1: maybe that is an apocryphal story. But anyway, it's interesting
Speaker 1: to me to think that we could make creating a
Speaker 1: meal so easy that we would feel guilty about how
Speaker 1: little effort it required on our part. Me. Man, I
Speaker 1: don't care if I opened up the fridge and there's
Speaker 1: a full meal there. I'm just like bonus. I think
Speaker 1: I think that that that translates into you know, um
Speaker 1: with with frozen meals and stuff like that. I think
Speaker 1: that some people feel bad serving those. I mean there's
Speaker 1: there's a nutrition issue in that. I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: serving cake, it's cake. You know, no one's really eating
Speaker 1: that for the nutritional value at least I hope not.
Speaker 1: Guys don't do that because the cake is a lie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about molecular astronomy. Now, Now where did
Speaker 1: this idea come from? All? Right? So there were these
Speaker 1: there were these two dudes. Um, I'm sorry, molecular astronomy people.
Speaker 1: These these people were, um it was. It was a
Speaker 1: physical chemist named her Vates and a professor of physics
Speaker 1: named Nicholas Curtie who got together and they had separately
Speaker 1: been experimenting with food and things for years and years
Speaker 1: and years. Curtie was a Jewish physicist who left Europe
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen thirties during the rise of the
Speaker 1: Nazi movement and came to the US to work on
Speaker 1: the nuclear weapons projects at Los Alamos. Yeah, so from
Speaker 1: there to molecular gastronomy, huh. But he but he got
Speaker 1: interested after after the project was over. The story goes that,
Speaker 1: um that he, like many of his other colleagues, wound
Speaker 1: up really wanting to get into something more creative and
Speaker 1: and so he he started getting into it. And one time,
Speaker 1: supposedly he was demoing how to make a sou fla
Speaker 1: at the Royal Institution in London, which is which is
Speaker 1: a scientific institution. Um, this was, this was in the
Speaker 1: night sometimes and he said, I think it's a sad
Speaker 1: reflection on our civilization that while we can and do
Speaker 1: measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus, we don't
Speaker 1: know what goes on inside our sou flays. Wow, okay, Um.
Speaker 1: So so he was he was passionate about this. And
Speaker 1: Tease was the sort of guy who reportedly used a
Speaker 1: lab ultrasound box to emulsify his mayonnaise. So this is
Speaker 1: the kind of people we're working with, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can just imagine you're walking. This makes me think of
Speaker 1: any science fiction film where you walk into the engineer's
Speaker 1: lab and there's this really advanced piece of equipment that
Speaker 1: always turns out to be the thing that the engineers
Speaker 1: using to make his coffee. Something along those lines. You
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about stereotypical thing, No, absolutely, I
Speaker 1: and so supposedly Teas got into uh got into food.
Speaker 1: Like I said, he was a physical chemist after he
Speaker 1: royally messed up a sufla recipe by adding all the
Speaker 1: egg yolks at the same time, so to one at
Speaker 1: a time to one at a time or two at
Speaker 1: a time the way that the recipe books said. But
Speaker 1: he was like whatever, physics and just did it and
Speaker 1: and it it fails. So then he said, well why
Speaker 1: is that, Why is it doing this thing? And how
Speaker 1: can we determine what is the actual process that's going
Speaker 1: on so that we can make food in a way
Speaker 1: that is going to be superior the best way to
Speaker 1: make whatever dish we want to make. And you know,
Speaker 1: anyone who really enjoys food. I mean not not just
Speaker 1: like I'm hungry, I need to eat, but someone who
Speaker 1: really enjoys the experience of dining and they like that
Speaker 1: experience to be rich and not necessarily the food is rich,
Speaker 1: but they like it to be a really um uh
Speaker 1: rewarding its rewarding experience. Yeah, then this is the sort
Speaker 1: of stuff that they get really interested in. Uh, they
Speaker 1: got interested in it on a molecular level, which is
Speaker 1: you know, the molecular gastronomy is where that comes from. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, to really understand this term, first we
Speaker 1: got to talk about what is gastronomy. So gastronomy is
Speaker 1: the art of selecting, preparing, serving, and enjoying fine food.
Speaker 1: So a gastronomic experience would be one where you are
Speaker 1: having this fine food that's been prepared in a specific way,
Speaker 1: perhaps by an expert chef, and you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it becomes an event. It's not just a meal
Speaker 1: or just nourishment. It's beyond that. There's there's also a
Speaker 1: very classic cookbook, if you've never heard of it, is
Speaker 1: called the The Larus Gastrono Meek, which was originally published
Speaker 1: in ninety eight and is this kind of encyclopedia of
Speaker 1: cooking technique. It's actually very dense to parts if you've
Speaker 1: never if you're not really familiar with cooking, but it's
Speaker 1: like a physics manual. And I find that fascinating that
Speaker 1: this has gone back that long of people just describing
Speaker 1: a method rather than the kind of breezy blog like
Speaker 1: thing that we have going on in cookbooks today, which
Speaker 1: is also fabulous and gets gets newcomers into the industry,
Speaker 1: but right doesn't have the same level of precision. And
Speaker 1: part of that is that, you know, preparing food is
Speaker 1: a very it's very difficult to be precise because while
Speaker 1: you can have certain materials and and have very specific
Speaker 1: measurements like you could you could say, all right, add
Speaker 1: x number, add sugar. When it comes to add one egg,
Speaker 1: not all eggs are created equal. So even if you
Speaker 1: are to follow the exact same recipe as closely as
Speaker 1: you possibly can, if you have ingredients that fall into
Speaker 1: that kind of category where the quality of the ingredient
Speaker 1: itself is going to be a little different, every single
Speaker 1: time they can do is go and yell at a chicken,
Speaker 1: and really that chicken does not care. Trust me, I
Speaker 1: have spent way too much time yelling at chickens. It
Speaker 1: is a waste of time. They they find it confusing
Speaker 1: and the eggs come out scrambled. So um. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just it's just an odd thing. It's one of those
Speaker 1: things about cooking is that even if you follow the
Speaker 1: procedure exactly the same way two times in a row,
Speaker 1: there are enough variables there depending upon what you're preparing,
Speaker 1: that your outcome could be a little to a lot different.
Speaker 1: But this was all about trying to really boil that down.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there are some critics of molecular astronomy
Speaker 1: who goes so far as to say that it takes
Speaker 1: the fun out of it and to make it a
Speaker 1: science instead of an art, or or that even or
Speaker 1: even that it's it's largely meaningless because of situations like
Speaker 1: this where you have ingredients that aren't always going to
Speaker 1: be exactly the same. Like you know, when you're working
Speaker 1: with chemistry, if you're if you're using pure chemicals, you're
Speaker 1: going to get that same right right, you know you're
Speaker 1: avoiding contaminants. Then every time you do the same experiment,
Speaker 1: the same procedure, it should come out exactly the same
Speaker 1: with cooking. It's a little different because it's not that exact,
Speaker 1: and some people have argued that you've taken an art
Speaker 1: and tried to turn it into a science, when really
Speaker 1: it belongs somewhere in the middle. Now. Molecular gastronomy specifically
Speaker 1: is the study of the actual physical and chemical processes
Speaker 1: that food undergoes during preparation. So it was originally called
Speaker 1: molecular and physical gastronomy or physical and molecular astronomy, essentially
Speaker 1: shortened just to molecular. The coin the coin was termed,
Speaker 1: the term was coined and abound eight or nine. I'm
Speaker 1: having the same kind of day, Lauren, I really am.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, And and it's it's interesting because when it
Speaker 1: was first developed, it was even more of a scientific approach,
Speaker 1: like almost clinical. They were going super nerdy with it um,
Speaker 1: which I love. I you know, I'm certainly not complaining
Speaker 1: about that, but that they were really breaking things down
Speaker 1: to their very physical chemistry elements and uh and being
Speaker 1: extremely precise and doing things like like using laboral ultrasound
Speaker 1: boxes to care multifications. And eventually they kind of loosened
Speaker 1: that up a little bit and acknowledged that individual expression,
Speaker 1: an artistic uh, an artistic merit play a part in
Speaker 1: prepared preparing food. It's not just you know, let's down
Speaker 1: the gloves and the goggles and get into the laboratory.
Speaker 1: And also beyond that, you know, I was mentioning the
Speaker 1: ingredients issue. Another issue is the equipment that you have
Speaker 1: available to you right like, and we're gonna talk more
Speaker 1: about the equipment in the second half of this podcast.
Speaker 1: But for example, if you're very specific scientific procedure involves
Speaker 1: heating a particular mixture to a very specific temperature and
Speaker 1: keeping it there, that could be tricky with a lot
Speaker 1: of kitchen equipment. It all depends on the kind of
Speaker 1: cook surface you have. You know, whether or not you
Speaker 1: can have that level of precision. You might be able
Speaker 1: to get within a couple of degrees, and that can
Speaker 1: mean the difference between success and failure. Yeah. By by
Speaker 1: the way, speaking of this, if if you find that
Speaker 1: things don't come out of your oven quite the way
Speaker 1: that you think they should, most most home kitchen ovens
Speaker 1: are wildly inaccurate. So it's it's uh, it's it's very
Speaker 1: worthwhile getting a probe thermometer or or other independent thermometer
Speaker 1: to check out the temperature on that just kitchen tips
Speaker 1: from Lauren. Yeah, that's a very good point. I mean
Speaker 1: it's one of the things that Alton Brown and his
Speaker 1: show always said was, you know, make sure you have
Speaker 1: some sort of thermometer. He had. He had a lot
Speaker 1: of infrared ones where you could just point it at
Speaker 1: the food and find out what the temperature was, but
Speaker 1: he had other ones to like probe thermometers as well
Speaker 1: and everything to to kind of give you that that
Speaker 1: idea so that you would know specifically what you're dealing with,
Speaker 1: what you're dealing with, Yeah, because you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: not an exact science. Unless you have someone coming in
Speaker 1: and calibrating your cookware all the time, it's probably not
Speaker 1: going to work out that way anyway. So what did
Speaker 1: molecular gastronomy people what what are these gastronomers extraordinaire? What
Speaker 1: did they concern themselves with? Well, they mostly concerned themselves
Speaker 1: with the three main groups of materials that are in chemistry,
Speaker 1: which are elements, compounds, and mixtures. Okay, so an element
Speaker 1: is a fundamental element, right, that is the basic unit
Speaker 1: there that can't be broken down. So for example, if I,
Speaker 1: if I, you know, just an example of any kind
Speaker 1: of element iron iron as an element, you don't break
Speaker 1: iron down into something less than iron other than iron atoms,
Speaker 1: and you could break atoms down, but then it's not
Speaker 1: iron anymore. Um, then you have compounds. These are materials
Speaker 1: that have properties that are distinct from the individual elements
Speaker 1: that combine to make the compound. But those elements are combined,
Speaker 1: they're locked together now. So this is sort of the
Speaker 1: molecule levels of water. For example, exactly, water has different
Speaker 1: properties than hydrogen and oxygen, which when they're combined make
Speaker 1: water different properties there, And then you have mixtures. And
Speaker 1: mixtures are a combination of substances that aren't held together chemically,
Speaker 1: so that means you could actually mechanically separate them. So again,
Speaker 1: and let's say, um, let's say that you can have
Speaker 1: a mixture that also has a compound in it. So
Speaker 1: let's say for some reason you have iron filings and salt.
Speaker 1: You can mechanically separate the iron filings from the salt.
Speaker 1: That's a mixture there, it's not chemically bonded. Salt, by
Speaker 1: the way, is a compound because that's sodium and chloride.
Speaker 1: These are very different elements. Sodium, of course, is a
Speaker 1: metal that can react very violently with water. Uh chloride
Speaker 1: not the most lovely chemical to come into contact with.
Speaker 1: It is quite toxic. But when they are bound together
Speaker 1: into sodium chloride, that's table salts, super tasty. Yeah, makes
Speaker 1: food better. So anyway, food dishes are colloidal systems. And
Speaker 1: I know all of you out there know this. You're
Speaker 1: all thinking, Jonathan, come on, this is cooking one oh one.
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna go through it anyway. Now, Really, a
Speaker 1: colloid is a material composed of tiny particles of one
Speaker 1: substance that are dispersed but not dissolved in an other substance.
Speaker 1: So here are the different colloidal systems in food. Ready
Speaker 1: write this down, there'll be a test leader. There's foam,
Speaker 1: so all of our burrista is out there, no, this
Speaker 1: one that's gas dispersed in a liquid, so cream whipped
Speaker 1: cream exactly. Then there's solid foam that's gas dispersed in
Speaker 1: a solid like a marshmallow, yep, marsh mellon as Spock
Speaker 1: would say. There's gel which is a solid dispersed in
Speaker 1: a liquid such as gelatin, So you know jello, that
Speaker 1: kind of there's an emulsion, which is liquid dispersed in
Speaker 1: another liquid. Mayonnaise be an example of an emulsion. And
Speaker 1: then there's a solid emulsion, which is a liquid dispersed
Speaker 1: in a solid, and that's like butter or cheese. Some
Speaker 1: of the tastiest colloidal systems as far as I am concerned,
Speaker 1: and in some food dishes, you're going to encounter more
Speaker 1: than one colloidal system, which creates what is called a
Speaker 1: complex dispersed system or CDs, like ice cream, which is
Speaker 1: has solids, liquids, and gases in at least two colloidal states.
Speaker 1: So you've got uh and the solids you have, You've
Speaker 1: got some fats, you've got some milk, proteins in the liquid,
Speaker 1: you've got you know, the water, and the gases. You
Speaker 1: have air and all of this comes together when you
Speaker 1: mix it together to make a delicious frosty treat, which
Speaker 1: is especially appreciated in the summer days in Atlanta. Ice
Speaker 1: ice cream is actually really chemically complex. It's it's fascinating
Speaker 1: that you know, with with four ingredients and a bag
Speaker 1: of ice and salt, you can make some in your kitchen. So, guys,
Speaker 1: the next time you are wandering around you see a
Speaker 1: little kid enjoying ice cream on a hot summer day.
Speaker 1: Walk up to that little kid, point at the little
Speaker 1: kid and scream, you're eating science, and then tell them
Speaker 1: that stuff you should know told you to do that
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Remember that it's really important. Okay.
Speaker 1: Uh So the molecular gastronomy guys they started describing colloidal
Speaker 1: systems using formulas like mathematical formulas and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like they could break down something like a sauce into
Speaker 1: a specific formula and explain the molecular makeup and dispersion
Speaker 1: processes to create that sauce. So you would take a
Speaker 1: sauce and you would analyze it. You'd say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: here are the molecules that go into this this is
Speaker 1: these are the ingredients that make this sauce. Here's the ratio,
Speaker 1: how many of one versus another. Here's what kind of
Speaker 1: um of substance it was if it was a liquid
Speaker 1: or a solid or a gas before it was put
Speaker 1: together to make this sauce. Uh, and here's the order
Speaker 1: it would go in. And you would break that down
Speaker 1: into like it would look like something that came ryal
Speaker 1: of an algebra book, I mean, or a trigonometry book.
Speaker 1: You look at this and like it looks like a
Speaker 1: proof or something. This is this geometry, And no, it
Speaker 1: was cooking. Um And in fact, uh, there was one
Speaker 1: of the one guy in molecular astronomy took a look
Speaker 1: at all the sauces used in French cooking. Tea. There's
Speaker 1: something like, oh, several hundred different sauces explained described within
Speaker 1: French cooking. But Tease said that all classic sauces belong
Speaker 1: to twenty three groups of colloidal processes, and that using
Speaker 1: his system you could create new sauces that were never
Speaker 1: recorded before just by adding in different colloidal processes while
Speaker 1: making your sauce. So, in other words, first he said,
Speaker 1: the French not that big. Those hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 1: sauces could be boiled down to twenty three. And then
Speaker 1: not only that, but you can actually make a brand
Speaker 1: new sauce using my method. It's in Yeah, well it's
Speaker 1: technically the French boil it down to four sauce basses.
Speaker 1: But yes, his twenty three is a little bit more precise. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And then when you get down to the specific types
Speaker 1: of sauces, that's when you get to the hundreds. So
Speaker 1: it's not not that, you know, four bases or whatever
Speaker 1: can then lead to uncounted sauces in France. That's one
Speaker 1: of those things that I always regretted about English history
Speaker 1: was that the French never really had after the Norman invasion,
Speaker 1: a really successful invasion of England because English food really
Speaker 1: could have used more sauce. Hey, I happened to like
Speaker 1: English food very much. Well, there's there's nothing, nothing wrong. Alreay,
Speaker 1: sure to boil you a turkey with the bacon bacon pie.
Speaker 1: Come on, come on, beef and bacon pie. We've all
Speaker 1: watched Game of Thrones and we all know that the
Speaker 1: food there is probably the most important part heart from
Speaker 1: the beheadings. Yes, beheadings and food. It sounds like a
Speaker 1: red wedding to me. Too soon, too soon, alright, sorry, alright,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about about some of the techniques that
Speaker 1: are used in molecular gastronomy. So this is beyond beyond
Speaker 1: just distilling food down to the actual scientific processes and
Speaker 1: and and the amounts you need to create stuff. They've
Speaker 1: started to create new techniques to give new gastronomic experiences
Speaker 1: to diners. Now, this is the crazy stuff that you
Speaker 1: might have seen on something like Top Chef or one
Speaker 1: of those other programs, or maybe if you've eaten at
Speaker 1: one of those super fancy or trendy restaurants or um,
Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch, right, I mean, like even in
Speaker 1: Atlanta we have a few, but you know there are
Speaker 1: other places like New York, l A, San Francisco that
Speaker 1: have amazing restaurants where you've got these real innovators. Also Chicago,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't leave out Chicago absolutely. Miami has a couple
Speaker 1: of good ones too. Yes, so one of them, one
Speaker 1: of the ones I liked a lot was Purification, which
Speaker 1: is making flavor beads. So these are little beads that
Speaker 1: are meant to to you know, you scoop them up
Speaker 1: in whatever food you have, and they contain flavor in them,
Speaker 1: and when you put them in your mouth, they burst
Speaker 1: and release flavor. So it's like a little flavor bubble.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's like a little solid sauce container. It
Speaker 1: usually winds up looking like cavy are and um contains
Speaker 1: whatever you want it to contain. And usually these are
Speaker 1: created through some kind of gelatine process or other starch
Speaker 1: to liquid conversion. Right, So you might use some sort
Speaker 1: of chemical composition that uses something like calcium chloride and alginate,
Speaker 1: which will create this kind of gelatin sort of substance
Speaker 1: that will provide the shell of whatever flavor you have.
Speaker 1: You then have the flavor mixture itself in something like
Speaker 1: a syringe, and then you would dip the syringe into
Speaker 1: the gel and very gently inject the flavor and and
Speaker 1: then you could shape the gel around the flavor and
Speaker 1: that's where you get the flavor bead, and you can
Speaker 1: actually shape it in different ways if you wanted to.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's this idea that you can introduce flavors
Speaker 1: in a way so that the textures of the food
Speaker 1: hit your mouth at a particular time and then the
Speaker 1: flavor releases a different time, so it almost becomes like
Speaker 1: a theater event as opposed to just eating a meal,
Speaker 1: like right, right. A lot of the idea of molecular
Speaker 1: astronomy is is taking these especially classic dishes, you know,
Speaker 1: flavors that we all know and love and um breaking
Speaker 1: them down to their component experience parts and and kind
Speaker 1: of putting them back on the plate in a way
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't expect anyone to have, right And Another
Speaker 1: one is presenting textures in a way that you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have expected before. For example, uh, flash freezing. Flash freezing
Speaker 1: is all about freezing the surface of food, uh, but
Speaker 1: allowing the center of the food to remain in liquid
Speaker 1: format for example. So that way, again you have this
Speaker 1: different experience. It's it's solid on the outside, liquid on
Speaker 1: the inside. You take a bite and then you get
Speaker 1: that gushy just gonna melt. Yeah. So this is often
Speaker 1: used in desserts and a lot of sweets use this.
Speaker 1: UM and we will talk about some of the cool
Speaker 1: tools used to create this in the second half. UH.
Speaker 1: And one of the most important agents used in molecular
Speaker 1: gastronomy is methyl cellulose, which congeals in hot water and
Speaker 1: then it becomes liquid again if it cools. UM. It's
Speaker 1: also important to have emulsifiers, which that's what allows you
Speaker 1: to disperse one kind of liquid into another kind of liquid.
Speaker 1: Like if you want to if you want to actually
Speaker 1: emulsify oil in water, that's what you would you would
Speaker 1: need emulsifiers for that. I mean, you can also shake
Speaker 1: it real good, but you know, oil and water don't mix,
Speaker 1: they'll separate out. That's why you have to have these
Speaker 1: emulsifiers to help do that, like uh, soil lessithan. I
Speaker 1: think it's how you say it in xanthem gum. Xanthem
Speaker 1: gum is the one that everyone talks about. In fact,
Speaker 1: I've read interviews with uh these people who do molecular
Speaker 1: astronomy work and they're like, xanthem gum is is that's
Speaker 1: like my most important tool. UM. And another one that
Speaker 1: they talk about a lot is transgluten. Gluten the mace
Speaker 1: the way too many syllables, but anyway, this is a
Speaker 1: chemical that makes proteins stick together. And UH. One thing
Speaker 1: that chefs use this for is to prepare meat dishes
Speaker 1: so that they can remove, for example, all the fat
Speaker 1: from a steak and then uh using uh this to
Speaker 1: kind of glue the steak together to hold it together,
Speaker 1: or even using it to form things like special kinds
Speaker 1: of noodles from material like shrimp. So it's again one
Speaker 1: of those things where you are able to prepare different
Speaker 1: types of food in different formats and you necessarily would
Speaker 1: would or that you would normally run into uh to
Speaker 1: give a new or unique dining experience. UM. It's also
Speaker 1: really helpful when you want to cook meat in a
Speaker 1: at a particular pace, because this is again another one
Speaker 1: of those issues like like I said, you know, no
Speaker 1: two eggs are exactly the same meat. When you have
Speaker 1: a cut of meat, it um, it's not all even
Speaker 1: all the way through like it's you know, it could
Speaker 1: be thicker in some places, it could be more dense
Speaker 1: in some places, might have a different different pockets of
Speaker 1: of of water or fats or so that makes it
Speaker 1: more It makes it tricky to cook it exactly the
Speaker 1: way you want it all the way through, which is
Speaker 1: why uh, these these kind of chemical is really useful
Speaker 1: because it can let you create a more uniform piece
Speaker 1: of meat to cook so that way you get exactly
Speaker 1: the way you want it all the way through. Um.
Speaker 1: All right, well, you know what that kind of brings
Speaker 1: us up to the halfway mark. We're going to take
Speaker 1: a quick break, but then we'll be talking more about
Speaker 1: some of the technology and gear that you can encounter,
Speaker 1: including some of the stuff that you probably are familiar with,
Speaker 1: the regular average kitchen stuff, and then we're gonna work
Speaker 1: our way up to Mad Scientists level. But before we
Speaker 1: do that, let's take a quick break to thank our
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Speaker 1: Get a free thirty day trial membership. Go to www
Speaker 1: dot Netflix dot com slash tech stuff and sign up now.
Speaker 1: And one thing you might consider watching since we're talking
Speaker 1: about food in this episode, Uh, there's a documentary called
Speaker 1: Gero Dreams of Sushi. It's all about a sushi chef
Speaker 1: who is known for a restaurant that has ten seats
Speaker 1: in it. It's a three hundred dollar a plate restaurant.
Speaker 1: By the time you finish watching this documentary, I guarantee
Speaker 1: you are going to be starving for sushi. It is amazing,
Speaker 1: So check that out. Remember this is subject to availability,
Speaker 1: so check in your area to make sure it's available.
Speaker 1: And uh, go to that website www dot Netflix dot
Speaker 1: com slash tech stuff and sign up. All right, we're back. Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the tech and gear that
Speaker 1: you would need to take. It's some cooking done on
Speaker 1: the basic end. You know, stoves a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of them, have a lot of us have them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really important for most of my preparation. A lot
Speaker 1: of the time they come in an electric or gas range. Right.
Speaker 1: So of course with gas you're cooking with with flames.
Speaker 1: So again this is one of those things where you
Speaker 1: know you have to figure out what where on that range.
Speaker 1: Certain levels of heat are right because you give it
Speaker 1: more fuel, which is which is hotter. Basically that's kind
Speaker 1: of our not terribly specific, right, and then you have
Speaker 1: electric ranges which aren't really that much better. In fact
Speaker 1: that you could argue they don't heat nearly as evenly
Speaker 1: uh your traditional electric range, depending on the quality of
Speaker 1: the heating element, which is which is directly heating um
Speaker 1: the pan. Essentially what you're using here as resistance, right,
Speaker 1: Like we know that when you run an electric current
Speaker 1: through a conductor, the conductor's resistance means that some of
Speaker 1: the energy gets converted into heat. So with things like
Speaker 1: cook tops, that's great, that's exactly what we want. That's
Speaker 1: the purpose of this. So the resistance is high, you
Speaker 1: get a lot of uh, and you've got a lot
Speaker 1: of surface area. That's why you've got the coils there
Speaker 1: as opposed to just you know, a flat surface. UM.
Speaker 1: And then you end up getting this um, this heated element.
Speaker 1: So that's what you use to actually transfer heat from
Speaker 1: the stove to the cookware, which has preferably probably some
Speaker 1: sort of food in it. One would think you're not
Speaker 1: just heating up your pots and pans. I hope that
Speaker 1: would be bad, but I mean it wouldn't necessarily hurt
Speaker 1: the potter pan unless it has a fancy coating on it,
Speaker 1: in which case it would. Yeah, I just don't. I
Speaker 1: don't any reason too. Yeah, come on, there's no up
Speaker 1: in the pan having a little creams clearwater revival moment.
Speaker 1: All right. So but then there are other, like more
Speaker 1: kind of science fiction a e ways of transferring heat
Speaker 1: on the cook top, like induction cooking. And this this
Speaker 1: is really cool. It's or really warm is the case?
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm cunning for you. Now this is a terrible development. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna sit back and watch. And induction cooktops
Speaker 1: use electro magnets to um to heat iron or steel
Speaker 1: cookware directly right right, There's a circuit inside the cook
Speaker 1: top that has an alternating current, which is very important.
Speaker 1: You have to have an alternating current because what that
Speaker 1: generates is a fluctuating electro magnetic field. Now, anyone who's
Speaker 1: been listening to tech stuff for a while knows that
Speaker 1: there's a you know, you can induce electricity to flow
Speaker 1: through a material by introducing a fluctuating magnetic field. That's
Speaker 1: the electro and the magnet part there. You know, electricity
Speaker 1: can create a creates a magnetic field. In magnetic field,
Speaker 1: if it's fluctuating, can create a flow of electricity through
Speaker 1: a conductor. So that's what you've got. You've got a
Speaker 1: circuit that's creating an alternating current inside the cook top.
Speaker 1: That alternating current when it comes into contact with the
Speaker 1: right type of induction cooking cookware, ferrist material, ferres material
Speaker 1: can induce current to flow. And this is all part
Speaker 1: of Faraday's law. Whether it's cookware or not. Faraday's law
Speaker 1: really just involves the electro magnetic effect here. Um, So
Speaker 1: the coils in the induction cooktop generate this magnetic field.
Speaker 1: The ferromagnetic potter pan placed on the cook top will
Speaker 1: induce about a volt of electricity, So it's not a
Speaker 1: not a huge amount of voltage. Obviously it's right along
Speaker 1: the bottom of the surface of the cookware, but that
Speaker 1: a C current is fluctuating very quickly to generate that
Speaker 1: molecular movement necessary to heat up the cookware itself. So
Speaker 1: the cookware begins to heat up even though the cook
Speaker 1: top itself is not getting warm. It generates that that
Speaker 1: resistance heat that we were talking about directly in the
Speaker 1: pan itself, So the heating element does not get warm.
Speaker 1: Um if you put glass or say a person down
Speaker 1: on top of that heating element, it would not heat
Speaker 1: unless unless you're made out of Ferris magnetic material, in
Speaker 1: which case you're going to got bigger problems. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: probably part of the Avengers, and I bet they're aliens attacking.
Speaker 1: So you've got other things to worry about apart from
Speaker 1: the souffle a sou and they do tend to heat
Speaker 1: up faster than electric stovetops, and they they're more energy efficient, certainly,
Speaker 1: and they they usually are at least they're advertised to
Speaker 1: offer more fine tuning capabilities that you can get it
Speaker 1: closer to a specific temperature as opposed to UH medium
Speaker 1: medium high. These have been these have been classically used
Speaker 1: in um, in industrial kitchens and in professional kitchens, although
Speaker 1: they are beginning to be released for home use. And
Speaker 1: by home I mean people who have a lot more
Speaker 1: money than I do in my home. There there are
Speaker 1: and you can get an induction cook top for your
Speaker 1: home right now, but it is expensive, or at least
Speaker 1: more expensive than the classic cook tops that we know,
Speaker 1: like gas and electric cook tops. Um are other ways
Speaker 1: of heating up food. I mean we we did a
Speaker 1: full episode of tech Stuff about microwaves back in the
Speaker 1: day and about how microwaves were kind of an an
Speaker 1: accidental invention that occurred. It was someone someone was standing
Speaker 1: near some kind of microwave element and antenna and uh
Speaker 1: and and realized that the chocolate bar in his pocket
Speaker 1: had melted. Yeah, and uh and it was like, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe I should wear some kind of clothing and be
Speaker 1: huh this could have applications, right, And then a few
Speaker 1: decades later there's a microwave in every home and yeah.
Speaker 1: Microwaves essentially are using electromagnetic radiation, specifically microwaves to excite
Speaker 1: polarized molecules that make them vibrate so liquid. For example,
Speaker 1: water inside your food starts to vibrate very very very
Speaker 1: quickly as excited by this radiation. And because the vibration,
Speaker 1: you know that that it generates heat, and that's where
Speaker 1: you get the heat from microwaves. Um. You know it's
Speaker 1: again it's it's something that the radiation itself is making
Speaker 1: the food heat up. Not it's not applying heat from
Speaker 1: an external source and heating the food that way. Uh,
Speaker 1: the food is cooking from the inside. But those are
Speaker 1: your basic ways of heating food up. There are also
Speaker 1: some other cool ways of doing it. Uh. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: um an infrared grilling is is a thing that has
Speaker 1: become a thing recently. These infrared cooking surfaces um uh
Speaker 1: use an electric or gas element to heat a a
Speaker 1: solid ceramic usually um to a certain temperature that will
Speaker 1: make it radiate far infrared waves directly into food that
Speaker 1: is sitting on some kind of element nearby. So you're
Speaker 1: not heating a pot that's heating the food. You're heating
Speaker 1: the food the way that you would in an in
Speaker 1: a microwave, except with with far infrared waves instead of interesting. Well,
Speaker 1: and then there's also immersion circulators also known as su
Speaker 1: vie machine right, and these are these are fun. One
Speaker 1: of my friends actually has one, so so we've played
Speaker 1: around with it a little bit. Yeah. So here here's
Speaker 1: the principle behind souvied. You may have heard that term
Speaker 1: before and heard people talk about it. It's a way
Speaker 1: of of cooking foods, specifically meat, but not necessarily only meat,
Speaker 1: so that it cooks thoroughly but retains all the delicious
Speaker 1: moisture and juices. Savita is French for under vacuum, because
Speaker 1: vacuum sealed pouches are often used, although they don't necessarily
Speaker 1: need to be. For example, if you wanted to um
Speaker 1: drop a whole egg, you know, shell and all into
Speaker 1: a suvie immersion bath, right, you could you could soft
Speaker 1: boil and egg for hours. Yeah. So the way this
Speaker 1: works is that the water is heated to a very
Speaker 1: specific temperature, very precise temperature, by that immersion heating element. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a heating element that there's there there
Speaker 1: several parts to this, right, They've got the pot that
Speaker 1: holds the water tank. Really you've got a essentially a
Speaker 1: tube that pulls the water through. There's a ump that
Speaker 1: that pumps water through this tube and inside the tube.
Speaker 1: But there's a heating element. The heating element is at
Speaker 1: a very specific temperature run by a computer very small.
Speaker 1: There's a little computer chip essentially a micro controller if
Speaker 1: you will. That is, it's got a thermometer based in
Speaker 1: that or a thermostat where it's it's set so that
Speaker 1: it keeps that water at a very precise temperature. And
Speaker 1: it all depends on what you're cooking. Right, there's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't just turn this on and it goes.
Speaker 1: But what happens is this water will very at this temperature,
Speaker 1: will slowly cook whatever it is you put in there,
Speaker 1: and it's very The reason why it's such a slow
Speaker 1: process is so that it preserves all of that tissue
Speaker 1: inside whatever the food is, so that it doesn't become
Speaker 1: tough or dried out. Like if you have ever cooked
Speaker 1: a steak and thought, well, the flavor is great, but
Speaker 1: it's really chewy. Some of that material starts to stiffen
Speaker 1: as you cook it. This idea is that you're using
Speaker 1: a much more gentle process so that you can you
Speaker 1: can cook food at a lower temperature for longer, which
Speaker 1: um which the same way that if you've ever had
Speaker 1: a really tender barbecue or roast, it's it's the same principle,
Speaker 1: except you know, you're sealing it in a baggy and
Speaker 1: putting it in this water bath. You wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: just drop a steak into the water bath. That would
Speaker 1: you get like steak soupy, different different thing. But then
Speaker 1: what the idea usually is that after you've cooked it
Speaker 1: this way, you then cut the bag open and then
Speaker 1: sear the meat if it's a if it's a meat
Speaker 1: dish like a steak, to get a nice caramel process going,
Speaker 1: so we can get that nice seared exterior and still
Speaker 1: have that tender, juicy interior. Souvie machines are pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I mean not like literally cool. They're actually quite warm,
Speaker 1: a little bit warm. But yeah, it's a pretty neat thing.
Speaker 1: And so often another thing you would might you might
Speaker 1: want if you're getting a souvied machine is a vacuum machine,
Speaker 1: which of course is a sealer that just pulls air
Speaker 1: from plastic bags and then seals them. And that can
Speaker 1: be used for preparing stuff for souvie, like of meat,
Speaker 1: or you might use it to intensify flavors. So for example,
Speaker 1: you might put fruits or vegetables in a vacuum machine
Speaker 1: along with some flavored oil, and when you pull that
Speaker 1: air out, fruits, some fruits and vegetables have lots and
Speaker 1: lots of air in them, so when you pull that
Speaker 1: air out, that vacuum ends up pulling the oil into
Speaker 1: the fruit itself and infuses the fruit or vegetables with
Speaker 1: the flavor of whatever oil you're using. So that can
Speaker 1: make these super intense flavors. It's one of those things that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I've had some some of these sorts of
Speaker 1: dishes and it is pretty phenomenal. I mean, when you
Speaker 1: have something like this, your eyes just kind of pop open,
Speaker 1: like wow, that's that's an intense flavor that you've created there,
Speaker 1: And at first you think where did you buy these strawberries? Um.
Speaker 1: It also the process of vacuum ceiling allows that food
Speaker 1: to then cook at a lower temperature um because of physics,
Speaker 1: because because science, because because when things are are at
Speaker 1: are at a very low pressure um, the boiling point changes.
Speaker 1: So so you can you can retain more of the texture, color,
Speaker 1: or nutrients or tenderness of a given piece of food,
Speaker 1: UM by not needing to use his intense heating process
Speaker 1: on it. Yep. And then um, there's another tool. This
Speaker 1: is this is getting more into the science less of
Speaker 1: the tech that that molecular gastronomists like to use. This
Speaker 1: tool is liquid nitrogen. Yeah, yeah, the same stuff we
Speaker 1: use to to help cool uh like superconductors down. Because
Speaker 1: because at uh it sits at a negative three degrees fahrenheit,
Speaker 1: which is negative one centigrade. That's that's pretty cold. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um cold enough so that it would cause you
Speaker 1: serious injury if you were to put yourself in contact
Speaker 1: with it. Also not a great idea to dump a
Speaker 1: bunch of this in a pool, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: very unsafe due to the fact that you will probably
Speaker 1: suffocate somebody. Yeah, they could. The the the gas that's
Speaker 1: giving off is heavier than oxygen, so it displaces oxygen
Speaker 1: and then you can't breathe it at least not for
Speaker 1: long and then you can at least yeah. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: there was the reason why we even bring this up
Speaker 1: is that there was a promotional event and I think
Speaker 1: it was Mexico and I want to say it was
Speaker 1: yeagermeister that did this and um and as part of
Speaker 1: the promotional event, they dumped a whole bunch of liquid
Speaker 1: nitrogen into a pool so that you get this cool
Speaker 1: smoke effect. But there were people in the pool and
Speaker 1: they ended up passing out because they couldn't breathe because
Speaker 1: they that oxygen had been displaced. So this is dangerous
Speaker 1: stuff on multiple levels. Be really really careful. However, it's
Speaker 1: really fun to make ice cream with. Yeah, and also
Speaker 1: it can let you do stuff so that you can
Speaker 1: work with materials in a way that you couldn't work
Speaker 1: with them otherwise. For example, if you were to take
Speaker 1: peanuts and grind them up, normally, you would get peanut
Speaker 1: butter like that's you know, all the oils and everything
Speaker 1: would combine, so that's what you get with peanut butter.
Speaker 1: But if you use liquid nitrogen, you could actually a
Speaker 1: peanut you coun actually, yeah, you could grind it up
Speaker 1: and create peanut powder, so you could use the peanut
Speaker 1: powder and stuff instead of peanut if that's if you
Speaker 1: needed a powdered peanut, that's what that's how you could
Speaker 1: do it. So there's certain materials that using liquid nitrogen
Speaker 1: will let you work with them in ways you couldn't
Speaker 1: work with them before. Uh, speaking of getting stuff cold,
Speaker 1: I hear that you have some sort of weird alternate
Speaker 1: reality version of a griddle to talk about bizarro griddle. No,
Speaker 1: it's called anti griddle. UM. This this is made by
Speaker 1: by a company called poly Science that does that does
Speaker 1: a few a few interesting pieces of equipment like this
Speaker 1: um UM. It pumps a refrigerant through a compressor to
Speaker 1: remove the heat from a steel surface. Um, the same
Speaker 1: way that that if you if you listen to our
Speaker 1: refrigeration episode. Um, it's the same way that a refrigerator works,
Speaker 1: but just on a small steel surface, uh, instead of
Speaker 1: pumping that air through a throw a box. So it
Speaker 1: will very quickly reach negative thirty degrees fahrenheit or negative
Speaker 1: thirty four degrees centigrade. That's pretty chilly. So you can
Speaker 1: use it to freeze the surface of stuff instantly essentially,
Speaker 1: So that's wh wh while leaving that fun creamy center
Speaker 1: that we're talking. Yeah, so I've seen I saw a
Speaker 1: thing where they were using this for again, sort of
Speaker 1: like a strawberry type dessert, where it was freezing the
Speaker 1: outside keeping the inside unfrozen. So that way you have
Speaker 1: this interesting effect when you actually bite into it. A
Speaker 1: lot of this is all about trying to create an
Speaker 1: experience you would not otherwise have if you were to
Speaker 1: prepare the food in a more traditional way. Right, So
Speaker 1: it's kind of thinking outside the box in a way,
Speaker 1: or outside the ice box if you prefer goodness migracious.
Speaker 1: Another one that's made by Polly Science is UM is
Speaker 1: a smoke gun. I believe it's the proprietary term is
Speaker 1: a smoking gun. And this is yeah, yeah, UM. This
Speaker 1: This is essentially UM a pipe that that has a
Speaker 1: pump attached and UM it will draw smoke from from
Speaker 1: wood chips that you that you like in the little
Speaker 1: basket of the pipe through a tube. As the smoke
Speaker 1: is drawn through the tube, it's cooled so by the
Speaker 1: time it gets to whatever food item you're applying it to, UM,
Speaker 1: it's it's a cold smoke that still infuses a lot
Speaker 1: of flavor interesting into whatever it hits. UM. I've I've
Speaker 1: personally seen this applied to UM to a bottle of
Speaker 1: of nice whiskey, which which gives it an extremely lovely
Speaker 1: smoky flavor. UM. Yeah, my wife would hate that. She
Speaker 1: hates smoky flavors. Uh So, Also, I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit. We're kind of wrapping up here with
Speaker 1: our discussion, oh tech, but I want to talk about
Speaker 1: a design competition that's gone on for a while, the
Speaker 1: electro Lux Design Lab. It's a contest that challenges designers
Speaker 1: to come up with innovative consumer products and technology's and
Speaker 1: a lot of that, not all of it, but a
Speaker 1: lot of it has to do with kitchens and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, cooking and the kitchens of tomorrow. And many
Speaker 1: of these designs end up looking like something you would
Speaker 1: see at Epcot down at Disney, you know, one of
Speaker 1: those things where you're like, wow, yeah, this this looks
Speaker 1: very futuristic. I can't imagine it ever actually becoming part
Speaker 1: of someone childly impractical but but super awesome, right like
Speaker 1: jet packs. Um, kind of these are the jet packs
Speaker 1: of the kitchen. Uh. And some of them, you know,
Speaker 1: you may end up finding some of these entering into
Speaker 1: the kitchens of tomorrow, but perhaps not in the exact
Speaker 1: implementation of the design competition. But one two thousand thirteen
Speaker 1: semifinalists is the Global Chef, which is described as a
Speaker 1: smart bowl with a projector Yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: bowl that can somehow, through means uh undescribed in the
Speaker 1: material I read, detect the ingredients that are placed inside
Speaker 1: of it. So let's say that you are preparing something
Speaker 1: like I don't know, let's let's go simple. You're just
Speaker 1: preparing the hetas, and you've got all your chopped vegetables
Speaker 1: and you put them inside this bowl, and the bowl
Speaker 1: is able to detect exactly what you are cooking with.
Speaker 1: It can then go through a essentially a social network
Speaker 1: that would be designed specifically for this type of equipment
Speaker 1: and look for other people who are cooking with similar ingredients,
Speaker 1: and then you could the projector in the bowl would
Speaker 1: project a screen and image of other people who are
Speaker 1: cooking with these ingredients, and you could have a social
Speaker 1: interaction with them as you're cooking and say, hey, I
Speaker 1: see you're cooking with such and such. What are you making,
Speaker 1: Here's what I'm making, Here's how I make it. How
Speaker 1: do you make what you are making? Dinner roulette? Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: dinner roulette. It's it's supposed to be a way of
Speaker 1: making cooking a social event against saying that more and
Speaker 1: more people are having kind of a solo experience, particularly
Speaker 1: you know, younger people of college age or whatever, and
Speaker 1: that cooking can be a very rewarding social experience, but
Speaker 1: for a lot of people it just doesn't work in
Speaker 1: their lifestyles. So this would help facilitate that, which is
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting experience an idea. Don't know how
Speaker 1: practical it is. Don't know that this is ever going
Speaker 1: to actually become a real product. I never really thought
Speaker 1: of getting a smart bowl. Uh, but I've thought of
Speaker 1: play of other smart appliances, and I've seen I've seen
Speaker 1: them at c E S and maybe one day I'll
Speaker 1: see this at CES. Maybe it wouldn't surprise me really,
Speaker 1: uh but anyway, Yeah, so that's kind of a rundown
Speaker 1: on some of the gadgets and gimmicks of the kitchen.
Speaker 1: Did you have any others who wanted to mention before
Speaker 1: we wrape up? No? No, I did not. Um no,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, of course, there are many, many,
Speaker 1: many other gadgets out there, and um and and like
Speaker 1: we said, cooking itself is is science and so um
Speaker 1: so there are countless processes and all kinds of innovators
Speaker 1: in the field doing really fun interesting stuff. We could
Speaker 1: have done a full episode just on Roun Popel, and
Speaker 1: maybe one day we will. I know that Chris and
Speaker 1: I mentioned pop Peel in a previous episode. I cannot
Speaker 1: remember what it was for. I do remember talking about
Speaker 1: the pocket Fisherman, but um but yeah right in jog memory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some there's some crazy gadgets out there. Maybe one
Speaker 1: day we'll just talk about wacky kitchen, just like some
Speaker 1: of the some of the stuff that is wildly impractical
Speaker 1: and yet kind of awesome. But until then, if you
Speaker 1: guys have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: you should write us and let us know our addresses
Speaker 1: tex Stuff at Discovery dot com, or find us on
Speaker 1: our social media. We're on Facebook, we're on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: you can find us there with the handled text stuff.
Speaker 1: Hs W and Lauren and I will talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon for more on this and thousands of
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