Refrigerate eggs recipes

Talk today about salts grain sizes.

I like them big, others like them small. There's arguments for both. Another listener asks some very good questions about recipe writing styles and why written recipes are so often bad. And we'll do a quick follow up on diet soda and teeth. But first, where do you keep your eggs and why do you keep them there? "Ask Adam." James: Hi Adam. James here, and I have a question about eggs. I'm from the US and I currently live in the US, but I've also lived in places like Japan, Korea, and the Philippines.

Now, here in the US, if I want eggs, I go to a grocery store, I walk to the refrigerator section, I take my eggs out of a refrigerator and I take them home and I put them back into a refrigerator. James: When I lived in Japan, it was the same thing, grocery store, fridge, and then back into another fridge. But when I lived in Korea, it was different. When I went to my local grocery store in Korea, they would have eggs that were not in a refrigerator. I would buy them and I'd take them home and I'd put them back in my fridge like always. James: One day I had a friend over who was also not from Korea. They were from South Africa and they went to my fridge to get something and saw that I had my eggs in the fridge. They asked me why I had my eggs in the fridge, and I said, "Because you have to refrigerate eggs.".

And they promptly said to me, "No, you don't." So why did I, an American, refrigerate my eggs while my friend from South Africa, didn't? Adam: There's got to be a word for a thing that appears on its face to be a cultural difference, but it is actually a practical difference. It seems like a thing that different groups of people do differently for arbitrary reasons, but it's not arbitrary at all. There's got to be a word for a thing like that, and this is one of those. Adam: Well, there is actually an arbitrary choice at the root of this phenomenon that you described, James. There is one arbitrary choice there, but it is not the choice between refrigerating or not refrigerating eggs. That is not arbitrary. That is perfectly rational. It's a reasoned choice.

Adam: The arbitrary choice is the choice between washing or not washing eggs. Washed eggs really do need to be refrigerated, probably. And unwashed eggs do not need to be refrigerated. You can still refrigerate unwashed eggs if you want to, but there is no particular reason to do so, probably. Adam: There actually may still be a pretty good reason to refrigerate all eggs and we'll get back to that, but first, why washing determines storage method? When an egg comes out of a bird, it has a protein coating on it, known colloquially as a bloom, and it is known scientifically as a cuticle. It's nothing like the cuticle that's on your fingernails. Adam: Cuticle is a very broad term that encompasses all kinds of protective coatings in the natural world. The cuticle on an egg is a protein-rich goo that enrobes the egg and it has evolved to block biological contamination of the embryo inside, assuming that the egg is fertilized and therefore has an embryo inside.

Adam: I mean, we generally eat non-fertilized eggs, obviously, but the egg comes out with a cuticle either way, and for a good reason. The surface of an egg may appear to be totally solid, but it is not. On the microscopic level, eggshell is porous.

It has to be porous because the

Embryonic chick inside has to breathe.

Adam: I mean, it doesn't breathe with its lungs, at least not at first, but through all the membranes and the fluids surrounding the embryo, there is gas exchange with the outside atmosphere, respiration. The eggshell has to be porous to allow for respiration. These pores, unfortunately, are like wide open doors for potentially harmful microorganisms that are attracted to the warm, wet nutrient-rich environment inside the egg. The pores are also big enough for moisture on the inside of the egg to escape.

So birds and other reptiles, they all evolved a protein coating around the eggs and this coating permits gas exchange, but it keeps most of the water sealed in and it keeps most microbes sealed out. This coating is called the cuticle or the bloom, and yes, birds are reptiles. Adam: Birds are not just evolved from dinosaurs. They are literally dinosaurs. The taxonomists have all agreed in recent years. Dino nuggets are dino nuggets. Let that sink in for a second. Anyway, washing the egg removes the cuticle, and once the cuticle is gone, the egg will spoil much faster.

It'll dry out inside, the egg inside effectively shrinks from water loss and the proteins break down. Adam: You can see this in any very old egg, regardless of how it's been processed or stored. Eventually the egg gets so old that you crack it, and the white is small and super watery. It just kind of runs across the pan instead of holding together. That is from protein breakdown with time. The yolk in a really old egg also breaks really easily, and it does not stand tall in the pan. It just kind of goes bluuuerg. That is from protein breakdown and dehydration.

Adam: All of those degrading processes proceed much more rapidly in an egg that has had its cuticle washed off. And then there's the microorganisms. It should not be surprising that when an egg comes out of a chicken, it is generally covered in bacteria, most worryingly salmonella. Salmonella is a genus of these little rod-shaped bacteria that live in the intestinal systems of animals. Adam: When the host animal poops, the salmonella comes out along with the fecal matter. And while we humans push our poop and our babies out of two totally different holes, birds do not. Birds have but one hole, called a cloaca. Everything comes out of the cloaca; excrement and eggs.

Adam: As you can imagine, the odds of the egg surface being contaminated with fecal bacteria are pretty high. Many studies have shown that an intact cuticle on the egg does a pretty good job of keeping bacteria at bay on the surface of the egg and preventing their migration inside the egg, where they would find a warm, wet nutrient-rich environment and they would be fruitful and multiply in there. The cuticle keeps them out. Adam: Foodborne salmonella infection in humans is thought by scientists to be somewhat dose-dependent. If you eat a few live salmonella bacteria, your stomach acid and your other defensive systems are probably going to kill them and take care of it.

But if you eat a ton of

Live salmonella, odds are greater that your defenses will simply be overwhelmed.

Refrigeration slows the growth of bacteria.

So keeping eggs cold improves your odds of not getting sick from an infected egg.

And an unwashed egg, an egg with its natural cuticle or bloom intact, that egg is less likely to be infected internally with bacteria. There may be bacteria on the outside, but the outside is not as hospitable for bacteria. It's harder for them to be fruitful and multiply on the barren surface of an egg. Adam: So if you are buying eggs that have been washed, then you don't have to refrigerate them, or at least it's not as urgent that you refrigerate them. But if you are buying eggs that have been washed, then you kind of have to refrigerate them. It becomes pretty important, and indeed refrigeration would probably help in all cases. Moisture loss and protein breakdown are inevitable as any egg ages and refrigeration does slow those processes down in any egg. Adam: Also, eggs can be infected internally with salmonella inside the bird as the egg develops before it even grows its protective shell and cuticle.

I am referencing an article by the University of Wisconsin, quoting a professor there named Dr. Ron Kean. He says, quote, "Salmonella can pass from the cloaca, the rear opening of the hen, up the oviduct, and then to the ovary." Adam: So if the ovary is infected, what he's saying is the egg can become infected before it's even fully formed. The inside of the egg gets infected inside the ovary. So it can have salmonella inside it before that protective cuticle even forms around the outside. And in that event, it would still be beneficial to refrigerate the egg because cold slows the metabolic and reproductive processes of bacteria usually. Adam: Nonetheless, lots of people on this earth eat unrefrigerated eggs, and most of them have lived to tell the tale, but crucially, they are dealing with unwashed eggs. Unwashed eggs store far better at room temperature than washed eggs.

You still got to worry about bacteria and other general grossness on the egg's surface. Adam: Households that cook unwashed eggs often have dedicated sponges just for knocking the literal crud off of the egg before you crack it and you cook it and eat it. And at the very least, they crack the egg away from their food, unlike me, a guy in the United States where eggs are generally washed and then refrigerated. Adam: I am quite cavalier about where I crack my eggs. I often do it right on the counter where I am cooking, which I should say is not a best practice. There's still potential for cross contamination there, but less so with a washed egg. And I've thus far lived to tell the tale. I do wash my counter after I do this, obviously.

Adam: The US is an egg-washing country, therefore, the US is an egg-refrigerating country. Same deal with Japan, same deal with Australia. If an egg producer in the US keeps more than 3,000 hens, then they are legally required to wash their eggs before selling them. Smaller producers do not have to, and indeed experts actually discourage little farm stand type operations from washing their eggs. They say you shouldn't do that, because you have to do it properly. Adam: If you don't wash your eggs just right, you can actually make the problem worse not better. The wash water has to be hot, not boiling. You don't want to cook the eggs, but it has to be hot.

The best practice temperatures are 44 degrees celsius, 111 Fahrenheit for the pre-wash that gets off most of the gunk, and then 48 C, 118 Fahrenheit for the final quick rinse.

Adam: I'm looking at a 2004 experimental

Egg washing study out of the uk.

Quote, salmonella were shown to enter the egg contents when water temperatures were lowered, indicating that strict temperature control must be maintained in order to prevent the ingress of salmonella into egg contents. Adam: Other washing machine parameters that were investigated did not significantly affect salmonella entry into the egg contents, but influenced shell surface kill levels to varying degrees, end quote. The other parameters that they're talking about there include sanitizing additives to the water, the water jet's pressure, length of the washing and drying processes. Adam: According to their experiments in the UK, those factors influenced the live bacterial counts on the egg's surface, but not inside the egg. Water temperature did influence internal bacterial counts. If you don't wash your eggs hot enough, surface bacteria is actually more likely to penetrate the egg than if you had just left well enough alone and never washed the egg in the first place.

Adam: It's easy to imagine why countries like the US and Japan first started washing their eggs in the first place, which was somewhere in the 20th century. We're talking about highly developed economies that have the resources to properly wash eggs. Plus, us residents of highly developed countries — we're a little softer, right? We're a little less able to handle the truth when it comes to our food. Adam: We are so removed from agrarian life that we forget all food comes from the ground. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, with the all singing, all dancing crap of the world. We've forgotten about this fundamental truth. So we are irrationally grossed out by the sight of goopy, unwashed eggs. So our egg producers wash them for us, which means we then have to refrigerate them because they don't have a cuticle.

Adam: Unrefrigerated washed eggs, they're going to dry out, they're going to break down, they're going to spoil really fast. As I understand it, more recently developed economies like. China and India and Brazil, these countries are in kind of a transitional period where both washed and unwashed eggs are on the market, at least in certain places, and therefore some people in these countries refrigerate their eggs and some people don't. Adam: And then there is Europe. Europe is the oddball here. Western Europe has been a highly developed economy for just as long as the US and Japan and Australia. Europe has had the financial and industrial capacity to properly wash and then refrigerate its eggs for a long time. But as of now, it is illegal in the European Union for commercial egg producers to wash their eggs.

They cannot wash their eggs if they want to. Adam: The reason that scientists in the UK were studying egg washing in 2004 is because they were investigating whether egg washing really should be feared by European consumers the way that it is. The popular perception of washed eggs in Europe is that they spoil faster, which is true, but only if you don't refrigerate them, and Europeans generally do not refrigerate their eggs, with some notable exceptions such as Sweden. Adam: Swedish egg producers actually got a waiver from the EU in 2003 to wash their eggs for their local market because Swedish consumers simply demanded washed eggs, but other Europeans are repulsed by the prospect of washed eggs. Not because French people just love the smears of chicken poo on their eggs, "Hmm. Ooh, la, la." But rather there is a belief among. European consumers and food safety regulators that washing is one of these things that modern industrialized food producers do to cover up all kinds of disgusting and unsanitary practices. Adam: Sure, sure.

Let's hold our egg-laying hands in horrifyingly cramped conditions and let's feed them other ground up chickens that may have been infected with salmonella. We don't have to worry about any of that because, hey, when the eggs come out, we'll simply wash away all our sins. That is how Europeans imagine the US egg industry and I don't think they're entirely off base.

Adam: The longstanding historical approach to food

Safety in europe has been to regulate animal housing conditions, regulate feed, regulate the medicine, all of that, to ensure a safe, clean product that won't need to be washed.

You go even further and you ban

Washing so that the producers will have no choice, but to keep their eggs safe and clean from the very start.

Adam: This is rather similar, I think, to the logic behind traffic circles and roundabouts and rotaries, which are three slightly different things, but I'm going to refer to all of them right now, colloquially, as roundabouts. Roundabouts, on their face, are more dangerous than traffic lights, but that's exactly what makes them safer. Adam: You physically cannot drive through a roundabout at highway speeds.

To do so would be suicidal. Even if you were the only car on the road, you have to slow down to go through a roundabout. A traffic light, you can totally blast through at highway speeds and people do it all the time. Car crashes happen everywhere, but it's generally only the high speed crashes that kill people. Adam: Roundabouts dramatically reduce the risk of fatal crashes at intersections because they force everyone to slow down because they are, on their face, dangerous and chaotic. Traffic lights are orderly, so people just shut off their brains and trust the light and blast through, which works just fine until a drunk driver blasts through the red light and T-bones you in the intersection and you both die. Adam: And of course, Brits, by drunk driving, I mean drink driving. The Brits say drink driving for some reason.

Anyway, I think that logic is similar to the logic underlying a lot of EU, and now distinctly UK, food safety regulations. You ban washing so that the producers have to be safe and clean up front. Adam: European egg and poultry producers generally vaccinate chickens against salmonella these days. US producers generally do not. In the US, we wash away our sins in the packing process, and as a result, we have to refrigerate the eggs. Which approach actually produces safer food? Nobody knows. Adam: I have a whole video about global foodborne illness rates, which, if you haven't seen it already, you should. Not a lot of people watched that one, but it's good.

I will summarize it, thusly. Any meme chart or other junk science you've seen that says foodborne infections are much more prevalent in the US than they are in the EU or the UK, anything you've seen like that is bunk. Adam: Foodborne illness statistics from different countries are not comparable because they are counted in radically different ways. We are paranoid about food safety in the US, or at least our government is. I would guess this is because of how intertwined US government is historically with giant food producers, most notably the beef and dairy industries. Adam: These giant producers are absolutely terrified of an outbreak that could tank their businesses. Food production in the US is so centralized in the hands of a few big companies that a single contamination could cause a nationwide outbreak. The US meat and dairy industries are terrified of this, and there are lobbyists that are very powerful in Washington, so we have a very robust public health surveillance system in the US for tracking foodborne illness.

Adam: We count way more foodborne illness. That doesn't mean we're actually getting way more foodborne illness. It just means we're counting more. The only major effort to normalize all the data and compare the global burden of foodborne illness is the 2015 World Health Organization report entitled, The Global Burden of Foodborne. Illness. Adam: In my video about this, I talked to a Dutch scientist who worked on that report. He explained all of the statistical science and magic they applied to try to figure out which countries actually have more foodborne illness.

And according to their math, Western Europe

Has almost the same numbers as the us plus canada.

 

Adam: "The respective food supplies of these two regions are just as safe," says this 2015 WHO report. WHO. Do people say who or W-H-O? I'm going to say who. Would the numbers be any different if we were only comparing, say, the US against the UK or France? Well, we don't know because WHO member nations have not authorized the release of country-level data from this study. Adam: They have only authorized the release of the next level up, which is what they call sub-regional data. That's where you get like Western Europe versus the US plus Canada, that kind of thing. Those are sub-regions. So which approach yields safer eggs? Washing and not refrigerating or refrigerating and washing.

Nobody knows, at least not in practice. Adam: You can do laboratory experiments, but those results may be different compared to what actually happens out here in the real world. The history of public health and safety is full of instances in which people came up with a rule or a procedure that should, in theory, make everybody safer. But then, in practice, it turns out to make people less safe. Adam: I'm about to go visit my father-in-law, who is a retired airline pilot and a Marine Corps aviator before that. Dude's a real badass, and he is always bemoaning how the US airline industry is trying to muscle out the real bad asses like my father-in-law. Historically, civilian airlines recruited highly skilled ex-military pilots and they paid them like highly skilled professionals. Doctors, lawyers, airline pilots — they all used to be at the same elevated professional class.

Adam: But then the airlines started automating more and more flying tasks with computers. And they have increasingly sought to reduce the role of pilot to that of a systems manager, a person who just hovers over the computer with a checklist and makes sure that everything is functioning normally. Adam: My father-in-law bemoans this, because in the event that systems fail and the pilot actually has to be a pilot, who do you want in that chair? You want somebody who's making barely above minimum wage as is often the case now with smaller regional airlines? Or do you want some ex-military badass with a billion flight hours in hostile airspace doing real life, top gun shit, dudes like my father-in-law? Who do you want in that chair? Adam: I see his point when he makes this point, but when he and I have these conversations, the thing that I always say to him is, US passenger air travel is now far safer than it ever has been.

This transition that you bemoan from high paid real pilots to low paid systems managers, this transition has coincided with a dramatic unprecedented increase in safety. Adam: We have not had a major airline crash in the US since 2009, knock on wood. And yeah, that 2009 crash of a tiny regional airliner outside of Buffalo, New York, that was an instance in which poorly trained, poorly paid pilots made some total rookie mistakes. The systems failed, they had to be actual pilots and they failed. Adam: But it sure seems like relying more on computers than on people has made us all safer in aggregate.

The net effect is a safer system. We're going to have this conversation as it applies to self-driving cars, right? Self-driving cars are going to mess up and kill people, and when that happens, we'll need to stop, take a second, use our big brains and ask, "How many more people would have been killed with human-driven cars?" Adam: That makes it sound like I'm an Elon Musk fanboy, which I most certainly am not.

I have no idea if self-driving cars are good or bad. I'm just trying to illustrate the principle. But I can tell you why I like Shaker & Spoon, the sponsor of this episode. Shaker & Spoon is a monthly cocktail subscription box. Adam: I'm already sold based upon that description alone, but let me proceed. Every month, Shaker & Spoon sends you a box, like the one that I've got right here, and inside it are all of the syrups and beaters and aromatics and such that you will need to make, not one but three original cocktail recipes, original recipes created by top bartenders and available exclusively in here.

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A classy party too. Shakerandspoon.com/ragusea. Use code Ragusea, for $20 off your first box. Thank you, Shaker & Spoon. Daniel: Hey Adam, this is Daniel. And my question is in relation to how recipes are written and advertised. It's two questions in one, but one is, it seems every single recipe, whether it's a video or written, constantly has to remind you how easy it is and how, "Oh, this is the easiest way to do this." Or, "This is the easiest way to do that." Or, "Five easy things." Daniel: And it seems like almost a cult of easiness, which just irritates me because I'm like, "If something is easy, I don't necessarily want to do it more." And I think, I don't know who they're advertising for, and it's really strange to me because it's like a lot of recipes are complicated, especially like something like sourdough.

Daniel: I screwed up sourdough all the freaking time.

I still want to do it. I still want to try and get better at it. So I don't understand why recipes are constantly advertised as easy. That's something that always confuses me. Daniel: But also the second part for me is, a lot of recipe videos and a lot of recipes that are written in general, I don't think they do a good enough job of telling you why you need to do something. Like, why do you need to do this step or use this ingredient and why should I not remove it? Sometimes I don't have a lot of the ingredients or sometimes I'm like, "Oh, this seems like such an overkill. Why do I have to do this extra step?" Daniel: I feel like they don't do enough to explain to you, "Oh, well, do you want this to happen? Then don't do that." And I think, I saw this pretty glaringly in I made one of your recipes. It was awesome.

I made the ice cream recipe with the two bowls and the hand beaters, which was great, but I messed it up the second time and then I forgot to take it out after one hour and do it again. Daniel: And I was like, "Oh, I know now why I didn't need to do that," is that it was so hard, I had to scrape off the ice cream. It was so hard to pull it off. Whereas the first time it was just nice and easy to pull off a bunch of ice cream. So I wonder, is there any merit to, don't do this because of that? Adam: Okay.

First question first, Daniel, why do people

Promote their recipes as being easy? this bothers you.

Why do people promote their recipes as being easy? I don't know, but I think that most people are looking for easy recipes, even if you are not, Daniel, and that is just fine. Not everything has to be for you.

Adam: Content that is clearly intended for someone who is not you, is not an affront to you. And. I imagine that you know that, Daniel. You sound like a thoughtful fellow, but certainly there are people on the internet less thoughtful, who will come across a piece of content and they think to themselves, "Hmm, this is not the particular piece of content I was looking for, therefore it is bad. Therefore, it is wrong. Therefore, I should leave a comment complaining that this is not the content that I wanted, it is instead something else, very bad." Adam: Solid logic there, Kevin. I don't know if the person's name is Kevin. Just sounds like a Kevin.

Anyway, you would have a legitimate complaint if the content lured you in under false pretenses, right? So I'm talking about deceptive click bait headlines. If they advertise X and then deliver Y then you have a right to be angry. But if not, just shut up and take your business elsewhere. Adam: If you don't like meat, don't watch Guga. Watch somebody else. I think he pronounces his name Guga, right? Not Gaga, because it's short for Gustavo, right? Guga. He's a YouTuber who does meat content, hot, hot meat content. Anyway, Kevin is not you Daniel.

I don't think that you're the guy who leaves such a comment, but it does sound like you are less interested in easy recipes than most other people who are searching the internet for recipes, and that is just fine. You do you. Adam: I want to stress that I am not speaking from some deep well of proprietary recipe content market research, to which I have purchased access. I have zero market research about my industry. I would love to see some or to commission some, but I don't think that I would be willing to pay enough for it because I don't really need it. I'm doing just fine making the kind of content that I want to make and the kind of content that you, dear viewer or listener, manifestly desire. Adam: I will say that anecdotally, my easiest recipes tend to do best on YouTube. I assume that most people are looking for simple things because they lead complex and difficult lives and they're not looking for a homework assignment.

They're looking for dinner. But certainly some people, some content creators do very well with complex involved recipe contents. Adam: People who like simple accessible recipes will often praise me in contrast to. Joshua Weissman, a considerably more successful internet cook. People will say, "Adam just says, 'Buy your hamburger buns.' But Joshua says, 'Well, here's how you make burger buns from scratch.'". And if you prefer my approach to Joshua's, well, I certainly appreciate that. But in Joshua's defense, I don't think that he's saying the only proper way to make a burger is to bake the buns from scratch.

Adam: All he's saying is, "This is

How i, joshua weissman, would make a burger bun.

 

This is how I would make my

Ultimate burger experience." and the people who watch joshua's videos are smart enough to think to themselves, "yeah.

I mean, I don't have to do what Joshua is doing, but. I want to watch him do it anyway because Joshua is entertaining and I'm curious how a burger bun is made. Adam: What makes a burger bun come out soft and squishy compared to other kinds of bread. I'm curious about that. So I'm going to watch Joshua bake a burger bun from scratch, even though I have no intention of ever doing that myself." Anyway, that is my answer to your first question, Daniel. Adam: Your second question was, why do recipes focus so much on the what rather than on the why? They tell you what to do, they don't tell you so much why you should do it. Obviously, I am sympathetic to your complaint there, Daniel.

I have built pretty much my entire food YouTubing career around the why. Adam: I make two videos and one podcast a week. My Thursday videos are recipes, but my Monday videos are not. My Monday videos are about food, but they are chiefly concerned with the why, why food is the way it is or why people do what they do with food. Adam: Being that I was a full-time university faculty member before I fell bass-ackwards into my present career, I designed my release schedule to be a weekly course schedule. Monday, we have the lecture. Thursday we have the lab. Get your theory on Monday and your practice on Thursday.

And even in my Thursday recipe videos, I do tend to cover a lot of the why's, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Adam: You can't go off on a tangent about every single decision underlying a recipe or the video is going to be three hours long or longer. I think a recipe video should be at its core, a utilitarian object. And if it gets too long, it's not very useful. So I try to cover the most pressing whys in my recipe videos. Adam: If I'm using a hard-to-find ingredient, I try to say why I'm doing that so that people can choose a substitute. If I use a technique that deviates from tradition or normal practice, I try to say why I'm doing that, mostly so that I can shut up at least some of the gatekeepers preemptively. Adam: But at some point, you have to stop explaining and just cook, or else the video is going to be three hours long.

And then when it comes time to write the text version of the recipe that I put in the description, the text version, there, I try to be even more streamlined. I want the written version to just be a quick reminder of what people already saw in the video. Adam: I hope that they watch the video, absorb the contents, get the big idea and then they simply refer back to the written recipe for measurements and other hard-to-remember details. I will often cover very little of the why territory in my written recipes. Adam: Why is that in my approach? Well, one reason is business. My videos make money, my written recipes do not. It is exceedingly difficult to monetize written recipe content. If I can incentivize people to watch my videos instead of just reading the recipes, then I make money.

Indeed, people who do mostly traffic in written recipe content, they will generally preface their recipes with what? Page after page, after page of prose, where they will cover lots of the whys about the recipe. Adam: They are doing this for a couple of reasons. One being that the only way to effectively monetize written recipe content aside from pay walling is to force your audience to scroll past a million ads on the way to the actual recipe card.

Another reason they do this is because

They're trying to keep the actual recipe card at the bottom as tight and utilitarian as possible, so they cover all of the why stuff in the preface.

Adam: I cover the whys in my videos for basically the same reasons. Also, I hate writing the written recipes. I hate it. It is my least favorite part of my whole creative process for many reasons that I will detail on some other pod, but I just hate it, and so I do it as fast as humanly possible.

Adam: As I recall, Daniel, I think I explained in that ice cream video of mine, why you have to mix the ice cream every hour or so. It's all about making lots of teeny tiny ice crystals instead of just a few big ones. Perhaps I didn't give the why in the written recipe and, well, now you know why. Adam: But of course this is bigger than me. Why do lots of other recipe writers omit the why? Well, often, it is because they do not know why. The greatest chefs in the world often have no idea why they do what they do. Or sometimes they have demonstrably false notions of why they do what they do. You do not have to know the why in order to be great at something.

All you need to know is the what. Adam: Great practitioners know what works. They do not necessarily know why it works and that is not their fault. Their job is to do, not to study. The why is the domain of scholars. I have a video that I did a while back that was about cooking lessons that I learned from Eddie van Halen, indirectly. Adam: I made that video like a month or two before he died and I didn't even know that he was sick. Nobody knew outside of his friends and family, I don't think.

And I talked in that video about how Eddie had all of these demonstrably false notions about music theory and guitar playing and guitar design, and yet he was still one of the best ever, right? Arguably the GOAT of the guitar. Adam: In my video, I talked about Gordon Ramsey, my favorite target. And I talked about how. Gordon still believes that searing meat seals in the juices, and he says that all the time, even though it is demonstrably false. Gordon remains a great chef. Maybe one of the best. He's great because searing tastes good even if it doesn't seal in the juices. Adam: He doesn't need to know the why, he just needs to know what, what works, and searing works.

That's all he needs to know in order to cook well. Of course, if Gordon put a little more effort into interrogating the why, well, maybe then he'd be a better cooking show presenter, which is, I believe, his primary gig. So in that sense, I do think Gordon sucks. Adam: I also think he sucks because he makes entertainment out of workplace abuse, which is why. I'm fine talking shit about Gordon Ramsey, while at the same time I generally try to not talk shit about pretty much anyone else who makes cooking content. There are exceptions of course, here and there, but, yeah. Adam: Cooking is filled with all kinds of inherited wisdom. People don't know why they do what they do.

They only know that their mom showed them this recipe and it works great. So they put the recipe on the internet and that is the only why that matters to them. Fair enough, IMHO. Pablo: Hey, Adam. My name's Pablo, I live in New York.. I just wanted to ask a question about something I've been thinking about lately. One of the things I've learned from cooking videos online like yours is the use of kosher salt to season food, and I really do notice what everyone says, it's much easier to season by feel, by pinch with kosher salt. Pablo: But recently I was shopping at this little grocery store where I just moved to in Brooklyn and the only big salt they had was this giant grilling salt, and so of course, that's what.

I bought because I didn't want to use table salt. Since then, I found that it's too big and I can't season my food homogeneously when I want to. The grains are so big that they don't even really dissolve in food that I'm seasoning unless I were to let it sit around forever. Pablo: So I just wanted to ask your thoughts on, are there uses in cooking, as opposed to baking, where it actually might be better to use table salt? Are there any valid culinary reasons why one might use table salt, I'm talking about very, very, very finely ground iodized, usually salt. I'll answer your question, Pablo. But first I would like credit for not putting your question at the beginning of the show and throwing up a thumbnail saying something like, does size matter? Or how big is too big? With my mouth pornographically agape. I didn't do that thumbnail. A lesser man would have, but I did not...