Bon Appétit's Brad & Claire Answer Cooking Questions From Twitter

Hey, I'm Claire Saffitz.

And I'm Bradley Leone from Bon Appetit,

and today we're here and we're gonna be doing Chef Support.

[drumming]

Question number one.

The one kitchen gadget I will never get

is a food dehydrator.

Why is that a thing?

Well, because it's good at dehydrating food.

And if you want to dehydrate food,

I mean, I know a lot of ovens make dehydrating settings.

But I mean, without it, if you wanted to make jerky

or different little fruit leathers

or SCOBY snacks, you want a dehydrator.

Well, not all ovens go that low.

Like some ovens bottom out at 150, 200

and sometimes you need a lower temperature

to really dry something out.

Fruit leather, that kind of thing.

So if you're into food crafting,

maybe it's worth the investment.

If not-- Yeah.

And I understand, it's a big bulky thing

to put on the counter.

But some of them are even collapsible.

I mean, I don't know, it seems like the least

of anyone's problems, next question.

OK, does anybody know how to make kombucha

taste a little better? No.

The taste isn't too bad, and I kinda like it,

but the aftertaste hits me.

There's a lot of complexities in layers

to what could be behind all flavors of your kombucha.

Maybe it's the tea you're using.

Maybe you have some funky yeast and bacteria

in your atmosphere that are giving off flavors.

Maybe you're fermenting it too long.

And you add like fruit juices and purees, right?

Yeah, so I mean, if you're doing right out

of the container, the first fermentation,

right off the SCOBY, people drink it there,

and it's quite nice.

It can be a little weird.

But I like to put it into a bottle

and then hit it with a little bit of fruit juice

and let that do a secondary fermentation

at room temperature.

Maybe that's where you can pick up

a little bit more of a pleasant flavor.

I'm fed up with useless garlic crushing gadgets

that split chunks out the side.

Oh, spit chunks out the side.

I'm considering getting a fine microplane grater, thoughts?

I mean, I would say, definitely get a microplane,

regardless of your garlic needs because it's so useful.

Like, grating nutmeg, all sorts of citrus zests,

it's an indispensable kitchen tool.

When it comes to garlic, like,

if you're trying to make mayo or an aioli,

And you need like a garlic puree,

yes, microplane basically liquifies it.

But if some cases where if you're browning garlic

in a pan, like you want pieces.

Clark DeHart wants to know,

how does one bake bread without an oven?

There's only really one option,

that's to make like flat bread that you griddle.

Unless you somehow like had a coal situation,

outside, with a Dutch oven.

You like put the Dutch oven in the coals,

put the coals in-- And like make

a little oven? And you create

your own oven somehow.

Flat bread is the answer, next question.

Why is fermenting vegetables so much easier

than pickling vegetables?

This is a serious question.

Fermentation seems to be a bit more difficult process

but in my experiences, it's much easier to do successfully.

I disagree 100%.

I think there's so many more factors and variables

that can change and throw you off in fermentation.

It's easy to make things rot.

To do it in a controlled rot,

which I call fermentation,

could be a little trickier.

Pickling is a little bit more,

you have your recipe, you have your stuff,

you add it, and it's kind of set it and forget it.

So yeah, I mean, if you're in a time pinch,

a quick pickle for onions is super quick.

Great, so we just add a little bit of water

to this here pan, a little vinegar, a little salt and sugar.

You really just want the salt and the sugar

to dissolve, and then you have a little jar like so,

put some onions in it or carrots

or whatever you're into, and then just pour that

right over, whammo bammo.

I mean, you can let that sit for an hour or two,

but really, you know, 12 hours overnight is fantastic

where it'll really start to penetrate the vegetable

that you're quick pickling and all those colors

will start to bleed nicely.

And those flavors kind of marry well.

OK, sous vide friends, when it says cooking range

one to four hours, WTH?

What the hell?

Oh.

How do you decide?

This is an example of a sous vide machine.

So, you put this in your pot of water,

and it's a circulator.

The main thing is the temperature.

When it says cooking range one to four hours,

that gives you the window where, you know,

you can pull off very similar textures.

You go past four hours, it might start to change

the texture of whatever you're cooking.

But it's usually that kind of holding window.

Do a little small batch and find, you know,

little tests, and see what batch,

see what time you like the most.

All right, where do you buy top quality meat?

Like me, personally?

Do you shop for it at the grocery store

or go to a butcher shop?

Oh, OK, OK.

I would always recommend going to a small, you know,

butcher shop, where you can meet the people,

you can find out, talk to them, you can, you know,

see where their products are coming from,

and there's just, you know, traceability

and accountability for each product.

Yeah, we were down in Central Texas in the hill country,

they were doing bison and chickens and you know,

and seeing how they treat 'em.

They love those animals, and the animals were happy.

They took 'em twice as long to harvest 'em,

because they didn't have, they weren't pumping 'em

full of stuff like grain to fatten 'em up quicker.

When you let it do its natural course,

you get a healthier meat, you get a healthier product,

and you know, it's a more ethical way of consuming meat.

Considering getting a blender to make smoothies in.

Is it worth it?

Would it be any better than the food processor

we already have? Yes.

Two different tools.

A food processor creates, I mean, it chops, basically.

It creates small bits.

And you can let it go and it will make it very fine.

It will make a thing.

A blender liquifies.

We're gonna do a little side by side.

Yeah, I mean, fly in the Vitamix.

Yeah, well, it's not really a fair fight.

Oh, Claire, it's fair.

The Vitamix versus the food processor?

It's for the sake of science, Claire.

Boom boom. Especially if you're using

ice, the blender will crush the ice much better

than a food processor.

And with the blender, you gotta add a little liquid,

usually, to get it going.

To get it spinning. Which is fine,

because it usually wants. That is the advantage

of the food processor is you don't have to,

there doesn't have to be like a critical amount of--

Liquid. Liquid to start.

Are you ready?

Yeah, ready?

[grinding]

Hello.

Yeah, you know what that don't have?

Turbo.

I think it's time to call it.

Yeah.

All right, you want to pour it in a glass?

Sure.

Mine looks. Yeah, yours looks like hell.

Looks like bear scat.

[laughing]

Aw, look at that, huh?

Yeah, that looks better than this.

I like to put a little mint in there.

Look at that.

Chunky.

Cheers, Claire, yours looks great.

Have fun picking that out of your teeth.

I'll eat it because I'm starving.

Well, visually, she has a lot more chunks

and bits going on.

I'm sure it tastes fine.

It's not smooth in texture.

No, mine's got that nice kind of bounce to it.

Can I have a little of yours?

Yeah, here, dump that swill out.

All right, moving on.

Focus, Claire.

OK, I'll take this one.

When baking cakes, sometimes you fold in

and sometimes you beat in the ingredients.

How do I know when to fold and when it needs beating?

Folding is resolved for operations

that need to be done gently,

to like keep the volume in the mixtures

and beating is-- That makes sense.

You want to vigorously combine two things.

Loud and forward.

OK, making cookies but I don't have enough flour

for two batches so I'm multiplying,

is this happening right now because--

This is live time.

All right.

I'm multiplying the recipe by 1.5.

If the original recipe calls for one and a quarter

sticks of butter, how much should I use?

My brain hurts, I don't know.

Get more flour.

Should I use for my one and a half batches,

converting into tablespoons.

Butter. Quarter sticks butter.

So a stick is eight tablespoons.

Plus a quarter would be--

So it's 10 tablespoons, so plus five tablespoons,

is use 15 tablespoons.

Great. Done.

This is the hardest math I'm doing today.

Yeah, me too, next question. All right.

What do you think about baking with Greek yogurt?

Love it, great idea.

Say like substituting oil for Greek yogurt.

That might not work out.

I love baking with yogurt and other acidulated dairy

like sour cream because it adds a lot of tenderness

to a baked good, like a cake, pound cake,

that kind of thing.

So it's doing a lot, but I would not recommend

substituting it for the fat--

Can't do it. In the recipe.

Midnight bananas foster is great,

but does the fire part really have to burn off

all the alcohol?

I think what Kyle's really asking is,

do you have to flambe?

You can just pour booze on it and eat it,

I mean, it's fine.

You can cook off the alcohol without having to flambe it.

Right. The flambe is just

the drama of it.

But like yes, I think you would need to cook it

because otherwise alcohol burn gets in the way

of all the other flavors.

OK, so we're gonna do a little flambe demo.

Yeah we are.

We'll turn this up.

And what do you say we add a little sugar in here.

Brown sugar, butter, and cinnamon.

[speaking foreign language]

Here's your banana halves, throw 'em in.

Say [speaking foreign language].

[speaking foreign language]

[gasping]

Protect your eyebrows.

I have no eyelashes.

[laughing]

What was the question?

Do you got to burn off your booze?

Yeah, how else you gonna [speaking foreign language]?

[laughing]

I think for a proper bananas foster,

you have to flambe. You have to.

Yeah, that was a fun one.

Today's baking status.

Enthusiastic, unskilled.

Seriously, how do I get the icing to stay on the cake?

Claire, take it.

This one's simple.

One, absolutely make sure the cake is fully cooled

because even a little bit of heat from the center

of the cake will-- Make it run?

Basically melt the icing. Makes sense.

Or run off.

But if you're going for that look of like the really

defined, beautiful white drips, you need a much

thicker glaze, I would hold back the liquid by half.

Beer is fermenting vigorously.

It blew the airlock off, exclamation point.

How do you get dried liquid marks off your wall?

Beer is fermenting vigorously,

but it shouldn't really blow lids off.

Especially if you had the airlock.

It must have just been doing so so so much

that the amount getting out wasn't enough.

It was still building up pressure.

And popped it out.

So I had a kitchen mishap recently.

We had an exploding can of sweetened condensed milk

that had turned into [speaking foreign language],

did I tell you this story?

No, but how did it explode?

You leave it on the stove top?

I didn't leave it on the stove top,

but it happened, and we had little ellipses shaped

marks on every single wall of our entire living room

and kitchen and the ceiling.

You might have to paint the ceiling,

that's what we had to do.

Really dislike imprecise recipes.

Exactly how, oh geez.

Exactly how thick is a quote thick sabayon?

For visual indicators like this,

where it's thick, YouTube is a great resource.

Do a little searching on YouTube for like sabayon,

how to make sabayon, and you can see it.

So we're gonna show you really quick

how to make thick sabayon and what that means.

So this doesn't have too many ingredients.

What do you got there?

Egg yolks, sugar. OK.

This step is called blanching, where you knead

the yolks and the sugar, and so I'm looking for

the yolks to lighten in both color and texture.

OK, so that looks good.

I think that's there.

So you can see, takes a second to dissolve.

OK, so that's ribbon.

We have more follow up.

OK, now you start.

So this is a double boiler.

Very gently searing water underneath.

You don't want the water to be boiling

because you don't want it to overheat the bowl.

And the idea is that this becomes like voluminous.

It'll triple at least in volume and you'll see

that nice ribbon again.

Yeah. I'd say that is

a thick sabayon, ribbon, coats the back of the spoon.

Volume. Nice and mousy.

Airy. Yeah.

See you later, sabayon.

Oh, it's got cookies, Claire, I'll read it to you.

I can never get my macaroons right.

Help, please.

What did I do wrong?

So these have what they call a foot.

If you go to like a fancy macaroon shop,

you'll notice that little ruffled edge on the bottom,

so that's hard to achieve so they have the foot,

but the tops are uneven and cracked a little bit,

so that to me says that you're over beating the batter.

It's like you're working too much air into it.

And then you're not folding enough after you're adding

almond flour, which deflates it a little bit.

So it shouldn't split like that.

No, it should be a really smooth,

non shiny like matte finish.

So try beating more after you incorporate the almond flour

to take out some of the air.

Give it a nice tap on the counter a couple of times

to bring out any big air bubbles.

Then let it dry out on the counter.

For, you know, 20 minutes, and even go longer,

so you develop a skin, and then that'll help you

get a really smooth surface.

But you have the foot, so you're doing pretty well.

OK.

Ovens don't cook food, OK.

People cook food.

What's the best tool for cooking food?

Is this like a riddle?

Ovens don't cook food, well, yes, they do.

And people also cook food.

It's a symbiotic relationship, BB.

It says people cook food, what's the best tool

for cooking food?

[Both] People.

Nailed it.

But that doesn't even make sense.

[Brad] Claire, you solved the riddle.

All right, Rachael McCaig wants to know,

can a hashtag foodie explain the science

of reducing a sauce before you thicken?

Yeah, like a roo or something.

Yeah because even if you add like a corn starch slurry

or something or a [speaking foreign language] to a sauce,

if the sauce is watery, the thickener will thicken it,

but it's not gonna make the flavor last longer.

[Brad] You're still gonna have to reduce it

to the right amount. Right.

Next question.

When making chocolate mousse, do you use egg whites

or whipping cream?

A decision must be made.

This is a good question.

The problem with using just whipping cream

is that it will actually fall.

Like you know, it's not stable.

So the idea of adding egg whites and chocolate,

like you're creating this sort of stable mixture

that in the fridge is maintaining,

is keeping that air.

So I would say go egg whites or both,

don't just use whipping cream.

Does miso paste go bad?

I have everything to try this but the miso paste

is over a year old with no dates printed on it.

No, no. It's fine.

You'll be fine.

I have one that's been sitting there at room temperature

for about two years now and it just gets denser,

it just gets more like chocolatey and firmer.

I think the rule of thumb for like

is something bad, does it smell fine,

does it look fine, if so, it's probably fine.

All right, Cal Wilson wants to know,

how does one poach in olive oil?

Cal, strong name.

Isn't that just a fancy way of saying deep fry

the shit out of it?

No, absolutely not.

Poach is usually just submerged in low temp, gentle.

Not fry the hell out of it.

Poaching is like no color.

You're not trying to put color on it.

Deep frying is like crispy edges, golden brown.

It's the opposite of frying. Right.

Let's move on.

Oh, mama. Brad.

Dear Bon Appetit, does Brad do all of his own stunts?

Does he need a body double?

My husband is available.

It's your doppelganger.

He's way better looking than I am.

[laughing]

And yeah, please e-mail me your resume

and we'll consider it.

I do all my own stunts, thank you.

All right, we answered a lot of questions.

Yeah, a ton of questions, and a lot of them were good,

you know, people really put thought into it

and care about what they're cooking.

And I like that people were asking questions,

that means they're cooking at home,

and trying new things and experimenting

and you learn more from the failures

than the successes.

That's the only way you do learn.

Like just keep cooking.

Keep making mistakes and we'll help you figure 'em out.