Smuggling Baby Eels: The New Black Market

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Hey, subscribers get exclusive recipes, some from my travels, others from my own personal repertoire. Founding members get those recipes plus direct access to me personally, plus a tote bag and a sign copy of the Milk Street cookbook. So, go subscribe at ChristopherKimble.substack.com, one more time, ChristopherKimble.substack.com. Today we're going inside an international black market. The goods were smuggled in Duffel bags, the deals were made at night on back roads, and it came crashing down in an undercover sting operation.

All of this happened for a taste of eel.

Even people that would never put an eel to their mouth. I'll never taste that, and then they haven't. Oh my goodness. And they love it.

Later on, the shout reporter Odis Gray brings us the story of America's eel boom. But first, I'm joined by my co-host Sarah Multon, dancer a few of your cooking questions. Sarah is, of course, the star of Sarah's weeknight meals on public television. Her latest book is Home Cooking 101.

“Chris, I have a very important question for you. You know, in the New Yorker magazine, the interview authors, the last question always is, if you could have three people over for dinner, a live or dead, who would they be?”

I think we've talked about this before, Lincoln, absolutely, because I gather he was a master storyteller and he had a right wit and sense of humor. I think Jengis Khan, who is probably the most interesting historical figure, of course he killed millions of people. I mean, he was detailed. He was a bit ruthless, but he created a 4,000 mile empire, so he's pretty amazing guy. And the third, one of my favorite people of all time, I never met Richard Feynman, he was a physicist with an incredible sense of humor.

He was the guy who figured out why the O-rings had a problem with a challenger, because it was too cold. So one of the things he used to do was he used to challenge people. He'd go into their office if they had a safe, and he would say, I could crack your safe within an hour. So we go in, he cracked the safe in 30 seconds, because he realized no one had reset the number from 00, so he'd open the safe, he'd bring a sandwich in a book and he'd read it for an hour, so make it look like he was working hard. He had a sense of humor and he was a brilliant physicist, so those are the three people.

And what about you? Well, minor contemporary, and I keep thinking, well, maybe I'll just call him cold, even though I don't know them, just because I love them. One would be, no one would be somebody you just interviewed recently, that'd be Dwight Garner. I just, I reviewer for the nearer time. Oh, I just love everything. He's outstanding. Oh, you know, maybe also Pete Wells. He's the restaurant viewer for the New York Times, and he just resigned, and I read everything. He's a great writer. Even if I have no interest in the restaurant, what so ever? He's just such a great writer.

And the third one is Ross Chast, the craziest. Particularly during COVID, she was hysterical. Well, is she good at conversation? I have no idea. I don't care. I just adore her.

That's a great list. Yeah. The most interesting thing is I want to have dead people, and you want to have living people. Well, that's a difference. Well, because you sort of wonder what those dead people would be like, and I guess I wonder what the life people would be like, but I pretty much have an idea, because I read them all the time.

“Oh, very different list. Yeah. There we go. Let's take your call. Welcome to Melch Street, who's calling?”

This is Debbie McKinen from Louisville, Kentucky. Hi, Debbie. How can we help you? Well, I have a family recipe that we're making for decades that calls for cakey. And since Louis from Chicago to Louisville, I can no longer find cakey. So that's a problem.

And I did try making this recipe with dry yeast, and it just didn't turn out right. Now, the recipe calls for first proofing in the refrigerator.

And when I used the dry yeast, I did not cook it in the refrigerator, but just at room temperature. And what happened with the rolls that you didn't like? How were they different? They were different in texture and taste. These are butter horns, and the normally should have a very almost satiny taste to them, or satiny feel to them.

Probably because they didn't rise as long because you didn't do it in the fridge, right? You normally do it in the fridge, you said. But they seemed also to over-profer rise too quickly at room temperature. Well, here's a question, how about so you used active dry yeast, which ironically has the least amount of active yeast in it of all your choices? The better choice would be the instant yeast. That's what I would recommend using. And you can look for the proportion of how much instant dry yeast you should use in place of the cakey yeast.

And then you could certainly let it rise in the fridge. Chris, what do you think? Two questions. What proportion were you using of active yeast to the cakey yeast? The recipe with the cakey is called for two ounces, so it's that kind of small rectangular foil package, and I use three packets of the dry yeast. You should be using slightly less than half by weight of the dry yeast.

The second thing is how long did the recipe call for the slow ferment in the fridge? Was it overnight?

Two hours. That's not so slow. How much flour to the cakey? Three cups of flour. It sounds like it has a lot of yeast for three cups of flour like three or four times more than you think. Here's my first theory. I wonder whether because it's a slow ferment in the fridge, you're putting a lot of yeast into it.

And so that then you take it out, you shape it, you finish it up for another hour. I wonder if the amount of yeast in the recipes, what's giving you that flavor you're missing with the dry yeast? Because I think it's very yeasty by the time you're finished with it, right? Yeah, that sounds weird.

“I think that's what's going on. You have a massive amount of yeast in this. And you know, you like the flavor, and that's why the dry active yeast is not giving you anything like that.”

That makes total fat. But then she's stuck. What are you going to do? By cakey's? Oh, in line? No, no.

It's a perishable product.

Or up the amount of active yeast and do the same thing, right? I mean, double a triple the amount of yeast, put in the fridge for two hours, and see if it doubles, then you know you have about the right amount of yeast. That's what I would do. If it doubles in two hours in the fridge, you've got a lot more yeast action going on than if it doubles at room temperature to hours. So in general, is there a difference in how bread or roll is going to taste, whether using cakey's or dry yeast? I don't think so. I think what's going on, this recipe just has a lot of yeast.

A lot of yeast. By the way, I just pulled out my phone. On Amazon, you can buy your fresh yeast cake, two ounces, six pack. Oh, we like that. There you go.

Okay. I mean, that's going to solve your problem.

“What's the name of the recipe again, one more time?”

Butter horns. Was this recipe came from, you know, the old country at some point, what was that? Yes, Sweden. My aunt immigrated from Sweden, so this was one of her family recipes. This sounds great.

I'm going to go check this out. Great. Thank you. And good luck. And I'm going to try it too.

Yes. Great. Okay, well, thank you for your help. Sure. Bye-bye.

Welcome to Milk Street, who's calling? Hi. This is Tyler calling from Charleston, South Carolina. How are you? I'm doing well.

How can we help you? I've got a bit of a conundrum. I was recently given a ridiculous amount of bell peppers. I've been able to give some away, but I've still got about a dozen bell peppers waiting to be used.

I've been putting them in soup. We've been doing stir fry.

“What in the world can I do with the rest of these bell peppers?”

You know, it's no good if it calls for a pepper or two. I would go something on the Mahamara uses a lot of red pepper. You know, if that wonderful sort of paste that you have is sort of an appetizer with bread, a roasted or red pepper soup would be great. You growler roast them, peel them, put them in the freezer and, you know, packs of two.

And then you don't have to worry about it because you can use it at any time, right? Yeah. That sounds like a good way to do it. What was that?

The first thing you mentioned this is...

Bell it. Mahamara M-U-H-A-M-M-A-R-A. It's North African. I'm sure you have a recipe in the magazine. Red peppers are sort of the basis for it.

Or a gaspacho. You know, make gaspacho with peppers instead of tomatoes or some combination. Let's see how the thing I would do. Right. They're different kinds of gaspacho.

Chris and I are both assuming red. Is that correct? Red and green. Handful of the yellow ones in there too. Second question.

Why would anybody give you so many peppers? It's re-gifting. It's kind of re-gifting. Yes. The company that my girlfriend works for received the donation that was a lot of red peppers.

And we just don't want them to go to waste.

Wait, wait.

“The company got a donation of red peppers?”

Yes. She works for the local zoo. And occasionally they will get donations from the local big box stores, cascos, Sam's clubs, etc. This time happened to be a gigantic palate of bell peppers.

No animals in the zoo. No elephant's interested. The number of animals in the zoo who enjoy bell peppers are in the same boat that I am. Where we just have way too many bell peppers. I had one last suggestion I thought Chris came up with some good ones.

You know, so the rest of them we are both advising that you'd boil or grill and peel. And then you got them ready for like with sausage or just to throw into a pasta. But another thought is you can puree the red pepper and then it becomes a sauce.

You can add it to vinegar.

Like I would add cherry vinegar and really nice olive oil. And make it into sort of a vinegar or a sauce for fish. Or you could toss it with pasta. So turn it into a sauce. Or you could roast them puree them and then freeze them in the puree state.

There you go. Well the other possible is you re-gift them to somebody else roasted red peppers and oil. And you're good to go. By the way, that's one of my favorite pantry ingredients. Roast red peppers.

You know, you throw them in your pancreas. They're really good. I hope that is modestly helpful. Yes. It has been incredibly helpful.

All right, great. Good luck. We're rooting for you. Thank you guys very much. Bye.

This is most read radio. Sarah and I are here to answer your cooking questions. Give us a ring at any time. Our number 855-426-984-31 more time. 855-426-984-3.

Or simply email us at [email protected]. Welcome to Milk Street, who's calling? This is Judy from Beach Island, South Carolina. How are you? I'm good.

How are you? I'm good. How can we help you? I have been trying to recreate my grandmother's recipe for chocolate chest pie. And I found a recipe that isn't quite right, but is very close.

Sugar, cocoa, eggs, butter, and evaporated milk. And a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of vanilla, so very simple. But when I make it every now and then, it separates into two layers. So I wondered if you could tell me what I'm doing wrong.

“Do you always use evaporated milk or sometimes you switch it out for fresh dairy?”

I have used half and half, and I have not found this separation to occur only with evaporated milk. Our only with half and half. Dark. I was thinking maybe I over beat the eggs or something. Are you pouring this into an un-baked pie shell and the mixture is cold?

Yes. Here's one thing that you might try. What I do with any kind of custard pie, you could call this a custard pie because it has milk and eggs, is to warm it while stirring on top of the stove and get it up to a sub simmer. I would pre-bake my shell for this kind of pie.

Take it out, let it cool just a little bit, maybe ten minutes or so. And then pour the warm filling into the warm shell. And that way, you're only going to need another 15 or 20 minutes of baking. It may be 325 to 350. 325 for 45 minutes.

It could be that that long baking time could be a problem. Also, if you over bake with the eggs, it's like any custard pie you are going to see leaking. But you talk about separation. So what's on the top and what's on the bottom? The chocolatey part is on the bottom and the part underneath is glistening.

I mean, it tastes fine, but it looks kind of weird. And it's two very distinct layers. It sounds like the chocolate layer has a higher specific density. It's denser and heavier and it's falling to the bottom.

“But I think if you make sure you whisk it really well, put it in a saucepan.”

Heat it to sub simmer just to start into bubble around the edges and put that in a warm pie shell and get that in the oven. I think it's going to cook quick enough and also during part of the cooking you're whisking. I think that'll solve the problem. That would be my case, Sarah. What's bothering me about your suggested Chris, although it sort of makes sense.

Is it him for me? Is that the problem?

No, it's that I've never seen, not that I've made a lot of chest pies, but I've never seen a chest pie where you did that.

It doesn't mean that it's not a good idea. When you say it separates into two layers, one of them is sort of greasy. Yeah, the bottom is shiny, greasy, and the top is sort of frothy. It seems like maybe the butter, you know, separated out a bit. Question.

So you said you think you're overbeating the eggs. How are you supposed to mix it? What are the instructions? It just says combined sugar, cocoa, and margarine.

That's my grandmother would have.

Add well-beaten egg evaporated milk, salt and vanilla, pour into unbaked 9-inch pie shell. What I'm thinking is maybe it just really needed to be mixed better because the butter is separating out. Have you made this recipe or someone else's or your grandmother mother made this recipe and it worked as fine? I have made this recipe and trying to recreate my grandmother's recipe. I have made this recipe 50 times, and I would say 8-10 times it has separated.

“The only thing I'd say about using half and half is that's going to be much more prone to curdling or separating than evaporating milk.”

Faberated milk is much more stable. Now I want chocolate chest pie. Really, a Judy, and let us know how it goes. I will. I'm going to make one, and I'll make sure it's well mixed and I'll let you know how it turns out. It leaves teated up a little bit before you put it in the pie shell.

Okay, we'll do it. Okay. Thanks for the kit. Bye-bye.

You're listening to Military Radio.

After the break, the wild world of eelfish. This is Melchet Radio, I'm your host Christopher Kimball. Last year, reporter Otis Gray went on the hunt for a rare delicacy, smoked American eel. He'd heard about a guy named Ray Turner who runs a smokehouse up in Hancock, New York.

“You know anything about Ray Turner? Ray Turner the eel king?”

Ray Turner the eel king, yeah. Oh, he's trying to find Ray. Otis did find Ray, but the bad news was that the eel king no longer fishes for eel. He got to a point where it wasn't much fun anymore. You know, geyserism is the catalyst.

Ray smoked eel used to draw invisitors from across the world, and Otis had just missed out on trying it. They were oily, there's no doubt about it, but I can't compare them to anything. They were just nice thin strips of really tasty fish. Otis became obsessed with finding someone else who smoked eel. This search led him up to the North Coast of Maine, where eel fishing has been making a comeback.

But as he found out, this comeback got tangled up with criminal activity. Here's Otis Gray with that story. American eel is pretty hard to come by. Hello, I'm good at eating with Stan.

“A lot of people have stopped fishing for American eel.”

For reasons we'll get into later, but I was lucky enough to find some. We have smoked eel here, and these are kind of smoked the same way that we used to do it hundreds of years ago. I'm with Stan meter on the edge of the Machiaus River in northern Maine. Stan is a member of the Passima Quadie Tribe, an indigenous tribe that's been here for thousands of years. The Passima Quadie have an eating eel for a long, long time.

Usually, the meat is white, but after it's smoked, you can see it becomes a little brownish in Auburn. There are gold Auburn color. Yeah, it's beautiful. By the time I met Stan, I'd been on a three-month escapade to find smoked American eel. And northern Maine is one of the only places you can still find it. That is rich. Eels were very popular in the early American diet.

They aren't so much these days. Stan says it's mostly because they look like snakes, which they do, but they are delicious. It is. Oh my gosh. Yeah, very much so. I love that. Yeah, it's absolutely delicious.

Even people that would never put an eel to their mouth.

Oh, I'll never eat. I'll never taste that. And then they haven't. Oh my goodness. And they love it. I haven't found anybody that doesn't like it yet. Eels have baffled people from millennia. No one has seen them reproduce in the wild.

Aristotle thought they sprang spontaneously from mud. Plenty thought they multiplied by rubbing themselves against rocks. They are these mythic, serpent-like creatures all over the world. But we do know that American and European eels spawn somewhere in the Sargasso Sea, off the coast of the US and the Atlantic Ocean.

They travel thousands of miles of coastal rivers before swimming back to the ocean to spawn and die. They can live up to 20 years. Some have even been recorded to live to 80 and grow up to 4 feet long. And for thousands of years, they were abundant in these rivers. But over the last century, over fishing and dams built along these rivers have made that journey a lot harder. So, populations dropped. And here in Maine, it seemed like eel fishing was becoming a relic of the past.

Until the last 20 years, when the eel market exploded. In some parts of Asia, baby eels are called white diamonds as they become increasingly rare. Their prices are soaring. In Japan, overfishing in the last century and a massive 2011 tsunami wiped out 70% of the Japanese eel population.

Eel or unagi is a delicacy in many Asian countries.

“And the global sushi crays has been raging since the 1970s.”

With more demand for eel, strict regulations were put in place to protect it, so the Japanese market turned to Europe for their eel supply. The price for eel there is skyrocketed, and fishermen couldn't resist the gold rush, breaking the law, catching more than allowed, and giving way to an eel black market.

That as of 2020 was a multi-billion dollar a year industry.

Bremen facing charges tonight for stealing more than a million dollars worth of white for it, frozen eels. What the Japanese market was really interested in was baby eels, also called glass eels or elvers. Tiny translucent little creatures that are raised to full size in fisheries before being sold and eaten. Smugglers began stowing live glass eels in suitcases to get them overseas. You can get up to 100,000 glass eels in one suitcase.

A suitcase full of baby eels could fetch a hundred grand.

“And a year later, that's a million a million euros worth.”

A million euros worth of full-grown eel. The money was too good. Gaines took part in the eel trade that were stand-offs, robberies, raids. So I'll tell you, crack down, making eel exports illegal, which is when, in the early 2010s, this multi-billion dollar industry turned its sights away from Europe and toward the rural state of Maine, where elver populations were still stable.

In less than a year, the idyllic small town rivers of this northeastern state became the center of an international black market. This is a traditional tribal drum. It's a hollowed out long with moose height on it. Before American eels created a global firestorm, they were just part of everyday life for the indigenous tribes of Maine. My name is Donald Saktoma. I'm the Passmanquaddy Tribal Historic Preservation Officer. I met up with Donald on an overcast day in October. He runs the Passmanquaddy Cultural Heritage Museum,

a one-floor roadside office packed to the gills with old Passmanquaddy artifacts, tools, instruments, weapons. This one I'm holding in my hand is a stone gouge for making dugout canoes. And how old is that do you think? This one's 6,000 years old. There's eel stuff too. He has woven eel traps that are at least a hundred years old, like it's still used today. And in the back of the office, there's a big shell filled with these birch bark baskets.

The bark is at with images and stories of tribal history. So, I'll show you the edging. Donald pulls the basket down. Somebody threw on a spear at the deer. There's drawings of medicinal plants on Muscrap, salmon.

“And then you see one of the most important food sources, eels.”

And it's just kind of wrapped around the side of the basket.

Yeah, the eels were important food. It was always a good time when people feasted on eels.

The Passmanquaddy buried eels in the sand with fires built on top of them. So you can come back in a few days and dig them up, peel the skin off and feast. Other times, the eel is split into and put on sticks over the fire and smoked. It's sort of like beef jerk in a way. You know, it's handy when spoiled or anything. Naturally, they wriggled their way into local legends.

Hunters always were wary of this giant eel sea serpent, the Abu Dumpkin. Protective parents would tell younger kids not to go in the water too much. Because the Abu Dumpkin is going to get you. When British settlers landed on the East Coast in the early 1600s, they were famously introduced to corn by the indigenous tribes.

But we also know that they were introduced to eel and it was almost surely served at those first Thanksgiving meals.

Part of our treaty rights always recognized from the 1600s places set aside for eel harvest memories.

That's how important it was. Donald says those treaties were later broken and eel fishing was outlawed in the early 1800s. That was a food source that was taken away from us. In the following century, the invention of dams for cotton and lumber, and then later electricity decimated the eel population.

Many pastime aquatic were driven from the lands where they fish for eel. So for the tribes people who survived, their diets drastically changed. Eal was built into our DNA. You know, our body craved the eel. By the time Donald was a kid in the 1950s, the traditions around eel fishing were mostly gone.

Sometimes it's ice on these rocks.

“About 20 minutes north of the tribal museum, I met up with Joseph Sokovase.”

He's the vice chief of the pastime aquatic, former cop as a permanent smile. We stumbled down some rocks to a bank on the St.roy River. On the other side was Canada. This is where Joseph fishes for eel. It's a beautiful river, and it's a river that our tribe has been coming to for thousands of years. Joseph says this is the perfect spot.

Refresh water is flowing into salt water. For a brief window in March, locals flock down to this river to fish for eel. They spread these wide nets and pockets of the river at night, and they wait. But not for fully grown eels like they would have centuries ago. No, these are for the baby, black eels.

This is where you're fishing for alvers. Yes, yes. For a few short weeks in the springtime, the mad rush is on. To harvest glass eels or alvers from local rivers and streams. While the demand for unagi and eel sushi is global,

“the Japanese market and other Asian markets make up the vast majority of it.”

So after the crash of the Japanese eel fisheries and the outlawing of European over exports, the market turned to main in 2012. But before the rush, the price for alvers was $185. Two years later, it jumped to 2000. The price can change from day to day by 2000.

Yeah, and you can do that in maybe a night. Oh, you can do much more than that. Immediately, anyone with a net and bucket was rushing out to these rivers to catch as many as they could. With that much cash being passed around, fishermen were afraid of getting robbed.

Things start getting out of hand. Almost everybody was carrying firearms. It was really the wild ones. Elver fishing in the U.S. is only legal in two states. South Carolina and Maine.

“But Maine has a higher elver population,”

and is the only state set up to export internationally. Thanks to a guy named Bill Sheldon in the 1970s. People from out of state were legally catching alvers up and down the east coast, smuggling them into Maine and duffel bags to sell them. Bill Sheldon isn't just a dealer.

He is widely credited with creating Maine's elver market. For four decades, Sheldon had a pretty humble reputation. But after the eel boom, he became known as Maine's eel kingpin. And was recognizable for wearing this flashy patchwork fur coat. I travel around with half a million of three quarters of a million dollars in cash

in my truck at night. People were catching way more alvers than the state allowed. So the federal government stepped in and set up a sting operation called Broken Glass. Glass eels, get it. Undercover agents with sell alvers to dealers without permits to see if they go for the extra cash.

Bill Sheldon himself and a few other big dealers fell for the sting. Sheldon was sentenced to six months in prison in 2018, where he wrote poetry about it. "I'm 71 and live my life free from crime.

I never did think I'd be doing jail time.

Then along came a warden with eels to sell, and tragically into his trap I shown fell." Since then, strict catch limits were put in place with a lot of enforcement behind it. Every sale is meticulously documented. And by 2020, this short, lawless eel rush in Maine came to a close.

Now, the state issues about 1,000 alver licenses each year. 550 of those belong exclusively to the past McWaddy Tribe. And even after stricter regulations, alver fishing is still very lucrative. It's almost like Christmas morning when you come down to check your net.

Because you just don't know, it could be 100 eels, it could be 2 pounds eels. The price still averages about $2,000 a pound. And you're allowed to catch up to 5 pounds a season, which lasts about a week, meaning you could break in 10 grand in less than 7 days. We all look forward to it.

It really has a positive impact in our community.

It brings over a million dollars in less than 10 days.

And it's nice to see people have a little bit of comfort and not have to worry about money for that time year anyway. The eel fishing may not be what it once was in America. But in the aftermath of this elver gold rush, tribal historian Donald Saktima says it has recindled something for the past McWaddy.

Our people are back on the water, our people are gathering, and the eel is there to support our families. The smoke eel I had by the river was made by American unagi, a company in Maine that buys American alvers and raises them domestically so they don't have to be shipped overseas, raised, and shipped back.

It is the first of its kind in the U.S.

and is plans to expand within Maine,

“and hopes of making eel a regional export, just like lobster.”

When I asked Donald if he feels optimistic about the future of the eel, he goes into a story about an elver he once saw, inching its way up a vertical dam. "Inch by inch, my inch is going to the top. I said, wow, that's determination right there.

And that's how we are. We've been surrounded by a non-tribal community for 400 years, but we still speak our language. That's how strong our culture is. We've been determined to survive and keep our DNA alive in this world.

Eels, they're a strong animal. It's a survivor, just like us. Special thanks to Otis Gray, who reported this story from Elk Street.

Otis is a radio producer from rural Vermont,

and also the host of the Sleepy Podcast, where he reads old books to help people sleep. Elessening to Milk Street Radio,

“coming up Kenji Lopez out reveals his trick for perfect scrambled eggs.”

I'm Christopher Kimball, and this is Moxtry Radio. I'm joined now by Jamhurst to talk about this week's recipe, baked Kefta with Tahini. Jam, are you? I'm doing great.

So Kefta coughed a, I guess, you know, Middle Eastern meatballs or meat patties. One of my favorite versions was in Morocco, they make marketplace to have the big square at night, turns into a food court of sorts under tents.

And they just grilled the lamb patties, small, maybe a few inches long, and served it with a spicy oil. And I guess that's one of the simplest preparations. But you were in Jordan, and you had,

I guess the other end of the spectrum, something a little bit more interesting. As you say, no matter where we go, whether it's Naples, Mexico City, or in this case, we find some variant of a meatball, you know, wildly different,

but still recognizable. And in Amon, I was at restaurant Sharrazad, which is kind of an alleyway really more than a restaurant. We're cooking is happening on either side, and they have this baked Kefta with Tahini that they make.

But if you looked at it, you would not think meatball when you see it come out of the kitchen.

Basically, they take ground lamb, and they season it with onion,

like chilies, and baharat, the local seasoning blend, which uses lots of warm spices, like cinnamon, and so forth. And they take this meat mixture, and they flatten it into the bottom of a round cake pan, going right up the sides.

And they throw that into the boiler for a little bit, they take it out, and they top it with, I'm sorry, but front fries, and tomato wedges, and then they put it back under the boiler for a few minutes,

“take it out again, and this time they add the secret ingredient,”

which is a sauce that is used widely in Jordan, a blend of tahini, and lemon juice, and tangi yogurt. And that goes on top. Now, when you see them do it, I mean, they really slosh it on. They're not bashful about adding the sauce to their Kefta.

They put it back under the boiler, under the heat of the boiler, that sauce thickens and reduces and caramelizes, and I gotta say it's almost like a barbecue sauce. When it comes out of the oven, it is so rich and so thick, and it glazes the meat in many ways,

and it was so delicious and rich and balanced. So, problem is, that method of cooking didn't translate well to the home cook. So, per usual, I went to a home cook to help us solve this problem, and Tagrid Mutasab offered to show us her version of this recipe,

which substituted ground beef for the ground lamb, and substituted potato wedges for the french fries. And she instead of creating a meat bowl, she actually created meat balls, and formed the beef into oblongs, which she arranged in a cake pan with the other ingredients,

and of course, that special sauce. And put it in the oven to bake, and again, took a little bit longer, because she wasn't broiling it. But that sauce reduced and caramelized and thickened, and again, it had this barbecue sauce like quality to it,

that was so rich and satisfying. It was really fantastic. Wait, what about the french fries? Come on. You see what the french fries are?

I want to know. I mean, as happy as I am to eat a good french fry, I gotta say, I was a little relieved when instead of french fries, she went for basic potatoes. I think it added a little something to the dish.

but tahini, yogurt, garlic, and lemon caramelized in the oven,

“as you said, a different form of barbecue sauce.”

So bake, kefta with tahini, essentially everyone loves a good meat ball, but this one is particularly interesting and particularly delicious. Thank you, Jam. Thank you. You can get the recipe for baked kefta with tahini at milkstreetradio.com.

(upbeat music) I'm Christopher Campbell, and you're listening to Milk Street Radio. Right now, my co-host, Sarah Malton, I will be answering a few more of your cooking questions. Welcome to Milk Street, who's calling?

My name is Leanne, and I live in Northwestern, Ohio, near a small town called Napoleon. How can we help you? Well, it has to do with cooking in a slow cooker as opposed to my oven.

We have a favorite Belgian recipe called Beef Carbonod, and I prepare it with medicine since my husband is a hunter. Ooh, so I brown the pieces of medicine, and I add my husband's brown ale along with other layered ingredients. But my question pertains to simmering in my favorite covered roaster

in an oven, as opposed to a slow cooker. Is there any end result in cooking in a slow cooker as compared to an oven? The thing about a slow cooker is they vary in terms of how they function.

I mean, the heat source is at the bottom, and the liquid goes absolutely nowhere in a slow cooker. Okay. But if you are going to use a slow cooker,

don't use a lot of liquid because the liquid never reduces.

Of course. Yeah. So that is really one of the problems. When you cook in the oven, there's heat all around the top, the bottom, the sides.

I think it cooks more evenly.

“I think you can control it much more easily.”

You know, just pull that out, take a peek. You know, when you put it in the slow cooker, and you just set it forever, and you don't know if it's come up to temperature the way you wanted it to, or if it's boiling too hard.

I'm just not a fan. How does your stew come out? The venison turns out very, very tender, but as you point it out, there is still a lot of liquid. So I create a room, and I use that in a makes a really nice

savory, thick gravy.

It turns out very tender, very moist.

It's just a family favorite. Okay. I was waiting for a butt. It sounds like you've had great success with the slow cooker. One thing about what you did when you thickened it, you might get an even more flavorful sauce

by removing the venison briefly, throwing it into a pot on top of the stove and reducing it, because what happened is when you cook it in the oven, some of that liquid does reduce, and none of it reduces in a slow cooker.

So it's not that strong and flavor. That's what I would do.

“But anyway, I know Chris has a few thoughts.”

I agree about the liquid problem, and if I do use a slow cooker, as for example, during honey season, dear season, you know, I'll leave it 536 in the morning, and I'll just set the slow cooker up,

and so when I get back, it's very practical. If you do it in the oven, I would do it at 325 for two hours with a top on. I take the top off and cook another hour to hour and a half, and that way you're going to get browning of the meat

that's above the liquid, and you're going to get a reduction of that liquid. So that, if you're around the house, and you can do it that way, that's fine. If it's in a slow cooker,

I would add either no additional liquid, or almost no additional liquid. You can cook a stew in a Dutch oven and add no liquid. And by the time it's cooked, there will be liquid at the bottom of the pot

from the onions, from the meat, et cetera. But the slow cooker is okay. The oven's better, but just get rid of that liquid, and don't use much of it.

Well, you have answered my question. I will use my oven more often. That was my question. You have supplied the answer very ably. Thank you so much.

Okay, very much. Thank you, Lynn. Bye. This is most street radio. If you're stuck in a culinary rut,

Sarah and I are here to give you a hand. Call us at 855-426-984-3. 855-426-984-3 or email us at [email protected]. Welcome to Milk Street, who's calling?

My name is Rich. I live in New Hampshire. How can we help you? Well, I'd like to fake my own bread, and I sort of like a very heavy bread by listing it.

You know if it's heavy, then I know if it's like it. The bread I've been making lately, I love the consistency. It's got all kinds of seeds and stuff in it. I usually use spelt instead of wheat.

It breaks apart. I'm thinking it needs more gluten to hold it together more. Let's talk about your recipe.

“So are you using any white bread flour or it's all whole grain spelt?”

See, I like a lot of stuff in my bread. So usually I do like five cups of whole grains, and another two cups of various grains, you know, keen on seed, some flour. You're making a vegetable of the problem.

You hit the nail on the head. You don't have enough gluten. So you have two options. First option is mix a ratio of whole wheat spelt to bread flour, white bread flour,

and maybe use 30 to 40 percent whole wheat spelt

to 60 or 70 percent bread flour. You're going to sacrifice some of the flavor, but you're going to get a loaf that has enough gluten to hold together. The other thing you can do is add a vital weak gluten, which is essentially, you know, a massive concentration of gluten

that's made from wheat. Add a couple tablespoons of that to your recipe to see if that helps. My simple solution would be to take three of the five cups and use bread flour, and then use two cups of whole wheat,

and that's the quickest way to solve the problem. Sarah? Yeah, I would absolutely agree. But let's say even if you were using more bread flour and you added keen flour and all those nuts and seeds

to it is still going to be crumbly when you slice it. Have you ever worked with the vital wheat gluten before? No, I have not. It's a great ingredient, as Chris said, it's like a bomb of gluten,

and you only need about one tablespoon per two cups of flour.

“If you want to keep it pure, you could do that”

or what Chris suggested.

Okay, I think I'll try the vital wheat gluten first

because that's sort of what I was looking for. A little blue to dump in and make the stick better. And I'll see how that goes first. You know, I don't, it's different every time I make it because I just sort of start dumping stuff together.

Adventures in bread bake. Anyway, give that a shot and let us know. Yeah, thank you very much. Be well, friend. Yes, you too, Rich.

Thank you. Bye-bye. Welcome to most rate, who's calling? This is Freda. How can we help you?

I bought a peach tree a couple years ago, and this year had a bumper crop, and I had a really hard time processing, you know, keeping up with all of the peaches,

and I was trying to get the skins off,

using the blanching method that everyone tells you to do. And they just wouldn't come off, no matter how long I boiled them. I didn't want to boil them to mush. So I was curious to see if you had suggestions on what

I'm doing wrong in terms of blanching peach. Tell me how you blanch them, how long? Well, I, you know, put a little ex in the skin at the bottom, put them in boiling water. I kept them in for increasingly longer amounts of time

because the skins weren't coming off. How much time, like, 30 seconds or? No, no, no, like five minutes. (laughs) Boiled peaches, okay.

Yeah, exactly. Did you have an ice bath, too? Yeah, I did. Well, one thing, you shouldn't need more than about 30 seconds, but the ice bath, you gotta have a big bowl

with ton of ice and water, because it's the shocking right from being hot to being cold, that'll help release the skin. So it's like doing hard boiled eggs, you need a really big ice bath.

I used to grow peaches too, and sometimes that doesn't work, and so I simply took a really sharp peel or just peel the skin off. But you shouldn't need five minutes.

More than 30, 45 seconds is probably plenty. Well, also, I was gonna say, peelers go dull, so you really do need to replace them pretty often. So I agree with Chris,

if the other methods not working, I also agree with 30 to 45 seconds. But there's also something that's made, it's a serrated peeler. That might be what you want to look for.

That's an excellent point. Yeah, get a new one. So it's a good sharp. That's a really good suggestion.

“Can I take in one extra question about the peaches?”

One of the things that I tried to make with it was a package of wheat, and I could not get it to gel. I used as much pectin as the recipe, said, and it almost set, but didn't,

and so I kept adding more and more. There are two kinds of pectin, one's a low sugar pectin, and one comes in a pink box, and one comes in the other color,

whatever that is. I don't know how my sugar is in this, but if it's a low sugar recipe, you need a low sugar pectin. You might check that,

because it's in all supermarkets, you can get the other one. Is there difference between liquid and non-liquid?

but I think there is a low sugar pectin, and you might need that for this recipe. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Take care. Okay. Take care. Bye. [Music]

This is most sweet radio. Now let's hear about Kenji Lopez's latest kitchen experiment. [Music] Kenji, are you? I'm doing good.

Are you? I'm good. I'm curious to see what you've been doing in your kitchen in the last couple of weeks.

Well, I thought today we could talk about something we've never ever talked about before,

which is eggs. Oh, Lord. You and I have been talking about eggs for 10 years. I feel like every other conversation is about eggs. So what kind of eggs are we talking about here?

Scramble eggs.

“And particularly when you should be adding salt to your scrambled eggs.”

Okay. I don't know if you've seen this video, but there is a very popular video in which Gordon Ramsay is showing you how to make the sort of French style really, really creamy scrambled eggs. It's a very, very popular video, like millions and millions of views on the internet.

In that video, he says not to add salt to the eggs until the very end, because he claims it'll make the eggs watery or it'll make them gray. And every, you know, yeah. And to me, I was like, you know, I've never really noticed my eggs turning water or gray when I salt them.

So I started doing some research on them. I found, you know, other people, including Markopier white, say don't salt your eggs until they're done. MFK Fisher says don't season your eggs until they're almost done. But on the other hand, people like, you know, Julia Child, Jack Papan,

they both tell you to salt your eggs before you start cooking them. So for my most recent New York Times asked Kenji column, I did a bunch of testing on this. So I took eggs and I salted them at intervals ranging from zero minutes before cooking all the way up to three days before cooking.

Yeah. You'll be in Kenji. And the way I normalized it is I used an induction burner that could keep a precise temperature out of hand. And so I used the same pan set at 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

I used the same amount of oil. Instead of butter just because butter is a more complex ingredient than oil. And I cooked them all for the exact same amount of time. And then I tasted them all side by side. The other thing I did was I drained them in a fine mesh strainer.

And what I did was I set that fine mesh strainer over a bowl to see how much sort of free liquid there was. So basically to be able to sort of measure or give a visual representation of how watery the eggs taste. And what I found was that in fact,

salting your eggs in advance helps them retain more moisture. So they end up more tender and less watery when you salt them in advance. What kind of just as though, but are we talking? I mean, how much extra liquid was there? Yeah, okay.

So that is a good question.

As always, it's like, is it worth doing?

“Do I need to salt my scrambled eggs three days in advance?”

Well, no, you shouldn't salt your scrambled eggs three days in advance. It really maxes out at about 15 minutes. And even at 15 minutes versus zero minutes, as long as you don't over cook your eggs, you're not going to think you're not going to notice. It's a very small but noticeable difference when it's side by side.

When you're not eating them side by side, you know, whatever. My general advice would be, you know, what I do is if I'm going to make scrambled eggs, I'll come down to the kitchen. I'll put my eggs in a bowl. I'll beat them with a pinch of salt.

And then I'll do everything else I need to do. Turn on the coffee maker. Wake up my kids. Get the toast in the toaster. Whatever it is.

Wait, wait, all in a second. Is that you wake your kids? You should have breakfast and have a cup of coffee and then wake your kids. Come on. Sorry, okay, I have a cup of coffee.

I get my bow tie on. Cup of coffee is the cup of coffee. So, so at the end of the day, salt your eggs ahead of time. If you can, if not, they're going to be just fine.

“You know, the key to good scrambled eggs is don't over cook them.”

Kenji, thank you very much. You resolved another shocking issue in the world of the culinary arts. Salting eggs, thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me. That was Kenji Lopez Alty's a food columnist for the new times.

Also author of the walk, recipes and techniques. He also co-host the podcast, the recipe with Kenji and Deb. That's it for today. You can find all of our episodes at MilkStreamRadial.com or wherever you get your podcasts. You can learn more about us at 177 MilkStream.com.

There you can become a member. Get access to all of our recipes and also our live stream cooking classes. Plus, free, standard shipping for the MilkStream store and lots more. You can also find us on Facebook at Christopher Kimmel's MilkStream on Instagram at 177 MilkStream.

We'll be back next week with more food stories and kitchen questions and thanks as always for listening.

Christopher Kimmel's MilkStreamRadial is produced by MilkStream in association with GBH. Co-founder Melissa Waldino, executive producer Annie Sumspa, senior editor Melissa Allison. Senior producer Sarah Klack, associate producer Caroline Davis with production help from Debbie Paddock,

Audio mixing by Jay Allison and Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

The music by Chewbob Crow.

“Additional music by George Bernill Egloss.”

Christopher Kimmel's MilkStreamRadial is distributed by PRX.

The music by Jay Allison is also available on the channel. Thanks for watching.