026: Spike Your Hot Dogs for a Great Tailgate

Hey Food Fans,

We're back with another delicious episode of "Cooking Like a Pro"! 🧑‍🍳 Your favorite culinary duo, Chef Cal and Christa, are serving up the latest episode filled with delicious tips, fun stories, and foodie fun that you won't want to miss.

🍅🥕🥬 Now Available! Veggie Quick Fixes FREE download 🥬🥕🍅

Here's a sneak peek at the 5 keys you'll discover in this episode:

1. Crab Season Insights: Learn about the opening of crab season, the best spots to grab these delicious catches, and why cold-water shellfish are top quality.
2. Organic Vegetables: Discover why organic veggies might just taste a little better and how to score the best ones at your local farmers market.
3. Tailgate Trends: Expand your tailgate menu with regional specialties inspired by different football matchups—did someone say Seattle-inspired hot dogs with cream cheese? 🌭
4. Soup Season Staples: Get warmed up for the colder months with a breakdown of different soup types, from creamy to brothy, and learn how to whip up your own unique flavor combinations.
5. Egg-Cooking Tips: Master the art of peeling hard-boiled eggs without getting stuck on sticking shells—smooth brunches ahead! 🥚

Fun Fact from the Episode: Did you know that you can eat your Christmas tree? Well, sort of... Tune in to find out how pine needles can be used like rosemary to add a unique twist to your cooking!

Let's Connect!

I'm Christa DeMercurio. I started as a stay-at-home mom who relied on cookbooks, measuring everything and following recipes to the letter. But watching my chef husband move effortlessly in the kitchen, I knew there had to be a better way.

So, I learned—studying his techniques, practicing his methods, and mastering the strategies that keep professional kitchens running smoothly. Over time, I became confident, capable, and free from recipes controlling my cooking.

I’m here to help you do the same. On Cooking Like a Pro, together we share everything you need to cook with confidence, save time and money, and actually enjoy being in the kitchen—without the stress and frustration.
P.S. I still reference cookbooks and internet recipes too!

❤️Culinarily Yours, Christa DeMercurio (Mrs. Chef)

Email: christa@culinarilyyours.net

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Chapters

• 0:03 Intro
• 0:39 Welcome to the Show
• 0:53 It's Crab Season
• 7:43 Seasoning with Pine Trees?
• 9:00 Finding Organic Veggies
• 17:00 Listener Questions: Beans and Hard Boiled Eggs
• 21:08 Hot Diggity Dogs: Tailgate Season
• 31:06 Soup Season is Here

Transcript

Christa DeMercurio:
Hey, food fans. Welcome to Cooking Like a Pro with Chef Cal and me, Mrs. Chef his wife, Christa DeMercurio. We're dishing out culinary intuition, insights and imagination to spice up your meals and make cooking more fun. On today's episode, my Chef husband and I discuss crab season. Finally opening finding organic veggies, expanding your tailgate repertoire, and diving head on into soup season. Let's dig. Today's episode was broadcast and recorded live on AM FM radio.

Chef Cal:
Welcome. Oh, there we go. Oh, hey, sound check. Get up. Give sound check. Hey, you've found Cooking Like a Pro. This is Chef Cal with my beautiful Mrs. Chef Christa sitting across the table from me.

Chef Cal:
And you know, I, I just, this is on my heart and it's, and it's just because for one, it's never been that I can recall in my lifetime been this late. But it's crab season and crab season is finally here. Now I'm a person that we, our family, we would go out and we would, you know, we would catch our own crabs, drop the crab nets, go out back, out back a little bit later, go out and pick them up. But it's just good. It is finally here. And I think that now they've, they opened it up in stages. So they start up in the California coastline real close to in Oregon. I think that's like the Crescent City catch.

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah.

Chef Cal:
Oregon open first and then they'll go down to the Eureka catch and then down to then or section, I guess you should say. And then like kind of that Fort Bragg area will open up. Then it goes down. Let's see, Monterey. I know San Francisco, Monterey and Morro Bay. Yeah.

Christa DeMercurio:
Six different locations. I think they were opening three through six.

Chef Cal:
Yeah.

Christa DeMercurio:
And then coming back up to one and two.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. So, you know, commercial fish as far as the commercially out there fishing for it. So you can go to the store and, and pay too much for it. You know, everything is always going to be more expensive when it first comes out, when first it's that season. So I'm not sure I've seen some different prices on crab, but I think you generally, you know, it drops down into the, the six or seven dollar area. But now we're well into the, well into the lower, the lower teens. But anyway, hey, it's back. And you know, remember when we're talking about shellfish, we always wanted to go with shellfish that comes from the coldest water.

Chef Cal:
So if you don't remember anything else, remember that whatever you're ordering, whatever you're purchasing Rather ask where it came from. And you want it to come from cold water. Cold water is going to produce by far the highest quality fish.

Christa DeMercurio:
Now where do you get crap? I mean, do you get at a normal grocery store? Do you go to a special shop.

Chef Cal:
When it's in season? I mean, you can get it just about anywhere. I know that they have a specialty place here in town, used to be called Buzz's Crab Shack. So there's, there's that if you know of that location, but R and R. Yeah. And then there's a variety of other ones. You can get it at, you know, the holiday markets in the Safeways and the, the different markets we have here. But see, I, I hesitate to say that simply because I just got back from a couple of weeks back and, you know, I did not see a single store or gas station that I recognized the name. Okay, so you get out of California, you don't see Safeways and you don't see, you know, Chevron stations.

Chef Cal:
And I know they may be around, but I was out, I was in Knoxville and in all of my travels, I didn't.

Christa DeMercurio:
Well, they don't have a lot of seafood middle of the country because they're not coastal. You know, typically your seafood is going to be more of a coastal type thing. So unless it's trucked and shipped and flown and ice.

Chef Cal:
You know, I also didn't see a sushi restaurant. But, but the reality is that you can get, you know, you get bluefin tuna next day from Japan if you want. You know, with the way that things are, you know, distributed and the way you can mail order things that come packed in dry ice and. Yeah, you know, another thing, they'd never, they'd never heard of Dungeness crab. And my son in law is actually a Chef. He never heard of Dungeness crab. They never heard a tri tip. That's strictly a California thing.

Chef Cal:
And also abalone, so it was interesting. But then again, I got plenty of grits. I got this butter baked bread that I literally could feel my arteries hardening while I ate it. It was so delicious.

Christa DeMercurio:
Do they bake it in butter?

Chef Cal:
Yeah, the butter goes in the pan. You whip up the. We'll have to put that one on the website. Put that on the website. After I played with it, little bit. Because he baked, he cooked it for me and then he sent me home with the, with the recipe.

Christa DeMercurio:
But anyway, back to crab. Do you. Okay, so a lobster, you cook live. Typically. Typically, right. Crab, is that a live cook or is that something you Buy, cook. Do you cook it yourself? How do you do it?

Chef Cal:
Yeah, you buy it already cooked and it is alive when they cook it. Lobsters know lobster. If you get a lobster out of a lobster tank with fresh lobster, you can do it that way. You know, you generally want to, you know, kill it immediately by putting a knife right towards the back of the head, behind the eyes. You know, don't want suffer. I mean, you can throw a lobster in boiling water and you can hear it scream. You know, they make this, they make this really high pitched sound when they're in there. So I prefer to.

Chef Cal:
No, I'm talking about like, you know, lobster tails or things. But if you really want lobster cooked alive, then that's really more of an east coast thing. You know, they do the, the lobster over there on the east coast. Their lobster is completely different than ours. You know, lobster like fresh Maine lobster. And when I used to get Maine lobster, it did come alive. It was still, and this was decades ago. They pack it in seaweed and they just keep it at a, at a cooler temperature and they're fine when they get here.

Chef Cal:
Typically you don't want to eat seafood. You don't want to purchase some of the mollusks. Now we're talking about crustaceans, right? Crustacean, multi segmented animals. You know, a lobster has a bunch of different shells, pieces to it, so does a crab. But when you get into a mollusk which is either one shell or two shells, two shells being oysters, clams, scallops, one shell being abalone, snails for a Chicago or something. So, so there's a difference there. But those, you don't ever cook them if they're not alive. If they're dead, you throw them out.

Chef Cal:
I mean, and a good way to tell is mainly is that the shell opens up. If you, if you see clams in the store and the shells are starting to open, you don't want to get them because, or, or tap on them. They might be breathing, but you could tap on them. If they close, then they're still alive. But if they're dead, you just, you definitely don't want to do it because there's a, with those kind of shellfishes, there's a lot of bacteria that can grow in there. And I've got horror stories that I'm not going to go into, but especially if they come from warmer water like Gulf of Mexico or.

Christa DeMercurio:
Now who cooks the crab? Is it the store that cooks it? Does it come cooked?

Chef Cal:
Well, not the general store, like you know, your supermarket? No, but if the, the old buzzes crab, you mentioned the R and R, they cook it there.

Christa DeMercurio:
Or if you're down at Fisherman's Wharf, like in San Francisco, you will buy a cooked crab. Crab.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. You, you would. It would they just drop it right in a big pot of boiling water, straight in the pot, and they let it go until it's, you know, until it's cooked. And they don't take that long, you know, because the shells are very thin and they actually cook fairly quickly. But anyway, and then we're right up against a break here. But I do want to mention something. You know, I've seen this. Now, this is another one of those things that you can't believe everything you read on the Internet.

Chef Cal:
Okay, I gotta preface by, by saying that. But this lady wrote a cookbook on eating your Christmas tree.

Christa DeMercurio:
Yes.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. And like, basically using the needles, like you would use rosemary. Rosemary. So maybe in a marinade or maybe, you know, I could see something like maybe use them for smoking, putting them in with your chips. If you want to get that kind of a pine, you know, flavor kind of like doing cedar plank salmon. But I don't know, I've, I'm not sure what else you eat.

Christa DeMercurio:
You know, it's mostly, I think, used for smoking, you know, using the wood for smoking, cooking outside. Then, yeah, you can use the needles. Depends upon the tree. You have to research each and every tree. Also, you do not want to get it from like a tree lot or something because it could be sprayed.

Chef Cal:
This is true.

Christa DeMercurio:
So maybe a real tree that you cut down in the woods.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. So if you're going to eat your Christmas tree, folks, we recommend that it is organic. Okay. From the woods. They should be organic. So we're going to take a quick break. We'll be back in just a moment. Welcome back.

Chef Cal:
Welcome back. Hey, you know, we had John Denver bring us back into the, into this, this segment here, but we want to talk a little bit about organics. And just there's a couple of the things, a couple of things that I think that, you know, I mentioned in the past, though. But, you know, we are what you eat. And, and the other kind of adage I'd use is garbage in, garbage out. So, you know, when we start to think about, you know, healthier foods, as we do towards the beginning of the year, going with the organics, and you have to expect them to be a little bit more expensive because, you know, they're, they're not being. Instead of using, you know, fertilizers and Pesticides, they have to come up with, you know, alternative ways of being able to make sure that, you know, the bugs aren't going to get them. One of the thing is they'll, they'll put aphids in there and they'll eat them at times.

Christa DeMercurio:
But sometimes organics actually taste better. I actually experienced this a couple weeks ago. I never buy organic lettuce, usually just because it's so expensive. But I was at Holiday Market and they pretty much have only organic. And they had this beautiful green leaf lettuce. It was one of the best lettuce I have had in years. Because lettuce does not mean, honestly, vegetables do not taste the way that they tasted to me when I was a kid. They taste totally different now.

Chef Cal:
Well, yeah, but I think they were probably coming out of somebody's, you know, farm or outside of. Out of maybe the neighbor's garden.

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah, but that's what I say is different. What we are getting now in your traditional grocery stores, they don't taste the same. So organic can lean you back towards that farm raised flavor.

Chef Cal:
And they're not, and they're not good for you. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that's coming out that, you know, whether it's, you know, a cucumber that's grown, you know, on a vine does not come off the vine shiny. Okay. Something's been put on that, a wax coating, some sort of a plastic, but it's, it's been coated with, with something. So you know, that's, that's an additive right there. And a lot of these things, especially with the soil that we have a lot of serious health concerns, you know, from, you know, hormone disruptors to cancers. I mean, you really just want to buy the best, highest quality. And around here, the.

Chef Cal:
One of the places to get really. One of the, one of the highest quality places, highest quality products. Excuse me, is, is going to be at the, at the farmers market. And you, you said that they're, they're open now.

Christa DeMercurio:
They are not already. They're staying open. They're going year round. They used to shut down the winter. Now they're staying open year round.

Chef Cal:
All right, so. So. But they, you said they change the time, so.

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah, I think they open at 8:30.

Chef Cal:
So 8:30 on Saturdays. That's behind the city hall. Taj Mahal over there, right off of Cyprus. Go down there and get the product, you know, and talk to the people. I don't just go and buy something. When I go there, I talk to them. Okay. How was it raised, you know, where did the water come from? That's something that's.

Chef Cal:
I mean, is it well water or is it water that's coming out of the hose? You used to be able to drink water out of the hose. I don't know that I would do it anymore.

Christa DeMercurio:
Well water, if you have good well water.

Chef Cal:
Yes. I mean, I'm just talking about, you know, some of the water, you know, that comes from in a metropolitan area. It's got so much chlorine, you feel like you don't have to, you know, brush your teeth when you're done. Or fluoride. Or fluoride, I guess. But yeah, just really look for the highest quality, you know. And when it comes to herbs, you can, you can adjust flavors so much with fresh herbs and herbs you can grow year round in your house. You know, we got rosemary, we got basil.

Chef Cal:
You know, our Baylor tree is fine. It's like 6ft tall. So there's enough, you know, Bailey used to, you know, flavor a couple swimming pools.

Christa DeMercurio:
Well, I think true, we need to pay attention to. We're supposed to be eating what's around us locally. Our bodies are supposed to, they're adapt to what we can eat in our season, in our location. And when we ship a lot of these foods in from other locations, they're not necessarily the best for our body because it's not from our environment. And you're going to get totally different food right now at the farmer's market, like cabbage, A lot of the, what do you call it, sulfuric type vegetables are what's out right now.

Chef Cal:
Broccoli, cauliflower, turnips.

Christa DeMercurio:
So yeah, you're not going to be getting the spring vegetables. You're going to be getting the winter vegetables. And your body is going to be craving that and all those.

Chef Cal:
Again, they're going to be your root vegetables as well. Things that are protected, they're grown underneath the ground. I remember a good story with this would, would be a book that I read. It was back when they had the WWJD what Would Jesus do thing. It was kind of came out big. A guy wrote a book and it was WWJE what Would Jesus Eat? And it was fascinating book because it was all about eating a Mediterranean diet. If you think 2,000 years ago, you know, you're in a Mediterranean area, what do you have? You've got fish, fresh fish that's, you know, grown in water, that's, you know, as pure as the wind driven snow. You've got, you know, animals that are grazing on, on natural product, you've got olives, olive oil, wheat that you're grinding yourself.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. So, so, you know, and then vegetables that you grow and stuff. So that's kind of, you know, I think now I believe, you know, that this is just, this is a trend. It's going to continue to go this way. Eating healthy is not a fad. People are figuring out that, you know, we're dropping dead because of what we're putting in our body. And, and they're, they're starting to come around to that. And I really see a lot of change coming up.

Chef Cal:
When you look at things like we talked about, food dyes and things that just really aren't good for you. When you look at a package of something and there's 30, 40 ingredients, and I've said this numerous times, if I can't pronounce it or if I don't know what it is and I don't know why it's in there, I just don't buy it.

Christa DeMercurio:
But another thing too, just because it says it's organic isn't necessarily still good for you. There's a lot of these packaged items, they'll say organic and they'll have organic ingredients in it, but there's a bunch of other ingredients mixed in that just aren't good to begin with because you know, there's lots of sugar and oils and fats that don't need to be there.

Chef Cal:
And you know, and also packaging, you know, I mean when something is wrapped in plastic, some of that plastic is affecting that product. So maybe going and purchasing things in an open air market, like a farmer's market or in a place where the, they sell it more things like in big bushel baskets or you know, where you can grab stuff that's not already pre wrapped, you know, that would be something that would, that would help. But again, I know for us you can just add a few extra elements of freshness. It's kind of like taking a salad and adding maybe some rough chopped cilantro or maybe some rough chopped, I was thinking mint. You know, something's going to brighten it up, something is going to add some color because you know, you mentioned lettuce earlier and lettuce is 90% water. Take a head of iceberg lettuce. Coming up this summer when it's in here, up in Redding, California, when you, when it gets up to around 115, just take that head of lettuce and put it outside and see what it looks like the next day. I mean there's Nothing there.

Chef Cal:
You know, a little bit of fiber, but I mean, really, it's all. It's all water. And that's really. Once you understand that, that's one way to really refresh your items. And we do that a lot. I mean, you know, explain to what they. What you do with the green onions. We buy one bunch of green onions and we are good.

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah, you just put them in a little glass of water, a little bit down there in the roots, and they'll keep going off in not months. You'll get two, three more. What do you call them?

Chef Cal:
Cycles.

Christa DeMercurio:
Cycles, yeah, They'll. They'll grow a couple, three times more. And then they will die. They will. They'll be done, but they will keep growing. Sometimes even if you leave them in the refrigerator, they will keep growing. They. If you leave for a week, they'll be longer.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, but take them out of the plastic. You know, one of the things I always did was I wrap things in damp paper towels. And that just continues to keep them moist. It keeps them protected from the. The air as well.

Christa DeMercurio:
That lets them breathe a little bit. So they're not completely, you know, closed off.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. And. Oh, and I wanted to get to these questions that. That John had reached out and sent these to me. So, John, thank you for the questions. One was, how do I take the gas out of beans? Because beans have these natural properties that will cause gas. And you really. Not only is there a gas, and you're also talking about irritating your intestines.

Chef Cal:
And you're also. The digestive process is a little rougher. So there's really the main two ways to do it is soak your beans, which overnight you can change the water out a couple times, but that will also dramatically decrease the cooking.

Christa DeMercurio:
Cooking time.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've always soaked our beans, like, what's soup tomorrow, wiping in ham. Okay. Soak 20 pounds of beans before you leave tonight. That kind of thing.

Christa DeMercurio:
And they need to be rinsed.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, rinsed. And you know, I always get something that they call triple cleaned, especially if I'm doing refried beans if I'm using, you know, if I want to make some frijoles out of pinto beans, you know, you want something that's really gone because, you know, they. They're grown and, you know, I mean, it's pretty easy to get rocks in them.

Christa DeMercurio:
I was just saying, I always remember growing up, the first thing was like, pick through your beans and look for rocks. That was number one every single time.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. I imagine they've. Well, I'm sure that they've increased the technology of getting rocks out of beans now because you don't see as much. But I remember back in the day all the time and you don't want to bite into a bean. I mean, you know, there, there goes your tooth. And the other question that we had was, I'm having trouble peeling my eggs. And, and what the, the person reached out to me, John, said that, that he cooks them and then cools them down and peels them the next day. The main thing about peeling eggs correctly, there's two main components.

Chef Cal:
One is that they're cooked correctly and I'll, and I'll just briefly walk through that process. And the second thing is you peel them while they're still warm and you peel them under running water, just lightly running water. So what, you take your, your eggs, you cook them, you get a pot of boiling water, pretty good sized pot of boiling water, you know, maybe four times the size of the volume of your eggs. Get it up to a boil, shut it off carefully, put the, you don't want the water to agitate the eggs because the eggs bounce around, they're going to break. So we're going to take a slotted spoon or some sort of a vessel and carefully put these eggs into the water. Once the fire has been turned off and it's not at a rolling boil, then once the eggs get in there, you turn it back on the outside of those eggs on, inside those eggs, the outer area will cook because of the heat and then they're not going to break. And even if they do, they're not going to lose any of the white. So that would be the first part of the process.

Chef Cal:
And then from there you just cook them for, they come back to a boil, 13 minutes, pull them out, cool them down, they're done. When you cool them down, I put them in, you know, a little bit of ice water to kind of get them to a point where you can handle them. And then I drizzle your, turn your water on in your faucet and just have it kind of drizzling and then just crack that egg and then just, I usually just roll the egg on a, on a cloth towel and then I just hold that egg underneath the, the running water and just pull, pull the shell off. And once the water gets under the shell, because remember, you got the egg, you got the shell and in between those two things you've got a membrane. You want the water to get under the membrane and then it, then it comes right off so. So thanks, John. Appreciate you calling in.

Christa DeMercurio:
And real quick, we forgot with the smoking beans, the additive, we added the water.

Chef Cal:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You can also add some baking soda.

Christa DeMercurio:
Or apple cider vinegar. Those both help with the digestion.

Chef Cal:
I've never done the bake, the apple cider, but yes, the little bit of bacon. And really, you're talking about maybe a teaspoon for every pound of beans. And you're all set. So for back for a quick break, everyone would be in love with me. There you go. There you go. Oscar Meyer Wiener. I think we all remember that jingle.

Chef Cal:
Everyone remembers. Remember that jingle. So, yeah, we're going to talk a little bit about. Well, I don't talk about all about hot dogs because there's only so much you can talk about, but like Costco, $50 combo. Oh, yeah, they'll go out of business if they ever change that one. That's a big one. I'll be out there protesting. I'm sure you will.

Chef Cal:
I think Ben, our engineer, lives on. On Costco Dogs. Yeah. Yes, sir. There you go. A sign of patriotism.

Christa DeMercurio:
Personally, I can't stand hot dogs.

Chef Cal:
All right, well, that's because maybe you know what's going in there. That's probably like. Well, when people know what. What goes in the sausage. But anyway, I did want to. I. So I was back in. In Tennessee and in Knoxville, and for my.

Chef Cal:
My daughter gave me my first grand. My first granddaughter. Excuse me. My first granddaughter, Juniper Roxanne Hodge. What a. What a beautiful name. What a beautiful little girl. I was able to hold her about maybe 45 minutes or so after she was brought into the world, and it's just wonderful.

Chef Cal:
And. But, But. But they're really Vikings fans. Okay? They are like, really Vikings.

Christa DeMercurio:
Did you ever find out why people in Tennessee are Minnesota Viking fans?

Chef Cal:
I don't know if it's everyone in Tennessee or just them or just that family. It could just be them. But I know that what they do is every time during. Every week during football season, whoever they're playing, they will match their food that they're going to have for their, you know, their. Their tailgate at home.

Christa DeMercurio:
So if the Vikings are playing the Niners, what would they make?

Chef Cal:
Well, the clam chowder, you know, something that would be reminiscent of that area. And so when I was there, they were playing Seattle in. Seattle apparently is famous for a particular hot dog, so that's why we had the hot dog bump coming in. And what they do is they take and they. They cook up the hot dogs and Bring them up to temp, you know, grill them off, give them nice and. Nice and flavorful, and then they'll take a hot dog bun, put cream cheese in it, put the hot. Hot dog bun on top of the cream cheese, and then top it with sauteed jalapenos.

Christa DeMercurio:
Did you have one?

Chef Cal:
I. Oh, I did not, because I was flying.

Christa DeMercurio:
You were flying out the day of the game.

Chef Cal:
I was flying out the morning of the game. But I did call back and talk to his dad, and he said he'll never have a hot dog any other way. So I did buy a couple jalapenos. So I am. I'm getting ready, folks. I'll let you know. I'll let you know. But, you know, not canned jalapenos.

Christa DeMercurio:
They're actually fresh.

Chef Cal:
Like fresh jalapenos and. Sauteed. Yes, sauteed fresh jalapenos. You know. Well, you know, people. Jalapenos get a little bit of a bad rap because of people that really don't like things that are spicy. But one of the things you want to do with your peppers, because you've got that captacem in there, which is that hot, the active ingredient that makes them hot, and that's in both the shoulders and the seeds. So when you cut a pepper in half, you take the shoulders out of it.

Chef Cal:
That's that white membrane, and you take the seeds out. And now all you have is just the true flavor of the fruit, you know, the. The fruit of the pepper. So now you just taste in it, whether it's a bell pepper and it's zero heat or a jalapeno, and it's maybe 4, you know, on a scale 1 to 10. I mean, depending could be 3, because, you know, the pep. They've gotten peppers now they're so hot. They're just. They're just painful.

Chef Cal:
I watch people eat them, and it's like, I see no.

Christa DeMercurio:
And they're registered no zero value in Scoville units.

Chef Cal:
Well, there's a variety. They do 1 to 10. They do Scoville units as well. But the Scoville is a little confusing because it reminds me of, like, being in Italy and, you know, buying a soda and it was, you know, 65,000 lay. You know, they just, you know, you know, when you get into Scotchville units, you go up into the millions. So it's kind of hard. One through ten. I can understand, okay, when you tell me something is 0.5 million SCO units.

Chef Cal:
All I know is that. Yeah, I know, I know. It's gonna give me blisters on my lips. So. But, you know, we talked about the hot dogs, and then we would come up with. Someone had mentioned bologna as well. And it's all the same thing. It just depends on how big the casing is.

Chef Cal:
The casing is the outside exterior that you pipe into it. The same thing with making sausage. They'll, you know, making hot dogs the same thing as making sausage, except, you know, one pork that's ground quite a bit more and, you know, and, you know, a hot dog, they. They pretty much grind up, you know, the, the ears, the lips that I don't know whether everything pretty much is in there, you know, and so that's probably why you, why you maybe don't care for them.

Christa DeMercurio:
I don't like the texture. I don't like the skin.

Chef Cal:
Like skin. You skin them, you know. Well, again, it was. You may have had hot dogs that have synthetic casing, and majority of them do majority of things that are wrapped like that, whether it's salami, whether it's a bologna, whether it's a sausage or hot dog, that outside casing is a synthetic product that they make. What I always use when I made my. Especially if I made like a seafood sausage or something like that is I would use, you know, fresh intestines. You know, you can. Because you can buy casein that's.

Chef Cal:
That's a natural casein, and it's, it's much more tender. You don't even notice that it's there.

Christa DeMercurio:
Now, what is salami? They always have that powdery, tough outer coating on that. What do they use for that?

Chef Cal:
That's, that's, that's the salami doing what it's supposed to do, which is growing. You know, that's the, you know, when you let something dry hang for a long time, it's going to get that, that, that fungi that's grown on the outside. But, you know, that's.

Christa DeMercurio:
So it's not flour. I always thought it was flour.

Chef Cal:
I. I don't know.

Christa DeMercurio:
I would have no idea.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, well, I don't know exactly what they dust everything on because I, I never made salami other than just to dry it and eat it fairly quickly. You know, you can get salamis that are, you know, decades old, you know, that have been hanging for a while. But I did want it. So I wanted to touch on the thing with the, the, the tailgate food. And we have, you know, playoffs coming up. We got. You know, I'm excited about all this because I was in Tennessee and Everyone's into college football, but we got college football going on now. The NFL playoffs are going on.

Chef Cal:
So we got a lot of different foods that people like for, you know, just kind of traditional, you know, foods you can snack, finger foods, appetizers, you know, that you can have during a game or during halftime. And, and I, you know, I'd love to hear from you folks if you have any items you can, you know, that you really like to like to do, ideas you want to share, please, you can give us a call down here or. One of the easier ways to get a hold of us is just go to Cooking Like a Pro podcast, right?

Christa DeMercurio:
Podcast.

Chef Cal:
Yes.netcookinglikeapropodcast.net you can tell who the tech person is and out of this group. But yeah, you know, because I'd love to hear. There's a variety of things that are out there. Some things are really unique. I used to go down to the Candlestick with my family and my brothers and stuff, and boy, we would have tailgates, that the tailgate party was better than the game.

Christa DeMercurio:
So what do you have?

Chef Cal:
Back when Montana was playing, what do.

Christa DeMercurio:
You, what do you cook?

Chef Cal:
We would do anything and everything. We would be sauteing, scampi, we would cook and filet. I remember doing lobster, I remember doing buffalo steaks. Just, just anything kind of different. I, I've done a lot of things off a tailgate on it, on a truck before. I actually did a seven course gourmet meal off the back of my pickup truck that was, I think they paid $5,000 for it for an auction long time ago. But, but it was, I did it. It was down in Napa.

Chef Cal:
It was out in a place, a remote place where I didn't have access to any cooking facilities. And it was really fun. It was really fun. But, you know, you're, you kind of, you're up against what you have, and when you know, you're cooking off a tailgate, you better have all the, all the right products.

Christa DeMercurio:
But, but if you're cooking at home, you're not really cooking off of a tailgate. You've got your barbecue available, you got your stove available. What do you, what do you make?

Chef Cal:
Wings, nachos, you know, queso dip. Things that you can, you know, eat while you're. You're watching. Like for me, wings. Wings, you know, need to be in the bone. But there's a lot of different things, you know, roast. If you. More healthy roasted nuts, you know, I mean, spice nuts or something.

Chef Cal:
You know, you can spice popcorn that's one of the things, you know, that I see quite a bit. But, you know, it's kind of whatever everybody wants. But usually, again, finger food, something you can eat, you know, not make too big of a mess.

Christa DeMercurio:
So how do you make candlestick fries?

Chef Cal:
Candlestick fries are garlic fries. And the best way to do those is you cook your garlic ahead of time. And it's roasted.

Christa DeMercurio:
Okay.

Chef Cal:
So just. Just starting to turn color, just barely turning amber. Okay. And then once you get it there, take it off, cool it down. You're going to go and chop that up in a little Robocool or a little blender, little mixer, and then you're going to add oil and parsley to that. And then once your fries come out, immediately come out of the fryer nice and crisp, you throw them in a bowl, throw in a spoonful of this roasted garlic, mix a little bit of salt and a little bit of parmesan cheese and toss them and boom. Candlestick fries can't go wrong.

Christa DeMercurio:
Well, get your fries. I love the fries from Trader Joe's. I think they air fry the best because we don't deep fryer fries at home. We air fry them.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, well, you know, do a deep fryer, it's fine. But you better have a good hood system because if not, your whole house is going to smell like a deep fryer. So I love deep fried food, and it's very healthy to eat. We can talk a little more about that at a different time, but it has to be done right in order to do that. I want to talk a little bit about soups. So this last segment, we're going to talk about soups just simply because it's something that, you know, when you. It's a great way to use up a lot of different products. But it's just the time of year for soup.

Chef Cal:
And you can make a really nice, healthy soup. Serve it with maybe some crackers or something on the side or croutons or whatever the garnish is, maybe some bread. But then it's an easy meal. But you need to make a soup that everybody likes, you know, and when you break it down into the categories, the French would break it down into either cream soups, broth soups, bisque soups, or specialty national soups. Now, cream soup is cream of broccoli.

Christa DeMercurio:
Cream of chicken, cream of mushroom, cream of celery.

Chef Cal:
Keep going, girl, keep going.

Christa DeMercurio:
Corn.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. Cream of asparagus, cream of tomato, cream of carrot. I used to make a cream of carrot and ginger soup. Oh, it's Nice. I. One of the things that when you make these soups is give them a little, little something. I mean, if you're going to make a cream of mushroom soup, then put one more unique item in there and just kind of break that down. Okay.

Chef Cal:
What's a mushroom taste like? It gives that earthy, almost like a umami kind of a flavor. Well, that earthy flavor goes great with. When I first think of it, the first thing pops my head is walnuts. So what if we add some chopped walnuts in with my cream of mushroom soup? Or like the carrot soup that we put the ginger in or corn maybe use. Make a nice corn cream of corn soup, but put some diced green chilies in it. Just kind of think of something to make it unique, something that, you know everyone's going to like. But cream soups, that's kind of where that comes from, which is basically a cream sauce that's a little bit thinner, that has some sort of vegetable usually parade.

Christa DeMercurio:
Let's talk about a cream soup. So you would start with whatever your flavor is going to be your vegetables, you're going to add your stock, which is usually probably a chicken stock or a vegetable stock. And then you just tighten it up with cream, right?

Chef Cal:
Well, no, you tighten it up with roux, but you do add milk to it. Now they say it's a cream soup, but generally it's going to be milk. Cream is first off, four times more expensive. And I always like to add a little bit of cream. But if I'm making, you know, 30 or 40 gallons of soup or something at work, I'm not going to use, you know, $100 worth of cream to do it. You know, we would use for the dairy, we'd use milk and maybe a little bit of cream just to kind of give it that little bit, that velvet mouth fill on your tongue at the end.

Christa DeMercurio:
So you just want to add the roux straight to the soup. Or do you want to cook the roux in with the milk and then add it to the soup?

Chef Cal:
No, you want to cook. You want to tighten up the soup before you add the dairy to it. And then when you add the dairy, you always want to add it slowly because you don't want it to break. When it's broken, you can tell that it's separated on top. So you add it slowly while you're whisking. So you take your cream and or milk and bring it up to temperature. Warm it up, not right out of the fridge, warm it up in another pan, get it Close. And what this is called is tempering.

Chef Cal:
Kind of the same way you temper chocolate. You want to temper your dairy. Before you go into this really hot boiling batch of soup.

Christa DeMercurio:
And you don't want to scald it.

Chef Cal:
No, no, you really don't. I mean, you can bring it up to a. To a simmer where it starts to rise and then shut it off. But you don't want to bring it anywhere near, you know, a hard boil. Yeah.

Christa DeMercurio:
Because it's going to scald and it's going to get that skin on it. You don't want that.

Chef Cal:
It's going to separate. Yeah, it'll separate in the soup and then just burn. Mix it and then adjust it with salt, pepper, whatever it is that you want to go whatever direction. Maybe again, come up with a unique spice or maybe you got a fresh herb. You know, you can take a cream of tomato soup and simply add. You know, if you make a pot of soup that's going to be four or six portions and you just add a couple, you know, let's say maybe half a dozen or eight basil, fresh basil leaves in there, kind of just chop them up lightly and put them in there. You completely change this soup into something that's going to be. The flavor profile is going to be dramatically increased.

Christa DeMercurio:
Well, when I make the soup, when I used to make it for the school, we'd make the grilled cheese and tomatoes one of our top sellers. I would get regular can of tomato, Campbell's tomato soup. Seriously, I would just start with that, but I wouldn't do the normal water can ratio. I would do a little bit of water, but then I would flavor with a little bit of chicken base, give a little flavor. And then I would add milk to it, and it was a perfect texture.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. Well, that's a beautiful recipe. And those kids just love that. I remember once that I made this tomato soup, and I was so proud of it. Fresh tomatoes. And the kids I had gotten and all this beautiful product and some nice onions, and I make this beautiful soup, and it tasted just like Campbell soup out of the can. I couldn't believe it. I was.

Chef Cal:
I was crashed, you know? But anyway, so how would you make.

Christa DeMercurio:
The carrot ginger soup that you talked about?

Chef Cal:
You're take your poultry stock, you're going to peel your carrots, chunk them up whenever you want to chunk them, throw them in there, let them go to their tender. Then you're going to take your stick blender. We call it a burr mixer.

Christa DeMercurio:
Burr is a French word for immersion blender.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. Immersion blender and you stick that in there and just go until it's completely pureed. And then you can just going to go ahead and adjust your seasoning and then slowly add your dairy while you're whisking it. And I would have already put my ginger in as well. Use some fresh ginger. Those little tubes of ginger are really good.

Christa DeMercurio:
Those are fantastic.

Chef Cal:
Those are good to have around because ginger is a pain because it's so fibrous, you know, I mean if you chop ginger, you just peel the outside of it. The key with ginger is you cut it with the back end of the knife. You don't use the sharp end of the knife, you cut it with the back end of the knife because it smashes it and then you just scrape it off and then you don't have all those fibers.

Christa DeMercurio:
Now I think too, a lot of people don't know this is a trick you taught me is if you want a truly luxurious creamy soup is to run it through a strainer and then a chinois and that will really get it just really super smooth.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, yeah. And again, you know, the vitamins and minerals things that are in there, if I'm doing something for a fancier, higher end meal, then yeah, I'll do that. Other than that, I kind of like all those little pieces in there because you know their, their flavor as well. Plus you know, makes a little more interesting having some kind of texture. And then so then we go to the broth soups which are clear soups. Minestrone is probably one of the more famous. But beef and barley, chicken noodle, anything that's a broth base.

Christa DeMercurio:
You don't tighten those with a roux. No.

Chef Cal:
So you got a cream soups, then you got your broth soups. And then your bisques are always going to be very similar to your cream soup except for your bisques are always going to be seafood. And one thing I always do with the bisque is I get a really nice high end paprika and it gives it that, you know, that amber kind of color to it and it's just, it's just beautiful. Kind of like making seafood Nuburg. Like if you're making the sauce, the Newberg sauce, it's kind of like that, but the soup would be thinner.

Christa DeMercurio:
So if somebody calls a soup like a tomato bisque or butternut squash bisque, is that incorrect?

Chef Cal:
Yes. Yeah. I mean, because they're using the word bisque as if it's a pureed.

Christa DeMercurio:
Yeah. Like it's a texture type thing.

Chef Cal:
Well, you know, there's truth in menu laws, but, I mean, how many people even care? I read menus now and then. I have to. You know, I need therapy when I'm done reading most menus because they're just incorrect in the way they describe it. And I don't want to get the. Miss the last soup here because we're going to run up against the end here. But specialty soups. So you got your specialty soups or national soups. National being things like French onion.

Chef Cal:
Right. Egg drop soup would be, you know, from your Pacific Rim area.

Christa DeMercurio:
New England clam chowder.

Chef Cal:
New England clam chowder. Well, that would be regional. Same thing as Boston clam chowder or, you know, some kind of pozole, you know, which would be maybe something you get down in the south or certainly.

Christa DeMercurio:
You'D get in Mexico or like a wedding soup.

Chef Cal:
Yeah. So something from Italy. Italy would be really. Probably more of a minestrone, you know, that you'd find, you know, what about borscht?

Christa DeMercurio:
Isn't that.

Chef Cal:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's from Russia. It's a beet soup. Beet soup from Russia. It's cool, too. You always add a little cream to it. It's just boom. Yeah, it just.

Chef Cal:
It opens right up.

Christa DeMercurio:
Now, the last one that I want to know is Vichy swa.

Chef Cal:
Oh, Vichy swa. Yeah. That's a beautiful soup. Yeah, it's a apple, celery, and leeks.

Christa DeMercurio:
I would not have fish in it.

Chef Cal:
And you also want to put a little bit of curry into it, too.

Christa DeMercurio:
Thank you so much for spending time with us. Until next time, we hope you'll be cooking up a storm in the kitchen. So we'll be with you again next week with food, flavor and fun right here on Cooking Like a Pro Podcast.