Science Friday - NASA Artemis Mission Launches To The Moon, Science Behind Thanksgiving Meals. November 18, 2022, Part 2

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

The Science Behind Your Favorite Thanksgiving Dishes Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and for many people, that means it’s time to start thinking about what will be on the menu for dinner that night. Many people will opt for a classic turkey: others, a vegetarian-focused meal. Regardless of the plan, preparing food for the holiday can take some planning, and there’s a lot of science that goes into it. Cookbook author Kenji López-Alt thinks about the science behind cooking a lot. He’s the author of The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, and he lists Thanksgiving as his favorite holiday. That makes him the expert on all things brine, sides, and pie. López-Alt joins Ira from his home in Seattle, Washington, to answer questions about the science behind Thanksgiving foods.   NASA’s Massive Rocket Finally Launches To The Moon Early Wednesday morning the Artemis 1 mission launched, the first integrated flight test of NASA’s Space Launch System—a massive rocket that NASA hopes will enable an eventual lunar landing. The uncrewed launch was a long time coming. Elements of the program have been under development for over a decade. If all goes according to plan, a second Artemis flight—this time, with crew—will take place in 2024, with a crewed lunar landing in 2025. Another component of the program, a tiny spacecraft called Capstone, entered into lunar orbit several days prior to Artemis. It will test a complicated orbit planned for a potential lunar space station called Gateway, which would serve as a way station for astronauts moving between Earth and the Moon. Ira talks with Jim Free, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development, and Brendan Byrne, space reporter for WMFE and host of the Are We There Yet podcast, about the test flight and what lies ahead for the Artemis program. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, we're tackling the science behind your Thanksgiving cooking. Kenji Lopez-Alt is going to join us, and we want your questions about how do you use science, chemistry, physics, whatever, to make your dinner better. Or what have you discovered that is really science in action when you cook and you'd like to share it with us? Our number is 844-724-8255-8-4-Sai-Talk, or you can tweet us at SciFri. First, early Wednesday morning, the successful launch of the Artemis 1 rocket to orbit the moon. Three, two, one. Boosters in existence.

And lift off of Artemis 1. We rise together back to the moon and beyond. A big first step toward eventually putting people back on that gray lunar ground. So what lies ahead? Joining me now is Brendan Burns, Space Reporter at WMFE in Orlando, and host of the Are We There Yet Podcast. Welcome back to Science Friday. Glad to be here. Ira, thanks for having me.

Nice to have you. I imagine it was nuts at that launch, right? I heard the shouting and the screaming. It was bonkers. I keep telling people it was indescribable, which is a terrible thing for a reporter to say, but it was incredible. It was absolutely incredible.

Now, I know there were some tense moments just a few hours before the launch with a leaking valve. I spoke with Jim Free. He's a NASA's associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development after the launch on Wednesday, and I got his view of the launch. So I was in the launch control center, which is actually pretty well protected. The windows rattled, but talking to folks who were on the outside and seeing somebody's

videos that folks took, it was a pretty intense pressure wave that hit. How's the mood now? The mood is, I don't even elated. I probably can't come up with the right words. You know, that's a long time coming. It's a hard work in engineering. And there's not a lot of launch vehicles that their first launch is successful. So, you know, of course, we still have a long way to go with the mission and some milestones ahead of us that we don't take for granted.

But boy, to see that rocket go yesterday was incredible. Yeah. Sending a team in to tighten down some nuts under a partially fueled rocket a few hours before lunch. That's kind of a gutsy move, isn't it? It is. Yeah. Actually, I was pretty jealous of the rest. You wanted to do it?

I would love to do that. I'm probably more at peace with the hardware than I am with the management stuff. But the great thing was all the procedures that are put in place to do that stuff worked. You know, safety of the people, giving them clear direction. The fact that within just a few minutes of seeing that leak, people understood that, hey, that's where the leak is. and that valve is probably loose and really only be not that far into our launch window, I think was a great testament to that hard work. What do you watch for in the coming days?

First thing we watch for is just coming off of the launch vehicle, can we get the spacecraft power positive is our term. Basically, can we get the solar rays pointed at the sun and get enough power to keep the spacecraft alive? And we've been able to do that. We start firing the engines. There's a whole series of burns we go through with the engines to make sure they all work. You have three different sets of engines on the vehicle for control, some of them, for boost, some of them.

So we try and test all that out, make sure that the temperatures are within range. And then we start doing some of the big maneuvers. We'll do some in a few days to insert ourselves into the lunar orbit. and then we'll sit in that orbit for a few days that can be further away from the moon than any human-rated vehicle has ever been, and then we'll come back and splash down. So we look for all those kind of milestones in the systems to build up our confidence before we put crew on it the next time. Yeah, so this is really a test mission before you put people on the rocket.

Yeah, absolutely. So we're testing out all these systems. You're pushing them farther than some of these crewed missions will go. so that we're really stressing them so that we gain confidence before the crew gets on there. Now, it doesn't mean we take the edge off, right? We don't breathe easier. We just have more confidence that we understand how the systems operate. We still take the same care when we put it together.

Yeah, because after this launch, it's going to be, what, a couple of years until you put the crew on? Why such a long time? So a few years ago, we made the decision really around budget to connect Artemis 1 and Artemis 2 with some of the electronics boxes, meaning we're going to reuse the electronics boxes from one to two. So one is up there operating. We're going to bring it back and recover the vehicle and then bring the vehicle all the way back to the Kennedy Space Center and then get in there, take these boxes out, send them back to the vendor, let them get tested, bring them back, and then put them in

the Artemis II crew vehicle, which is being built just a couple miles from where I'm at right now. And then that will go through the rest of its integration and tests. So we have this connection of electronic boxes that puts a little bit of a fixed bar between the missions. And then we just have to get Artemis 2 crew capsule through the rest of its flow and up on top of the launch of it. So what can you hope to learn from Artemis 1 that you'll bring to Artemis 2? So we have a great international partner on this mission that has built the service. module, the European service module that provides the propulsion and cooling and power. We want to learn how does that system function in deep space. This is not like low Earth orbit.

We're on the other side of the Van Allen belts. So the radiation environment is more complex. The thermal environment with the albedo from the moon, the reflection of the moon and how that affects the vehicle. So we want to have those kind of points. Like do we have the right set points on our parameters. Do we have the right flight rules? When we fly systems, we come up with flight rules. So when you see the folks in mission control, they're working to a set of rules that we've made engineering assumptions on to evaluate. And now as we fly the mission, we want to say, are we too stringent? Are we not stringent enough? Probably the thermal is definitely something that highlight the propulsion elements. And then the crew capsule. That crew capsule has a lot of systems

in it that have to function with the crew in it next time. And we'll hope to learn some of that. Yeah, because you have to maneuver that capsule around, don't you? Like we haven't done since Apollo days. That's right. Yeah, so we have, I mentioned the three types of propulsion systems on there. We also have a guidance navigation and control system that helps us look for the star fields to see where we are in space.

We have to fire the engines at precise times. We'll do an engine firing on the far side of the moon where we're not even in communication with the vehicle. So there's a lot of things that we have to do for the first time. And at what point do you say, hey, we can relax. We've got what we needed to get out of this flight. Probably when the ship docks in San Diego. Because our objectives are to test all of our systems in space. in the flight environment, and that started with the launch, and it's going on right now with

Orion. We want to test the heat shield coming back in, and we want to recover the vehicle. So with those three major objectives, I'll feel better when that vehicle is sitting in the well deck of the Navy ship. And looking forward, what is the timing for the rest of the mission? When might we see people walking on the moon again in a very large sense and a projection sense? Yeah, so Artemis 2 is followed by Artemis 3. There's not the same connectivity between 2 and 3 with the reuse of the hardware. So we're hoping for Artemis 3 at the end of 25. We have to build a human lander for that mission, and we have to build new space suits for that.

So there's even more hardware coming online. And then we're looking at Artemis 4, which will be the first flight to our mini space station around the moon. in the late 26, early 27 timeframe. And then we're going to start going every year from there on out. Well, Jim Free, thank you, and good luck to all of you there. Thank you very much. We'll hope you all stay tuned in and what's going on with Orion. That was Jim Free, NASA's Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development.

Sitting here, talking with me and listening to that interview was Brendan Byrne. He reports on space for WMFE in Orlando and hosts the podcast, Are We There? Brendan, interesting conversation. We are now a couple of days into the mission. Where is the spacecraft now? And what is it doing? So I'm taking a look at the telemetry right now. It's 195,000 miles away from Earth and about 123,000 miles away from the Moon. And the cool part about where it's at now is that it's being influenced more by the Moon's gravity than the Earth's gravity. So that's like a really incredible milestone for a new vehicle, the first vehicle designed for huge. since, as you mentioned, the Apollo program in 1972. So that's where it's at. And it's testing out all those systems, as Jim mentioned. They're testing some of the systems out inside.

There's actually this really neat experiment happening inside the capsule. Engineers hooked up an Alexa, just like you would have at home that you talk to, to a WebEx and a tablet. And this is going to be used for future Artemis astronauts to communicate back to Earth. But there's no internet, right? So they're testing out all of these different systems in deep space and how you can communicate back to Earth. Because that's something that's going to be really important is to be able to reach back to Earth when you're this far away. So that's happening inside the capsule now. Now you've triggered everybody's Alexis across the country. Yeah, I'm sorry. I apologize. I apologize everyone. And the rocket didn't just have this one spacecraft, right? There were a bunch of tiny CubeSats on board. What are they for? Yeah, so I think QSATs are one of like the coolest developments in aerospace engineering, right? So you take what used to be these massive satellites and you're able to break them down into these really, really, really tiny spacecraft, like the size of a tissue box.

And there are 10 of these that got deployed just shortly after Orion was making its trip to the moon. And they're not just experiments that are looking at the moon. They're going to be looking at our Earth, our sun, and even a near-Earth asteroid. But one of the really cool ones that's on here is it's got a strain of yeast. So these are live cells that are going to be living in deep space. And there's a set of these yeast cells on the International Space Station, and we have them here on Earth. And scientists will be able to compare how this deep space environment, the radiation that astronauts may be exposed to on these deep space missions, are going to affect the DNA of these yee cells,

which we can extrapolate and look to see how it might affect us or humans when they're out there. So that's really cool. There's also some sensors that are looking for the minerals that are going to be on the surface of the moon. Scientists are really excited that there's water underneath the surface that we can use for fuel for future missions. And so these little tiny cubesats are doing really big work

uncovering all of these things in deep space. All right. We're going to take a break and come back and talk lots more about Artemis. We're going to be taking your calls. 844-724-8255. That's 844-Sy-Talk. We'll be taking your calls. And you can also tweet us.

We'll be back with Brendan Byrne. Stay with us. Hi there, folks. I want to thank you for being here. I want to take a moment to say just how grateful I am to you. By downloading or listening to this podcast, you're making my work more fulfilling, sharing in my curiosity and love for science. You're also keeping the conversation going beyond just Fridays. Science Friday continues to make an impact because of people like you and your commitment to factual science news and information. Our work and this podcast depends on public support. If you haven't already, please make a donation to Science Friday and help us continue to share science with the world. You can go to science friday.com slash support to make your gift. Thank you. And have to.

Happy holidays. We're talking this hour about the Artemis Moon Mission, what lies ahead in space exploration. I'm talking with Brendan Byrne, space reporter at WMFE. And we're also taking your calls, 844-724-8255. Let's go to the phones to Harvey in Orlando. Great spot to be in Florida, Harvey. Yes, it is.

And I've got maybe a little bit different perspective. I was a teenager when the Apollo mission started going off to the moon. And unfortunately, I was in the audience when we heard that Apollo 1 had burned up on the pad during a test. And, you know, the triumph that has come out of that tragedy is just incredible. But I've got a little bit different perspective because I was able to listen to the issues and all the controversy about should we be doing us.

I don't think there's any question now that we're. should be, and I'm glad that we are. But having seen the Apollo missions go, and all that we got out of that, and all that NASA has benefited mankind as a result, is just been astounding. But this, now going forward again with Artemis, it's just incredible. I've got some interesting aspects of that, because I was listening to the differences between what I remember from the Saturn missions, and when the Saturn 5B took off, it was an extremely intense popping sound. And I was pretty close. With the Artemis, and I assume this is because of the solid rocket boosters, it was more of a continuous roar.

But it was more tactile. When they hit you in the chest, it was like you were inside of a bass drum, and it was just pounding incessantly. It was just, it was incredible. To be listening to this and tears streaming down my face, I was just, I was amazed. Lastly, this red crew that went out. I don't think too many people remember that there was another red crew. that went out a long time ago and locked down some nuts on another rocket before it took off to the moon. That was Apollo 11, but there was a crew that went out there and had a lock it down

so that Armstrong and his crew, Buzz Aldrin and Collins could go to the moon. So this is the second time that a group has gone out to lock down some hydrogen leaks. Well, Harvey, thank you for your reflections and your remembrances. And good luck to you and everybody else in Florida. Good deal. Go Artemis. There you go. Brendan Byrne, what do you think? That is one excited observer, I think.

Yeah, yeah. And there was plenty of more just like Harvey out there. And he's right. That sound, it was a great way to describe it. It was percussive. And it was from those solid rocket boosters. And I think one of the coolest things about the solid rocket boosters that Harvey's talking about is night turned in today.

I mean, you could actually see the blue sky. one o'clock in the morning when those things lit up. It was pretty wild. And to Harvey's point about the red team, most rockets have used a red team like that. It's been called different things over the years. I think it was called the ice team for shuttle days. But they've been deployed to do that. It's very, very dangerous work, but very important work. So, you know, the folks of the red team of all the different rockets from Apollo to ULA's Atlas 5 to the space shuttle, they all have those red teams in place to do that kind of work. They must have some kind of toolbox. They take them from.

David in Milwaukee. Hi, David. Oh, did we lose David? We just lost David. I guess what he's asking, and we might have covered this a little bit. How does Artemis, Brendan, fit in with the, and he was wondering on Mars. Does it fit in with any plans for going back to Mars at all? It does. And you even heard with that launch commentator, you know, counting it down saying, you know, this is one step getting us closer to Mars. Learning how to live and work in deep space is going to be imperative if we're going to go to places like Mars. These Artemis missions have been described to me as like, you know, camping in your backyard before you hike the Appalachian Trail.

You want to work out all those kinks when you're closer to home. Learn to live and work in deep space for a short period of time before you go even further. I mentioned that there's water on the surface of the moon. Well, part of NASA's plans to get to Mars is to set up the moon as. a base for fuel. You can take that water and separate it into hydrogen and oxygen. We all know very well that SLS uses hydrogen propellant. You can use that to refuel your rocket from the moon to get you to places like Mars. So the Artemis missions are imperative if we want to get to places like Mars in deep space. A tweet from Mark and Madison who says, how much of the old Apollo

knowledge and tech is being dusted off for Artemis? Quite a bit. I mean, a lot of the Apollo Tech is being used all over the space flight program. I mean, for instance, the parachutes that bring the crew capsules back home from the International Space Station that SpaceX and Boeing use, those are inspired by Apollo engineering. But there's a lot of also space shuttle legacy hardware in the SLS. I mean, those are RS-25 engines. Those four engines on the core stage came from the space shuttle program.

So there's a lot of legacy hardware and knowledge in this program. Something that kind of flew under the radar this week because of Artemis was testing out a new kind of heat shield on Mars, right? They were, they came up with something new. Can you talk about that? I think you're referring to the heat shield that ULA launched recently. Yes. This is an inflatable heat shield. And from all accounts, of course, I was focused on Artemis, but the accounts that I read that everything went very well on that one. So, you know, a heat shield is extremely important. so it's good to have a few more in your arsenal. Let's go to Rich in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.

Hi, Rich. Hey, go ahead. Good afternoon. How are you all doing? Fine. Hey, I was wondering, Brendan, what, with all the, I'm, you know, in New Smyrne Beach, I get to see the launches all the time, walk out in the front yard. We've got so many satellites going up with SpaceX and NASA and, you know, you know, DOD, how do they keep from hitting one another?

It's a very good question. I mean, are there crosswalks or bike paths? It's actually a very good question, and something that is becoming more and more of an issue of this collision avoidance, the Department of Defense is working on it, there's all sorts of organizations that are calling on this. When Artemis launched,

they actually had to calculate what window, This crosswalk, as you mentioned, that it could actually launch in that it wouldn't hit anything. This is not like a standard satellite, right, that kind of goes into the flow of what's already in orbit. It's punching through that flow. So they actually did have to calculate where everything is in orbit. And as more and more stuff gets up there, things die. Things could crash into one another, creating even more debris. So space traffic and space junk and space debris avoidances is a really big issue.

And it's something that a lot of agencies, to get on top of now before there's something catastrophic that happens in space. Hope that answers your question. Thanks for calling. The Artemis program isn't just NASA, right? It has involvement with the European Space Agency in Canada and other nations, too. That's right. Yeah, a lot of these agencies are helping build some of the hardware that's going to be going there. There's going to be an international crew on these Artemis flights. We're going to have other than just NASA astronauts there. and Gateway, which Jim Free spoke about a little bit, will be also built by different countries.

The parts will be built by different countries and different commercial entities as well, but also some other countries have their own plans to go to the moon, right? China has announced plans to send three uncrewd missions to the moon. Russia has signaled it wants its own moon program. So the moon is going to be a very busy place in the next few years. All right. We'll be watching

and hoping you'll help us keep track of it, Brendan. I'd be more than happy to, Ira. You know, I'm happy to chat space with you anytime. I know, and we could go on all day. We could. Brandon Byrne, Space Reporter at WMFE in Orlando, host of Are We There Yet? That's a great question. Are We There Yet podcast?

Thanks for being with us today. Anytime, Ira, thank you. Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and for many people, that means we need to start thinking about what's going to be on the menu for dinner that night. I know lots of us have already started thinking about that. Are you doing a classic turkey? Maybe you're sticking to vegetarian. How you prepare your food for the holiday takes a lot of thought,

and if you want to get competitive edge on the food front, there's a ton of science, a ton of chemistry in food preparation and cooking, and no one better to answer your Thanksgiving food questions than my guest, Kenji Lopez-Alt, cookbook author and food scientist based in Seattle, Washington. Welcome back to the show, Kenji. Hey, thanks for having me. So much chemistry in food, isn't there? Yes, quite a bit.

Let's start then with the centerpiece of most people's or many people's Thanksgiving meals, the turkey. Now, I know there's a big argument that seems to happen every year, and that is to brine or not to brine. Right. So what is brining, and what does it do to the meat? Right. So brining, what it does, the act of brining is when you take your turkey or your chicken or whatever it is and you dunk it in a saltwater solution. and let it sit there generally overnight or so. What it does is that salt water dissolves some of the muscle proteins

that are kind of wrapped around the individual muscle fibrals. And so when your turkey cooks, what happens is those proteins contract. And that's what causes juices to kind of squeeze out. And so the hotter you cook it, the tighter those proteins contract, and the more juices get squeezed out. What brining does is it kind of loosens up some of those proteins that dissolves them so that they don't squeeze us tightly, which means that cooked to the same temperature,

a turkey that has been brined, will retain more moisture, about 7% more moisture, than a turkey that hasn't been brined. No. Of course, the debate is whether it's worth it or not. What I recommend is a process called dry brining, which is it gives you all the advantages of a wet brine,

plus I think it tastes better, and it also means that you don't need to pull out that, you know, five-gallon bucket or the cooler. to soak your turkey. So essentially all you do is you season the turkey pretty heavily with salt. If you can, you know, you want to get like a little bit of salt up in between the skin and the meat on the breast in particular. That's what your finger is going under the skin then is what you're... Exactly, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And then you leave it uncovered on a rack in your fridge at least overnight and up to two nights. And so you get a lot of the same effects as brining, so it'll retain more moisture. but you'll also get kind of crispier skin because you're not soaking it in water for a couple nights. So I, excuse me, I think it's a better method than just traditional wet brining. Well, I know lots of brining recipes have sugar in it. What's the deal with sugar versus salt here? Yeah, well, sugar is mainly going to be for flavoring and also to help it kind of brown a little bit. So if you do want to, you know, if you do want to put a little bit of sugar in your turkey,

whether it's a wet brine or a dry brine, that'll help it brown a little bit. But you do have to kind of be careful that it doesn't go too far, you know, because turkey skin, that's been red with sugar. It can, you know, if you're doing it low and slow on a smoker, that's one thing. But if you're roasting it in the oven,

it could start to, you know, brown a little bit too fast, in which case you just want to kind of check your oven temperature and ease back. I want to bring our listeners in on this, 844-724-8255 if you have a question or a suggestion. 844-724-8255. Before we go to the break, I've got to ask you about this latest turkey recipe published in the New York Times this month, which uses a key ingredient that I have to say as a New Yorker and reading the New York Times. I was a little more than a little surprised to see, and that was mayonnaise.

You put mayonnaise on your turkey. What is it about mayonnaise that you think results on a good turkey? Well, you know, you don't need it to get a good turkey, of course. But, you know, what I've found is that if I'm going to be adding some kind of herb flavoring to it, you know, so in the past I might have done like a butter, an herb butter or maybe an herb oil. The difficulty with herb butter is that it's hard to get the butter at just that right temperature, I think, where you can kind of spread it all over the turkey and get a nice even coating. Whereas mayonnaise, you know, whether it's straight out of the fridge or at room temperature,

it spreads and it holds its place really easily. So it makes it really easy to get those herb flavors into a sort of wet mix that you can then get all on, like an even coating on the surface of the turkey. The other thing that mayonnaise offers over butter is that the protein in the mayonnaise, and this is true whether it's a vegan mayonnaise, which is stabilized with plant proteins or traditional mayonnaise to stabilize with egg proteins. The protein in there is going to help kind of solidify it. So instead of butter, which kind of melts away and just drips off, the mayonnaise kind of helps keep all of the herbs and garlic or whatever it is you put in your mix right up there against the turkey as it roast.

And by the time it's done roasting, of course, there's no kind of, it doesn't look like mayonnaise. Okay. It all breaks. I feel better now. Yeah. You don't put mayonnaise on your pastrami, do you? No.

No. No. I know. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. We're talking about the science of cooking, and we're taking your calls at 844-724-8255. I have a tweet that came in, and it's kind of interesting. Why do we preheat the oven? John on Twitter wants to know.

Is it a logical thing about standardizing cooking times, or does the immediate heat do something different or better than letting the food come up to temperature with the oven? So it depends on the exact recipe in the situation and situation, but by and large, it would be the first answer, which is that all ovens heat differently. And so, you know, an oven that could take 45 minutes to preheat, you know, someone's oven might take 45 minutes to preheat, someone ovens might take 15 minutes to preheat. So if you're putting your food in as the ovens preheating, you're building a lot of unpredictability into the timing and into that recipe. So allowing ovens to properly preheat does standardized time. In certain recipes, you know, there might be certain types of styles of roasting where you would start at a really high temperature and then kind of drop the temperatures as you go along. With those types of recipes, definitely preheating is what gives you that sort of blast at the beginning that allows you to kind of sear surfaces.

So in those cases, there is sort of a functional benefit to preheathing. Same with like if you're baking a pizza or a loaf of bread, you really really really, want to properly preheat, not just the oven, but also the stone or the steel that you're baking on, because all of that absorbed energy in the walls, it's what's going to help your pizza or your bread get the oven spring, you know, with the nice big bubbles in them and the nice char on the surface. So in many cases, the preheating the oven is a sort of a functional thing as well as a practical thing as a recipe right. Is there a better pan than what kind of pan to put the turkey in physics-wise that will absorb or radiate the heat best?

Yeah, so I would say do not use the standard deep walled roasting pan. You know, I have like a roasting band that has like walls that are maybe three inches tall. Right. And it's made of heavy stainless steel. And it comes to the VRAC meant for poultry. I think this is one of the worst ways you can actually cook poultry because what it does is the pan kind of shields the bottom of the bird. So the area where the thighs are meeting the backbone, it's kind of shielding that area. and it's preventing both radiant heat from the oven and, more importantly, convection, so hot air flowing around the oven from getting to that area.

And so what ends up happening is that that area cooks really slowly. And that's the part where you're all supposed to take the temperature because that's the part you want actually cooked to the highest temperature. And so by the time that comes up to the right temperature, everything else, in particular the breast, is like heavily overcooked. Kenji, I'm going to interrupt you and get the answer when they come back about what you should do, because we're writing out. out of time. But I want to hear, this is really interesting talking with Kenji Lopez-Alt, a cookbook author based in Seattle. Our number for more suggestions, 844-8255. We'll be back with the answer about the right utensils to use in the oven for your turkey. What is you should cook it in. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this break. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira

Flato. We're continuing our conversation about the science behind preparing our favorite Thanksgiving dishes with my guest Kenji Lopez-Alte cookbook author and food scientist based in Seattle, Washington. And when I rudely interrupted him to go to our break, you were telling us what not to do, not to use the deep-sided standard kitchen cooking pan for turkey. What should we be doing? You should be using just a regular rimmed baking sheet, like a sheet pan. So a half-sized sheet pan, I think it's like 23 inches by 18 inches. That'll fit like a 14, up to 14 pound or so, spashcock turkey or whole turkey. So that with a wire rack said in it. So the idea is that you're going to get a lot better circulation under and around the turkey than you would

with a deep-sided pan. And so your cooking is going to be a lot more even. All right. Let's go. Lots of, of course, you can imagine lots of folks want to talk about cooking. Paul in Conway, Arkansas. Hi, Paul. Hey, Ira. I'm a long, long time listener. Sir, a great program, previous great programs before. I'd like to comment. I've cooked many a turkey over the years. I'd like to cook. I really appreciate your guest smarts. What about fried turkey guys? You northerners are missing out. We have it up here. We've tried it. We've almost scolded ourselves with hot oil. I love a fried turkey. I love a good fried turkey. Yeah, I think space-wise, it's a little it's a little hard. It's more intimidating.

Well, what does frying do physically to the turkey? And thank you, Paul, for that call. What goes on in the turkey that's different from roasting it to frying it? Well, so, I mean, the main thing is that you're transferring heat at a much faster rate. So you're really going to get extremely crispy skin and all the meat around the outside is also going to crisp up. And then you're going to be getting, you're cooking really fast. So one of the important things that frying does is that you're circulating.

So in an oven, you know, when you have a whole turkey, you can imagine the space inside the turkey, you know, the cavity where you might traditionally stuff it, for example. Even if it's unstuffed, even if there's air in there, it kind of ends up sitting in place. And so you don't get very much good circulation inside the turkey as far as heat goes. Right. So that's one of the reasons why it takes so long to roast a turkey and why, you know, why spatchcocking is so much. faster. But deep frying a turkey, because oil is much more viscous, it kind of flows in and out. And so you're really getting hot oil inside the turkey as well as outside. So you're cooking it from both sides really, really fast. So what that means is that it drastically cuts down on the total

cooking time while also giving you really sort of crispy skin. And so, you know, and as long as you kind of don't overshoot the final temperature, as long as you're very careful about using your thermometer, It can also be like an extremely juicy way. Right. Okay. We've talked turkey long enough. Let's move on too. Because there are a lot of people who are making vegetarian dishes.

And we've got questions about what's the best way to make a really good vegetarian gravy? Is it the heat, the cornstarch or something else that really makes it work? Yeah. Well, so, you know, I think one of the things that makes it difficult to make a good vegetarian gravy compared to a meat-based gravy is that meats give you those amino acids. So, you know, glutamic acid,

inocinic acid, and these things that we associate with savouriness. So you kind of want to look for sources to replace or enhance those savory notes. And so,

excuse me, when it comes to vegan or vegetarian gravy, I think, making a really good mushroom stock, maybe adding some kombu, you know,

like Japanese-style kombu, seaweed. sea kelp to it to really sort of boost the umami factor using dried mushrooms like porcini's can really improve the umami factor in a in a in a stock um and then also doing using fermented things so things like soy sauce and miso paste um i think i think i have a recipe for a vegan gravy on serious eats that uses kind of all those things uh and then you just thicken it up at the end and it can be really really delicious you know i really enjoyed you're talking about the physics of roasting in the oven. And we have a question from Karen in Kansas City, Missouri. Hi, Karen.

Oh, it's Carrie. Carrie, I'm sorry. Oh, no problem. One of my biggest issues is always oven space on the day in trying to make sure I'm not overcrowding. And I've learned that crockpots can be a great alternative for some side. So what's some good suggestions on when you know you've overcrowded your oven and how much space do you need if you're you know kind of time lining out you know to have everything ready at the same time and let the turkey rest and all that stuff yeah good question so i think yeah i mean a good a crockpot can definitely work well for for for some things uh you know having having some of your dishes be okay at room temperature is also you know i think you know that you can make like a grilled vegetable salad or a roasted vegetable salad um that

is good warm but is also fine at room temperature. So thinking about dishes that you don't really have to worry about as far as sitting goes is a good idea. When it, you know, when it comes to oven space, I, at Thanksgiving, you know, I grew up in a New York apartment, you know, so little galley kitchen with a tiny stove. And I think the way we treated the oven on Thanksgiving was that towards, towards dinner time, it would sort of just become the warmer, right? So excuse me, everything else was baked ahead of time. So the turkey was roasted, the size where, you know, the stuffing was baked in its dish. The Brusselswrest was roasted and all kind of in heatproof containers.

And then once the last thing that you actually need to bake or cook in the oven is done, then you can just pile everything back in to rewarm. You know, and I think with dishes, you know, Thanksgiving-type dishes are almost built for that, you know. They're built, there are a lot of sort of casseroles and bake things and things that are kind of just fine, reheated and are almost even sometimes better reheated. Yeah, they taste better. So I don't think you have to worry too much about, you know, for most Thanksgiving dishes, I don't think you have to worry about them going, you know, straight, piping hot directly

out of the oven onto the table. All right. I think reheating them and holding them is totally fine. Let's go to slushie in California. Hi, slushy. I'm sorry, I got your name correct? Yeah. Hi, go ahead.

Hi. My question was, are biscuits something that you can have to, Thanksgiving and also Kenji do you have a solution for every time someone makes biscuits the dough comes out not not sticking together well and when you bake it it comes out hard

yeah what is slushy doing wrong there so I definitely think you can have biscuits for Thanksgiving I mean uh yeah I don't I can't think of occasion where you can't have biscuits. I think they'd be great for Thanksgiving. As far as the second question, I think I'd need to know a little bit more about exactly what's going on.

So it sounds like the dough is coming out too dry, but the biscuits are also coming out too hard. And all I can think is that maybe you need to be using a lighter flower. So instead of like an all-purpose flower, using something like white lilyle. or a biscuit flour or a cake flour that will be a little bit lower in gluten, so more tender? That's a good idea, but my mom should use all the ingredients because we have like a whole book of ingredients that we kind of used for the biscuits. And whenever she makes them using the recipe, they turn out incredible. but I'll use the same recipe and they'll turn out like literal cookies.

Sounds like maybe you need to work with your mom more closely. Yeah. Yeah, that is a good solution. All right. So I'm going to kind of have family over and I feel like if I do a baking assignment for my class and I give them that, they're kind of going to, my reputation is kind of going to be.

It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing. All right. So she, we got to go on, but thank you. That's an interesting phone call. Maybe your mom can help you out. Thanks for calling. Let's talk about you. You mentioned before a little bit about leaving stuff out on the counter. And this is a question we get asked all the time. How long can I leave things out on the countertop and feel safe that the bacteria is not going to do its thing when it's out. You know, it depends on, so, you know, there's no hard and fast rule for this. There are, you know, there are what the government requires restaurants to do it to, which the sort of the easy version is that it can't spend more than four hours between the temperatures of 40 degrees Fahrenheit and 140 degrees of Fahrenheit total. So that includes the time that it takes to heat it up, the time it takes it to cool it down if you're putting it in the fridge, and the time it takes to prepare and serve.

So that's not very long. That is four hours. Four hours, yeah. You know, and realistically, though, you know, that's sort of like the extremely safe version. Realistically, if you're cooking in your own home kitchen and you roast a, you know, you pull the green bean casserole out at 2 p.m.

and dinner's not until 7, I would feel totally comfortable serving that. You know, as long as you don't have like the cat jumping over it or the kids stepping in it or anything. But, you know, as long as you keep a relatively clean house and your ingredients are not moldy to begin with, you know, I think that it's totally safe. Okay.

To not follow those rules exactly. Sounds good. And before we run out of time, I've got some other questions. Some of them from our own staff members. And one of them is sometimes bad mashed potatoes are described as gluey. What's going on there from a chemical perspective that gluey? And how do you unglue them? You can't unglue the gluey mashed potatoes.

So essentially what's happening is that you're over-activating the starch. And so there's a couple ways that can happen. One of them is that the potatoes could be kind of boiled too violently for too long before mashing them. And so they're kind of getting waterlogged. and then the starch molecules kind of expand and burst and, we sort of, we sort of lost them there. Let's see if, well, see what happens when you talk about gluing mashed potatoes. You lose the line.

Let's see if, let's see if we get some phone calls in while we're waiting. Let's go to Bob in Spokane, Washington. Hi, Bob. Hi there. Hi there. Go ahead. Okay, well, my favorite way to prepare Thanksgiving turkey is using the suede method, and that's where the food is placed in a food-safe plastic bag, and then cooked at a

lower temperature in a water bath. Typically, I'll take and suction the turkey, remove the leg quarters, the wings, and the breast meat, and one leg quarter and one wing goes in a one gallon plastic bag, and then the breast meat goes in another gallon plastic bag. And then that's, it's dry brine with salt and you can use herbs and spices on it. And then it goes, the dark meat goes in starting at only 153 degrees, I believe it is. And it stays in for about four or five hours. And then you add the breast meat to that and drop the temperature down to about 145 degrees, as I recall. And then the whole thing takes about five hours to cook.

And when it's done, it's juicy, it's flavorful. And then you take it out of the plastic bags. put it in a hot oven for a few minutes to brown it, and it's delicious. Wow. Wow. That's a lot of preparation, isn't it? It is, but, you know, it turns out so well, and people say, well, yeah, but it's not getting up to the 165 degrees. Well, because it stays so long at those lower temperatures, it's still safe at those temperatures. Who do? Thank you for that suggestion, Bob, and your experiences.

Yeah, you're welcome. Let's see if we can get another phone call in before we have to say, goodbye because we are running out of time. Let's go to Danielle and Santa Cruz, California. Hi. Hi. Is this Science Friday? It is Science Friday. It is Science Friday. We're having a little technical difficulty, so we're hoping you're going to save us, Danielle. We'll see about that. I just wanted to ask, my mom always cooked Thanksgiving turkey in a really deep Mexican plate pot or called Oya de Barro. And I'm wondering,

what, how that makes it juicier and whether that's an actual scientific phenomenon that would make the turkey cook juicier. I think Kenji is back. Kenji, did you hear that question? No. We didn't, we didn't have, why does it make it juicier? I wish I had an answer for you. But I'll see if we can, we'll see if we can get an answer for you offline, okay?

Thanks for calling. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Let's see if we get one. One more calling here. Let's go to Frank in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania. Dillsburg. Where is that, Frank? That's right outside of Harrisburg, PA. It's about maybe 20 miles west of Harrisburg, a little rural town. And you have something you're going to share with us.

Yeah, just a quickie here. I know you're almost done with the Mayo issues, but I stumbled on a couple years ago to using mayonnaise on the salmon that I grow. And I used to use butter and then put spices on it and grill it on both sides. And it sounds really disgusting when you explain to people or they look that you're putting mayo on it. But it is remarkable. And I just understood why today because it doesn't drain off. And the tenderness and the taste and I guess the conveyance of some of the spices makes it really good. My wife is a really great cook and she thinks it's the best salmon she's ever had. We go all over and eat it.

So it's really tender, tasty, really easy to do. You know, just put the mail on both sides, put your spices on, grill it, and it's wonderful. My mouth is watering, Frank. It's really good, although it sounds really disgusting. And you discovered it on salmon, and then you did it for your turkey? Yeah, yeah, I'm going to try it for the turkey now until I never heard of that, but it makes sense. It really does seem to work. Well, I will thank you for taking time to be with us today.

Frank, that's a great suggestion. Well, thank you. your program is wonderful, the diversity is great, I love you, so thanks. Thank you, thank you. And we have run out of time. That is about all the time we have for now.

And, of course, if you want to hear from, if you want questions about what to do behind, you know, are your favorite Thanksgiving foods. We've got some hits up there on our website. I want to thank Kenji Lopez-Alt, cookbook author and food scientist,

based in Seattle for, well, we had them on for most of the hour. We had a little bit of technical difficulties, these difficulties at the end, but boy, I learned a lot. I hope you did too in this hour. And of course, if you missed any part of the program, you'd like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts, or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday.

Every day now is Science Friday. And of course, excuse me, you can say hi to us on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or email us the old-fashioned way, sci-fri at ScienceFriad.com. Send us your feedback. Tell us what you'd like us to cover. Next week, we're going to have our annual Thanksgiving show. And what does that mean? That means the Ig Nobel Prizes will be back.

Always a lot of fun to listen to them. So have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato.