Cooking and Amazing Appliances with Chef Colin Shine

This is episode number 186 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett. Here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We're so glad that you could join us for another episode here live. From the Homeowner Show Studios. How you doing, Kev?

And it is so much better than last week. Life is so much easier.

The property's been released. Yes, it's now their problem.

That's right.

Yeah, like, and they aren't your problem.

No, no more. They're out of my life forever. But I tell you, man, it was stressful. Yeah, I mean, anyway, I'm I was a little bit hot last week. I was like in the middle of everything, you know?

Oh yeah.

Now I'm kind of not so much in the middle of everything.

How much weight did you lose?

I don't know, probably not enough, I guarantee that. But definitely—

Didn't hit the goals?

Well, I don't know if I had a goal, but if I did, I probably missed it, I'll tell you that. But yeah, I'm good. How are you, man?

So there is a raging case of poison ivy working its way through my house right now.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

Okay. So I was here whenever, just shortly after the case happened, the first one.

Yeah.

But is it spreading by person or—

Yes.

Oh, weird.

It is weird.

I didn't know that could happen.

Well, so I am not allergic to poison ivy.

Okay.

I've never really had it before, But apparently my son is very allergic to him. I mean, he had it like behind his ears, on his eyeballs, just pretty much all over his body, everywhere north of his knees. And it was just bad. Like, he's been home from school for 3 days on steroids and all this kind of stuff. I mean, he's fine, but like, he's itchy.

Sure.

And apparently whatever he sits on, if somebody sits on it after him, they just get whatever he had.

Really?

From that.

That I legitimately didn't know this was possible.

I didn't either.

That you could transmit poison ivy from person to person.

Right.

I didn't think that was a thing.

And so our mutual friend Haley was actually telling me that, I don't know how long ago it was, but like apparently her dad had a really bad case of poison ivy that he kept giving himself back. through a bar of soap. No.

Yes.

Like, apparently this stuff is like really contagious.

Wow.

And like, it's like contagious up to like 4 days after.

I had no idea.

I mean, not to be like gross, but you get like those like pus nodules and like they burst and that gets on stuff and like, and then it just all goes to hell.

Wow.

Yeah. So I've never had poison ivy until now.

And now you have it?

And now I have it.

Where?

On my back.

You're disgusting.

Yeah, I'd rather have this than hair though.

I've seen some pretty hairy backs in my time, and I'm like, man, like, you could lay down and like people could walk on that sucker.

It's like a bear rug.

I don't even know why you— like, there's not enough wax in the world for that thing.

No, no.

That's just— that really, that truly is disgusting.

Yeah, so FYI, and not that I'm gonna show it on the show, I don't have a hairy back.

And those of you that have hairy backs out there, ladies, there's not one of them out there that's going to care. No, no, not at all.

Oh, there's one. And she's pretty happy with it.

And she has a hairy back, though. What? Oh, maybe not. We're not talking about the same person.

Never mind. You about to get Will Smithed.

Oh, man. I will tell you, man, I love the memes that are coming out of that thing.

So many good ones.

So many good ones.

So, and we, I mean, like, we, we pretty much covered it last week.

We did.

Yeah, but like, it's still happening.

Uh-huh. Okay. Has your opinion changed?

No.

Okay. Just curious.

No.

Okay.

I, I think I even like my— I've dug in deeper into my opinion. I'm like, take it away from him.

Yeah.

You know?

Okay. Yeah, I'm fine with it.

You're fine with him getting the Oscar?

No, I'm fine with him not.

Not getting the Oscar?

Yeah.

He did get it. No one said boo about it.

No. Although I did listen to a pretty interesting— we got a friend who's a lawyer. He put like a video out about like in the state of Texas, if that would have happened, right, what would the authorities on site have done? Oh, it was kind of interesting. The answer was nothing.

Nothing?

Yeah. If you really want to know, the answer is kind of like nothing. Nothing. Now they could retroactively come after him.

Well, the organization can do whatever they want.

Yeah, but no, but the authorities could retroactively come back with a warrant if charges were pressed.

He already said he wasn't pressing charges.

No, he's not going to.

So although there was a really good picture of it, um, where it's like right after Chris Rock got slapped, his like his right hand is down and it's kind of flinched a little bit, and it's like he thought about it for a second.

Yeah, he wanted to. He wanted to. Yeah.

Anyway.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

There you go.

No more new takes on that. Just less interesting information about it.

Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what, it is— it has been an interesting week though, as we have adjusted or worked towards adjusting to living in a home that's literally half the size of the one that we had.

Right.

It's different. My kids are sharing a room, which I shared a room growing up with my brother. He and I shared a room.

Share a room right now.

Yeah, it's true. I've shared a room the majority of my life now that I think about it. But anyway, so that's kind of new and different. There's no real place for someone to go.

Yeah, you can't hide.

No, there's nowhere for someone to— so last night, apparently, Um, I, I'd come home, uh, from work late. It was like 9:30.

Uh-huh.

And, uh, I came home. I was like, hey, man, how— like, how'd everything go tonight? You know, I wasn't here. And Kimberly said, well, my son walks out of the room and goes, Mama, I need some alone time. And he's, he's 7. So he's like, I need some alone time. And she was like, okay, buddy, like, I'll see if I can figure this out.

So she, she—

because the reason that I asked this question is I walk in, in the room is my daughter's huge, massive Barbie Dreamhouse. I'm like, why is this in here? We literally put it in there on purpose. And she was like, yeah, he needed some alone time. Just not with the— yeah, needs to get away.

Yeah.

So anyway, but it's fine.

Just want you to know my wife heard your comment. Oh, and she said, not cool, Kevin. She thought you said that she had a hairy back.

Well, she didn't understand that I didn't understand what we were talking about. I was talking about someone else. Uh-huh.

See, what happened was—

Also was not gonna actually be named. Tell her this: of all the people I would want to offend in life, it is someone not with the last name Williams.

That's in general.

I've, I've offended your mom before.

Ooh, that did not go well.

That did not go well. That did not go well. I did it on purpose though.

Like, it was funny. It was good.

It was one of my better ones. That was, that was a really good one.

But the retribution was funny though.

What I said was funny. Uh-huh. The retribution was also pretty funny, but what I said was— it was a good one. Yeah, she probably didn't remember what I said at this point.

Uh, but well, so our, our guest tonight— yeah, we actually have a guest.

We do. So it's been a while.

Has some experience with the wrath of the Williams clan.

Oh, really?

Because he's been around quite a few of us.

Okay.

He's, he's a good family friend. We got Chef Colin Shine in the house, in the studio.

All right.

How you doing, Colin?

Great. Thank you for having me.

Dude, this is exciting.

Pleasure to be here. I'm excited.

This is your first time out to the ranch?

Yes.

Yeah. Made the trek up north?

Yeah, it wasn't a big deal. We waited traffic out.

Well, we, we, we, and we enjoyed some adult beverages before with the fine people over at B52. A craft beer or two. Oh, yeah. Dude, and you hadn't been there before either, right?

What a space, dude. What a space.

Like, if you, if you've never been to Conroe, or if you have been to Conroe but you haven't been to B-52, like, you're missing out.

Yeah, it's, it's a really unique place because there's a lot of breweries out there. I mean, really, these craft breweries, they've, they've kind of shot up everywhere. They're, they're popping up here, popping up there, but most of them are like in this little hole-in-the-wall place that they could find. Yeah, you know, whatever. This place is like, I don't know, they probably got 5 acres.

At least, yeah.

At least, maybe more.

I think they told me they've—

They got 5 acres in parking.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And, and, and they— it's— I mean, here's what's interesting. I remember the first time that, Craig, you, you and your wife invited our family out to the brewery.

Yeah.

And my wife and I were like, What?

What's wrong with him?

Yeah, and your wife, the non-hairy back one, right? She said, no, it's not like that. Like, it's a family atmosphere.

I want to be clear, I don't have another wife that also has a hairy back.

I was leaving it up to interpretation.

I'm monogamous.

Okay, good.

So, okay, speak more clearly, Kevin.

I thought I was pretty clear. Anyway, um, so I was like, seriously? And, and we showed up and like there were kids running around. There's these yard games out there. It's like, it's awesome. It's a really neat place.

Family-friendly brewery.

It really is.

Yeah, cutting edge.

Yeah, cutting edge.

They have tetherball.

Do they?

Yeah, they do.

Oh, well, I know they got like, like cornhole and like horseshoes and like a giant Jenga thing and all that kind of stuff. So yep, it's fun.

And kitty cats.

That, well, yeah. You have to have Kit Kats. Kit Kats.

No.

Not like, not like the break kind. Like, little kitty cats.

Kitty cat. Yeah.

Yeah.

You have to have some of those.

Or just property cats.

Those are right.

Those are just feral.

Yeah.

Those are the ones keeping the other things away.

That's right.

So who's wrangling who?

That's right. That's, it's a question that who knows?

I, I think it's actually a strategy that, you know, no matter what, your children are still gonna be more well behaved than the cats.

Mhmm. So that no one can actually say say it's like wrangling. Right. Yes. Yeah, that's a good point. So you make a good point without saying the point. Yes.

See, speaking clearly.

I, I— you didn't even have to say anything and you were more clear than me. I said something, it was less clear than what you didn't say.

Okay, so, but we need to explain why Chef Colin is here.

Why am I here?

Because we invited him.

We invited him.

Okay, that's, that's an easy answer.

So one, we, we've, we met Chef Colin because he was the chef at one of our favorite restaurants. Uh, what I mean by that is like, we still like the restaurant. He's just not the chef there anymore.

Right.

So, but he is now working with Wolf and Sub-Zero, and you're doing demonstrations with their products as the, like, chef representative.

Yeah. I'm like the, the white coat expert in it.

Is that the official title? No.

I, yeah, I kind of come up with that. No, in some respects.

Yeah.

I mean, the white coat experience. Right. So You know, for people, we have a showroom outside the Galleria. It's 10,000 square feet, shows everything that we have in our product line from refrigeration and freezers to hot side cookware with ovens, wall ovens, ranges, the full, the whole, the whole spectrum.

Is that in, in the mall or just out in the area?

No.

It's outside.

Just outside.

Okay.

So, like, Sage in West Alabama.

Okay.

Freestanding building. So, yeah. Like, that white coat experience of people that are in the market doing a remodel, doing a whole new build, whatever their project may be, Mm-hmm. Yeah, we try to give them that culinary insight, I guess, in some respects of how those products can benefit them in their life and inspire them in the kitchen and bring a lot of value for essentially what they're making, a big investment in that regard. We're certainly a luxury product, a higher-end product. Yeah, we try to provide that kind of experience, um, to, yeah, inspire them in their kitchen and, and, and maximize what they're, what they're investing their money in.

So, and this is, this is kind of like a big deal now because I think, you know, what you guys are offering is, is more along the lines of what you would be using commercially, right?

Definitely.

There's a commercial heritage there.

Yeah.

Um, company started out as mainly refrigeration 76 years ago, um, innovated, um, some cutting-edge refrigeration ideas. And then, yeah, about 20-some-odd years ago, acquired the residential line of Wolf. Wolf was traditionally a commercial brand, so it would have been in restaurants and hotels and banquet halls.

Right.

Had a very small residential part of the market, and they went to pair that with their refrigeration expertise to try to start to build like the perfect kitchen or the, or the, or the perfect package. So yeah, there's definitely a commercial heritage there in the way that we build cookware. But man, who doesn't want to do that? Who doesn't? Anybody that likes to be in the kitchen is like a kid in a candy store in a commercial kitchen.

Yeah. No kidding. Well, so let me ask a couple of questions here because we definitely want to talk like chef stuff too, because for sure, who doesn't want to talk about food? But what in your kind of pitch here, what would make these products superior than just— I mean, I, I think it's pretty easy to see that it would be better than like Frigidaire, right? Like, we're, we're better than that. But that being said, like, what makes it better than— like, what's a, what's a, what's a really high-end Jenn-Air? I don't know, that's a pretty high-end type of appliance, right?

Yeah.

What makes it better than something like that?

From a refrigeration standpoint, many, many years ago, we kind of created the idea of what we call dual refrigeration. So anytime you have a unit that has a refrigerator and a freezer, whether it's side by side or whether that's an over-under, typically those units will share air between those cabins, those cavities, right? A freezer wants a frigid and dry climate, whereas a refrigerator wants a cooler— a cool— a warmer but cool and humid climate for all those leafy greens and fresh fruits and things like that. So to maintain those respective climates, you would share air. You would take that frozen dry air from the freezer, you'd move it into the refrigerator cavity.

Mm-hmm.

So you get this big fluctuation in temperature, but you're also picking up humidity in that refrigerator, and then you're moving it back into the freezer. to maintain both of those climate zones with one system of condenser, compressor, and evaporator. So that presents a challenge. You get a big fluctuation in temperature, you get a big fluctuation in humidity. You can imagine what would happen if you picked up water molecules in the fridge and then moved it back into the freezer. What do you get? Freezer burn.

Ice.

You get freezer burn on your veggies, freezer burn on your meat. You get ice crystals on your, on your ice cream.

Yeah.

Or if you've got a bunch of fresh seafood in your fridge, you've got ice that tastes like salmon or shrimp or scallops or whatever the case may be because you're sharing all that air.

Yeah.

So, so they were very cutting edge in isolating those 2. So every unit that they have is going to have a specific condenser, evaporator, and compressor for the freezer and for the fridge. And then that in turn, that, that makes both of those zones more efficient. you can get them to their ideal temperatures and hold them very much, very easier, more efficiently, right? You don't have to work the unit as hard. If one goes out, the other one's still up and running. And then we coupled that with about 5 years ago with a technology to be able to scrub the air of the refrigerators, a technology that was sort of developed in conjunction with NASA. And so it basically

scrubs the air of what's called ethylene gas. Ethylene— you ever taken, like, a— you have an avocado or a peach that wasn't quite ripe? What'd you do with it?

Put it in the fridge.

Did you?

No. It's not ripe?

Not ripe, and you wanna ripen it up faster.

We just put it on the—

Or maybe a brown paper bag.

I've not tried that.

Ever, ever done that trick? That does work.

Yeah.

With, like, a lunch sack?

Wrap it up.

Wrap it up. And so you're using ethylene gas to try to speed that up.

Okay.

So if you throw everything in the fridge together and certain things give off ethylene gas, like, you know, certain fruits and vegetables emit it, certain fruits and vegetables are susceptible to it and break down faster because of it. So there's actually an air purification cartridge that's in every one of our fridges that every 20 minutes fires to pull that ethylene gas out of that environment. So we can really maximize the shelf life of ingredients substantially. I mean—

So like, what are the ones that like tend to spoil quicker?

Well, you tell me.

What's—

what are you throwing away that you can't get through when you buy fresh?

Lettuce.

Lettuce. Lettuce, strawberries, leafy greens, arugulas, herbs, heads of lettuce, right?

Celery seems to be one of those that goes limp real quick.

Yeah. Strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, all that stuff. You know, if you see strawberries last a couple days in a normal fridge, I can get strawberries to last like 2 weeks.

What?

In a Sub-Zero. Leafy greens, I got— I keep a head of lettuce.

I mean, Tupperware can't even do that, y'all.

I keep a head of lettuce. just in a fridge all the time with a label on it, and it'll go a month or more and just be beautiful.

So, okay.

So again, we're keeping very constant temperatures, we're keeping very constant humidity, we're removing harmful gases and odors. And so we can just naturally preserve food much, much longer. So if an average family of 4 throws away on average $2,200 a year in just food spoilage, right? Just food you don't get through, heads of lettuce, fruit that you can't get through. You know, we really feel like we can— you can pay that forward and pay that back over the course of a life of a unit that we know is gonna last you 20 years.

Wow. So, okay, there's a really pretty funny meme that's going around right now. This said, it said, we do not waste food by throwing it away immediately. We put it in the fridge, let it spoil, and then throw it away.

That's right.

Daggummit.

Oh, there's a— I know, I know, I've seen a magnet on a fridge that it was a gal holding the head of lettuce and she said, You know, should I throw this away now or go ahead and wait 2 weeks like I normally do?

That's right.

And I laughed because when I took this job, it becomes— I wouldn't say obsolete, but you, you honestly have— I have leafy greens like arugula and spinach and lettuce that we would normally barely get 3 or 4 days out of, and, and I'm, I'm holding on to it for 21 days.

That's crazy.

That, that, that I can't—

And that's all about temperature control, humidity control, and removing that ethylene gas out of the environment.

Do you know any of the ingredients that release that, that gas?

Yeah, plenty of fresh produce like, you know, apples and, and avocados, bananas.

Okay.

So just certain fruits and vegetables, and then some of those ones that you see going, you know, the ones that tend to last longer in your fridge are probably giving it off, and the ones that are busting down earlier are probably The ones that are taking it. We actually have a card in every Sub-Zero refrigerator that highlights those things for you. It tells you what those are, ideal places to store them, and how long they— you should see them ideally last in your unit.

Yeah.

All the things that you just listed are things I never put in the fridge. I didn't know that they did that, but I just always keep them on the counter.

Right. Because you go through them quick enough, you'll eat them. But if, you know, if you have things that are, that are in the, in the fridge like that, then they're certainly going to cause those arugulas and leafy greens and fresher produce to break down quicker. But even things like dairy, because of the consistency of the temperature control, the expiration date on a milk carton is now just a recommendation. You should still give it that old nose test and maybe even give it like, eh.

That's a good Seinfeld episode. Do they ask the cows? Is it today? Is it today? Tomorrow? But so, but the— I was actually gonna ask that because, um, you know, there are milks out there like Fairlife, for example, that, um, that their expiration life is much longer.

And I think there— it's a pasteurization process for them. Like, they're just highly ultra-pasteurized.

Yes, exactly. So I was, I was actually kind of wondering, um, you know, it's in a plastic carton, so— but I guess there's still There's still things that happen inside that plastic carton, right? It still has a shelf life. And so I was wondering, and it sounds like it's gonna last a little bit longer.

A little bit. I had a milk carton, I think, last week or so that it probably stretched a little too far. I mean, it was almost 2 weeks past the date.

Wow.

I finally threw it out. It was like, yeah, now it's time. And I'm a guy that's gonna stretch the limit anyway, right? Like, I don't like throwing things away, right? I try to use it, maximize it.

Who has milk for 2 weeks?

Well, but it's not at home, right? This is at work. So I buy something and I use it and I don't get all the way through it. There could be easily 10 days before I come around to use it again. I'm not always cooking every day for a big event. And that's the beauty of kind of the job that I have. I get to cook and do that in a showroom, in an appliance, literally appliance showroom, but can still source really great high-quality ingredients somewhat in bulk. Right? And still be confident that, that I don't have to use them in a quick turnaround, and they're gonna last for me.

So is this—

Over the course of a month or so.

Yeah.

So are, are these units, like, normal fridge size? Are we talking like the— like, a lot— I know a lot of the more commercial type stuff, people are putting them in their homes.

Yeah.

A lot that are, that are basically a full-size freezer and fridge that are your side by side.

So we have, we have the full spectrum. Right? So we have traditional side-by-side over-under units that run the gamut from 24 inches to 48 inches. And then we also do what we— those are like the classic series, so to speak. And then we do more designer-built, what we call column units, that are intended to be like paneled over and to match your cabinetry and stuff like that.

Yeah.

And those run a gamut of, you know, anywhere as slim as 18 inches, you know, full 75-inch height, 18-inch, uh, up to 36-inch wide. So, wow, pretty spectrum of what you can do and how you can mix and match things together to build what suits your either aesthetic look or just your lifestyle, how you're using your fridge and freezer.

Yeah, I mean, I was asking the question earlier about like, because we're considering the idea of building, we're trying to figure out what we want to do ultimately, but, um, I was like, could it, could it go in a barndominium? Like, how?

Absolutely.

Like, what, what's my threshold of income here that I have to have? Well, what is like the—

I mean, from a price standpoint, I mean, Sub-Zero and Wolf certainly is on the higher end of the echelon. But to the point of, you know, what I talk about, the money that it can save you, um, from a refrigeration standpoint on an annual basis, and the fact that it is going to last you 20 years. I mean, we are going to— it is engineered built and tested to last a minimum of 20 years.

Wow.

And it's not uncommon that on a day-to-day basis, I meet people that have a unit that is 35 years old, runs like a dream, and they're either building a second home and putting it in, or they're just ready to renovate, update, and modernize their kitchen.

Yeah.

And they still have a unit that's almost 40 years old that's still, still working like a top.

That's crazy.

I mean, it's just unheard of.

It is.

I mean, you don't— and appliances just don't last unless they're green. If they're green, these appliances will last a lifetime.

You mean like the color green?

Yeah, the avocado green ones from the '60s. Those are still around. Like, they're— some of them are in the landfills and they won't break down. Like, there's nothing you can do to them.

It's because they're camoed.

They're— there's— yeah, they don't even know they're there, right? There's something about the green ones. I don't know. But we had a yellow freezer also, and it lasted really long time. But, uh, but no, it's unheard of. I mean, how—

I mean, I think an average refrigerator on the market will last about 10 years. And I think that's a— that's generous, a generous estimation, right? If you buy a run-of-the-mill fridge at a store and you just need something and you're putting it in, whether you live in an apartment or a house, um, and you're on a budget and you're not trying to spend a lot of money, yeah, you might be lucky to get 6 to 8 years out of it.

Yeah.

If you think about that, right? And if you put something like a Sub-Zero in your house that it, it is costly. It's like buying a car in some respects, a small car. But to think that it could last you the life of the mortgage of that house. Right? That's huge. Or more. Then you, you're buying one product, and you'll probably have to invest very little additional income to keep it running that long.

Which, by the way, did you guys hear about how they're planning on solving some of the housing crisis right now? So there's been talks of them, the, the government negotiating with the banks in order to offer a 40-year mortgage.

Really?

Yeah.

Seems good for the bank. I—

it does, doesn't it?

Hold on. A 40— that's— okay. I remember—

I may not have 40 years left.

So, I mean, exactly. I, I don't wanna, I don't wanna spend too much because I'm sure we'll talk about it next week with Haley.

Sure. But I remember whenever vehicles went from 5-year Uh-huh. Like, no, 60-month, like on a Suburban, right? And now they're up to like in the 90s.

Yep.

Uh, and it's like, goodness gracious, like you're, you're spending like 8, 9 years to pay for a vehicle.

And I can't imagine spending that long buying a house, which is fair because a lot of vehicles cost as much as houses do.

No doubt. There's no doubt about that.

Um, but anyway, I thought it was an interesting— it's like, well, we all can't afford them, so let's just draw this painful thing out as long as possible. So anyway. Wow.

Okay, so you don't just— you don't just work in a place that, that sells really high-end refrigerators. They also do, uh, like ovens, stoves, those types of things, right?

Yeah, absolutely. We have it. And so Sub-Zero is all refrigeration. That's the original brand in the brand family, let's call it. And then Wolf is anything that would be, you know, cooking appliance, right? So whether that's a full range with an oven underneath, whether that's a range top or a cooktop or wall ovens, I mean, we have in-counter deep fryers, in-counter steamers, all kinds of cool stuff.

Nice.

So yeah, from super commercial in the way that it's engineered and built. And again, when we talk about Sub-Zero and like that temperature control, like everything about Wolf is about just controlling heat. Right. And making, you know, helping the home cook have really good results over and over again and taking a lot of that, the pressures that we feel in the kitchen sort of off of them with the ability to manipulate heat, have heat control and temperature control and stuff like that.

I mean, we— so I remember whenever convection became something that was fairly normal and everybody was going, I don't even know what that is.

I don't think it's normal still. I encounter people every day that I'm trying to convince them about convection.

Yeah.

And, and, you know, part of, part of it is that, you know, things cook quicker.

Correct.

And they are supposed to cook more evenly, especially whenever you're baking, like cookies and those sorts of things. But what I've noticed—

Not your experience?

No.

No.

What was your experience?

Well, I, I currently, I don't actually know what our current one is. A week ago, I had a, an oven that was convection. And it was, uh, the Frigidaire Gallery, so it's one of their nicer ones that's still Frigidaire, right? Um, but I, you know, I would put it on convection and it had the convection convert, so it, you know, it, it changed the temperature for you, all those sorts of things. So it's, you know, kind of nice as far as that goes because you can't cook things as hot on convection. You don't need to because it's, it's blowing the air around, all that kind of stuff.

Correct.

But Yeah.

Even I, I'd put in a, a batch of cookies, for example, and they would still come out uneven.

Yeah.

And, and so I'm like, I don't understand. And, and so what I would find is that cooking things not on convection actually did a better job.

Yeah.

In those than not, you know?

Yeah. So I, I, I think I would speak to the market in general in the sense that most products that are listed as convection on the market are still, you know, they're using a, a fan or a, a series of fans to generate heat in an oven that is still To, to, let me say, rephrase that, to circulate heat in an oven cavity that is still generated from either a bake element on the bottom of the oven or a broiler element on top.

Mhmm.

What Wolf has engineered is what we call true convection. So we actually have 2 additional heat elements in the back wall of the fan, in the back wall of the oven attached to those heat fans so that we can, again, even more efficiently move that heat around an oven. So You know, the idea behind convection is, yes, you can cook things quicker. It's going to be faster. So there's a traditional conversion rate. You know, if you, if you have a recipe that bakes at 350, you know, or at any temperature, we're going to convert that to convection. We're going to drop the temperature 25 degrees because it's more efficiently heating that oven cavity. So if we had a recipe

that said bake at 350, we're going to convection cook at 325.

And then you're also going to lower the cook time. Correct.

By 25%. We call it the 25-25 rule.

Yeah. So you're saving energy, and you're also saving time.

Correct.

Okay.

So if I have a recipe that said bake at 350 for 1 hour, I'm gonna convection cook at 325. I'm gonna drop that temp 25 degrees, and I can anticipate it's gonna cook about 25% faster. So I can shave almost 15 minutes off that time.

Nice.

You know, and as, and as a chef, I'm gonna tell every home cook, set the timer sooner.

Mhmm.

Right? Turn the oven light on. You can look in there. You don't have to open the oven, interrupt the cooking process. Set the timer sooner and watch what's going on in the oven. Get in, be connected to your food, you know, watch the process and you'll see those cookies rise or that bread or whatever you're doing, or you'll see the potatoes start to brown and it'll just make you a better cook, better in tune with what's going on. You can kind of start to get a better feel for timing that way.

So, okay. As far as convincing someone like my wife to go with like a nicer oven. Yeah. you know, like this, this price point, right, versus, you know, a higher end, right? I don't know, something else at Lowe's. Um, what— yes, I hear what you're saying, but, but how do you convince someone to go, this is going to make your food experience that much better? Is it, is it the— not just the quality of, of your food, but is the longevity of the appliance? Is it the—

I think, I think both of those. I think the freedom and the margin of error and the, and the level of comfort that it can provide you in the kitchen with, with minimizing a lot of those errors, um, with how you control heat, with how the results of the product that come out of an oven or on a range top or on a stove.

It's less—

I guess so.

After you've already cooked something.

Right. And then, and then also couple that what we talked about with Sub-Zero is, is that, you know, it's a product that could potentially last you 35 years. Okay. Um, I think really sets it apart, but really just about performance of heat control. I mean, you know, I could see where you're talking about having— using convection but still getting uneven results, right?

Yeah.

Oh, it happens. And I think that that is a part because, like I talked about, a lot of those products on the market are still putting heat off from that element that's on the base or the floor of the oven or the broiler element on the ceiling in the oven. And you're just using a fan to try to move that around. But that aggressivity from those isolated locations is still the same. Whereas a Wolf true convection system has additional heating elements attached to those fans that are cycling off and on in conjunction with each other to just really optimize that notion of convection cooking to the nth degree.

Nice.

What are the different sources of heat that you guys are using? Or is it all electric?

Yeah.

Gas?

So we use, we have gas, we have Electric in the ovens and the wall ovens. We have, like, traditional electric cooktops. They got a blazing red-hot coil underneath it. We still have those, but we're also pushing induction as well, which—

Are you doing induction?

Yeah, I cook on induction a lot, and it's awesome. You know, just reaction times are tremendous. Control is very precise. It's clean. It's sleek. It's modern.

I love it.

It's efficient. So tell them about, about what we found out about the other day with induction. It on just in the granite.

Oh, well, yeah. Have you seen those ones that you can install the induction units underneath?

Underneath the granite? I have seen that.

It's wild.

You guys don't do that? No. We have more of a—

I think it's called, like, InvisiCook or something like that.

Yeah. I, I just kind of started to scratch the surface on that. I think it's really cool. But no, ours are a little bit more traditional as, like, a drop-down, drop-in. You know, you would cut the hole in the countertop and drop it in.

Right.

And it has that sort of glass ceramic top to it. Looks like an electric kind of cooktop, but it is running on induction power, you know.

So like, I was— I just recently learned that you can use cast iron.

Absolutely.

On induction.

Absolutely.

I didn't know that.

Absolutely.

I didn't either.

Cast iron, enameled cast iron. Really, the only things that aren't gonna hit it are— It's gotta be like really thin. Yeah, thin stainless steel, thin aluminum, and copper. So as long as you have enough ferrous metal in the pan, so even aluminums would like have a real heavy gauge bottom base. Good, good quality stainless steel, and then cast iron and enameled cast iron are all gonna work well on induction.

Yeah, when I, when I figured out like you can use cast iron on this, I was like, this is awesome.

Yeah, so it's running on magnets. Yeah, it's just a system of magnets that's interacting with the ferrous metal in the pot or the pan, basically moving those metal ions, creating friction, which in turn generates heat. Yeah. And so yeah, people in the market are always like, you know, do I have to go buy all new pots and pans? No, not necessarily. I can use my grandmother's, you know, heirloom cast iron pan.

Just cast iron is actually fairly reasonably priced. I mean, oh yeah, you go buy a cast iron pot.

There's nothing wrong with a Lodge preseason cast iron product at Academy for $35.

Absolutely.

I mean, you know, depending on what it is, right? And the size of it. But yeah, no, absolutely not.

They'll last.

They'll outlast you.

Well, you got to take care of it still.

I mean, otherwise it's going to rust.

Can't have somebody throwing it in the dishwasher.

That's true.

Well, I mean, like, and you and I have done some events where that's all we cooked in.

That's it.

I mean, plenty of everything we cooked was in cast iron. Absolutely.

Yeah.

So I pretty much cook at home only on iron.

Oh really?

Whether it's forged or cast. I mean, I'll do eggs in a nonstick still just because that's just easier, easiest way to go about it. But Now, I've got some really cool forged iron pots and pans that were gifted to me that were really heavy duty. And so they're just a little more ornate than a cast iron, a little cooler, a little less campfire, a little more, you know—

Showpieces.

Showpiece. Yeah, thanks. But they're awesome. But yeah, I would— I mean, just the heat retention on cast iron alone, it gives you that sort of margin of error, right? that you can, um, kind of mess things up but not mess things up as much, I think, in some respects.

Well, which one would you prefer? Would you prefer the, the gas, electric, or the induction?

People ask me that all the time, and it's hard to answer.

You know, do you get something different out of each of them?

Yeah. You know, you do. Um, you know, with gas, it's like we have that caveman mentality in us. We wanna see the fire and the flame and gauge that. And it is fast reaction time. But induction is, you know, if we can kind of get our head around that a little bit, induction is really super sleek and super precise. It's very efficient. It doesn't put a lot of heat out in the kitchen. It's not using a lot of energy. It's fairly cool to the touch, you know, outside of where you're cooking. Just the reaction times are unbelievable. I can boil almost a gallon of water in like 5 minutes.

Oh, wow.

But then the beauty of that is when you turn it off, it cease— it ceases cooking immediately too. Right? So they don't have those carryovers that you would have on an electric—

Oh, okay.

Electric traditional electric burner. Right? That has all that heat retention, and that coil has to cool down, and the pot and pan has to cool down. Like, you're—

You're not gonna, like, move pots off of—

No. I mean, your pot pan is now your source of heat. It is the element. And so when you stop that magnetic reaction, you've stopped the heat source. And so everything stops cooking. You can I mean, I've been in demos where I've had a sauce boiling or something and trying to reduce it down, and it gets to the point where it almost boils over and I hit stop and it just settles. I mean, you couldn't script it. It just happened to happen that way. And it's the cream and butter's about to go over the rim of the pot and I stop it and just, and it all settles perfectly.

Well, I think that even, like, even if you're using gas, which I know that, I know that on a range, gas is gonna be more, more efficient than than electric, especially, you know, that sort of thing. But, but even with that, like, I, I find that a lot of pots and pans don't— right, they don't, they don't heat throughout the whole pan, right, or the whole pot.

You still, with gas, can have some inconsistencies with the heat distribution or application.

And I guess part of that is how good a quality the pan is itself.

The pan or the gas output.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, no doubt. So, like, ideally for me, I have both. Right? And I'm just fortunate to be in that situation. But even if I was building my perfect kitchen, I would wanna have both because certainly living in this part of the world, you know, we're very familiar with hurricane season and power outages. And I wanna be able to have gas and be able to light that thing with a fireplace lighter and just have that. You know, I don't wanna be beholden to an induction because it's cool and it's sleek and then the power goes out and I can't even do anything.

Right.

I can't boil water. I can't heat up a can of soup. Unless I move to a camp—

Campfire.

Camp stove or something like that. So yeah, if I were building my perfect kitchen, I would have a little bit of both. But in everyday use, I find myself using more and more induction. And I think for me, and I've heard other chefs say this in jest, it's just about getting older and lazier. It's so easy to clean. I mean, it's just like a glass ceramic top and you wipe it off and you move on. Whether it's grease splatter or spillover. In a traditional electric cooktop that has those red coils, you can't do that because as soon as something boils over, it's scorching and scalding into that surface, or it's too hot to even apply a wet cloth to it.

That's why you have those really attractive aluminum foil wraps that you do underneath those burners. Right.

Yes.

So yeah, I find myself cooking on induction a lot, but our gas products are just super quality as well. Just super professional in the way that they get high, but also get low and give you a lot of control.

Do you guys, do you guys have a griddle option on any of these?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I, I keep seeing, like—

I live and die by it. I mean, I cook on that probably more than anything.

I was— okay. Because I, I see, like, every other house I go to now has one of these Blackstones.

Yeah. Outside.

Outside.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, like, which is cool. I haven't used one myself, but, like, having a griddle inside—

Game changer.

Well, I mean, when, when I'm, when we're at church, cooking for various things. They've got a really— they got a commercial griddle there. We use it all the time.

Heck yeah.

Because it's easy to clean.

Yep.

Cooks really well, and it's easy to kind of move your food around. And yeah, I mean, it's great.

It's a little bit different stylistically of how you might normally cook, right? But the griddle, we love it. We push it all the time. We have great, you know, again, great heat distribution. Ours are actually thermostatically controlled, so you can dial the temperature in from 100 degrees to 450. So it's not high, medium, and low. Like, I can dial it in within 25 degrees.

That's amazing.

Of somewhere, right? I could use it at 100 degrees for a warming table. I could put it at 450 to sear steak screaming hot and everywhere in between.

So like, like, I know on a lot of griddles, and you probably know this, been in lots of restaurants, but like you end up with like cold spots.

Yeah. So ours is, um, actually, uh, an infrared burner underneath, like you would have a sear zone on your outdoor grill or something. So it's a gas line that has basically like a, like a, um, a metal mesh screen over it.

Yeah.

To distribute all those heat points or those, those flame tips. Um, so imagine if you fire up like a gas burner outside on your, on your outdoor grill and you can see the big burner and there's like a couple dozen orange or blue or orange flame tips. But then if you cover that with a metal screen and distribute that, now you got almost 1,000 different flame tips. You're basically replicating the surface of the sun. And so you're able to redistribute all that heat very evenly and then couple that with the thermostat to control that heat. And then we— our griddles are like a half-inch plate of steel.

Jeez.

So you're retaining that heat well. So it's like a 3-headed monster as far as heat control distribution and retention.

That sounds glorious.

It's amazing. It's amazing. I mean, you can have a 22-inch wide griddle and run pancakes from corner to corner to corner to corner, and they're all pretty close to the same. You'd be splitting hairs to try to figure out where the hot or cold spot was.

Yeah.

I don't believe you.

Okay. Come on down to the showroom.

We'll make pancakes. I need proof.

Monday through Friday, 9 to 5.

So I was gonna ask you that. I mean, because, like, we, we talked, like, you're the, you know, you're the chef on, on the floor.

Yeah.

How—

is that, like, an appointment people have to make in order to come in?

We certainly go— we encourage appointments. Right? So it's a very hands-on process. Most of these folks that are coming into our showroom are doing some sort of a significant remodel or a whole new build.

Right?

Right.

And they're spending a fair chunk of change on appliances. Right? And so we have a consultation process where we try to figure out what they're doing. What's your cooking style? What's gonna suit you? And then we go through that. So, you know, sometimes I'll be in on those. More often than not, most of my job is we invite these customers that are in the market to demonstration dinners, a live dinner. Like, we'll have a dinner twice a month, usually on a Wednesday night, and I'll cook a 4-course meal and we'll pair it with wine. And I'll put a lot of those appliances to use in a sort of classroom or stadium closed-circuit recorded format.

Okay.

And just try to touch on that. And it's very interactive. We encourage people to talk and ask questions. I'm not up there to lecture. You know, we're trying to figure out who you are and what— where are you in your process? They're probably trying to make final decisions, pare down what they want, what they need. And so it's just a cool opportunity for them to kind of see that, inspire them, cook for them, share some food and wine, but really educate them about the product and how it can help them in their kitchen. I mean, that, that's most of my, you know, that's most of my day. And, again, I get involved in consultation a little

bit, but it's more of that. And then when customers do get delivery and installation, we do use and care classes so they can set an appointment with me and come in, and we'll talk specifically about a product that's in their house and how it can function and how we're gonna clean it and maintain it, take care of it, so on and so forth.

Man. That— I, I just don't get that at Lowe's. I tried. I tried once. I got kicked out.

You got kicked out?

Yeah. Because I was trying to cook on their cooktop.

Did you go to Home Depot?

Yeah, well, I tried to go to Home Depot and they didn't let me in either.

We used to have a Builder Square in front of our neighborhood way back.

Yeah. Nice.

And I forgot about those. Builder Square.

Yeah, that's good. Well, I—

but I— the B had like a—

yep.

Okay.

Yeah.

Remember, right?

A B with a square. With a square. Exactly.

Well, no, I thought that— I thought the hole in the B, the capital B was square.

I think you're right. Yeah, either way, uh, I, I do really like that process because I do think that, uh, people, people buy stuff and they don't know what they're buying, right?

I mean, it happens all the time. No, not at all.

And so, and no one knows how to explain to them what they— they're, they're like, well, this one, this model here is a little more expensive, right?

And you're not going to get that.

That's all you get.

You're not going to get that from your everyday salesperson either, right? Um, so we actually, in our showroom, we don't sell anything. We are a corporate showroom to showcase what the company has. We're really a— There's no like price tags on them?

Not at all.

We're going to talk to you about what you want. We're basically going to build you a wish list or a shopping cart, and then we're going to send you all those specs. It's going to have price, you know, price points so you can start to set budget. It's going to have all the specs you're going to give to a builder or contractor or designer, you know, as far as, you know, all the dimensions, all the electricals and gas and things like that. And then eventually you'll go— it's more of like a, um, you know, we have factory-certified dealers, authorized dealers that we would hand you off to nurture a relationship there that you'll make your final purchase from. But they're also gonna handle— help handle delivery and

installation. We have factory-certified installers. Those dealers do. And then that gets you additional warranty on every out-of-the-box warranty. So you can get upwards of, you know, 6 years on a, on a unit, full parts and labor. Oh, wow.

I mean, these are definitely the Maseratis Oh, yeah. Of, of the car world.

Right? Yeah.

Definitely. But I think certainly more so in the last 5 years, probably even more so in the last year that I've been there, we're seeing a lot more and more and more people that are just middle-class families that are buying these products because they have the reputation and, and they're American made and it's a family business. And, again, they know that they're gonna make one purchase and it's gonna last them a couple decades.

Well, I, I think that, I think the kitchen has become a more and more important room in the house. I mean, I, I even think more so than, like, the living room.

The pandemic has done that for sure. Right? Forced people into the kitchen. And we certainly are living in a lifestyle, in an age with everything's online, and we're watching cooking shows more and more and more. And so the age of the celebrity chef has started to rage in the last 20 years, certainly in my gen— our generation. People beeline to me in the showroom. Like, they just, they see a chef and like, whoa. And they just wanna gravitate and talk and just bounce ideas off you. And then it's fun because I'm not a classically trained chef. Right? I didn't go to culinary school. And so there are some of those chefs in the organization that I would imagine have a harder time relating to people. It's so

easy for me to just talk to people about cooking at home. That's, that's how I grew up cooking.

Yeah.

My earliest memories in life were in a garden or in a kitchen.

Yeah.

Right. Picking tomatoes in my grandma's house, squash, snapping green beans around the table. I mean, like, and then I grew up in commercial kitchens in the restaurant biz too.

Well, yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, like, I, I know you pretty well and like, you're, you say you don't, didn't go to culinary school. That's fine. But you're pretty well traveled. I mean, you've, you've, you've had quite a few like culinary experiences, not just in the US, but like internationally.

I mean, like, for sure.

But I think I got a leg up because my father's in the restaurant biz and has been for almost 50 years. So I grew up, you know, biting ankles in commercial kitchens. But then, you know, it just— the restaurant biz and food life is kind of one of those things, you love it or you hate it, right?

Mm-hmm.

Or you love it or you're just not interested, I guess is a better way, not hate. But yeah, for me, it's just— it's in my blood. I love it. I breathe it. It's all I ever wanted to do. Gave a lot of thought to going to culinary school over my life. Didn't do it for whatever reason. Took a different path, and it's worked out for me, fortunately. Um, but yeah, I think that that's a blessing to me, to be able to relate to people on that level and not have them feel out of their own element or like they're being talked down to. Talked down to.

Well, it's one of those deals where, like, if I'm gonna come in— like, for me, if I'm gonna walk into a place like that and go, I want to buy one of these products, right? I want to be able to use it, right? And I want to be able to cook on it. And I don't want it to be something that I really need to have some level of cooking experience in order to be able to use it, right, at a high level and make it happy in my home and make other people happy that eat the food. I don't want to have to be a chef in order to do it. So, so I think that Did having someone like you that did— it's like, look, we can, we can cook chicken nuggets in

this thing too, you know?

100%, you know, and, and there definitely can be intimidating, and some of those products are more intimidating than others. Like, for example, a convection steam combination oven, right? Can people— what, you know? And then the multitude of things that it can do, and they're like, I'm not sure, I'm not sure, I'm not sure. But when you start to talk to them about it, and what do you cook, what do you like to cook, what do you like to do, And then you start to enlighten them about how it can help you on their terms, on their level, whatever part of the spectrum that that runs. Right. That's definitely my job is to try to relate that to people and make them understand

that it is intimidating. But our smartphones were a little intimidating when we first had them in our pocket too. And we figured those out pretty quick.

But does it have an air fryer in it? Because that's the latest rage is you buy air fryers, you buy ovens, and it's like, now with air fryer, I'm like, isn't that a broiler unit? Like, I don't really know.

You guys mentioned it in your turkey episode about it. And you were right on somebody, one of you said it, and I'm not sure who it was, but you were right. You hit the nail on the head. It is just a convection system, right? It's a very powerful convection fan in a very small oven cavity. Yeah, that's an air fryer.

Yeah. I mean, and they're cool. I mean, like, you know, they're awesome.

And, and they, they actually do a great job.

Yeah.

I mean, and they're— I mean, y'all have one. It has replaced your microwave, which is really, really—

Replaced the microwave?

Yes, it did.

There was never a microwave to replace.

At one point you had a microwave. At one point.

The 8 years ago.

Okay.

So it replaced it.

But that was because it was installed in the house when I moved in.

Quickly took it out.

Well, it was like, it was one of those over the oven.

Roach, roach filler.

Yeah, I hate those things. They're of the devil. Yeah, I'm sorry if you guys sell microwaves.

We do, but we're not gonna talk about microwaves. I mean, I use a microwave a lot, but I think people don't use a microwave the way that it can be maximized to use, right? I never microwave anything on 100% power. I always change the power level down.

Every time.

Power level 7, power level 8. Yep, whatever, so on and so forth. the melt mode, the softening mode. Right. I mean, you can soften butter or cream cheese or melt. Like, those are— they work pretty well depending on the microwave. They work pretty darn well if you've got a well-made microwave and they can— again, even something like that of highlighting to people, you know, things that they're not utilizing is pretty cool.

Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I'm the same. I always power down, but I'm like, well, this thing has 1,400 watts. If you put that on 100%, like, you're gonna—

There's a reason your fried rice tastes like It's horrible.

It's absolutely—

so I'm like, 1400, like, I put it on 50%. Yeah, I'm like, I can't—

You can always add, you can never take away.

Exactly. But I still would never reheat certain things in a microwave.

Like, such as pizza? Yeah, you just never get anywhere there.

No, 400 for 8 minutes, that's the, that's the sweet spot with pizza. Don't, don't test me on pizza. I know my pizza.

That's air fryer it is.

Yeah. I mean, we don't have an air fryer, but it—

It would be a good way to heat up pizza, though. Yeah.

Yeah.

It'll do. Alright.

One of the reasons I said air fryer is because it's, it's one of those features that, that ovens are pushing these days. Like, now it's got an in, like, internal air fryer or whatever.

Yeah. It's, it's kitschy. Right? It's like a catchphrase, but it is. I think it's important to understand what an air fryer is and, and really under— that's a testament to understanding convection where this kind of conversation about cooking, you know, started off on was convection and, and how it is more efficient and the results are better than traditional oven heat sources.

Yeah. And, and I'll, I'll, I'll say this to not fully wrap things up, but to wrap up a little bit. Like, I, I, I'm a huge believer in you get what you pay for.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, you really do. And, and, and I know that, that there are instances where you pay for something and it was, you know, it was more expensive and you got, you got burned on it. and get those things. But, but the majority of the time, there's a reason that something is more expensive, right? And I'm not talking like $100 difference, I'm talking like, you know, thousands of dollars difference, right? You wind up getting a superior product. There's a reason a BMW costs what it costs and a Ford costs what it costs, right? I mean, both of them are going to drive, you know, but at the end of the day, one of them is going to be a lot nicer.

Yeah.

And it's probably going to last a lot longer if you maintain it. It just is what it is, you know?

Right.

So anyway, that's all I got.

All right, so I gotta, I gotta ask you, in, in any of your demonstrations, have you used our watermelon recipe?

Which one?

The bacon and watermelon.

No, I was thinking about using that this week.

Are you really?

I even hit up my dad for, um, man, those Old South watermelon rinds are like off the market. You can't find them.

I know.

Mike Shine has like 6 jars.

Does he really?

Honey, hold away. Randy has a few But honestly, Craig, I'm at the point where I want to make my own pickled watermelon rind, so I'm not gonna buy the jar anymore.

Well, you need to— you need to talk to Celestina because she did—

she did that. Yeah.

When was she—

oh yeah, that was— that was— goodness gracious, that was probably like a year and a half ago at this point.

Yeah, well, when I went on her show, yeah, she made— because she's in Germany, she couldn't get them, so she just made them herself.

Yeah, I'm sure it's great.

So, well, so I, I bring it up because the other night Kevin and his wife were over for dinner.

You did them?

And I was— no, I was telling him, I was like, Colin used to make these, but he always wanted to figure out something else to do with them.

Yeah.

Because it was like, it was like, it's so simple, but it's so good, but it seems like it needs something else.

Yeah.

So I made a sauce.

Okay.

With the watermelon rind.

Okay.

It was, um, good.

It was— whatever you're gonna say, I can tell you it was very good.

Yeah. It was, it was, it was Uh, golly, it was red onion is what I paired it with. Yeah, it's just like red onion and watermelon rind. Okay, I just made a sauce for pork tenderloin with.

Okay, so, so your bake— your pork product, you just put that over tenderloin? What, so you just spun those flavors and then made a sauce and then put it over pork tenderloin instead of wrapping it?

Exactly.

I love it.

Yeah, dude, it was, it was really good.

I love it.

So, and I'd never, I'd never used like a pickle. No, but it is in a, in a sauce.

To call it a pickle is accurate, but I think most of the time we think about a pickle, we think about a lot of acidity, right? And vinegar. And this is definitely the sweetest pickle you've ever had in your life.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

This is the most sugar-coated—

Maybe like candied.

It's candied. That is way more accurate. It is a candied watermelon rind. I mean, there's some vinegar and salt in there, but there's a lot of sugar.

A lot of sugar.

Yeah. Well, and he put it on top of cheese grits. Oh, which was perfect. Oh, it was just so— in fact, The cheese grits were so good that, that his wife was like, I'm still kind of hungry. Hey, you want some more grits?

Dip into the grits.

So she, so she goes back up to the second and a half floor to the kitchen because you've not been to his house. It's weird. Um, it's on the second and a half floor.

Second and a half floor.

That's where my kitchen is.

Perfect. Yeah, it's cool. And, uh, it, it, yeah, it, it's cool.

It's functional.

No, it, it, well, if you can walk upstairs.

If you're mobile.

If you're mobile, it's functional. But, uh, it's not ADA certified over there, right? No. And anyway, so she literally went up to the kitchen and she just got bowls and brought it down and it looked like ice cream. It looked like mounds of ice cream. And we had spoons.

Intermezzo of just grits before dessert.

And she put some of that sauce on top of the cheese grits.

Oh, nice.

And it was—

She knows what she's doing.

She wasn't going to waste it.

No, and it was delicious. And it was, it was just funny because—

So how fine did you bust up the watermelon rind to put it in the sauce? You just chop it up, or—

I used an immersion blender.

You, you went full like emulsion puree on it.

Yeah.

I love that.

Yeah.

Fried up, sweat some onions, sweat some shallot or whatever.

Yeah.

Garlic or anything in there?

Uh, I think I used a little bit of garlic powder. I think I used a little bit of white wine.

I like just to kind of give it something.

Yeah.

Because otherwise you're just scorching sugar in there with it.

So, yeah. Okay.

Y'all are using words now that I don't know what you're talking about.

Tell me we finished it with a little butter.

I did.

Yeah. Absolutely.

I did.

That's what I caramelized the red onion before I, yeah.

Before I did all that.

Yeah.

Deglazed with white wine.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It tastes delicious, y'all. That's all I know.

So I, I, I typically will do this. Like I did the pork loin in like a, like a really hot pan.

Yeah.

And then I deglazed the sauce after that.

Yeah.

Perfect. and then emulsified it.

Awesome. So you did bust— you, you pureed the watermelon rind and the sugars and got it down to a pretty fine consistency?

Oh yeah.

Oh, I like that.

Yeah, I mean, it looked like— it, it looked like chocolate sauce.

Really?

Yeah.

Had that kind of color to it?

Mm-hmm.

Oh wow.

Yeah, it was—

I think it was from the, the glaze of the pork is what it—

Yeah, you picked up all the, all those drippings.

Yeah.

Certainly gave it some color.

It was funny because he like— he— I, I'm watching him cook, but we're just talking, right? I'm watching him cook. I have no idea what he's doing over there.

And, um, then he pulls out a trolling motor. No, he pulled out a boat motor.

Pretty much.

That's like one of my favorite things in the kitchen. I love it.

Yeah. So, so he, he gets done with it and, and he's— he just kind of looks at it and he, he like takes something like taste it and he goes, here, taste that. And I'm like, yeah, he was, he was, he was genuinely going, I don't know if this is—

You could see the gears turning.

I could see it in his eyes.

And he, he's probably playing Surprised. Caught him off guard a little bit.

Yeah, but he— no, I was really— I didn't have anything else. Like, that's all I had. I was like, well, we're gonna make this work.

Committed to it.

Yeah, I was.

I was like, you know what, a little mustard might have been good in there too. Like grain mustard.

Like some Dijon or like some—

Like whole grain, like a Creole. Just like a little dollop, you know. Think about all this, like pork and all that stuff seems to work together. Um, any herb? Finish with any herb? Like, I bet a little thyme would have been all right too.

If I had any—

All that just works.

If I— the only ones I would have had would have been rosemary or thyme.

I think that would work. So, but I don't think I put any in there. But, yeah. I think that that's—

What, what was interesting is, is I, I, so I, I took a little taste of it as well.

Mhmm.

And I was like, wow. That's amazing. It's sweet. Yeah.

You just blew your mind. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

And I was like, it's sweet. I did not expect it to be sweet, but it wasn't like, like a sugar bomb. Like a sugar— no. It wasn't like I was putting, you know, right? You know, sweetened condensed milk on something or anything. But it was, it was sweet, but it was just, it was really, really Yeah, really good.

Yeah, I think that was always the amazing thing about that. I'm pretty sure your dad introduced me to that. Like, I didn't cut, you know.

I think we did that at one of the Chuckwagon things.

Yeah, I don't know if my dad came up with that, but I, I would have given your dad credit if I didn't know, right?

Um, well, it came from, it came from my grandmother's.

Okay, okay, well, perfect. Um, and, and, you know, just for some backstory there, which we're literally taking sugary candied what they call pickled watermelon rinds and cutting them into bite-sized pieces, wrapping them in bacon, broiling them in the oven and putting a toothpick in it. And you just eat it as like an hors d'oeuvre or a little bite, like a crowd pleaser.

Yeah.

And people think you're a genius.

But yeah, but I love that. I don't even remember having that conversation with you, but I laugh. I can, I can see myself trying to spin the wheels and go, we can really do something elevated here with this. How can we do it? And I love that you came home and did that. That's amazing. I inspired him.

You did. Yeah.

Oh, I've been thinking about it ever since we talked about it.

It's been a decade in the making.

I'm just glad I was here for it.

Yeah, you really reaped the benefits.

Yeah, I did.

But like, like you said, I don't know that I can do it again because you can't find them.

Oh well, no, we have to make our own watermelon rinds.

Oh yeah, that's the next adventure. Yeah, no, but all right, we can't let him get off the hook, Kev.

No, because we got— I mean, people have been listening now for an hour and 2 minutes and they're like, holy cow, when are they going to get to the most important thing? It's— no, it's the most important part because it is time for the Final Four.

The Final Four.

That's right, it's the final 4 questions we ask each and every one of our guests. And I don't know if you're prepared for this or not. I hope you're not. It's perfect.

Yes, even better.

I obviously wasn't paying attention to the other episodes I listened to at the final 10 minutes.

Yeah, you gotta go all the way to the end to hear. That's why people— that's the only thing we hook people with.

That's right, that's all we got.

That's all we got. But here they are.

We're gonna go in and ask ask you the final 4 questions.

So here is the first question. What is the must-have tool you won't leave your house without?

Culinary tool, I guess we'll stay on the culinary line. I don't make my own definitions.

Yep.

A sharp knife. Like a well-sharpened knife, right? Most people don't understand that, you know, in the kitchen, a dull knife is way more dangerous than a sharp knife.

Oh, so true.

And so a sharp knife can really get through ingredients quickly, whereas a dull knife, you really got to work and force things at it, and it causes way more damage in the long run.

Slippy stabby.

Yep. Oh, so a sharp knife would be my tool.

Okay, yeah. Do you have a, do you have a specific knife that's kind of your favorite?

No. Wolf has a subsidiary called Wolf Gourmet that they make cutlery and cookware and things like that, and I've been using their knives, and I've been pleasantly Okay, pleased with them. But, um, nice. You know, everybody loves a good like Japanese shun or something like that. I don't even own stuff like that. I'm like, I'm gonna go— I'm going to Ace Mart and buying a Mercer. I'll be just fine, right? As long as you keep a blade on it.

Sure. I, I like my Cutco. I'm not gonna lie. There you go. I really like it. Some people probably have opinions, but mine is good. It works for me.

I have the one obligatory Cutco, which is the one that you buy when you feel bad for the person who's doing it. Oh, but it's the only— like when—

yeah, when I was young and poor and yeah, it's like I'll buy that one. Yeah, I know which one it is.

Please go away.

I know which one it is. I used to sell Cutco actually for a little, for like a moment. For a moment. It was like a 2-week period I sold Cutco. I think I sold like 2 sets and got to keep my starter set, which was awesome.

There you go.

But all right, second question. Here we go. What is a job you walked away from? And I am gonna qualify this for just a moment because because, uh, we, we intended this question to be like a, like, what's a project you walked away from, really? Um, like, at your home, like, you're working on something and just got into it. It's like, I don't wanna do this. You called a contractor and—

Yeah.

Those sorts. But, but we asked the question the first time, what's a job you walked away from? As you can take it however you want to.

Okay.

Alright.

Um, I think for me, I went to the University of Texas and I studied— I got a degree in economics. And so I did some work in like a personal finance wealth management firm.

Okay.

And yeah, it didn't last long. Entry-level position, maybe I went 6 months.

Wow.

Just, I'm not an office rat. I was not an 8 AMer at that time. I would do that work and then still find myself tending bar and being in the restaurant life at night and on the weekends. So I quickly gravitated back to the restaurant biz.

Well, that doesn't lend itself well to like waking up at 8 o'clock, you know. Not at all.

I'm still not a morning guy.

Exactly.

I'm doing okay. I'm doing better. Yeah, I'm not there. I don't know that I'll ever be.

No, I mean, you know, I've spent 30 years in the restaurant, right?

So, um, I'm just— I'm a little bit more of a night owl.

Yeah, absolutely. I understand. All right, next question. How do you wind down at the end of a long day? Or so the wee hours of the morning?

Yeah, no, I'm not that bad. Okay. Um, yeah, I like a good glass of wine, cold beer, margarita, something like that. Um, I like watching sports just to take my mind off whatever was going on. When I was in the, in the restaurant biz and you really felt like I needed more of that wind-down time, um, you know, I would probably do more time with just getting away and whether it's watching TV or binging Netflix or something like that. But I think with the lifestyle change that I have had in the last 13, 14 months, um, man, just getting outside and, um, being in the sun, playing golf.

Yes.

Golf is like a meditation thing for me, you know. I can really get in the zone, and I enjoy golf sometimes a lot more just on my own, not playing with friends or family, um, just because I can kind of have that time, put some headphones in and and be sort of like me time. I love playing golf. It's a good wind down for me, or just being hiking, being outside, uh, in the sun. Last couple weeks have been great.

Yeah, that's been perfect weather to be outside.

Yeah, it's been, it's been great. And, and you know what, we haven't actually said this in a while, but like Craig and I, we, we definitely advocate for people to have time to just kind of stop for a minute and just wind down, just realize that everything's not as hype as you have made it to be. And like, just chill for a little bit, spend some time with your family if you have a family, spend some time just kind of, you know, chilling a little bit. Absolutely. Very, very good. All right, last question, here we go. What's one of the best pieces of wisdom or advice that you've ever received?

Oh, that's a tough one. I mean, I think you go a lot of ways, but on a very simple level or introductory, I think I already said it a moment ago, was like, you can always add, you can never take away. And I think that I encounter that in my life every day, especially in cooking. But you can apply that to a lot of different things, right? You can always set a good foundation and build on it. But for me as a cook and a chef, I try to preach that to people all the time, whether that's heat application, whether we're seasoning, you know, you can always add. It's hard to go too far and then dial it back.

Yeah. Nice. Well, here's the thing. This is a weird— this is an awkward moment because I said that was the last question, but it's actually not the last question. There's a final question. There's Craig.

There's 4 final more.

Well, there's just one.

Gird your loins.

It's the only question that Craig remembers, and so we're going to let him ask the final question, which is, if people want to get a hold of you, how do they find you?

Oh, I've got an Instagram handle. @C, as in Colin, C Shine, S-H-I-N-E, Cooks. Or you can reach out to me at colin.shine@subzero.com.