We all want to cut down on food waste. We've got great ideas.

We're veteran cookbook authors Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough. We've published over three dozen cookbooks and been contributing editors for both COOKING LIGHT and EATING WELL. We've written extensively about the Instant Pot with books like THE INSTANT POT BIBLE, FREEZER TO INSTANT POT: THE COOKBOOK, and INSTANT POT BIBLE: COPYCAT RECIPES.

If you want to cut down on food waste, we've got three apps you've got to try. They'll also help you save money on food and discover new ways to find lots to eat at surprising food establishments. Plus, we've got a one-minute cooking tip on when to improvise in the kitchen. Bruce interviews Matt Moore, author of BUTCHER ON THE BLOCK. And we tell you what's making us happy in food this week.

Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:

[01:12] Three food sharing and food waste apps that can help you save money and the planet

[14:21] Our one-minute cooking tip: Improvise in cooking, not baking.

[16:02] Bruce interviews author Matt Moore about his book BUTCHER ON THE BLOCK

[32:08] What's making us happy in food this week? Watermelon and snickerdoodle cookies!

Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein and this is the Podcast

Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

And I'm Mark Scarborough.

And together with Bruce, we have written three dozen cookbooks,

including the latest out this fall of 2023, the look and cook.

Air fryer Bible.

It has 125 simple and easy air fryer recipes, but better than

that, it has 704 photographs.

Count them that exhaust than four.

Oh my God.

Three huge photo shoots to get 704 photos of.

Every step of every recipe.

The whole thing is photographed, start to finish, kind of an insane project.

We're not talking about air frying today, although we do love air frying.

We're gonna instead talk about food waste and three apps that you can use

to actually cut down on food waste.

This is kind of fascinating, and I didn't know anything about

this until Bruce brought it up.

Bruce has an interview with Matt Moore, the author of.

Butcher on the block of God, of course.

Our one minute cookie tip, and we're gonna talk about what's

making us happy in food this week.

So let's get started.

Food waste is a real thing, and from restaurants to home cooks

to just anybody that buys food tends to throw a lot of it away.

It is.

And.

I am so happy that I found these apps because they're so great.

They, what they do is they allow neighbors to share food with each other.

Let's say you made a dozen cookies and you only want to eat one.

Well, you can give away 11 cookies via this app to people who live near you.

Restaurants can use it to share their leftovers at the end of the

day, and if you just wanna volunteer some of these apps, Need volunteers

to pick up food and delivery.

You know, I'm, I'm gonna tell a personal story for a minute if I can.

Yeah.

Um, you, back in the day when I was a little kid, uh, we did a lot of work at

a place in Dallas called Union Gospel Mission, and it was this place that

fed homeless people on the street.

And of course you had to come in and hear a sermon.

It was, it was related to a church, and you heard a sermon and then you got.

Fed dinner.

And so we did a lot of cooking down there, even as a kid.

And we would go to grocery stores.

This is way back in the day, and we would ask them what they had that

was off or that had expired, and I would come in with boxes and ask,

and they would always send me in.

I think they thought like the nine year old got a better response than the adults.

I don't know.

But I would go in and I would talk about Union Gospel mission and

that we were gonna, you know, make dinner and we just needed some food

if they had anything to donate.

And they would.

But here's the thing, it always felt like begging and I, I was always slightly

embarrassed as a kid to go in grocery store and say, oh, you know what?

Do you got meat that's gone off today?

Gone off?

Well, at least you aspired for today.

So what I think is cool about these apps is that it doesn't feel like.

Begging.

Mm-hmm.

This is actually a way to cut down on food ways that kind of is ethical, um,

and has a little bit more, uh, this is what I like, anonymity about it.

So what's the first one?

So, the first one is called Olio, o l i o.

Remember, they have websites.

You can go to oleo.com and find out about it.

But to access any of the services, you have to download the app.

Oleo, o l.

I o.

So you set up an account for free and you could browse free

food items to pick up locally.

There are no delivery options.

You're gonna have to be able to get to the store or get to the

restaurant, or was ever giving it away.

So a restaurant might say, Hey, we have, you know, extra hamburgers

tonight and they can't save.

So you're going to be able to find out where they are and go get them.

Okay, so now let's just stop.

Before we go forward, let's stop.

So this is basically restaurants and food service places and maybe

supermarkets who have excess stuff Yes.

That they cannot get rid of at the end of the day.

So you have to be ready with Oleo to go get it.

That's part of the problem.

Right?

you do but Oleo has, 7 million members worldwide, including 86,000

volunteers, and the volunteers can rescue unsold food from local businesses.

Ah, there you go.

And bring it to you or bring it to a place where you can get,

when you said no delivery option available, my hunch is a lot

of those volunteers go and deliver them to charitable organizations.

Yep, yep.

But maybe there's a charitable organization you can connect to if

that's something that you wanna do.

But you can also do this on your own.

And I think that this is what's kind of cool about Olio is that you can

do this and set it up on your own, go on your own to pick up items.

Um, please don't think that you're somehow stealing them out of the

mouths of charities, because honestly, there is more food waste, particularly

in the United States and Canada.

Then there can possibly be people who need it.

So you're not taking food outta the mouths of the Red Cross.

But there's another aspect to Oleo that I really love, and it's

sort of the social media, almost Craigslist kind of thing about it.

Oh, let's see.

Before Craigslist became all sex before it did, so now it's the

oleo is sort of like the food of Craigslist or the Craigslist of food.

So you make.

Two dozen cookies.

Three dozen cookies.

You bake four cakes.

You make four pizzas for whatever reason.

Let's say you were having a party, right?

And then people didn't show up, right?

And you have all this food left over, you could post in an oleo, and if your

neighbors are also members of Oleo, they could find out that you have two pizzas

and they can come take them from you.

Yeah, so that's a really nice way to share it with your neighbors.

Yeah, it is.

Or people in your town.

We live very rurally, as you probably know if you listen to this podcast in

New England, and there is a great deal of economic disparity in our town.

In a typical New England town, we have a lot of ex New Yorkers, ex techies,

a lot of ex show business people, and they eat up a lot of the wealth.

And then we have a lot of people who were.

Born here, generationally born here.

We have one road that essentially holds one family in this town.

And, uh, those people have been born here for years.

And those people, uh, along that road, by the way, that family

is not necessarily in poverty.

No, not at all.

But I'm just saying that there are people here who are generationally in this town.

Mm-hmm.

But beyond that family on that road back in the woods.

And we live very remotely and there are a lot of, back in the woods,

there are a lot of very poor people.

We, we know a place, in fact around us where there are four cabins behind a house

that are non electrified and non plumbed.

And people live in the, the family offers these homes to

people who don't have any shelter.

So they're not.

Electrified.

They're not heated, they're not plumbed, but there is a lot of po and these

people couldn't connect to Lio, but there is a lot of poverty around us.

Right.

Yeah.

As Mark said, you need to be internet connected.

You have to have either a smartphone or a tablet.

Yeah.

To be able to download the app.

So there is a certain level of.

Economic wealth or situation that you have to have to use it, and it's something

that I'll consider using in the future.

When we do our photo shoots for our book, we shoot, as Mark said, we

shot 704 photos for the new book.

Right?

That's a lot of food we're making and I give it to my neighbors all the time.

But it would be nice if I could post on Oleo that, you know, today we

shot three pies, two cakes and four stews, and if you want to come by,

I could leave it in a cooler at the road and you can have some free food.

And so we're gonna move on to the second app, which

is called Too Good to Go.

And that's t o o.

Good to go, too.

Good to go.

But before we get there, let me just say that it, what, what, one of the things

that could be interesting about this, if you wanna become more involved in this, is

not only for you to have food that is, uh, potentially bound for the food waste bin.

But also if you live as we do again rurally, you can pick up food and have

it delivered to your community center.

Mm-hmm.

Let's say you live, um, I don't know, let's say you live 40 miles, 50

miles outside of Lincoln, Nebraska.

You could find places in Lincoln, Nebraska that are on the verge

of throwing out food and bring it back to your small town center and.

I would bet you that there are people in your town that could use

that food even if you don't use it.

So let's talk about it too.

Good to go.

So too good to go is a great way both to eat well, cuz you're gonna

get some decent food and save money.

And it's great for the food business because this is only for food businesses

to make a little extra money out of what they otherwise would've thrown out.

So we're talking here, mostly restaurants.

Mostly restaurants, but also some stores.

So here's how it works.

You could browse through nearby locations on the app to find out what you like.

Then you reserve what they have.

So you have to actually reserve in advance and then go pick it up.

So if it's a supermarket, you might find that they have in the morning, they'll

say, we have three bags of produce that are gonna be available at $8 a bag.

Now, you know, if you went in the morning, those bags of produce might cost

you $30 and you don't necessarily know what you're gonna get, but they know.

Every day they have X amount of produce left over.

I mean, we, when we were, uh, out trolling the app and trolling, looking

around the app, didn't we see a chocolate story that had bloomed chocolate on?

Okay.

If you don't know what that means, that means some of the, the fat

has come to the surface and given it that kind of white, foggy film.

There's nothing wrong with the No, we're still that a ball, you just can't sell it.

They can't, well, the store's selling chocolates at like $80 a pound.

It's in New York, in Times Square and.

$80 pound chocolates are out of the reach of most people.

Yeah.

Outta the reach of this, people go on to too good to go.

And they were sound, they said they had 10 boxes of chocolates that

were perfectly edible, but they had bloomed so they can't sell them.

And they were like $5 a box.

Yeah.

So you can reserve it, go in and get it.

So it's a way to have some really nice chocolate, really cheap.

So, This works from fish stores, produce stores, chocolate stores.

It's really nice.

Yeah.

We even found when we were looking at the app two, didn't we find

something about fish, headss and tails?

Yep.

That some store was basically giving away fish, headss and tails from filets.

And while you may think, well, who wants fish?

Headss and tails, well, maybe you wanna make fish stock, which yep.

Actually in our cookbook house, we would actually do,

oh, I would drive to get free fish.

Bruce made fish stock for peja, right?

Mm-hmm.

For the filter fish, when you make a filter fish.

So, I mean, this is something might we might do, but you

can also get mystery bags on

Too.

Good to go?

Yeah.

A store knows it's gonna have.

X amount of leftovers every day, or a restaurant or a diner, but they don't

necessarily know what it's going to be.

So you can reserve a mystery bag in the morning for $5, $8, $10, and you know

you will get 30 or $40 worth of food, but you don't know what it's gonna be.

It's so, I think this is such interesting stuff.

Olio too good to go.

And this last app, flash food.

Hmm.

It's a great way to cut on food waste and save some money along the way.

Okay, so let's talk about flash food.

Flash food is great.

It's almost like having a super coupons in a supermarket.

So you go to flash food and you look for supermarkets in your.

Area and then you literally go shopping on the app.

And stores always do markdowns.

When you're in the store for milk, that's gonna go bad in two days or meat

that's gonna go bad tomorrow, right?

So on flash food, you'll find yogurt for 25 cents a.

Pint because it's gonna expire in two days and the store would rather

give it to you for 25 cents and get

rid of it.

I mean,

I used to this all the time before there were apps I used to, we would make

banana both Bruce and I like banana bread, and I know that's super controversial

because that's good Banana bread.

People hate it.

But I, well, that's not controversial.

That's just idiot.

C

Okay.

No, but people who allow their taste.

But I, I admit that I don't like banana bread.

The second day it does get gummy, so I look at the day it's made well.

So anyway, we would make banana bread for parties and you know, or I would

bring banana bread to one of the book groups I lead and ultimately

have three quarters of it leftover, cuz nobody likes banana bread.

But anyway, I would go back to that speed rack in the grocery

store and buy the bananas.

That were in the back, usually in the hallway to the restrooms, right, that are

on that speed rack of not great produce.

Because honestly, for the best banana bread you want not great bananas.

You don't want firm just ripe bananas.

You want overwrite bananas?

You do.

And the app allows you to buy all the stuff you pay for in advance.

It's just like ordering on the supermarket website where you do

grocery shopping and then pick it up.

Yeah.

But this way you're getting only things a store is marking down.

You might get.

Sales on food, that's really good, but the store just hasn't been able

to sell them, so all of a sudden you're getting something really

nice that the store is marked down.

It's a great way to save some money when you do your shopping.

We've talked about that.

Yeah.

You can pay for this, that you can pay for the, did we say this, that you can

pay for this with any major credit card?

Yep.

You can pay or debit card.

Or, um, on flash food, you can pay for it with Snap e b T cards.

You can, you can.

So even if you're getting assistance, you could still use it.

That's right.

So you can use all kinds of methods.

So let's go over these apps one more time.

There's oleo, O L I O.

I keep spelling it that because I'm old enough to know oleo as with an

E, meaning margarine, but, okay.

O l i O.

Think Italian.

That's your Craigslist of food where you can get food

from neighbors or from stores

where

it's all,

and then there's.

Too good to go, which is the restaurant and food producers Mostly.

Yeah, mostly.

And then there's flash food, which is mostly grocery stores.

Mostly grocery stores giving you super discounts of

food they know they can't sell.

Before we get to that next segment, Of our podcast.

Let me say that we have a newsletter.

It goes out.

Well, it has been going out a while, but in case you don't know,

I wrecked my shoulder and have been a wreck over my wrecked shoulder.

So it hasn't gone out in about a month now, but it is now going out again.

So if you would like.

To sign up for our newsletter, which is not connected to this podcast and has

different content than this podcast, go to our website, Bruce and mark.com.

There is a signup form on the splash page of our website, Bruce and

mark.com, and you can sign up there.

And again, I say this every time, but I just wanna remind you, I

have locked it so I don't see your email and I don't see your name.

And then, uh, I can't sell it, nor can the service I use.

Sell your name to any mailing list.

And furthermore, any email always includes an unsubscribed button

with you don't wanna get these emails anymore, so you can do that

on our website, bruce and mark.com.

Up next are one minute Food cooking tip.

The tip is to improvise in cooking, not baking.

Right.

If you think that you make a vinegarette, I don't know.

And you think it would be nice to add a little cumin to your vinegarette?

Mm-hmm.

Try it out.

Yep.

And see what cumin tastes like in your vinegarette.

But do not make some kind of wild substitution in baking because

as we've said a million times and as is the truth, cooking is

physics, but baking is chemistry.

Mm-hmm.

So you gotta get the formula right in baking you do for it to work.

Um, Yeah, that's, it's really important.

I, I think I've told you this before, but I had a friend who

substituted corn starch for flour.

Well, they're both white and powdery.

That's

what she said in a baking recipe.

And well, so is cocaine, I guess you could try that.

Um, nice.

So anyway, uh, yeah, don't experiment in your baking, but.

Do experiment in your cooking.

Mm-hmm.

And use a recipe as a guideline, not necessarily a rule.

Okay.

Before we get to our interview segment of this podcast, let me say that it would be

great if you could rate this podcast, if you could drop down on the Apple page or

the Google Page, or any place where you get your podcast and simply look there.

It's tells you how to rate it, and it says, write a comment or write a review.

Man, that would be great.

Even nice podcast.

We had a recent rating where someone just said, nice podcast.

Thank you so much for that, because that is honestly what does

the analytics a world of good.

Mm-hmm.

And otherwise, we are unsupported except for your support.

So thanks for doing that.

Okay.

Up next Bruce's interview with Matt Moore, author of Butcher on the Block.

This is a.

Book that Bruce loved.

Bruce is a carnivore from long ago, and he was very excited when he got

Butcher on the block in the mail.

Hey, this morning we're talking with Matt Moore.

He's the author of the book, butcher on the Block, everyday Recipes,

stories, and Inspirations From Your Local Butcher and Beyond.

Hey, Matt.

Hey, good morning.

Thanks so much for having me.

Uh, my pleasure.

Hey, you come from a line of butchers and said, is your wife?

And your book is a story of butchers, the butchers you've

met and even around the world.

And you say right up front in the book, no matter what level of home

butchering you can do, it's great to have a relationship with a local butcher.

Why is that?

You know, for me, um, this book was personal.

Uh, my grandfather and, and going back even to my great-great-grandfather

come from the trade of butchering.

And it's always been a necessity no matter where you travel and which culture.

Um, it, it, it's a trusted relationship and I think I.

You know, during the seventies and eighties and nineties of the mass

trends of the supermarket, we sort of lost track of, of the, the quality and

care that goes into shaping our food.

And, uh, for me, um, being able to travel throughout the world, uh, especially

in Europe, that's still a tradition that's very much rich and still alive.

And I think, uh, my inspiration came after writing a book on, on, on

barbecue called The Sal's Best Butts.

And following that with cereal griller on live fire grilling.

Um, you know, that book came out in Covid and I would go to the grocery store and

I would see things like whole chickens just sitting there, even though there

was scarcity or beef ribs or London broils and all these different cuts.

And it kind of dawned on me that a lot of people just don't know how

to utilize those ingredients and without maybe having a butcher to tell

you, Hey, this is how you cook it.

Um, that offered an opportunity for me to explore my own family roots,

but also to combine, you know, the ideas that I, I think are I'm known

for in terms of barbecuing, grilling.

But then open up this whole platform that it could be barbecued, it

could be grilled, it could be raw, it could be roasted and fried.

And that sense of community of, of a butcher that's gonna be able

to explain and, and customize or fabricate those cuts, as well as

giving you, uh, expertise and cooking tips just really opened up the door.

And, um, it was a great conduit for me to strike up some friendships and

continue to, to, to write great books and, and meet really interesting people.

Do you think that's a universal skill of butchers

that they all know how to cook?

You know, they're probably the most underpaid, uh, cooks,

or really all of them should, should have their own cookbooks.

But the most common question is how do you cook this to the butcher?

Right.

And you know, I think they appreciate that question because ultimately they're in

business and they want you to have a great experience with what they sell, and they

want you to come back to that business.

And so, Part of providing that quality product is also the advice

on how to have a fantastic result.

One of the reasons I like to go to a butcher is for dry-aged beef.

Can you talk about what that means?

What does dry-aging do to meat, and is there any way we can come close to doing

a decent and safe job of it at home?

Yeah.

So, you know, aging is a, a technique that's been around really since

the beginning of, of actually butchering and, and eating animals.

But specifically with, with beef, um, you know, the process of dry aging is

I think really what separates a lot of the local butcher shops from, um,

Primarily the, the mass stores that you're gonna find that wet age, right?

So wet aging is typically, you know, after maybe hanging for a period of

time, it's gonna be packed and sealed and quote unquote kind of age on

its way to transport into the store.

And the reason that that takes place is because they don't

have any loss of mass, right?

If they're wet aging, they're not gonna be reducing the actual weight

and, and quantity of the beef.

So it's, it's better from a commercial standpoint.

Dry aging, you know, specifically we're talking about, uh, under time

and temperature control, allowing that, that meet to age for, um,

you know, at minimum a couple of days, upwards of 75 to 90 days.

And it's basically going to ba.

Be breaking itself down and losing mass over time, which enhances, um,

in my opinion, a lot of the flavor.

And so you are losing a lot of product to the dry aging process.

And it is something that, as I mentioned earlier, has to

be under proper temperature.

Um, and, and storage and control, which a lot of the, the butchers

have, have honed in on this process.

It's sort of like saying, teach me how to make wine.

Well, I mean, it could take a lifetime to master.

Yeah.

And so I think that's a big differentiation.

You know, I would be amiss without.

Not covering the subject lightly.

In, in the book, the first line of the book is, this is not a

book about butchering per se, rather it is about the butcher.

Mm-hmm.

You know, that being said, we do give a, a primer on how to do some

basic things at home, like breaking down a whole chicken, playing a fish.

Mm-hmm.

Doing a beef tenderloin, even, uh, going so far as frenching a pork chop.

But we, we visit slightly the idea of dry aging at home because technology has

come a long way and now we can source.

These dry aging bags that allow us within our own refrigerator so we don't

have to do a whole lot of time and I temperature control to use those bags and

produce a a, a quality result at home.

There's a recipe in your book from the Rim Family Butchers

in Cambridge City, Indiana, and this recipe strikes me as fantastic and

easy, but might scare a lot of people.

It only has two ingredients.

So tell me about this dish.

This is a, a recipe that I almost left, uh, and headed

back to Nashville, um, and, and would've missed out on, on my visit.

But I, I, I believe we might've had a, a few cold beverages at this point.

We were having some Hogshead tacos and Hmm.

Uh, Jerry Rim, who's the family patriarch, had, had talked to me

about, Work in the line and how they would spend days of processing.

And one of his favorite snacks, he didn't even have a chance to leave the floor and

they would cut out the little tips at the ends of, uh, roasts and ribeyes and they'd

just dunk 'em in some worcestsershire, and then they would eat those all day long.

Yeah.

And I kinda paused and I said, well, where's that recipe?

I don't see that out.

And he literally got in his little, uh, truck and, and drove up to the plant

and trimmed up some steak and soaked it.

And you know, it's one of those moments where, Time and place kind of stop.

And that's, that's a moment I always crave when I'm out seeking recipes.

And just the, the, the mix of the trim meat just soaked in that kind

of smoky, tangy, umami style sauce.

Mm-hmm.

Just with just the right bite, maybe a little bit of a

crusty bread alongside of it.

I said, that's a super simple recipe.

That's why I'm out on the road is to get the good stuff.

And I was super thankful to, for them to deliver it to me.

I can't wait to try that.

Um, especially we do a homemade Worcestershire around here until, oh wow.

That sounds like we have to do it.

You tell the story of two butchers in the south of France.

Uh, how did their journey differ from butcher's you met in other parts

of the world, especially in the us.

Well, they were tech guys to start software and sales.

Um, and through some late night conversations, uh, decided that

that was just a career that wasn't giving them fulfillment.

And, you know, I think the old world qualities, especially in

France, there's a tradition of still going to the local butcher.

Yeah.

To the local bakery.

You know, the, the mass supermarkets are really things that you, you don't see.

They are becoming more common.

And I would tell you, That most people are telling you that it's sort of

destroying the culture, so it's a, a big debate, but for them, They wanted

to have that connection to community, to family, uh, to pass on a legacy.

And so they, they literally quit their jobs and went about, uh, learning

a trade that most people are, are apprentices for, you know, 10 to 15 years.

Uh, they said that they worked 10 times that amount in three years

and, and learned that process and, and now have created just a, an

incredible destination of not only.

Dry and, and specialty age cuts, but also this beautiful world that

we call, uh, Importe on France, where, you know, they're not going

to the fast food restaurants.

They're actually stopping at the local butcher.

Mm-hmm.

To get the plate too shore, which could be a lasagna or a pork stew

the particular day that I was there.

And I think that's just a beautiful tradition is that the secret is that some

of the best meals that you eat in Europe actually come from the butcher shop.

It goes back to that whole thing we just talked about, butchers

being these underrated cooks and really know what that's about.

Besides cooking, is there a common thread in most of the butchers you talked to?

I think there's just a thread of service.

You know, at the end of the day, um, the butcher's just constantly asked to give.

It's a hard job, probably an underpaid job.

You know, they are working to take, uh, an animal or a sacrifice and,

and, and utilize every part of that.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and that's a, a trend that you're seeing in the whole animal butchering

side, that a lot of the, the market here in the US doesn't necessarily

know how to work that process.

And so with that being said, they've got to, you know, work throughout the

entire lineage of being able to provide.

Cut me like this, tie it like that.

I need a quarter pound of this.

Not so much of that.

Do you have this in stock?

And then as we said earlier, give me your recipe and give me

your technique for making it.

I think the most unusual butcher you feature in your book has gotta be

the vegetable butcher in San Francisco.

Well, I have to ask you what.

Is a vegetable butcher.

Hey, listen, my job as an author is to create a time and place

and a stamp as to where things are.

When I did a barbecue book, you know, I, I had to look at,

okay, this is what's historic.

And this is maybe the future of barbecue.

And a lot of people sometimes opine that, Hey, barbecue is, is static.

But truthfully, it's something that's constantly changing and

that's what makes it so great.

And so the same thing applies to the world of butchering there.

There's a lot of techniques and traditions that have lasted

for, uh, Thousands of years.

But this idea of vegetable butchering came about truly because Caramel Jeanie

was the first quote unquote vegetable butcher in New York's eat Italy market.

Mm-hmm.

And if you think about it, it makes a whole lot of sense.

There's a lot of folks that are intimidated by vegetables and they

don't know how to approach them, how to break them down, how to prepare them.

And so they created essentially a vegetable butcher in the market,

uh, so that you could take your Cole Robbie or your cabbage or whatever

that might be, and, and work with Kara.

And you know, she's somebody that.

Uh, wants to make vegetables more of the center of the plate.

And, you know, that's her mission.

And I think, uh, teaching folks, uh, proper techniques in the same

way that you break down a whole chicken, you might break down a, a

vegetable along the same lines to maximize the flavor and the potential.

Um, and so for me it was really, um, a point of diversification in the book

to showcase that, you know, butchering is not just meat and game, but it can

include vegetables and seafood as well.

The recipes in your book are just mouthwatering.

The photos are gorgeous and they range from sublime smoke

carrots to those hog head tacos.

You mentioned earlier you've got braised oxtails, double cheese smash burgers.

You have a few takes on chicken wings, something you

claim to be a connoisseur of.

So Matt, what makes a great chicken wing?

Yeah, I think every book I have, you gotta have a couple,

uh, chicken wing resumes, right?

Uh, that's typically my, uh, my night out with, with friends as well.

Um, you know, the, the, a couple of the takes, the kind of the smoked lollipop.

So, uh, you know, frenching the bone is, is a, a barbecue technique

that you see a lot, uh, especially throughout the competition circuit.

I, I will tell you, probably my favorite one is just the fried chicken wing.

I did it in sort of my grandmother's old fashioned style of just salt.

Pepper flour, a little bit of water and just deep fried and cast iron.

And I think oftentimes we think of chicken wings as being more along the buffalo

style, either smoked or flash fried without that kind of crispy coating.

And I always do tell folks that, you know, whenever you can, um, you know, pick 'em

up, you can source 'em at your butcher.

I like to buy the wings as a whole and, and actually take the time

with a little cleaver and just kind of pop 'em between the joint.

I think if they've been processed somewhere else,

the consistency of the meat.

Is not quite as good.

So that's definitely something that I'm often sourcing whole, and it's

an item that I'll simply butcher at home or maybe ask, you know, of

course my local butcher to, uh, to take care of that work for me as well.

What's your take on sauces with wings?

Once you frame crisp, toss 'em with a sauce or don't toss 'em with a sauce.

The fried chicken wings in that book do not sauce them.

Um, now my wife is, uh, a connoisseur of all things sauce.

So she'll tell you that the house made blue cheese that I feature in the

book is probably one of her go-tos.

And, uh, we've been married long enough that I just turned my head.

Uh, same thing with dry rub ribs.

She's always asking where the sauce is, but I don't believe in it.

Hey, one of the things I love about your book is you include phish.

As well as beef, pork, and chicken.

I think it's really important to understand fish is meat, and

most people understand grilling a steak or smoking a pork shoulder.

The thought of cooking a salmon for Lake can be scary to them.

Do you have any tips for success with fish?

I'm so glad you brought that up.

I mean, again, My intention for Butcher on the Block was to create a general

cookbook through the lens of the butcher.

Um, it's not like I mentioned a, a bunch of technique on butchering.

Rather, it's this beautiful window into incredible people, uh, diverse

cuisines, great stories, tips and techniques, including seafood.

And that's why we traveled to Boston and met Jared Auerbach, who, uh,

really is just a fantastic, uh, person who's kind of upending the seafood

industry by changing the way that.

That we source sustainably great seafood.

And you're exactly right.

A lot of people have a lot of fears when it comes to specifically grilling seafood

because is it gonna stick to the grate?

Is it gonna be dried out?

Am I gonna lose half of it to the coals?

And you know, there are a couple different techniques that I always tell folks,

you know, choosing, um, a piece like a salmon or, uh, the sport fish, like

a Kobe that we have in the book, or even tuna, you know, something that's

gonna be a little bit more hearty, uh, more steak like in consistency.

We wanna give it every opportunity to create the mayard reaction on the grill.

So starting with really good clean grates, uh, just a touch of oil.

And then, uh, where most people mess up on seafood is they

start touching it too quickly.

They don't allow that reaction to occur to really just let the proteins kind

of lift themselves off of the grate.

If you're working with, um, you know, solutions like

maybe, uh, or ingredients like.

Flounder or trout, typically those are gonna be a little

bit more, um, less dense.

And so oftentimes I tell people to use maybe a, a pan or like a grilling basket,

something like that where we're not having to, to flip it or turn it too much.

Um, again, just kind of set yourself up for success and you can just

look and touch the, the filet and have a good understanding.

Is this gonna stand up over high heat?

Or maybe I need to put it in a basket or something along those lines and still

perfume it with the charcoal and smoke.

Uh, but maybe not flip it and, and have that aha moment

where it drops in the fire.

I like that you offer these kind of tips and, and help with grilling the meat.

And it's not just a book about how to cut up meat.

It's not just butchering techniques.

It is.

Book full of wonderful recipes, as well as the importance of just butchering

in general, and we need to, as you say, have a relationship with our butcher.

Go to them for advice, go to them for suggestions, and then follow

the amazing recipes in your book.

Matt Moore, author of Butcher on the Block, thanks for spending some time

and sharing your insight with me today.

It's been a pleasure.

Thanks so much for having me.

So you like the book, right?

I think this book is fabulous because Matt is so smart about

meat and his advice about cooking meat and talking to your butcher.

It's the most important thing if you cook meat that you can do is develop

a relationship with a local butcher.

Even if that butcher is inside the supermarket, you will get.

Better cuts of meat.

You'll learn about meat.

They could teach you how to cook it.

Matt knows that that's what you have to do.

He talks about it in the book and his recipes are fantastic.

Yeah, it was.

That's a great interview.

It was nice to have him on because we've had a lot of vegans and vegetarians

on lately and that's beautiful stuff.

And um, if you know, I have cut down on the amount of meat I eat by a great deal.

So of course I'm very interested in vegan and vegetarian recipes.

But, um, it was nice to have just an old-fashioned

carnivore podcast this weekend.

Okay.

So as these typical, our last segment, what's making us happen in food this week?

It's watermelon time again, and I bought my first watermelon of the spring

at the local supermarket yesterday.

No, no, it's not the watermelon's making me happy.

That's, no, it's not a local watermelon.

No, no, it's not.

It's still coming in from where?

I don't know.

Probably Ecuador, but yeah.

UA or actually Bolivia?

No, Ashley.

I think this one's from Florida.

Well, this Texas boy just refuses to eat them until

they come into the local farms.

Well, that's the end of August now.

I'm not waiting till the end of August to have a watermelon.

Bruce loves watermelon more than I can even say.

What's making me happy through this week?

Uh, our snicker doodles.

I, I made a party for Bruce.

Bruce sings with a baroque.

Group who, uh, they perform, I don't know, lots of Baroque music

and BK is too late for them.

They're earlier than they have their really early Baroque music.

Uh, and he sings with this group.

And when our friends come to concerts, I make dinner and I made 70 snicker doodles.

So many snicker doodles.

It was ridiculous.

The, it was a recipe from our book, the Ultimate Cookbook.

And it's my mom's old recipe.

And to be honest with you, I just came here from St.

Louis and I took my mom a bag of the leftover snicker doodles and

I was like, this is your recipe.

She was very thrilled to get them.

Despite her increasing a1c, she was very thrill.

Grilled together.

My mom's 90, so cut her a break.

So,

hey, I would like to have her a1c, so let's go

there.

No, let's not.

So I took her a bag and she sat there snacking on them, on

the couch as we watch the news.

So, uh, that's about where I go with my mom at this point, is we watch the news

together and that's what visiting means.

So, Anyway, it was really nice to make snicker doodles such an old

fashioned US cookie, at least if you're a US citizen of my age, you are

really familiar with snicker doodles.

Most likely there were two Brits at the party.

Oh, they didn't even know what they were.

No.

And they had no clue what they were.

And I was like, oh, well it's a thing.

It's a thing.

Especially if you're my age and you grow up in the United States.

Maybe Canada too, for all I know, but sorry, I didn't grow up in Canada.

Lamentably didn't grow up in

Say It right, Canadia, where the Canadians are from.

Right.

I didn't grow up in Canadia and so I, I don't know if Canadians know

about the snicker doodles, but we sure did in the United States.

Okay.

That's our podcast for this week.

Thanks for being a part of our podcast.

We know that there are thousands of podcasts out.

There and we are thrilled that you have chosen to listen to ours,

and I will ask you, please go to our Facebook group, also called Cooking

with Bruce and Mark, where I share recipes, videos, conversations about food.

I want to know what you had last night.

I wanna know what's making you happy in food this week, so you can share it

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