S3E17 Ask Jack: BBQ and picnic foods

Geoff Allix  00:01

Hi, I’m Geoff Allix, host of Living Well with MS, the podcast from Overcoming MS.

Jack McNulty  00:06

Hi, I’m Jack McNulty and professional chef, and serious OMS foodie. Welcome to Ask Jack. A special Living Well with MS podcast series, where I’ll be answering food and cooking related questions submitted by you, our Overcoming MS community.

Geoff Allix  00:24

If you’d like to submit a question for a future episode of Ask Jack, please email us at podcast@overcoming ms.org That’s [email protected]. And now, let’s rip up our appetites and dig into this episode. Welcome to our third installment of Ask Jack featuring the prodigious culinary talents of professional hosted chef Jack Nulty. Answering food related questions generated by you our community. Check out the show notes that dig deeper into the topics covered on this episode. Set your dials for this station when asked Jack number for premieres on September 15, 2021 Just in time to kick off autumn for one half of the world at least. Don’t forget to submit your questions for Jack by emailing them to [email protected]. Now on to this episode’s main theme, summer is for eating well. In this episode, we dig into some topical questions about foods and activities that are part of every summer culinary package. And Jack makes sure to advise you on how to make sure they align with your OMS diet and still taste great. So welcome, Jack.

 

Jack McNulty  01:33

Thanks, Geoff, it’s good to be back. Really looking forward to addressing the questions we got on on the show today.

Geoff Allix  01:40

And talking about summer cooking, as we’re starting to get warmer days and longer days, at least for us in the north. Well, yes. s orry to Australians. Maybe put this one on the backburner. Listen to it in six months when exactly when you’re having your Christmas Barbies. So the first question we have is from Matilda in London. And actually a lot of these come from the northern hemisphere, unsurprisingly. So Matilda Nanda is asking about induction hubs. So a bit of a question that’s come from a previous episode talking about cooking methods. So thoughts about induction hubs? And is induction great in controlling temperatures?

Jack McNulty  02:23

It’s a great question. And you know, to be honest, the first time I saw the question come across, I was a bit surprised, because I thought, oh, boy, everybody should know about induction cooking. But then I thought a little bit more about my own situation and really induction stovetops or hobs are not so common outside of Europe. And in fact, in many parts of Europe, they’re not even that common also. So yeah, it’s a fabulous question. I think the best way to answer it is, first, what is induction and how does that work and, and really, it’s all based on creating a magnetic field, which is created from an alternating electrical current. And this magnetic field sort of gets transplanted to the cooking vessel in a wireless method, if you will. And it’s really the cooking vessel that has this magnetic field on its bottom that’s moving rapidly and creating heat to heat up the actual cooking vessel. That’s how that works. It’s sort of a direct heat to the cooking vessel from the cooking vessel as opposed to an indirect heat heating the cooking vessel, it’s a little bit of a different scenario. There are some clear advantages to induction hobs or stove tops. First of all, there’s less wasted heat. That translates into a much, much cooler kitchen that temperatures adjust really fast, almost as fast as as gas would in terms of being able to control that current and how the magnetic fields move. It’s very simple to clean because it’s typically on a surface like a ceramic surface or a glass surface of some kind. So basically, it’s really really simple to clean and the the the actual stove top cools quickly there is residual heat, so it’s not going to be instantaneous, but it cools rapidly, which is also a big advantage in terms of keeping the kitchen much cooler. There are some disadvantages though to an induction hob first of all, your pots and pans need to be magnetic which is to say they have to have some kind of ferrous material on the bottom, you can always just simply check that by putting a magnet on the bottom of your pan or pot. If it sticks great. You’re good ago, they’ll work fine on induction. If it doesn’t, you’ll have to replace it or use some sort of converter on on the stovetop. There’s also a bit of a learning curve, as I discovered, when I started using induction food tends to stick on the bottom of the pan much faster than if you’re using something like electric or even gas, you just have to be wary of that and stir your food quite a bit more, especially if you’re making a stew or soup of some kind. Some people claim they’re noisy, I’ve, I’ve worked a lot with induction, and I noticed there is a little bit of a noise, but it’s from my perspective, pretty non-offensive. Probably the biggest factor to consider is for anybody that has a heart implant or some sort of hearing implant, induction stoves can create creates some interference there. And so that’s something to certainly be aware of and check. I think you know, overall, from my extensive experience, both working in a professional kitchen and at home, it’s noticeably cooler, it’s very fast to clean, temperatures adjust very rapidly. And probably more importantly, or most importantly, for those that like to handle pots and pans a lot like I do, the handles don’t heat up nearly as much as if you’re using gas which can can burn your hand if you’re not aware of that. I like them, I’m all in favor of them.

Geoff Allix  06:36

That’s great. I’m particularly happy because we replaced our kitchen and switch from gas to induction. So if you’d said they’re not OMS compliant that would have been problematic.

 

Jack McNulty  06:47

Did you have to change out all your pots and pans as well?

 

Geoff Allix  06:51

No, very few actually, and what you said about the noise where we have bought something which is specifically designed for induction, it doesn’t tend to make a noise. When something happens to work with induction, then it’s more likely to be to create a noise, I would say yeah, and it’s just, it’s a low buzzing noise. It’s nothing. It’s really not a problem. The whole the speed actually is impressive when previous forms of of hob electrical cooking, were incredibly slow to change the temperature but it is very close to gas speed. It’s really, really fast. And also it can go incredibly hot, there’s a sort of ours  has a booster setting, which really you only want to use on definitely only on pans, which is specifically designed for it. And really only for boiling water but to to bring water to the boil to cook pasture or something incredibly quick.

 

Jack McNulty  07:58

Yeah, there’s also some some really other nice advantages such as because it only works when there’s a connection of a magnetic pan that goes on to the service, you can actually have them on. Like turn the burner on, it’s not going to generate any heat until you put the the pot or pan onto the burner. And and go from there. So the way that that is most helpful is if you want to go from, let’s say using a pressure cooker and you want to go from full pressure to just maintaining the pressure and that usually means adjusting the temperature down from that medium high to medium low fairly rapidly. You can work with two burners have one on the on the high end and one on the low end and just simply move the pot from one burner to the next burner and you’re good to go. So there’s really no added heat that’s going to come on from just having the burner on in the first place.

 

Geoff Allix  08:56

And you’re not going to burn your house down either if you think “Did I leave the gas on?”

 

Jack McNulty  09:02

Unless, of course you’ve left something on it.

 

Geoff Allix  09:07

So yeah, that’s reassuring. Anyway, so on to reheating food so Gina in Bristol asks about reheating food, especially after oils have been added to that food and our microwaves okay to reheat food.

 

Jack McNulty  09:24

Yeah, again, really great questions here. I think in terms of reheating, I think it’s really best to to revisit what is the safe point the minimum point and in terms of temperature that you should reheat food to. So that specific temperature is 75 degrees centigrade or 165 degrees Fahrenheit. But when you’re reheating something, you should heat the food up to a minimum of that temperature. And of course, oils start to break down at around 120 degrees centigrade or 250 degrees Fahrenheit. So you can see that that’s well within the range, it’s not going to harm any sort of oil that maybe have that you added previously to the food if you’re just reheating. And of course, if you just add a little bit of moisture that’s going to prevent it really from going over the boiling point anyway, the 100 degrees centigrade or 212 Fahrenheit. So I think it’s a very safe consideration in terms of reheating food that you’ve added oil previously to, there should be no problem. Now, of course, there’s other things to consider in terms of exposure to air, you know, the type of oil, the using the time amount of time it’s been exposed, all those sorts of things come into play. But in general terms, it should be really quite safe. As far as microwaves are concerned, there are plenty of recent studies that do indicate microwaves are  certainly a safe method for cooking, they do not emit very much radiation. In fact, the chances of you having more radiation emitted from the phone in your pocket that you’re carrying around all day, or all the other electronics in your house is much, much greater than anything that’s going to happen with using a microwave unless you’re just hovering around the microwave constantly. It should be really no big issue there. Microwaves work differently, though, in terms of heat, as opposed to a stove or oven. So rather than heating from the exterior to the interior, it works opposite it works from the interior, to the exterior. And it really relies a lot on the moisture content within food. And that’s how microwaves heat food. So when heating, or reheating food in a microwave, it’s always a good idea to add some moisture into the food put like, let’s just say for instance, you wanted to reheat last night’s leftover risotto, because I know everybody’s making risotto at night. So you just go ahead and work, you know, two to three tablespoons of water into the rice, mix it up really nicely, put it in the microwave and heat it up as opposed to just heating it. It will heat quicker, it will be much more efficient. And it’ll be much more even if you if you do it that way. In terms of other methods of reheating, my favorite way is I just put a pan on the stove, I heat it up, add a little bit of water to the pan, put my food in the pan. And that just heated up in the pan. That’s probably my number one go to method, the oven works. But that’s the slowest method of reheating food. If you want to reheat something like a lasagna or something like this, and you don’t have a microwave, it’s a good idea to work with a preheated oven, usually a minimum of 180 degrees centigrade or 350 Fahrenheit. And always remember to just put a cover on on your food helps the the exterior from drying out too much. So that’s probably the best way to do that.

 

Geoff Allix  13:16

Okay, and it’s interesting about microwaves, so they, they really can’t cause a problem with temperature because they’re heating water. So by definition, a microwave is going to the boiling point of water and no higher.

 

Jack McNulty  13:28

Exactly. I’ve actually even seen some recent studies that in terms of cooking vegetables that using a microwave is the healthiest way of cooking a vegetable. I’ll put a link up on the show notes for that so people can go look at that actual study. I was a little bit surprised by that. I personally don’t cook my vegetables in the microwave. But I do have a microwave from my chocolate-making days in the past. And I use it exclusively just to reheat food at time. So when I’m in a real hurry, a microwave is a blessing.

 

Geoff Allix  14:04

Okay, great. So on to the more summery topics. One of the most popular things to put onto a barbecue, obviously is meat or burgers. And so we’ve had lots of questions from listeners, and we’re sort of grouping them up. So it’s starting off with talking about meat substitutes, and they were specifically asking about a brand of vegan sausages, but we’re talking here about the meat substitute type of burgers, so and they’re very popular nowadays. I think there’s a lot a lot of vegans now, or vegans will become more popular. And so a lot of those people are trying to find something that tastes like meat. They want something that tastes like a burger or like a sausage. So what are your thoughts about meat substitutes? Are they okay on an OMS Diet.

 

Jack McNulty  15:01

You know, Geoff, it’s such a tricky topic to understand, especially when trying to understand it from the perspective of the OMS guidelines in the diet, I’m still wrestling a lot with where I where my position is. Overall, when it comes to meat substitution. For me, what I like to try to do is I just, I took a step back, and I said, right, let’s look at at meat replacements, the whole sort of history to gain a little bit of perspective on it, see where we are today on it and understand it a little bit from that perspective, and then look at some of the ingredients. So I apologize if I carry on a little bit. But I think this is really a fascinating topic. And it’s something that we’re all going to have to deal with. Because this is not going away anytime soon. In fact, it’s going to become more and more prevalent within our life. And we’re just going to have to understand how to deal with these sorts of food choices. So in terms of meat substitutes, that actually has been around for 1000s of years, it First appearing in ancient China, with where they figured out how to separate the protein from the starch. Of course, they didn’t really know protein and starch back then. But they figured out how to make that separation with wheat. And kind of came up with the first I suppose the first seitan product that appeared, seitan itself appears in was developed in 1961. Seitan it’s actually just sort of a a brand name, if you will, it was developed by a Japanese scientists, which combine gluten with soy sauce, and marketed it to replace protein. So you can even look at the Japanese name, seitan, sei meaning made from and tan is the first part of the Japanese word for protein. So basically just means made from protein, which gets right to the crux of the whole discussion. All of this meat replacement is really just protein replacement. And if you look at it from that perspective, I think it’s really helpful in trying to make some of these these choices. So there are other things that have been out there, other foods that have been out there for quite a while tofu and tempeh, or alternate protein sources. They came about in cultures that were primarily plant based from years and years ago, legumes and grains have been used as protein sources for a long time. They were the first use and trying to create vegetarian burgers. I mean, years and years ago, we’re talking probably 30 years ago for for some of those first ones to appear. Quorn, many of the listeners based in the UK might be familiar with Quorn that actually was developed in the UK is a type of micro protein derived from fungus. And it was originally bound together with egg protein, they now have a vegan version that’s bound together with potato protein. It’s had some controversy, but it’s out there as a meat replacer. And so this idea and concept of replacing proteins and diets is from plant sources, it’s certainly nothing new.

 

Geoff Allix  18:34

So before we go on to the sort of the new vegan burgers that are coming around, would you say that certainly legumes and grains that’s perfectly OMS compliant? Obviously, yeah. Tofu and Tempe? Slightly more processed, presumably. But you’d be fine with that, I guess?

 

Jack McNulty  18:59

Sure. Yeah, I have no problem with either one of them. Tempeh is really just whole. I said the original, you can make it from a number of different legumes. Generally made from soya. And it’s really using the whole whole beam. So Tempeh is much more of a whole food product and say tofu, which is basically just soy milk that’s been set.

 

Geoff Allix  19:20

Right? And seitan?

 

Jack McNulty  19:23

Seitan is a processed food. It’s basically just having the gluten removed from the starch. And it’s 100% gluten. That’s okay.

 

Geoff Allix  19:35

Would you say it’s over processed or fine?

 

Jack McNulty  19:39

No, I think and you know that now you’re kind of getting into the whole discussion, which I guess is where we are on this whole meat replacement is what’s considered acceptable within the OMS guidelines versus what’s considered acceptable with your own personal choices. Now, all of those foods seitan, quorn, tofu, tempeh, they’re all acceptable within the OMS guidelines as they’re written. Now, personal choices of some people taking that a little bit further and saying “No, I only want to eat whole foods, non processed foods.” So they may make the choice, the personal choice to eliminate some of those foods from their diet, which is fine. There’s absolutely zero problem with that. But for those that are just coming into the program, or want to have the broader perspective and have as much choice as possible within the OMS guidelines, then all of those are fine.

 

Geoff Allix  20:41

Yeah, I would say actually Quorn because I’m in the UK, you do need to be cautious because some of it does still contain some of it contains milk as well. So sometimes a milk sometimes egg. Yeah. And some of it’s absolutely fine. You’ve just got to check each different type of quorn.

 

Jack McNulty  20:59

I think the vegan ones actually say vegan on the packaging

 

Geoff Allix  21:01

They do, yeah. But I think a lot of people think oh, cool. And that by definition vegan. It’s there are actually many Quorn products that have certainly milk and I can so onto the, the big sort of publicity side of it, which is, and there’s two big companies that have come around Impossible Burgers and Beyond Meat burgers, and I will admit, I have tried both to see what it’s all about. Now, I am aware that their saturated fat content is high. It’s not massive, but it’s it’s higher than I would like. And, and I was certainly mindful of what else I was eating in that meal. And literally everything else was zero saturated fat. But yeah, try try them out. And one thing I actually realized is that impossible burgers are marketed very much in the states. And in restaurants. It seems to be they’re sold in restaurants, whereas Beyond Meat burgers, more sold in shops for you to make it yourself. And I realized in the States I hadn’t, I’ve had one Impossible Burger only but it the burger part of it is not the main thing. The main thing was nice tasting sauce and the salad that they’re putting in with it and the pickles and so on. And you actually think, okay, the burger really is mostly about a texture rather than anything. And yeah, so I would say both of those that the taste of sort of personal opinion that the taste is, is like a reasonably good meat burger, not a top top in sort of sirloin steak burger. It’s one where you would expect to have a lot of other fillings in your burger man. And that’s actually providing a lot of flavor. So what are your thoughts about these type of burgers anyway?

 

Jack McNulty  23:12

Just to fully admit, as you have, I’ve tried a half a Beyond Burger in my time, just one half. And I’ve never eaten an Impossible Burger. So I can’t comment on the actual texture flavor on the impossible from personal experience. But I do find it very interesting what’s going on in the world. So both companies sort of approached it differently and marketed the whole aspect a little bit differently. The timing is really interesting with both companies because they’ve gone a little bit more beyond the just animal rights and sort of tried to position their products in terms of environmental health in terms of human health. And so I think that that’s sort of interesting. But when you get right down to it, they’re both doing the same thing that all of those other products that we mentioned earlier, are doing their research, they’re trying to replace protein in some way or another. That’s the ultimate goal. And they’re spending a lot of money to do that. So there’s a few different approaches beyond uses 100% plant products in various forms, various processed forms, whereas impossible is the company that started using lab grown meat. So basically, they’re they’re taking a stem cell from the real cow, if they’re making some beef replacement, and they’re growing that cell in a petri dish and doing various things to keep that cell growing and basically creating lab meat. That’s basically what the Impossible Burger and then they’re adding other things into it to create different flavors and whatnot. On the horizon, there are many, many companies doing fish replacements as well as continued product expansion to include sausage of ground meat replaces burgers, steaks, chicken, veal, tuna, salmon, prawns, you name it, if it’s got meat or fish associated with it, there’s some sort of vegan replacement on the horizon. That’s one thing that you can be absolutely certain of. And it’s really interesting when you start to look at what these companies are doing and how they’re trying to create the food. And that sort of helps understand a little bit in terms of the OMS diet, as to whether it’s something you’re going to want to put into your your body or not. So basically, they start with building taste and body. So if a food doesn’t taste good, it’s not going to sell it’s as simple as that. And in order to do that they’re using as a base, they’re using a lot of these companies that they’re plant based. Anyway, they’re using protein, soy, textured soya protein, pea protein, even algae derived protein to make fish replacements. But all of these sorts of process proteins come with a price and that price is it creates a sort of unpleasant, off note in its taste. So to cover up that bit, and to create flavor, a lot of companies are adding various aromas. They’re using familiar culinary cues, if you will, to like adding smoke, or grilled flavors or canned flavors even just so that humans are a little bit more familiar with it. They’re creating premade dishes using popular flavors like teriakki, curry paste, soy sauce, sweet and sour, spicy peppers, sort of Mexican or South American vibe to them. And then they’re binding it all with more protein, usually something from a plant like the chickpea lentil, sunflower, peas are very popular these days. And then creating sort of mouthfeel. Now the mouthfeel is very important as well. And that’s usually made with some kind of starch, an isolated starch, fats, most commonly coconut, rapeseed or sunflower. There’s gels that are being used protein isolates. And then of course, they have to make the visual appeal attractive and so there, there can be natural or artificial colors included. So that’s an example of what what that process might look like. Now, returning to the original question from someone that asked about the Richmond vegan sausage, which I believe is available at Sainsbury’s, if I remember correctly, I looked that up on the website. I wasn’t familiar with it myself.

 

Geoff Allix  28:13

It’s widely available in supermarkets in the UK.

 

Jack McNulty  28:15

Yeah, so the ingredients in this particular sausage is water, rehydrated textured soya protein concentrate. There’s rusk made from wheat. There’s coconut oil, soya protein concentrate, chicory root fiber, there’s a stabilizer there’s cellulose, there’s natural flavorings, yeast extracts, or herbs, spices, five extracts. And various colorings coming from beet root stock flour, and then there’s salt added to it. That’s a long list of ingredients. So immediately, I would look at that and say no, that’s not for me, it might taste good, but I’m not going to put that in my body. Whereas there’s another as a as a comparison, there’s a chicken replacement that I know is available here and where I am in Switzerland, that made with pea protein, pea fiber, rapeseed oil, water and vitamin B 12. So it’s really only four or five ingredients fairly familiar. And would I eat that? I wouldn’t make it a habit. Would I try it? Probably, in fact, I have just posted just to put that out there. And it is quite good, but it’s nothing I you know, still a bit underwhelming for me. But then the ultimate question really is, you know, are these things healthy? Are these meat replacements healthy? I think if you look at the labels, it’s clear they’re not in terms of meat replacements. I did a little comparison between a normal beef burger a beyond burger and Impossible Burger, all having roughly the same amount of size or same size, and all of them containing roughly the same calories around 220 to 240 calories. And what was surprising to me was the beef burger had 17 grams of total fat and six saturated, whereas the beyond burger is 18 grams of fat a little bit more and five grams of saturated a little less. And the Impossible Burger, still less total fat at 14 but more saturated fat, eight grams, just for 100 and 100 gram burger, that’s a pretty healthy amount of saturated fat. The Beyond Burger and Impossible Burger have no cholesterol, whereas the beef burger does, because sodium becomes the big issue here. Whereas a normal beef burger might have something like 50 milligrams of sodium, the Beyond Burger has 355 milligrams, and the Impossible burgers 370 milligrams of sodium. So just based on the sodium alone, not that would send off a huge red flag that this is maybe something I wouldn’t necessarily want to put in, in my body. So I think that the ultimate takeaway here is, as these products expand and become more prevalent in the supermarkets, it is really, really important to read the labels to understand what it is you’re putting in your body. Ultimately, we’re all responsible on that level of what we put inside of us. And the only way you’re going to know that is by reading the label. And it’s also I think, vitally important to always keep in the back of your mind of the old, what’s the ultimate goal of OMS? What is it that you’re trying to do with the diet. And just to remind everybody, you’re trying to improve your blood profile, reduce cell oxidation, and reduce inflammation in your body? That’s what the diet is all designed to do. And if you ask that question and frame it with the ingredients are the products that you’re considering eating, then probably the decision more likely, and more often than not, is well, that’s something you want to stay away from and maybe replace it with something else. In terms of the whole meat replacement. industry that’s growing. Personally, I’m still, I still am formulating my opinions. As a curious chef, Geoff, you mentioned this yourself earlier, I like to, you know, experiment and stay on top of things, understand what the culinary significance is of some of these foods. I’m not against trying some of them, but that what I have tried so far, and would have known about them, I am rather underwhelmed by everything. From a personal health perspective, there’s quite a lot of sacrifice when viewed solely from the health perspective. So I like to keep that in balance. From a planetary health perspective, there’s actually a lot to gain when viewed from this perspective, we cannot continue our current food production in a sustainable manner. So something drastic must change in order to answer that, that ultimate protein question, you know, I certainly wouldn’t consider a diet that that incorporates a lot of these meat alternatives as your primary source of food, something that’s healthy, I mean still, you’re going to want to eat a lot of fruits, vegetables, beans, legumes, nuts, seeds, whole grains. And that’s really where you should be placing your your emphasis. But on the other hand, I don’t really want to demonize what these companies are doing. I think it’s very important for planetary health and perhaps even as a stepping stone for some people of transitioning from their from a genuinely unhealthy meat based or animal based diet to something a little bit more plant based. That can work, but probably not necessarily for everybody and certainly not so much for the OMS diet.

 

Geoff Allix  34:23

Okay, great. So, next question came from a number of listeners about grilling seafood and barbecuing. So the first thing is the definition for a worldwide audience of what we mean by grilling or barbecuing. So in the UK, a grilling would be direct heat from above barbecuing direct heat from below. So for a US audience, what would that be?

 

Jack McNulty  34:49

Grilling in the US would would refer to like a barbecue or something outside you know where your you got your charcoal or wood or gas or something I got with the heat sources coming from the bottom, as opposed to the UK where the it’s enclosed in an oven like environment where the heat source is coming from the top.

 

Geoff Allix  35:08

And it does it actually make much difference if we’re talking about direct heat. So if we’ve got, say, gas flames above, or gas flames below, discounting the charcoal effect where we’ve got a natural barbecue, but let’s say gas barbecue from below, or a gas grill from above, or they essentially?

 

Jack McNulty  35:26

Purely from a cooking perspective, it’s going to be relatively the same. I mean, it’s just depends on where you’re placing the heat, how close you are to the heat source, all of those sorts of things are gonna come into play. But ultimately, it’s just really a flavor difference.

 

Geoff Allix  35:42

So everything we talked about now it’s really just if you’ve got charcoal, then you get the smoky flavor. Yeah, if you’ve got gas, you don’t.

 

Jack McNulty  35:51

Exactly you can get still smoky flavor from a gas grill.

 

Geoff Allix  35:56

You can actually get add in briquettes to add to give you a sort of hickory smoke flavor and things to.

 

Jack McNulty  36:03

You add wood chips in a certain way. That would certainly add a lot more smoke to it. But just even a normal gas, barbecue will give you some degree of a flavor. Maybe it’s more of a mental thing, because you got the whole the summer vibe, you know you’re outside with the grill going maybe it’s that.

 

Geoff Allix  36:27

So back to the original question, which seafood is best to barbecue or grill?

 

Jack McNulty  36:36

Well, this is breaking down. Seafood for me means everything non fish that think of it coming from the ocean, really. So you’re talking about your octopus or a cuttlefish, prawns, that sort of thing. That’s how I would sort of define seafood. So all of those are good to grill or barbecue, there are some things to be aware of, they’re gonna give you a lot more of a chewy texture, they can dry out because they’re all relatively low in fat. And the timing of all of these is very critical. So with anything like an octopus, at calamari, cuttlefish, that sort of thing. You have the rule you cook at one minute over high heat, or you cook it more than an hour over moderate heat, everything in between is going to be basically rubber. It’s it’s a strange thing with with these kinds of food, but really that very quick cooking, it’s going to be chewy, but not so bad. But once it goes more than about a minute or so it becomes really like leather. Or you can long cook it and just let it let it to interesting in Greece, you’ll see this a lot where they tend to sun dry octopus or calamari. And that sort of softens it or tenderizes it and then they just put it on a very hot grill for about a minute or so. Lock it down in front of you usually with a glass of ouzo, and you’re good to go.

 

Geoff Allix  38:07

And so if we’re talking about seafood in a more general context, including fish, then then what about fish to barbecue?

 

Jack McNulty  38:17

Yeah, then you can you can break that down further into high fat fish versus sort of low fat white fish. And so high fat fish is going to work the best. It’s going to be moist. It cooks relatively fast on a hot grill or if you’re using a hot temperature, and it’s very appropriate for something that small to cook at home. So you’re talking about things like not small certainly, but these kinds of fish would be like salmon, tuna, macrel, and the smaller sardines you’d want to cook whole or even something like a Mahi Mahi, which grilles really nicely. The low fat white fish or thick kind of white fish like halibut, swordfish, snappers that sort of thing that’s going to cook well on a grill but you’ll have a drier flavor for sure. And if you’re not set up real well on the grill, the fish will tend to flake or stick or fall apart and then you got those sorts of issues to deal with. I can offer some some tips if you’re using like a barbecue.

 

Geoff Allix  39:28

That would be very useful. Yeah.

 

Jack McNulty  39:31

Yeah, so the best thing to do if you’re barbecuing any of the seafood high fat fish or low fat fish is make sure you preheat the grill should be quite quite hot. That’s really actually the critical element to prevent too much sticking on the grill. The other bit is you got to oil the grates. Now that sounds a little bit counterintuitive to what OMS is all All about but you do need to get some oil on the grates that’s not going to transfer onto your food, you’re really just making kind of the surface a little bit slippery or it should be shiny and black. The way we used to do it in, in the restaurant is basically we’d pick you pick an onion, we just cut it in half, we put a big fork in the onion, we dip that onion in some oil and then we just rub the onion on the grate several times. But you got to move quick if you get it burn your hand a little bit also some of the fish, not necessarily for the for the high fat fish, but some of them you want to give a a light coating of oil that helps prevent sticking. But it doesn’t have to be a lot just a really just a light brushing. Or if you’re using some kind of spray just spraying it on. You want to lightly season fish you want to avoid too much salt on on fish before cooking it because the salt will draw out some of the water that’s going to make it dry but it’s also going to create a problem in terms of the grilling and cool the temperature down. And that will help the sticking part of the fish on the grill which is not good. So when you put fish on, on a great in a barbecue always with the inside down if there is a skin and you want to lower the heat to about medium. Generally, for cooking, fish cook it two to four minutes. Of always avoid turning moving it around too quickly. Interestingly, with most things that you grill, the grate or grill by barbecuing, the grate will release the product when it’s ready. So a fish, if it’s not quite cooked, it will still stick on the on the grate. But if it did go up, you’ll have those nice marks on there and just release itself. You just want to flip that over. generally smaller fish, the smaller the fish, the higher the temperature. Grilling baskets are very useful when you’re barbecuing, especially for some fish that tend to fall apart. So you can get those easily and just put the fish in between the baskets and just grill it that way. You can also wrap fish and leaves or aluminium. And you want to avoid marinating any kind of fish beforehand. Always want to cook it then marinated afterwards if you want that flavor on the fish.

 

Geoff Allix  42:34

So to change a little bit away from barbecuing, what about picnics? What were the the best OMS friendly foods to bring on a picnic?

 

Jack McNulty  42:44

Here, I think the world of possibilities opened up quite extensively when it comes to answering questions. So I think it’s best to address it this way. Think first about the environment that you’re going to have this picnic in, you know, how long is the food going to be out? You need to keep it cold? Or can it be left at room temperature for you know, several hours. And then also how are people going to both serve the food to themselves and also eat it. So those are the the actual considerations now in terms of suggestions on what would be good for almost friendly picnic. Somewhere salads are great for picnics. Now I’m not talking about the leafy green kind of salad here. I’m talking about something that’s great served at room temperature that you can mix a lot of vegetables in, I like making grain salad. So either with some kind of wheat or quinoa or using something like bulger or buckwheat even up there’s so many different types of grains that you can cook and then just simply mix with a lot of different vegetables. Add a little bit of seasoning as you wish a lot of fresh herbs, and away you go so that that’s those are always popular after the salads are fantastic. Not necessarily spaghetti, although you can do some nice stuff with Asian using longer noodle. But basically pasta lends itself well for making the salad and all kinds of different flavors going into a bean salads are the same way. Potato Salad is just simply steamed potatoes mixed with some onions and just with like a little lemon vinegar wrapped or something of this nature. It’s fantastic. These are all very familiar offerings. People are going to recognize them. You don’t have to spend a lot of time explaining yourself saying well I’ve got you know MS, and I’ve got to protect myself by having this particular kind of diet. You didn’t serve the food and food becomes food that people enjoy and it’s recognizable. So that that’s those are the kinds of that kind of food would be very appropriate. I think pies are another thing savory pies, who doesn’t like a good pie, you know. And generally, they can be just fantastic at room temperatures, especially just little individual hand pies, they’re simple to make lots of different ways you can do it, and you can fill them with whatever you want to do. One of the things I like to do, some may be a little bit more advanced, but that’s not advanced, really, is that I like to just make some kind of dramatic savory bread.

 

Geoff Allix  45:34

I love the sound of that. This is a dramatic savory bread.

 

Jack McNulty  45:40

Exactly. When it’s really, it’s really just making a simple bread dough, which you could easily do. And then I like to just played it. Now that is a little bit more advanced for some people, but you can roll it out flat, you can bake basically put some kind of feeling on it. I like using things like some dried tomato walnuts or something like Swiss chard and tahini or something unusual. And just create a sort of feeling, just roll it up as if you’re going to make some kind of swiss roll or something like that. You can twist it, bring it together and kind of then just bake and it looks like a crown at that point. And it’s just fantastic to present something really unusual like that. And then of course, anything that can be grilled: skewers burgers, of course, you’re making your own burger makes at this point. All vegetables are fantastic. That sort of thing is just great in a picnic environment.

 

Geoff Allix  46:38

And so we’ve had another question from from Nicola from Canterbury in the UK, who’s asking about things that she could try on a barbecue because her homemade bean burgers fall apart. And she worries about cooking fish over direct heat. She has had some success with mushrooms in oil, but doesn’t have any ideas. Any other ideas? So is there any tips of things that she could grill over barbecue?

 

Jack McNulty  47:02

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Again, the world is pretty open on this, you know, it’s it’s interesting BBQ really relies on the open flame kind of cooking, which is the original kind of cooking, when when man first started heating food or cooking food, they just put it right in the fire and so it kind of plays along those lines. So I like to use vegetables now, on the barbecue. I think it’s the mistake a lot of people make with vegetables as they cut up their vegetables either to fine or even cutting it in the first place. I like to leave the vegetables whole completely like for instance just put a whole eggplant onto the barbecue. Poke a few holes into it because eggplant tends to

 

Geoff Allix  47:50

In the UK that’s an aubergine.

 

Jack McNulty  47:52

Yeah, exactly sorry. And or a whole sweet pepper, courgette, onions of course corn. Meaning the actual vegetable corn, not the mushroom based Quorn product that we talked about earlier. All of those things work extremely well. And I think the best thing to think about when you’re cooking a whole vegetable is to avoid oiling them. With the exception of probably mushrooms, they need a little bit of oil. But generally all vegetables don’t need anyway you just put them right on the grill. I just grilled carrots the other day. They’re fantastic. A whole carrot just thrown on to a barbecue. In fact, it’s a bit of a trend where people do that and mix it with a barbecue sauce and cook it as a hotdog replacement. I’ve seen that going around in the vegan world lately. So use your vegetables and keep them pull keep them cut big. That’s one thing to do. Another thing I like to do is using flatbreads, either store bought or just make something your own on your own. So that can be tortillas. They can be any kind of flatbread really, and just putting them onto the grill and you just really think grill or barbecue. They go really fast in terms of cooking and then you can create any kind of sort of fillings or toppings ahead of time. It’s it’s quite fun in a picnic to do that. And have a make your own taco sort of picnic where you have all of the ingredients made ahead of time and people are just basically throwing a tortilla on the grill for a minute or two and that’s it. And they make their own little taco or burrito or some kind of wrap or something. And I like tofu in this format. So with tofu, it’s very important to use a very firm tofu, but it’s also important to marinate it. I like to marinate it overnight, usually a half hour an hour is the minimum. But if you create some sort of acid based have sort of like a lemon mustard sort of mixture and let it just sit in there with plenty of seasoning. Overnight, take it out of the marinade, wipe it a little bit dry, then go ahead and grill it and then you put it back into the marinade when it’s done, I think you’ll find that that’s quite tasty. And it makes a really nice sandwich actually. In fact, one of thinking new sandwiches, just throw this idea out there. I just did this this week where you’d have some bread, you grill the bread real quick, I did my whole egg plant. Once it’s grilled, it takes about 15 minutes, it gets very soft, he has cut it in half, all of the interior just flows away from the skin very, very easily. It becomes sort of like a Baba ganoush kind of dip, if you will, is very soft. You just use that as a spread. Put a little bit of grilled tofu on there with some lettuce and onions. And I make a little Yemeni kind of spicy condiment that goes on to that. And it was delicious. It’s a great option for something on the grill.

 

Geoff Allix  51:16

So we’ve covered the main course or what how about desserts and sweets? Do you have anything? Any ideas of things you could bring to picnics? For dessert?

 

Jack McNulty  51:25

Well, most definitely, most definitely. Yeah, forget about the sweets in my opinion. I think the key with desserts like any kind of food is really the temperature management. Think about how people will eat that dessert. You don’t want to bring the cake without having a plate or some kind of fork around that sort of thing. So let me just run down some ideas. So I like fruit filled pies. They can either be whole pies or hand pies. You can make them really easily a hand pie with filo dough, for instance, roll them, you’re filling up into a triangle and bake it and then take it. The thing that’s nice about pies is they’re generally really good. They don’t have to be cold. They’re very good. room temperatures well think about something like a crumble. Always popular simple to make. You can use whatever fruits are in season. Even a light cake with a fruit or berry compote. Something I can olive oil cake, you know, very spongy, like that sort of thing that’s very familiar to people. Um, those are those are excellent. Something like a trifle I think is really nice as well where you can put fruit inside of a glass and alternate with some kind of simple cream, either cashew baits or yogurt based. They go over really well in terms of sweet dessert. And so hopefully those are some pretty good ideas to get people started on.

 

Geoff Allix  52:52

in the UK that tends to be a trifle would have another essential ingredient which is alcohol they have actually warned on government warnings about people going over the drink driving limit from from eating trifle which had so much Sherry in it that actually people ate too much of it became drunk.

 

Jack McNulty  53:18

That might be only a problem in the UK

 

Geoff Allix  53:21

It’s probably a cultural thing. But you know, I mean, certainly in the UK, if there’s a bit of sherry in there, and you’ve got plenty of plenty of fruit, then yeah, people would be happy. So thank you very much for joining us again, with your cooking tips, Jack. It’s been really useful. I’m definitely looking forward to getting the barbecue out.

 

Jack McNulty  53:46

Good. Thanks, Geoff and all our listeners. It’s been fantastic diving into your questions, and I look forward to our next podcast and I believe September if I’m not mistaken. Remember we’re doing the show to answer your food and cooking questions. So please get those questions submitted to us at podcast at overcoming ms.org as soon as possible. We focused on the principles of OMS and until next time.

 

Geoff Allix  54:14

Thank you. Join us from 19th of May for the next episode of Living Well with MS. Very very special and insightful interview with Dr. Sandra Neate the head of the Neuroepidemiology unit or NEU, within the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne in Australia. The NEU is at the forefront of research into lifestyle related risk factors in MS and health outcomes and the experiences of people who adopt lifestyle modifications. Have a listen to hear what’s on the NEU’s research horizon and how it may impact you. Subscribe to this podcast and never miss an episode. You can catch any episode of living well with MS either on the Overcoming MS website or on your favorite podcast listening app. Don’t be shy if you liked the program, leave a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you tune into the show. And feel free to share your comments and suggestions by emailing podcast at overcomingms.org. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ask Jack, the special five part series where we dive into questions from our OMS community about all things food, please check out this episode shownotes at overcomingms.org/podcast You’ll find all sorts of useful links and bonus information there. If you’d like to submit a question for a future episode of Ask Jack, please email us at [email protected] You can also subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. Ask Jack is kindly supported by grant from the Happy Charitable Trust. If you’d like to support the Overcoming MS charity and help keep our podcast advertising free, you can donate online at overcomingms.org/donate Thank you for your support. Ask Jack is produced by Overcoming MS, the world’s leading multiple sclerosis healthy lifestyle charity. We are here to help inform, support and empower everyone affected by MS. To find out more and subscribe to our E newsletter. Please visit our website at overcomingms.org Thanks again for tuning in and see you next time.