Torch Reform

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, torch reform.

Spike brings the case against his wife, Ellie.

Spike would like a kitchen blowtorch.

Ellie thinks it's too dangerous.

Who's right, who's wrong?

Only one man can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents an obscure cultural reference.

In Greek myth, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humankind.

The jewelry he kept for himself.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, swear them in.

Please rise and raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

So help you, God, or whatever?

I do.

I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that he doesn't need a torch to...

Never mind.

I do.

Yes, I do.

Judge Hodgman, you may begin.

Spike and Ellie, you may be seated.

for an immediate summary judgment in one of your favors.

Can either of you name the piece of culture that I quoted as I entered this fake internet courtroom?

Spike, why don't you go first?

I didn't recognize the quote, so I'm going to go with my prepared guess, which is friend of the podcast, Alton Brown.

Alton Brown.

Oh, that would have been a good one because he likes to talk about cooking, and this is about a culinary torch that you want to get.

Indeed.

Mm-hmm.

Alton Brown.

Good guess.

Putting it in there.

I'm not revealing whether it's right or wrong, but it's not correct.

Okay, Ellie.

A quote from Julia Child.

A quote from Julia Child.

I'm actually writing it down.

Why am I doing this?

No, August.

You mean to say that when you say you're writing it in the guest book, that's not actually true, Judge Hodgman?

Well, I'm not always engraving it the way I claim to.

But I often will write it down a little bit as I try to think of what to say next, which is wrong.

I didn't go in any culinary direction at all.

I went in mythological direction because

you wish for the gift of fire.

And as we know from this quote and from Greek myth, the Titan Prometheus first shaped humanity out of clay, then so loved his creation that he wished to give humankind the gift of fire and stole it from Olympus and gave it.

But then when he waged war on the titans, Zeus punished Prometheus especially for raising humankind out of savagery with the gift of fire.

And so Prometheus was bound to a mountaintop.

And every day a vulture or eagle, depending on the translation, would eat Prometheus' liver.

And then the liver would regrow.

And then the vulture or eagle would eat it again with a nice Chianti.

I think that's how that myth goes.

Anyway.

I was looking for a lot of different Prometheus quotes.

I was going to maybe quote Prometheus Unbound by Byron.

And I was going going to get a quote from the movie Prometheus, the prequel to Alien, which, by the way, Jesse Thornton, that's David Reese's favorite movie.

The movie Prometheus?

Yeah.

His favorite film of all time.

I'm slandering David Reese right now, my good friend and colleague and collaborator, David Reese.

I'm slandering him because he actually likes Prometheus.

And so I think the punishment for liking Prometheus is saying that it is his favorite movie.

You ever see that movie, Spike?

No, I gave it a pass.

It's visually stunning, atmospherically boring.

But I figured you would guess that one, so instead I quoted the fact sphere, a character from the video game Portal 2.

Didn't you play Portal 2, Spike?

I did play Portal 2.

Yeah.

I enjoyed that game very much.

It's one of the facts that the Fact Sphere spouts throughout the game, or a certain portion of the game.

And, of course, both of the closing songs to Portal and Portal 2, written by my friend Jonathan Colton, friend of the podcast.

John, one of these days you're going to quote a video game that I know about.

Like, you're just going to go, pow, and I'm going to be like, oh, yeah, Madden 95 for the Genesis.

Do you not know the games Portal and Portal 2?

These had a song from Jonathan Colton, and I heard they were really wonderful games.

They're really terrific puzzle games that I highly recommend.

And Spike, you played Portal 2 and enjoyed it, but you missed out on guessing correctly.

So now we are going to hear this case.

Spike.

You bring this case because you want to get a torch for your kitchen, like a gas torch.

Yes.

You want to use it to set your hair on fire and to get rid of your eyebrows, correct?

Or maybe the hairs on the back of my hand.

Sure.

Okay.

But you want to use it for what purpose?

I would like to brown steaks with it after cooking them sous.

Aha.

I should have known sous vide was involved in this.

Yeah, pretty much.

Come on.

His name's Spike and lives in Seattle.

Of course, he wants to sous vide to steak.

And Ellie, you do not want this

because you're like, why don't we just cook steaks the normal way on fire?

I mean, the sous vide is wonderful, but I don't feel like we need that.

We can finish them off in a pan.

Well, look, anyone who wants to learn about sous videing of steaks, and the sous vide method that we're referring to, if you're not familiar, is a method of very low temperature or relatively low temperature cooking for long periods of time, which is made safe by vacuum sealing your target food, such as a steak or a chicken or vegetables, or it could be anything, into a vacuum-sealed bag and then essentially poaching that bag, submerging it in water that is kept at a low temperature or your final target temperature for cooking for a long period of time.

And it allows you to really

micromanage your steak.

Because if you want that steak to be at 126 degrees internal temperature, 130 degrees internal temperature, then you just set the water at that and you get the steak up to that temperature and then it stays there and it won't overcook.

Do I have that correct, Spike?

Yeah, yeah.

What I really like about it is that even if you have a giant thick piece of steak, it cooks it exactly the same all the way through.

Absolutely right, Spike, because when you cook a steak in the traditional way over a grill or a pan, the external surface of the steak gets heated to a very high temperature, and only the middle gets to that whatever perfect medium rare you want.

Whereas in the sous vide method, the entire steak is heated precisely to the temperature you want.

The doneness is completely even throughout the steak and you don't have all the muss and fuss of that beautiful charred exterior.

You just have this floppy piece of meat that is kind of gray on the outside.

Yeah.

And so that's what the torch is for.

So explain what you do with the torch after you take the steak out of the bag.

Yeah, you pull it out of the bag, but it's kind of not browned and nice on the outside.

Having done this, I'm going to paint a word picture for the audience.

When you take that steak out of the bag, it looks like the necrotic tongue of a dead god.

It's disgusting.

It does not look very appetizing.

You're absolutely right.

And not only does it not look appetizing, that sort of brownness on the outside of the steak is really tasty.

So you want to get that brownness.

And so what I want to do is use a blowtorch to brown the outside of the steak.

Perhaps there are people listening to this podcast going, this guy's out of his mind, blowtorch.

But this is a known technique in the sous-vied world.

Yes, right.

That's correct.

And so, even though this is a proven and known technique, Ellie, you do not like this technique.

Is your concern primarily safety, or is this just one affectation too far for your home chef partner?

It's definitely safety-related.

What is your concern?

So, I personally have dealt with a number of burns from kitchen-related items, mostly on other people.

And it just seems like there's a lot of recipe for disaster there.

You are a physician?

Is that correct?

I am a burn and trauma surgeon.

Oh.

So you're familiar with the Browning process.

I am very familiar with the Browning process.

You're familiar with the Maillard reaction, which is what happens to protein

when it is exposed to high heat.

That is correct.

Yeah.

But in a very unpleasant way.

Do you see a lot of kitchen blowtorch injuries in your line of work?

They are infrequent, but present.

Really?

Oh, so you have seen cool sous videers who overestimate their own skill with the blowtorch and have burned themselves.

I haven't asked about what they were cooking when they burnt themselves with the blowtorch, but

certainly I've seen people who have burned themselves with kitchen blowtorches.

These could have been creme brulee injuries, you admit.

I admit that it could be creme brulee.

And so you have sent in some evidence, Ellie, and I am presuming that I'm about to look at some photos of horrible burns.

I hope not.

I didn't do that.

Oh, good.

Thank you very much.

No, here it is.

Instead, you sent in some news articles discussing various torch shenanigans and explosions and bad things happening.

And we'll look at those.

But first, Spike, you sent in some evidence as well, which is a video of a cute dog.

Yeah.

Hoping to sway sway this court.

Well, I know that we all love Jesse's reaction to seeing cute animals.

And I know that Ellie is maybe eventually going to be bringing in some questions or some discussion about a tarantula.

So I thought it would be good to have some visual evidence of the animals that we already have in the house.

The picture of Tent Dog.

He went inside the bag of food.

And then it's just his little chihuahua noses poking out.

Look, hey, yeah, I ate this food.

No, but Jesse, click on the link.

There's a video.

Okay,

I gotta click on it.

Let's get this out of the way because he's attempting to sway the court and distract us from justice by showing us his video of the dog.

So let's get it.

Oh, boy.

He's wearing it as a cat.

He's like a little chihuahua guy.

And he got

the big bag of dog food.

His head is through it like it was a yoke on an ox.

the dog got stuck

while attempting to escape from dog jail that was a really good one oh wow that was totally worth it

i'm getting honestly kind of mad at people sending me these in a like dance monkey but like this is good

It is something now that people routinely will send in photos and videos of animals telling me that I have to show them to you to get you to react to it.

And there is a bit of a pushiness to it.

And Spike, this is entirely immaterial to your case.

In fact, I would dare say that giving this to me to show to Jesse is prejudicial against your case because it seems like you don't have a case.

But this is a very cute dog, and I do want to show it to Jesse.

The footage will be available on the Judge Sean Hodgman page, both on Instagram and on maximumfund.org.

And for the record, enter please into the record, Spike, the name of this dog.

The dog is named the Loch Nest Monster.

Boom, cryptozoology dog name with a definite article.

The Loch Nest Monster is the name of the dog.

That's correct.

All right.

Yeah.

An integral article.

Do you call it Nessie for short?

Yes, we do.

Pretty good.

So you got a dog.

Oh, look at the kitty is in a cup.

Right, there's a cat as well.

Oh,

look at that little kitty.

I want to give the kitty a kiss.

That would be kaiju.

Kaiju, the kitty named Kaiju, of course, being the reference to the genre of Japanese giant monster movies like Godzilla.

Correct.

Who's naming these animals in your house, Ellie?

It's a joint effort.

I picked the genre, which was I wanted all of our animals to be named after monsters, and then together we come up with...

individualized names.

All right.

That's pretty awesome.

Because you could understand, from my point of view, I have a guy here who's nicknamed Spike who likes likes sous vide.

And all of a sudden, these animals are being trotted out with these unusual names.

And I'm thinking, like, what else has this guy got in the kitchen?

Well, it doesn't get even weirder than Sous vide.

I think that's probably the most highly effected cooking instrument that you can have today.

Ellie, does your partner have other dumb or unnecessarily expensive kitchen stuff?

I don't think so.

Oh, actually, there's one thing that he has.

He has this Kona Coffee Maker

that's super fancy,

where you have like an open flame, like alcohol thing on the bottom, and then you watch

the water go up, and then it filters through the coffee and then back down into a, like through a percolator, back into like the bottom.

Like a chemistry distillation coffee maker?

Oh, yeah.

With an open flame.

With an open flame, alcohol-based.

Spike, Ellie is a physician who deals with burns and trauma, and you're just trying to stock up your house with as many open flames as possible.

Are you trying to gaslight her on fire?

I don't think that it is fair to call this coffee maker like strictly mine.

We don't drink coffee.

That's true, but we got it together, and you were 100% supportive of getting it when we got it.

It was a Christmas gift.

Poor him.

All right.

So, Spike, have you worked with a blowtorch on a steak before?

Yes, briefly once.

Oh, okay.

At a friend's house.

That he convinced to get a sous vide.

Oh, so Spike, you convinced your friend to get a sous vide rig, and then he went to the next step.

Yep.

And now you've got to keep up with the torchies.

How did you get into sous vide, Spike?

And what do you like to cook in it?

I mean, I mostly like to cook meats in it.

And I'm not really sure what originally got me on it.

I think just, you know, reading stuff on the internet and people talking about how restaurants use them and how it's like what I really like about it is that

it makes it really straightforward to get meat done the way that you want it.

And you can kind of put this thing on, and then you don't have to have precise timings and temperatures and things like that.

It just sort of takes all of the randomness out of cooking meat.

For sure.

Although, to be clear, there is a time element.

As our friend Jaykenji Lopez-Alt has demonstrated, if you leave most proteins in the sous vide for a really long time, they will get mushy.

Yes, that's correct.

But the sort of precision that is required is in sort of tens of minutes to hours, not

one minute or 30 seconds too long and it's overdone kind of stuff, where you're cooking in other methods.

But you didn't answer my question, Spike, which is what are the other meats other than steak that you're making?

that you like to do in the sous vide.

I like to do chicken a lot and pork chops.

And so how do you brown them when they come out?

Well, the chicken we normally put into a pasta dish, and so we don't bother to try and brown it.

We just break it up and put it in.

Okay.

So you're talking about like a chicken breast on the bone, or are you talking about like chicken fillets?

Usually boneless,

skinless breasts.

Right, okay, gotcha.

And pork chops?

You just like having gray, floppy pork chops, or do you sear them off at some point?

Well, I mean, since I don't have a blowtorch now, the way that I sear them is in a a stupidly hot pan.

That works, doesn't it?

I mean, it works, but it sort of feels much more dangerous to me than

a blowtorch, right?

Like, if I have this pan, I have to put oil in it and then, like, heat it really, really hot, and then you put the meat in, the meat is wet, the oil splatters.

You know, like, oil fires are definitely a thing that happen in the kitchen.

Whereas with a blowtorch, I can just take it out of the sous vide bag, put it on a sheet pan, and then have at it with this blowtorch, and there's there's like nothing flammable around it.

Like you can't get a chunk of meat to like start on fire.

So it just doesn't seem nearly as dangerous as the other ways of browning.

I'm going to be honest with you, the phrase, you can't get a chunk of meat to start on fire, sounds like a challenge to me.

Let's take a quick break and hear about another wonderful show provided to your ears by maximumfun.org.

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Court is back in session.

Let's return to the courtroom to hear more of the case.

Ellie, do you enjoy the Sud V cooking?

How long has Spike been doing it?

Let's see.

July of last year, so just a year and a half now.

Okay.

And what are the results?

How do you like that chicken that comes out of a a bag compared to chicken that comes out of a oven?

It's actually really tasty.

I actually think that we cook the chicken like more regularly to like the like level that we like it.

Previously, we were obviously.

You like it medium rare, right?

You like a medium rare.

Not chicken.

No, okay.

No, fully cooked, ideally.

Right.

But I actually, the chicken is fantastic and the steaks are also quite good.

And the other argument for this kind of cooking, of course, is that it concentrates flavors.

You can put in different aromatics and different spices into the bag.

And with chicken, you don't lose any moisture because it's all stuck in there.

It's a big bag of wet chicken in a tepid pool of water for hours.

It's delicious.

It's the form of cooking that robs all of the romance of cooking from cooking and turns it into a weird science fiction experiment, which is part of the reason it's fun.

But I guess what I'm asking you, Ellie, is before I rule on whether or not Spike should graduate to having a super hot, high-intensity open flame in his hand, before I, Prometheus, give him fire, is he good at this?

Is he a good sous vide cook?

Is he a good cook in general?

He's definitely a very good cook, and he's the one that does most of the cooking in the family.

So, yes, he is a good cook.

He is very careful.

And I was going to ask, I mean, is he normally a careful cook?

Has he had accidents before that give you pause

before Prometheus gives him a blowtorch.

No, he's not particularly clumsy or anything like that.

That's me.

You're not helping your case any here.

You have to store the blowtorch.

All right.

Before we get to that, quick question.

Did you eat the steak that Spike made at the friend's house when he got to use his friend's blowtorch?

Yes.

And how did it compare?

to a sous-vied steak that was finished in a stupidly hot, presumably cast iron pan?

Did you notice a difference?

I did notice a difference, and I liked the one with butter in the cast iron pan the best.

Oh, better than a torchy.

Yes.

Right.

So, Ellie, you send in some other evidence that pertains to this case, which are these news articles with headlines like, creme brulee torch explodes in Swiss restaurant, injuring 15.

There's a lot of people to get hit by a creme brulee torch.

Those creme brulee torches are little, little teeny guys.

Yeah, but the Swiss really cram them in in there into those creme brulee restaurants.

The old Swiss saying is, if you're cooking with high heat, get everyone into the kitchen.

I think that's how it goes.

Headline, chef sent to Burns unit after, quote, gas explosion at London restaurant.

That's from the UK.

Woman sues Disneyland after chef mistakenly brulees her face.

And then finally, Mary Berry from the great British bake-off or baking show or whatever it's called.

It's called different things in different territories, says you can't use a blowtorch to get that crunchy top on a creme brulee.

She says it should be under a grill.

That's the traditional way to do it.

What are you trying to establish with these news reports?

That blowtorches are dangerous and they're not necessary.

All right.

You have to appreciate that these are just a few stories.

Did you find any more?

So I think all of those are within the last two years.

Okay.

Have you firsthand, personally, in your work as a burn doctor, cared for patients who were injured through home blowtorch cooking accidents?

Home blowtorch, that was a cooking blow torch, but not a cooking-related incident.

If that is

right, so someone had a cooking blowtorch, but we're not cooking with it.

Correct.

What, to attack someone?

To get rid of bugs.

That's awesome.

Oh, what a bad idea.

I'm willing to promise not to get rid of bugs with the torch if you grant me the permission to get one, Judge.

If I were to order in your favor, do you have a torch in mind?

And you may use a brand name.

No, I mean, you know, just a standard kind of kitchen blowtorches is all I want.

Okay.

What are you afraid is going to happen?

You mentioned something, Ellie, about storing the blowtorch, which would seem to be the least of your worries when we're talking about a live active flame.

What is your concern about the storage of the blowtorch?

Well, I trust Spike to be conscientious when he's actually using it, but we do, as you have seen, have little critters running around the house.

So, you know, tripping over them or having some accident befall it, or if you store it.

There was one news article that you didn't mention about a father and son that had stored a blowtorch in their kitchen, and it actually, like, I think blew the door off of it.

And they suffered injury.

Did you determine from from that article that they were storing their blowtorch inappropriately, like in the oven?

It was unclear.

All right.

So you're afraid the Loch Ness monster, a.k.a.

Nessie, might accidentally trip over the blowtorch and set his dog food bag collar on fire.

Yes.

So Spike, why do you think we're here?

Why do you think Ellie is nervous about your having the blowtorch?

Is this typical?

in your relationship, or do you think she has another motive?

I think that it's just, you know, related to Ellie's line of work.

You know, she deals with burns.

They're quite traumatic.

And so she's just extra-sensitive about the dangers of various kinds of fire things in the house.

Whereas, you know, there are lots of things in the house that are dangerous, or driving a car around, or things like that.

And you sort of don't really think about how dangerous those things are.

But in a sort of sober assessment of your risk, the blowtorch wouldn't be the thing that is likely to actually harm me.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: So you're saying that your wife, who is a trained physician, who's actually trained burn victims and has seen all the things that go wrong, is just too sensitive.

She has heightened sensitivity to burn injuries.

How about that?

Spike, you're saying that your wife, a burn physician, is actually a Frankenstein, afraid of fire.

I don't think I'd go that far.

Jesse, how do you feel about Frankenstein's compared to Dracula's?

I have no problem with Frankensteins.

They're just trying to do their best.

They're misunderstood.

Right, misunderstood monsters, not active bloodsuckers like a Draculus.

Oh, God, Draculus.

Oh.

Ugh.

Kind of freaking out over here.

Let's move on to something else.

All right.

Hey, Draculus.

Spike, do you not also believe that there is another motive in her denying you this blowtorch?

I heard tell of a tarantula.

Yeah, so I don't think that that is another motive.

I think that that is a sort of specious argument against the blowtorch.

Because basically, when I said, oh, I want a blowtorch, and she said, no, I don't think you should get one.

And I said, that is unreasonable.

She said, well, you won't let me get a tarantula.

And is that so?

Is it the case that Ellie would like a tarantula and you will not allow her to have one?

So I don't think it's the case that she would really like a tarantula, but like we were having this conversation and she was talking sort of wistfully about remembering growing up and having this tarantula.

And I like put a lid on that really quickly and said, no, we're not getting a tarantula just in case you're ever thinking about it.

Well, wait a minute.

Why?

Ellie, tell me about the wistful reminiscence of tarantula's past that you were having and your actual or specious desire to get a new one.

Did you have one as a child?

It was my brother's, technically, but it lived in the family room right in front of the fireplace.

Was it named the abominable snowman?

It was called free stuff

because we got it from the pet store and they were so desperate to get rid of it that it came with like its little tiny terrarium and a bunch of other stuff with it.

So it was not free.

The stuff that came with it was free.

Correct.

Like, take this tarantula off our hands and we'll gift you an enclosure so it doesn't crawl all over your house.

I would have imagined that you took it home from a box on the street corner labeled free stuff that also was full of like 80s horror VHS tapes.

That's what I was hoping, too.

Looks like we have some old paperbacks we don't want, and also nine tarantulas.

Look, I've heard a lot of great pet names on this show and in this very episode, but Free Stuff the Tarantula, that is the greatest.

Spike.

Yeah, that's real good.

You got to acknowledge that's awesome, having a tarantula named Free Stuff.

Why should I not shut down this conversation right now and order Ellie to get a brand new tarantula named Free Stuff 2?

Is that the number two or T-O-O?

You know what?

Ellie's choice.

It's your tarantula.

Free stuff to electric boogaloo.

No, that's not allowed.

I said Ellie's choice.

No riffin', Spike.

No riffin'.

Yeah.

Spike, you should know.

This is 2018.

It's free stuff to the legend of Curly's Gold.

Spike, that's so awesome.

Why don't you want a tarantula in the house?

This would be so easily solved if I could order yes tarantula, yes, blowtorch.

Bring some adventure into this house.

I think I have a sort of not unreasonable fear of spiders.

Yeah, but you would have a blowtorch to defend yourself.

I thought I was supposed to promise not to

use it for things that aren't cooking.

Yeah.

Tarantulas are not insects.

It's different.

They're arachnids.

You can fight a tarantula with a blowtorch if it comes for you because it's not going to.

Right, Ellie?

Tarantulas are nice, aren't they?

She was very sweet.

Tell me a little bit about free stuff.

So she was a rose-haired tarantula.

And when we got her, she only had seven legs, and she molted a couple of times.

So we had her.

It was many years.

And so I slowly started regrowing that leg.

I didn't know tarantulas could regrow a leg.

And she only had seven legs and she was thrown out in a box marked free.

Exactly.

Well, how did she lose her leg?

I don't know how she lost her leg.

That was before we had her.

They can live like 20 years.

Whoa.

That's amazing.

I'd like to point out this is another reason not to get it right.

Spike, stand by.

Tell me more, Ellie.

Did you let her crawl all over your arms and stuff?

So my aunt, who worked at the Desert Museum in Arizona, would come up and kind of be the one that did most of the handling of her.

Most of us just kind of watched her eat crickets.

What's a tarantula like?

Are they smart?

Do they come when they're called?

They certainly don't do any tricks.

They'd kind of dance around in their cage, like spinning webs and eat eat little bugs and be interesting to look at.

How big was Freestep?

Like 16 inches long?

Probably with her legs spread out like the size of like a normal person's palm without the fingers.

So, you know, from front to back, her torso was probably four-ish inches and then her legs were another couple.

And they are not venomous, correct?

Correct.

They can throw the hair on their, I think it's their back and their abdomen

that can kind of create a rash or feel like a beasting, but they're not venomous.

Throw their hair.

What wonders of nature we live amidst.

Was there ever a moment where you worried that Free Stuff might actually be a Dracula in disguise?

Nope.

Because she just liquefied the entire cricket.

She didn't suck its blood.

She liquefied the cricket?

Yeah, like in its exoskeleton?

This is getting better and better.

What ended up happening to Free Stuff?

She eventually passed away.

And was she 20?

Well, we don't know how old she was when we got her, but she was with us for certainly over five years, and I think it was closer to eight to ten.

Oh, wow.

You gave her a good life.

I think so.

Good job.

Folks should know that Spike sent in...

No, Ellie, did you send in this photo of Free Stuff?

The really fuzzy one?

Yeah.

That was the only one my father could find.

Allie sent in a photo of Free Stuff.

It is one of the the most terrifying photos I've ever seen.

It truly looks like a Polaroid that was found on the floor of an abandoned cabin.

Jesse Thorne's giving it a good old-fashioned Jesse Thorne reaction laugh, but it's also weird.

So weird.

Do you want a tarantula, Ellie, or is this all part of some weird mind game princemanship that you guys are pulling on each other?

Yeah, are you just sending us these pictures because you want to brag that you have encyclopedias?

No,

no.

I just think if he's going to arbitrarily say, I can't have something, then I should be able to have an item that, like, that I should just be allowed to say, no, you can't have this.

This is something that makes me uncomfortable.

So you're saying it's mind game springsmanship.

You do not have an honest desire to have a tarantula in your house.

Correct.

All right.

Hmm.

All right.

So if I were to order in your favor, obviously, Spike, you would have me order that you get a blowtorch.

Yes.

And that we don't get a tarantula.

And you don't know exactly what kind of blowtorch you want yet.

But I presume you want to get one that's better than your friends, because that's what's happening here.

This is a sous-vied arms race between you and your pal.

You want to get a better one.

You want to get a bigger one.

Well, a better one anyway.

And while I will acknowledge that

these headlines are horrific, They are a small number of accidents compared to the number of torches that are in regular use, both in home home and commercial kitchens.

I would argue that you don't know how many low torches are in use.

Oh, no, I have that number right in front of me.

You know what it is?

1 billion.

It's weird.

It's a round number, too.

It's really weird.

Because I have a counter.

As each one is registered, I have a Google alert, and it just hit 1 billion 15 minutes ago.

It's pretty amazing.

I agree with you.

You know, obviously, I don't know.

I don't have a counter, but I think it's safe to say that a lot of them are in use a lot of the time and they're not always exploding.

But that said,

the concern is real.

This is dangerous stuff, Spike.

You have to acknowledge.

Those canisters, if they're not stored properly, bad things can happen.

And of course, this is a very high-intensity open flame.

So though accidents of this kind might be less usual in the life of someone who does not treat a burn victim every day, what precautions do you offer and are you willing to take to make Ellie feel more comfortable with your ownership of a very, very dangerous piece of equipment?

Starting with storing it out of reach of animals and other critters.

Do you have a house or an apartment?

We have an apartment right now.

We've lived in a house in the past.

Using it for cooking and being conscientious with it,

having water and

a pot lid and things like that around when I'm cooking with it.

Do you have a fire extinguisher in your kitchen currently?

Yes, we do.

How long ago did you get it?

Several years.

Okay, need to replace that.

Okay.

Do those precautions seem reasonable to you, Ellie, or do they not

make you feel better?

I would rather just not have the blowtorch in the house.

Are you afraid that it will spontaneously explode?

Things tend to happen badly when alcohol is mixed and people's judgment is definitely clouded.

And so I know that us and our friends all enjoy a drink here and there and that

people can have really bad ideas.

So I would say, let's just not have it as an option.

Do you generally have a cocktail while you're cooking, Spike?

On occasion, yes.

Often.

All right.

I think I've heard everything I need to in order to make my decision.

I'm going to go into my tarantula habitat and confer with my 35 tarantulas, all of whom have all of their legs, by the way, not to brag.

And I'll be back in a moment with my decision.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Ellie, how are you feeling about your chances in this case?

Not great.

Why is that?

Well, because it's just a comfort thing.

It's just something that I don't really want.

And that's not actually a really solid reason.

Have you thought about the possibility that you get what you want, he gets what he wants, and

the dog uses the blowtorch on the tarantula.

I'm more afraid the dog's going to use the blowtorch on the cat.

It's an age-old story.

Indeed.

Spike, how are you feeling about your chances?

I'm feeling okay.

Sort of cautiously optimistic.

Do you think you acquitted yourself well in the courtroom?

Yeah, I think I made the points that I wanted to make.

I mean, you seem optimistic.

Either that or you just used a bunch of CBD oil.

I'm feeling pretty good, but, you know, not counting my chickens sous vide

before they are ready.

How come you're not browning the chicken?

Just because you can't see it doesn't mean that the effect doesn't make it taste better.

The mallard effect, or whatever it's called.

Browning food makes it taste good.

That's why roast vegetables are good.

Yeah,

just lazy, going straight into a pasta dish.

I do.

I think fresh pesto.

And also, the chicken is less unappealing if it's not been browned.

Chicken coming out of sous vide actually doesn't look weird.

Yeah, but it tastes better if you brown it.

Brown it next time for me.

Okay, we'll do.

Also, everybody, let's cook our onions a little before we put them in the slow cooker.

Okay, we'll see what Judge John Hodgman has to say about all this when we come back in just a second.

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while, maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years, I know where this has ended up.

But no, no, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah.

You don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined.

No, no, no, it's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Long.

I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom.

So I just burned up a steak back there in my tarantula habitat because I was needing a snack.

I used my own blowtorch.

And I maybe should have recused myself from this case because I need to acknowledge that I own one.

I own a Burns-O-Matic.

I'm going to tell you this for future reference.

I own a Burn Zoomatic TS-8000 high-intensity trigger start torch that is screwed onto a Burns-O-Matic brand mini canister of propane, the kind that you would get at any hardware store for a camp stove or something like that.

And the reason that I have it is for this reason.

I am curious about sous-vied cooking.

I was doing a fair amount of it over the summer, including trying out this process of cooking steak in a bag in a tepid pool of water and then taking it out and then burning it with a blowtorch.

I only went down this road because my father-in-law had given us a slightly lesser intensity blowtorch trigger, also by Burns and Amatic, because that's what he uses to light his fires in his wood-burning stove.

And I will tell you this right now: both that lesser-intensity torch and certainly the Burns-Imatic TS-8000, that will start a fire in a wood-burning stove or a fireplace with the quickness.

Fantastic for that.

You know what it's also good for?

It's also good for welding pipes.

It's very good for doing torching things.

You would think

that it would be great for searing a steak.

But what I discovered, and this is my own experience, is it's not that great for it.

It's actually a very time-consuming process

that, for me, did not get the sear that I wanted on the steak, A, and B, made my kitchen smell bad.

I did not like it, and I will continue to experiment with it because I know you liked it.

But I'm inclined, from a matter of taste, to agree with Ellie that if you're going to slow boil a steak in a bag in tepid water for two hours, and then bring it out and you're going to sear it off in one way or another, a super hot cast iron pan with butter in it is a really good method for doing that.

And you would put some oil and some butter because that butter will brown and intensify the flavors.

And this is all mapped out if you want to learn how to do this.

At Sirius Eats, our friend and occasional guest expert, JKenji Lopez-Alt, has huge amounts of information and tutorials that are very fun to read.

And he is a proponent of sous vide staking.

Ultimately, I think sous vide steak, in all of my experiments with it this summer, because I was really interested, I tried different thicknesses of meat, I tried different cuts of meat and everything else.

Ultimately, I found that it was not worth the effort.

People have enjoyed steak cooked over a grill or in a pan for a long time because it's good.

And while meticulous temperature control is

attractive to those of us like you and me, Spike, who want to have control over everything in their lives,

the only benefit that I could see to cooking a steak in a sous-vied style is that you could pre-cook a bunch of them to that perfect level of doneness ahead of time before a big dinner party and stick them in the fridge and then you bring them out, bring them to room temperature, and then sear them off and you've got dinner on the table in 35 seconds.

But that's if you're serving steak for a crowd, when usually I serve steak, you know, Rosemary's baby style.

I cook it in a pan for two minutes and then eat it over the sink as quickly as possible because I'm carrying the devil's baby.

So simply put, put,

in my experience, I have not found, even with the TS-8000, the highest intensity blowtorch you can get, this to be a very satisfactory way of cooking.

I don't happen to feel that a steak is well served by Sous vide.

But the question isn't, what do I think?

The question is, is it fair to

prevent Spike from discovering this himself?

from getting a blowtorch, which is not a particularly expensive thing.

And when handled safely, is handled handled safely by lots of people who own them, and continue his experimentation.

For that matter, is it fair for me to deny a tarantula a good home with two good co-pets in the form of kaiju and in the form of the Lochner's monster?

The obvious solution to this

is to put a pox on both of your houses

and force you both to get a blowtorch and a tarantula.

One may not follow without the other.

But

I am going to say this.

Only one of those things

belongs in an apartment.

Spike, do you have a deck?

We have a small deck, yeah.

When I say that I have a blowtorch that I use to light fires

and

attempt to burn stakes and also keep on hand to destroy raccoon poop because the CDC suggests you fight it with fire.

That's because

part of the year we live in Maine.

And in Maine, you get to have all kinds of life-threatening items that you rarely use.

I also have a chainsaw that I will never get near after I took that one chainsaw class.

I like my legs.

I don't want to cut them off.

I'm sure that I'm going to get letters from lots of apartment dwellers who have

propane torches in their home, but I don't think it's appropriate to have in an apartment.

I don't think you have an, I mean, you have a deck.

They say that these torches should be stored outside.

The canisters need to be stored in a place with a lot of airflow around them.

But I think this is a high-intensity tool

that

is a problem in a high-density living environment.

I think it is highly unlikely and almost impossible that it would spontaneously combust.

But based on a little reading on the internet I did, if you have, for example, a bad seal, because what you do with these torch heads is you screw them on.

And if you don't screw it on enough and there's a slow leak, then that can be bad news next time you

hit the pilot light or light a candle or something.

It's bad.

Bad.

I will say this as well.

The kind of blowtorch that you are interested in in order to get that stake seared has to be at least a TS-8000.

I don't know that it goes higher than that.

And I still didn't find it to be a very good sear.

Maybe I'm using it wrong.

Maybe I'll keep trying it, but it's still, I felt like my kitchen smelled terrible.

You can't do it with a little creme brulee thing.

That's very, very low intensity compared to what you need in order to get that sear on that steak.

So, the right thing to do, I mean, the fairest thing to do is to force a tarantula and a blowtorch on both of you, but I don't think it's fair enough to your neighbors.

So, I'm going to essentially rule this:

You may have a blowtorch

as long as you do extensive research into not merely the safe handling

of that blowtorch, but also the safe storage.

Consult with experts and get a new fire extinguisher.

And when you undertake this stake thing,

you have Ellie standing by with the fire extinguisher ready to hit you hard with it in the face should you mess up.

And also you get a tarantula and care for it for 20 years.

I mean, that's an option, and that is available to both of you, but those are the conditions.

I don't want you to stop in your experimentation.

I don't want to stop your journey towards a blowtorch.

I don't know whether you will have the same experience of disappointment as I.

But it is a thing that is super duper dangerous, and I don't don't think you should have it in the apartment, but I'm going to leave it up to you.

And if you're going to put that anxiety onto Ellie, it is only fair that you have the anxiety that a tarantula is there waiting to throw its hairs at you.

That is called justice.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge John Hodgman rules, that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Ellie, how are you feeling about this decision?

I'm kind of looking forward to Free Stuff 2.

Free Stuff 2, The Legend of Curly's Gold.

Full name.

Of course.

Spike, how are you feeling?

A little disappointed, if I'm honest.

Yeah.

Why is that?

Because I definitely don't want to get a tarantula.

And so if I don't want to get a tarantula, then

I guess I can't get a blowtorch.

I mean, tarantulas are pretty cool.

Did you know they can throw their hairs?

Yeah, I've been told.

Doesn't sound that pleasant to me.

Spike, Ellie, Ellie, thanks for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Another Judge John Hodgman case in the books.

Swift justice right around the corner.

But first, we want to thank Mike McDavid, who named this week's episode Torch Reform.

If you'd like to name a future episode, be sure to like Judge John Hodgman on Facebook.

You can follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

Hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets.

Hashtag JJ H.O.

Always enjoy seeing the conversation about the program.

And check out the Maximum Fund subreddit at maximumfund.reddit.com to chat about the episode.

We're also on Instagram at Judge John Hodgman, where you will find evidence for this week's case.

This week's episode recorded in Seattle by Chris O.T.

at K-U-O-W Puget Sound Public Radio.

Our producer, the always capable Ms.

Jennifer Marmer.

Now, Swift Justice, where we answer your small disputes with a quick judgment.

Are you ready, Hodgman?

I am ready.

Ben asks.

When washing up, I put cutlery in the drying basket handle down with the head at the top.

My housemate puts the head of the cutlery down.

I think that the bottom of the basket doesn't dry as effectively, and it's easier to fit them in the basket head up.

I only make an exception for sharp knives, which I put in the basket blade down to avoid injury.

My housemate thinks it's unhygienic to risk touching the heads of the cutlery with one's hands when removing the cutlery from the basket.

Who's right?

So I have a dishwasher that has a top tray where you lay in the cutlery on its side, which is great because you never get stabbed in any other way.

When it's a basket dishwasher, I always put the heads up, as it were, the spoons and the forks and stuff.

And there is no question that I'm touching a bunch of fork tines that I should not be touching.

There is a hygiene issue.

But I would say do whatever gets your cutlery cleanest.

If you find putting them head down gets them thoroughly clean, then do it.

But I don't know.

I've always put them head up, and I don't know whether that's because of just tradition or superstition, because there's a lot of superstition around dishwashers.

You know that, right, Jesse?

There are a lot of haunted dishwashers.

Sure.

There's a lot of like, if you put, you know, three spoons up means it's bad luck, you know.

I mean, if we get serious about covering haunted dishwashers, we're kind of encroaching on the McElroy's territory.

So that's like their thing.

Yeah, we don't want to do that.

I have always put my cutlery with the business end down.

Really?

Because that puts it closest to the water sprayer and makes it easier to take, to pull up out of the thing.

And you find that it gets all your forks and knives and stuff clean?

Yeah, I think the only thing you really got to be careful about when you're putting that cutlery in there is making sure that your sharp knives aren't banging against anything.

Right, because that would dull the edge.

Yeah, my dishwasher has like a little flip-down tray on the top that you can use with slots for knives.

So, you know, you can make one of the little trays your knife tray and put the knives in the slot, your steak knives, or what have you.

And then

you just got to be careful not to let the spoons nest.

Yeah.

If the spoons spoon, you're going to have food in those spoons.

But besides that, I mean, I've never had a problem.

What I honestly believe, John,

is that there is no irrational thing that I care more about than someone else loading my dishwasher in a different manner than the way I would load my dishwasher.

Right, because you figured out how to solve the puzzle perfectly, and there is a beautiful solution that only you can see.

I'm with you on that.

So I think it is highly personal.

I think as long as your stuff is getting washed correctly, then no one should criticize you, Ben.

The only hard and fast rules about cutlery in the dishwasher, of course, is don't let the spoons nest, as Jesse said.

Do not put your Burnsomatic TS-8000 propane torch in the dishwasher.

That's not where it belongs.

And if you put three sets of tongs in the dishwasher, you summon a demon.

Everyone knows this.

You open it up next time, it's going to be a Dracula inside.

Don't do it.

Sorry, Jesse.

I know it's scary, but I have to warn the people.

Yeah, people got to know.

That's about it for this week's episode.

Submit your cases at maximumfund.org/slash JJHO or email hodgman at maximumfund.org.

No case is too small.

We read them all except the Dracula ones.

We'll see you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Oh, friends, I'm demanding an all-Draculas episode.

Send in your Draculas disputes.

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