Joshua Sharkey (08:46.776)have to imagine some of it is they don't know what they don't know. I remember you posted something about a banana bread where you use the banana skins. Yeah. was like, what? What? know, I've cooked it long time, never seen that happen. I haven't tried it, but sounds like it works. Yeah. So I think a lot of it's probably the else, you know, we just don't know what them itself. The things that you don't need to waste. It makes sense. You know, it's like I love fruit skins. You know, my kids, like they always want to the apples and I'll only eat the peels of the apple.
Vojtech Vegh (09:06.988)You can tell that's all I
Joshua Sharkey (09:16.622)And like kiwi, like my wife's like, why are you eating the kiwi skin? like, I don't know, that's the best part. And the watermelon skin too. I, you know, like the, my daughter's the same way. She's like, it's all the green part. Like she goes right for the green part of the watermelon.
Vojtech Vegh (09:29.998)My son is the same. He turns around the watermelon and eats it from the other side like the skin first.
Joshua Sharkey (09:35.436)Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of, mean, there's some fruit skins that they're not so great, but for the most part, they're all really good. It's funny that we like peel some of them. I will say, I have not tried that banana skin. I gotta give it a go, but.
Vojtech Vegh (09:47.726)Don't eat banana stems raw. It's, it's, they have to be like chopped up and cooked, in some way. Yeah. But it's an ingredient that was used in like Caribbean cuisines, you know, like it used to be used. It's, it's in fact, there is nothing unusual about it. When you look back into some older cooking, like even in African continent, it's just another ingredient and way more nutritious than the banana flesh itself.
Joshua Sharkey (10:18.223)Yeah, well lot of these skins are like they have so much fiber in them, you know?
Vojtech Vegh (10:22.574)The fibrodenteric sinans, the minerals, the vitamins are more concentrated in the skin and with that oftentimes the flavour as well in many cases. So you have more flavour, more nutrition out of our skins and things that we label as byproducts basically, things that we don't want to eat.
Joshua Sharkey (10:40.046)I mean, if you test things long enough, I'm sure you can figure it out. But lot of this stuff, I imagine people just don't know, like, oh, that's interesting. You can use that too. So the fact that you're testing it and then sharing that with others is really interesting. Well, you know, I'll tee us up. And for everybody that doesn't know you, you are this sort of, you know, pillar of zero waste food. You're a chef, restaurant in Cambodia. Now you're back in Cambodia. Congrats.
And now you're on this mission to make sure that nobody wastes food. And what's interesting is, I remember when I first, like years ago when I first saw you doing your thing, I was like, this is BS. I'm gonna call him out. It's like, there's no way. But then when we met and talked, I was like, oh, you know what? actually, you know, there's a way you could think about this that would be, you know, if you don't understand like how to make it work and you don't understand technique where it can just feel like fluff.
and feel very altruistic without anything behind it. But you don't do that. And I think that you've you've shown that, is why you've grown your business and your community so much. congrats, man. And thank you so much to have you back. We're doing this like quick fire thing, but we're going to spend most of time. This is like six questions. One of the questions we switched because everybody started talking about it, which was one of the two most wasted ingredients in the kitchen. We're probably going to talk about like, OK, what are the 10?
But I have a few other questions that I want to like throw in there just because we keep asking to everybody. And I might just not ask all of them. But I'm going to start, though, with something else, because when we started chatting about like, hey, come back on, do this quick fire thing, I was like, oh, well, you know, we're also just like asking every chef, how do you make grilled cheese? And you're like, I don't fucking make grilled cheese. I mean, you know, those words, but you're like, we don't we don't we don't eat grilled cheese. You know, in America, every kid eats a grilled cheese and mostly we you know, they eat it with like Kraft.
Singles and the processed white bread and butter and toasted and you know, that is what it is. It's still delicious. But like every kid eats it and everyone, know, every kid and every parent knows like what it, you know, like makes their grilled cheese and a PB &J. But what's like the comp for you from, you know, from where you're maybe not Cambodia or where you're originally from of like what's the grilled cheese of your culture? Let's talk about that.
Vojtech Vegh (12:56.942)Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I can't speak for Cambodia because that's not my culture, but in Slovakia where I'm from, know, a sandwich thing or anything like a sandwich is not a local thing. So you will not have anything like that. Sandwich is viewed as a Western thing in Slovakia in general. We have like open sandwiches. I don't think it's the reason of the replacement. There is not like a private kids. Well, like every kid eats.
Joshua Sharkey (13:01.772)Yeah, of course.
Vojtech Vegh (13:25.836)We eat like, we have this, there is no translation to it. Imagine like a baguette, but a small one. Like a very small, like a small baguette basically.
Joshua Sharkey (13:35.502)Forget the sandwich, I just mean like what do kids eat that like every parent has to make for them that you know, that's like a...
Vojtech Vegh (13:42.554)And yeah, but with that baguette, know, like we we have this kind of like a small baguette and it's like very light and fluffy. Mexican bread is similar to that, which is like super light, super airy. It's something that you're going to see almost every baby and every toddler kind of chewing on that bread in their strollers or anywhere they are. That's like one of the things they're like playing as it is. Like every parent gives it to their kids.
Joshua Sharkey (13:53.356)Yeah, yeah
Vojtech Vegh (14:11.822)That's one of the things. The other thing that comes to mind is something that is like very popular and I feel like just about every kid eats it is again, it's something that you're not gonna find probably somewhere else, but the curses description would be a porridge made from like a coarse wheat flour essentially, kind of like a ground wheat that you cook into a porridge. You put some melted butter on it and some cacao powder and that's it.
And some kids, some kids go crazy over that. Other kids like hate it. But I think that like most kids, like even it's something that I haven't had for a very long time, but you would do even in your adulthood as a kind of a comfort thing from your childhood. So it's like a hot porridge thing that kind of sets like it's very thick. So you melt some butter on it, some cocoa, maybe some icing sugar for someone and that's all.
Joshua Sharkey (15:06.998)Is that... I'm reading, is this called the Krupikna Kasa?
Vojtech Vegh (15:10.166)Yes, because how did you find this?
Joshua Sharkey (15:13.452)i'm going to let you you're talking about it on your notice of this is yet
Vojtech Vegh (15:16.91)Yeah, yeah, yeah, Krupica, it's called Krupica.
Joshua Sharkey (15:19.99)It's like a semolina pudding? it? It's made with semolina?
Vojtech Vegh (15:23.48)Basically, yeah, basically semolina, but it's not the actual semolina that you would find labeled as semolina in the grocery store. Like we still have semolina and we have that's the Krupiča kind of thing.
Joshua Sharkey (15:36.622)Last time you were on we talked about this, Brinsof Haluski. Do remember that? I'm sure I'm not saying it right, but like, the internet at least says that the kids also eat that a lot. Maybe, maybe more plain with cheese or something.
Vojtech Vegh (15:52.238)Kids eat actually it's this kind of thing. I know many kids maybe some of them disagree, but this haloski which is basically like a kind of a spatula or like a dumpling kind of thing. But once again, with butter and cacao powder.
Joshua Sharkey (16:05.794)What with cocoa powder? Really? Yeah. Just like actual cocoa powder?
Vojtech Vegh (16:10.062)Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In a sweet way. And I know people and I know kids, which is, I think it's more popular in these days that you simply have pasta. You cook some for cereal or anything and you put some butter and cocoa powder on it, which is something I never had. It's wild, but I know people who do that.
Joshua Sharkey (16:29.678)Kids in Slovakia have like Lucky Charms and Coco Pebbles and stuff like that? Does that exist there? Sorry for the dumb question, but like do you have those kinds of cereals there? You know I'm talking about? Like the really sugary cereals from... No? You know how like in the States we have like sugary cereals, got like Pop Tarts, have Toaster Strudels, we have Eggo Waffles, Hot Pockets.
Vojtech Vegh (16:44.606)It's a-
Vojtech Vegh (16:55.032)There is a term for it and we call it American breakfast.
Joshua Sharkey (16:57.524)I that.
Vojtech Vegh (16:59.534)People don't eat it. But maybe someone sure like I don't know. You can see some of that in shops, but it's not something that I have seen. That's what you're have at home for breakfast.
Joshua Sharkey (17:11.926)Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. That's what we grew up on. mean, I'll be honest, a total brutal with like double the icing. It's pretty, good. Not healthy. I mean, who knows what's in that thing, but it's good.
Vojtech Vegh (17:27.283)Yeah, yeah. No, no, no. It's not something that you're gonna find at home soon.
Joshua Sharkey (17:30.766)OK, 86 Grilled Cheese Conversation. Let's move on. And I think I'm going to focus on three questions for you because there's a bunch here, but some of them I think are probably better than others where we'd spend more time. we're going to end with like the ingredients that get wasted most in the kitchen, because that's probably where we can we could talk about 50 of them, not two. So let's start with if you could ban one ingredient tool or phrase in the kitchen, what would it be?
Vojtech Vegh (17:56.43)Phrase is easy, one phrase for sure. that's, we've always done it this way. That's one of the phrase that you see in many kitchens over here. I still hear it from many chefs. We've always done it this way. Whatever that means.
Joshua Sharkey (18:11.074)That phrase should be gone from every company in the world, not just Kitchens, but I totally agree.
Vojtech Vegh (18:16.45)Well, it's only this way it's meaningless.
Joshua Sharkey (18:18.656)I know it really is. Yeah. You should just respond with another meaningless response when they say that. They say, we've always done this way. Just say, my kid likes toast. Any other random.
Vojtech Vegh (18:28.726)When someone tells me this way, what I say is that that's exactly the problem. That you always do it this way. You know, that's why we are in this conversation.
Joshua Sharkey (18:40.28)Well, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over over again. there you go. OK. What is the wildest or most embarrassing kitchen story that you have?
Vojtech Vegh (18:53.422)There are a lot to choose from as usual, but while this, not embarrassing probably, more like a borderline threatening. I was working in one very fancy restaurant where we did very many things that took a long, long time to prepare. Lots of reductions and ferments and all kinds of glazes and things that take like months and months until they age.
You know, like a lot of people's work goes into that. And we were trying upstairs, uh, prep kitchen and the downstairs service kitchen. So during the downstairs service, you just left something on boil on upstairs kitchen, you know, like reducing sauces and things slowly in the big pots. I did the same thing. just filled up a big pot with a very expensive ingredient that took a lot of time to prepare. That was meant to be.
Reduced down to a nice sticky glaze. Well, but the service got bit too busy. So I didn't make my way up in time. When I came back to the service, to the prep kitchen, what I found was first of all, half of the kitchen filled with smoke. Second of all, a thick, like a 10 centimeter block of charcoal on the bottom of the pot. Like I'm speaking of like a couple of thousands in the US.
of ingredients that went into preparing.
Joshua Sharkey (20:21.865)What was in it? What were the ingredients?
Vojtech Vegh (20:23.982)I can't give you like hints because I don't want to give you like what restaurant could it be. But a lot of grains and legumes and like expensive seasonings and stuff that were inside and a lot of aging and processing behind that until the final step of reducing that liquid down to a glaze where I decided to go to the biggest spot and reduce it down to a nice big charcoal in that spot. And of course, like there was no...
there was no way to hide that or like back. Like how do you go back from that? So I had to like go and tell my chef that like, Hey, I did this. You know, it's that kind of a situation where it's like such a big of a mess up that he was beyond the capacity of screaming and he was like pointless already. Like, it was just pretty much, I mean, we'd be grateful that the kitchen didn't burn down and nothing has happened.
Joshua Sharkey (21:01.976)What did your chef say?
Vojtech Vegh (21:20.728)you know, that he stayed in the pot. Yeah. it gets embarrassing is that, okay, like take the other batch that we have, the second batch and like reduce down, like do a smaller one and burn the second batch as well.
Joshua Sharkey (21:34.764)Shut up, are you serious?
Joshua Sharkey (21:39.79)Did you just give up then? You're like, hey chef, I'm done. I'll just go home now.
Vojtech Vegh (21:44.302)Now let's just say that the dish on the menu needed a change very quickly because there was no more liquid and to reduce at that point, I'm glad I kept my job. I wasn't fired, but I wasn't allowed to reduce sauces anymore unattended.
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The sad thing is, there's so many of these, I have like 30 of these stories that every time I'm just like, God, I can't believe it happened.
Vojtech Vegh (23:14.722)Yeah, yeah, yeah, not my proudest moment for sure.
Joshua Sharkey (23:18.124)Well, it's interesting. think in kitchens, unlike other jobs, there's a lot more opportunity to screw things up. Because it's all perishable. It's all needed in real time. You're like you're manufacturing the product for the company.
Vojtech Vegh (23:33.676)You can't click on unboot or back. There is no back.
Joshua Sharkey (23:36.866)Yeah, exactly. Well, you survived. So we're here.
Vojtech Vegh (23:41.088)I'm here and yeah, I hope everyone else forgot it who was in that kitchen. So we are past that.
Joshua Sharkey (23:46.486)All right. Well, let's talk about the ingredients that get wasted. I'm going to give you some I haven't done this before, but like I keep hearing the same exact thing and you probably will agree and you can say this one too. But literally every person has said stocks of, you know, vegetables, broccoli stocks, things like that, kale stocks, those get wasted and they should be used. So that's as of now, I think every single person has said that plus something else. I heard a really interesting one about the fat from braising liquid, which is really, really interesting. But let's talk about
the most wasted ingredients and because it's you, there's probably a lot. So not two, but let's just spend the next 20 minutes talking about what you've seen as the most wasted ingredients or parts of ingredient in kitchens.
Vojtech Vegh (24:32.11)can give you hard data because I know for a fact because we measure it so I know what is it globally and number one you want to guess it what do you think it is it's none of the three number one is the trimming it's a it's a by-product a trimming
Joshua Sharkey (24:42.51)Number one? Okay, hold on.
Joshua Sharkey (24:49.198)Okay, hold on, don't tell me. Let me get, you said it's a trimming? Is it cauliflower leaves?
Okay.
Vojtech Vegh (24:59.21)It's a watermelon rind.
Joshua Sharkey (25:01.038)Really? That's interesting. Well, it's because there's so much of it. Because it's heavy. Half the watermelon is like rind. It's. pickled. Yeah. Wow. That's the that's the most wasted ingredient in the world. That's wild. I mean, how much pickled watermelon can you eat, though? What else can you do with watermelon, Ryan, other than pickle it? All right. Tell me a couple.
Vojtech Vegh (25:07.182)25 %
Vojtech Vegh (25:25.728)You look watermelon rind is basically just a vegetable like any other. It's all it's like a cucumber or zucchini kind of thing. It's neutral in flavor. So it works in savory and sweet ways as well. It picks up flavor and seasonings and spices very well because it doesn't have a strong flavor. So if you shred it or grate it or chop it, you can use it in your stir fries, curries, dumplings, spring rolls, stuffings and fillings of any kind.
Anything where you would use chopped or shredded vegetables. You can make candied watermelon if you want, pickled, fermented, dehydrated. You can cook it, can saute it, you can work it into any casserole, any stews. Salads, you can grate it into salads. You can use it raw. can replace the cucumber in your tzatziki. You can replace your cucumber in your green gazpacho. You can do patties. You can do veggie burgers. You can do
fritters like in
Joshua Sharkey (26:25.07)Okay, okay, I gotcha, I gotcha. You know what, you had me at cucumber. That's a great point. It really is very similar in profile to a cucumber. Not as watery. It's a bit firmer, but that is a great point. I love the idea of creating it into like a raita or a tzatziki. That's a really good idea. Yeah, yeah. Okay, the number one most wasted ingredient in the world is watermelon.
Vojtech Vegh (26:49.836)In terms of by-products and trimmings.
Joshua Sharkey (26:53.046)Okay, okay, I got it in terms of but okay. Got it. Number two. Okay, give me a clue. Give me some sort of It's a fruit. wait, is it like the whole fruit or is the trimming of the fruit?
Vojtech Vegh (26:55.502)Okay.
You wanna guess that one too?
Vojtech Vegh (27:02.935)It's a fruit.
Vojtech Vegh (27:08.046)trimming all the fruit.
Joshua Sharkey (27:10.712)The trimming of a fruit. Trimming of a fruit. wait. Is it banana? No. Okay, so not the banana skins. That surprises me, actually, because when I saw you using banana skins, was like, well, bananas are like everywhere in the world. the world, Cavendish bananas exist. Yeah, that's probably the most.
Vojtech Vegh (27:27.438)The second one is something heavier.
Joshua Sharkey (27:30.072)Heavier than a banana. Okay. Because it's funny, I was going to say oranges, but heavier than a banana and not a watermelon. I'm assuming not like a jackfruit or something like that.
Vojtech Vegh (27:41.336)It's gonna be on just about every hotel's breakfast buffet.
Joshua Sharkey (27:45.44)Melon, some sort of Cantaloupe or honeydew or something. Pineapple. Pineapple. The skins of pineapple are incredible. Yeah.
Vojtech Vegh (27:56.174)Very heavy and a lot of flesh attached to the skin. So a lot of that goes to the virus.
Joshua Sharkey (28:02.317)And a lot of flavor. The skin's got a lot of flavor.
Vojtech Vegh (28:04.686)because it's you have natural sugars and the flesh in it so there is flavor in it right so pineapple skin
Joshua Sharkey (28:11.15)I like to actually pour tequila over the pineapple skins and then just use that to make margaritas. Yeah. Let it sit for a while. can sous vide it too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also, the Mexicans make a really incredible vinegar from the pineapple skins too.
Vojtech Vegh (28:17.804)You know, you know the badger.
Vojtech Vegh (28:28.174)It's easy to use also because it's basically like what you're looking for is the pineapple flavor from it. So you're just looking at the flavor extraction process.
Joshua Sharkey (28:35.276)Yeah, yeah, what else to use it in?
Vojtech Vegh (28:37.922)Syrups and drinks is the easiest thing that you can do. Boil it with water, some spices, like, you know, you put cinnamon and some cloves in it, a touch of sugar if you want, you don't have to. You have it in a, turn it into a drink. You can have that on tap, on your breakfast buffet or wherever as a welcome drink or behind the bar anywhere else. You want to take it monster further, you take that drink, reduce it down to a syrup. Now you have a glaze, whether you're going to use it on your ham or yakitori in savory ways. So you're going to have a glaze on your ice creams.
your desserts and cakes or behind the bar again as a homemade pineapple cider is just about the flavour extraction from the skin.
Joshua Sharkey (29:13.452)That's a really good one. You know what would be really good actually? You know how you like use beets or cucumbers with salt and you like cure gravlocks or something? I bet pineapple skins ground with salt would be really good to cure like a compachi or like a fluke something like that as a, you know what mean? as a cure.
Vojtech Vegh (29:31.48)You can blitz it up, you can like blitz up the skins as they are raw and use it to cure the meat because they contain the bromelain, the enzyme that helps cure the meat. that it is used for it in some ways. But usually people like bite as the enzyme separately, but you can just use the pineapple skins and infuse the meat with it as well. And you know, it's, just a pineapple basically with identical flavors.
Joshua Sharkey (29:56.014)Okay, good. Number two, let's go number three.
Vojtech Vegh (29:59.808)Number three is hard to give globally because Asia plays a big role in that. But if we can go like number three and four or something in between, then it's going to be bread and rice.
Joshua Sharkey (30:13.412)Bread I get. Rice? Rice is surprising.
Vojtech Vegh (30:16.138)Asia. Asia is big.
Joshua Sharkey (30:18.296)But don't they just, didn't it always just were used for fried rice?
Vojtech Vegh (30:22.616)This is too much. is too much. Think about countries like China, know, like more than a billion people, how much food is present and the rice is just about everywhere. every country. And the same is true for all, pretty much every Asian country. The rice is everywhere. Now imagine all the big buffets in hotels and resorts and everywhere, or every restaurant that like you always have rice. You don't run out of rice in Asia.
Joshua Sharkey (30:34.638)everywhere.
Vojtech Vegh (30:50.422)Right. It's more than one you can just use, use up like for fried rice and stuff. there's so much rice wasted.
Joshua Sharkey (30:59.95)There's a cool company called Copia. I don't know you know it. This one, Kimberly runs it and they help to sort of take whatever is left over and ship it to the places. like cooked rice, you know, you can make cookbook with that. The rice ships. But it'd be very difficult for every restaurant to make their own cookbook all the time because it's a, you know, it's definitely a process. But if they all, you know, collectively, you know, shipped it somewhere, you could take all that. I mean, if it's plain and make a, and make cookbook. But there's a bunch of stuff you can do with it.
What do you do with the leftover rice? Like what are your top things to do with it?
Vojtech Vegh (31:32.376)Now it comes down to the food safety, how it was kept and how long it was kept for, you know, so to stay on the safe side, it's good to use it for crackers, you blitz it up. They are great to have like very nice puff crackers. Problem is the capacity that you can do at this year. Like if you have like too much then it's not really viable on like long term solution. So the next thing that you can do is of course use for stir fry, which is like the easiest thing that you can do, or you can make like rice cakes, like rice patties kind of thingy. You can also blend it up and use it for like rice pancakes and like
go into the direction of looking at it like any other kind of a dough that you would use for similar things like a pancake, whether it's a batter, for example, whether it's a fritter, whether it's a binder in like veggie burgers and stuff. But if you give it a little bit of blitz, like blitz it up a bit and mix it with veggies, you can make like white spokettes from it as well. But you can just simply make like a really nice fried rice patties from that.
Joshua Sharkey (32:27.35)Rice is such a great crispy element once it's cooked and you can bind it. I remember having to make krippuk with the rice. It's a real pain in the ass to make. And it takes a lot. The shrimp chips, they're dried and they kind of puff up when you fry them. But it's a real, it is a pain to make like that. But that's a good one. Bread's an obvious one. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, it's funny how much bread gets wasted that you just, you can eat in so many things.
Vojtech Vegh (32:53.976)For those kitchens who make or that make homemade bread that they bake their own is one of the most expensive things that they are wasting because of the labor, space and equipment that goes into making that bread that eventually ends up in a bin. So a homemade bread that is in a bin is one of the most expensive things that you can waste.
Joshua Sharkey (33:16.418)What are some things that we might not think of to do with it? Yeah, exactly. What to do with the bread that maybe we don't think about.
Vojtech Vegh (33:19.618)Do we the bread?
Vojtech Vegh (33:24.174)So if you think about bread, the bread in most cases is just water and flour. Typical white bread, it's water and flour. So now think about all the dishes and elements on your menu where water and flour is present. You can take your bread and boil it in water and blend it down to a puree. And now you can incorporate it into sauces, for example. One of the things.
The other thing is that you can take that same bread and now you can toast it, infuse it in like milk and cream or something. And again, blend it down and turn it into, you can make bread pancakes, for example. You can make any kind of sauces. Think about the bechamel sauce. Think about a sauce that you make for your casserole or mac and cheese. You mix together flour, butter, and fat. Now, most of the bread and other bakery products, flour, butter,
of fat basically, milk is already present in it. You blend it down with water, you get a similar consistency out of it. So where you would use the bechamel sauce as a kind of a on like the kind of a casserole dish I'm thinking about, you know, that can be replaced with bread. We can also
Joshua Sharkey (34:39.585)That's a smart idea. Yeah. You soak the bread and milk instead of... and then just blend that and...
Vojtech Vegh (34:45.151)You can also blitz down the bread as it is when it's fresh, when it's like not dehydrated, make like kind of fresh bread crumbs and work it into cakes. When you make a dough for a cake, like a sponge, for example, you can make it from a bread. You can make pancakes or like the American pancakes from the bread as well. If you want, you can deep fry the bread. And this is maybe for like fancier places, but you can make like a fried bread pâté, like a vegan pâté.
from the fried bread, which if you would taste, you would never guess that it is made from the bread. can defry the bread. You can use it as a crust for your cheesecakes. Toss it in a bit of butter or coconut oil or something, and you have a cheesecake crust made from it. And we can go on and on because you think about things where a flour and water and fat is already present.
Joshua Sharkey (35:23.661)Yeah.
Joshua Sharkey (35:41.016)What are some things that like we wouldn't necessarily think, wow, we should, we should use that too. Banana peel is a great example, but like what's another banana peel example?
Vojtech Vegh (35:51.886)Do you use potato peels?
Joshua Sharkey (35:53.888)yeah, mean, potato skins. You know, those are delicious. Fry them up. A little sour cream.
Vojtech Vegh (35:59.01)Yeah, but it's still some of the things that I see chefs being surprised when I mentioned it, like you should utilize potato peels in your kitchen. Cause in many kitchens they are producing large quantities on daily basis. And to me, they are just another delicious ingredient that you have in your kitchen and you're not utilizing. So potato peels are definitely something that can be worked into many things. Not on
Joshua Sharkey (36:24.814)What else do you do with them other than like you know crying him up?
Vojtech Vegh (36:28.684)You fry them up, but that's the first step. Then you can take it one step further. You can blend them down into a crumb, basically. You can use them for condiments. Think of things like crispy chili oil, but made from fried potato peels. You can blend it into creamy sauces. You can make a potato peel sauce or a potato peel puree if you want thicker consistency. And once again, if something has been turned into a sauce or a puree,
It's one step away from becoming a pate, where you just need to change the consistency of that. And now you have a potato peel pate. Think of like dips for your crudités or like a hummus kind of thing or like sharing pate or some stuff. Made from potato peels that you would never guess that it's potato peels.
Joshua Sharkey (37:17.622)I love that. That's a great idea. I mean, I'll also could just eat them with some cheese and sour cream and I'll be happy.
Vojtech Vegh (37:24.182)I love them, yeah. I love them.
Joshua Sharkey (37:26.574)I work duck. I forget, are you vegetarian?
Vojtech Vegh (37:32.536)No, I was vegan for some time. Yeah, I was going to be in that for some time, but I ate so much chicken today. That's yeah.
Joshua Sharkey (37:42.242)Yeah. Yeah. Well, with what you're doing now, it's probably hard to, it would be hard to do that because you got to, you know, taste a bunch of stuff.
Vojtech Vegh (37:50.232)Hard midnight travel.
Joshua Sharkey (37:52.642)Yeah. Okay. Potato skins. Let's do one more and just something that totally, you know, a surprise that we would normally just think that has to go in the garbage.
Vojtech Vegh (38:08.526)That has to go. What is like thing that people are using?
Joshua Sharkey (38:11.586)And by the way, if you want, you could use the banana peel and just talk more about that if you want. But like, that's what I'm talking about. Like, I would have never thought, yeah, we can use banana peels. Those just go in the bin. That's great compost, but that's about it.
Vojtech Vegh (38:25.334)It's going to be banana peels because it's, it's one of the other surprising things. know, like when I, when I think about things like, I don't know, like orange peels and stuff, like people know that you can make like candy, skin, et cetera. That it's not like information that never heard before, but banana peel is something that many people have never thought about.
Joshua Sharkey (38:45.582)So tell me about how you process it, because there's like obviously like the hard woody part. I'm assuming you got to cut that off. That goes in compost, but yeah. And then there's the fibrous piece. Are you peeling off the fibrous pieces? Are you keeping those on? And then how are you processing this?
Vojtech Vegh (38:59.182)So you want to chop off that bit from each end that is like the hardwood part. You discard that. But then you can utilize the fibers in the peel because the fibers run alongside the length of the banana. So if you cut your banana in half or in three pieces, then you cut down the peels, let's say into this length. So the fibers are this long.
So now they are more like digestible and edible basically. So then you're going to shred them up and cook them down with the same condiments and spices that you would use for pulled pork. So all you saute some onion and garlic, you take some, I don't know, tomato sauce, you put some condiments and spices, whatever you like. I like some soy sauce in there as well. And you cook it down. You're going to create.
what vegans call the vegan pulled pork basically made from banana skin.
Joshua Sharkey (39:56.918)Whoa, so, so in this case, you're literally just cutting up the banana and cooking it, kind of like with jackfruit. Yeah. And just eating it as is. This isn't like a puree. That's interesting. I gotta try that.
Vojtech Vegh (40:09.198)So the fibers of the banana peel basically kind of mimic the fibers of the meat of the pork, the pulled pork that you can have. So I did this once in like a long time ago in one of my master classes where I did a tasting for the chefs, those who were not part of the master class and they would not believe me that it was not pork, that it was not meat.
Joshua Sharkey (40:18.424)Yeah, yeah.
Joshua Sharkey (40:33.582)When you cut off the ends, obviously it's kind of like ginger, know, the fibers, you gotta cut them down otherwise you can't chew them or they get stuck in your teeth, I would assume. Then are you cutting it into smaller strips so it's like, what size piece is this of a banana?
Vojtech Vegh (40:49.046)You want to keep some of the length of the fibers so you have the texture, know, but you don't want to keep it too long. So this is why I recommend that you depend on the size of your banana. Now it sounds wrong, but you want to cut it in two or three pieces or maybe even four.
Joshua Sharkey (41:03.118)Yeah. And does it need to be a ripe banana? Is it an underripe
Vojtech Vegh (41:08.526)It's better when it's ripe because then the peel is softer. But again, can use bananas that is less ripe and just cook it bit longer. You know, or you can even salt it. Like you take the skins, you chop them up. You mix them in with some salt, you wait for a few minutes and squeeze down the water and it kind of softens the fibers as well. So it's shortens your cooking time.
Joshua Sharkey (41:30.38)Yeah, yeah. And are we talking about just sort of the Cavendish style bananas or is this also like the little red bananas? Is it like plantains as well? Like, is it anything in that banana family?
Vojtech Vegh (41:42.19)Plantains are a bit challenging for this particular use because they are much thicker and the fibers are much harder in that. So, they would have to be like either like very right to be used for that purpose, but you can use plantain peels for other things like frickers, for example, you just want to chop them across the fibers to cut through the fibers. Make them a short story. Basically, like, I don't want to say like chiffonade, but like almost, you know, like you want to go like very thin.
Fibers up,
Joshua Sharkey (42:12.27)Yeah, yeah, I got it. I hate peeling plantains. I hate peeling plantains. On that note, just since we're talking about green plantains, those suck to peel, what about yuca? Peeling yuca sucks too, and those skins are, can't do much with that. Right?
Vojtech Vegh (42:28.588)Yeah, but think about it if you process it as the rest of the root basically. Don't worry, you do it. You boil it or you cook it or you roast it. Then once again, okay, so what's the problem is, is that it's hard and fibrous. What is the solution? You either want to chop it up, chop through it, or you want to shred it. Or if it's possible, then you're going to blitz it and put it through a chinois, for example. But anything that is too hard and fibrous to eat as it is,
you're looking at disrupting the fibers in some way. that's blending, chopping through, shredding, grating, or do whatever that's kind of breaks down the fibers. And in cases, know, like Yuka or another example is for example, like the asparagus stalks, which no matter what you do, the fiber is still going to be there. You just have to like pass it through a chinoir or put it through a sieve or something. use them, you know, I'm always looking at applications which are as
minimally label intensive as possible. Well, that least amount of work is needed for that. So I don't go to things which are like multi-step, like long time. So it takes a lot of time to prepare. So if something is easier to be turned into a super puree, then that's what I'm going to advise basically.
Joshua Sharkey (43:47.744)I always use asparagus skins whether white or I mean white obviously for like the poaching liquid and then the green whatever I'll make if I make a asparagus soup Always I just use the skins to make this stock. Yeah, I have a stock already I'll just fortify with the skins because there's there's so much flavor in those. Yeah You come a little bit I'll try that that seems like a that seems tough Because I was getting pretty hard, but I guess it makes sense. Basically your point is anything that is
Vojtech Vegh (44:03.534)Now this flavor and everything
Joshua Sharkey (44:16.748)you know, something that we eat every piece of that, unless it literally is like, what's the, what's the, what's the goalpost here or like, what's the, the line in the sand where you're like, okay, this is the things you just let's just assume all of this. You've gone through a way. Obviously we talked about the root of the hard part of the banana. What are the lines in the sand?
Vojtech Vegh (44:32.238)And
Vojtech Vegh (44:37.758)One thing that I don't recommend using in commercial kitchens is the pineapple leaves, the crown of the pineapple. So it's technically edible. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's just a bit of a risky thing because of the compounds that it contains. It's higher in the bromelain as well. It can like, it can permit allergic reactions as well. And there's only so many things you can do with it, which would be mostly again about flavor extraction, whether turn it into a tea or a drink. So
It's kind of an item that I'd say is not worth it. That's one of the things. The other thing is things like, that's particularly in Western world, things like papaya skin or mango skin. So you're going to see like Indians and like maybe other South Asian countries, like people eating the mango skins for example, but they were eating it since they were kids. So they are used to it. But mango skin can trigger an allergy reaction that you might not know about.
So to me, it's it's looking at the risk reward ratio in it, like where it's not worth it. They can't abstract me because of the risk involved, like I just rather like just composed it.
Joshua Sharkey (45:48.344)Sure. What about avocado skins? What about avocado skins?
Vojtech Vegh (45:52.266)Avocado skin too, it's healthy, but you can turn it into a tea and drink and nothing can happen to you because there isn't any kind of risky compound in it. But it's the amount of chemicals that is sprayed on an avocado skin and because of the thickness and how hard the skin is, it stays on the skin. It protects the avocado flesh more than ingredients with a thin layer of the skin where the chemical spray penetrates through the ingredients. peeling it is not going to help.
Joshua Sharkey (46:21.078)Seed.
Vojtech Vegh (46:23.17)Seed is the healthiest part of the avocado and you should eat it.
Joshua Sharkey (46:26.606)How do you eat a seed? What do you mean? You grind it up? Is that what you...
Vojtech Vegh (46:29.816)Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, is the healthiest part of the.
Joshua Sharkey (46:32.596)First of all, what blender are you putting that avocado in? Those are hard.
Vojtech Vegh (46:36.608)You have to chop it up first. You chop it up and be careful. Don't chop your fingers off because it's bit slimy. You chop up the avocado and you blend into a smoothie. That's one of the things. The easier thing that you can do is turn it into a tea. It makes one of the healthiest tea. Okay. I'm not like a nutritionist or something, but it's like super healthy thing that you can drink. Cut it in half.
Joshua Sharkey (46:43.66)Yeah, yeah, that's-
Joshua Sharkey (47:05.422)does taste like?
Vojtech Vegh (47:07.182)It has a very unique flavor. It's, you know, like, you know what the taste of an unripe avocado is? you ate like avocado, it's not really ripe. I don't know how to describe it. It's kind of a unique flavor. So it's more of that. It's that kind of a remotely like a nutmeg a bit, I would say, you know, like this kind of a spice in there a bit.
Joshua Sharkey (47:29.838)Okay, so you say watermelon is the most wasted watermelon rind, but like I gotta imagine avocado seeds are going in the trash more than, I mean there's how many avocados are there? There's millions of them a day. Those seeds are not going in the shakes right now or teas. It's gotta be a big one.
Vojtech Vegh (47:48.334)Here is a startup idea. Someone collecting avocado skins, grinding them down to a powder, them into a healthy drink. There goes your business idea. Someone go and do it.
Joshua Sharkey (47:59.79)Have you met Kimberly from Copia by the way? No. I gotta introduce you to her. I'm gonna introduce you to her after this. She has a company that basically helps kitchens take whatever is left over and send it to, well it's like soup kitchens and things like that and other places and they get like some tax benefits from it. But there's other, I think there's other opportunities there. I'll introduce you to. This was great man. I feel like could ask you this for hours and I feel like every time I'm asking you I'm like trying to get a gotcha.
But it never happens. You always have an answer. So, you know, it's great, man. And congrats again on keep, you you just keep building the zero waste community and it's pretty incredible. thanks for coming on again.
Vojtech Vegh (48:43.286)Yeah, thanks for having me. It was my pleasure.
Joshua Sharkey (48:45.41)Let me know what you come up with for kids birthday. That is a non-cake cake this time.
Vojtech Vegh (48:51.374)You will probably see it on Instagram, but you reminded me because I forgot about that part.
Joshua Sharkey (48:58.03)Alright, yeah, well, that's what I'm here for. Thanks, I appreciate it, Thanks so much for listening to show. If you liked this episode or any other ones,
Vojtech Vegh (49:01.943)Alright!
Joshua Sharkey (49:08.482)You can actually check out more of this at getmes.com slash Josh. That's G-E-T-M-E-E-Z slash J-O-S-H. I have my podcast there, the MES Podcast, plus some other shows and interviews. Starting to write some stories and blog posts, some recipes, recaps, things like that. So I think you'll enjoy it. Again, it's getmes.com slash Josh. G-E-T-M-E-E-Z dot com slash J-O-S-H. Thank you very much. Very grateful for all of you.
