Daniel Holzman on Coffee Culture, Making Coffee "Right"

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Daniel Holzman

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Daniel Holzman is the chef and restaurateur behind New York City's The Meatball Shop and Danny Boy's Famous Original Pizza in Los Angeles. His new book, "Food IQ: 100 Questions, Answers, and Recipes to Raise Your Cooking Smarts," is available now.

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Your coffee thing, if you're really into it, you get into the flavors and you get into drinking it black. I used to always add cream to my coffee and I still do if I get Starbucks because no offense Starbucks but generally speaking their black coffee does not taste that good. A lot of it is like overcooked and burnt. I read that Howard Schultz's biography and it like turned me into a huge Starbucks fan because the guy is just so inspirational. He brought coffee culture to America. Coffee didn't exist here before. The espresso culture and espresso bars, whether you like the coffee or don't or whatever you say it's really phenomenal what he's doing. They have that one machine. If you go to that one machine, what is it called? The Clover? Yeah, it sucks the coffee. What is that called? Is that a quote? Yeah, but I think Starbucks like bottom all right because they're like this is too good. He partnered with the way it's part of his book. He like found this guy that was doing this thing and he was like I want to partner with you and bring this to the world. It's a genius piece of kit. There was a Starbucks near my house in California that had one and I used to always get that. I drink black but other than that I just pour some cream in there and it's good enough but I generally like a dark roast black coffee and I've gotten it's a thing that's like you get accustomed to the flavor and the taste. Yeah, that's the machine. It's really wild. You pour the beans in there and then you have to kind of whisk it and stir it. There's some sort of a vacuum. It is called a clover right? There's a vacuum process that creates the coffee and it's the perfect temperature coffee and then you got this weird hockey puck of grounds that come to the top and then they just sort of scrape that hockey puck off. Yeah, they got that little squeegee. It's amazing. Perfect. Matt and I have this conversation all the time because I'm like part of coffee culture at a coffee bar is the theater of it all. When you go to coffee but then I'm like we're writing this cookbook and I'm like dude can we just actually make coffee and taste it all these different ways and try and break down what's really important. Do I got to steep the beans and then wait 10 minutes and then start again and get the rest of the water in there? Do I have to ... Is that a blooming process really matter? How long before I grind the beans? We came to the conclusion that some of the things are ... Look if you got a morning tradition that includes putting on your monocle and putting on your bow tie and looking at and grinding your beans. That's hilarious. Your pins in there. For me, we were like actually fresh grinding your beans makes a huge difference. I love a pour over coffee and blooming the coffee matters. Getting it wet first and then putting a little more water in afterwards so it has some time. You know what I'm talking about? No, explain that. Matt wrote the recipe in the cookbook but basically it's like an old school glass drip coffee maker actually makes really great coffee like an old bun machine where the drip comes down slow so it gets the ground coffee wet and it gives it a chance to absorb the water and then the flavor to filter out. Whereas if you just pour all the water over dry beans right away ... Like a French press. It doesn't ... Well, a French press, it steeps it in there, right? Right. Like a French press, you pour it in, you let it steep in there and then you strain it out. But a lot of people when they do a pour over coffee or whatever they're doing, they just put the beans in their filter, ground beans in their filter, pour the hot water over and let it drain through and you leave a lot of the flavor behind. Whereas if you get it wet, let it sit for a minute and then pour the rest of the water through, you get more extraction of the flavor. So when you say get it wet, how wet? Well, I put 20% of the water in. For me, I do 21 grams of coffee and 350 grams of water. Jesus. That's an eight-hour specific. Well, everything is this way. I'm a psycho about everything I do. I mean, salting meat, I do it by the percentage weight. Everything's percentage weight for me. Really? You don't just like salt bay it? No, no. I mean, I do the salt bay after I weigh it first, obviously. No, everything for me is ... That's the way you get great consistency and that's the way you can really figure out what you did wrong and get it better is by adjusting it incrementally, right? So that 21 grams of ground coffee for whatever it is, a full-size cup of coffee, this is beautiful. But do I get to keep this one? Oh, yeah. Sure. I just offered that to myself. No, no, no. See? Yeah, it's 400%. It's for you. Thank you. That would be a great thank you. You're welcome. I'll drink my coffee and look at you every day. All right, beautiful. I'll get weird. It's handsome. So I take the first 100 grams of water and I pour it over. And then I go and I take my ... I do some of my morning activities before I start the shower and then I come back and I finish the coffee the other time. How much time in between? Depends upon what I have for dinner the night before, really. Oh, so you take a shit. Take a shit and then I come back and I finish. So like 15 minutes? Yeah, it could be any amount of time. Really, I don't like to drink my coffee super hot, so I don't mind that extra time to cool it down a bit. But I think you just want to give it about two minutes for the coffee to bloom, for whatever scientists that would explain, like the starches are absorbing the water, which is allowing them to release ... Because if you think about pouring coffee over ... It's like little ground pebbles of coffee beans. You pour the water over and you want the water to have a chance to leach out the flavor that's inside of the ground. And espresso is really fast and you grind it really, really fine, right? Whereas maybe a French press is going to steep for quite a while, so you grind it quite a bit coarser. And so pour over maybe somewhere in between, but it still needs a few seconds to steep. But that's what you prefer, the pour over. Yeah, I'm a pour over guy.The Jerogan experience. Your coffee thing, if you're really into it, you get into the flavors and you get into drinking it black. I used to always add cream to my coffee and I still do if I get Starbucks because no offense Starbucks but generally speaking their black coffee does not taste that good. A lot of it is like overcooked and burnt. I read that Howard Schultz's biography and it like turned me into a huge Starbucks fan because the guy is just so inspirational. He brought coffee culture to America. Coffee didn't exist here before. The espresso culture and espresso bars, whether you like the coffee or don't or whatever you say it's really phenomenal what he's doing. They have that one machine. If you go to that one machine, what is it called? The Clover? Yeah, it sucks the coffee. What is that called? Is that a quote? Yeah, but I think Starbucks like bottom all right because they're like this is too good. He partnered with the way it's part of his book. He like found this guy that was doing this thing and he was like I want to partner with you and bring this to the world. It's a genius piece of kit. There was a Starbucks near my house in California that had one and I used to always get that. I drink black but other than that I just pour some cream in there and it's good enough but I generally like a dark roast black coffee and I've gotten it's a thing that's like you get accustomed to the flavor and the taste. Yeah, that's the machine. It's really wild. You pour the beans in there and then you have to kind of whisk it and stir it. There's some sort of a vacuum. It is called a clover right? There's a vacuum process that creates the coffee and it's the perfect temperature coffee and then you got this weird hockey puck of grounds that come to the top and then they just sort of scrape that hockey puck off. Yeah, they got that little squeegee. It's amazing. Perfect. Matt and I have this conversation all the time because I'm like part of coffee culture at a coffee bar is the theater of it all. When you go to coffee but then I'm like we're writing this cookbook and I'm like dude can we just actually make coffee and taste it all these different ways and try and break down what's really important. Do I got to steep the beans and then wait 10 minutes and then start again and get the rest of the water in there? Do I have to ... Is that a blooming process really matter? How long before I grind the beans? We came to the conclusion that some of the things are ... Look if you got a morning tradition that includes putting on your monocle and putting on your bow tie and looking at and grinding your beans. That's hilarious. Your pins in there. For me, we were like actually fresh grinding your beans makes a huge difference. I love a pour over coffee and blooming the coffee matters. Getting it wet first and then putting a little more water in afterwards so it has some time. You know what I'm talking about? No, explain that. Matt wrote the recipe in the cookbook but basically it's like an old school glass drip coffee maker actually makes really great coffee like an old bun machine where the drip comes down slow so it gets the ground coffee wet and it gives it a chance to absorb the water and then the flavor to filter out. Whereas if you just pour all the water over dry beans right away ... Like a French press. It doesn't ... Well, a French press, it steeps it in there, right? Right. Like a French press, you pour it in, you let it steep in there and then you strain it out. But a lot of people when they do a pour over coffee or whatever they're doing, they just put the beans in their filter, ground beans in their filter, pour the hot water over and let it drain through and you leave a lot of the flavor behind. Whereas if you get it wet, let it sit for a minute and then pour the rest of the water through, you get more extraction of the flavor. So when you say get it wet, how wet? Well, I put 20% of the water in. For me, I do 21 grams of coffee and 350 grams of water. Jesus. That's an eight-hour specific. Well, everything is this way. I'm a psycho about everything I do. I mean, salting meat, I do it by the percentage weight. Everything's percentage weight for me. Really? You don't just like salt bay it? No, no. I mean, I do the salt bay after I weigh it first, obviously. No, everything for me is ... That's the way you get great consistency and that's the way you can really figure out what you did wrong and get it better is by adjusting it incrementally, right? So that 21 grams of ground coffee for whatever it is, a full-size cup of coffee, this is beautiful. But do I get to keep this one? Oh, yeah. Sure. I just offered that to myself. No, no, no. See? Yeah, it's 400%. It's for you. Thank you. That would be a great thank you. You're welcome. I'll drink my coffee and look at you every day. All right, beautiful. I'll get weird. It's handsome. So I take the first 100 grams of water and I pour it over. And then I go and I take my ... I do some of my morning activities before I start the shower and then I come back and I finish the coffee the other time. How much time in between? Depends upon what I have for dinner the night before, really. Oh, so you take a shit. Take a shit and then I come back and I finish. So like 15 minutes? Yeah, it could be any amount of time. Really, I don't like to drink my coffee super hot, so I don't mind that extra time to cool it down a bit. But I think you just want to give it about two minutes for the coffee to bloom, for whatever scientists that would explain, like the starches are absorbing the water, which is allowing them to release ... Because if you think about pouring coffee over ... It's like little ground pebbles of coffee beans. You pour the water over and you want the water to have a chance to leach out the flavor that's inside of the ground. And espresso is really fast and you grind it really, really fine, right? Whereas maybe a French press is going to steep for quite a while, so you grind it quite a bit coarser. And so pour over maybe somewhere in between, but it still needs a few seconds to steep. But that's what you prefer, the pour over. Yeah, I'm a pour over guy.