Joe Rogan Experience #1202 - Fred Morin & David McMillan

1. 0:00 – 2:23

   Apocalypse cookbook concept & the Joe Beef guys’ off-grid mindset

   1. DMDavid McMillan0:00

      I don't know. No, here we go.

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:02

      Good?

   3. DMDavid McMillan0:06

      Okay.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:08

      Here we go. Three, two, live.

   5. DMDavid McMillan0:12

      Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:12

      Boom, we're live. Gentlemen. Joe-

   7. DMDavid McMillan0:15

      David.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      Fred.

   9. DMDavid McMillan0:15

      Hey, good to be here.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:16

       Good to see you guys. What's happening?

   11. FMFred Morin0:19

       Not much, we're in sunny California.

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:21

       Yeah, it's, uh, too close to the sun.

   13. FMFred Morin0:23

       (laughs)

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:23

       Little bit.

   15. DMDavid McMillan0:24

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:25

       Been barbecued over the last week and a half, I've been hiding in a hotel for six days.

   17. DMDavid McMillan0:29

       How proper that we're here to talk about, uh-

   18. JRJoe Rogan0:31

       The apocalypse. (laughs)

   19. DMDavid McMillan0:32

       ... surviving the apocalypse, yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan0:32

       Yeah, that's what I was gonna say, your book is Joe Beef Surviving the Apocalypse. Um, a cookbook for surviving the apocalypse? What is the, what's the purpose of the, uh, the title? Just a goof?

   21. FMFred Morin0:43

       We haven't written a book in years, you know. We, I don't think we really wanted to write a second book. Uh, when we started getting a bit of pressure to write a second one, we kind of, you know, laid down the gauntlet to the editors and said, "We're gonna write what we want. Are you in or are you out?" And they said, "Well, you know, show us a little bit of the framework of what this is gonna be." I said, "I wanna talk..." You know, cooking doesn't define me or Fred, it's not all that we do. Like, it's, you know, so you see some people, they seem to like eat, live, and breathe cooking. Um, I said, "No, I'm into the outdoors, I'm into mushroom picking, I'm into fermentation of berries. I'm into, you know, canoeing. I know all about canoes. I love swimming in lakes. I wanna talk about multiple subjects. I wanna talk about the native Mohawks of Quebec. I wanna..." You know, so I said, "Let us write a book about the multiple subjects of which we're into." You know?

   22. DMDavid McMillan1:36

       Uh, hey, Joe, if, if we're not cooking, we're building first aid kits and, like, survival kits for real.

   23. FMFred Morin1:42

       Really?

   24. DMDavid McMillan1:43

       The, yeah, David-

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:43

       Oh, yeah, yeah.

   26. DMDavid McMillan1:43

       ... goes to, like, L.L. Bean, he has a lifetime membership there and...

   27. FMFred Morin1:48

       I have an off-grid cabin up north, like north of Montreal, about an hour and a half. You can only get there by, by boat.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:55

       (laughs)

   29. FMFred Morin1:55

       Uh, it's eight kilometers from the, the landing. Uh, you know, 2,000 watts of solar power. Completely off grid, you can't even... You can barely walk in 'cause of the jagged cliffs all around it, and behind me is an old growth forest that's protected federally.

   30. DMDavid McMillan2:08

       And I have a suture kit and, uh, saline-
2. 2:23 – 6:13

   Montreal winters, grid failure fears & banning wood fires

   1. JRJoe Rogan2:23

      Pft. I grew up in Boston, and, uh, I did standup in Montreal for the first time, I think, in like 1991 or something like that, and I remember thinking Boston was cold until I, I went to Montreal and I went, "Oh, this is a different thing. This is-

   2. FMFred Morin2:38

      Oh, we had it last year, too.

   3. JRJoe Rogan2:40

      ... a whole different level of cold."

   4. FMFred Morin2:40

      We had a polar vortex last year come roaring through. I think all the pipes blew in all the restaurants.

   5. JRJoe Rogan2:46

      I'm sure.

   6. FMFred Morin2:47

      Right.

   7. DMDavid McMillan2:47

      Yeah. January 2nd, you know?

   8. JRJoe Rogan2:49

      But what I was gonna say is, do you think that living in such an extreme environment, a beautiful city, amazing city, but it's, uh, incredibly harsh environment in the winter, do you think that makes you more, uh, more cognizant about-

   9. FMFred Morin3:02

      It's always-

   10. JRJoe Rogan3:03

       ... the need for survival?

   11. FMFred Morin3:04

       It's always in the back of my head. I have three daughters, like, uh, I, it's always in the back of my head, I said, "This is incredibly cold. If the power goes out for 48 hours, I have to start a plan B. Where am I bringing my babies?

   12. JRJoe Rogan3:18

       Yeah.

   13. FMFred Morin3:18

       What are we gonna eat? Where are we going?"

   14. JRJoe Rogan3:20

       Yeah.

   15. FMFred Morin3:21

       Even our city over the last couple of years have been talking about a complete ban of fireplaces and wood-burning stoves inside of homes, condominiums, and home- and houses. The, the laws governing wood burning in the city of Montreal are stricter than the ones in California. Uh... We'd die, man.

   16. DMDavid McMillan3:42

       If, if-

   17. FMFred Morin3:42

       For the life of me...

   18. DMDavid McMillan3:42

       ... it's cold, we die.

   19. JRJoe Rogan3:43

       Yeah.

   20. FMFred Morin3:43

       I go, "This is irresponsible." You know.

   21. JRJoe Rogan3:45

       Yeah.

   22. FMFred Morin3:46

       By, by the government to do this. I said, "Okay, make sure we don't use them, but let's all have them just in case."

   23. DMDavid McMillan3:51

       Same goes for-

   24. JRJoe Rogan3:52

       Yeah.

   25. FMFred Morin3:52

       Because if the-

   26. DMDavid McMillan3:52

       ... bits like guns, yeah, right?

   27. FMFred Morin3:54

       If the grid goes down... It's...

   28. JRJoe Rogan3:54

       What are they worried about it for? Are they worried about the-

   29. DMDavid McMillan3:56

       Air-

   30. JRJoe Rogan3:56

       ... air pollution?
3. 6:13 – 7:53

   Bourdain ice-fishing episode: staged ‘no fish’ becomes culinary theater

   1. JRJoe Rogan6:13

      Yes. Yes. So, you just wanted to write a book that kind of covers all of your interests, not just with food. But one of the things that I really enjoyed about ... There was an episode that you guys did of, uh, Anthony Bourdain's show where you were ice fishing, um, and you had a s- one of those ice fishing huts and you guys cooked.

   2. DMDavid McMillan6:33

      You know, Tony told you, it's notorious on his show that they never caught fish.

   3. JRJoe Rogan6:38

      Yeah.

   4. DMDavid McMillan6:38

      And whenever he had a gun, he never hit anything. So we knew that and we knew that there was not a pike and there was not a walleye that was gonna bite. So we're like, okay, option A, we sit there and we, like, take some fake fish and we fry it up in cornflakes and shortening in a hollow cabin. Or we just went, like, Joe Beef crazy and we brought all the old cookbooks we had, all the spirits, like Cuban cigars, all the copperware, all the stuff. And we made a menu from an old Lyonnais restaurant, Paul Bocuse, that he did a show at after. And he, he knew nothing about that day, and we just went from fishing after he asked us about, like, uh, strippers in Quebec. And, like, uh, just a few funny banter and it was... We just went in and it was, like, magical. It's a ... It was seriously a tenth, a tenth of the size of this room here.

   5. JRJoe Rogan7:24

      Yeah. It was a tiny, tiny little shack.

   6. FMFred Morin7:26

      Yeah. And he tapped out that day.

   7. JRJoe Rogan7:28

      Yeah?

   8. FMFred Morin7:28

      Yeah. He was having a good time.

   9. JRJoe Rogan7:29

      (laughs)

   10. FMFred Morin7:29

       And, uh, we hit the ... We, we brought some fine wines and fine spirits and some really rare oddities, some old Chartreuses and stuff like that-

   11. JRJoe Rogan7:37

       Yeah.

   12. FMFred Morin7:37

       ... that Fred had lying around. And, and Tony was, was funny.

   13. JRJoe Rogan7:42

       There you guys are. It's up on the screen right there.

   14. FMFred Morin7:43

       He let it go a bit, you know?

   15. DMDavid McMillan7:45

       Oh, very nice.

   16. FMFred Morin7:45

       He just ... He calmed down and enjoyed us and let me do our thing. I'm a bit fatter, eh? Oh, God.

   17. JRJoe Rogan7:51

       (laughs)

   18. FMFred Morin7:51

       (laughs)

4. 7:53 – 10:28

   Old-school nutrition: organ meats, blood sauces & cheese as digestif/probiotic

   1. JRJoe Rogan7:53

      Uh, that was in the wine-drinking days too, right?

   2. FMFred Morin7:55

      Yeah, correct.

   3. JRJoe Rogan7:56

      Look at that. God, that looks good. Is that foie gras and some sort of mashed potatoes or something?

   4. DMDavid McMillan8:00

      Yeah. That's, uh, wild rabbit. It's a French recipe. It's called, uh, hare a la royale, where you, um, you cook the hare for a long time and, uh ... Hare. (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan8:11

      (laughs)

   6. DMDavid McMillan8:11

      And you serve it with truffles and, and, uh, you take ... You keep the blood. This hare is snared, so it's still full of blood, and you keep the blood. And at the end, you've thickened the sauce with the blood.

   7. JRJoe Rogan8:20

      Whoa.

   8. DMDavid McMillan8:21

      Ah, it's very good. And I bet you ... You know, it's funny. I bet you it fits all the principles of nutrition now, you know?

   9. JRJoe Rogan8:27

      Mm.

   10. DMDavid McMillan8:27

       It's like blood and all the organ meats and all the-

   11. JRJoe Rogan8:29

       Right.

   12. DMDavid McMillan8:30

       Same with cheese. Look. This is, like, pure-

   13. JRJoe Rogan8:32

       Epoisses cheese with brandy.

   14. DMDavid McMillan8:33

       ... probiotics right there.

   15. JRJoe Rogan8:34

       Isn't that ... That is interesting, right? That no one thought of that until recently, that that was what it was. That people just thought of it as cheese, and now people think of it as there's live cultures on it and organ meat is f- much healthier for you, and people are so much more aware of that.

   16. DMDavid McMillan8:48

       And look at the, the cheese thing too. It's like ... Now, they ... The ... A lot of the probiotic makers are doing, like, uh, l- lipodeliveries. They coat it in fat so it resists the stomach acid, right? But that's fat.

   17. JRJoe Rogan9:01

       Mm.

   18. DMDavid McMillan9:01

       Probiotic from cheese is covered in fat.

   19. JRJoe Rogan9:03

       Right.

   20. DMDavid McMillan9:03

       You eat it after your dinner, it lives through you. And, and it all c- ... It ... In a perfect world, it comes from right around your house, right? So you eat a cheese and the probiotics are the same one that you're gonna encounter later, so you kinda get immunized in a way.

   21. JRJoe Rogan9:17

       Yeah.

   22. DMDavid McMillan9:17

       That's the benefit. That's what true local is.

   23. JRJoe Rogan9:20

       Right. Right. Yeah. Is ... There's a benefit to eating cheese after a meal?

   24. FMFred Morin9:24

       Yeah, sure. It is. And when it's a very pungent, uh, advanced, alive, raw cheese, it'll be seen ultimately as a non-alcoholic digestif.

   25. JRJoe Rogan9:33

       What is a digestif?

   26. FMFred Morin9:34

       To, to, to h- help stimulate digestion.

   27. JRJoe Rogan9:37

       Ah, no kidding.

   28. FMFred Morin9:39

       Correct.

   29. JRJoe Rogan9:39

       So it's almost like an enzyme, like a ...

   30. FMFred Morin9:40

       Yeah, like a probiotic.
5. 10:28 – 15:14

   Taboo proteins: horse meat, cultural history, and America’s narrow meat palette

   1. JRJoe Rogan10:28

      Yeah, yeah. Now you guys, uh, how long have you been in Montreal? And I have to tell you, and I've said it before, p- if I had to say my all-time favorite restaurant, I think Joe Beef's my all-time favorite restaurant. I don't like to say my all-time number, because there's a lot of great restaurants in this world. But damn, if I had to choose one, I think I might choose you guys.

   2. FMFred Morin10:47

      No, you're very kind.

   3. DMDavid McMillan10:48

      Yeah.

   4. FMFred Morin10:48

      But we have to take you out to other places to change your mind.

   5. JRJoe Rogan10:51

      (laughs)

   6. DMDavid McMillan10:51

      (laughs)

   7. FMFred Morin10:51

      I don't think you gotta, man. You guys are the fir- ... It's a kind of f- ... If you're a horse lover, turn your head. Plug your ears.

   8. JRJoe Rogan10:57

      (laughs)

   9. FMFred Morin10:57

      You guys are the first people that ever served me horse. And I was like, "What?" When you b- you brought over a hor- ... Uh, you ... Uh, it was a, a horse, horse tenderloin. And I was like, "What the fuck? You guys are eating horse up here?"

   10. JRJoe Rogan11:07

       (laughs)

   11. FMFred Morin11:07

       And horse tartare. I was like, "Mm." But it's a stigma, you know?

   12. JRJoe Rogan11:11

       Yeah.

   13. FMFred Morin11:11

       It's a, a cow, an elk, a bison, a deer-

   14. JRJoe Rogan11:14

       Yeah.

   15. FMFred Morin11:14

       ... a horse. It's a four-legged animal.

   16. JRJoe Rogan11:15

       Yes.

   17. FMFred Morin11:15

       And you know, what if I put ... If I put a bison tenderloin on this ... And, and serve you up a beef tenderloin and a cow tenderloin and a deer tenderloin, it's ... At the end of the day, it's ... You know, it just has a couple of degrees of separation from the other. It's all flesh, really.

   18. JRJoe Rogan11:29

       Oh.

   19. DMDavid McMillan11:29

       And, and it's, it's very subjective that we base our nutritional choices on the ... How pretty or how cute an animal is, you know? It doesn't make sense, you know?

   20. FMFred Morin11:39

       Uh-

   21. DMDavid McMillan11:39

       And we're lucky now we're able to choose what we eat.

   22. JRJoe Rogan11:42

       Right.

   23. DMDavid McMillan11:43

       You know? Like, it wasn't like that 100 years ago. You know, the purpose of the food guide until, like, 40 years ago was to make sure you got enough calories. Now we're in an age of restriction, so you ... We say, like, "I don't want horse. I prefer deer," or, "I prefer veal," or, "I had chicken yesterday. I can't have twice in a row." Like, all this is a bit of fluff, what we do, in a way, because we're so fortunate to have enough food to-

   24. FMFred Morin12:05

       ... decide? (sighs)

   25. JRJoe Rogan12:06

       My friend, Remy Warren, was on a backpacking, uh, uh, horseback elk hunt and, uh, one of the horses fell down and broke its leg. And they had to make a decision. They were deep in the back country and they had to shoot it. And, uh, it was just wasn't gonna get out of there. And after they shot it, he decided that really this is... its animal's gonna go to waste. So they took the backstraps off and they, they cooked it and ate it. And anybody said that it was a really weird moment where like this is an animal that was like everybody's petting it and it was, you were, you know, you're riding it and it just... It was a working animal, but it was an animal that you loved and then all of a sudden it's down and you have to kill it. And he's like, "Well, it's gonna go to waste." He said he just felt wrong to let it go to waste, so they, they cut the backstraps off of it.

   26. FMFred Morin12:52

       You know, the reason that I think we don't eat horse culturally is really based ultimately on the Battle of Wolfe between Montcalm on the plains of Quebec City. Uh, you know, there, that was a decisive battle in North American history, whereas if the French had won that battle, everybody in North America ultimately would be speaking French.

   27. JRJoe Rogan13:13

       Mm-hmm.

   28. FMFred Morin13:13

       You know? They didn't win that battle, so British rule imposed. So in England, you didn't eat horse by royal decree. But in F-... the French ate horse, the Belgians eat horse, the Germans eat horse, you see? So that's-

   29. JRJoe Rogan13:27

       Oh, so that's what it is, huh?

   30. FMFred Morin13:27

       Yeah. It's very old history. Uh- You know, it was mining, it was mining-
6. 15:14 – 20:11

   Wild game legality & the dark side of foraging: market hunting, hijackings, mushroom wars

   1. FMFred Morin15:14

      ... and the food that their parents buy. Um, some, some people of lesser means eat pork liver. They're raised on it. So when they see liver on the restaurant, cute little, you know, 19-year-old girls that are about to go out to the club later will have a slice of liver. You won't see that in New York City. Are you allowed to sell venison here that you hunt?

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:32

      No.

   3. FMFred Morin15:33

      No?

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:33

      Not that you hunt.

   5. FMFred Morin15:34

      Okay.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:34

      You, you have to bu- buy farm raised stuff and, oddly enough, most of it's from New Zealand. Most of the stuff that we're-

   7. FMFred Morin15:39

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:39

      ... getting here in the United States is from New Zealand. And if they call it venison, it's most likely some sort of stag or, you know, and the elk that we get, if we buy elk in a restaurant, it's-

   9. FMFred Morin15:49

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:49

       ... it's all from New Zealand. But when you-

   11. FMFred Morin15:51

       So you can't harvest them?

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:52

       No.

   13. FMFred Morin15:52

       When you, when you do a kill you can put it in your freezer?

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:55

       Yes.

   15. FMFred Morin15:55

       Okay, perfect.

   16. JRJoe Rogan15:55

       Yeah. Well, all... I have two freezers back here. Um, all of, um, the elk that I get I get from myself that I hunt and I give it to a lot of my friends and I make sausages for my friends and I send, I... you know. But that's the only way they're gonna get it, unless they go out and get it themselves. There's not a place in Los Angeles where you can go buy elk meat.

   17. FMFred Morin16:13

       In New-

   18. JRJoe Rogan16:14

       Yeah.

   19. FMFred Morin16:14

       In Newfoundland, the... they're, they're allowed to... hunters are allowed to sell moose back to the restaurants. Really?

   20. JRJoe Rogan16:21

       Yeah. Moose were introduced onto the island of Newfoundland from Maine and there was no natural predators on Newfoundland.

   21. FMFred Morin16:28

       Ah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan16:28

       So the moo-... and it's a perfect environment for them, so they just propagated, so-

   23. FMFred Morin16:33

       That's why they, they drive slow there, man.

   24. JRJoe Rogan16:35

       Oh, yeah.

   25. FMFred Morin16:35

       When we shot with Tony, they drove slow. Like we drove for hours, like full days to go like 300 miles because you can't drive fast because of the mooses. So you can have a restaurant, like in the hotel we stayed, the restaurant had a permit to buy moose. So they would make like moose curry and moose sausages and-

   26. JRJoe Rogan16:53

       But like at a Days Inn kind of vibe. Like-

   27. FMFred Morin16:55

       Yeah, yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan16:55

       ... not a great restaurant. Right.

   29. FMFred Morin16:56

       Like a hotel, uh, you know, a hotel restaurant serving wild moose burgers. But it's pretty cool that they do that.

   30. JRJoe Rogan17:04

       That is cool.
7. 20:11 – 22:53

   Overfishing realities: bluefin tuna, bycatch, whaling loopholes & choosing sustainable seafood

   1. DMDavid McMillan20:11

      You know, it's like, yeah, you know, bluefin tuna is going extinct, but just make it three times the price. It's gonna regulate the market, you know?

   2. JRJoe Rogan20:19

      I guess. I wish there was a way to reintroduce bluefin to the wild. It just seems like the appetite that people have for those things is just untenable.

   3. FMFred Morin20:27

      If you look at any given night in a city like Manhattan, how much red tuna is sold on the island of Manhattan-

   4. JRJoe Rogan20:36

      Oh.

   5. FMFred Morin20:37

      ... any given night of the year, it's, uh, it's, it's scary.

   6. DMDavid McMillan20:40

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan20:40

      Yeah.

   8. DMDavid McMillan20:40

      I almost feel like it's like killing the last giraffe in a herd, you know, like, like, fishing a giant tuna like that. It's, it's ... And again, you know, they're, they're big, they're feisty, they're majestic, so that shouldn't guide my choice, my decision in, to protect them, but, like, I ... That's heartbreaking.

   9. JRJoe Rogan20:59

      Well, the problem is there's complete lack of regulation on the open waters when these guys have these enormous ships filled with huge nets and they just drag them across the ocean floor and capture everything-

   10. DMDavid McMillan21:10

       Or bycatch.

   11. JRJoe Rogan21:11

       Yeah.

   12. DMDavid McMillan21:11

       You know, that's the biggest joke.

   13. JRJoe Rogan21:12

       What's that?

   14. DMDavid McMillan21:12

       It's, like, they call it bycatch. So you didn't set off to fish for tuna, but that's what kind of bit.

   15. JRJoe Rogan21:19

       Mm-hmm.

   16. DMDavid McMillan21:20

       You know?

   17. JRJoe Rogan21:20

       Right.

   18. DMDavid McMillan21:20

       Like, yeah. (laughs) Come on. You know, you go fishing for what? To catch a bluefin tuna in the first place, you know? Place?

   19. JRJoe Rogan21:27

       Oh, so they're-

   20. DMDavid McMillan21:28

       Mm-hmm.

   21. JRJoe Rogan21:28

       They're, they're pretending they're not fishing for it. Is that what you're saying?

   22. DMDavid McMillan21:31

       Allegedly. Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan21:32

       Yeah. Well, you know the whole thing with Japanese whalers, they, they found a way to work around it and the way they worked around it-

   24. DMDavid McMillan21:37

       Research boats.

   25. JRJoe Rogan21:37

       ... is science research boats or the- these science research where we're gonna do research on these whales that we kill and then they chop them up and sell them. And Sea Shepherd has been tr- tracking that down and they, they, you know, hover over them, take photographs of it and report them and, you know, it's, it's ugly business.

   26. DMDavid McMillan21:54

       Yeah. Stuff we-

   27. FMFred Morin21:55

       Wild protein is ugly business.

   28. JRJoe Rogan21:56

       Yeah. It is.

   29. FMFred Morin21:57

       We've worked hard at the restaurant to ultimately avoid it, to be more seafood, sustainable seafood focused.

   30. JRJoe Rogan22:02

       Mm-hmm.
8. 22:53 – 29:30

   Oysters: New York’s hidden foundation, water filtration, and ‘ocean cupcakes’ ethics

   1. DMDavid McMillan22:53

      There's, uh, a good book that was published a few years ago, The Big Oyster, I think, Mark Kurlansky, he wrote a book, a book about crab-

   2. FMFred Morin22:59

      The History of the Oyster.

   3. DMDavid McMillan23:00

      Yeah.

   4. FMFred Morin23:01

      The New York and the History of the Oyster. That one's incredible.

   5. DMDavid McMillan23:03

      And it's super interesting because his, his, his thing was, like, you know we try to portray our history as, like, glorious and we herded bisons before for protein and that's how we started our, like, modern farming, but in fact, we probably farmed oysters and snails and clams 'cause they don't move and they're the most prolific and the most abundant source of protein.

   6. JRJoe Rogan23:25

      Yeah.

   7. DMDavid McMillan23:25

      You know?

   8. FMFred Morin23:25

      Kurlansky, in that book, Kurlansky brings up a premise, and I'm loosely interpreting it now because I read this book a few years ago, but think of this for a second, right? The island of Manhattan, uh, is a perfect, all the rivers around it, all the water systems around it. It is actually one of the greater oyster situations on the Atlantic East Coast, right? The reason that the population exploded in Manhattan at the, in the early days was that any person could literally get off a boat, walk onto the island of Man- of Manhattan, homeless, broke, and sleep in an alley, and walk down to the river, and pick five oysters. A small oyster is five grams of protein, right? A medium oyster's got 10 grams of protein. So a completely destitute person could just eat six oysters a day.... you know, three oysters and live again another day to find a job. So the population ultimately, you know, New York City and its population was based on this readily suppl- this huge supply of oysters.

   9. JRJoe Rogan24:36

      Wow.

   10. FMFred Morin24:36

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan24:37

       That's crazy.

   12. FMFred Morin24:37

       There was a free available source of protein that will make you live another 24 hours. So if it takes you three days to find a job, four days to find a job, 20 days to find a job, you're not gonna die because there's oysters.

   13. JRJoe Rogan24:49

       Look at this.

   14. DMDavid McMillan24:50

       And, yeah, and they, they, they found oys-

   15. JRJoe Rogan24:53

       Is that... What is this from? (laughs) What the... What is this from?

   16. FMFred Morin24:55

       Harlem River-

   17. JRJoe Rogan24:55

       The year?

   18. FMFred Morin24:55

       Oysters.

   19. JRJoe Rogan24:56

       Oh, this is incredible.

   20. FMFred Morin24:57

       Yeah, yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan24:57

       Look at this.

   22. DMDavid McMillan24:57

       There, there's, uh, actual islands that they thought were like geo- geological formation that are made of oyster shells.

   23. JRJoe Rogan25:05

       This, um-

   24. DMDavid McMillan25:05

       Layers and layers of oyster shells.

   25. JRJoe Rogan25:07

       The article that Jamie put up is from Thrillist. Is that what it's from? Yeah.

   26. FMFred Morin25:09

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan25:10

       Pull up to the top so I can tell people what the arti- the name of it is. Um, why oysters are ridiculously important to the history of New York City. And, uh, it's just showing all these ancient photos of mounds of oyster shells and-

   28. FMFred Morin25:22

       There's an amazing program today. You know some of the areas... Uh, uh, there's a... They take these giant cages. One oyster, if I'm correct, one oyster filters four metric tons of water per day from what I understand. I might be wrong with my math. So take this for instance. You know, a cage, a caged box of thousands of oysters... There it is. There's the math.

   29. JRJoe Rogan25:47

       There it is. A single oyster can filter about 30 to 50 gallons of water-

   30. DMDavid McMillan25:50

       (laughs)
9. 29:30 – 32:01

   Eating insects and the ‘organic means bugs’ reality check

   1. JRJoe Rogan29:30

      I mean, a lot of people are eating cricket protein. If you guys ever-

   2. DMDavid McMillan29:33

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan29:33

      ... serve any insect dishes...

   4. FMFred Morin29:34

      No, but I'm not opposed to it.

   5. DMDavid McMillan29:35

      Not, not in England.

   6. JRJoe Rogan29:36

      Well, one of the thing... (laughs)

   7. FMFred Morin29:37

      I got a letter last week that someone found, uh, a bug in their salad in their credit set.

   8. DMDavid McMillan29:42

      But, you know, sometimes the-

   9. FMFred Morin29:43

      Oh.

   10. DMDavid McMillan29:44

       ... people are a bit... They want the cake and they want to eat it too because they... People want organic.

   11. FMFred Morin29:49

       Right.

   12. DMDavid McMillan29:49

       And we support that. We love that. But, um-

   13. JRJoe Rogan29:53

       Occasionally, you get an ant in there.

   14. DMDavid McMillan29:54

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan29:54

       Yeah. Well-

   16. DMDavid McMillan29:55

       Organic is no pesticides, so-

   17. JRJoe Rogan29:57

       Right. That's okay. The... Bugs aren't bad. It's like the idea of bugs being... Like roaches are bad, okay? Most other bugs are not that big of a deal.

   18. FMFred Morin30:05

       Yeah.

   19. DMDavid McMillan30:05

       You know?

   20. FMFred Morin30:05

       It's like quite... You know, if we're serv- if we're serving 100 people a day and maybe, you know, that arguably being 40 salads, you know, it's some kinda crazy work to really look at both sides of each leaf.

   21. DMDavid McMillan30:15

       Yeah.

   22. FMFred Morin30:15

       We try our best.

   23. JRJoe Rogan30:16

       Right.

   24. FMFred Morin30:16

       You know, but, you know, one, one will get past us every year.

   25. JRJoe Rogan30:19

       I think you're better off. The people that, that are freaking out about bugs, you don't want them coming in there. Just let them... Just give them their money back and get the fuck out of here.

   26. FMFred Morin30:28

       Yeah, I agree with that.

   27. JRJoe Rogan30:29

       Stay out.

   28. FMFred Morin30:29

       That's my policy.

   29. DMDavid McMillan30:30

       (laughs)

   30. JRJoe Rogan30:31

       ... but when I was in Mexico, they, uh, we checked into this resort and they had a bowl of fried crickets in the hotel. Like, like, they, they had some sort of a flavor to them, they added some flavor to them.
10. 32:01 – 39:04

    Live frog market shock → processing ethics and ‘cook with what the animal would eat’

    1. DMDavid McMillan32:01

       I... David and I were in New York, uh, for Anthony's memory thing, memorial thing, and we walked into Bowery on, you know, middle of the afternoon, hot sun, you know-

    2. FMFred Morin32:11

       Oh, this is a good one.

    3. DMDavid McMillan32:13

       And there's like a little store, no refrigeration, and there's buckets of clams and, you know, like mesh bags, like you put onions in. There's a big mesh bag in a bin and it's full of giant bullfrogs-

    4. FMFred Morin32:25

       Like, looking up at us.

    5. DMDavid McMillan32:26

       Like, 100 little bullfrogs with their tiny heads-

    6. FMFred Morin32:30

       But, like, lined up in a box, like oranges in a box, like one, two, three, four, five-

    7. JRJoe Rogan32:32

       And they're alive.

    8. FMFred Morin32:33

       Yeah.

    9. DMDavid McMillan32:33

       And their little eyes just looking up, like this.

    10. JRJoe Rogan32:35

        Whoa.

    11. DMDavid McMillan32:35

        And I was like, sure, we have frogs in the book, but that was...

    12. FMFred Morin32:39

        So hang on. Fred and I have been cooking for years, like, you know, 25 years arguably not, if not more. I've processed every animal in French cooking-

    13. DMDavid McMillan32:46

        We're process-oriented.

    14. FMFred Morin32:48

        Okay. So of course we're... We keep... We just look at the frogs, we don't say anything to each other, we keep on walking. And I go, "Hang on a sec, Fred. Walk me through this." He goes, "How exactly does this work? I know how to do a rabbit, I know how to do a hare, I know how to do a duck, I know how to do any fish, any seafood, lobster no problem-"

    15. DMDavid McMillan33:04

        So you get a case of frog in the kitchen, what's your first move?

    16. FMFred Morin33:07

        Right now, what's our first move? So we take the live frog, do I put it on the cutting board? Do I hack its legs off? And what do I do with the 60% remaining of the frog? This is... That's what I'm worried about.

    17. DMDavid McMillan33:18

        A ta- a tasty broth? (laughs)

    18. JRJoe Rogan33:19

        Yeah.

    19. FMFred Morin33:20

        Is it, is it ground? Does it end up in dumplings? Where's that other part of the frog going? Is it in soup? Is it broth? You know, that's an amphibian.

    20. JRJoe Rogan33:30

        Right.

    21. DMDavid McMillan33:31

        It was fascinating.

    22. JRJoe Rogan33:32

        Did you experiment?

    23. FMFred Morin33:34

        No. We-

    24. DMDavid McMillan33:34

        No, no, no.

    25. FMFred Morin33:34

        I- I'm mortified. And after that, we went to Tony's memorial. It was in a, a Chinese restaurant and I was just like, I couldn't eat, 'cause l- by default everything had, like, frog in it, in my head.

    26. JRJoe Rogan33:46

        So you were freaking out just because they were alive, staring up at you?

    27. FMFred Morin33:49

        No, because I know that the legs are delicious.

    28. JRJoe Rogan33:51

        Right.

    29. FMFred Morin33:52

        I know that, you know, if I chop the legs off and I peel the skin and I dredge them in flour and I fry them and I serve them with garlic cream, that they're delicious. They're as delicious as chicken wings. What I'm worried about is the frog is so big and, you know, the, the discarded part of the frog is the size of a, a softball.

    30. JRJoe Rogan34:11

        Right.
11. 39:04 – 44:28

    Cooking wild game well: adding fat, border rules, sturgeon/caviar laws & Mohawk fishing

    1. DMDavid McMillan39:04

       I have to say that when I see your, uh, the picture you post of your, uh, meat cooking-

    2. FMFred Morin39:08

       Not bad.

    3. JRJoe Rogan39:09

       Thank you.

    4. DMDavid McMillan39:09

       ... it's always on point.

    5. JRJoe Rogan39:10

       Thank you very much.

    6. DMDavid McMillan39:11

       Because there's a lot of hunters that post up pictures of their dinner and it's not because in ... Like, you can take pictures and they'll look beautiful with, like, of anything. It's not the quality of the picture, but the food is a little bit, mm...

    7. FMFred Morin39:26

       Yeah. Some hunters don't know how to cook. We have a lot of hunters in Quebec and sometimes, you know, the hunter will bring by the... He goes, "I shot this beautiful moose, David. It was, uh, 2000 pounds or 1500 pounds." And he shows me a picture on his phone and then he brings me a jar of the spaghetti sauce he made out of the moose. I was like, "Really?"

    8. DMDavid McMillan39:47

       Mm.

    9. FMFred Morin39:47

       "That's what ... (laughs) Y- y- like, you, you shot a majestic moose in the forest and you made spaghetti sauce with it?"

    10. DMDavid McMillan39:53

        And I put kiwi in it because it tenderizes the meat.

    11. JRJoe Rogan39:56

        (laughs)

    12. FMFred Morin39:58

        (laughs)

    13. JRJoe Rogan39:58

        Well, listen, spaghetti sauce with ground moose is delicious. But-

    14. DMDavid McMillan40:02

        And I'll give you a tip.

    15. JRJoe Rogan40:03

        You gotta have, you gotta have a r- I eat everything. I eat the whole thing, right? I mean, I will ... I, I've, I know how to make the roasts and I use the ground for a bunch of different things. And, um, I, I just think that if you, if you do it properly or if you, if you wanna handle it properly, you've really gotta read up on how to cook wild game as opposed to how to cook anything else. There's a very little fat content. It's a tricky kind of meat to cook.

    16. DMDavid McMillan40:31

        There's a, a tool, it's called a lardoire in French. It's like a big needle with a swivel tip. And what you do is you cut long strips of fat and you poke them through the meat. And as-

    17. JRJoe Rogan40:43

        Oh, and you inject it?

    18. DMDavid McMillan40:43

        Yeah. No, you don't inject. You put like-

    19. FMFred Morin40:45

        Like threading it. Ah.

    20. DMDavid McMillan40:46

        You're threading your piece of meat, like the, the loins or the fat of the back, straps-

    21. FMFred Morin40:51

        Mm.

    22. DMDavid McMillan40:51

        It's, it tends to be leaner. So you put long strips of pork fat inside and you cook it slowly enough that the pork fat will melt inside so in every bite, you'll have a little bit of fat. That's nice.

    23. FMFred Morin41:02

        It's a neat thing. It's an old French cooking trick.

    24. DMDavid McMillan41:04

        Yeah.

    25. JRJoe Rogan41:04

        That sounds sensational.

    26. DMDavid McMillan41:06

        Or what we do actually, like for the wild rabbit, which is extremely dry, we'll put, uh, a veal foot with the skin, so that'll give off the collagen and we'll put a slice of pork belly with it, that'll give off the fat.

    27. JRJoe Rogan41:21

        When are you guys going back to Montreal?

    28. FMFred Morin41:23

        Tomorrow.

    29. JRJoe Rogan41:24

        Tomorrow?

    30. DMDavid McMillan41:25

        Yeah.
12. 44:28 – 1:02:00

    Sturgeon & eels as ‘weird fish’: meat-like cooking, McNugget molds, and horror stories

    1. FMFred Morin44:28

       Uh, but again, you know, the people don't really ... we, we even struggle with it at the restaurant. Uh, the ... for me to sell a plate of smoked sturgeon, tough sell. Uh, you know, I'll sooner sell other things than that. Uh, you know-

    2. JRJoe Rogan44:41

       'Cause people aren't interested?

    3. FMFred Morin44:42

       I, I think it's a tough sell as a fish, let's say as a, as a 200 gram or, you know, four ounce piece of fish.

    4. JRJoe Rogan44:48

       Look at that thing. That is so crazy.

    5. FMFred Morin44:50

       Mm.

    6. JRJoe Rogan44:51

       Is that the same river?

    7. FMFred Morin44:52

       That's probably Columbia River sturgeon. That looks like, from what I see.

    8. DMDavid McMillan44:55

       Yeah.

    9. FMFred Morin44:55

       It's like Fraser River?

    10. DMDavid McMillan44:55

        Yeah. Fraser in BC.

    11. JRJoe Rogan44:57

        Look at the size of that thing. That is so ancient-looking.

    12. FMFred Morin45:01

        It's a-

    13. JRJoe Rogan45:01

        It looks like it shouldn't be here.

    14. DMDavid McMillan45:03

        Yeah. It's a fish that's a bit muddy to ... sometimes, depending on where it's caught and everything.

    15. FMFred Morin45:09

        Mm.

    16. DMDavid McMillan45:09

        So-

    17. FMFred Morin45:10

        How do you, uh ... how do you handle it, like if you were gonna cook one of those?

    18. DMDavid McMillan45:13

        We make Jamaican patties with it. (laughs)

    19. FMFred Morin45:15

        In this-

    20. JRJoe Rogan45:16

        Yeah?

    21. FMFred Morin45:16

        ... book we did. In old French cookery, uh, one of the ways to cook sturgeon is, you know, ultimately, you apply cooking a piece of sturgeon loin as you would a piece of veal loin or pork loin. Uh, meat juice even is acceptable, you know, roasted carrots, roasted onions, roasted celery, roast the sturgeon and serve it-

    22. DMDavid McMillan45:35

        Bacon, mushroom, red wine.

    23. FMFred Morin45:36

        ... with meat juice. Bacon, mushroom, red wine, like Fred said.

    24. JRJoe Rogan45:38

        Mm.

    25. FMFred Morin45:39

        So you treat the sturgeon as you would meat-

    26. JRJoe Rogan45:42

        Ah.

    27. FMFred Morin45:42

        ... is possibly the best way. To treat it as you would fish is not the best.

    28. DMDavid McMillan45:47

        You know, people got to expect ... we, we, we, we were overly fortunate to have, you know, 300 gram, you know, like a pound of fish seared in a pan and served with a little sauce, was common thing, right? But it's not the right thing to do if we wanna keep things in, in the water, you know, for our-

    29. JRJoe Rogan46:07

        Right, right.

    30. DMDavid McMillan46:07

        ... kids or whatever. So people got used to this, like, a piece of fish that tastes like nothing that you can eat for, like, an hour and a half because you have so much of it, then that's the standard. But a fish like sturgeon is great if you have a little bit in a sauce like David May sis- talks about, over, like, uh, buttery mashed potatoes or, like, with, like, a egg noodles or something like that. It's a great way to do it, and it's a great way to look at fish, where, like, you need actually 75 grams of protein, not, like, uh, 500. You know?
13. 1:02:00 – 1:09:28

    Flavor extremes: rotten pheasant, fermented foods, funky wines, and cultural taste preferences

    1. DMDavid McMillan1:02:00

       There's two process, right, by which the meat gets tender. The first one is the rigor mortis, right, like the meat rests and the rigor mortis, like, all th- I guess all the cortisol and everything that, like, stiffens the meat at death, well, the meat will rest. And then it is an enzymatic reaction where the enzymes work and break down some of the meat fibers and the tougher muscles and stuff. In French, the word for, uh, resting meat is called pheasant. And pheasant is a pheasant, you know? S- because they used to hang the pheasants-

    2. FMFred Morin1:02:30

       By the beak.

    3. DMDavid McMillan1:02:31

       ... by the neck, yeah-

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:02:32

       Yeah.

    5. DMDavid McMillan1:02:32

       ... until they fell.

    6. FMFred Morin1:02:33

       And so when the beak falls off the skull, then they're ready to eat.

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:02:35

       Yeah, I've seen that before. That is so strange.

    8. FMFred Morin1:02:38

       It's hard to eat. I've had it a couple of times. And people are like-

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:02:41

       What does it taste like?

    10. FMFred Morin1:02:41

        "This is like..." It tastes like death warmed over.

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:02:43

        (laughs) What the fuck is wrong with these people?

    12. DMDavid McMillan1:02:45

        Yeah.

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:02:45

        Why are they eating it like that?

    14. FMFred Morin1:02:46

        Because it's, uh, you know, a lot of the people love, uh, strong flavors like blue cheese, like, uh, muenster cheese in-

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:02:53

        Yeah.

    16. FMFred Morin1:02:53

        ... Germany, uh, you know. So this is... Well, because ultimately if you just eat it fresh, it's, mm, chicken of the woods, really.

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:03:01

        Right.

    18. FMFred Morin1:03:02

        So-

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:03:02

        But it's good.

    20. FMFred Morin1:03:03

        Yeah. By letting it go a little bit, letting it rot a little bit-

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:03:06

        Ugh.

    22. FMFred Morin1:03:06

        ... they get these, like, secondary, tertiary intense flavors, um.

    23. DMDavid McMillan1:03:12

        Uh, maybe too we were talking about probiotics. You know, you don't... Those traditional ways, you don't always know what you... why you do them.

    24. FMFred Morin1:03:18

        Right.

    25. DMDavid McMillan1:03:19

        But maybe initially they're like, you incubate, you know, you immunize yourself a little bit, you know?

    26. FMFred Morin1:03:25

        Mm-hmm.

    27. DMDavid McMillan1:03:25

        It's like the taste is... You got to love it after you're used to it. But initially, it might be a way to have some of the bacterias. I think you talked about soil-based probiotics before. I read about that. Like, we're realizing that, like, okay, yogurt probiotics are not the whole thing, you know?

    28. FMFred Morin1:03:45

        Mm-hmm.

    29. DMDavid McMillan1:03:45

        So maybe there's soil-based probiotic, animal-based probiotic. Maybe we're completely wrong about what flora we're ingesting and maybe that was, like, a old-

    30. FMFred Morin1:03:54

        A good way to get your flora.
14. 1:09:28 – 1:13:28

    Chefs, fighters, and feeding performance: UFC relationships and weigh-in meals

    1. DMDavid McMillan1:09:28

       And it's a good... For, for us, it's interesting, you know. We, we actually have a bit of a chapter in the book where we talk loosely about those guys and that relationship. We-

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:09:38

       Were you guys sponsored him or something?

Episode duration: 2:41:10