Joe Rogan Experience #1202 - Fred Morin & David McMillan

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   I don't know. No,…

   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. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. FMFred Morin15:00

      liver, lamb liver, deer neck, deer heart tartare. It's not a thing, like it's not what other restaurant people are eating. It's just part of the registry, you know? Little girls, like your daughters, are raised eating, you know, the food that their dad hunts-

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:14

      Mm-hmm.

   3. 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?

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:32

      No.

   5. FMFred Morin15:33

      No?

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:33

      Not that you hunt.

   7. FMFred Morin15:34

      Okay.

   8. 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-

   9. FMFred Morin15:39

      Yeah.

   10. 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-

   11. FMFred Morin15:49

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:49

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

   13. FMFred Morin15:51

       So you can't harvest them?

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:52

       No.

   15. FMFred Morin15:52

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

   16. JRJoe Rogan15:55

       Yes.

   17. FMFred Morin15:55

       Okay, perfect.

   18. 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.

   19. FMFred Morin16:13

       In New-

   20. JRJoe Rogan16:14

       Yeah.

   21. FMFred Morin16:14

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

   22. JRJoe Rogan16:21

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

   23. FMFred Morin16:28

       Ah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan16:28

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

   25. FMFred Morin16:33

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

   26. JRJoe Rogan16:35

       Oh, yeah.

   27. 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-

   28. JRJoe Rogan16:53

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

   29. FMFred Morin16:55

       Yeah, yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan16:55

       ... not a great restaurant. Right.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      idea of bugs being... Like roaches are bad, okay? Most other bugs are not that big of a deal.

   2. FMFred Morin30:05

      Yeah.

   3. DMDavid McMillan30:05

      You know?

   4. 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.

   5. DMDavid McMillan30:15

      Yeah.

   6. FMFred Morin30:15

      We try our best.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:16

      Right.

   8. FMFred Morin30:16

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

   9. 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.

   10. FMFred Morin30:28

       Yeah, I agree with that.

   11. JRJoe Rogan30:29

       Stay out.

   12. FMFred Morin30:29

       That's my policy.

   13. DMDavid McMillan30:30

       (laughs)

   14. 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.

   15. FMFred Morin30:43

       Yeah, Rene Redzepi at Noma, arguably one of the world's best restaurants is obsessed with serving ants.

   16. JRJoe Rogan30:49

       Really?

   17. FMFred Morin30:50

       He loves them.

   18. JRJoe Rogan30:51

       Why ants?

   19. DMDavid McMillan30:51

       Lemony fresh.

   20. FMFred Morin30:52

       I don't know. I think, I think they're crunchy, they're delicious. Uh, you know, he thinks they're, they're fine. Uh, you know, of course, and he's doing this wonderful Nordic cuisine and, uh, there's ants. And when they, when they forage vegetables-

   21. JRJoe Rogan31:06

       But it's a homework-

   22. FMFred Morin31:06

       ... and they forage mushrooms and, you know, there's also ants. So why not forage those too?

   23. DMDavid McMillan31:10

       And it's a homework they do for the rest of us, you know. It starts... They- they're doing the right thing, you know. People pay a lot of money, fly there to go eat there, but, you know, he's doing some good legwork on how to prepare them, how to raise them, how to... You know. I'm not saying his food is based on that, but-

   24. FMFred Morin31:26

       Right.

   25. DMDavid McMillan31:26

       ... I'm happy that somebody did that part of the research.

   26. FMFred Morin31:28

       And he'll bring the point up and then, you know, ultimately by osmosis other younger chefs will try to do that.

   27. DMDavid McMillan31:35

       Mm-hmm.

   28. FMFred Morin31:35

       And they'll normalize it a little bit more. So, you know, expect ants at Nordic restaurants.

   29. JRJoe Rogan31:41

       Interesting. So this is the new trend. Get ahead of it, folks.

   30. FMFred Morin31:44

       (laughs)
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   It's a- …

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:01

   2. FMFred Morin45:01

      It's a-

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:01

      It looks like it shouldn't be here.

   4. DMDavid McMillan45:03

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

   5. FMFred Morin45:09

      Mm.

   6. DMDavid McMillan45:09

      So-

   7. FMFred Morin45:10

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

   8. DMDavid McMillan45:13

      We make Jamaican patties with it. (laughs)

   9. FMFred Morin45:15

      In this-

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:16

       Yeah?

   11. 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-

   12. DMDavid McMillan45:35

       Bacon, mushroom, red wine.

   13. FMFred Morin45:36

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

   14. JRJoe Rogan45:38

       Mm.

   15. FMFred Morin45:39

       So you treat the sturgeon as you would meat-

   16. JRJoe Rogan45:42

       Ah.

   17. FMFred Morin45:42

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

   18. 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-

   19. JRJoe Rogan46:07

       Right, right.

   20. 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?

   21. JRJoe Rogan46:37

       What is the ... is there a comparison that you can make in terms of what it tastes like?

   22. FMFred Morin46:41

       Yeah, uh, veal loin, a little bit, I guess.

   23. JRJoe Rogan46:46

       Really?

   24. FMFred Morin46:46

       Somewhat.

   25. JRJoe Rogan46:47

       Wow.

   26. FMFred Morin46:47

       You know, braised, uh, braised veal collar. Uh, how do you say blanquette? A, a large-

   27. DMDavid McMillan46:53

       Veal stew, yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan46:53

       Yeah.

   29. FMFred Morin46:53

       A larger piece of stew. Like, not a small, you know, two-inch block of stew, but let's say a bigger piece of stew.

   30. DMDavid McMillan46:59

       With a chunk of seaweed in it, you know?
5. 1:00:00 – 1:09:40

   Okay. …

   1. DMDavid McMillan1:00:00

      don't have a fridge with you, you have no water. And, but on the other hand, when we have the wild rabbit, they taste like, uh, juniper.

   2. FMFred Morin1:00:10

      Okay.

   3. DMDavid McMillan1:00:10

      Like very, very, very strongly like juniper and that's, that's ... In fact, the challenge is to get rid of some of that juniper taste.

   4. FMFred Morin1:00:18

      Yeah, it's like the partridge that we shoot at the lake, yeah.

   5. DMDavid McMillan1:00:21

      And in fact, it's, it's, it's-

   6. FMFred Morin1:00:22

      It tastes like spruce, spruce tips.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:23

      Mm.

   8. DMDavid McMillan1:00:23

      And instead of ... When we cook sometimes, we'll cook meat and then we'll, we'll even had, add a partridge or at home I'll add a partridge or a w- a wild rabbit just as seasoning to the rest of the pot, you know? If you look at all the traditional French Canadian dishes of hunters, they're all like, all the games are mixed up, you know? So you never have ... This is a modern cuisinier, like culinary fancy thing to have a breast of partridge seared on a bed of cabbage. You know, those things are always treated with, like I said earlier, with fat, with like all the spices, with wine, with cognac, with layers of like-... you know, even like organ meats in there and you put a crust over it, and cabbage. You know, it's like, it's... L- like we said, it needs a lot of skills to eat, like, good games.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:01:13

      Yeah. I've never had gamey venison. I've been very, very fortunate that I've, uh... Well, first of all, I've learned to hunt from people that really know what they're doing, so we didn't let anything sit out in the heat and made sure we opened it up and cooled it out quickly. But one of the things that they do do, um, when, when guys are deep into the back country and they have an animal and they, they kill it and it's... E- even in the summer when it's warm out, what they do is they hang it and give it a lot of air circulation and it develops a crust on the outside. And then they cut that crust back, um, and then the, the meat underneath it is sort of tenderized in a lot of ways. And a lot of hunters say that it's even more delicious that way.

   10. FMFred Morin1:01:51

       Yeah, it's protected by the, by the, by the cru- by the crust the air has created.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:01:55

       Yes.

   12. DMDavid McMillan1:01:55

       Yeah.

   13. FMFred Morin1:01:55

       And of course, it probably starts... The bacteriological work starts to work inside of that crust to age.

   14. 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-

   15. FMFred Morin1:02:30

       By the beak.

   16. DMDavid McMillan1:02:31

       ... by the neck, yeah-

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:02:32

       Yeah.

   18. DMDavid McMillan1:02:32

       ... until they fell.

   19. FMFred Morin1:02:33

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

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:02:35

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

   21. FMFred Morin1:02:38

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

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:02:41

       What does it taste like?

   23. FMFred Morin1:02:41

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

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:02:43

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

   25. DMDavid McMillan1:02:45

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:02:45

       Why are they eating it like that?

   27. 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-

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:02:53

       Yeah.

   29. 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.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:03:01

       Right.

Episode duration: 2:41:10