Today we’re busting Italian food myths. Have we even sold lies about Italian food? Do you actually have to add vodka to vodka sauce? Do you need to hand need your pasta dough? Do you need to respect your elders, or are these just myths? Pedaled from Nona to Nona waiting to be busted. To find out, we’ve assembled this highly trained team of serious culinary professionals. To put them to the test because this is Myth Munchers, in Italia. Myth Munchers. Unlike Italian American legend, Joe Diaggio. We’re about the busted Italian food myths today. First up, making fresh pasta. Do you actually have to hand knead it? About to find out. Myth number two, do you need to neutralize the acidity in tomato sauce? We’re about to find out. Myth number three, Why do people add good old vodka that you could be partying with into their sauce? Who knows? We’re about to use some science, see what the dealio is, and then finally, cannoli dough. What is it? Is it a myth? Is it fact fiction? We’re gonna. See what happens when we add wine versus not. So y’all are gonna make your guesses on what you think the winning myths are gonna be. Here, take these cards, pass ’em out. And then while I have you here, we have the official Mythical Kitchen pronunciation guide to Italian classics. ’cause I can’t be bothered to talk full words. So prosciutto becomes Persu. Ricotta? That’s regat. Mozzarella is indeed mutzah-del. We all know that one. Uh, minestrone. Nope. That’s minastrone. E gets dropped. Calamari. Galamah so much funner to say, spaghetti. Well, that’s SP’ GET pronounced spaghet. And then penne is penne. I wish I regot this whole part of this episode. Prochute…. To you. We are making omelets. Ooh, yes. With a flour. Uh, no. We’re making fresh pasta. Do you make a lot of fresh pasta at home? No. No. I don’t cook when I like go home. Okay. I like go to sleep. You cook. I don’t cook here anymore, so I actually make fresh pasta. I make a fair amount of fresh pasta at home. And we are testing hand need, which is a pretty difficult process, especially if you’re at home and you don’t have a ton of counter space, or if you have. The most annoying tile counters in the world. Oh yeah. The ones that have the little like grout in the middle. Yeah. And you’re trying to roll pasta on it and you’re just fingering it out like that don’t, I don’t know, probably like other stuff is getting like last night’s dinner’s getting in there too. A hundred percent. Or can you just chuck it in a machine? And then use technology to your advantage. But I also have a personal vendetta. I’ll show you the technique that 99% of the world’s blogs or Nonas out there, if you don’t have a Nona at home to talk to, will tell you to do the well method. So we’re gonna start doing that. You’re gonna chuck that into a stand mixer. I’m very pro stand mixer and I’m gonna let everyone know that’s what I voted for. That’s good. She did come in with and I voted and then for stand mixer. Yeah. I wore the sticker sign. Not actually, don’t blame her. She voted for stand mixer. I do feel like though, when you’re using a stand mixer, unless if you’re a Nona, like you are just letting the dough do its thing and I feel like with a, well, you’re like, oh, it’s getting too dry. Let me add water or, and then you add more things and then. Suddenly you’re like off of the recipe. Well, I always, so I make a lot of handmade pasta at home. It’s a fun little Friday night activity. It’s my anti-drug. Oh. Keeps me off, keeps me safe, you know, gives me something to do, but it just gets so annoying when you make the, well, I was talking to someone recently and they were talking about making handmade pasta at home, and they were like, it’s so hard to gradually add the flour. And it took me like 15 minutes. I’m like, why did you do it for 15 minutes? And they’re like, I was so worried about adding the flour all at once. And I made the claim that you can just sort of add the flour all at once and you can just mash it together. So when I make fresh pasta at home, I generally just tuck it in a bowl and I don’t use the well, but we’re gonna test those things together right now to see if you need to make it. If you can see the well that I’m talking about is this little divot in the flour here. Interesting well. What? How would you have done it? I don’t know. That was the most passive aggressive comment. No, that well’s interesting. It’s a great– In what way, Lily? Enlightened me. I know you voted for stand mixer. The idea here is that you start stirring from the inside out and then gradually flour from the base of that well works in here, which I understand why that would be roughly beneficial, but the more you need pasta dough, it all just sort of comes together and hydrates. As it is. Uh, also we’re doing just a simple egg and flour based recipe, which I would associate typically with like bologna, like bologna’s, fresh pasta is just super, super eggy. Yep. But like a vast majority of the pasta in the world is just flour water. Like what? Oh my God. We were talking about this earlier and Lily was like, I’m gonna act surprised. Okay. Wait to called me. Some vegans have actually asked me like, I can’t eat pasta ’cause it’s eggs and flour. It’s like, no, most is just water and flour. Yeah. When you get dry pasta though, like, and it has a yellow tint. Is it tillery? No. So it actually likely has to do with the, uh, type of wheat. So like a Durham selina wheat as opposed to like an AP flour. Right. And if we were making like an even more legit Italian pasta, we would probably use a Durham or a Selina, which is harder. Mm-hmm. But you can totally do it with AP flour at home, which is what we’re doing now. So I’m gradually incorporating a little bit more flour. But as you see the well method, you sort of just, it spreads all over your counter and then there’s a gunk on it, and then you gotta come in with the bench scraper. Yeah. You know, and then that’s gonna exacerbate any relationship issues, you know, that you might have In regards to like who? Like who believes, like what? Like who has so. I’ll clean things. Yeah. Okay. But then sometimes, you know, my roommate will come in. Yeah, your roommate. And she’ll be like, that’s not clean. And I’m like, well, I don’t know. I washed it. And then she’ll be like, what’s that? And I’ll be like, I can see how you think that’s not clean. Wait, what does this have to do with. Pasta because the counter, it gets the counter covered in mud. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I’m getting to the point now where the dough’s like pretty formed and the well has broken down, but also like you have the base of like a well-formed dough here. Right. Do you feel like you are gonna need all your flour? I don’t know, but that’s, I guess that’s part of the benefit of a well is once you start working the dough together, yeah. You have like leftover flour on the outside that you can either use or not use. You’ll know your dough is too dry because it’s just not coming. Coming together. Coming together. Yeah. At this point, if there’s like little scraggly bits, I’d probably. Waste this. Yeah. And take this out. ’cause otherwise you’re gonna have lumps in there. And once you start working a dough out on the board, it’ll actually hydrate a little bit. Yeah. And so it’ll feel like it’s too dry, but once you start working it, it comes together. Yeah. Yeah. You want me to get some muscle into it? Yeah. Well, so now that we’ve swapped. Dough over here now that I’m working this, this does feel once a little bit dry. Maybe could have been solved if there was a little bit more egg. But also when you’re making pasta, every egg weighs a different amount and has a different quantity of liquid in it. And so like the fact that you have that extra flour and you can do it by feel that dough in the well does feel a lot better. It feels like a soft tushy. Ugh. How many tushies you out here touching? A lot of them. I like a nice rock hard tushy. One that’s been doing, it’s Bulgarian split squats. Yeah. They’re not at all. I know that this was my little pet project where I was like, I think you can just dump it into a bowl and mash it. And I’m having a hard time. I really have to drive off of my back foot on every need to get it to work, but I think it’s still gonna come together. But immediately I feel like my stupid idea failed. They rested. They took a little nappy. Yeah. I need a little nappy. Me too. That sounds nice. Would they still out? We have pastas. Yeah. We, we rolled out the pasta doughs and we, we cut them with a knife to little hand cut taglia or tagalinni, situational fettuccine. Mm-hmm. You’ll not a lot of visible difference from any of these. I will say the difference between the stand mixer and the hand kneaded ones is these might have been a little bit drier. Yep. Just because with the, well, I’m kind of already sold on the well technique, even though I just. Yeah. Was the, the one who started this all by crapping all over it. Mm-hmm. When you’re making pasta in the, well, you can stop when you feel that the dough is ready. It’s more control. It’s more control. Yeah. You don’t have control. We have control issues as chefs. Yes. Uh, so I think, I think that’s really important. So these might have been a little bit dry. You can feel this one might be a little bit firmer. Mm-hmm. The touch than this one. This is a lot softer. Um, but this one might. Tastes better. ’cause with the KitchenAid you probably got a lot more kneading, so it might be more gluten development. Mm-hmm. Which might give it like a nicer bite, but we’re gonna drop it in the, in the water and figure it out. Yeah. I was doing a weird thing with my arm and going like this before we cooked the pasta and I was trying to like imitate a dough hook in the stand mixer to see if I could like do that when I kneaded it. You know what I mean? It was like when I was a kid and I’d see birds flying. I’d try and imitate them to think that I could maybe take off. Oh, did you ever jump off a tree? No. No. I was too, uh, portly to climb up the tree to then be able to jump off. Got it. Yeah. I was more of a ground kid, you know what I mean? Good on the ground, bad up in the air. We have the three pastas right here. Not much to tell until we actually eat it. You wanna get to it? Yeah, I do. We just mix it with a little bit of butter ’cause we wanted to make it pleasant for ourselves. Which one we try should go the well. Okay. Yeah. You, you believe in this one? Yeah. Also, I believe in eating all noodles with chops. Steaks regardless of the provenance from which they came. I just like butter noodles. Mm. Has good give, nice balance, nice chew. Okay. I mean, that’s a good noodle. It’s uh, I like it. It’s supple. It’s nice. Let’s see if there’s any difference in this one. Here. You got, you get first crack. Thanks. Can I put pepper on it? Sure. Well, no, no, no. I want it. It’s a test. I want eat nice foods. It, it is like harder to me. This one does feel like a little bit more rustic in a bad way, like a Nona cooked it. But like a Nona who she grew up during the war never really had to cook. She was in the factories, you know, and she’s trying her best, you know, but her food’s just all a little bit rougher than the other Nonas in certain ways. Not all grandmas know how to cook, right? My, mine certainly didn’t. This one’s softer, but it still has that like bounce and chew to it. It’s kind of perfect. It’s like delicate, but it has a little bit of strength and then stuff, let me mix it up. We put a lot of butter in the noodles. I know. Hmm. Princess bites. Josh, princess bites. This one doesn’t have as much like, um, bounce to me as the other two, which is interesting ’cause we probably kn it for longer, however. Yeah. Kneading it in a stand mixer for five minutes. Nobody exactly knows how much that translates to like really getting your palm into it and driving it. Mm-hmm. When you’re doing the stand mixer, like the dough is working through it so kneading, right. You’re physically doing this. Yeah. Do show ’em, show him how you do it. Versus if I’m really here. Yeah. And I’m really working it. This is the dough hook. Like, okay. If, if we’re, if we’re talking numbers here real quick stand mixer, it’s kind of, go ahead, do it again. Mm-hmm. How many like pounds per square inch? So force, like, just not to be that guy, but like, you know, I can, I can bench like close to 300 pounds, probably about 285 right now. If I’m really like putting a lot of force into one arm. That’s at least like 160 pounds probably of pressure. ’cause the right side’s on my good side when I bench, I’m here, you know when it gets like overheated. Yeah. And it just starts. And so I’m here and I’m just, I’m benching into the pasta. Yeah. You’re all like this. Yeah. I’m all like this. So ultimately I think. I, I know where I stand on this one. Yeah, I really thought this one. But you have voter’s remorse now. I do. 2016 all over again. The winner, officially hand kneaded. Well, that means that Myth Munched us. Hey, everybody. That was pretty crazy, right? You saw the, you saw the lots of gyrating in the last. Last bit. Yeah. You might see the same amount of gyrating. Only time will tell. Not for me. We are gonna be making a delicious tomato sauce. Yes. We’ll, with a base of onions, garlic, chili, pepper, oil, all that fun. Good stuff. Just your classic tomato sauce. Start with oil, right? Yes. We’re gonna add our garlic and onions, right? Yes. Okay. We’re gonna let these get a little bit sweaty. A little bit soft. Yeah. So we’re actually testing, um, a lot of people who make homemade tomato sauce mm-hmm. Is very acidic. So we are testing to see what is the best neutralizer for that. That’s right. Baking soda, sugar. We’re gonna find out. Right. So the reason why a lot of people use carrots, because, well, first of all, it’s like an old Nona thing. You just drop in some carrot to neutralize the acid. So the thing is, carrots are actually a highly alkaline vegetable. Mm-hmm. And they are able to neutralize the acid in there. And the baking soda also does the same thing. It, it totally neutralizes any sort of acid in there. You ever made a volcano? No. In middle school we made missions. You made, I also made missions. Oh my God. Did you fourth grade missions, did you ever go to the missions too? No. Oh, I went to the mission. I was sad. But um, basically if you ever saw like a baking soda and vinegar solution, they kind of explode together and then it neutralizes. Same thing is gonna happen with our tomatoes and then sugar. Sugar actually doesn’t do any sort of neutralizing No. It just sweetens it to kind of trick your mind into assuming it tricks your palate. Yes. It tricks your palate and your mind. And your tongue. I like to think sugar is like a, can I say ask? You could say ask on the, okay. It’s like a put a bandaid on it ass mentality right here. Just drop it in there and fix it. Yeah. But that bandaid isn’t gonna do anything. Right. It’s still bleeding underneath. So we’re gonna let this sweat a little bit more. We’re gonna add some salt. We’re gonna add our chili flakes, our tomato posada, and by the time you come back we’re gonna add all of our neutralizers and see which one works for best. Grab those Posadas Nona Nicole. I’m like one of those beer mates. You know the, the beer ladies at October Fest? Yeah. The ones that come in ready to go with Das Boot? Is that what it’s called? Das. Das. That’s right. Oh my God. This is violent. This is violent. I’m trying. This sounds, I see why Josh has some much, I’m turning this, why did I wear white? Why did I wear white? Yes. Okay. Okay. I’m gonna add my sugar. Yeah, I’m gonna add my carrots. Okay. Beautiful carrots. Bugs Bunny would be proud. And then you can do the honors of the baking soda. I shall, is there any reaction happening to the baking? Let’s see. We’re getting some foam. Are we? That’s so cool. Oh my God. We’re getting some foam. Do you see that? You hear that? Can you hear that? That is crazy. Can you hear that, Tally? So it’s bubbling. It’s bubbling just like the volcano. Yes. That you did in middle school. I dunno if you did it Annaliese, ’cause you were homeschooled. But, but they, it’s totally happening right now. It’s, you know, homeschool is actually a flex. You gotta be at home all the time. Yeah. So flex that Annaliese. Hey, we can do the volcano now. If you want, we can do the volcano after we wrap, but whoa. This is a, okay. This. This is so crazy. I think we have to let this cook a little bit. Yeah, cook down a little bit. A hundred percent. And see, and kind of let it chill a little bit and then give it a taste test. How does that sound? Yeah. Let the volcano relax. What’s that? It’s a pH strip. Whoa. This is how scientific we’ve gotten over the past few years. We are literally using science-based testing to find out what pasta sauce is. The least acidic, multiple degrees over here. So if you go ahead. So we’re gonna stick our pH strips for one second into our sauce. Lift it up, give it a quick swipe. Sorry, I tasted it ’cause I’m hungry, girl. And then we’re going to see. Which sauce according to the following. What would you call this, bake? Would you call this a bake? It’s just a chart, I guess. A chart if you will. Which is the most acidic and they’re all different. Okay. Let’s see. Oh my gosh. Can I just say that the sugar based sauce, we are in the very acidic. We are in the acidic territory. That looks like a solid four. That looks like a four. And this is the, this is the base strip test. Look at that. I mean, that third strip is not even green anymore. That is insane. So we are in the, the is the sugar. Yeah. So in the various acidic. Acidic range. We know that. All right. ’cause we do know that it masks it. Does it really do anything? Is this baking soda? This is baking soda. Baking soda. Okay. So we can see the green over here. Yeah. I think we’re, we’re also in the acidic range. Mm-hmm. But we’re, we’re more of a five instead of like a three or a four, how we went with the sugar. So that did something. It is still considered acidic, but it is much less acidic. Right. Okay. And carrot is the last one. Carrot ain’t do anything, man. It looks as carrot did nothing. Carrot did the same thing as sugar. It’s the twin. These are so interesting. Oh my God. Look, carrots and sugar are literally the same. The exact same. That’s really surprising actually. So baking soda works the best, but I think the only way we can make this legit is if we do a blind taste test. I’m ready. Nicole, are you ready? My eyes are closed. Let me get my spoons. Okay, so he’s gonna put a random sauce in my mouth. I’m not gonna know which one it is, and I have to guess which one is the most perceived acidic out of the three. All right, Nicole, are you ready for your first one? Yeah. Airplane. I might have got some on ya. That’s all right. Okay. That’s a pretty good sauce. You ready for your next one? Yes, I am. Um, what’s the other fighter? Airplane? Yeah. Nice. Really nice. I felt that, um, on my titty. Sorry. Okay, last one. Okay. This one’s just going straight in. Okay. I’ll actually covered your titties this time. Yeah. Nice. Good. Side mouth. I don’t– oh, what’s happening? Sorry, David. Wow. I have a feeling I already know what you’re gonna say. The, the least acidic one was the one I just had. That was crazy. Can I open my eyes? Really? Yeah, you can. The least acidic one I had was the one you just ate. I just ate, was it literally didn’t even taste like tomato sauce. That’s this one. See that neutralize the acid so much. It doesn’t, it’s not even tomato. It really, it, it literally doesn’t taste like tomato at all. ’cause tomatoes have a natural acidic right. Well, I just saw my shirt. Okay. The second one was sugar. And I thought sugar was the most, was the most acidic. Yeah, sugar was the most, you should try these, babe. You should find out which one is the best tasting one. Maybe. Maybe in the future glass spoons will put a little bit less baking soda. ’cause it did neutralize it in too such a way that almost doesn’t, it almost doesn’t taste like tomato any longer. Whoa. Carrot tastes good. Carrot just tastes good. It’s just like naturally. Makes it better. Yeah. Yeah, and it balances it out. Look at this best of both worlds. Whoa. Isn’t that crazy? It kind of tastes like. It’s weird. It’s almost too much. It just taste like mush. Like almost like baby food. Yeah. Because the is completely gone. Yeah. I’m team carrot, dude. I might be. I might be Team Nona. Team carrot. It just makes sense. ’cause if you mess around and put too much baking soda in that one, it can get really bitter and like. Change the whole flavor off. Off. And it’ll just be disgusting, right? But carrot just seems like right in the middle. It just like raises the pH balance perfectly, and it’s just like a natural flavor enhancer. So even though most people are using sugar, this myth has been munched. You gotta shake the pants. This ain’t a myth. This works. This works. Not too much, Lily. He’s dead. You killed him. We’re making not Penne al vodka. We’re making rigatoni al vodka ’cause– Oh, rigatone. Rigatone. Oh my God, I’m so sorry. We’re making rigatone, rigatone. My favorite rigatone artist is, uh, Teron really set the, set the scene. Today we’re asking the question, uh, do you actually have to add vodka? ’cause it’s such a neutral spirit, right? I can’t kind of imagine what it would do, especially if you’re cooking out the alcohol. Mm-hmm. People say on the internet that, um, the aroma intensifies. Ooh. The flavors intensify. Ooh. Um, and it also, eva, it helps like evaporate. That’s what they said. The sauce, the tomato sauce evaporates. I, I’ve seen people say all kinds of things. It helps the sauce emulsify, which I guess if you’re adding cream to, uh, to acid, that could potentially curdle, but you’re doing it so quick. Um, I, I read the original usage of vodka and pasta the first time it was ever recorded. 1974 Italian actor, Ugo Tognazzi. He made a recipe for a dish called penne all’infuriata, his furious pasta. And he claimed that the vodka added a little bit of like heat or spice. Oh. Which makes sense. ’cause vodka burns when you drink it. Yeah. And so we’re going to, uh, test out what it actually does with all this. So in this, we added the vodka, the beginning of the cooking process to see what would happen if a lot of that alcohol is cooked out of it, but you still get a little flavor that vodka, ’cause alcohol does act as a sugar in a lot of ways. And then we have one that’s just a delightful tomato cream sauce with no vodka to act as a control. Then Lily, you’re doing the pyrotechnics over here? I’ve never flambeed on cam, so I’m a little nervous, but there’s a first time for everything. You gotta crank it hot. I’m going. No, crank it. Slam it. You have to turn it off. No, you have to turn it off first. For safety. I’m gonna just, I’m gonna do it on the side. Okay. It’s not gonna light now. Jesus Christ. Lily, what? Is it? Lit on fire? Yes. Okay. There it is. Shake it. Shake it. You gotta shake it now. You shake it. There you go. Now you can see it. Now you can see it. Okay. There you go. Okay. So now I’d, I’d say toss it now. Pasta iaa. Outa pasta. TAA pasta. We’re going pasta. And we’re going heavy cream. Okay, you’re going first. You gonna pasta? Cream water. You can do it all. Just gonna cook together. Okay, so we’re going pasta there. We’re going cream’s. Gonna get that little shimmy shakedown. There we go. I’m gonna go pasta cream. Okay. And the other one that has no vodka in it. Use your spoon. I’m trying my best. Wow. These spoons are so cool. Oh, they’re the Mythical Kitchen spoons, eh? Yes they are. Look at us, dude. I think for the flambe it adds like a caramelization on the tomatoes, you know? It definitely does. Yeah. I mean, alcohol is just sugar at the end of the day. Somebody who’s done science, please tell me that that’s not exactly the case. But I think that that is part of it. I drink a lot of sugar on the weekends. Right. Are you okay? What are you getting? The aroma’s, talk about the aromas. Oh yeah. Let’s you smell the liquor. You risk, um, not burning off all the alcohol. Maybe. Well, but also like. I don’t think, I think, I think sometimes people burn off too much alcohol when it’s like if you’re adding like in a dessert, right? Yeah. Like you want to taste the rum if you’re adding it to a bananas foster. And so if you like burn all of it off and keep cooking it down, you’re kind of losing a lot of that aroma character. I agree. It’s, I think this is, I think it’s gonna taste good, but like also, wait, did that emulsify better than these? Yeah. I mean, maybe the color looks better. Even. Maybe I’m just like a better chef. Oh, do you wanna add cheese or later? Add cheese, you’re gonna eat this pasta with cheese, cheese. Just, I’m not gonna stop here. Measure, measure it with the hand. Okay. Measure it. Measure it with the hands, but keep your hand under it ’cause I’m not stopping. Yeah. Why do you keep going higher? Well, because you keep raising yours higher and then some it falls in there. This is how we get control. Okay. Just put in one section so we don’t have to grate more. You know what I mean? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I got you here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ll just half it. Okay. This is scientific control folks. Yes. What are we trying for? Let’s, let’s try the control folks. Okay. Control. Hmm. Mm-hmm. I would taste that and be like, that’s a great pasta dish. Don’t need no vodka. Right. I think you could tell me though, that there was vodka in it. I’m like, yeah, sure. Yeah. A hundred percent. Should we go over here now? Honest to God. Looks better. Hmm. Okay. I taste the vodka. Wait, hold on. I have an idea. Huh? You taste the vodka and it’s you, you taste it and it’s bitter. Mm-hmm. However, all the other flavors are a lot more intense. Yeah. You can taste the tomato more. Even the cream, I feel like. Like, I’m curious if we, if we keep this going for like two minutes and let some of that vodka boil out, let’s wait a second and go ’em over here. See if we can taste any of the vodka as boiled out. So this in theory should be a little bit sweeter than the no vodka. Interesting. Whoa. It is just more like acidic. Yeah, this tastes better. Yeah. You know, I’m gonna try this one again. Are you going straight While it’s cooking? You’re boiling liquor pasta! Okay, we’re gonna try this one again. Okay. Just blow. Do you want me to blow on it for you? No, that’s weird. That’s now infantalizing for me. Now I feel patronized too. I wouldn’t like give it to my kid, but I’d have it on the weekends with my other sugar juice. Hey kid, you wanna party? Fun Dad’s in town. We’re getting drunk off pasta. This to me is unequivocally the winner. Really? Yeah. What do you think? The vodka is too much? Yeah, it is a little bit bitter. However, I think maybe if you cooked it a little bit longer or if we added slightly less vodka. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like if we’re trying to prove what vodka does, like for real, the guy who first wrote about this. Talked about the liquor giving a spicy flavor and like. That’s exactly what you’re getting in a way that you can’t get from capsaicin. Mm-hmm. It is intensifying like all the flavors. Even though a lot of vodka sauce recipes will tell you to add it at the beginning, when you add it at the end and flambe it, you get a lot of those aromatic compounds. That is definitely the winner. That means that myth has been munched. Friends we’ve reached the end of the road. For an Italian meal, that means one thing. The Nona comes outta the kitchen and she hits you with the rolling pin going, [bleep] What does that mean? And you go, I’m not your– [bleep], it means [bleep].. We’re eating dessert. We got cannolis here. And we have three different doughs here because we’ve made cannoli before on the show and– Canole. and they, I’m so sorry, we’ve made canoles. They say the traditional Sicilian way is to add marsala wine, which is a fortified wine to the dough. And we had always assumed that’s ’cause alcohol is a lower evaporation and boiling point and that would make it give more crispy bubbles. But then we’d also heard that sherry vinegar can also be common, which is interesting because vinegar has a higher boiling point than water, which would mean less bubbles. And then we did one where we didn’t add none of that and we just added water. And these all look wildly different. You’ll feel the dough, see what you can glean from it. Soft. Soft, less soft, hard, squishy, harder on the mar, marsala. Can you raise that dough so I can. Also what we learned from– Nobody says, bless you? Bless you. Why did it go this one? Come on. What we learned from vodka pasta. Maybe the flavors are like a little more intensified. That could also be it. Marsala also has sugar in it, which is gonna get you a little bit more browning, which we do see right here. Paper. But also this doesn’t seem as like bubbly and crackly and the sugar could do that. Another thing, so like what gives a dough the ability to trap air? Oh, is this a quiz? Gluten? Gluten, gluten, gluten, gluten, gluten. Vodka. Vodka. Lily’s stuck on the vodka train. Uh, gluten gives dough the ability to trap air. That’s how bread rises, right? But with the marsala wine, alcohol does inhibit gluten development supposedly. That could be another reason why, but that would also give it less of a hard sort of crunch and more of like a subtle pastry feel. Should we eat these? Yeah. Yeah, see we gotta got pistachios under here. Classic small plate restaurant of serving two desserts for four people. Well, it’s crack in half. Which one do you wanna try first? Two stars. Wait, look at these. Look the same. You’re just adding two tablespoons of sherry vinegar to this. I mean, yeah, like you would think these would look a lot more similar. I don’t know. No, I agree with that. Like the, it was surprising that this is the most violently different. Mm-hmm. One. I wonder if he’s gonna taste similar. The bubbles are insane on that one. Yeah. Little Bublets. I like the bubbles. Yeah. Is that Italian for Bubble? It is now. Little bublets? Yeah. Michael Bublets. I like his Christmas album. Okay. Marsala. Graci. Pregnant? What? That’s just a good cannoli, man. Wow. Do you, you guys feel about the texture of the outside? I ate the whole thing. You didn’t even think about it. You just ate it? I tried to take a bite, but then it was gonna squeeze out. So it’s cool when you black out, but when I do it? It’s not too crunchy, which I like, you know? Yeah, no, it has a pastry feel, which I’m looking at. It has a pastry feel, which is good, nice and pleasant. Like if you just want to eat, you know, egg roll, which this bro, this is an egg roll. This is. Oh, actually a dumpling like a yum. But it doesn’t have any flavor. Yeah. This one has more flavor. Yeah. Mm-hmm. The texture on this though is, it’s crazy. It’s not cannoli, right? Like the texture isn’t giving cannole. It’s giving. It’s giving egg roll. Okay. Water and sherry vinegar. I’m excited about this. Ooh. It almost tastes chalky to me. Definitely different than than the water. More similar to the marsala. I really like that. I do too. I think it’s a little bit lighter and like crispier. I don’t know. If you think about the sugar content of marsala. Mm-hmm. Like that would inhibit something from getting crispy because it’s gonna start to caramelize in the fryer before it actually dehydrates and gets crispy. I have my personal favorite though. Me too. I think the marsala, to me, the marsala one tastes the best. Absolutely. Agree, right? Mm-hmm. All the way around, buddy. Boom. I disagree. I did too. Water and sherry vinegar, all the flavors make so much sense and the textures I think, make, make a lot of sense. It’s al, it hearkens back to this very specific flavor and texture that it can only has. I agree. Funny. We’re split. We’re split. I’m getting that from marsala. Well, I, we’re getting that from, from water. You guys go over there. Okay. Now flavor. You go rock paper scissors. That’s fine. Rock, paper, scissors then. Okay. On three on the, do you go rock, paper, scissors. Shoot you guys. So we do Okay. We do whatever you want. Rock, scissors. Shoot. Oh, sorry. Dang, we lost. Well that’s fine. Why did I go for scissors? Ultimately, it looks like the decision down to a game of chance and skill, Lily champ boat. No, that was weird. Yeah. Water and Sherry vinegar is the winner. Technically, that means this myth has been munched. Myth Munchers. We have successfully represented the nation of Italy in all of its best interests, and we have found out that when it comes to making fresh pasta, hand needing, it does give you more consistent results, especially when you make a well. I’m completely sold on that. Because you can do it by feel, estimate more flour or more water as you go, and you’re not just dumping everything into the same system. Myth number two, two tomato sauce. We found that adding a carrot to it adds a little bit of sweetness. Adds some aroma. Way better than you add sugar or baking soda. Just make it less acidic. Uh, myth number three, vodka sauce. We found that, yeah, you add vodka at the end, it really does increase those aromas. It adds a sharpness that really plays off of the chili and tomato in there. I was really impressed with that one. Then when it comes to canool dough, when you’re making your canools out there, uh, we were split on this, but definitely adding something to the dough is better in water, and Sherry vinegar was the winner in that capacity. Officially, thanks to the rock paper, scissors, or an Italian. Rocka, papa, scissoras. Lily, how many did you get right? I said a little standi, stand mixture. A little shugshug, little fla flambe, and a little Marcy Mars. Fun. Vee, how many did you get right? Hello, I’m Nona V and here are my predictions. This is also me in about 10 years. I picked Hand knead, the carrot, vodka and the Marsala Wine. Two. Baltimore ass. Nicole, how many did you get right? Bonne journée. I think that stand mixer, carrot, vodka plus flambe and marsala are going to win. I got two right. Josh? How many? How many did you get? Get right. My name’s Josh Scherer, World’s number one supporter of Italy. I believe hand knead, and I think the well is bs. I believe Carrot will make the best sauce. Vodka con flambe, and marsala. I would like a judge’s ruling here. I’d like a judge’s ruling. You can see my full card because I, I got three, right? But then I added an addendum and said ‘The well is bs’. This is like in jeopardy when you added the wrong first name, but the right last name, even though if you just said the last name, name. But you still good points, right? For no, even if you, if you just said the last name, you would’ve gotten it right, but you added a first name out of Hubris and you got it wrong. So no points. I lost Jeopardy. No points. Okay. Okay. Well it’s a three-way tie, but ultimately, wait, who lost? I. I did what? I lost, I lost. But what we ultimately learned today was that the great and proud nation of Italy and all of their achievements across philosophy, sciences, astronomy, and especially food. I’ve added a lot to this great world ever since the Buron Dynasty United, the two great kingdoms of Sicily across the island to Sardinia, ever since the first Olive Garden opened in Minnesota, the great fanfare, since Maneskin won 2021 Eurovision. We can all agree. And when a Nona chases you down with the rolling pin yelling, [bleep]. [bleep]. Hey, we’ve got a double feature just for you. Watch Survive the Mythical Kitchen and Good Mythical Evening on demand now at mythicalkitchenlive.com.