On the BLT.

So I have a bit of an obsessive personality, as one might surmise from other articles on this blog. I listen to a song on repeat until I memorize the lyrics four times over. I play the same video game over and over to view all the permutations of plot. So it stands to reason that when I get the idea for a particular food, I'd make it over and over until I got it just right.

And last month, that's what I did with the BLT. See, the co-op near where I live makes a crazy good BLT, but a) they almost never have it because it sells out like a motherfucker and 2) I got tired of paying $5.75 for a sandwich I could damn well make myself. After all, it's a five-goddamn-ingredient sandwich; how hard could it be to make?

Pretty hard, as it turns out. Well, not hard to make, but hard to make well. I studied sandwich theory on the interwebs and in textbooks, I drew diagrams, I measured my jaw's maximum capacity. Two pounds of bacon, three clamshells of greens, and multiple pounds of tomatoes later, I finally made a BLT I was proud of.

Am I claiming that this is the ultimate BLT, the one that generations of the future will laud and forevermore consume? Mighty Odin, no. Sandwiches are as varied in structure and preference as oral sex. I'm just letting you guys know what I came up with, and some little fun factoids I picked up along the way.

The Bread

So let's start with the bread. Fact is, there's a ridiculously large amount of permutations you can make on a sandwich simply by modulating the bread you're serving it on. Split baguettes, sliced boules, the good old fashioned pullman loaf, cut thick or thin, toasted or not. The possibilities are endless, and infinitely important. After all, this is the frame of the sandwich, the parenthetical by which the damn thing will be consumed. Bread is fucking important, people - you can make a shitty sandwich out of the finest bread, but you can't make a good sandwich out of shitty bread.

The aforementioned coop sandwich was finished with one crucial touch that I was determined to incorporate in the final product - the multigrain bread was clearly fried in bacon fat before assembly, producing a satisfying crunch and an extra dimension of bacony goodness in the end game. Of course, it also left my fingers a little greasy, but I was willing to pay that price. So I grabbed a couple of slices of my go-to sandwich bread, a big fat long loaf of sourdough, fried them on both sides in bacon fat, and assembled my first BLT. And on the first goddamn bite, half the fillings went flying out the backside of the sandwich onto my lap.

So something wasn't right, besides the fact that I probably should have been holding the bloody thing over a plate on the first bite. I took another bite, more slowly this time, to see if I could determine what was wrong. As my teeth met the crisp outer shell of the bread, I could immediately feel the problem - a bite is a compression cut; not-so-sharp teeth pressing down on a hard surface meant the force of the bite was distributed horizontally over the entire top slice of bread. So rather than having my teeth cleave through the sandwich, it was pressing down on the whole damn thing until I applied enough force to crack the bacon-fried exterior.

So if I wanted all my fillings to stay in place, I could just use toothpicks, no? Yeah, I could ride my bike with the training wheels still on and play Rock Band on Easy, too, but I'm a grown-ass man, goddamn it. The solution, as it turned out, was pretty simple: only fry the interior of the bread. That way, I could still achieve the crispy, Maillard-reactiony goodness of a griddled bread while leaving the exterior pillowy and soft. My lower teeth could find purchase while my upper incisors could slice cleanly through without causing lateral force redistribution. Plus, no greasy fingers afterwards! My jeans were overjoyed.

The Spread

Any good sandwich maker knows that a spread can make or break a sandwich. It adds flavor and mouthfeel while simultaneously providing a moisture barrier between the fillings and the bread. When it comes to BLTs, tradition states mayo, and with good reason - the fatty, slightly tangy spread is the perfect foil to the acidic tomato and the smoky bacon.

But it's more than just that. Spreads are adhesives, too, adhesives desperately needed to hold a sandwich together bite after delicious bite. It's the glue that sticks the first filling to the bread, the initial tread that binds a sandwich together. Now, if you're not a fan of mayo (which I'm a little odded out by - it's the world's most innocuous condiment, but I respect your opinions), you could reach for all kinds of things here - hummus or tapenade, for example - so long as you're comfortable stretching the BLT out of its comfort zone. You could also just spread something suitably waterproof, like solidified bacon grease or butter, but even by my standards, that's getting a little gross.

I also like mayo because its pale color makes it easy to see how much cracked black pepper I'm putting on the sandwich, since this is the layer in which I add my spices. And my only spice is just that - cracked black pepper. No, no salt. This is a bacon sandwich, people. Calm down.

The Lettuce

I'll admit, I'm not a fan of iceberg. It's flavorless and leaks moisture like damp sponge. Left in whole leaves, it's about as blatant a slip hazard as Astroglide on a kindergarten floor. No, for a proper sandwich green, I look for something drier, with small enough leaves to create textural friction so consequent fillings don't slide right the fuck off of it. Which is important, because the next ingredient is going to be slippery as fuck. Arugula, that ever-faithful peppery green, fit the bill just right. No, it's not technically a lettuce. Yes, if you have a problem with this, you can suck it.

The Tomato

Now, I happen to live in a region where I can actually acquire Jersey beefsteak tomatoes when they're in season, but unfortunately, they're really only available about two weeks out of the year, so I prefer to use plum tomatoes for the other fifty weeks. I advise you do the same; when they're properly ripe, they've got the right balance of sweetness and acidity to cut the baconosity of the sandwich. When it comes down to it, it's the tomato that provides half of the big flavors in this situation, so choose wisely.

You'd think that we could just slice these delicious fruits down and drop them in, yes? INCORRECT. Tomatoes have a notoriously tenacious cuticle surrounding it, leading to an incredibly high bite-and-slide risk. What's a bite-and-slide? Anyone who's eaten an onion ring can tell you - it's when you bite into something and the whole goddamn thing comes out as you pull away, ruining the filling ratio for the rest of the experience. Is no good. Is very sad.

Couldn't we just peel and seed the tomato to avoid any danger of this? Theoretically, yes, that's an option. But who the fuck concasses tomatoes to put in a sandwich? Besides which, we actually want the tomato's seeds and jelly, since that's where the acidity of a tomato actually lies.

Instead, just split the tomato in half (which you should be doing to get the white pith core out anyway, because really, the pith can go fuck itself) and cut down accordingly. The reason why I like plum tomatoes so much for sandwiching is that cutting them in half leads to perfectly bite-sized slices with the jelly evenly distributed across the sandwich. If you're using something bigger, consider quartering them before slicing them down, but exercise caution - pieces too small and you run the risk of edge fallout, which is clinically proven to cause indiscriminate swearing and bystander mockery.

The Bacon

Yes. The bacon.

When I first embarked on this journey, I bought myself a slab of thick-cut bacon, assuming that thick meaty slices of pork belly would be the way to go. But ironically, what I loved about thick-cut when I was just walking around my house in flannels eating chunks of it while playing video games proved detrimental in sandwichy format. Fried crisp, it was actually too hard, distractingly toothsome in the midst of my sandwich, especially only cut in half to accommodate the shape of my bread. Thinner, regular-cut slices proved to be the winner here, being easier to chomp straight through than thick-cut.

Now, I happen to like my bacon crispy, so cutting the slices in half proved to be sufficient so that I could create an even layer across the sandwich. If you prefer your bacon more on the floppy side, take a lesson from my speech on tomatoes and bite-and-slide and cut them into fourths.

So that's it, right? All ingredients accounted for. 

AND YET.

When I slapped the top slice of bread onto the bacon and took a bite, I felt... dissatisfied. Even using 1/2" thick bread, the single-layered flavors I instituted to eliminate slip risk were there, just not flourishing with the freshness and robustness I craved. What was I to do?

I decided to palindrome it. Double up from the inside out, multiplying the innards to bring it home. But this presented a new problem - bacon on bacon. After all my careful work layering frictional substances on each other, I had a dry-dry situation at the very core of my sandwich.

Enter that glorious addition to BLTs country-wide, avocado. Rich with lipidy flavor, thick slices of avocado would provide a spread-like glue to the center line, holding fast at the very heart of the structure.

One more time for emphasis, and I finally built my perfect BLT. And there you have it, guys. Enjoy.

Recap - building from the bottom up in single layers:

Sliced bread griddled in bacon fat (suggested: sourdough or seeded Italian)

Mayonnaise spread on the crisp side

Cracked black pepper

Arugula

Halved and sliced plum tomato

Crisp regular-cut bacon, slices cut in half

Sliced very ripe avocado

More bacon

Tomato again

Arugula

The other slice of bread with mayo and black pepper

Press gently down on the sandwich to moosh the layers together in a cohesive unit. Cut in half.

Eat the fuck out of it.

On a few things I've learned over the years.

I feel like babbling today. So I'm going to just rattle off a couple of tricks that I've picked up cooking and hope that some of them will be useful to you.

1. Wash your damn hands.

2. While you're at it, use your hands more. There is no tool in the kitchen as versatile as the ones at the end of your arms. They can smash, scrape, stir, fold, peel, and form. Get in there and play with your food.

3. Sure, you could put a towel under a bowl, pull out a whisk, blend vinegar with mustard and seasoning and spices and carefully drizzle oil while whisking constantly to build a properly emulsified salad dressing, or you could just put all that shit into something with a screw-top and shake it like a British nanny.

4. Just use a bigger cutting board, man. C'mon.

5. Why buy tupperware when you can just order too much soup from a Chinese place?

6. Onions make you cry because the sulfur you release into the air when you break their cell walls is mixing with the moisture in your eyes to make sulfuric acid. If you have four onions to chop and you do them one at a time, you're going to be sobbing uncontrollably by Onion #3. Halve and peel all the onions. Then score all the onions. Then chop all the onions.

7. Get a bunch of very, very large bowls. Nothing's sadder than trying to mix something in a bowl too small for the job. You wind up being too gentle to mix properly and shit winds up spilling over the edges anyway. At most, the material inside the bowl should be around half the carrying capacity of said bowl.

8. Get a tablespoon, a teaspoon, and a half-teaspoon. Measure out salt in each, then dump it in the palm of your hand. See how it looks, how it feels. Do that every time you measure spices. After a while, you'll be able to freehand measurements.

9. If you have two cast iron skillets, you have a panini press. You also might have one too many cast iron skillets.

10. Save the waxy butter wrappers in a zip-top bag in the freezer. They're shockingly useful when it comes to greasing pans.

11. If you keep your cooking oil in a squeeze bottle, you'll save yourself the trouble of brushing oil onto crostini or glopping too much into a frying pan. What's that? You don't have a squeeze bottle? How about one of those fifty thousand water bottles you picked up from all the 5Ks you've run and expos you've gone to for work?

12. Do you have a food processor or a blender? Then stop buying hummus, you dumbass.

13. Mise en place, motherfucker. Learn it. Love it.

14. Bacon makes everything better because it drowns out all other flavors and replaces them with bacon. Take it easy there, cowboy.

15. Everything is more flavorful than water.

16. Taste as you go. Don't just wait until you get to the finish line to discover you've created a hot steaming bowl of shit.

17. Use thermal mugs for soup. Or hollandaise. You get the extra bonus of surprising the fuck out of whoever tries to steal a sip of your coffee.

18. If you drop something in the kitchen, don't try to ninja-catch it. Either it's really sharp or really hot (or both!) and you're only going to severely wound yourself, or you'll fumble it and make the mess that much worse. Just step back. Caveat: kicksaves are acceptable when it's glassware.

19. Don't try to grab anything hot with a wet towel.

20. If you fill a jar halfway with milk and shake it until it doubles in volume, then drop it in the microwave until it hits around 155F, you can mimic steamed milk. Think about that the next time you're thinking of springing $3 for a cafe au lait.

21. Acidic things like vinegar and tomatoes will dissolve aluminum over time. It is less dramatic than it sounds, but it is exactly as gross.

22. The more moving parts a kitchen tool has, the less useful it will be in terms of multitasking. Also, the more pain in the dick it will be to clean.

23. Be aware of what the stuff around your kitchen actually is. Your salad spinner is a colander and a bowl. Your 8oz. coffee mug is a measuring cup. Your shot glass is two tablespoons. Your high-end rotary foamer is a weak paperweight. Your dog is a mop.

24. If you double-wrap your sheet pans in foil, you'll never have to clean them again.

25. Macerated fruit and sweetened whipped cream in a martini glass is an easy dessert for a dinner party that is also classy as fuck. Don't forget to put a sprig of mint on that shit. 'Cause garnish is real, son.

26. Store leftover guacamole in zip-top bags. It's crazy easy to keep properly deoxygenated.

27. Just toss your stale bread into the freezer. You can toast it off and make bread crumbs out of it later. And then you can look back on how much you've spent on bread crumbs in the past and weep.

28. Every time you open your oven door, you're losing like 100 degrees. Turn on the goddamn light and look in the window like a civilized human being, you ass.

29. Cutting a whole lot of shit over an extended period of time is like driving. It feels monotonous, and you want to distract yourself by having a conversation or letting your eyes wander. But the instant you stop concentrating, boom, there's blood everywhere and everybody's screaming. Pay attention to what you're doing.

30. When you love what you do and take pride in your work, it shows in the final product. Don't just treat cooking as something you have to do because you'll die if you don't eat. Treat it with love and respect, and it'll pay you back every day of your life.

All right, guys. This seems like a good place for me to stop for now. Take it easy.


Oh, hey. Bonus tip: When in doubt, put an egg on it.

On knifery.

Let's talk about knives. They're an essential part of any cook's arsenal - you don't get far in a kitchen without having to cut something. Or smash something. Or slice something or dice something or whatever the fuck. But it's surprising how little the average home cook knows about this sort of thing, how many people cut the shit out of themselves using the wrong tools for the job. So let's see if I can't save a couple of fingers here, huh?

What do I need?
There's an old saying bandied about in culinary school that all a good cook needs is a chef's knife and a paring knife. And you know what? They're pretty much right.

A chef's knife is a straight-backed, curved-edged blade ranging in size from 8" to 12". This is your workhorse, the knife you'll do most of your slicing, chopping, dicing, watermelon peeling, and chicken disassembling with. You want something that fits comfortably in your hand, first and foremost. Something you can grip the shit out of with confidence. Some people use santokus for this kind of work, and those work just fine. Hell, my daily knives are santokus. But I bust out my chef's for when I'm being serious about something I need to rock-chop or when I need to take a bird's spine out.

A paring knife, somewhere around 4" long, is for your detail work. Your scoring of onions to get a fine dice, your deboning of meats, your carving Tony Danza into a squash. I don't know about you guys, but nine times out of ten I'm using a paring knife, I'm holding it like a pen. The other one time I'm peeling something because someone else is using my peeler.

At this point, I'd like to point out the importance of using the right-sized knife for the job. If you're using a paring knife to slice down a bunch of celery or dice garlic, you're doing it wrong. Alternately, if you're using a chef's knife to cut the strings off a roast or peel an apple, put the goddamn thing down and grab something more manageable.

The one addition I'd like to add to the list is a good bread knife. The longer the better. You can't really get good slices from a 10" boule when you're using an 8" bread knife, yeah? Plus the serrated teeth situation really comes in handy with particularly cut-resistant surfaces, like the outsides of tomatoes or the skin of a pork belly. If your chef's knife is meeting resistance, don't force it, just grab something toothy.

How do I take care of them?
Get a honing steel. Seriously.

Next, learn the difference between honing and sharpening. Honing, which you do by alternating strokes along the ridged steel at a steep angle, is realigning the edge. Every time you use your knife, you're making little bends and dents along the edge that increase drag and generally fuck up your cutting power. Using a steel before and after you cut things brings everything back in line. You wouldn't bike on a bent wheel, would you?

In general, wash your knives by hand. Use a sponge. The edge of a knife is a very, very delicate thing, so you probably don't want to be tossing it into the dishwasher, where high-pressure water jets have the poor thing banging around like an airplane passenger in the bathroom during turbulence. Now here, I say in general because if you don't give that much of a shit about the knife, knock yourself out. My daily-use knife is a banger with chips out of the handle that I got for free. 90% of the work I do in my kitchen is slicing cooked meats, chopping aromatics, and other sundry stuff that doesn't actually require a razor-sharp edge, so I just use my beater to carry the brunt of the abuse. Of course, that being said, the INSTANT it can't cut through an onion without me applying a moderate amount of pressure, it's headed off to Valhalla. A dull knife is an extremely dangerous thing to have around.

Keep your clean, honed knives somewhere where the edge won't get banged about, like a knife block or a... well, a knife block.

Now, in order to keep your edge healthy, pay attention to how you cut. Sure, it's fun to use it like a cleaver and just chop the shit out of things, but a) that's incredibly dangerous to start with, and b) you're literally slamming your edge into a flat surface at a high velocity. What part of that seems like a good idea? Take it easy, cowboy. Don't just go up and down. Work it back and forth in long strokes and you'll go a long way in keeping your edge. That's what she said. Sorry. Couldn't help myself.

And while we're on the subject, use a goddamn cutting board. And use something with give, like wood or plastic! I don't know who the fuck came up with glass cutting boards, but what the shit. You may as well be banging your knife into a granite counter or steel tabletop. Save your glass cutting boards for serving canapes, or better yet, hang it up on your wall as a dry erase board.

Well, this knife is fucked. How do I sharpen it?
Sharpening is the act of actually grinding away the steel to create a new edge, as this mildly racist video explains. Sure, you could do it yourself (I like to do this annually with my regularly-used knives), but if you've got a knife store near you, get them professionally done. Face it, no matter how often you practice doing this, you're not going to beat a professionally machine-sharpened edge.

This does bring me to an interesting little trick I've picked up. Say you're traveling, and your unit's kitchenette has, as is typical, a set of ridiculously shitty knives for you to maim yourself with. Being a creature of dignity, you'd like to sharpen the knives at your disposal so you don't lobster yourself trying to take apart a tomato. What do you do? Grab a coffee mug from the cabinet and flip it over. See that coarse ceramic ring on the bottom? Works surprisingly well as a grindstone. Just soak it in water for a bit, then put the mug on a towel so it doesn't slide, and grind away.

So there you go. Take care of your knives, people, and they'll take care of you. Now if you'll pardon me, I have to go cut slices off a meatloaf for sandwiching purposes.

On eating something new.

I want to talk to you guys about a sandwich. Lillie's Q in Chicago has a particular item on the menu - the CLT. It's not the sort of thing you walk into Lillie's for the first time and order, because let's face it, when you walk into a BBQ joint of this particular reputation, you want to slather ribs in any one of their amazeballs sauces or cram a tri-tip sandwich into your facehole. And you would be correct to do so.

But on your second go-round, check out the CLT. The description alone was enough to catch my eye: "Chicken Skin Bacon, blah blah, blah blah blah." Chicken skin bacon, you say? My mind flicked immediately to the simple delight skin brings me. From chicharrones to sneaking the skin off a Thanksgiving turkey, that crispy, fat-laced savory burst holds a special place in my cholesterol-choked heart. So when I came back to Lillie's for the second day in a row, naturally I had to order it.

And it was fantastic. Smoked chicken skin fried crispy with a toothsome snap with fresh tomatoes, crisp Bibb lettuce, and a smear of mayo on white bread. It was everything I wanted it to be. And as I chomped my way through bite after bite of this painstakingly simple, yet delicious sandwich, I realized a few simple truths that drove home just how well-run the kitchen here was.

1) Total utilization of product. This is something that's beaten into us from Day 1 in culinary school. Restaurants operate on thin margins, and you never really realize how much it costs to throw shit out until you're shopping for dumpster contracts. Basically, the more you use, the better the situation. Vegetable peels and onion roots go in the stockpot, zested lemons get juiced to make a house vin or a homemade lemonade.

I had the smoked fried chicken the day before (which was a brilliant plate in its own right - you could see how deep the smoke took by the pink in the meat, which had that pillowy texture that only buttermilk can get you BUT I DIGRESS), and I noticed it had been skinned. A fairly common practice, actually - the skin is a well-known slip zone, as anyone who's taken a bite out of a thigh and come away with half the fried knows. So what do you do with all that excess skin? Most places would chuck it, but it turns out you can also smoke it, flattop it, and sell it as a sandwich. Brilliant. Speaking of...

2) Fry it flat. Skin's freakishly delicious, but also notoriously difficult to work with because of all the proteins in it that REALLY want to curl up and ruin your plans for even cooking. Sure, you could work your way around it by dropping it in the deep-fryer, but if you're trying to emulate bacon, you need flat, layered protein to build a sandwich the customer can actually get their mouth around. The chicken skin bacon here was paper-level flat, which implies a big ol' griddle and a weight to ensure the skin was cooked consistently. Food isn't just about what you cook - more often than not, it's how it's cooked that separates the champs from the chumps.

3) Context. When you really want to feature something unique, there's a temptation to pull out all the stops, to serve it with herb-pickled tomatillos, fern greens, and a chipotle aioli on rosemary brioche. Resist that urge. You don't do a side-by-side comparison of a Ford Focus on its way to the supermarket and a Lamborghini Countach driving through a ring of fire while a castle explodes in the background and girls in bikinis applaud underneath. You don't show off your new jeans by wearing them with a ruffled shirt and an LED-laced broadsword on your back. Lose your frame of reference and you lose what makes your idea special. Proper context is exactly what this sandwich does. A ripe, flavorful tomato, some easy-going tender-leafed lettuce, a glob of mayonnaise and good old sliced bread was all the chicken skin bacon needed as backup. And it sang.

Whoever came up with this sandwich was a genius. It's a magnificent idea with a flawless execution, turning an iconic sandwich on its ear with one simple substitution. Well done, Lillie's Q; and to the rest of the eating world, I hope we all learn something from it.

On a dream about hamburgers.

So I had a dream last night that I was attending some kind rambling beach/cliff party. I found myself engaged in conversation with one Jewel Staite about hamburgers.

I can't remember the majority of it, of course, as I'm terrible at remembering my dreams. But I do remember her arguing for the presence of avocado on certain burgers, calling the lipid-rich fruit 'nature's mayonnaise'.

I can't really argue that, can I?

That being said, I could really go for a havarti burger with an asiago frico, avocado, and a thick, fatty slice of applewood-smoked bacon right now.

On a plea to those that deliver fries.

It is with a heavy heart that I write these words. For I know how they will not be heard by those who need to hear it most. That this impotent cry will echo into the internet but once, then forever be lost to the silence of the years.

But say it I must.

Delivery places. Please. Please stop putting fries in clamshells.

Do you not realize what crunch is? That all it really comes down to is dehydration? Do you not know that moisture of any kind is crunch's bane?

So what, you're just going to cram those beautiful, crisp fingers of potato into an airtight motherfucking container? So that they can release steam that escapes through fucking nothing and therefore just soaks right back into the fucking fries? Don't you know that you may as well have just dumped them into a wet fucking rag soaked in your own fetid fucking urine? Can't you see that every time, every fucking time you hand that off to your customer, two fucking kittens die somewhere?

Would it fucking kill you to put them into a fucking bag? I mean, fuck.

On buttered toast.

So a while ago, Tyler asked me to write an article on why buttering bread before it was toasted made it so much more delicious. So I ventured out into the internet, trying to find the scientific reasoning for what's always been pretty common knowledge in the kitchen: A smudge of fat on bread leads to a more even, darker browning in the oven. And you know what I came up with? Jack shit.

"Well, fuck," I said as I closed my textbooks. "Looks like I'll have to think this one out." We talked about the Maillard reaction not too long ago - we know that browning leads to the development of all those delicious compounds that makes toast toasty. Crunch is, at its core, dehydration. So logically, the awesomeness of buttered toast has something to do with driving out water content on the bread's surface.

And that makes sense, really. Trying to sear a moist steak on a dry surface leads to a splotchy, inconsistent crust rather than the beautiful golden brown a little oil generates. Oil acts as a direct surface-to-surface heat application, like a liquid pan you can coat your food in (incidentally, this is why oven-fried chicken is a sham). While water has a boiling point of 212F, keeping any wet surface from getting any hotter than that so long as there's moisture to vaporize, oil can go well beyond that temperature without breaking a sweat. So to speak.

So here's my theory. When you fattify the porous surface of bread, that oil swarms the molecular structure, its naturally hydrophobic properties encasing or otherwise driving away the moisture from the surface. It obviously doesn't push the water out, or a puddle of water would form every time you smear bacon fat on your toast, but it takes up space that water vapor would otherwise trap itself in as the piece of bread heats.

Exposed to high temperatures in the absence of water, the bread essentially fries in the oven, free to develop color and crunch unfettered by the thermal shackles of the boiling point. Butter in particular is a great candidate for this, despite its ~15% water content, since the milk solids that give it its characteristic buttery flavor stand up to the short blast of high heat involved in toasting when it's buffered by the bulk of the bread.

So there you have it, buddy. Buttering bread before toasting it is delicious because butter is delicious, the Maillard reaction is delicious, and water can go suck it.


I feel like I should add a note here about buttering bread before putting it into a vertical slot toaster. Don't do it. Those heating coils are way too close, and the fat's just going to drip off the sides rather than soak into the bread. Use a little common sense here, people.

Guidelines: Meatballs.

Rrrepost! Y'know, in case some of you want to stock up on a little something something this weekend.


Meatballs.

I mean, really, I don't need to say much more than that, do I? My recipe is loosely based on Alton Brown's (and by loosely, I mean his ratios are what I roll with); I've found the man's proportions to be pretty solid. But again, meatballs are one of those things that was born of necessity - they were created to use up scraps of meat and to bulk them to feed a crowd. So really, anything goes.

That being said, this is how I usually do:

For every 1.5 lbs. of ground meat (be it beef, pork, veal, turkey, whatever), I use:
3 eggs
1/2 c. bread crumbs (I make my own, but you can use anything from panko to just pulverized leftover bread)
Some kind of milk (I've got half and half in my fridge for coffee at all times, so I use that)
~5 oz. spinach (cooked, drained, chopped. You'll note that that's half a box of frozen spinach, of course - I've used everything from Swiss chard to kale here, too. Just cook it and chop it fine) (And when I say drained, I mean wrap that shit up in a couple of layers of paper towel and actually squeeze the liquid out. Don't be lazy.)
1/2 c. grated hard Italian cheese (Parm, Romano, whatever the fuck)
Soy sauce and Worcestershire to taste
Pepper, dried herbs and spices (parsley, thyme, sage, oregano, red pepper, whatever)
Maybe like one small onion, chopped fine and sweated
However the fuck amount of garlic you want, also chopped fine and sweated

Really, the only tricky thing here is the panade, which is when you dump the bread crumbs into the big-ass bowl you'll be mixing everything in first, then add enough milk to make a thick paste. What happens here is the fats in the milk soak into the starches of the bread crumbs, trapping them within the starch molecules so that the tasty fatty mouth feel is distributed evenly throughout the balls rather than running all over the damn place when you cook 'em. Before you add anything else, let that sit until all the milkstuff is absorbed into the breadstuff.

Then add the eggs, and with your hand, moosh everything together until it's evenly mixed. Then dump everything else in and mix it with your hands until just incorporated. I say 'just incorporated' because the more you beat the shit out of the proteins in the meat, the more springy and tough they get. So try not to mash everything around any more than you really have to.

Here comes the fun part, the one that most home cooks pass up, hoping they can just skate on the recipe and everything will turn out great. Heat up a small pan with a dab of oil, pinch off a little of your meatball mix, and cook up a little test patty.

THEN FUCKING TASTE IT TO SEE IF IT'S GOOD OR NOT.

If it is, great. If not, add more shit to it and repeat the process until the test patty tastes like how you want your meatballs to taste. Jesus, you people and your not tasting shit as you make it. If you wait until the end, how will you know it's good?

Is your mix good? Awesome. It's time to portion them out. Now, since the mix is uniform in density (because you mixed it properly, right?), you can do this step by weight or by volume. Me, I use an old 1 fl. oz. ice cream scoop I inherited from my folks, so it's both utilitarian AND nostalgic. You, use whatever you want. Doesn't really matter on size so long as they're all the same. (Don't be an asshole and try to make 6 oz. meatballs. Or if you do, stuff them with something like rice or proscuitto so you don't have raw meat on the inside and burnt-ass shit on the out.) Portion them out onto a sheet tray lined with parchment first, then once you've got everything measured, go back and roll them into balls. Trust me, it's faster this way.

Here, you can try an optional step for funsies. Remember when I said working proteins makes them tough? I like to slap the balls between my hands a little before I roll them so the exterior gets tough and holds its shape in the oven. Again, totally optional.

Once everything's all portioned out and rolled, fire up your oven to 400 degrees and bake them until they're done. For my oven and my portion scoop, that means about 25 minutes until the balls are cooked all the way through. For you, that'll vary on how good your oven is and how big you made your balls. Figure it out. Cut one open after 20 minutes, see what's up.

And that's that. Seeing as how this is a somewhat involved process, I'd recommend making around 3 lbs. of meat's worth of balls at a batch, using what you need for dinner, then freezing the rest on sheet trays until frozen, then putting them in a labeled gallon-sized Ziploc for future use. That way, you can just simmer a few in sauce until they're hot or pop them in the microwave the next time you want meatballs.

And let me tell you - meatballs on demand is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Out.

(mic drop)

On winter.

So I haven't been posting very often recently (I'm trying to make sure to post at least once a week), and there's a reason for it. Philadelphia's in the grip of one of the most ridiculously snowy winters in recent history, and this kind of weather brings a body down. Between the shoveling and the parking and the trying to get anywhere in goddamn town, the season's piling on all these tiny little stresses that wear me out until all I have the energy for at the end of the day is to flop down on the couch with a bowl of something warm and goopy.

And that's what this season does to you, right? This is the season of soups and stews, of long, slow braises. This is the time of year when we cook things that take hours, when we fill the house with the smell of meat and broth. This is the season of fat and collagen.

We eat foods that flood the mouth with flavor and linger on the taste buds, whether it's the thick gravy of a long-cooked short rib or the encompassing swell of a good soup. We want it warm and soothing, fatty and filling. We want it to make us sleepy after. We want it heavy and hot. We want our food to give us a hug.

Because when the chips are down and the world outside is cold and slick and angry, that's all we really need. A hug.

So do yourself a favor this winter. Cook something you can eat with a spoon, whether you're supposed to or not. Cook something that makes you want to lick the bowl after. Stay in and give yourself a food hug. You need it. You deserve it.

On love.

We all express love differently. Whether it's to a significant other, a friend, a family member, when we love, we show that affection through the things we do. Maybe we offer gifts, or perform acts of service. Perhaps we offer words of affirmation. (Maybe someone tells you about love languages.)

One of my favorites has always been food. Whether it was my mom making dinner for the family after a long day at work or me learning how to sear a duck breast perfectly for that special girl, I've found the act of preparing food to be intimate and expressive. Understanding what your audience wants and providing it for them. Creating something with your hands to share with another. All the skill and training in the world can only take you so far. If you cook without love, without care, it is evident in what you create.

And create is the proper term for it. Because you're not just making something to cram into someone's face hole (although that can be another expression of love), you're creating an experience. You're engaging all the senses in a way that can never be exactly replicated. You're forging a finite moment, something with a definite beginning and end that will live on only in memory. And that's beautiful to me. Because it means every time I cook, I have to try just as hard as the last time. I have to put just as much heart and soul into it as I did the day before. It's not a tennis bracelet or a flatscreen TV that can be bought and left as a constant reminder of love. It's an act, a proof of the continuation of my love for that person.

And in saying this, I include myself. Sometimes it's easy to just jam a cheesesteak in me, or throw a Stouffer's lasagna in the oven. It's easy when you live by yourself to forget to cook, to let yourself be sustained by whatever crap you pick up along the way. But sustainment isn't nourishment. For me, it's important to cook for myself. To love myself, whether I'm just melting cheese on chips or orchestrating a short rib braise in coffee and stout and a blue cheese risotto.

So if you're into food, and I'm guessing if you're reading this blog, you are, please. Take the time to cook for yourself. Take the time to love yourself as you would another. Because you're worth it.

Besides, it's good practice for when it's time to love other people.

And by love other people I mean seduce with food.

Happy Valentine's Day, guys. See you next time.

Guidelines: Chili.

I posted this around this time last year - also idea chili weather, I think. Then again, let's be honest; it's always good chili weather.

Chili's one of those dishes that have infinite permutations, from the basest of recipes to the most carefully engineered formulae (I'm looking at you, Darian). Most of the time, I play it fast and loose, adhering to its history of being whatever the fuck happened to be lying around the chuck wagon. I do love to carefully gather ingredients from time to time, building an alchemical masterpiece. But when I don't have the time or energy for it, this is how I tend to roll.


  Around 1.5 lbs. ground meat. I like to use ground sirloin (the 90/10 stuff) because the texture's nice and crumbly.  Feel free to mix it up; my last batch included six strips of bacon that were going to go south in a couple of days.
  Some worcestershire sauce. Some is a technical term.
  Some soy sauce. See above.
  An onion, diced. The size and variety of the onion should depend on whatever the balls you have lying around.
  Between 1 and 40 cloves of garlic, peeled, smashed and chopped. I set the limit at 40 because unless you're using the two-bowl technique, madness begins to set in after peeling your 37th clove of garlic.
  Whatever other vegetation you have lying around, diced. Bell peppers, chiles, whatever.  Knock yourself out.
  Beer. Tomatoes have flavonoids that dissolve in water, fat, and alcohol, so don't skimp.
  One 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes. Muir Glen makes a really nice fire-roasted variety, but I'll go San Marzano if I can find it. Because San Marzano tomatoes are fucking delicious.
  A splorch of molasses. Usually however much comes out before you can stop it from pouring.
  Chili powder.  Shocking, I know. I generally use chipotle here, but anything from ancho to generic'll do. Come to think of it, you could use chipotles in adobo to get that flavor, but careful. That shit is hot.
  Oregano, cumin, and paprika. Really, these are optional, but this herb and these spices in particular work really well in chili. If you have it, go smoked on the paprika. If you don't, throw out your regular paprika and get your ass to the store for some smoked.
  Whatever other spices you want. I like to use coriander and cardamom because I don't use them in much else, and I kind of want to get rid of them.
  Cocoa powder. Yeah, I said it.
  One 15.5 oz. can of beans, drained and rinsed. Red kidney, cannelini, black, pinto, whatever floats your boat.

1. In a pot big enough to hold the chili (and really, if you can't eye that kind of thing up, just go with the first pot in your set that has handles on both sides), brown the meat.  A lot of recipes say work in batches to get some nice browning, but unless I'm really trying to impress someone, I've generally found it isn't worth the time - big flavor gets built in from other steps. If working with a wooden spoon is giving you agita, try using a potato masher.
2. Dump the meat into a bowl, released juices and fat and all. Add worchestershire and soy sauces until it's tasty enough to eat with a spoon. Not a fork. A spoon.
3. Bring the pot back up to heat and sweat the onions, garlic, and spare vegetation. Note that I said sweat, not burn.  Keep 'em moving.
4. The liquid released from the onions should have been enough to dig up any brown bits left behind from the meat (if any), but just in case, hit the pot with a little beer to deglaze. If you don't know what deglaze means, bring it to a boil and scrape the bottom and sides with whatever utensil you're using until nothing's sticking anymore. It's essentially the same thing.
5. Dump in the tomatoes. Not literally, as it'll glomp out and splatter all over the place if you do it fast enough. Trust me. Bring it back up to a simmer.
6. Add the molasses, herbs, spices, whatever. Gun to my head, I'd say 2 tbsp. chili powder and 1 tbsp. of the rest to start (I just dump the spices into my cupped hand to eyeball it), then add 1 tsp. each in rotation until you get the flavor you're looking for. If you want more heat, throw in whatever you've got in the door of your fridge - Tabasco, Frank's Red Hot, and sriracha all work well.  If it gets too hot, hit it with a little more molasses to mellow it out.
7. By the time you're done with 6, everything should have simmered long enough to be soft and stick-blendable if you're into that sort of thing. If you like your chili chunky (or you don't have a stick blender), skip this step.
8. Add the meat and beans back into the pot. If there isn't enough gravy, add beer until there is. Drink whatever's left.
9. Bring to a simmer and hold for however long you feel like it. Truth is, all the flavors should meld enough to be tasty in about 20 minutes, but I just let it go until I have to go to bed so I can keep picking at it.

Note: like most (if not all) things that involve tomato, the chili will taste even better the next day. I can't tell you the exact science of it, but it has to do with the acids and glutamates inherent in that magical fruit going to town on everyone at the party.

So that's that. Cheers, guys. I'll see you next time.

On browning.

So not that long ago, I got into searing - particularly the myth that searing seals in juices (which it doesn't). So why do we do it?

The answer? Browning.

Browning is, by definition, the act of turning something brown (doi). Now, in culinary terms, this is an overarching way to describe caramelization and the Maillard reaction. Organic molecules all have one element in common - carbon. And when compounds containing carbon are exposed to enough heat to break them down, the carbon reacts, turning black. Combined with everything else that's going on, this steadily darkens (or browns) the food until all the other elements burn away, leaving you with, well, carbon. Which is a fancy way of saying 'burnt'.

So what happens before we get to burnt? Let's look at caramelization first. We've heard the term, maybe even heard the phrase 'breaking down of sugars' bandied about. And said phrase is a pretty decent snapshot of what's going on - sugars, which are composed entirely of oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon, do in fact break down from their more complex forms (like sucrose and lactose) and recombine into smaller, less complicated sugars (like glucose, fructose, and galactose) that, when they reach the tongue, require a lot less effort to process and therefore taste sweeter to us.

But wait, that's not all! The process also creates all kinds of weird little mongrel molecules out of these three building blocks, organic acids and polymers that don't just taste sweet. They hit bitter and sour notes, creating a multidimensional flavor profile for us to appreciate.

Which brings us to the Maillard reaction, which is pretty much the same thing, only we're bringing proteins to the party. Amino acids have a shit-ton more elemental diversity than sugar itself, which means the chemical compounds formed with sulfur, nitrogen, potassium and more get infinitely more complicated and unique, leading to an insanely more complex and diverse flavor profile in the finished product.

So if browning is so amazing, why don't we do it all the time?

Well, first of all, browning involves an assload of heat and a giant pile of chemical reactions. As intense and interesting as the new flavors we create through the process, we're destroying just as many flavors as we're creating. Sometimes we want these flavors present in a dish - we want an avocado to taste like an avocado. Sometimes, in order to bring a food up to a temperature high enough to generate these reactions, we destroy the textural things we enjoy about them, like egg or celery.

Secondly, browning makes things... well, brown. Cooks and chefs the world around know the value of visual contrast, how the bright green crunch of a fresh scallion can make a dish pop. Chicken stock traditionally skips the browning process of the bones and mirepoix to maintain its light, delicate coloration. It's tough to make a plate look pretty if everything's the same color. Come to think of it, it's tough to make a dish taste complex if everything's a complicated brown muddle of flavor. Contrast is key, be it in flavor, appearance, or texture.

So there it is. A rough breakdown of browning and why we do and don't do it. Cheers, guys - I'll see you next time 'round.

On leftover fries.

We've all been there. Maybe we went to Five Guys and got the large. Maybe we ordered delivery and they were so floppy they wound up in the fridge. Regardless of the circumstance, you have a wadload of fries sitting in the fridge, staring at you from a greasy bag or a moist clamshell until you give up and chuck them.

It doesn't have to be this way. Fries can be given a new life. All we have to do is fry them again.

You heard me. And of course, you don't have a deep fryer just lying around your house. And even if you did, you definitely wouldn't want to drop already-seasoned food back into it. No, we must look to the frying pan for this.

To make the potatoey bits more manageable in a pan, I highly recommend cutting them down into cubes before tossing them into a frying pan with a healthy dose of high-smoke point oil. Just fry them off, stirring occasionally (I like to use the cheffy panfloop), until they reach your desired level of crispness.

And what do you do with these crispy, nutritionally vacant bits?

Garnish soup. Like croutons, these hyper-crisp nubbins of potato will hold their own in moisture-rich environments. Not for long, of course - if you linger over your soup, add them in stages as you work your way down.

Serve alongside a braise. I can't tell you how often I braise chicken, usually with a big tough leafy green in the same pan. Call me crazy, but I like dishes that are ready whenever the fuck you feel like eating it. Of course, a good dinner needs balance in all things, and nothing in a braise comes out anything other than crazy soft. Counterbalance that with a little refried fries action and take it to the next level.

Make hash. While the potatoes are still in the pan, dig out a couple of wells in them, crack eggs in, sprinkle some bacon or cheese or what the what you have lying around on top, and drop it in the oven until the eggs are done to your liking. Voila, you have a quick and easy breakfast. And if you like your yolks runny, you're going to love them gooing all over crunchy chunks of tuber.

The sky's the limit, really. They make for a handy side or clever garnish, and they give you a quick and easy option when you need something on the rail. So don't throw out those leftover fries - put them to work.

Ode to Steak.

Written a long time ago. Still relevant today.

Ode to Steak

I ate a steak today. It was delicious.
Lusty lines of fat embraced the meat;
Age had made it tender, ripe, ambitious,
Ready - no, salacious for the heat.
A dash of salt, a coat of pepper ground,
and oh! What sacred scent I did endure.
Scent led to taste, and what a taste profound -
Say what you will, that moment's joy was pure.

So let you vaunted versists squawk your lines,
Your love and loss, your mountain's majesties.
Love fades to bore, loss whimpers to a whine,
and mountains never mattered much to me.
Thrust your sweaty loins until you ache,
I'll keep my simple pleasures. Give me steak.

On the searing myth.

We've all heard it. "Searing meat seals in the juices." As I grew up and while I learned to cook, I heard it time and time again, repeated from the mouths of hallowed chefs and local cooks alike. It's one of those tenets you hear and just accept, because let's face it, it sounds like it makes sense.

But just because something makes sense doesn't mean it's true. The idea was originally put forth by Justus von Liebig in his book Researches on the Chemistry of Food back in the 1850s, and it was immediately embraced by the cooking world, including the legendary Auguste Escoffier (the mack daddy of modern professional cooking - more on that history lesson at some point, I'm sure). And reinforced by so many voices, the public came to accept it as culinary fact.

So why did we buy it in the first place? As I said, it makes sense. We all hear about cauterization, about how slapping hot iron to a wound stops bleeding in a pinch. But we forget that in times like these, we're not so much sealing a surface as we are melting pipes shut. Effective, yes, but definitely a completely different ballgame from cookery.

The fact is, food is (hopefully) biological material, and biological material is made of cells. Any time you rupture those cell walls, be it with blade or fire, you're going to create moisture loss, as evidenced by Alton's episode on culinary mythery. After all, if searing really did seal in the juices, why would meat in the pan keep sizzling once a crust had formed if the cut wasn't still releasing moisture?

Okay, okay. So if searing meat not only doesn't seal in juices, but actually accelerates moisture loss, why do we do it, and why do we do it as the first step? The answer is simple: the Maillard reaction. Which, of course, is very far from simple, but just saying those three words is simple. Shut up.

Applying an assload of heat to food generates this magical physical and chemical reaction that creates a wide range of flavors and textures in the process (more on the Maillard reaction another day) that is extremely desirable in food. Since the compounds created are water-soluble, the process is best executed with a minimum of moisture involved. And since, as we've stated, cell damage generates moisture loss, the driest your hunk of meat will ever be is going to be at the very start of the cooking. You following me here? Because I'm still a little nap-brained and I'm not sure I'm making complete sense.

Speaking of, I should stop talking before I really go into depth about caramelization and the Maillard reaction. Let's post up here and let this sink in:

Searing meat does not seal in the juices.

But keep doing it anyway.

On garlic powder vs. granulated garlic.

I mean, seriously, what's the difference?

Ever since Alton Brown graced on it on his episode on dips (Dip Madness, S6E8), I've used granulated garlic almost exclusively. I could never really put my finger on why - maybe it's because I perceived the flavor to be more garlicky, maybe it was just easier to distribute via my usual pinch-and-sprinkle method.

So I decided to do some research on my own today. I've delved into my textbooks and references, Googled the shit out of some shit, and come up with...

...almost nothing. Just a bunch of vague assumptions, conversion charts, and largely unsubstantiated claims. So what did I find?

1) Garlic powder tends to come from dehydrated garlic flakes, while granulated garlic tends to come from freeze-dried slices of garlic.

Garlic's flavor, like all members of the Allium family, comes from pungent sulfuric compounds (side note: that's why chopping onions makes you cry; the sulfur is released into the air, and when it comes in contact with moisture, it's actually making sulfuric acid in your goddamn eye), and all such compounds tend to be on the volatile side of things.

Now, dehydration tends to be a hot technique, encouraging evaporation through heat (usually around 150F), whereas freeze-drying uses air pressure to draw out moisture through sublimation. We talked about heat and molecular agitation earlier, so which method do you think would better preserve garlic's flavor?

2) Garlic powder is pulverized into a dust, while granulated garlic is milled to a desired grind.

Again, this comes down to preserving the flavor compounds. Granted, neither technique is particularly delicate with the product, but somehow, I feel like smashing the fuck out of something repeatedly is just a little gentler than running it through a set of burrs once or twice. Call me crazy.

Also, a coarser grind means the surface area to volume ratio for granulated garlic is considerably lower. This means each granule has an undisturbed nubbin of garlicky goodness within, while in powder form, there's next to nothing left of the original fatleaf. And since, like any dried herb or spice, the flavor comes out with rehydration, having more garlic at the core should, logically, lead to a fuller, more comparable garlic flavor. (On the rehydration tip, remember that time and moisture works to your benefit. So if you like garlic powder on your pizza, better to hit the entire pizza at the getgo rather than wait to flavor each slice.)

3) Garlic powder has a much higher chance of containing an anticaking agent than granulated garlic.

A minor concern, of course, since anticaking agents are widely known to be harmless. Still, I like to operate with as few ancillary ingredients as possible, so if I can skip the silicon dioxide (or calcium silicate or sodium aluminosilicate or whatever the fuck), I'd prefer to.

So there you have it, guys. If I had the time to infiltrate McCormick's and get to the nitty gritty of things, I might have been able to get more details to you. But as it stands, I'm feeling pretty confident in my continued decision to use granulated garlic over garlic powder. If anyone's got any further information on the subject, I'd love to hear it.

Until next time!

On recipes.

Periodically (for the first few months of this blog, at least), I'll repost blogs from my other blog that pertained to food. Partially because they're relevant to this blog as well, but mostly because I'm too lazy to rephrase material.

I was prompted today to post a recipe. Not too surprising of a prompt, of course; those of you that know me (and I'm going to assume that's all three of you that are here) know I cook a great deal. But as I sat down to think about what my greatest dish and the story behind it was, I hit a rather familiar roadblock. Barring baking, I don't generally follow recipes, much less write my own.

That's not to say that recipes don't have their purpose. If I'm learning a new dish, I'll make it once to spec to understand what the author wanted it to taste like, then adapt it accordingly to my tastes. But after a while, you start to realize that most recipes are just one or two techniques with variances on ingredients. Once you learn how to make a proper pot roast, braising short ribs in coffee isn't much of a jump. If you learned how to make a beschamel for your baked mac and cheese, then you know how to build a turkey gravy.

To understand these techniques, it's important to understand why you're doing what you're doing. Are you searing that pork chop because that's how you seal in juices, or because the Maillard reaction generates complexity of flavor? Is that water bath you're putting your cheesecake in to keep the top from cracking or for insulation? When you learn these things, you learn to adapt. You learn to thicken your chowders with leftover mashed potatoes when you don't have the flour to build a roux, because starch is starch. You learn to use white vinegar in your guacamole when someone has a citrus allergy because acid is what keeps the avocados from oxidizing.

And I say this to you because it's important to know how to adapt. When you know why the rules and instructions are in place, you understand what's important and what's not. And you stop worrying when you miss your turn, because you can just take the next one and circle around. You stop stressing out when you lose a washer because a bread clip will do just fine. You waltz to Everybody Hurts because it's in 3/4.

Knowledge is power because knowledge keeps you from freaking the fuck out. And not freaking the fuck out is the greatest power of all.

On comfort food.

I talk about tacos a lot. My affection for them is well-known - once, on a family vacation, I tried to eat fifty of them in a week (I was balked by food poisoning). I owned and operated a taco shop. I claim them to be one of my favorite foods. When asked what kind of taco I'm talking about when I say I love tacos, my response is usually 'I love them all.'

And while that is true, when I say that tacos are my favorite comfort food, I'm talking about a very specific kind of taco. I'm talking about the hardshells, the ground beef tacos. The ones you find in kits at the grocery store in the Ethnic Foods aisle. Unexciting, perhaps, but comfort food isn't meant to excite.

For a food to be a comfort food, it has to be more than about the food itself. Comfort is not found solely in an object - it is swaddled in meaning, in memory. Like a brand of cigarette you used to smoke or the road the house you grew up in is on. They might just be a cardboard box or a stretch of pavement to some, but to you, it's something special. It's a memory, a feeling.

And it's that feeling that gives us comfort. The act of putting two shells on the plate, two fingertips holding them upright. Spooning just the right amount of filling in. The cheese, the salsa. The chopped tomato, the leafy green. Years of studying the mechanics of the taco, learning what holds which ingredients in place. How much pressure at what angle makes the fillings squeeze out the other end.

That first bite. Teeth snapping through the shell quickly, too quickly to create fault lines throughout the remainder of the tortilla. The melding of textures between your teeth, the balance of flavor on your tongue. Measuring your bites to ensure even filling distribution as you work your way along. Knowing at the end of your second taco that you know exactly how many bites each taco afterwards will take.

This is what comfort is. It's familiarity. Ritual. In the face of uncertainty, a vast, shadowy future, it gives us shelter and strength. It is found in religion, in exercise, in what you do when you get home from work. Have respect for it when you see it in others. And most of all, have respect for it when you see it in yourself.

On thermal travel mugs.

So the cafe I work at got these neat stainless steel travel mugs in, and true to form, all us staffers got to take one home. And in the middle of a cold snap a month or two ago, one of my coworkers was telling me how she left her hot coffee out in her Jeep all bloody day, and when she got back, it was still warm!

Amazing! "But I don't get it," she said. "It's steel, and doesn't metal transfer heat pretty quickly?"

Well, that's really only half the story. First off, not all metal transfers heat quickly, but that's a tale for another time. The important part of this equation is that the travel mugs are vacuum-insulated. In fact, most thermal products nowadays are. And the reason why is pretty simple - because vacuums are amongst the best insulations available to us.

Heat is, after all, the agitation of molecules. Picture a bouncy castle with a kid with four cookies and a hot chocolate railing around in it. That kid is going nuts, bouncing off the walls, screaming her lungs out, doing what kids do. She's got a lot of kinetic energy to burn. Now picture the same kid two hours later, passed the fuck out in the middle of the thing or wherever the fuck she landed. She's burned off all her energy, and has none left to do anything but sleep.

This is the difference between a molecule that is hot versus one that's cold. It's a matter of energy. Now, how many kids on a sugar rush do you think you can fit in that bouncy castle? How many will fit if they're all totally zonked out? Suddenly the idea that things expand and contract when they're hot or cold makes sense, no? Things take up less room when they are still.

But I digress. The fact is, thermal energy, like kinetic energy, is transferred through impact. When molecules smash into each other, they transfer the energy of the impact into the next molecule until an equilibrium is established. This is why if you preheat a container before you put a hot liquid in it, it'll keep said liquid hotter longer because the average between those two temperatures is significantly higher than if you had started with a cold container.

Which brings me to the value of the vacuum-insulated container. A cross-section of one of our steel travel mugs would reveal two thin layers of steel separated by an empty space, which, before you so callously cleft the doohickey in twain, contained absolutely nothing. No air, no liquid, nothing.

Think about that. Nothing. In the absence of any molecules to transfer energy to, the tiny bouncy castle kids that make up your double tall bound back from the walls with absolutely zero loss in kinetic energy, meaning your tasty beverage remains just as hot. Is it perfect? No. Obviously, they're still hitting the air at the unsealed top of the mug, so heat is bleeding out that way. And no manmade vacuum is flawless; there's always going to be a teensy amount of air or particulate matter bouncing around in there. But all the same, vacuums make for fantastic insulation because there's simply nothing there to agitate.

Of course, nature abhors a vacuum. Which means when you toss that fucker in the dishwasher or run it over with your car or chuck it at a brick wall because the Eagles lost again, you run the risk of cracking the hull. And when that happens, air rushes in, completely nullifying the mug's insulating properties. No longer do you have a magical heat-maintaining device; you just have a chunk of metal that holds stuff for you. It's also why we don't insulate shit like our walls with vacuums - try to nail one painting into the wall, and you're boned.

So there you go. This is why your fancy thermoses and travel mugs keep hot things hot and cold things cold - it's all about molecular energy transfer. It's also why if you need to keep anything at a stable temperature - soup, hollandaise, melted chocolate - look to your travel mugs.

Cheers, kids. See you next time.

An introduction.

Hi.

I'm Raoul. Better known on the internet as Warmonger Smurf (Smurf for short). And I love food. I learned how to cook watching Alton Brown. I read Harold McGee and Michael Pollan. I've worked around food my whole adult life, and I've grown to love every last bit of it. How it looks, how it smells. The joy to be found in the simple act of eating.

It bums me out to think that when a lot of people think of food, all they see is an ingredient list and some step-by-step directions. Food's more than recipes and reviews; it encompasses so much more about our lives than we give it credit for. It's science and art, it's comfort and exploration. It's techniques and forms, rules and philosophy. It takes precision and interpretation in equal measure. It's a reflection of cultures worldwide, an insight on what people believe and how they live. Eating's one of two human activities that use all five senses, that we all have in common across the globe.

I won't pretend to be an expert on any of this. I'm just a guy who cooks, some dude who talks about food a little more often than the average person. You won't find many recipes or destinations here - I'd rather talk about what goes into cooking, why we do the things we do when we're making it. I'd rather talk about what it means to us, as individuals, as friends, as families and communities.

So stay a while, and listen. Y'know, if that kind of thing appeals to you. I'll be here.