Eater - All |
- The Burger Bun of the Summer? Maybe Not Martin’s Potato Rolls
- TikTok’s Viral ‘Healthy Coke’ Concoction Is Better Than You Think
- How Pecking House Makes One of NYC’s Best Fried Chicken Sandwiches
- Making Your Own Ice Cream Is Totally Worth It
- The Fried Chicken That’s Essential to the Black Chicago Experience
- The Absolute Best (and Sometimes Worst) Vegan Ice Cream
- The Best Ice Cream Topping Is That Shitty Cake You Just Made
- Baijiu Gets Its Due on Cocktail Menus
- The Environmental Limits of Eating Local
| The Burger Bun of the Summer? Maybe Not Martin’s Potato Rolls Posted: 08 Jun 2022 10:16 AM PDT  Members of the Martin's family have donated to the far-right Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, prompting potato roll fans to consider other options Martin's potato rolls are often considered the single best store-bought hamburger bun, with their sweet, squishy nature bringing them to the top of the list in taste tests at Serious Eats and Epicurious, and making them the bun of choice at Shake Shack since the chain opened in 2004. But starting last week, food industry members have urged Shake Shack and other restaurants to boycott Martin's products as a result of the political affiliations of the Martin family, which founded the company in 1955 and has run it ever since. The Philadelphia publication Billy Penn reported last month that executive chair Jim Martin has provided over $100,000 of support to the far-right Pennsylvania senator and gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano — constituting the largest single donation to Mastriano's campaign donation this year or last. Those ties extend further, Billy Penn found, as Martin's daughter and wife — who both work at the company — have also made donations to Mastriano's campaign. Mastriano, a Trump-endorsed politician, has supported anti-abortion laws with no exceptions and denialist ideas about both COVID vaccines and the legitimacy of the 2020 election; in 2018, he compared calls for gun control in the United States to Germany under Hitler. In addition to attending the January 6 rally that led to the insurrection on the Capitol, which resulted in some calls for his resignation, Mastriano spent thousands shuttling supporters to the event. In April, he campaigned at a Christian conference that peddled QAnon conspiracy theories. Although Martin's gave a statement to Billy Penn stating that the company does not support any candidate or party, despite the views of the family, some restaurant owners and shoppers are considering alternatives to Martin's popular potato rolls. The question of boycotts is particularly important when it comes to big restaurant chains, who not only use huge amounts of Martin's products but have also done the most to raise the brand's public image. Last week, cookbook author J. Kenji López-Alt and mathematician Joe Rosenthal began leading the charge to boycott via Instagram. "I will not be buying any more Martin's products, nor will I support any establishment that uses their buns until they change suppliers, and I'd urge you to do the same if you don't want your dollars supporting this stuff," López-Alt wrote, putting pressure on Shake Shack and the Philadelphia chain Federal Donuts in particular. While Shake Shack didn't provide figures, a 2017 Eater report estimated that, at the time, the company went through at least tens of millions of Martin's buns per year. The comments on both posts suggest other food folks across the country — including Top Chef's Tom Colicchio, Cherry Bombe's Kerry Diamond, and chef and burger expert Sammy Monsour — are giving up Martin's potato rolls. Zack Fernandes of the Bay Area burger pop-up Lil' Eagle Burger told the San Francisco Chronicle that he plans to switch suppliers or make his own buns after he runs through his Martin's supply this weekend. "I cannot in good conscience use Martin's products any longer for Lil' Eagle pop-ups, especially while people I love still live in the state of Pennsylvania," Fernandes said. Despite these calls for action, Billy Penn reported last night that Shake Shack doesn't appear to be budging from its brand-famous buns. The company said in a statement:
Federal Donuts responded to an Instagram comment to say that the company was aware of the issue and is working on it, and reiterated to Billy Penn: "I'm happy to confirm FedNuts' message that they have been working on this." (Eater has reached out to Federal Donuts, but has not yet received a response.) However, neither Shake Shack nor Federal Donuts has, as of this writing, addressed the Martin's situation in social media posts. The top comments on Shake Shack's most recent post, a Pride-inspired shake promotion benefitting the Trevor Project, are full of calls for the company to switch suppliers; as commenters point out, this type of corporate Pride content doesn't square with Martin's implicit support of a candidate who shows, as the Philadelphia Inquirer has described, "open hostility toward his own state's LGBTQ+ community." Until another bakery takes up the mantle of best burger bun, some cooks may be considering the option of perfecting the potato roll at home. From chef Nyesha Arrington, here's one way to do that. The trade-off: More work, but a bit more control over where your money is going. Update: June 8, 2022, 2:40 p.m.: This article was updated to include the full statement from Shake Shack. |
| TikTok’s Viral ‘Healthy Coke’ Concoction Is Better Than You Think Posted: 08 Jun 2022 08:17 AM PDT  But you'll never get over the smell People who have been dieting to lose weight for years can convince themselves of anything. They can be convinced that frozen pureed fruit tastes "just like" ice cream, and that Lean Cuisines can adequately approximate any edible entree. And so it's not exactly surprising that a large contingent of TikTok wellness creators seem to legitimately believe that a combination of seltzer water and balsamic vinegar can taste identical to a Coca-Cola. In the past couple of days, the hashtag #healthycoke has gotten more than 1.5 million views on the social media platform. The origin of the trend remains unclear to me — the top Google result for "balsamic vinegar healthy Coke" is a 2016 recipe from a supplement-shilling doctor. But there's a slew of TikTokers of all stripes trying out their own versions of the trendy new drink, with user @mandyvjones racking up 4.7 million views (as of publication time) for her video that credits her Pilates instructor as inspiration. Of course, pouring vinegar into seltzer isn't really that weird of an idea: Shrubs and kombucha are beloved, and vinegar isn't a particularly uncommon ingredient in cocktails. Perhaps dubbing this concoction a "Coke" is a response to the sugar-laden dirty soda fad from earlier this year, but either way, there's no denying that the idea of finding a "healthier" soda option is clearly appealing to plenty of TikTok users.
Because I cannot resist the allure of a bizarre TikTok trend, I decided I had to see whether or not these influencers were onto something. My own version of this shockingly popular concoction was simple: a few glugs of Costco balsamic vinegar (it's imported!) and a Topo Chico. Most of the "recipes" on TikTok call for a flavored seltzer, but we work with what we have. And because Topo Chico is a superior mineral water, I assumed that it would serve as a solid backbone for a simpler version of this drink. After cracking open the bottles and pouring the mixture together, though, it became immediately clear that this was not going to be an addition to my nonalcoholic beverage repertoire. Combining seltzer and balsamic vinegar does, visually, resemble a Coke. It's nice and fizzy, and appropriately sweet, and I was pleasantly surprised by the taste, which was remarkably complex. I couldn't bring myself to add two whole tablespoons of vinegar, as some recipes suggest, which meant that the mixture was still light in flavor while still maintaining the assertive fizziness of Topo Chico. But because TikTok kept insisting that this was a "healthy Coke" alternative, I couldn't get that comparison out of my head. Instead of just positioning this as a healthy summer sip, insisting that it's an improved version of Coke is just setting what could be an otherwise enjoyable beverage up for complete and total failure. The sour notes of the vinegar don't come anywhere close to approximating the weird chemical flavors of America's favorite soda. Even though there is assuredly less sugar in this concoction than a classic Coke, it somehow manages to still be cloying and overbearing. The worst part, though, is the smell. No one wants their drink to smell like a bottle of salad dressing, and this combination recalls a vinaigrette, not the spicy, slightly fruity aroma that everyone associates with Coke. As the cup sat on my desk, nearly completely full, the smell only intensified. It reminded me of those tiny dishes of vinegar and dish soap that I sometimes put out in the summer to catch fruit flies, not anything I'd want to serve to my dinner guests. And truly, why would I bother? The soda market is more interesting than ever right now, even if you're looking to get health benefits from your favorite fizzy beverage. Instead of swilling fizzy vinegar water, I could be calming down my brain with CBD and adaptogens or allegedly nourishing my gut with probiotics. But mostly, if I wanted to drink a soda with less sugar, I'd just go back to good old fashioned Diet Coke, chemicals and all. |
| How Pecking House Makes One of NYC’s Best Fried Chicken Sandwiches Posted: 08 Jun 2022 07:00 AM PDT  For decadent touches, chef Eric Huang glazes the chicken in dark soy caramel and tops it with pineapple jam Chef Eric Huang's Pecking House went from a pandemic pop-up to one of New York's premiere destinations for fried chicken. By blending flavors from his Taiwanese upbringing with American southern traditions, he and his team serve some of the city's most sought after dishes. Among the most popular dishes on the menu is Huang's twist on a fried chicken sandwich. To start, the chefs use a deboned chicken thigh with the skin on, which is part of what Huang feels differentiates it from other chicken sandwiches. "Everybody has a chicken sandwich, so we were trying to do something a little different," says Huang. They glaze the chicken in dark soy caramel, seasoned with aromatics including garlic, cinnamon, ginger, star anise, and chicken powder for a savory taste. To top off the sandwich, Huang blends up pineapples and, adding cinnamon and star anise, makes a thick jam. "Once I settled on really liking the dark soy caramel, that kind of led me to the pineapple part," says Huang. "[The jam is] translucent, it's brown, and it's caramelized." The chicken sandwich is finished with a grilled cabbage slaw, which gets charred on a grill, then marinated in Worcestershire sauce, fish sauce, and Tabasco. The glazed chicken is set on a brioche bun along with the pineapple jam and grilled cabbage. "There are a lot of ways to introduce Asian flavors and Asian cooking into what is generally a menu centered around southern tradition and country cooking," says Huang. "But this is something that still seemed authentic to the way we like to cook and where my background was coming from." |
| Making Your Own Ice Cream Is Totally Worth It Posted: 08 Jun 2022 06:33 AM PDT  It's almost as easy as buying a pint, and way, way more customizable As summer rapidly approaches, my cravings for ice cream intensify daily. When it's hot outside, there are few more perfect desserts. And as easy as it is to just score a pint of ice cream at the grocery store, it's almost as easy — and always worth it — to make your own ice cream at home. That's even true right now, when you can find high-quality pints from top creameries like McConnell's and Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams on grocery store shelves across the country. Gone are the days when the only options were Blue Bunny and Haagen-Dazs; really great ice cream is more accessible than ever. But this new generation of ice cream comes with a pretty steep price tag. Some of these newcomers cost upwards of $9 a pint, and if you've got a serious ice cream habit, that might not be a sustainable addition to your grocery budget. By making your own ice cream, you can very closely approximate your favorite fancy flavors with ease. A scaled-down version of the ice cream base recipe used by Jeni's is widely available online, and founder Jeni Britton Bauer has written multiple ice cream cookbooks. That's also true of the minds behind the popular Portland, Oregon, chain Salt & Straw, whose cookbook includes both a ridiculously easy five-minute ice cream base recipe and the methods for duping beloved flavors like roasted strawberry and sea salt caramel. The experts are openly sharing their secrets with us mere mortals, and we'd be fools to not take them up on their absolute wealth of knowledge. For those of us who have rock-salt-scented childhood memories of hand-cranked homemade ice cream, the idea may still seem like it's just too much effort. But ice cream freezer technology has come a long way since the '90s, and many ice cream makers are eminently affordable. My personal recommendation is this cult-favorite Cuisinart model, which clocks in at less than $100 and involves little work beyond putting its ice cream chamber into the freezer for several hours and flipping a switch. After pouring your custard mix into the chamber, you only have to wait about 20 minutes to have more than a quart of perfectly frozen ice cream just waiting to be devoured in one sitting. But if you don't want to splash out for an ice cream freezer, that's okay, too: as long as you have a loaf pan, you can make no-churn ice cream at home. And matter how you make ice cream, you can pack it into your own adorable reusable containers to really kick things up a notch. The best part about making your own ice cream, though, is that you can customize every single step along the way. Wish that the chunks of cookie dough in chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream were bigger? Love the idea of swirling pomegranate molasses or fig syrup or spicy chile crisp through a vanilla-spiked base? You can make all of that happen. You can also substitute plant-based milk if you're not into dairy, and really splurge on the ingredients that you love, like top-quality vanilla or lush, vibrant saffron strands. The real luxury, though, is making a totally bespoke ice cream that suits your taste — and only your taste — perfectly. Sonia Lazo is an illustrator from tiny, tropical El Salvador. They're also a book author and tattoo artist, and like creating colorful, fun, and silly art that can make you smile. |
| The Fried Chicken That’s Essential to the Black Chicago Experience Posted: 07 Jun 2022 04:28 PM PDT |
| The Absolute Best (and Sometimes Worst) Vegan Ice Cream Posted: 07 Jun 2022 08:00 AM PDT  We tried 17 kinds of vegan ice creams so you don't have to If you want to measure how much the landscape of packaged vegan foods has changed, vegan ice cream makes a good yardstick. There is now enough vegan ice cream on the market that those of us who avoid dairy for whatever reason now have exponentially more choices than we did even five years ago. Big, non-vegan ice cream companies have gotten in on the game, as have grocery store brands and a myriad of start-ups. But quantity, alas, does not necessarily mean quality: It is a truth (almost) universally acknowledged that an awful lot of vegan ice cream tastes like it was made by people who hate vegans. As someone who has eaten my fair share of vegan ice cream, I set out to try to distinguish the good from the bad and the very, very strange. While I tried 17 brands in the course of my research, this is not a comprehensive guide to every vegan and nondairy ice cream on the market. It is also not a guide to only certified-vegan ice creams — while everything on here is nondairy, a number of brands use the terms "nondairy" and "vegan" interchangeably, so those who are strict vegans need to do a bit more digging to make sure certain products are certified as such. (Refined white sugar, a major ingredient in many ice creams, is typically processed using animal byproducts.) One other bit of potentially confounding (and telling) terminology is that a lot of brands call their products "frozen desserts" rather than ice cream. When possible, I tested each brand's vanilla flavor, since vanilla is arguably the best test of a brand's basic competence. When I couldn't find vanilla, I bought whatever flavor I could find. While some may argue this creates an uneven playing field, I believe that important attributes like texture and flavor can be improved upon only so much if you're not working from a decent base. This is less a traditional shopping guide than a public service announcement. Again, there is a lot of bad vegan and nondairy ice cream out there. I ate a lot of it so you hopefully won't have to. The Big, Non-Vegan Brands/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23605953/EA_155_Vegan_Ice_Cream___Test25012.jpg) Jeni's Splendid Ice CreamsKnown for its creative flavors, Jeni's doesn't offer anything as pedestrian as a dairy-free vanilla; the closest I could find was its banana cream pudding. Jeni's makes its nondairy base from coconut cream, which here creates a very good, creamy texture with nice melt. The flavor, on the other hand, is a bit artificial; it tastes less like banana than food science's idea of banana. Also, in my pint, at least, there weren't enough wafer bits (or "vanilla wafer gravel," as it's appealingly called on the ingredients list). That said, it was overall pretty satisfying. 7.5/10 Ben and Jerry'sLike Jeni's, Ben and Jerry's doesn't do nondairy vanilla. And why would they — going to B&J's for vanilla is like going to a steakhouse for salad. Like their dairy counterparts, the brand's certified-vegan nondairy line, which it launched in 2016, plays to B&J's primary strength, which is making ice cream that is more or less a deconstructed candy bar. I went for Phish Food; like the original, it is chocolate ice cream mixed with marshmallow and caramel swirls and fudge fish. Also like the original, it is very, very difficult to stop eating. The almond milk base is quite creamy and melts nicely — of all of the nondairy ice creams I tried, it came closest to approximating dairy ice cream. In terms of flavor, again, what you have here is more or less a very cold candy bar. Which is not something to complain about, so long as you don't mind the fact that you're eating no fewer than six forms of sugar. Truly, this is the apotheosis of food science, for better or worse. 9/10 Van LeeuwenI have eaten a ton of Van Leeuwen's vegan ice cream over the last few years, from both its New York scoop shops and grocery store pints. As someone who had never loved the brand's dairy ice cream, I was at first pleasantly surprised by the variety and relative quality of its vegan flavors. More recently, however, I've become disillusioned: VL vegan ice cream often tastes like its cashew milk base, and leaves a weird, somewhat artificial aftertaste. Its vanilla is no exception: In texture and flavor, it's like eating frozen chalk. To compound matters, the pint I bought had some structural issues: when I dug a spoon into it, the ice cream collapsed on itself, revealing a giant air pocket lurking beneath the surface. As a lesson in the pitfalls of mass production, it was interesting, but as an ice cream, it was somewhat disturbing. 3/10 Cosmic BlissUntil earlier this year, Cosmic Bliss was better known as Coconut Bliss, a "plant-based" ice cream brand that had been around since 2005. But this March, the company began selling a line of dairy ice cream and rebranded itself with a new name that makes it sound like a New Age sex shop. In any case, the brand's Madagascan Vanilla Bean is fine. It's got a silky texture and melts well, and its flavor is inoffensive to the point of self-negation. If anything, it tastes more like coconut, probably because the base is made from coconut milk. If you're the kind of person who just wants something cold and melty and nonconfrontational to eat, look no further. 5/10 Grocery Store Brands/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23605955/EA_155_Vegan_Ice_Cream___Test25042.jpg) Whole Foods 365Whole Foods 365's Vanilla Bean Almondmilk Non-Dairy Frozen Dessert is better than its name implies. It's creamy, smooth, and melts well, and its flavor is innocuous; it's kind of the equivalent of a book with blank pages. I appreciate that the ingredient list includes "ground vanilla beans" and that you can see them, tiny little flecks that lend the appearance of character to this otherwise magnificently bland ice cream. This would definitely work best as a delivery vehicle for foods with actual flavor, i.e. chocolate syrup, pomegranate molasses, crushed cookies, literally anything. 5/10 Trader Joe'sLike Whole Foods, Trader Joe's could use a little help in the nondairy ice cream naming department. That said, its Strawberry Non-Dairy Oat Frozen Dessert with almond brittle and candied strawberries is pretty good! The texture is quite smooth and creamy, interrupted only by little nubs of the aforementioned mix-ins. My only real complaint is that there's not nearly enough strawberry flavor; it's there, but it doesn't immediately declare itself, as strawberry ice cream should. Also it would be nice if the brittle was chunkier. But really, you could do a lot worse. 6.5/10 Bigger Vegan/Nondairy Brands/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23605963/EA_155_Vegan_Ice_Cream___Test25074.jpg) So DeliciousSo Delicious has been around for a long time — since 1987, which makes it one of the earlier dairy-free frozen dessert brands on the market. Clearly, its longevity is not tied to the appeal of its Very Vanilla ice cream, which was among the very worst of the ice creams I tested. The flavor was stridently artificial and left a sour aftertaste, and the texture — well, where to begin? Before tasting it, I left it out for 15 minutes to soften, only to find that it refused to do any such thing. After realizing that the ice cream was more or less inedible, I decided to bin it — while I loathe throwing out food, serving this to another living being was not an option. A few hours later, out of curiosity, I fished it out of the trash to see if it had finally melted. Reader, it had not. This stuff is indestructible, perhaps the first frozen nondairy dessert that could qualify as building material. Proceed with extreme caution. 1/10 Planet OatAs an oat milk company, Planet Oat makes oat milk-based ice cream. While its website trumpets the "classic vanilla flavor" of its vanilla ice cream, I couldn't detect it. Instead, I got a faint note of cardboard with chemical undertones; if anything, I would describe the flavor as "abandoned library." The texture was fine, though. 4/10 Nada MooI've had a soft spot for Nada Moo ever since I tried its mint chip, which is truly minty and contains a satisfying number of chips. Its vanilla is good, too: Like the rest of Nada Moo's certified-vegan flavors, it has a creamy base made from coconut milk, and isn't sweetened too aggressively. The flavor is mellow, with hints of vanilla; it's an easy ice cream to eat, and enjoy. 8/10 OatlyThe oat milk behemoth's foray into certified-vegan ice cream has been a largely fortuitous one, at least if its vanilla ice cream is anything to go by. It's incredibly smooth, melts well, and has a lovely flavor — you get the roundness and warmth that real vanilla offers, which makes this one of the rare vanillas that I would eat on its own, without any adornment. 9/10 Smaller, More Niche Brands/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23605965/EA_155_Vegan_Ice_Cream___Test25055.jpg) MUDMy first red flag for MUD's "dairy free, vegan, paleo" vanilla ice cream was its name, which stands for Mindfulness Using Desserts. That's an unforgivable thing to slap on a pint of ice cream, or any dessert. The second red flag was the color, which is light brown, probably because the ice cream is sweetened solely with dates. And then there was the flavor, which was vaguely tangy and tasted like the smell of cardboard, and the texture, which was grainy. But by far the most disturbing thing about MUD, which is made with coconut milk, is what happened to it when it fully melted. It effectively turned back into a can of coconut milk, with the liquid sloshing around under a thick brown floe of fat. This specter betrayed MUD's foundational lie, which is that it is ice cream rather than another effort by the wellness industry to ruin dessert, to say nothing of my appetite. 0/10 Revolution GelatoSadly, I couldn't find Revolution's Full Throttle Vanilla, so settled for its dark chocolate flavor instead. Fully vegan and made with cashews, it mostly acquits itself well: While its texture is on the icy, crunchy side, the flavor is robust. It reminded me of frozen, high-octane hot chocolate, and despite my slight aversion to the texture I kept eating it anyway. 6.5/10 WildgoodLike MUD, Wildgood goes hard on the "better ice cream, better you" vibes to sell its "plant-based" vegan ice cream. "Indulge without compromise!" "Treat your best self!" yells the messaging on its pints. Chief on its ingredient list, after water, is extra-virgin olive oil, which is described as "the ultimate replacement for dairy." Having tried Wildwood's vanilla bean ice cream, I can say that "ultimate" is a touch generous. The ice cream's most notable characteristic is that it crunches when eaten; it actually makes a rasping noise when you dig a spoon into it, which I assume is the sound of 10,000 ice crystals dying. The flavor is okay; it's a little too sweet but does offer a faint vanilla undertone. If you're the type of person who likes to chew your ice cream, then this bud's for you. 2/10 SunscoopSunscoop is yet another "plant-based" vegan ice cream that sounds less like dessert than a wellness fever dream. "Our flavors are reimagined classics with a superfood twist," quoth its website, which also touts its "clean ingredients." My boyfriend preferred to describe its vanilla ice cream as a "waste of calories," due largely to its very icy texture. The main ingredient here is coconut cream, followed by water, two kinds of brown rice syrup, and coconut water, which may explain why the ice cream becomes watery as it melts — the pint I tried formed an actual liquid bubble on its surface and puddles in its nooks and crannies. It's less like ice cream than a depressed slushie. Flavor-wise, it's vaguely vanilla-like, though the visible flecks of vanilla bean seem to function more as a distraction from the fact that this is a product that has no real relation to actual ice cream. 2/10 Forager ProjectForager Project makes very decent vegan ice cream, and its vanilla flavor actually tastes like vanilla. Its base is made from cashew milk and is freckled with lots of ground-up vanilla bean. The texture is slightly on the icy side, something I can forgive because the flavor is so good. Like Oatly, this is one of the rare vanilla ice creams, vegan or otherwise, that I could happily eat all on its own. 8.5/10 Blue MarbleBlue Marble is a New York-based company known and loved for its regular dairy ice cream (seriously, it's so beloved that Paul Giamatti even agreed to put his mug on the Blue Marble website). In recent years it has added a small handful of vegan options to its menu. Plain vanilla is not among them, so I tried the Brooklyn Black & White Cookie, which uses a vanilla ice cream base. Given that this is Blue Marble, I had hope for this ice cream. Alas, that hope proved false. Made with coconut cream, it has a very, very icy texture; while it's not as crunchy as Wildgood, it's still not particularly appealing. The flavor is very faint; even the cookies don't taste like much. 3/10 Dear Bella CreameryLast, but very definitely not least, is Dear Bella, a Los Angeles nondairy ice cream shop that began shipping nationwide at the beginning of May. This was the most expensive ice cream I tried: You have to order a minimum of five pints for $65, and then pay for overnight shipping, which for me cost about $80. That said, it was 100 percent worth it. First of all, the flavors are fantastic. There was no plain vanilla, so I chose mango sticky rice, sweet red bean, strawberry, Cookie Monsta (cookie chunks in cookie butter ice cream dyed blue with spirulina), and Kinda Baked (vanilla-chocolate ice cream with brownie chunks and chocolate chip cookie dough). All of the flavors taste as advertised, and then some — the strawberry, shot through with a ribbon of strawberry jam, is especially robust. The cookie chunks are plentiful and taste like cookies instead of some weird corn syrup-wheat flour hybrid. And the texture is spot on: It's creamy, smooth, and melts well. For me, this was, without question, the light at the end of a very long, often dark vegan ice cream tunnel. 10/10 Michelle Min is a food and travel photographer based in San Francisco. |
| The Best Ice Cream Topping Is That Shitty Cake You Just Made Posted: 07 Jun 2022 07:00 AM PDT  Upcycle your failed baking experiments into ice cream toppings This post originally appeared in the June 6, 2022 edition of The Move, a place for Eater's editors to reveal their recommendations and pro dining tips — sometimes thoughtful, sometimes weird, but always someone's go-to move. Subscribe now. As someone who bakes cake for recreation, I have had more than my share of failures over the years. Because I hate wasting food, I refuse to throw anything away in all but the most extreme circumstances, like the time I accidentally swapped salt for sugar while making a genoise. A few years ago, I had my most prolific failure to date. On the heels of a breakup, I was determined to bake myself an eat-your-feelings birthday cake, but it proceeded to collapse not once, but twice, leaving me with two very sad, sunken cakes that I ripped up in a fit of pique, stuffed into a plastic bag, and stuck in the freezer. Since I was now a person with a bag of cake and limited freezer space, I began thinking of ways to repurpose it. I didn't have to look far; the next thing I knew, my dead cake had been reborn as an ice cream topping. If Ben & Jerry's and Jeni's can mix cake with ice cream, I thought, then why couldn't I — and everyone else with a pint and a cake fail to spare? Cake crumbled over ice cream is nothing less than a god-tier treat, one so flawless it will inspire you to bake a cake for the sole purpose of destroying it to eat over ice cream. (Here I should add that tearing apart cake with your bare hands is one of life's greatest tactile pleasures.) And it doesn't stop with cake: So long as the flavor is there, any failed or lackluster baked good, from cookies and brownies to pies and tarts, can be upcycled into an ice cream topping. I've done this with semi-stale cookies, blondies, leftover graham cracker pie crust, too-crumbly brownies, and various quick breads. All of them, unsurprisingly, have excelled as ice cream toppings. I'd go so far as to say that a lot of baked goods are actually better this way: Like frosting, ice cream can cover up any number of sins. The only crime it can't hide, really, is that of throwing away unattractive but perfectly edible baked goods. So don't do it. Eat them over ice cream instead. |
| Baijiu Gets Its Due on Cocktail Menus Posted: 06 Jun 2022 08:43 AM PDT  A growing number of bartenders are raving about a popular Chinese liquor that many American consumers know little about When veteran bartender Ashley Mac landed a job heading up the bar program at D.C. restaurateur Peter Chang's new Baltimore establishment NiHao, she had zero grasp of what the gig would entail. "[Chang's daughter] Lydia asked me to develop a program centered around this spirit called baijiu. But I was like, 'what is baijiu?'" Mac says. Despite not knowing much about the spirit, Mac took on the challenge out of curiosity: She was drawn to baijiu's fragrant aroma and complex flavor after the first sip, which contained "floral" notes, "tropical fruits," and "caramel" — somehow all at once. Her interest in baijiu only continued to grow. "Baijiu is the kind of spirit that the more I learned about it and its history, the more fascinated I became," she recalls. Baijiu (pronounced bye-joe) is a category of alcohol that includes all grain-based distilled Chinese liquor. It's known for being high-proof, averaging 50-plus percent alcohol by volume, and in some cases approaching 80 percent ABV, which has earned it the nickname "fire water," alluding to its flammability. Its styles are characterized by their "aromas" and each style varies drastically; four major aroma styles (strong, sauce, rice, and light) have emerged as the leading categories of baijiu across China, with the brands Moutai, Luzhou Laojiao, and Wuliangye garnering the most national acclaim. Traditionally, it's served in a small, third-ounce shot glass that looks like a miniature goblet. "What distinguishes baijiu from their Western counterparts is the use of solid rather than liquid fermentation," explains Derek Sandhaus, a D.C.-based historian who dedicated two books to baijiu. This process requires qū (曲/麴 pronounced "chew"), a fermentation agent used in Chinese alcohol production for several thousand years. Qū, starting off as a clump of grains, is made through a complicated process and becomes the agent that simultaneously converts starches into sugars and sugars into alcohols. "In short," Sandhaus says, "Western grain alcohols are usually fermented in a liquid form using cultured yeast, whereas Chinese grain alcohols are fermented in a solid state using wild yeast and other microorganisms." Today, baijiu is the most-sold spirit in the world, according to a 2021 report from valuation consultancy Brand Finance. Its major producers — led by Kweichow Moutai — dominate the chart of the globe's most lucrative liquor brands; by comparison, Jack Daniel's, America's highest-valued spirits producer, comes in at sixth place. But despite its popularity among China's consumers, awareness of baijiu in the U.S. had been sparse and ephemeral. Lumos, the first dedicated baijiu bar in New York, quietly vanished from the public eye after a few years. Before Lumos opened in 2016, even most Chinese restaurants in the U.S. didn't serve baijiu. "There were 46,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S. before the pandemic but most of them are takeout businesses with thin margins and no seating so it was hard to justify acquiring liquor licenses to serve alcohol," says Lucas Sin, chef and co-founder of Junzi Kitchen in New York and a 2019 Eater Young Gun. But now, a growing number of bar managers and bartenders are taking a fresh look at baijiu, adapting it to their audiences with flights, cocktails, and experimentation, such as lychee and jujube date infusions. Restaurants highlighting Chinese regional cuisines — such as Sichuan, Cantonese, and Hunanese – have taken note of the prominent and often ritualized social role of baijiu consumption with meals in these areas. By offering baijiu flights, they mirror the way in which baijiu is traditionally served in China (straight and at room temperature) while also exposing customers to a variety of styles. "Sichuan is home to many famous strong-aroma baijiu, so it's fitting to go with the food we serve," says Travis Post of Plenty of Clouds, a Seattle restaurant specializing in Sichuan and Yunnan cuisines. "We usually start with three baijiu on a flight served on a board with explanations for each style." James Kyle, who co-runs cafeteria-style restaurant Danwei Canting in Portland, Oregon, also offers the major aroma styles in both single-serving glasses and flights. "Traveling around China, I was amazed by the wide range of baijiu styles — and their fragrance and mouthfeel that are all different," Kyle says. Not only does Danwei Canting showcase the various styles of baijiu from China, but the restaurant also makes sure to include Vinn, a domestic baijiu from a small-scale family producer in Oregon. "We exclusively offer Vinn in our baijiu cocktails — it's a rice-aroma baijiu, which is light and floral, making it easily rendered in cocktails." High-end bars and even non-Chinese restaurants are starting to see baijiu as a spirit worthy of their drinks menus. Darrell Loo, the bar manager at Waldo Thai in Kansas City, Missouri, was familiar with the spirit from growing up in Malaysia in a Malaysian Chinese family and studying in Taiwan, but he was at first hesitant about introducing it to his American customers. His experience working at a whiskey bar changed his mind. "I realized that baijiu is similar to whiskey in terms of its variety and the styles and how hugely different they can be," he says. Loo now hosts tastings for his picky, bourbon-loving customers. Patrick Smith, the bar manager of recently reopened Manhatta in New York, took note when he sipped on the baijiu cocktails at Capital Spirits, a Beijing hutong widely recognized as one of the first successful baijiu bars. Now, he's working on launching a full baijiu menu at the Union Square Hospitality Group restaurant. "We want to start with four to six varieties representing the major styles, as well as traditional serveware," Smith says. To Smith, featuring baijiu on the menu makes business sense, as people go to bars and restaurants to try things that they don't have the time, tools, or knowledge to make for themselves at home. "This means things like complex amaro, unique gins, and lesser-known categories to Americans such as sherry, cachaca, or eau-de-vie. I think baijiu belongs in that mix," Smith says. Some restaurateurs also believe that baijiu has a great potential in cocktails — not only due to its unique flavors, but also as a means to introduce Americans, who often consume liquor in mixed drinks, to this previously unfamiliar spirit. Sarah Thompson and Henji Cheung, the couple behind Queen's English, a Washington, D.C., restaurant serving classic Cantonese dishes, see baijiu as an inseparable part of the culture they seek to represent. After adding it to the restaurant's menu, customers increasingly expressed interest in baijiu, so Thompson brought on Tracy Eustaquio, who expanded the bar program at Queen's English to center around the liquor. "From selling mostly beer and wine, we now sell six types of baijiu by the ounce for guests to sample various styles," Eustaquio says. But she also expanded the cocktail program to seamlessly work different styles of baijiu into the classics. "I use baijiu as a modifier, not a base spirit, so I took inspiration from existing cocktails — analyzing the flavor profiles and making sure baijiu would fit in." As the name "baijiu" pertains to a diverse category of liquors, there's no one-size-fits-all solution to including baijiu into mixed drinks. Eustaquio incorporates Moutai, a sauce-aroma baijiu with notes of chocolate, caramel, and coffee into a Manhattan, while Ming River baijiu, a fruity, strong-aroma style, subs in for tequila in a margarita. Like Eustaquio, Post of Seattle's Plenty of Clouds has also opted to modify familiar cocktails to highlight the flavors of baijiu. "One of our top-selling cocktails is called Ernest Goes East, which is drawn from the classic Hemingway Daiquiri. We use a strong aroma baijiu in this cocktail. We like its complexity and ability to stand up to citrus," Post says. But some bartenders have eschewed using baijiu in familiar cocktails in favor of altering the flavors through experimentation, opting to let baijiu take the starring role in innovative drinks that capture both the cocktail-savvy and baijiu-curious crowds. After initially feeling stuck with her baijiu experiments, Mac of NiHao in Baltimore decided to infuse baijiu with dates. "I learned about Chinese jujube dates, which are sweet with a slightly tart aftertaste. I infused a sauce-aroma baijiu with those dates and made a drink called Inch of Gold, which was a layered cocktail with jujube-infused baijiu — I still think that's the best cocktail I've ever made." At Kwei Fei in South Carolina, bar manager Aneel de Albuquerque also infuses baijiu with various ingredients he sources locally. This technique, which introduces the complexity of baijiu in light, refreshing drinks, has been particularly popular with the Charleston crowd, who are relatively new to the mouth-numbingly hot Sichuan cuisine in which Kwei Fei specializes. "Fruit-infused light-aroma baijiu in a fruit punch tends to do quite well," de Albuquerque says. "We also hosted events to educate bartenders and enthusiasts in South Carolina about the spirit." Sin, who grew up familiar with baijiu, is thrilled to see it finding its place in American restaurants, whether toasted in tiny shot glasses or mixed in cocktails. "While I think there's something to be said about preserving the traditional Chinese ritual and method for consuming baijiu with food," Sin says, "I'm also a fan of creative applications of the spirit in contexts beyond what would strictly be 'traditional' by chefs and bartenders." With the scene as crowded as it is, bar creatives are rushing to pick up the next trend, and baijiu's unique flavors can help. "It's just like painting a landscape and finding a new color to put on your palette," as Smith puts it. "We are always looking for new spirits to play with,'' says Nick Lappen, bartender at Backbar in Somerville, Massachusetts, and host of Boston Baijiu Bar, a popular pop-up that consistently has a waitlist. "Baijiu has interesting flavor notes — with the right education, people can really appreciate it." Even in China, where baijiu has long been the national alcohol of choice, young creatives are appealing to a new generation by applying modern technology and techniques to give this ancient drink a facelift. Such efforts include a dedicated baijiu cocktail bar named Bar SanYou in Guangzhou, where owner Bastien Ciocca and his team are elevating infusion experiments to a new level. Using a rotovap, baijiu and gin are infused with herbs and botanicals in a low-pressure environment, which decreases their boiling point and allows for the extraction of unusually fresh and delicate flavors. The bar aims to captivate members of a young crowd that typically "don't drink and don't like baijiu" — seeing it as unexciting and old-fashioned next to liquor like cognac and bourbon. So far, SanYou's efforts to rejuvenate the popularity of China's national drink among local youth have been successful, as a second location of SanYou has opened in nearby Shenzhen. And as bartenders take increasing interest in the spirit, baijiu companies are taking note. Ming River Baijiu, which is made in a centuries-old distillery in Sichuan, is one of the most widely distributed baijiu brands in the U.S. since its launch in 2018. Lappen, who's built Ming River into his cocktail repertoire, credits its bar service-friendly bottleneck, eye-catching graphic design, and intentionally underproofed ABV for easy mixing as factors in Ming River Baijiu's success. With Ming River laying the stepping stones for other centuries-old baijiu producers to follow, we'll likely see more brands modernize and adapt, and more cocktails created with a touch of this fragrant, sometimes earthy and funky fire water. Valerie Li Stack is a food writer and editor whose work has appeared in Cook's Illustrated, America's Test Kitchen, USA Today, Reviewed, and more. |
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