Content about American cuisine
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October 17, 2011
Just a little love for laborious cooking projects.
The older I get, the more I appreciate the un-simple things. Sure, I admire the shining brilliance of singularly perfect foods — like the best summer tomatoes or a properly aged steak — but I'm far more interested in dishes that combine dozens of components into a complex and bewildering whole. I speak of Mexican moles, feisty Thai salads, balanced Indian curries, and, of course, a certain Creole dish I've been in love...
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March 15, 2011
A quicker, easier process than the whole brisket
Corned beef is one of the more basic and surprising kitchen experiments. But I think that people still think it's pretty nuts. I'm staying in California for a couple weeks, and had to buy the ingredients, cook, photograph, and eat this project while staying at someone else's house (sorry for the lack of pictures). First of all--it's really tough cooking somewhere you don't have all your familiar tools! But I...
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March 4, 2011
Our friends over at Serious Eats have put together a slide show of America's top fried chicken joints. Predictably, most of them are in the South. Now, they just need to do a chicken and waffles list...
Our Favorite Fried Chicken in America
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February 25, 2011
Here's a list from Food and Wine of the best pizzeria's in the United States. Chicago's own Great Lake is listed, as well as Pizzeria Mozza, which we wrote about in our Gorgefest: Los Angeles Edition. What we want to know, though, is did they leave any place out?
Food & Wine's Top Pizza Joints in the US
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February 22, 2011
Nick eats lunch at home everyday, usually scrounging up leftovers in his fridge into some kind of new creation. He'll post about more successful attempts.
After making a big batch of beef broth for the best risotto of my life, I was also left with an insane amount of poached beef. Though a simple beef sandwich with horseradish would have worked, I instead decided to make a modified Italian Beef. Not 100% successful, but still delicious.
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December 14, 2010
How to make chopped (not pulled) pork
Just add sauce...
Does anyone have the recipe for Allen and Son's barbecue sauce, because I'll lay down a sizable chunk of change to get my hands on it. It's one my favorite barbecue restaurants in the country, and it's almost all down to that tangy, vineger based sauce. It doesn't coat the meat like a thick Kansas City-style sauce, but seems to disappear into the meat, making each bite acidic, spicy, and addictive....
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December 7, 2010
A mad dash for LA's best food in one afternoon.
We had four hours to eat in L.A., a period of time which all of us agreed wasn't long enough. While most people would have simply given up and spent the time driving around Hollywood or lounging on the beach, we plowed ahead, sure we could catch a plane and sample some of the best food in the city along way. So our afternoon in L.A. was spent cruising the endless sprawl of concrete and zig zagging through the streets in search of the...
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October 5, 2010
The kiwi could change everything
The kiwi that could change everything
I keep returning to Korean barbecue, and once I get it in my head, nothing else interests me. The amazing flavor of the meat--beefy and complex and sweet--and the unique butchering and cooking method, which renders the normally tough short rib into a grillable pleasure. These things are crack to someone who loves to eat and is fascinated with cooking.
So here's what we know about Korean-style...
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September 29, 2010
Tweaking the classic Chicago hot dog (aka The Superdawg)
Though it pains me to say this, the Chicago hot dog has one little flaw. It’s not always an issue, but it’s there just the same. Most of the seven toppings which make up a proper Chicago-style Hot Dog can be had at any time: mustard and relish are condiments, celery salt is a seasoning, the sport peppers and pickle come from a jar, and onions can be freshly cut up at any time of the year. No...the flaw is that damned red tomato...
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August 11, 2010
Chicago's famed restaurant revamps their cafe
Spiaggia isn’t the sort of restaurant you waltz into on a whim--you have to wear a jacket to eat there, its gorgeous dining room has floor-to-ceiling windows, they have a cheese cave, and, oh, it’s really, really expensive. But the secret is that Spiaggia also has a cafe. It’s casual, intimate, and the food is superb. The attention to detail that is expected of a high-end restaurant like Spiaggia filters down to its more...
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July 9, 2010
Or, the best carne asada tacos we've ever had
As far as I know there are only two kinds of ways to make carne asada. The first method is to take thinly sliced flank or skirt steak, sear it over mad charcoal fire, chop it up, and then stuff it into warm corn tortillas. It's almost always great. The second method is the kind that most taquerias use, which is to scoop some bits of raw steak, plop it on a grill, and sauté until it is cooked. This one is almost always bad. The...
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March 23, 2010
Sometimes you need to start with the basics.
I was recently bumming on a friend's membership to Costco, arms full of inexpensive bulk yeast and Dijon mustard for salad dressing, when I discovered the can of tomatoes you see above. It seemed like the deal of a century. For $3.89, I walked away with a can of San Marzano tomatoes weighing almost 7 pounds. That's the price you sometimes pay for a single 28 oz can of them.
I immediately contemplated the massive pot of tomato...
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March 2, 2010
The Big Mac will always be better.
I should apologize in advance for this fast food rant. I've never indulged in such a tirade before, but I simply couldn't resist this one. Regularly scheduled content will return later this week, I promise.
The Mac Snack wrap is the stupidest, most idiotic, dumbest fast food creation I've ever seen. It purports to be a Big Mac in flour tortilla, except it betrays logic and any culinary common sense. From the moment I saw the...
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February 12, 2010
Great pizza doesn't have to cost much.
If you're not down with pizza stones, it's time. Bread-bakers and home pizza afficionados praise them for their heat-retaining, moisture-wicking ability to imitate the floor of a brick oven. You put it in your oven and it not only provides a rustic surface to bake the bread on, but it also keeps the heat of the oven steady. Especially when it comes to pizza, that ever-important underside char and blistering (sometimes known as the...
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January 28, 2010
The PC guide to little burgers.
What is a slider? A slider is a particular thing. It's particularly American. It's a small subset of our great culinary tradition, the hamburger. But as I explained last week, it's not just a mini-hamburger. To be a slider, it cannot be perverted with expensive ingredients like foie gras or tuna tartar, a cutesy version of a burger for a chef to play with. A slider consists of a thin layer of beef, American cheese, a soft bun,...
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January 19, 2010
How do you make the best mini burgers?
First things first: there's something to clear up about "sliders." They are not mini hamburgers. Along with Adam Kuban over at A Hamburger Today, I actually sort of hate mini hamburgers and the implied cuteness. Sliders are a different beast, and not cute. They are compact and small, yes, but they are also haunted by sauteed onion, which they are cooked on top of to create a sort of steamy bed. The resulting burger patty...
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January 12, 2010
Can great pizza be made at home quickly?
Idea Lab is where we explore topics before we head into the kitchen. We welcome your thoughts, opinions, and ideas, so please leave them in the comments!
Though I once praised the virtues of the broiling pizza on Serious Eats, I'm now over it. I'm tired of broiler antics and pre-heating cast iron pans to make approximations of Neopolitan-style pizza at home (I've already ruined one baking stone in the process). The fact is, a...
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December 14, 2009
Best of the beef.
When Blake and I sat back and looked at what food obsessed us in 2009, we noticed an unusual interest in beef. Pork is still the hippest meat around, and praise for beef sometimes seems limited to talk about steaks or short ribs. We wrote about both of those cuts this year, but we did it our way. We also managed to dress up mounds of round, tenderize brisket, turn chuck into the tender foundation of chili, and wax poetic about the...
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September 24, 2009
Make both of those at home.
The tomatoes were turning on me. A few weeks ago they were red and rosy, destined for a starring role in a BLT. Now, I'm not sure if they can withstand the scrutiny of the spotlight. They are still light years beyond what appears during the winter here in the Midwest, but not quite the ones you can slice up, sprinkle with salt, and eat raw. I kind of wish I would have known this before I bought a huge batch of them at the farmers market...
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August 21, 2009
How to create the perfect cucumber sandwich.
I feel like I finally understand the cucumber sandwich. After weeks of thinking about it, and trying to recreate the most authentic version I could muster, it finally sunk in. The taste isn't rich, indulgent, spicy, acidic, comforting, salty, or fatty. It's cool, calm, and collected. The strongest reaction I had towards one was a contented sigh, a sort of momentary delight.
So why was I breaking a sweat trying to make one? I had...
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August 18, 2009
Starting with the perfect loaf of bread.
(Check out Part Two of My Cucumber Sandwich Revenge for the sandwich recipe)
I went to see a man about a loaf pan. All the traditional outlets had failed (Crate and Barrel, Sur La Table, Williams-Sonoma and four restaurant supply stores) and I was starting to get desperate. See, I needed a very peculiar kind of loaf pan, one that would help me create the mysterious loaf, pain de mie, which would hopefully provide the base for the perfect...
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What to pair with North Carolina-style barbecue.
The crisp bite of coleslaw, the crunchy crust of freshly fried hushpuppies, and the porky punch of black eyed peas: I realized after a mad dash through the barbecue trail in North Carolina that these were not just side dishes, but essentials. Without them my meals would have fallen apart, lost in meat gluttony. They helped achieve a barbecue balance, where everything complimented and heightened the taste of each other. I couldn't...
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My first trip through North Carolina.
After the fifth barbecue stop in North Carolina my brother-in-law and I were delirious. We stumbled out of the door of the last joint, nearly tripping over ourselves like a couple of drunk freshman. I called my wife but when I attempted to speak the right words wouldn’t come out. Sure my belly was full of pork, but it was something about the addition of coleslaw, hush puppies, and glass upon glass of sweet tea to the...
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June 3, 2009
The spiciest way to grill your chicken.
My first bite of jerk chicken, fresh from two hours of mingling with smoke, was everything I wanted it to be. The rub of allspice berries and black peppercorns mixed with fresh ginger and thyme and created this incredible aroma --one that I couldn't help but adore. I was completely happy and content until quickly, and without much warning, the spice hit. A double dose of habanero cut through all of that complexity,...
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May 27, 2009
Nick's tour of the South's barbecue capital.
Memphis has insanely good ribs, some so mouthwatering and juicy that they make most of the barbecue I've ever eaten fall of their bones in shame. The rub is better, the smoke more lingering, and the sauce more lip-smacklingly suited to the cause. What cause? Sublime barbecue. I wanted to see how good it could be. Which isn't to say that everything went perfectly or that every bite left me in awe. ...
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May 13, 2009
How to pickle brisket.
I was standing in the meat section of my local Korean grocery store (the excellent Joong Boo Market) with fellow food blogger Brian, from the Daily Ikura. He was talking me through his favorite Korean dishes and ingredients, and I was loving it. We were discussing uses of red bean paste, which ramen was worth its price, and whether some brands of soy sauce were really so good you could sip them. Then I picked up a hunk of...
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April 16, 2009
How to make Grand World Champion ribs.
I returned home from a weekend in Ohio to to find that a fire had struck Honey 1 Barbecue. The building was still intact, but the smoking aquarium where they cook all their meat had been destroyed. According to owner, it might take a few months to get back in order if smoker is salvageable and the insurance company gives up the money quickly. It could take much longer.
I found the news hard to take. It's...
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April 14, 2009
Cooking Easter dinner with no oven.
Easter dinner has always been a giant-baked-ham affair for me. Glazed with a sticky concoction loaded to its saturation point with brown sugar and splashed with bourbon, studded with cloves, and baked until warm and tender--ah, it's hard to beat.
Living here in a country full of pork, I figured reproducing this wouldn't be too hard to pull off. But two problems presented themselves: one, it's quite hard to find any...
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April 9, 2009
How to cook your next porterhouse.
I'm not interested in carbonizing the surface of the meat. To me that ruins the flavor.
- Alain Ducasse
It was a bachelor weekend of sorts. My wife mercifully let me pass on attending a wedding of an old family family friend, so I had the whole weekend alone in the apartment to get work done. I had some crazy projects planned including a mad braise of a cow tongue, but the first night alone was all about pure unrestrained male...
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April 3, 2009
Nick learns from his mistakes and makes a good deep-dish pie at home.
I was determined not to fail this time. My last attempt at deep-dish wasn't an absolute failure, but it was close. It was too soggy and messy, and had none of the glorious qualities that my favorite Chicago pizzeria, Pequods, displayed. I theorized about all kinds reasons for the failure, thinking it had something to do with the crust. Then I just gave up and asked you all to help me. Ended up I was way off...
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March 17, 2009
Nick struggles to perfect deep-dish pizza at home.
Or at least, that was my hunch. I searched for a long time and finally settled on this recipe from pizzamaking.com. Deep-dish dough is very different from its thin crust counterpart. The crust has a healthy dose of cornmeal, which gives it an interesting crunch and texture. All the elements seemed to be here. I tracked down some tomatoes, cheese, and even decided to add some spinach (an addition that has worked well...
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March 12, 2009
Korean barbecue solves the challenges of cooking short ribs.
Short ribs and I don't have a good history. The first time I tried to make these with Blake we ended up with a collection of tough, greasy, hunks of impenetrable meat. The second time I solved the toughness factor by cooking them for ages, but forgot about the fat. Even after stashing the pot of short ribs in the fridge for a day so I could easily skim some off, I still felt like I had dunked the meat in fryer grease. That's...
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All content copyright Nick Kindelsperger and Blake Royer.
