Everything Is a Berry Now
Answering your questions on unregulated broths and Difficult Milks.
Welcome to another Mailbag edition of Haterade, where I answer reader questions four weeks too late! Our first comes courtesy of Kevin:
Half-serious answer: turn into a mid-priced Mexican restaurant. The most popular post-pandemic restaurant fantasy, if my social media feeds are any indication, is going to any Americanized Mexican restaurantāthe kind where they automatically assume you want flour tortillas and serve you fried ice cream in a sombrero on your birthdayāand mainlining chips and salsa like thereās a prize at the bottom of the basket.
No judgment from me. Thereās something alchemical about dunking a restaurant chip, still dewy and warm from the fryer, into a soupy, onion-pungent tomato salsa. These days, Iād rather turn water into a syrup-y, neon-yellow house margarita than lead into gold.
More serious answer: Iām expecting a kind of Roaring-Twenties-esque return to bars and restaurants for those of us who havenāt been playing shuffleboard on the Titanic this whole time. I have some doubts about the shelf life of the casual concepts the pandemic spawned: in a newly vaccinated world, my guess is tasting menus are going to be more popular than tots. But I do think some demand for upscale carry-out is going to stick around.
Restaurateurs have waxed rhapsodic throughout the pandemic about how diners long āto be taken care ofā once again by obsequious servers with table crummers, but that brand of hospitality was inaccessible to a large segment of diners before the pandemic hit. A lot of fine-dining spaces arenāt navigable for fat people or people with disabilities or parents with young kids. When those spaces started offering carry-out, they became hospitable to some diners for the first time.
I should acknowledge here that carry-out presents logistical challenges; Iāve heard itās less profitable, too. But I hope restaurants are able to keep some carry-out presence in the After Times. The demand was always there, I thinkāmany of us just werenāt paying attention.
I appreciate this half-question. If it can be milked, I wish to taste its cheese.
That said, there are a few good reasons why you canāt buy pig cheese at Hy-Vee.
Without exception, the major Cheese Animals of the worldācows, goats, sheeps, camelsāare ruminants. They eat plants and pulverize the nutrients out of them with multi-chambered stomachs more efficient than any juicer. Because of that, they produce a pretty clean-tasting milkāand a lot of it.
Pigs, on the other hand, are omnivores, a label that doesnāt really do their appetite justice. I once watched a classmateās pet pig hoover up about a pound of silly string from the floor of a park shelter.
Pigs also produce much less milk per teat (sorry) than a cow, and what little they do produce tastes like silly string. On top of that, pigs really fucking hate to be milked.
Iām still curious enough about pig cheese that Iād try it, but my āwhite whaleā is deer cheese. Deer milk has the highest fat, protein, and casein content of all the ruminant milks, and I just know the Forbidden Cheese would be incredible.
If anyone owns a domesticated deer, HMU.
This is a great question with a not-so-simple answer.
In theory, the distinction is easy: stock is made with bones and connective tissue, broth isnāt. As a result, the products themselves should have entirely different tastes and textures. Stock has a high proportion of collagen from animal bones/tissue, which makes it both thicker and slightly āstickyāāa spoonful of good stock should coat your tongue and the roof of your mouth. Broth, on the other hand, is typically made by simmering (boneless) meat and vegetables, so itāll be both thinner and meatier-tasting.
But thereās a major caveat here, which is that the FDA doesnāt give a hoot. If you buy commercial cartons of ābrothā or āstockā at most grocery stores, thereās almost no way of knowing which youāre getting, because the FDA allows companies to use those labels interchangeably.
The upshot: you canā¦use them pretty much interchangeably. That said, if you buy a commercial āstockā and are curious about its contents, thereās an easy test: put it in the fridge. If it turns into the texture of Jell-O, itās got bone juice in it. If it it stays fully liquid when chilled, itās probably just broth.
You didnāt ask, but thereās a third category of Meat Squeezins, ābone broth,ā which started showing up in hippie markets a few years ago. Most manufacturers claim itās a hybrid product, with the meaty flavor of broth and the collagen-based amino acids of stock.
But this term, too, is unregulated, so take it with 100 mg of salt. Technically, any hot tub Iāve ever been in is bone broth.
Invite me over to use your hot tub.
We were all so preoccupied arguing about whether a tomato is a fruit that we missed the paper-skinned wolf at the door.
āBerryā has a precise botanical definition, and Dylanās right that grapes are technically berriesāas are kiwis, guavas, and bananas. Iām sure thereās a pedant out there whoās made Melissa Clarkās berry buckle with bananas and grapes to prove a point.
We all know that botanists are Chaotic Evil, but I still canāt get my hackles raised about this stuff. You want to tell me that green beans are fruits* and rhubarb is a vegetable? OK! I donāt make the rules. I just ignore them and move on with my lifeāmaking a green bean compote.
*so help me, if anyone writes in with āactually, theyāre a legume,ā I will feed you a ranch popsicle.
Screenshotting Private Andrew for this weekās final question:
I keep a plastic tub of duck fat in my fridge at all times, and I donāt care that this makes me a pretentious goon. Duck fat is faddish, sure, but itās also really ducking good. Itās got a lower percentage of saturated fat than butter, which I suppose makes it vaguely healthier. But I donāt think most people eat duck fat for health reasons.
Duck fat has a higher smoke point than some animal fats, which makes it pretty great at making things crisp. If youāre cooking for someone this Valentineās Day, make them these crispy duck-fat potatoes. But the key advantage of duck fat is just that it tastes good. It has an assertive aromaāsavory, dark, dankāthat undermines its richness, like an evil dauphin. Itās not gamy, but itās a little bit wild.
Because of that, I think duck fat works especially well in desserts, where its aroma crashes through sugar and cream like an errant gong. Room 39 used to sell a duck fat chocolate ice cream, and I would swallow a toothpick to eat it again. I donāt have an ice cream maker, so Iāve had to settle for the next best thing: duck fat cookies.
Recently, I swapped half the butter for duck fat in the old Cookās Illustrated āUltimate Chocolate Chip Cookieā recipe (the official versionās paywalled, but a food blogger republished it here).
A brief aside: this is my go-to recipe for chewy, saucer-sized cookies that donāt require any ingredients that arenāt already in my cupboard. I roll my eyes a little when recipe writers want me to break up a $5 fair trade chocolate bar with a hand-forged mezzeluna. Maybe itās worth it, but I live my life in the middle of the Venn Diagram between ālazyā and āoverwhelmed,ā so: Costco bag of semisweet chips it is.
Anyway, these were delicious. The duck fat came through super strong in the batter, but it was way more subtle once baked; Iād probably up the ratio next time to make them birdier. You might notice some variation in the photo, also. I only added chocolate chips to half of them; the other half have pecans and Ā”CRAISINS! which I thought might compliment the duck fat well. They did! If I had to choose, Iād go with the nutfruits, but both varieties were good.
Democratize duck fat, I say. In the Duck Tales universe, thereās a Scottish coal miner named āDirtyā Dingus McDuck. It is in the spirit of Dirty Dingus (and his excellent padding) that I lift my fork.
If youāve got weird food/beverage questions you want answered in a future mailbag, drop them in the comments or shoot them over on Twitter: @lizcookkc. Thereās a 50 percent chance Iāll take next week off while I wrap up a major writing project, but you can guilt-trip me into doing one, anyway, by sending me ranch money: @lizcookkc on Venmo/CashApp.
Question for next time: What Harry Potter inspired dish would you recommend? Drinks count. Maybe even count more.
Best part of the Modern Farmer interview: "(Editorās Note: The original version of this post contained art of a male pig. We regret the error.)"