rhys says if i order double extra mushroom i have to go and pick it up because the pizza guy might snap and decapitate him with a pizza cutter

also the pizza guy thinks he's alexis because the orders are all in my name and he has too much anxiety to correct him which is very funny but also i can lean into this and just say i'm rhys (reese) since we both have neutral names

glad we're in agreement that the appropriate amount of mushroom is All Of It

Needs more mushroom, I feel

thank you, just-mushroom-thoughts

That has enough mushrooms if you also replace the red sauce with mushroom duxelles

@qwertystop:

[ID: Tumblr reply from qwertystop asking, “found this and showed an acquaintance when MSG sensitivities came up in conversatoin - do you get problems from soy sauce, parmigiano-reggiano cheese, vegemite, boullion cubes, meat stocks, etc? Things which contain similarly extremely high levels of glutamic acid, but not as something isolated and added back in?]

Soy sauce, Parmesan cheese, no. Boullion cubes and meat stocks, it depends on whether they’ve had MSG added in or if they’re just full of the natural glutamates. Vegemite, I have no idea, I can’t stand the flavor of it.

I had an interesting conversation with someone about this where it seems plausible that the problem isn’t with the MSG itself but with the brain’s response to being overwhelmed by the concentrated flavor. Like, apparently MSG kept in gelatin capsules and swallowed doesn’t cause a problem, when the same amount tasted and spat out can.

Given that migraines are often a response to a sensory overload condition it seems like it could be the concentrated MSG flavor itself that’s the issue. My migraines tend to be triggered by protracted intense sounds and smells, so that feels plausible, anyway (although the specific symptoms I have when I eat MSG-laden foods are different than my usual migraines).

that actually sounds delicious???

hack?

that’s just garlic confit

Seriously, anyone who didn’t know about how to make this didn’t have parents/relatives who cooked.

Y’all need to pick up a cookbook.  Or watch Julia Child.

Sorry everyone didn’t grow up in a household where their caretaker cooker or knew how to cooked. Some of us didn’t grow up in a household with fresh fruits and produce. Some of us didn’t have the money to spend on a shit ton of garlic.

So how about enjoy the video instead of being a snobby bitch.

Also Julia Child would be ashamed of people behaving like that. Her whole deal was just... Making cooking accessible for people. Hell, she had a whole segment devoted to "oh, nobody taught you how to cook eggs? Here's how you do that." A significant part of her show was basics that people take for granted (and though the equipment may have changed somewhat, its still pretty helpful). My dad had busy parents who didn't have the time or knowhow to cook, and he learned from watching Julia Child. French cooking made easy, here's the basics everyone assumes you know but never taught you. And ever since, he's had a love of cooking.

Stop putting people down for not knowing basics. Everyone is a beginner at some point or another.

I grew up in a healthy-eating cooking-skilled household and I did not know that this existed.

Just shut up and spread the TikTok

So confit is a way of cooking things, and it does marvellous things to many things.

You put stuff in oil and slow cook it. That’s confit. Garlic confit? Put it in oil and slow cook it. Chicken confit? You put it in oil and slow cook it.

(side note: confit historically means to preserve by cooking at a low temperature, (which often also meant a cure prior to cooking). So Fruit confit is fruit that’s been cooked at a low temperature in a very concentrated sugar solution, not in oil. Nowadays, confit usually just means cooking slowly in oil outside the context of fruit and does not imply a curing process)

Compared to deep frying, almost no moisture is lost, and the flavour is not changed via the maillard process because it doesn’t happen. There is no charring or searing done to the meat/whatever you’re confitting.

For veg in general, to confit them will cause them to become ultratender, as fibers and stuff will partially break down, cell walls will collapse, but no moisture will be lost. And their flavour will mostly remain; for garlic in particular, the hot garlicky taste, the result of the allicin, which is a result of crushing or chopping the garlic, will never come out. The chemicals will break down under that amount of heat.

The oil does not terribly seep into the food by the way; it’s already saturated with water, and unless that water leaves, the oil doesn’t have a place to seep into. It’s saturated already, and the result of connective tissue breaking down, or fibres breaking down, is less room for fluids. Which is why a carrot can be nice and dry, go into a hot oven, and come out floppy and moist, as the water inside can no longer be held by its inside, and available, unabsorbed water = wet.

You do get a thin layer of oil coating the outside of the food.

This means that confit’ing a food item is actually very close to steaming that item at a particular temperature, or cooking it sous vide; in either case, the item does not dry out and slowly reaches its final temperature.

@brattylikestoeat the damned garlic wars was back on my dash this morning.

I like this post. Video with technique. Somebody being a dick. Other people saying don’t be a dick. Super helpful science dump that I enjoy a ton.

I’m just elated to see a TikTok recipe hack that works, produces tasty results, and isn’t likely to set someone’s house/eyebrows/stomach on fire.

Hey what the FUCK is this audio?

i desperately want to believe that the person who made this thought it was good music

the ray charles replicant is undergoing a severe system malfunction because of how sexy that crêpe looks

For the love of God do NOT unmute

wrong they all should

The music adds a lot to this video

Unfortunately what it adds is confusion and befuddlement rather than an appreciation for a strawberry crêpe

no it’s not cutthroat kitchen or gordon ramsey it’s a documentary exploring the anthropological & historical significance of cooking, and the dangers of the mass industrialization of food.

and i misspoke it’s rated TV-14 (for language and nudity)

this guy is so fucking angry about sliced bread (justifiably) that he really came out on camera with this absolute banger of a quote:

“And this is really how capitalism usually works. It creates a problem, and rather than fix the problem, it creates a new business to solve the problem.”

utterly scathing and yes this is from a 60 minute documentary episode dedicated entirely to the subject of Bread

You can’t just not tell us why sliced bread is terrible D8

right ok so technically it’s not sliced bread but industrial, mass-manufactured bread that is…causing problems. Here’s the theory as the show presents it:

For about ~10,000 years bread was a fucking staple of the human diet. we evolved to eat this food, our bodies, our societies were built on this food, but all of a sudden we’re seeing a rise in gluten sensitivity* (distinct from celiac disease). Aka our bodies are rejecting this food we’ve spent 100 centuries eating. Where is this coming from?

Well, a big part of it is probably that less than 100 years ago corporations changed the definition of bread. (Like, figuratively and literally, they petitioned the FDA to change the legal definition of bread so they could put in additives.) In fact, industrialization has changed the process and the ingredients used to make bread, to the point manufactured bread is a profoundly different product from what our ancestors knew as bread. Let’s start with:

1) The Process: For thousands of years, humans relied on naturally occurring wild yeast and bacteria found in the air to make (leavened) bread and bread starters (fermented dough used to “start” new loaves. hence the term “sourdough”). you can still do this at home–all it involves is leaving a mixture of water and flour lying around for a few days. notice something missing? that’s right, YEAST. this process of making bread involves yeast–yeast from the air around you–but it doesn’t involve concentrated baker’s yeast. Baker’s yeast refers to various strains of yeast that are added directly to flour & water mixtures as a leavening agent. This allows the bread to rise more quickly and cuts down on the overall production time. Convenient, right?

Now, adding yeast is not automatically a bad thing, and bakers have been doing it for a damn long time in interesting ways (such as using yeast from beer brewing). But lately we’ve taken it to extremes–we’ve gotten too good at creating more and more efficient forms of commercial Baker’s yeast, specifically for industrial use on a mass scale. Manufacturers want bread to rise as fast as possible, because that is how you get more product on the shelves. Making bread in factories now takes a small fraction of the time it used to.

And why is this a problem? Because it turns out a more traditional “long fermentation process allows bacteria to fully break down the carbohydrates and gluten in bread, making it easier to digest and releasing the nutrients within it, allowing our bodies to more easily absorb them.” [1] This (added to the fact that some commercial breads contain extra added gluten) has the unfortunate result that the product you buy from the grocery store is less digestible and nutritious than the bread human societies traditionally relied upon. Hence the rise of gluten intolerance–the gluten we are eating is simply more difficult to tolerate than gluten in properly fermented bread. (This is the reason many people with gluten sensitivity don’t experience symptoms when eating more traditionally made, longer-fermented sourdough.)

That’s not the only issue though. There’s also:

2) The Ingredients. not just the countless additives, but specifically: the flour. See, a grain of wheat is…incredibly nutritious, honestly. It has almost everything we need to sustain life and health. Civilizations did–and do–rely on bread as a fundamental dietary staple, to the point that you can track political instability with rising wheat prices. It’s essential. Look at this:

In a single grain, the essence of life.

So yeah, wheat is nutritional. We can build bodies and civilizations out of wheat. But it’s also, like…super difficult to access that nutrition. Well, more so than with most foods. If you eat a handful of wheat grains, a spoonful of flour–your body can’t digest that, you get basically nothing out of that (also raw flour isn’t safe to consume, don’t do that). Unlike many crops, wheat relies on being carefully and correctly processed in order for the final product to be as nutritional as possible. As stated above, part of that process is about fermentation. Another part is the quality of the flour, what it contains and how it has been milled and treated.

And that quality has changed a lot in just a century or two. Take white flour, for instance. White flour has been around for a long fucking time actually, but until the late 19th century it was considered a luxury item, a treat for the very wealthy. White flour was never considered a staple food–until industrialists learned how to manufacture it cheaply. [2] And then it was everywhere. And suddenly, surprise surprise, we started to see a rise in nutrition related illnesses. Because the bran and germ have been stripped away, white flour has only a fraction of the nutritional value of whole grain. But because this gives it a higher shelf life, it was more convenient (and profitable) for manufacturers. So when they learned about the health issues, what did they do? Go back to making healthier flour?

Pshaw. Of course not. No, instead they kept removing nutrients, then artificially adding them back in. And that is how we got enriched flour–flour which is still significantly less nutritious than whole wheat flour. [3] And this is what the previous quote about capitalism was referencing. The food industry created a problem, and rather than undoing the problem, they created a whole new business to “fix” it:

And thus came the mass rise of “enriched” foods.

Eat Wonder Bread! It has as much protein as roast beef! As much calcium as cottage cheese! As much iron as lamb chops! No need to eat real foods, when you can eat highly processed foods instead! Don’t cook your own meals, let trustworthy corporations feed you! Mass-produced factory foods are easy, are healthy! There will be literally no downsides or long-term repercussions to public health & wellness!

So yeah. Much of what we think of as “bread” is chemically and molecularly distinct from traditional bread, and is very different (and less nutritional) than what our ancestors were eating even just a century ago. (On an individual level, I’m not sure how to mitigate this, other than by purchasing the healthiest options available (e.g. whole wheat, sourdough), buying from small bakeries/farmer’s markets, or baking bread at home. Lately there has been a rise of small health-concious brands focusing on traditional fermentation and whole ingredients; some may be available in your area. But ultimately, it’s the entire wider system that needs to change.)

And there you have it! I have never been so incandescently furious about wonder bread. This documentary will do that to you–and will change your whole understanding of modern food. It’s a 4-part netflix series called Cooked (2016), based on Michael Pollan’s book of the same name. Most of the info above comes from the third episode, and is accurate to the best of my knowledge (but let me know if I got anything wrong).

*I want to be perfectly clear though, gluten itself is not inherently bad. It’s being demonized in the press on no scientific basis, just to push yet another diet fad. Unless your body has actual issues with gluten (e.g. celiac disease, gluten sensitivity) there are no proven benefits to eating gluten-free. There are, however, benefits to eating less processed, more nutritional (delicious delicious) bread.

tip jar :P