Category: Food & Drink

Beverage of the Week: I drank La Croix and vinegar because I don’t respect myself

It’s called a “healthy Coke,” and it’s proof TikTok must be stopped.

Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Previously, we’ve folded these in to our betting guides, whether that’s been for the NFL slate or a bizarrely successful run through the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey. 

OK. Full disclosure. I started this feature because I wanted to drink a bunch of fine German beers and then talk about fine German beers. While that very much remains in play, my beautiful, pure vision has since been perverted into hard seltzers, cookie liqueurs and a truly unhealthy amount of Coffee-Mate creamers.

But never did I see it getting this far.

Somewhere, somehow, from the dark recesses of TikTok came an ungodly creation. An abomination of ice, seltzer and balsamic vinegar known, for reasons I can only assume are ironic and/or idiotic, as a “healthy Coke.”

This disturbs me. Greatly.

My stance on La Croix is that it tastes like someone whispering the description of a soda they had weeks ago. My vinegar usage is limited to steak fries and descaling my coffee maker (different vinegars, but still). Like you, I, at no point, considered pairing the two, just as I’d never considered drinking either on its own.

But, because I drank Utah’s dirty sodas, added booze to Utah’s dirty sodas and have sipped cookie dough whiskey in the name of science, this duty fell on my shoulders. “Vocation” comes from the Latin “vox,” or voice, meant to imply a calling from God. In my case, that voice is filtered through my coworkers, lovingly reaching out to say, “hey dummy, drink this.”

So I did. With my head tilted toward the heavens, quietly asking, “why?” I did.

Like last month, when I had to purchase two gallons of coffee creamer in a single trip, I felt weird running this through the checkout line. I fondly remembered the words Ryan Dunn’s urgent care doctor gave him after an x-ray showcased a toy car inside his rectum at the end of the first Jackass movie.

“You don’t talk to anybody. To your girlfriend, to your boyfriend, to whomever. You don’t tell nobody. [My editor] already knows. That’s too many people.”

But while I can hid that shame from the cashier, I can’t expense these drinks I don’t want or salad dressing I won’t use unless I write about it. Such is the plight of my offseason.

The Top 10 Most Popular Ice Cream Flavors

We’ve posted a few articles this week on the latest weird, wacky and wild flavors out there in the world of ice cream. Time for a reality check. Who knew Butter Pecan gets so much love?

Dessert trends may come and go, but ice cream remains a perennial favorite. The question is: Which flavor is most popular?

We looked at data from Lexham Insurance — they cover ice cream vans — for the 2022 results. They looked at search volume around the world in 121 countries.

 

Most Popular Ice Cream Flavors 2022

1. Chocolate ice cream

2. Vanilla ice cream

3. Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream

4. Cookie Dough ice cream

5. Buttered Pecan ice cream

6. Neapolitan ice cream

7. Banana ice cream

8. Toffee ice cream

9. Caramel ice cream

10. Dark chocolate ice cream

Source: Lexham Insurance

 

Changes in the Top 10 Ice Creams

Below you will see what the results were back in 2008 when this article was first published. Note: Mint chocolate chip and cookie dough ice cream didn’t even crack the top 10 back then (nor did banana, toffee, or carmel). Vanilla and chocolate are in the top two spots, but vanilla took first place back then. In 2022, strawberry and cookies-and-cream ice cream were absent from the top 10.

 

Favorite Ice Cream Flavors Back in 2008

1. Vanilla, 29%

2. Chocolate, 8.9%

3. Butter pecan, 5.3%

4. Strawberry, 5.3%

5. Neapolitan, 4.2%

6. Chocolate chip, 3.9%

7. French vanilla, 3.8%

8. Cookies and cream, 3.6%

9. Vanilla fudge ripple, 2.6%

10. Praline pecan, 1.7%

Source: International Ice Cream Association, 888 16th St., Washington, D.C.

 

More Popular Ice Cream Flavors (based on sales)

Back in 2008, the NPD Group’s National Eating Trends Services published its own Top  5  List, based on share of sales in the USA. Here’s how their cone stacks up; note that Chocolate Chip Mint makes it to the top 5 whereas it was omitted by the International Ice Cream Association data.

1. Vanilla, 30%

2. Chocolate, 10%

3. Butter Pecan, 4%

4. Strawberry, 3.7%

5. Chocolate Chip Mint, 3.2%

Editor’s note: This story was originally published in 2008 and updated on June 9, 2022.

Beverage of the Week: White Claw’s new lemonade line is not an improvement

Finally, a White Claw that tastes like something (but not something good).

Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Previously, we’ve folded these in to our betting guides, whether that’s been for the NFL slate or a bizarrely successful run through the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey. 

I have nothing against White Claw. I just don’t think it tastes like anything.

The brand that helped launch the ongoing hard seltzer trend has, for me, stayed too true to its source material to be all that enjoyable. Every flavor offers a faint hit of what it could be, washed away by dry bubbles. It’s a reasonable alternative that tastes fine on ice but has been utterly skippable when it comes to my beer fridge.

I assumed all seltzers were roughly in that range before High Noon’s vodka/soda-based offerings changed my mind. Those tasted like actual cocktails while retaining the fizz and low calorie count of its genre. With summer set to settle upon Wisconsin at some point — 66 and rainy all weekend! — it felt like a good time to give White Claw another shot.

That led me to their new REFRSHR line of flavors which promise “a completely new take on lemonade.” That seems ambitious since there are already a bunch of other hard seltzer lemonades on the market, but the mix pack I was sent also led me to Google whatever the hell “calamansi” is, so there’s at least a partial truth in that statement. The flavors seem tasty enough and at 5.0 percent alcohol and 100 calories, it packs more of a punch than light beer or High Noon without ruining anyone’s diet.

So sure, let’s see what White Claw’s gonna use to secure its standing in the seltzer world.

Celebrate National Donut Day with 7 deals and free donuts on Friday

GO GET SOME DONUTS!

MMMM, DONUTS.

That’s right, friends, it’s National Donut Day, and that means you can actually get some free fried baked goods from purveyors of doughnuts around the country.

Why is Friday, June 3 National Donut Day? Why do we spell it doughnut or donut? I have no idea, but free or discounted donuts are the important thing here, and we want you to get those.

So let’s stop writing about donuts and get to the important stuff here: A partial list of donut joints that we’ve found who will give something away or sell you one for less than the usual price:

Beverage of the Week: Welp, they made me try peach lemonade vodka

Honestly it’s way better than I expected.

Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Previously, we’ve folded these in to our betting guides, whether that’s been for the NFL slate or a bizarrely successful run through the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey. 

Flavored liquors have taken off in recent years. The booming popularity of spirits like Fireball and Skrewball (540 percent growth in 2020!) is a reflection of a market that’s typically rewarded tinkerers trying to make middling drinks taste a little less like themselves.

That’s especially true when it comes to vodka, which offers the blankest canvas for experimentation of all the major liquors. There’s a wide gulf between connoisseurs buying top-shelf brands to drink on ice and the multitudes happy with neutral spirits swirled with fruit juice in a garbage can or whatever.

Pinnacle and Burnett’s have made “bad vodka mixed with a bunch of random crap” their business model; a trip down their line extension reads like a Baskin-Robbins menu. While I had a whipped-cream-vodka phase for a minute back there — especially with Mountain Dew, which somehow tasted like Sour Skittles (try it, in moderation) — I’ve mostly steered away from flavored vodkas and toward whatever would mix best with Zing Zang, hot sauce, and a beef stick garnish.

Smirnoff is hoping to bring me back on board with its new 2022 offering: Peach Lemonade Vodka. I wouldn’t have bought this unless it ended up in a bargain bin at my local grocery store, but my general rule remains: If you send me booze (or non-alcoholic beverages!) I will drink it and write about it.

Right away, this bottle flies in with some lofty promises. It’s wrapped in pink and yellow like it was a leftover prop from a Duran Duran video. The description printed therein promises “a refreshing taste like crisp waves hitting the sand” and “tangy flavors as bright as the sunshine.” I don’t know what the hell a crisp wave is, but fine. Shoot your shot, copywriter.

The bottle also includes three recipes, though they’re more suggestions than actual guides. Let’s try them out, along with a classic vodka tonic since that’s effectively a perfect summer drink and, despite the fact it’s currently 55 and raining in Wisconsin, summer is pretty much here.

Here’s how to get Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza before its official release

The only thing better than Mexican Pizza is early Mexican Pizza.

The Mexican Pizza is coming back to Taco Bell, and fans of the offering at the chain are SO excited for it.

(An aside: I’m more excited about the Dolly Parton Mexican Pizza musical that’s coming out, but that’s for another post!).

It’s supposed to drop on menus later this week, but Taco Bell is making it available early, starting Tuesday: Per the chain’s official site, you can redeem one through the app if you’re a registered user as a Rewards Member.

For those who don’t know: Their Mexican Pizza is on tortillas, with beans, pizza sauce, beef, tomatoes and lots of cheese.

Go get it!

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Coke and coffee creamer is better than you think (but it’s no coffee substitute)

It’s not as gross as it sounds! It might be good!

Welcome to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Previously, we’ve folded these in to our betting guides, whether that’s been for the NFL slate or a bizarrely successful run through the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey. 

This series has largely been steeped in alcohol. This has the benefit of keeping me from delirium tremens in the name of work but also excludes the non-drinkers of the world.

Fortunately, thanks to Olivia Rodrigo and Joseph Smith, an alternative blew up this over the past month that allowed me to expense $20 worth of Coffee-Mate flavored creamers. “Dirty sodas” have long been a staple across Utah, a state whose majority Mormon population is prohibited from hot caffeinated beverages like coffee or tea. Beginning in 2012, however, the Church of Latter Day Saints — Smith’s outfit — decreed caffeinated cold beverages were fine, leading to a slow soda boom in the region.

So outlets across the state have jumped into the craft soda game. Or, specifically, a game in which they craft their own sodas by adding syrups and cream to layer flavors into a pre-existing base (Coca-Cola, Sprite, etc). The whole adventure is kinda like decorating a prefabricated, modular home.

Anyway, chains have popped up throughout the Beehive State with rejected tech start-up names like Swig, Sodalicious and Fiiz and are thriving because, you know, no hot coffee.

Ms. Rodrigo posted about the beverage back in December and it recently went viral on TikTok. While it feels new, it’s been trending in some form since 2016. If you’re reading this from Utah or any other location with a heavy Mormon population, you’re probably feeling real hipster-y about the whole subject, having known about it before it was cool. Congrats on that; maybe send a few recipes my way? Because soon you will realize I have only a very basic grasp on proper dirty soda architecture.

Traditional pale ales may be fading, but Bell’s Two-Hearted still tastes like summer

Traditional IPAs may be falling out of style, but Bell’s Two-Hearted still rules.

Welcome to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Previously, we’ve folded these in to our betting guides, whether that’s been for the NFL slate or a bizarrely successful run through the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey. 

This probably isn’t a beer that needs a review. Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale is a titan in the world of craft brewery standouts. It’s been around for as long as I’ve been drinking beer — a baseline fancy option everyone likes. It’s even spawned its own extensions light and heavy along the way.

But I’ll be damned if Two-Hearted doesn’t taste like summer to me. And we’re finally set to have more than one 70-degree day in a row up here in Wisconsin, so here we go.

The first sip, this one off a fresh tap, is crisp, pine-y hops. It’s not overwhelmingly gloomy with bitterness, especially for a brew that promises “massive hop additions in both the kettle and the fermenter.” Instead, there’s a sunny feeling stuck in there thanks to the general lightness of the beer.

That leaves an open canvas for a little grapefruit citrus to slide onto the scene. No one’s going to confuse it for a shandy or even a juicy IPA, but there’s a definite fruit aftertaste that works in tandem with that crispy start. By now that’s fairly commonplace, but back in the 1990s when this beer first came about it probably blew people’s minds.

This is a beer that is much easier to drink than you expect, especially at 7 percent ABV. It stays inviting as it warms, balancing the earthiness of a healthy dose of hops with the airiness of that citrus. Everything about it is pleasant; if you’re a beer person it’s complex enough that you can parse out distinct flavors. If you’re just looking for a quick drink you can enjoy the fact it tastes great and drinks smoother than any IPA from the 90s should.

Three-ish decades later, it’s still a flagship beer since it’s so damn good. What’s going to happen now that trends are finally turning away from traditional IPAs?

Two-Hearted’s future is probably fine. The brewery was sold to a subsidiary of Japan’s Kirin last winter after its founder decided to retire, but as long as no one’s tinkering with the recipe, Bell’s will continue to thrive. The brewery itself is diverse enough to survive a changing landscape. Two-Hearted will be the taste of summer for dorks like me no matter what.

But what about the rest of a brewing landscape that leaned heavily on “[expletive] your tastebuds” hoppiness over the past decade-plus? Pale ales’ share of the beer marketplace continues to grow, but much of that can be tied to the expansion of styles that goes beyond the basic brew that defined the early stages of the brewery boom. Demand for hazy IPAs in particular is a major driver; their share of the beer market grew by 761 percent through the start of the pandemic, per Drizly.

Hazies aren’t the only reason for the pale ale’s recent rise. Session IPAs have helped make the heavy brews more approachable. Imperial IPAs moved in the opposite direction and had their sales grow nearly 500 percent between 2020 and 2021.

Together they make up the second-best selling booze style of the budding decade, behind only the incredible rise of hard seltzers. Half the top-selling IPAs came from those aforementioned subcategories. Just having a hoppy beer isn’t enough anymore. Being really good in one dimension isn’t going to provide a flagship brand. And while we don’t have actual numbers for 2022 yet, anecdotal evidence suggests the drinking public may be cooling on the traditional pale ales that were omnipresent in America’s craft brewing boom.

Which makes sense, because we’ve had two-plus decades to perfect the micro- (and macro-) brew version of the American pale ale. Two-Hearted proves there isn’t much room left for improvement. No one’s clamoring for Dr. Thunder when Dr. Pepper already exists.

And that’s what a great pale ale like Two-Hearted (or Space Dust, or Axe Man, or Sculpin) has become; the brand name competitors are left to chase. Instead, breweries have turned to IPA styles they can make their own while unlocking a new dimension of customer. There might not be another Two-Hearted, but there doesn’t need to be. There could be a hazy or imperial or session copycat instead that takes the ball and runs with it to create a unique juggernaut.

That’s great news for beer nerds and neophytes alike. Pale ales are great. Expanding their universe so there’s something for everyone is even better.

The Best Beef Bourguignon Recipe: Julia Child’s vs Everyone Else’s

Julia Child demonstrates how to cook Boeuf Bourguignon on The French Chef, a TV show produced by WGBH, and shot in Boston from 1963 to 1973.

• Julia Child’s debut, on “The French Chef” (WGBH in Boston) aired as a pilot on July 26, 1962.

• She would continue to teach on camera, and in seminal cookbooks, for three more decades.

• In this video, she demonstrates how to cook a seminal dish, Beef (Boeuf) Bourguignon; we compare her recipe to what’s on TikTok and Youtube. 

 

Culinary icon Julia Child is famous for many things: her cookbooks, her TV shows, her height (6’2″), and her unusual voice. Her crowning achievement, however, was the skill with which she explained French recipes; it turned on generations of home cooks. Though she is famous for cooking many seminal dishes — like Coq au Vin and French Onion Soup — her signature dish is Beef (Boeuf) Bourguignon.

In this video, she demonstrates how to cook Boeuf Bourguignon on “The French Chef” — which aired on February 11, 1963, on WGBH in Boston — as well as how to brown and braise meat, what it takes to make a great brown sauce, how to braise onions, and how to cut and sauté mushrooms.

We’ve highlighted some key moments with timestamps so you don’t have to watch the whole thing through.

 

Key Moments

0:30 Theme song plays

1:12 Child rattles off all of the skills she will demo: how to brown and braise meat, what it takes to make a great brown sauce, how to braise onions, and how to cut and sauté mushrooms.

3:00 Shocking use of paper towels to soak up the moisture of the meat—something you can be sure did not exist in previous recipes of this dish (which dates back to the Middles Ages).

15:11 Here she dries off the mushrooms with cloth towels (so they brown properly) and basically says no one should fret about the soiling of the towels as long as they have “electric washing machines.”

 

Background of Beef Bourguignon

Julia Child was not the first chef to appear on TV, but she was by far the most influential one. She starred in The French Chef, which debuted on February 11, 1963, on WGBH (in Boston) and ran nationally for ten years. It won a Peabody Award and the first Emmy for an educational program.

This now-classic french bistro recipe is essentially a beef stew, slow-cooked and braised in red wine with potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, garlic, onions and a bouquet garni (bundle of thyme, parsley, and bay leaves). Child includes lardons as well; not everyone does.

Other variations include adding a pig’s trotter, using beef cheek, marinating the meat in advance, and caramelizing the onions. You would be wise to pair this with wine from Burgundy (Bourguignon being the provenance of the dish).

One of the earliest written versions of beef bourguignon was penned by legendary chef Auguste Escoffier, who described it in 1903.

 

The Popularity of #boeufbourgignon

On TikTok, there are tk recipes tagged with #boeufbourgignon. Some of the most popular ones have already been viewed more than 1,000,000 times. This video, like many, edits the recipe down to 59 seconds, in an evocative, albeit wordless, visual montage.

@theemoodyfoody

Beef Bourguignon, Julia Child’s Beef Bourguignon✨ #food #cooking #asmr #ramsayreacts #movie #film #recipe #chef #fyp #calm #relaxing #music

♬ UNDERWATER WONDERSCAPES (MASTER) – Frederic Bernard

Best Beef Bourguignon Recipe for People in a Hurry

Yes, you can learn how to cook this rather time-consuming dish in under a minute. On TikTok, @robbiebell8 talks a quick clip while the video plays at warp speed. Everything runs perfectly well until 49 seconds in when he admits — shocker — he uses Rosemary (“I would normally use Thyme but I didn’t have any.”).

@robbiebell8

Beef Bourguignon!Slow cooker on summer for 6hrs. Try and get the best beef you can afford. #beef #slowcook #cooking #recipe #tiktokchef

♬ original sound – 🔪 Robbie Bell 🥘

Best Beef Bourguignon Recipe for Vegans

The entire video is just over a minute long and in this one, and the chef doesn’t even speak. Instead, you see the names of the ingredients flash onscreen (sadly, sans measurements). Note: The beef substitute is tempeh.

 

Jamie Oliver’s Beef Bourguignon Recipe

Jamie’s variations:

0:26 He uses beef cheeks.
5:35 He uses parchment paper instead of a proper lid (“to slowly concentrate and get thick and thicker”).
7:23 – Jamie’s idea of hell (peeling those tiny silver-skinned onions)

 

Modern Boeuf (Beef) Bourguignon Videos

Binging with Babish tackles Julia Child’s recipe in three minutes and 44 seconds. At the end, he says “Julia Child’s version completely blew my pants off.”

See: All Recipes