October 28, 2025 • 40 mins
It’s our very first episode—and we’re starting with a feast. Tanner and Jerry stir up an Apple Pie Manhattan before diving into the dos and don’ts of Turkey Day. From hosting hacks that make Thanksgiving easier to guest etiquette that keeps you invited back, we’ve got you covered. Then it’s time for a rapid-fire Short Order Cooking where we answer Google's most googled questions, and we wrap up with our hot takes on the most overrated and underrated dishes at the table. Pour a drink, grab a plate, and join us for a Flavorphiles Thanksgiving.
Thank you for listening! Join us again every weekend for more food inspired fun. Have questions you want answered, comments to make the show better, do you want to join our growing list of radio stations partners, or just keep in touch? Let us know at Flavorphiles.com.
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https://www.tiktok.com/@flavorphiles
Thank you for listening! Join us again every weekend for more food inspired fun. Have questions you want answered, comments to make the show better, do you want to join our growing list of radio stations partners, or just keep in touch? Let us know at Flavorphiles.com.
Follow on Instagram:
Flavorphiles: https://www.instagram.com/flavorphilespod/
Tanner: https://www.instagram.com/tagaragar/
Follow on Tik Tok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@flavorphiles
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Flavor Files. It's a brand new show. I'm
Jerry Jegar, broadcaster. This show is about food and drink
and culture and how it all comes together and what
food and drink means to us in our lives and
to do that, really, I'm just here to facilitate my son,
Tanner Regar, who is a restaurant tour chef and a bartender.
(00:21):
He is Michelin awarded and recognized as well by Michelin
and the James Beard people. Those are big deals. Look
them up if you haven't heard of them before. But
Tanner is here and in just a moment, we're going
to talk about how to make it a lot easier
for yourself if you're the person who has to do
all the cooking on Thanksgiving or anything major holiday time.
(00:43):
But we've got Thanksgiving coming up. Tanner, First of all,
let's start with something that you're calling amuse booze. What's
all all about.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Absolutely, we're really excited to be starting the show, and
obviously I think everything should start with a drink, and
so I've already got one in hand. Amuse bousch is
a French term. It means literally to a mouse, to
entertain the mouth. And so what that means is it's
generally little snacks that might start at a meal. You
could think of it as like past apps. You've probably
(01:10):
seen it parties or weddings, and so amuse Booze is
a word I made up for the little drink I
have to entertain the mouth and get my party started.
Since we're doing our Thanksgiving episode as our very first episode,
I wanted to do a Thanksgiving drink. So what we're
going to be doing is a Apple Manhattan Manhattan, very
classic cocktail, one of the original cocktails. The recipe is
(01:33):
the area code of the island of Manhattan. It's two rye,
one vermouth, two dashes bitters, really easy to keep in mind.
To sort of change it up for fall, what we're
going to be doing is we're going to make our
base Calvados. Calvaos is a French spirit. It's made out
of apples in Normandy and so it's a brandy. It's
(01:54):
made out of that. It has an amazing flavor. So
what I've done is I've done one ounce of the Calvados,
one ounce of the rye, have some red vermouth in there.
That's the sweet vermouth. That has that wonderful flavor, and
then I'm using some apple bitters and some anguster sort
of that really classic bitters. So you end up with
a Manhattan which has that exact color profile you're always expecting.
(02:15):
It still has that whiskey, that vermouth backing, but it's
got all that apple sitting right on top, and that
makes it wonderful for the season. And it's pretty much
the easiest possible cocktail you could make that still sounds
like you really know what you're doing, and that's what
I wanted for the show. So you end up drinking
something that tastes like full I mean, it sort of
tastes like an apple pie, and I didn't have to
(02:37):
go to all that bother.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
All right, let's talk about making a Thanksgiving dinner. Sometimes
what happens is there's one individual, and it's usually mom,
who's up early and spends the entire day cooking, and
everybody else just has a good time. But you're saying,
very much like what restaurants do, don't do it all
on the last day.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
When restaurants cook, you think of cooking actually in two stages.
You know a lot of people think I'm cooking this
is my recipe. I'm getting it done. When we think
of it, we think we're going to make this stuff
in advance, and then we're going to finish. So we
sort of, you know, prep and then we call it fire.
We fire the dishes. We're finishing the dishes. So our
(03:18):
goal is to have everything about eighty percent of the
way done and then once you order it, we're going
to finish. So if you think of your Thanksgiving that way,
think about things that can be done in advance, right
you If you want it to bake bread, you can
do that in advance. If you want to make mashed potatoes,
you want to make stuffing, you want to make any
of this, you can do all of that in advance.
So really, I understand that Thanksgiving is a stressful day
(03:40):
for people. The turkey, that's something you can't do in advance.
You can prep the turkey in advance, and we'll talk
more about that. But you know you want to take
that turkey, put it in, and you should have a
drink in your hand. You should be hanging out, you
should be celebrating and spending this time with people, knowing
you can just take the turkey out and put those
sides back in the oven to kind of come back
up to temperature.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Okay, but I would worry that if I cook something ahead.
First of all, how do I figure out what's eighty percent?
And secondly, then when I haul it out of the
refrigerator and put it back into the oven on the
actual day, I'm just gonna drive the thing out. It's
not gonna taste fresh.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah, absolutely, So that can be an issue. Right, So
if I was making my stuffing, for example, I've got
my stuffing recipe right, and it's gonna say, bake it
this long till I get to this point, right, all
I'm gonna do is i'm gonna pull it out maybe
five ten minutes before it says it's gonna be done. Great,
I'm gonna set out of my counter. I'm gonna let
(04:37):
it cool, and I'm gonna then package it up and
put it in my fridge. Then what I like to
do is I'm gonna pull it back out the next day.
I'm gonna turn my oven pretty hot, like four hundred
degrees fahrenheit. Then i'm gonna take some butter. I'm gonna
cut that up, I'm gonna put it on top. Then
I'll wrap it back in the foil, I'll put that
in the oven. I'll bring that up. You know, it
should probably only take me about twenty minutes. And what's
(04:59):
gonna happen. It's going to come back up the temperature.
You're worried about it being dry, that's natural, but that's
what the butter's for. Anytime you're replacing dryness with butter,
you're making Julia child happy. And so that would be
kind of the key to that is sort of just
undercook your food and then finish it at the end.
You know, something like a pie I wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Do that with.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
But again, a pie doesn't need to be served warm.
A pie can be a day old and a pie
still really wonderful.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Okay, And you kept talking about the stuffing and you
were preparing the stuffing ahead. You don't prepare stuffing by
stuffing it in the bird.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
No, you should never do this in my opinion, Well,
because one of the issues with stuffing is if you
put it inside the bird, now, the stuffing needs to
reach one hundred and sixty five degrees to be safe. Right,
So really, what the move is going to be now
is you're cooking your bird your center's one sixty five,
so it's food safe. You're outside, it's going to be
(05:55):
something like one eighty five or higher. And you're going
to end up by thinking I'll have this really picturesque Thanksgiving.
You're dooming yourself to dry turkey. And I equate dry
turkey with sadness. And so I like to cook my
Thanksgiving turkey in my roasting tray. I like to do
my stuffing separate. And if you really need that Norman
(06:17):
Rockwell painting, then when nobody's looking, just take all that
stuffing and push it into the bird after they're both cooked,
because then you're not at risk for anything.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Okay, let's jump back though. Let's say you've brought the
bird home. It's sitting in the freezer. Now you got
to bring it out. You've got to thaw it out.
What's the best way to do that? And does it
really have to sit for two days in the refrigerator
to though out?
Speaker 2 (06:36):
So if you order your turkey frozen, which a lot
of turkeys are gonna come frozen, don't worry about that.
That's perfectly fine. I do think the best way is
put it in the fridge. It is going to take
a couple of days. You know, you think about the
fact that it's frozen, let's call that, you know, zero
in the fridge. You're gonna put it in your fridge. Well,
your fridge is gonna be sort of slightly above freezing,
(06:58):
So it is gonna take two days for something that's
frozen to become not frozen in an environment that's very
close to frozen. But that would be my preferred way
to slack it. That's what we call in the restaurant
when we defrost something. But if you need to slack
it in a hurry, one thing you can do. Get
a big clean up your whole sink, make sure it's
really clean in there. Get a big pot, and then
(07:19):
put your turkey in there. Run cold water about the
slowest you can that it's still running and the coldest
you can. And what that's going to do is you're
gonna have constantly refreshing water that's bringing the turkey up
to temperature faster than your fridge can. But you have
to keep that water running otherwise the turkey is going
to the water's going to warm up, and you can
(07:39):
exit the safe zone for storing the bird. That can
be a problem that's why I should tell you to
do it. The other reason to do it is warming
turkey juice does not smell very good at all, and
that clean water is going to help make sure you're
enjoying your kitchen while you're in there prepping everything else.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Okay, so the water just constantly spilling out over the
pot that you have put the turkey in, and how
long do you think that would take for the average
sized turkey to follow?
Speaker 2 (08:08):
I'm not so sure. To be honest, I would probably
plan maybe a couple hours for that to happen. But
I mean a couple hours is better than two days.
And rankly, if you're listening to this and going this
still sounds like so much work. You know you are
allowed to buy your food from a restaurant, like that's okay.
My restaurants in Dallas we do like a super simple Thanksgiving.
(08:31):
We do everything for you. Do exactly what I said.
You put the turkey in the oven, you take it out,
you put all of your sides that are eighty percent
done in, and you finish up. We're not the only
restaurant that does this. There's a restaurant near you. There's
a grocery store, near you that can take the pressure out.
And everybody likes the person who shows up and goes, oh,
I got this pie from the farmer's market. There's someone
there I really like. You can still look good even
(08:53):
if you didn't make it. And if you're bad at cooking,
it's just everyone would prefer if you did it that way.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Okay, how do I know how much turkey to buy?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
I generally go for a pound of person. You know,
if you really like turkey, you can go more. You
really don't, you can go a little less. One thing
that's really important with the turkey is a pound sounds
like a lot, but you're accounting for the loss of moisture.
As a cook's you're accounting for all the bones and
the carcass, you're accounting for the giblets. So a pound
of person typically works out. I find that it also
(09:24):
leaves a little bit turkey extra because the next day
I like to make that sandwich that has mashed potatoes
and gravy and turkey in it.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
All Right, so you own restaurants and a bar, and
you're being awarded all of that which I mentioned at
the beginning. But let's go back. Let's go back and
revisit a memory of when you were fourteen years old
and you had it in your head that you would
become what you are now and you decided to do
Thanksgiving dinner. What kind of a day was that for
(09:54):
us as a family.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
So let's start off by saying I was in the
eighth grade at this time. Yes, so I think I
get a little credit for being in the eighth grade
and deciding I was going to do Thanksgiving by myself.
And I would say the appetizers were killer, you know.
I made this cognac French onion soup. It was great.
I put out a couple of trays of food. It
was all really great, and I was feeling pretty toughed
(10:17):
with myself right until my mother said, so, how's the
turkey looking. You know, this is probably like six o'clock.
I'm maybe a little behind schedule. Yeah, yeah, maybe it's
a little earlier, but it's you know, well in the
evening and we're doing appetizers, we're having fun. My mom says, so,
how's the turkey looking. I said, I'm going to get
to that. Now. What do you mean you're going to
(10:39):
get to it?
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Tanner?
Speaker 2 (10:40):
It's six pm. The turkey is still wrapped up, like
it's not even in a roasting tray. I mean it's
it was in the fridge, but it's in the fridge.
And so I learned a lot about timing a meal
back then. And I would say I'm significantly better at
cooking now because I have the opportunity to do things
like listen to flavor files.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
All right, Well, I I will also say that you
did a fabulous Thanksgiving meal one year later at the
age of fifteen, uh, because you were embarrassed and you learned.
Let's talk about being a good guest, a great guest.
First of all, I would say, don't bring food unless
you've cleared that with the host.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah. Absolutely, this is a big faux pas. Right, I've
invited you to come over. If you bring something, even
though I told you didn't need to, you're sort of
implying that I don't have dinner covered. And I mean
I invited you to Thanksgiving. If I didn't think I
could handle food, I wouldn't have invited you on the
biggest food day of the entire year, right, So don't
(11:41):
bring food if you weren't asked to. If you're asked
to do there's a couple of things I'd like to
bring if I'm asked to come right.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
One of the big ones is, you know, salad. I
love bringing a salad because a lot of people make
bad ones. I don't, So that's a great thing to bring.
Dessert that's a really great thing to bring. Some sort
of order, some kind of app those are really good
things to bring. One of my rules when I'm bringing
food is how do I bring something that doesn't require
(12:08):
anything from the host? That's really really important. You were
asked to make the burden of hosting easier, so don't
make it harder if you show up and you think, well,
I just need one burner. If I only have four
burners and I'm making my hot meal, you can't have one.
Oh I just need thirty minutes in the oven. Sure,
but my oven's full of mashed potatoes and stuffing and
(12:31):
pie and everything else. Right, So it's really best if
you bring something that doesn't require This is also okay,
this is a huge pet peeve for me. Do not
bring something and then immediately ask me if I have
a serving dish or if I have a serving bowl. No,
I don't have one that you can use, because I'm
doing it to serve all the other food I've been
(12:53):
making all day long. So part of agreeing to bring
something is bringing the implements required. Right, don't show up
with a whole bunch of cheese that needs to be
cut and some salami that needs to be cut. Show
up with a cutting board where all of that's done.
Then it's all laid out, and you can take that
cutting board back with you and your little tongs or whatever.
(13:13):
It's your responsibility to have everything with you, and a
note on the charcuterie board, because this is a I
have a friend and when he listens to this episode,
he'll know it's him. If you're a person who is
perpetually late, if you are an always late person, do
not volunteer to bring the charcuterie board, because halfway through
the meal, we'll have to get up and get some
(13:34):
of your appetizer. So we don't feel rude. And you
were rude. You were rude. If you're a late person,
you know you're a late person. Except who you are,
you're not going to change this Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is not
the day to turn your life around. Just accept you're
a late person and bring.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Pie, bring dessert. And by the way, you don't have
to make it. You touched on this on the first
segment tenor and I think it's a it's a cool thing.
People don't mind if you show up and say, Okay,
I'm bringing dessert. I brought these two pies. I know
this greatest little bakery. You guys are gonna love this.
People love that as much or more than if you
made it, unless you happen to be really fabulous at pie.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Yeah, a homemade is nice, good is better?
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Better, you know, a hot little bakery, then just use
that exactly right. Absolutely, you gave me a tip before
I went to a backyard party once. It wasn't quite
the same as Thanksgiving, but still it was a case
of if I wanted to bring something, and I said
to you, I don't want to just bring a bottle
of wine like this. You know it seems lame and
(14:41):
I don't know anything about wine. Okay, if I did
that make a difference. And you told me you love
the cocktail, the old fashioned Okay, so buy a bottle
of bourbon. Figure out the amounts. I poured it in
a bowl, and I figured out the amounts of everything
else I had to put in there with the bitters
and the simple syrup and the stuff it goes in,
and I mixed all that in the bowl, and then
(15:03):
I got the label off the bottle and I made
my own label and called it Jerry's Old Fashioned or
something like that. And then I took a final and
I poured that stuff back into the original, now re
labeled bottle. And then the cool thing is because I'd
added ingredients, I had a little bit of an Old
Fashioned left over for me, And then I took that
bottle and it was a hit. It was gone in
(15:24):
no time.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Absolutely. I mean I'm a little biased because a lot
of my recognition is for spirits and cocktails, you know,
so I do love wine. I drink a lot of wine,
but I would say, you know, when you show up
with a bottle of wine, you haven't made that you're
not necessarily involved. The other issue with the bottle of
wine is that you know, you can have really five servings,
(15:48):
maybe you can stretch it if everybody gets a little.
But when you brought that Old Fashioned, there's twelve old
fashions in a bottle, so you immediately have something that's
a lot more community focused. It's also nice because remember
I said earlier, you should have things that are already done.
If you've gotten old fashioned, if you bring it already done,
used to pour it over some ice and you're set
(16:09):
to go. So bringing the cocktail is a really wonderful one.
I just went to a dinner party a couple weeks ago.
I made up a cocktail. He's a incredibly respected chef,
so I'm glad he didn't ask me to bring a dish,
because look, we're friends, we're both great chefs, we have
some of the same awards. But still I was like, Okay, cool,
I don't have to worry about cooking. He's got that handled.
(16:30):
I'll bring the cocktail. And you know, if you're looking
for a cocktail idea the amuse boosh section, that's I
gave you the recipe for making it. You can do that.
It's really easy. And everybody likes the guy who brings booze.
Everybody likes that guy.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Okay, I would.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Also say about that. You know, one thing I love
about gifting bourbon or other spirits just quickly. Wine is
like a one time thing. I tell people all the time.
If you're gifting to clients, or to loved ones. I
love a bottle of spirits because nobody drinks a bottle
in one day unless they're a real professional like me
and my friends. So you can. It's a great thing
(17:07):
to buy a clienter as a thank you, because if
I give you a bottle of whiskey, and I've given
you whiskey as a present before, it's gonna take you
several times to drink it and to think about me
and our relationship and to enjoy that whiskey as opposed
to wine, which is a one night thing. So I
think spirits are a great gift period, making a cocktail
even better.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Okay, now this is a completely different part of being
a great guest at something like a Thanksgiving dinner, But
you had in your notes here go sit for a
minute at the kid's table. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Absolutely, I think kids. Lots of people say, oh, kids
are smarter than you think. They are smarter than you think.
I'm sort of surprised, you know, having a four year
old niece and talking to her and how much of
our previous conversation she's remembering or talking about. She'll ask me,
She's like, how's the new restaurant doing. Do you guys
still have that hill. There's a hill like a block
away that she likes to play on. I'm like, yeah,
(17:58):
don't worry, we still have the hill. So you know,
it's like kids can do that, and you know, talking
to kids, kids like attention from adults. They appreciate that.
I would say, it's also a really great excuse to
get away from that person who desperately wants to talk
to you about whatever hot button political topic you do
not want to talk about. The kids are a great
(18:20):
excuse to be like, you know, I really do have
to get back to I was just in a conversation
with her, but we'll catch up later, definitely, Uncle Dan.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah. Also, I guess with kids, this has been something
I've tried to do. Clue into when they're done talking
to you, because I'll tell you a quick question or
I tell you a quick little story about one of
your cousins. He was quite little and I was talking
to him and I was trying to draw something out
of him, so I kept asking him questions and finally
(18:51):
he just looked at me and said, look, I goed
where I goed. I dud what I did. I don't
want to talk about it. I knew, all right, we're done.
I guess done with this?
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, for sure, you know, and being a great guest
is about also trying to make the environment fun for
people working the room, talking to people, you know. Also,
the easiest way to make sure you get invited to
Thanksgiving or any other dinner party is as soon as
everything's done, can I do the dishes for you? Everybody
(19:25):
likes the person who does the dishes if if nothing else,
if you're like, oh man, I am the uncle Dan,
I brought up stuff. My wife specifically asked me not
to talk about. Then do the dishes and everyone will forget.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Okay. Have you ever, even though you are a professional
in terms of entertaining people with food, have you ever
just said, you know, I'm doing the paper plates, Like
I just don't want to do the dishes.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Uh. Yeah, So I would absolutely say. One of my
tips if you're hosting is you can absolutely get away
with just use paper plates. It's it's fine. I have
forever walked away from a great meal and been like,
I don't know why she didn't use that china she
keeps locked up in the cabinet. This is the one
day of the year.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
It's f Yeah. Well, the problem with that is that
it's the one day a year that it gets used,
and then she won't let you put it in the dishwasher.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Right, it all has to be hand washed. But that's
for Uncle Dan, you know, the controversial uncle. It's his
job to take care of the china.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
We're going to do a segment we will return to
a number of times this this show continues called Short
Order Cooking. I'll do ten questions and ten or will
give us ten answers in ten minutes. Okay, should I
briind my turkey?
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Actually, a lot of commercially available turkeys are already brind
for you, so you can look on the package to
see if it's already briind. Brining is basically putting some
salt water along with a whole bunch of herbs or
other seasonings together and then you just dump the bird
in there and let its hit overnight. Turkey should be briined.
They lose a lot of liquid as they're cooking, so
(20:57):
you should brind it. And as it loses some of
that water, that's gonna be those drippings that help you
build a really wonderful gravy. So yes, you should brind
your turkey. Even if a turkey comes brind, I like
to brind mine anyways, because I don't trust people to
use in a flavor when they brind.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Okay, now, earlier in the show, you said don't do
the stuffing in the bird because it means that you're
going to cook the bird too long. But do you
put aromatics in the bird when you're cooking?
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, it's popular for people to put rosemary, thyme, citrus
inside the bird. I'm never one hundred percent convinced that
that makes this huge difference unless you just, I mean
absolutely pack that with an incredible amount. What I find
is a lot better bang for my buck, both literally
and flavor wise. Is I like to soften butter, then
(21:47):
I will whip it with some of those same herbs.
I'll gently lift the skin, rub that butter underneath the skin.
Then as it's cooking, everything improves with butter. The butter
is also melting, keeping everything juicy, keep it rich, and
infusing it with that herb flavor.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
How do I know? Actually when the turkey is done
is as simple as sticking in a meat thermometer and
waiting for that right temperature to arrive.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Absolutely. Some of them come with that little red stopper,
so you can definitely use the red stopper. I would
prefer a meat thermometer. I don't know why more people
don't own meat thermometers. They're not expensive. You put them
in and then they'll beep when your food's done. One
thing I will tell you is everything'll tell you, oh,
turkey poultry, it has to be one sixty five. I
(22:30):
actually like to pull it out a little bit before,
maybe like one sixty maybe one fifty five if I'm
feeling brave. Because one thing people don't realize. Everything cooks
after you take it out. It's still cooking. It's called
carryover cooking. And if you pull it out at one
sixty five, your turkey could be hitting one seventy five.
That's how you get dry turkey. It's also, by the way,
(22:51):
how you get cracked pies. Pull things out a little
bit earlier than you think, and that's how you're able
to get better flavor.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Well, I learned that lesson you saved me. Actually, this
last Christmas, I decided to do a beef Wellington for everybody.
And when you've got everybody a big family group, and
you buy a tenderloin. It's big enough. It's really expensive.
I spent a lot of money on that meat, and
then I did all of the other things you do
with beef wellington. I won't go through it all, but
it's a lot of work. And I got it in
(23:19):
the oven, and you asked me what temperature I was
going for, and I told you and used it. Uh huh.
And then I was watching the thing, and then you
walked into the kitchen and you looked at that thermometer.
I thought it wasn't ready yet. You hauled it out
of the oven and put it on top of the stove,
and I walked over and watched that meat thermometer come
right up to about I think it stopped right around
the temperature that I wanted, so I would have overcooked it,
and that would have been pretty disappointing with something like that. Okay,
(23:43):
what do I do with the giblets?
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Yeah, I know that your opinion is just throw them away.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Yeah, well, but with that, I think.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
The giblets are great. You know, maybe the neck is
a little bit weird to work with, but I think
gibblets are great. What I like to do, especially liver heart,
things like that roast them. Just put them in the
other like underneath the turkey. It'll all cook. And then
what I like to do is I have to take
those I like to throw them in with my gravy
and then use an immersion blender, so it's like a
(24:11):
stick blender. You could use a regular blender. The gravy's
main flavor should be the turkey anyway, and this will
just bolster that. People will think, why is this turkey
gravy so much better than normal? And it's because you
use the giblets.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Okay, so they're a flavor enhancer in a sense, not
just here's a turkey heart.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yeah. I mean most people don't want to be served
a turkey heart, right, those people are wrong, But this
is an easier way to get the kids to eat it.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Okay, gotcha? What wine do you serve with a Thanksgiving dinner?
Speaker 2 (24:39):
If you want to go white, I would probably go
for a chardenay, you know, especially you know in the
US and Canada, really buttery Napa style shardenaise are popular.
But you could also use something that doesn't have all
that butter, because you already have a rich meal. I
would say peano, no war or Boujoulet, something coming out
of Burgundy. I really like. I like the fruit flavors.
I think it goes great with cranberries. I think is
(25:00):
great with those fall flavors, so I would probably go
with that.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
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(25:24):
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Party Like It's sixteen ninety nine Tanner. What is pumpkin spice?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Pumpkin spice has no pumpkins in it. A lot of
people don't realize this. It is the spice is used
in a pumpkin pie. It's not defined. Actually, nobody so
everybody who makes pumpkin spice is making their pumpkin spice differently,
and I suggest that if you want to, you should
make your own pumpkin spice yourself. Spices don't last forever.
(26:09):
They do go bad. They can't expire the essential oils
that make them have that flavor. So I like to
know how fresh my pumpkin spice is. I like to
know that I'm not buying last year's overstock, that I'm
buying something that's fresh. I also like to blend it myself.
I'm a huge fan of green cardamom, so when we
make pumpkin spice in my restaurants, it's heavy on green
cardamom and less on nutmeg, because that's what we like.
(26:33):
But you might like something different, and you should empower
yourself to make it the way you like it best.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
What do you do to make the best use of
your leftovers?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
There's two things that are my favorite thing to do.
I guess the three things I love to do with leftovers.
One is the sandwich. I think everybody already knows this
one right, just sort of build the sandwich. But there's
two I think are really fun. One I really like
to sort of make a meal that uses them, but
in a new way, so it feels like a new meal.
(27:02):
Shepherd's pie is one I think is really great. Right,
you can take some stuffing it's a base, and you
can take some turkey, and you can take some green beans,
and you can sort of throw all of that stuff
in there. You top it with leftover mashed potatoes, although
frequently I don't have any leftover mashed potatoes because I'm
a bit of a glutton. But then you can put
that in the oven and then when you serve it,
(27:22):
it feels like I'm getting a brand new dish out
of the overused food. I also like to make curries
that way. Take some of those vegetables, take that turkey,
throw it in there with some curry seasonings, make up
a turkey with a little bit of rice, and the
next day, again, your meal feels fresh instead of feeling reheated.
(27:42):
And I find that people like that a lot better.
And those people are me.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
What are your tips then, since you're a glutton for
mashed potatoes, to make better mashed potatoes.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, So the biggest issue that people have with mashed
potatoes is really they don't think about how you need
to heat the cream first. So to make mashed potatoes great.
You know, if you like sort of I don't want
to say lumpy, that sounds bad. But if you like
sort of that more rustic, like actually mashed potatoes where
you get chunk of potato, that's cool. If you don't
(28:14):
like those, you can either press them through a sieve
or you can buy what's called a riser. They're not
very expensive and you just basically put the cooked potato in,
you spin it around and it forces the potato through
these tiny little holes so that it's really creamy. That's
how you make a classic palms pure. The whole thing
is that you have to keep it really, really hot,
So you need to have hot potatoes. You need to
(28:36):
have hot cream. If they're cold, they're not going to
blend into that really wonderful creamy texture.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
You're heating up the cream before you put it in
the potatoes.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Yeah, my cream, my butter, anything that's going in the potatoes.
I have getting hot on the side while my potatoes cook.
And then it's a race against the clock when I
make the mashed potatoes to put everything together as fast
as possible. But I said earlier, you can cook in advance.
You can. You can make mashed potatoes a day before
and have them taste amazing. But you have to make
sure that when you bring everything together, you're doing it
(29:07):
quickly so that you get the right texture.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
All right, Can you fix lumpy gravy?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
You can absolutely fix lumpy gravy. I talked about the
immersion blender earlier, the stick blender. You can just put
that in and it'll start to it'll chew up those
bits and really help get everything back how it needs
to be. Also, do not be shy to just bring
out a calendar and pour your gravy through it and
then just throw the lumps away and pretend you never
(29:33):
saw them.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Of course I don't have lumpy gravy. What would make
you think that?
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Absolutely? What is this my first time?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Anything? We're missing out on here?
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Yes, a lot of people don't think about music. Every
time you go into a restaurant. At least a good restaurant,
they have a carefully curated playlist, They know what they
want to put on. Think about your music ahead of time.
Don't just put your Spotify on shuffle and do not
trust it to someone you don't trust with vibe curation.
Put on something that you're going to be excited about
to listen to. Food taste better when good music is playing.
(30:06):
And Thomas Keller wrote this in his book, so you
know it's true because he's more famous than me.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Let's do over under here ten or take a look
at maybe ten different items that are common to a
lot of people's Thanksgiving dinner and whether these items are
overrated or underrated. All right, let's start with green bean casserole.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Overrated, absolutely overrated.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Well, I don't like green beans, so I can't really
properly weigh in on this. I'm sure, I'm sure somebody
who likes green beans can make a good one.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
So the problem is the green beans have to be blanched,
which is a separate cooking process, and then they have
to be mixed together, and people always use They always
mess up the blanche and then they always put on
canned cream of mushroom soup, and then they always bake
it in the oven for not the right amount of
time while they put fried onions on it to make
themselves think that this dish is going to be good.
Green Bean casserole is a overrated food. It's straight up
(30:56):
not that good, And this is your official permission to
just not make it this year. Just let it die,
send it to the great Thanksgiving in the sky.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
What are you going to do if somebody calls you
and you've been invited and they say tenor you make
great salads and everything? Can you bring the green bean casserole? No?
Speaker 2 (31:14):
I can't.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
What's the second suggestion? Okay, how about the cranberry sauce? Overrated? Underrated?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
I think cranberry sauce is overrated in how it's made.
That can of cranberry sauce is overrated. Good, proper cranberry
sauce made with fresh orange jest, freshra rosemary doesn't exist
on most people's table, so it can be good, but
as it served in culture today, it's definitely overrated.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Well, it's usually out of a can. I'll tell you
something that used to happen with my mother, your grandmother,
every time, every single time, because the only time we
ever had cranberry sauce was at a Thanksgiving, and I
guess she thought we had to have it, but then
because we didn't normally have it, she'd forget, and just
before dessert she'd go, oh, the cranberry sauce and she'd
drag it out and we'd have to sit there and
eat some crimeberry sauce all by itself.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, to make your mom feel better, you have to
eat a thing you didn't really like to begin it.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
That's right, Okay. Mashed potatoes overrated? Underrated?
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Could they be overrated? Is that possible? No?
Speaker 1 (32:15):
They can be badly made, and we talked about that
previous segment. But good mashed potatoes, you can't get enough.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
No, mashed potatoes are one of the pre eminent foods.
I eat mashed potatoes literally at every single opportunity. If
there is a mashed potato near me, it better watch out.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Are we going to say the same thing then about
mac and cheese?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Yes, but okay, I feel the same way about both
of them. I'm glad you bring that up. They should
only be trusted to the person you know who can
actually cook, right, I'm willing to accept, okay, on some
of the things at the table, I cannot condone bad
mashed potatoes or bad mac and cheese. And it might
be your aunt or your mom's thing. You need to
(33:00):
gently help them realize there are other things that could
be their thing. But the people who can't make mac
and cheese cannot be trusted with mac and cheese. It's
rude and it's wrong.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Okay, we're going to spend a minute on this, because
we're not talking about the famous mac and cheese that
comes out of a box, you know, craft dinner. It's
called in Canada or Kraft mac and Cheese. I think
it's called in the US. That's not what we're talking about.
Take a moment, and how would you make what you
consider to be a really good mac and cheese.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
So if I wanted to make a really good mac
and cheese and I wasn't really sure how to do that,
I would cheat. And what I would do is I
would go buy those fondue packets that show up the
holiday season every year, and I would take those and
I would put them in a pot with a little
bit of wine and kind of loosen it up, and
(33:52):
then I would just boil some pasta and I would
stir the two together and I would have this really
great white wine Swiss style mac and cheese. Because at
the end of the day, what I want is a
lot of cheese flavor. I want it really creamy, and
I don't want it dry. And this is the thing
that a lot of people mess up is they make
this mac and cheese and then they think that to
(34:14):
finish it off, what they should do is put more
cheese on it and bake it, and you end up
with this baked pasta that's dry. You know, you could
do this in your crock pot if you really wanted to.
But mac and cheese should be saucy and rich and indulgent.
You should feel a little bit bad about how much
mac and cheese you ate. That's the price. That's the
right amount of mac and cheese.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
I think that's the right amount of any kind of food.
But uh so it's the fondue packets. But they need
to be loosened up with a little bit of wine. Yeah,
and then it'll be great. Okay, they'll be too thick.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
That would be my cheat. If I don't want to
like google recipes and figure out how to actually make it,
that would be my hack.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Okay. Overrated or underrated sweet potatoes and marshmallows.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
You know, I really love sweet potatoes, but the sweet
potato and marshmallow thing I've never really understood. I think
it's overrated. If I never ate it again, I wouldn't notice.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Is it. You want to move on from that thing?
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Yeah, I'll move on. I have nothing else to say
about that food.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Okay, I think there's only one way to go here.
But again, it depends how it's made. I guess overrated
or underrated.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
The stuffing, Yeah, the stuffing is underrated. Stuffing is amazing.
It good bread, good herbs, good butter. How can you
not love stuffing? I mean, I think the stuffing is
is one of the highlights, and it's one of my
It's one of my favorite things to dig into every year.
I also think it's fun. You know. A great way
(35:40):
to make your stuffing better is to buy a variety
of different breads. Obviously, I own a restaurant called Rye,
so I'm pretty big on Rye. But getting a really
dark rich Rye, getting some you know, some more traditional
sour doughs, sort of blending these different breads together makes
the bites different. At our restaurant. You know, we also
(36:01):
make a corn bread stuffing, and we like to blend
in a lot of peppers, and we blend in a
lot of onions, so as you're eating it, it's more
of a Southwestern style than I might make for myself
at home. But the stuffing is like you can basically
limitlessly iterate on what is stuffing. It's basically bread that
you make soggy, that you toast so it's not soggy,
(36:22):
and that's it. So that's like the whole thing. What's
stuffing is so you can put in literally whatever you want.
And I don't know how you can take bread which
is the best, and then have the ability to do
whatever you want and then can somehow say that it's overrated.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
It's amazing, overrated, underrated Brussels sprouts.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
I would say. Other people would say that they're overrated,
and they give you gas and they don't taste that
good to begin with, So I could understand other people
having a bad Brussels sprout's opinion. But I find if
you take good Brussels sprouts and you give them a
little blanche, you know, hot water, really quick, then you
ice them down so they don't overcook, then you toss
(37:03):
them with everything, you stick them in the oven and
roast them. I think they're just absolutely these little baby cabbages.
They're sweet, they're rich, they taste amazing. I think they're
overrated to almost everyone. Except for me, and I find
them underrated. I'm excited to see Brussels sprouts.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Okay, but they're like a lot of things, and especially
that kind of a vegetable. Maybe people could go, I
don't really like them. I don't really like them, and
all of a sudden, somebody says, we'll try these, and
you go, wow, I never had them like that before,
So you need to put a little effort into figuring
out how to do them.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
I think, well, absolutely. It's also funny, you know, Brussels
sprouts are one of those foods that sort of get
this treatment. I made Brussels sprouts. Oh how'd you make them?
Speaker 1 (37:45):
So?
Speaker 2 (37:45):
I tossed them in molasses and then I added bacon.
They go, yeah, okay, all right, so what we're eating
some molasses and bacon like great? Like the it's sort
of like when you have a salad that has so
much dressing on it that it's sort of you know,
we're not really having vegetables anymore, we're based just having
hidden Valley ranch.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Okay. On your list of things overrated, underrated, the dinner roll, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Mean I just I just feel like I don't really
need the dinner roll, Like there's.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
So many hard Yes, you do no ceries.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
The butter, yeah, sure, I mean it's a butter delivery device.
I suppose so in that way, it's good. But there's
so many carves that are already on the table. You know.
I already have my potatoes, I already have mac and cheese.
Maybe I've got the sweet potatoes coming up. I'm about
to have pecan pie, your pumpkin pie. Like I have
so many starches that the role sort of feels like
(38:40):
if you're great at making rolls, if you're great at
making bread, or you have a really nice bread, it's
it's nice. But I do frequently feel that there's sort
of this tag on and we could let it.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Go, okay. I sort of made fun of my mom
a little earlier, your grandma with the cranberries. But nobody
made a better in a role than she did. I
would anybody. They were the best thing ever.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Yeah, and I wish that she was still here to
make some Then I would change my opinion. I would
change my opinion for pat all right.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
So, uh, very last thing. I don't know how you
could overrate it. The turkey.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
You know, obviously, it's like the centerpiece and everybody thinks
it's so important. If I went to a Thanksgiving and
somebody said, look, I'm just not passionate about turkey and
I just don't like it, and I've made this other
thing that I like better, I would not be mad.
I would absolutely be okay with having a Turkey list Thanksgiving.
(39:39):
I know it seems sacrilegious, but I would absolutely be
okay with it.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
All Right, we're having Ham, or we're having Prime Rib
or we're any.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Yeah, I mean, can I pick Prime Rib over Ham?
Speaker 1 (39:51):
All right? I'm Jerry Agark, He's Tanna Aegar, and I
hope you've enjoyed our first episode. And they'll join us
next week for Flavor Files
Welcome to Flavor Files. It's a brand new show. I'm
Jerry Jegar, broadcaster. This show is about food and drink
and culture and how it all comes together and what
food and drink means to us in our lives and
to do that, really, I'm just here to facilitate my son,
Tanner Regar, who is a restaurant tour chef and a bartender.
(00:21):
He is Michelin awarded and recognized as well by Michelin
and the James Beard people. Those are big deals. Look
them up if you haven't heard of them before. But
Tanner is here and in just a moment, we're going
to talk about how to make it a lot easier
for yourself if you're the person who has to do
all the cooking on Thanksgiving or anything major holiday time.
(00:43):
But we've got Thanksgiving coming up. Tanner, First of all,
let's start with something that you're calling amuse booze. What's
all all about.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Absolutely, we're really excited to be starting the show, and
obviously I think everything should start with a drink, and
so I've already got one in hand. Amuse bousch is
a French term. It means literally to a mouse, to
entertain the mouth. And so what that means is it's
generally little snacks that might start at a meal. You
could think of it as like past apps. You've probably
(01:10):
seen it parties or weddings, and so amuse Booze is
a word I made up for the little drink I
have to entertain the mouth and get my party started.
Since we're doing our Thanksgiving episode as our very first episode,
I wanted to do a Thanksgiving drink. So what we're
going to be doing is a Apple Manhattan Manhattan, very
classic cocktail, one of the original cocktails. The recipe is
(01:33):
the area code of the island of Manhattan. It's two rye,
one vermouth, two dashes bitters, really easy to keep in mind.
To sort of change it up for fall, what we're
going to be doing is we're going to make our
base Calvados. Calvaos is a French spirit. It's made out
of apples in Normandy and so it's a brandy. It's
(01:54):
made out of that. It has an amazing flavor. So
what I've done is I've done one ounce of the Calvados,
one ounce of the rye, have some red vermouth in there.
That's the sweet vermouth. That has that wonderful flavor, and
then I'm using some apple bitters and some anguster sort
of that really classic bitters. So you end up with
a Manhattan which has that exact color profile you're always expecting.
(02:15):
It still has that whiskey, that vermouth backing, but it's
got all that apple sitting right on top, and that
makes it wonderful for the season. And it's pretty much
the easiest possible cocktail you could make that still sounds
like you really know what you're doing, and that's what
I wanted for the show. So you end up drinking
something that tastes like full I mean, it sort of
tastes like an apple pie, and I didn't have to
(02:37):
go to all that bother.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
All right, let's talk about making a Thanksgiving dinner. Sometimes
what happens is there's one individual, and it's usually mom,
who's up early and spends the entire day cooking, and
everybody else just has a good time. But you're saying,
very much like what restaurants do, don't do it all
on the last day.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
When restaurants cook, you think of cooking actually in two stages.
You know a lot of people think I'm cooking this
is my recipe. I'm getting it done. When we think
of it, we think we're going to make this stuff
in advance, and then we're going to finish. So we
sort of, you know, prep and then we call it fire.
We fire the dishes. We're finishing the dishes. So our
(03:18):
goal is to have everything about eighty percent of the
way done and then once you order it, we're going
to finish. So if you think of your Thanksgiving that way,
think about things that can be done in advance, right
you If you want it to bake bread, you can
do that in advance. If you want to make mashed potatoes,
you want to make stuffing, you want to make any
of this, you can do all of that in advance.
So really, I understand that Thanksgiving is a stressful day
(03:40):
for people. The turkey, that's something you can't do in advance.
You can prep the turkey in advance, and we'll talk
more about that. But you know you want to take
that turkey, put it in, and you should have a
drink in your hand. You should be hanging out, you
should be celebrating and spending this time with people, knowing
you can just take the turkey out and put those
sides back in the oven to kind of come back
up to temperature.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Okay, but I would worry that if I cook something ahead.
First of all, how do I figure out what's eighty percent?
And secondly, then when I haul it out of the
refrigerator and put it back into the oven on the
actual day, I'm just gonna drive the thing out. It's
not gonna taste fresh.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah, absolutely, So that can be an issue. Right, So
if I was making my stuffing, for example, I've got
my stuffing recipe right, and it's gonna say, bake it
this long till I get to this point, right, all
I'm gonna do is i'm gonna pull it out maybe
five ten minutes before it says it's gonna be done. Great,
I'm gonna set out of my counter. I'm gonna let
(04:37):
it cool, and I'm gonna then package it up and
put it in my fridge. Then what I like to
do is I'm gonna pull it back out the next day.
I'm gonna turn my oven pretty hot, like four hundred
degrees fahrenheit. Then i'm gonna take some butter. I'm gonna
cut that up, I'm gonna put it on top. Then
I'll wrap it back in the foil, I'll put that
in the oven. I'll bring that up. You know, it
should probably only take me about twenty minutes. And what's
(04:59):
gonna happen. It's going to come back up the temperature.
You're worried about it being dry, that's natural, but that's
what the butter's for. Anytime you're replacing dryness with butter,
you're making Julia child happy. And so that would be
kind of the key to that is sort of just
undercook your food and then finish it at the end.
You know, something like a pie I wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Do that with.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
But again, a pie doesn't need to be served warm.
A pie can be a day old and a pie
still really wonderful.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Okay, And you kept talking about the stuffing and you
were preparing the stuffing ahead. You don't prepare stuffing by
stuffing it in the bird.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
No, you should never do this in my opinion, Well,
because one of the issues with stuffing is if you
put it inside the bird, now, the stuffing needs to
reach one hundred and sixty five degrees to be safe. Right,
So really, what the move is going to be now
is you're cooking your bird your center's one sixty five,
so it's food safe. You're outside, it's going to be
(05:55):
something like one eighty five or higher. And you're going
to end up by thinking I'll have this really picturesque Thanksgiving.
You're dooming yourself to dry turkey. And I equate dry
turkey with sadness. And so I like to cook my
Thanksgiving turkey in my roasting tray. I like to do
my stuffing separate. And if you really need that Norman
(06:17):
Rockwell painting, then when nobody's looking, just take all that
stuffing and push it into the bird after they're both cooked,
because then you're not at risk for anything.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Okay, let's jump back though. Let's say you've brought the
bird home. It's sitting in the freezer. Now you got
to bring it out. You've got to thaw it out.
What's the best way to do that? And does it
really have to sit for two days in the refrigerator
to though out?
Speaker 2 (06:36):
So if you order your turkey frozen, which a lot
of turkeys are gonna come frozen, don't worry about that.
That's perfectly fine. I do think the best way is
put it in the fridge. It is going to take
a couple of days. You know, you think about the
fact that it's frozen, let's call that, you know, zero
in the fridge. You're gonna put it in your fridge. Well,
your fridge is gonna be sort of slightly above freezing,
(06:58):
So it is gonna take two days for something that's
frozen to become not frozen in an environment that's very
close to frozen. But that would be my preferred way
to slack it. That's what we call in the restaurant
when we defrost something. But if you need to slack
it in a hurry, one thing you can do. Get
a big clean up your whole sink, make sure it's
really clean in there. Get a big pot, and then
(07:19):
put your turkey in there. Run cold water about the
slowest you can that it's still running and the coldest
you can. And what that's going to do is you're
gonna have constantly refreshing water that's bringing the turkey up
to temperature faster than your fridge can. But you have
to keep that water running otherwise the turkey is going
to the water's going to warm up, and you can
(07:39):
exit the safe zone for storing the bird. That can
be a problem that's why I should tell you to
do it. The other reason to do it is warming
turkey juice does not smell very good at all, and
that clean water is going to help make sure you're
enjoying your kitchen while you're in there prepping everything else.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Okay, so the water just constantly spilling out over the
pot that you have put the turkey in, and how
long do you think that would take for the average
sized turkey to follow?
Speaker 2 (08:08):
I'm not so sure. To be honest, I would probably
plan maybe a couple hours for that to happen. But
I mean a couple hours is better than two days.
And rankly, if you're listening to this and going this
still sounds like so much work. You know you are
allowed to buy your food from a restaurant, like that's okay.
My restaurants in Dallas we do like a super simple Thanksgiving.
(08:31):
We do everything for you. Do exactly what I said.
You put the turkey in the oven, you take it out,
you put all of your sides that are eighty percent
done in, and you finish up. We're not the only
restaurant that does this. There's a restaurant near you. There's
a grocery store, near you that can take the pressure out.
And everybody likes the person who shows up and goes, oh,
I got this pie from the farmer's market. There's someone
there I really like. You can still look good even
(08:53):
if you didn't make it. And if you're bad at cooking,
it's just everyone would prefer if you did it that way.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Okay, how do I know how much turkey to buy?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
I generally go for a pound of person. You know,
if you really like turkey, you can go more. You
really don't, you can go a little less. One thing
that's really important with the turkey is a pound sounds
like a lot, but you're accounting for the loss of moisture.
As a cook's you're accounting for all the bones and
the carcass, you're accounting for the giblets. So a pound
of person typically works out. I find that it also
(09:24):
leaves a little bit turkey extra because the next day
I like to make that sandwich that has mashed potatoes
and gravy and turkey in it.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
All Right, so you own restaurants and a bar, and
you're being awarded all of that which I mentioned at
the beginning. But let's go back. Let's go back and
revisit a memory of when you were fourteen years old
and you had it in your head that you would
become what you are now and you decided to do
Thanksgiving dinner. What kind of a day was that for
(09:54):
us as a family.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
So let's start off by saying I was in the
eighth grade at this time. Yes, so I think I
get a little credit for being in the eighth grade
and deciding I was going to do Thanksgiving by myself.
And I would say the appetizers were killer, you know.
I made this cognac French onion soup. It was great.
I put out a couple of trays of food. It
was all really great, and I was feeling pretty toughed
(10:17):
with myself right until my mother said, so, how's the
turkey looking. You know, this is probably like six o'clock.
I'm maybe a little behind schedule. Yeah, yeah, maybe it's
a little earlier, but it's you know, well in the
evening and we're doing appetizers, we're having fun. My mom says, so,
how's the turkey looking. I said, I'm going to get
to that. Now. What do you mean you're going to
(10:39):
get to it?
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Tanner?
Speaker 2 (10:40):
It's six pm. The turkey is still wrapped up, like
it's not even in a roasting tray. I mean it's
it was in the fridge, but it's in the fridge.
And so I learned a lot about timing a meal
back then. And I would say I'm significantly better at
cooking now because I have the opportunity to do things
like listen to flavor files.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
All right, Well, I I will also say that you
did a fabulous Thanksgiving meal one year later at the
age of fifteen, uh, because you were embarrassed and you learned.
Let's talk about being a good guest, a great guest.
First of all, I would say, don't bring food unless
you've cleared that with the host.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah. Absolutely, this is a big faux pas. Right, I've
invited you to come over. If you bring something, even
though I told you didn't need to, you're sort of
implying that I don't have dinner covered. And I mean
I invited you to Thanksgiving. If I didn't think I
could handle food, I wouldn't have invited you on the
biggest food day of the entire year, right, So don't
(11:41):
bring food if you weren't asked to. If you're asked
to do there's a couple of things I'd like to
bring if I'm asked to come right.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
One of the big ones is, you know, salad. I
love bringing a salad because a lot of people make
bad ones. I don't, So that's a great thing to bring.
Dessert that's a really great thing to bring. Some sort
of order, some kind of app those are really good
things to bring. One of my rules when I'm bringing
food is how do I bring something that doesn't require
(12:08):
anything from the host? That's really really important. You were
asked to make the burden of hosting easier, so don't
make it harder if you show up and you think, well,
I just need one burner. If I only have four
burners and I'm making my hot meal, you can't have one.
Oh I just need thirty minutes in the oven. Sure,
but my oven's full of mashed potatoes and stuffing and
(12:31):
pie and everything else. Right, So it's really best if
you bring something that doesn't require This is also okay,
this is a huge pet peeve for me. Do not
bring something and then immediately ask me if I have
a serving dish or if I have a serving bowl. No,
I don't have one that you can use, because I'm
doing it to serve all the other food I've been
(12:53):
making all day long. So part of agreeing to bring
something is bringing the implements required. Right, don't show up
with a whole bunch of cheese that needs to be
cut and some salami that needs to be cut. Show
up with a cutting board where all of that's done.
Then it's all laid out, and you can take that
cutting board back with you and your little tongs or whatever.
(13:13):
It's your responsibility to have everything with you, and a
note on the charcuterie board, because this is a I
have a friend and when he listens to this episode,
he'll know it's him. If you're a person who is
perpetually late, if you are an always late person, do
not volunteer to bring the charcuterie board, because halfway through
the meal, we'll have to get up and get some
(13:34):
of your appetizer. So we don't feel rude. And you
were rude. You were rude. If you're a late person,
you know you're a late person. Except who you are,
you're not going to change this Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is not
the day to turn your life around. Just accept you're
a late person and bring.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Pie, bring dessert. And by the way, you don't have
to make it. You touched on this on the first
segment tenor and I think it's a it's a cool thing.
People don't mind if you show up and say, Okay,
I'm bringing dessert. I brought these two pies. I know
this greatest little bakery. You guys are gonna love this.
People love that as much or more than if you
made it, unless you happen to be really fabulous at pie.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Yeah, a homemade is nice, good is better?
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Better, you know, a hot little bakery, then just use
that exactly right. Absolutely, you gave me a tip before
I went to a backyard party once. It wasn't quite
the same as Thanksgiving, but still it was a case
of if I wanted to bring something, and I said
to you, I don't want to just bring a bottle
of wine like this. You know it seems lame and
(14:41):
I don't know anything about wine. Okay, if I did
that make a difference. And you told me you love
the cocktail, the old fashioned Okay, so buy a bottle
of bourbon. Figure out the amounts. I poured it in
a bowl, and I figured out the amounts of everything
else I had to put in there with the bitters
and the simple syrup and the stuff it goes in,
and I mixed all that in the bowl, and then
(15:03):
I got the label off the bottle and I made
my own label and called it Jerry's Old Fashioned or
something like that. And then I took a final and
I poured that stuff back into the original, now re
labeled bottle. And then the cool thing is because I'd
added ingredients, I had a little bit of an Old
Fashioned left over for me, And then I took that
bottle and it was a hit. It was gone in
(15:24):
no time.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Absolutely. I mean I'm a little biased because a lot
of my recognition is for spirits and cocktails, you know,
so I do love wine. I drink a lot of wine,
but I would say, you know, when you show up
with a bottle of wine, you haven't made that you're
not necessarily involved. The other issue with the bottle of
wine is that you know, you can have really five servings,
(15:48):
maybe you can stretch it if everybody gets a little.
But when you brought that Old Fashioned, there's twelve old
fashions in a bottle, so you immediately have something that's
a lot more community focused. It's also nice because remember
I said earlier, you should have things that are already done.
If you've gotten old fashioned, if you bring it already done,
used to pour it over some ice and you're set
(16:09):
to go. So bringing the cocktail is a really wonderful one.
I just went to a dinner party a couple weeks ago.
I made up a cocktail. He's a incredibly respected chef,
so I'm glad he didn't ask me to bring a dish,
because look, we're friends, we're both great chefs, we have
some of the same awards. But still I was like, Okay, cool,
I don't have to worry about cooking. He's got that handled.
(16:30):
I'll bring the cocktail. And you know, if you're looking
for a cocktail idea the amuse boosh section, that's I
gave you the recipe for making it. You can do that.
It's really easy. And everybody likes the guy who brings booze.
Everybody likes that guy.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Okay, I would.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Also say about that. You know, one thing I love
about gifting bourbon or other spirits just quickly. Wine is
like a one time thing. I tell people all the time.
If you're gifting to clients, or to loved ones. I
love a bottle of spirits because nobody drinks a bottle
in one day unless they're a real professional like me
and my friends. So you can. It's a great thing
(17:07):
to buy a clienter as a thank you, because if
I give you a bottle of whiskey, and I've given
you whiskey as a present before, it's gonna take you
several times to drink it and to think about me
and our relationship and to enjoy that whiskey as opposed
to wine, which is a one night thing. So I
think spirits are a great gift period, making a cocktail
even better.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Okay, now this is a completely different part of being
a great guest at something like a Thanksgiving dinner, But
you had in your notes here go sit for a
minute at the kid's table. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Absolutely, I think kids. Lots of people say, oh, kids
are smarter than you think. They are smarter than you think.
I'm sort of surprised, you know, having a four year
old niece and talking to her and how much of
our previous conversation she's remembering or talking about. She'll ask me,
She's like, how's the new restaurant doing. Do you guys
still have that hill. There's a hill like a block
away that she likes to play on. I'm like, yeah,
(17:58):
don't worry, we still have the hill. So you know,
it's like kids can do that, and you know, talking
to kids, kids like attention from adults. They appreciate that.
I would say, it's also a really great excuse to
get away from that person who desperately wants to talk
to you about whatever hot button political topic you do
not want to talk about. The kids are a great
(18:20):
excuse to be like, you know, I really do have
to get back to I was just in a conversation
with her, but we'll catch up later, definitely, Uncle Dan.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah. Also, I guess with kids, this has been something
I've tried to do. Clue into when they're done talking
to you, because I'll tell you a quick question or
I tell you a quick little story about one of
your cousins. He was quite little and I was talking
to him and I was trying to draw something out
of him, so I kept asking him questions and finally
(18:51):
he just looked at me and said, look, I goed
where I goed. I dud what I did. I don't
want to talk about it. I knew, all right, we're done.
I guess done with this?
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, for sure, you know, and being a great guest
is about also trying to make the environment fun for
people working the room, talking to people, you know. Also,
the easiest way to make sure you get invited to
Thanksgiving or any other dinner party is as soon as
everything's done, can I do the dishes for you? Everybody
(19:25):
likes the person who does the dishes if if nothing else,
if you're like, oh man, I am the uncle Dan,
I brought up stuff. My wife specifically asked me not
to talk about. Then do the dishes and everyone will forget.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Okay. Have you ever, even though you are a professional
in terms of entertaining people with food, have you ever
just said, you know, I'm doing the paper plates, Like
I just don't want to do the dishes.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Uh. Yeah, So I would absolutely say. One of my
tips if you're hosting is you can absolutely get away
with just use paper plates. It's it's fine. I have
forever walked away from a great meal and been like,
I don't know why she didn't use that china she
keeps locked up in the cabinet. This is the one
day of the year.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
It's f Yeah. Well, the problem with that is that
it's the one day a year that it gets used,
and then she won't let you put it in the dishwasher.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Right, it all has to be hand washed. But that's
for Uncle Dan, you know, the controversial uncle. It's his
job to take care of the china.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
We're going to do a segment we will return to
a number of times this this show continues called Short
Order Cooking. I'll do ten questions and ten or will
give us ten answers in ten minutes. Okay, should I
briind my turkey?
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Actually, a lot of commercially available turkeys are already brind
for you, so you can look on the package to
see if it's already briind. Brining is basically putting some
salt water along with a whole bunch of herbs or
other seasonings together and then you just dump the bird
in there and let its hit overnight. Turkey should be briined.
They lose a lot of liquid as they're cooking, so
(20:57):
you should brind it. And as it loses some of
that water, that's gonna be those drippings that help you
build a really wonderful gravy. So yes, you should brind
your turkey. Even if a turkey comes brind, I like
to brind mine anyways, because I don't trust people to
use in a flavor when they brind.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Okay, now, earlier in the show, you said don't do
the stuffing in the bird because it means that you're
going to cook the bird too long. But do you
put aromatics in the bird when you're cooking?
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, it's popular for people to put rosemary, thyme, citrus
inside the bird. I'm never one hundred percent convinced that
that makes this huge difference unless you just, I mean
absolutely pack that with an incredible amount. What I find
is a lot better bang for my buck, both literally
and flavor wise. Is I like to soften butter, then
(21:47):
I will whip it with some of those same herbs.
I'll gently lift the skin, rub that butter underneath the skin.
Then as it's cooking, everything improves with butter. The butter
is also melting, keeping everything juicy, keep it rich, and
infusing it with that herb flavor.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
How do I know? Actually when the turkey is done
is as simple as sticking in a meat thermometer and
waiting for that right temperature to arrive.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Absolutely. Some of them come with that little red stopper,
so you can definitely use the red stopper. I would
prefer a meat thermometer. I don't know why more people
don't own meat thermometers. They're not expensive. You put them
in and then they'll beep when your food's done. One
thing I will tell you is everything'll tell you, oh,
turkey poultry, it has to be one sixty five. I
(22:30):
actually like to pull it out a little bit before,
maybe like one sixty maybe one fifty five if I'm
feeling brave. Because one thing people don't realize. Everything cooks
after you take it out. It's still cooking. It's called
carryover cooking. And if you pull it out at one
sixty five, your turkey could be hitting one seventy five.
That's how you get dry turkey. It's also, by the way,
(22:51):
how you get cracked pies. Pull things out a little
bit earlier than you think, and that's how you're able
to get better flavor.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Well, I learned that lesson you saved me. Actually, this
last Christmas, I decided to do a beef Wellington for everybody.
And when you've got everybody a big family group, and
you buy a tenderloin. It's big enough. It's really expensive.
I spent a lot of money on that meat, and
then I did all of the other things you do
with beef wellington. I won't go through it all, but
it's a lot of work. And I got it in
(23:19):
the oven, and you asked me what temperature I was
going for, and I told you and used it. Uh huh.
And then I was watching the thing, and then you
walked into the kitchen and you looked at that thermometer.
I thought it wasn't ready yet. You hauled it out
of the oven and put it on top of the stove,
and I walked over and watched that meat thermometer come
right up to about I think it stopped right around
the temperature that I wanted, so I would have overcooked it,
and that would have been pretty disappointing with something like that. Okay,
(23:43):
what do I do with the giblets?
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Yeah, I know that your opinion is just throw them away.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Yeah, well, but with that, I think.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
The giblets are great. You know, maybe the neck is
a little bit weird to work with, but I think
gibblets are great. What I like to do, especially liver heart,
things like that roast them. Just put them in the
other like underneath the turkey. It'll all cook. And then
what I like to do is I have to take
those I like to throw them in with my gravy
and then use an immersion blender, so it's like a
(24:11):
stick blender. You could use a regular blender. The gravy's
main flavor should be the turkey anyway, and this will
just bolster that. People will think, why is this turkey
gravy so much better than normal? And it's because you
use the giblets.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Okay, so they're a flavor enhancer in a sense, not
just here's a turkey heart.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yeah. I mean most people don't want to be served
a turkey heart, right, those people are wrong, But this
is an easier way to get the kids to eat it.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Okay, gotcha? What wine do you serve with a Thanksgiving dinner?
Speaker 2 (24:39):
If you want to go white, I would probably go
for a chardenay, you know, especially you know in the
US and Canada, really buttery Napa style shardenaise are popular.
But you could also use something that doesn't have all
that butter, because you already have a rich meal. I
would say peano, no war or Boujoulet, something coming out
of Burgundy. I really like. I like the fruit flavors.
I think it goes great with cranberries. I think is
(25:00):
great with those fall flavors, so I would probably go
with that.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
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Party Like It's sixteen ninety nine Tanner. What is pumpkin spice?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Pumpkin spice has no pumpkins in it. A lot of
people don't realize this. It is the spice is used
in a pumpkin pie. It's not defined. Actually, nobody so
everybody who makes pumpkin spice is making their pumpkin spice differently,
and I suggest that if you want to, you should
make your own pumpkin spice yourself. Spices don't last forever.
(26:09):
They do go bad. They can't expire the essential oils
that make them have that flavor. So I like to
know how fresh my pumpkin spice is. I like to
know that I'm not buying last year's overstock, that I'm
buying something that's fresh. I also like to blend it myself.
I'm a huge fan of green cardamom, so when we
make pumpkin spice in my restaurants, it's heavy on green
cardamom and less on nutmeg, because that's what we like.
(26:33):
But you might like something different, and you should empower
yourself to make it the way you like it best.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
What do you do to make the best use of
your leftovers?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
There's two things that are my favorite thing to do.
I guess the three things I love to do with leftovers.
One is the sandwich. I think everybody already knows this
one right, just sort of build the sandwich. But there's
two I think are really fun. One I really like
to sort of make a meal that uses them, but
in a new way, so it feels like a new meal.
(27:02):
Shepherd's pie is one I think is really great. Right,
you can take some stuffing it's a base, and you
can take some turkey, and you can take some green beans,
and you can sort of throw all of that stuff
in there. You top it with leftover mashed potatoes, although
frequently I don't have any leftover mashed potatoes because I'm
a bit of a glutton. But then you can put
that in the oven and then when you serve it,
(27:22):
it feels like I'm getting a brand new dish out
of the overused food. I also like to make curries
that way. Take some of those vegetables, take that turkey,
throw it in there with some curry seasonings, make up
a turkey with a little bit of rice, and the
next day, again, your meal feels fresh instead of feeling reheated.
(27:42):
And I find that people like that a lot better.
And those people are me.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
What are your tips then, since you're a glutton for
mashed potatoes, to make better mashed potatoes.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, So the biggest issue that people have with mashed
potatoes is really they don't think about how you need
to heat the cream first. So to make mashed potatoes great.
You know, if you like sort of I don't want
to say lumpy, that sounds bad. But if you like
sort of that more rustic, like actually mashed potatoes where
you get chunk of potato, that's cool. If you don't
(28:14):
like those, you can either press them through a sieve
or you can buy what's called a riser. They're not
very expensive and you just basically put the cooked potato in,
you spin it around and it forces the potato through
these tiny little holes so that it's really creamy. That's
how you make a classic palms pure. The whole thing
is that you have to keep it really, really hot,
So you need to have hot potatoes. You need to
(28:36):
have hot cream. If they're cold, they're not going to
blend into that really wonderful creamy texture.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
You're heating up the cream before you put it in
the potatoes.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Yeah, my cream, my butter, anything that's going in the potatoes.
I have getting hot on the side while my potatoes cook.
And then it's a race against the clock when I
make the mashed potatoes to put everything together as fast
as possible. But I said earlier, you can cook in advance.
You can. You can make mashed potatoes a day before
and have them taste amazing. But you have to make
sure that when you bring everything together, you're doing it
(29:07):
quickly so that you get the right texture.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
All right, Can you fix lumpy gravy?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
You can absolutely fix lumpy gravy. I talked about the
immersion blender earlier, the stick blender. You can just put
that in and it'll start to it'll chew up those
bits and really help get everything back how it needs
to be. Also, do not be shy to just bring
out a calendar and pour your gravy through it and
then just throw the lumps away and pretend you never
(29:33):
saw them.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Of course I don't have lumpy gravy. What would make
you think that?
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Absolutely? What is this my first time?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Anything? We're missing out on here?
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Yes, a lot of people don't think about music. Every
time you go into a restaurant. At least a good restaurant,
they have a carefully curated playlist, They know what they
want to put on. Think about your music ahead of time.
Don't just put your Spotify on shuffle and do not
trust it to someone you don't trust with vibe curation.
Put on something that you're going to be excited about
to listen to. Food taste better when good music is playing.
(30:06):
And Thomas Keller wrote this in his book, so you
know it's true because he's more famous than me.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Let's do over under here ten or take a look
at maybe ten different items that are common to a
lot of people's Thanksgiving dinner and whether these items are
overrated or underrated. All right, let's start with green bean casserole.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Overrated, absolutely overrated.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Well, I don't like green beans, so I can't really
properly weigh in on this. I'm sure, I'm sure somebody
who likes green beans can make a good one.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
So the problem is the green beans have to be blanched,
which is a separate cooking process, and then they have
to be mixed together, and people always use They always
mess up the blanche and then they always put on
canned cream of mushroom soup, and then they always bake
it in the oven for not the right amount of
time while they put fried onions on it to make
themselves think that this dish is going to be good.
Green Bean casserole is a overrated food. It's straight up
(30:56):
not that good, And this is your official permission to
just not make it this year. Just let it die,
send it to the great Thanksgiving in the sky.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
What are you going to do if somebody calls you
and you've been invited and they say tenor you make
great salads and everything? Can you bring the green bean casserole? No?
Speaker 2 (31:14):
I can't.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
What's the second suggestion? Okay, how about the cranberry sauce? Overrated? Underrated?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
I think cranberry sauce is overrated in how it's made.
That can of cranberry sauce is overrated. Good, proper cranberry
sauce made with fresh orange jest, freshra rosemary doesn't exist
on most people's table, so it can be good, but
as it served in culture today, it's definitely overrated.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Well, it's usually out of a can. I'll tell you
something that used to happen with my mother, your grandmother,
every time, every single time, because the only time we
ever had cranberry sauce was at a Thanksgiving, and I
guess she thought we had to have it, but then
because we didn't normally have it, she'd forget, and just
before dessert she'd go, oh, the cranberry sauce and she'd
drag it out and we'd have to sit there and
eat some crimeberry sauce all by itself.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, to make your mom feel better, you have to
eat a thing you didn't really like to begin it.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
That's right, Okay. Mashed potatoes overrated? Underrated?
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Could they be overrated? Is that possible? No?
Speaker 1 (32:15):
They can be badly made, and we talked about that
previous segment. But good mashed potatoes, you can't get enough.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
No, mashed potatoes are one of the pre eminent foods.
I eat mashed potatoes literally at every single opportunity. If
there is a mashed potato near me, it better watch out.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Are we going to say the same thing then about
mac and cheese?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Yes, but okay, I feel the same way about both
of them. I'm glad you bring that up. They should
only be trusted to the person you know who can
actually cook, right, I'm willing to accept, okay, on some
of the things at the table, I cannot condone bad
mashed potatoes or bad mac and cheese. And it might
be your aunt or your mom's thing. You need to
(33:00):
gently help them realize there are other things that could
be their thing. But the people who can't make mac
and cheese cannot be trusted with mac and cheese. It's
rude and it's wrong.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Okay, we're going to spend a minute on this, because
we're not talking about the famous mac and cheese that
comes out of a box, you know, craft dinner. It's
called in Canada or Kraft mac and Cheese. I think
it's called in the US. That's not what we're talking about.
Take a moment, and how would you make what you
consider to be a really good mac and cheese.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
So if I wanted to make a really good mac
and cheese and I wasn't really sure how to do that,
I would cheat. And what I would do is I
would go buy those fondue packets that show up the
holiday season every year, and I would take those and
I would put them in a pot with a little
bit of wine and kind of loosen it up, and
(33:52):
then I would just boil some pasta and I would
stir the two together and I would have this really
great white wine Swiss style mac and cheese. Because at
the end of the day, what I want is a
lot of cheese flavor. I want it really creamy, and
I don't want it dry. And this is the thing
that a lot of people mess up is they make
this mac and cheese and then they think that to
(34:14):
finish it off, what they should do is put more
cheese on it and bake it, and you end up
with this baked pasta that's dry. You know, you could
do this in your crock pot if you really wanted to.
But mac and cheese should be saucy and rich and indulgent.
You should feel a little bit bad about how much
mac and cheese you ate. That's the price. That's the
right amount of mac and cheese.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
I think that's the right amount of any kind of food.
But uh so it's the fondue packets. But they need
to be loosened up with a little bit of wine. Yeah,
and then it'll be great. Okay, they'll be too thick.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
That would be my cheat. If I don't want to
like google recipes and figure out how to actually make it,
that would be my hack.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Okay. Overrated or underrated sweet potatoes and marshmallows.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
You know, I really love sweet potatoes, but the sweet
potato and marshmallow thing I've never really understood. I think
it's overrated. If I never ate it again, I wouldn't notice.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Is it. You want to move on from that thing?
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Yeah, I'll move on. I have nothing else to say
about that food.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Okay, I think there's only one way to go here.
But again, it depends how it's made. I guess overrated
or underrated.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
The stuffing, Yeah, the stuffing is underrated. Stuffing is amazing.
It good bread, good herbs, good butter. How can you
not love stuffing? I mean, I think the stuffing is
is one of the highlights, and it's one of my
It's one of my favorite things to dig into every year.
I also think it's fun. You know. A great way
(35:40):
to make your stuffing better is to buy a variety
of different breads. Obviously, I own a restaurant called Rye,
so I'm pretty big on Rye. But getting a really
dark rich Rye, getting some you know, some more traditional
sour doughs, sort of blending these different breads together makes
the bites different. At our restaurant. You know, we also
(36:01):
make a corn bread stuffing, and we like to blend
in a lot of peppers, and we blend in a
lot of onions, so as you're eating it, it's more
of a Southwestern style than I might make for myself
at home. But the stuffing is like you can basically
limitlessly iterate on what is stuffing. It's basically bread that
you make soggy, that you toast so it's not soggy,
(36:22):
and that's it. So that's like the whole thing. What's
stuffing is so you can put in literally whatever you want.
And I don't know how you can take bread which
is the best, and then have the ability to do
whatever you want and then can somehow say that it's overrated.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
It's amazing, overrated, underrated Brussels sprouts.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
I would say. Other people would say that they're overrated,
and they give you gas and they don't taste that
good to begin with, So I could understand other people
having a bad Brussels sprout's opinion. But I find if
you take good Brussels sprouts and you give them a
little blanche, you know, hot water, really quick, then you
ice them down so they don't overcook, then you toss
(37:03):
them with everything, you stick them in the oven and
roast them. I think they're just absolutely these little baby cabbages.
They're sweet, they're rich, they taste amazing. I think they're
overrated to almost everyone. Except for me, and I find
them underrated. I'm excited to see Brussels sprouts.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Okay, but they're like a lot of things, and especially
that kind of a vegetable. Maybe people could go, I
don't really like them. I don't really like them, and
all of a sudden, somebody says, we'll try these, and
you go, wow, I never had them like that before,
So you need to put a little effort into figuring
out how to do them.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
I think, well, absolutely. It's also funny, you know, Brussels
sprouts are one of those foods that sort of get
this treatment. I made Brussels sprouts. Oh how'd you make them?
Speaker 1 (37:45):
So?
Speaker 2 (37:45):
I tossed them in molasses and then I added bacon.
They go, yeah, okay, all right, so what we're eating
some molasses and bacon like great? Like the it's sort
of like when you have a salad that has so
much dressing on it that it's sort of you know,
we're not really having vegetables anymore, we're based just having
hidden Valley ranch.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Okay. On your list of things overrated, underrated, the dinner roll, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Mean I just I just feel like I don't really
need the dinner roll, Like there's.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
So many hard Yes, you do no ceries.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
The butter, yeah, sure, I mean it's a butter delivery device.
I suppose so in that way, it's good. But there's
so many carves that are already on the table. You know.
I already have my potatoes, I already have mac and cheese.
Maybe I've got the sweet potatoes coming up. I'm about
to have pecan pie, your pumpkin pie. Like I have
so many starches that the role sort of feels like
(38:40):
if you're great at making rolls, if you're great at
making bread, or you have a really nice bread, it's
it's nice. But I do frequently feel that there's sort
of this tag on and we could let it.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Go, okay. I sort of made fun of my mom
a little earlier, your grandma with the cranberries. But nobody
made a better in a role than she did. I
would anybody. They were the best thing ever.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Yeah, and I wish that she was still here to
make some Then I would change my opinion. I would
change my opinion for pat all right.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
So, uh, very last thing. I don't know how you
could overrate it. The turkey.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
You know, obviously, it's like the centerpiece and everybody thinks
it's so important. If I went to a Thanksgiving and
somebody said, look, I'm just not passionate about turkey and
I just don't like it, and I've made this other
thing that I like better, I would not be mad.
I would absolutely be okay with having a Turkey list Thanksgiving.
(39:39):
I know it seems sacrilegious, but I would absolutely be
okay with it.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
All Right, we're having Ham, or we're having Prime Rib
or we're any.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Yeah, I mean, can I pick Prime Rib over Ham?
Speaker 1 (39:51):
All right? I'm Jerry Agark, He's Tanna Aegar, and I
hope you've enjoyed our first episode. And they'll join us
next week for Flavor Files
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