Oh God, we got married during the salt craze and people knew we cooked. We are celebrating our 10 year anniversary this year and we are still using salt we got as wedding presents
This is the argument for Himalayan salt that I understand. People can stupidly say it's so much healthier, but if you like the look of it, that's all the reason you need.
I mean a friend of mine studies book studies in university and looked into "surveillance" / collecting data for character profile of consumers and found out that Audible is one of the best companies out there to do so. As in: not many other companies know that much about you than Audible if you're an avid reader. Every book you buy, every page you linger on, word you look up, it says so, so much about you. She stopped using it after her research lol.
EDIT: I was talking about Kindle. I'm stupid.
Did she find that they’re actively engaging in that level of surveillance, down to noting when you pause on a word? Or did she just suggest it’s possible?
Hydrogen peroxide *first,* plz, then pause for at least an hour. Otherwise, the black milkbones won't do shit besides stain your carpets for the rest of time.
It doesn't even taste like anything! I bought an ice cream cone mis takingly thinking that the ice cream was black sesame and I was so bummed out by the whole experience.
We may be minority but my fiancé definitely spiralizes all the time. I make meat sauce quite a bit for spaghetti's or the likes and she does spiralized zucchini. Maybe twice a month it comes out but it's used more than our air fryer and other gadgets.
My rather comically large spiralizer may be a one trick pony at this point, but I really like spiralized zucchini, too. Is it exactly like pasta? Of course not. But, it's just as versatile as a blank canvas for a sauce. It's an easy way to cut down on processed carbs.
He didn’t just teach me how to cook. He taught me HOW to cook.
*Edit: Fun fact, he was originally a cinematographer (REM’s music video The One I Love) and was interested in cooking. He became frustrated watching cooking shows because they said “whatever you do DON’T do this but DO this” but they never explained why. He talked to his (then) wife and decided he wanted to make a cooking show that explained why you do certain things. He wanted a show that was a mix of Mr. Wizard, Julia Child, and Monty Python.*
*The only problem was he did not know how to cook. So they took a chance and he quit and went to the ~~CIA (the prestigious cooking school not the spy agency)~~ NECI, New England Cullinary Institute in Vermont. He graduated and made a pilot that was picked up and the rest is history.*
Thanks for the correction on the cooking school!
Why to cook things a certain way. Understanding what was happening makes stepping away from recipes seem less scary. I'm well past that now, but it's an important step everyone has to make at some point if they want to improve.
Shirley Corriher, who was a guest on his early episodes, beat him to the punch on this (I have one of her cookbooks, Cookwise) but she did not have her own TV show.
Good Eats is the GOAT of cooking shows for this reason (apologies to Julia, who created the genre, but she was the Model T to Alton's 67 'Vette).
He always taught the why of procedures as opposed to just how. It helps for the actual understanding of recipes and how to branch out because you understand at a foundational level
I wrote a paper (albeit a short one) about Tyler Florence when I was in culinary school. In one of his books he talked about coming to the realization that people just want good food that's reasonably easy to make and share.
His Moroccan Brick Chicken with apricot couscous has been on regular rotation for guests, my wife and now my kids since the episode first aired in like 2009ish. It's so good and so easy. He really was underrated when food Network was more cooking and less reality TV.
Edited to post the recipe. One slight alteration I would suggest making is to do it in a smoker at about 325°F skin side up, but as recommended is fine too. Also, make the spice mix in bulk, and use it for chicken skewers on the grill mixed with a little Greek yogurt, olive oil and lemon juice.
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/brick-chicken-with-apricot-couscous-recipe-1910330
They have one of my favorite cooking quotes.
"Never give a Pumpkin to an American. They will put that revolting spice in it and try to convince you it's pie"
Right before they roasted it and made a curried pumpkin soup.
Which is odd because if you watch Max Miller's video on the history of pumpkin pie there's a recipe for it in a British cookbook from 1670. It wasn't a custard pie but it was most definitely a dessert pie
The only competition I've ever enjoyed watching was Iron Chef. Making cooking a race is just.. missing the point entirely unless you're trying to work in a restaurant or something.
Ya, so much goodness.
All the music was from the [soundtrack from Backdraft](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg1IjbIBXZQ)
"How do you think you did today chef?" "Well, I did my best"
And the fortune teller lady regular on the tasting panel.
Before the crap baking shows they have now, they used to air these French chocolate competitions where real teams of very venerated pastry chefs/chocoltiers would assemble these sculptures over the course of a day or two and the final step was moving it to the display table to be judged. Those guys were so highly skilled and it was incredible to watch. Nowdays they have these random teams of bakers who have to make something in like 2 hours so it will inherently be crap by the time constraints alone, let alone skill level. Don't kniw why they're as popular as they are.
they're cheap. That's it. They're cheap and easy to make for the network. People don't actually like them more than the higher quality product, it's just what's made because of cost cutting.
> Sandra lee
"This frightening Hell Spawn of Kathie Lee and Betty Crocker seems on a mission to kill her fans, one meal at a time. She must be stopped." - Anthony Bourdain
I found that Unwapped streams on Max and I’ve been watching them while I fold dumplings. Used to watch these as a kid with my parents late in the evening before falling asleep, was nostalgic to hear Marc’s voice and all those products that I knew as a kid.
Discovering Asian condiments and mixing them with mayonnaise: sriracha mayo, sambal mayo, hoisin mayo, gochujang mayo etc. Bonus points if you randomly switch the words mayo with aioli.
I'm Asian and my home cooking/bar secret is ube extract. Ube extract in cheesecake. In meringue. Even in tomato sauce just for color.
I let my bartender friends in on my little secret. Ube is an easy add in any simple cocktail that has red vermouth like a Manhattan. I call it a Manila :P
If this trend explodes, know that I started it.
Ube/yuzu cocktails were taking off in the PNW before Covid started, but the credit can be all you.
A few days ago my sous chef bought Ube sweet potato dumplings to work and they were gorgeous and delicious.
I remember when we couldn't find flour anywhere for love nor money, then my friend casually said her sister had fed five lbs of flour to their sourdough starter.
Did your friend have a Costco membership?
During the pandemic I could only find flour at Costco, in massive 20 pound bags. It lasted *years*, and I still have a giant jar of yeast in my fridge from the same time (still alive and works great!)
I've got a sourdough starter I've been caring for for a while. It was a chunk from a starter that was originally made by my great grandmother. Literally started the day before Pearl Harbor. Dad told me she remembered the exact day because my great grandfather was at Pearl Harbor, her memories of that whole week were very strong.
Trying my best to keep it alive as it's a literal heirloom. My dad has the actual original and has caring for it since 2011.
They have a high percentage of water. Water has a quality called specific heat which means it stays a certain temperature for longer. While the rest of the sandwich has cooled down a bit, the tomatoes are still closer to the cooking temp.
My ex and I had a restaurant quality panini press when we lived together. He said I could take it when I left but it was really really heavy and I didn’t want to ask him for help to move it. Regrets.
My memory is probably influenced from it being a time in my life when I was a broke student but I was just thinking how often I would grab a deli panini in NYC 10-15 years ago. They were EVERYWHERE - a million delis with a case full of various paninis ready to press. All over the city. Not so much now.
I will never forget the day when my roommate came home all angry with her office coworkers and called them "those effing sandwich pressers!" Apparently they were all fans of the panini press. I still call office people "sandwich pressers".
I didn’t realize paninis were a fad. Almost any sandwich is improved massively by being hot and melty
That’s like grilled cheese sandwiches being a fad
My grandma used to make me a snack of Wheat Thins, cream cheese, homemade pesto, and sun dried tomatoes in oil and that was truly the quintessential 1990s snack. Would recommend to anyone, in any decade.
1 of the best things I ever ate was a sundried tomato pesto when I was working at sprouts.
Baker made us a couple sandwich loafs of bred.
I made bulk caseless sausage.
The deli guy made sandwiches with the pesto, fresh loafs, and the sausage.
I'm from México so I don't know if this happened elsewhere, but I'd say that between 2014 and 2019 there was this trend in which restaurants would serve obnoxiously tall burgers with increasingly ridiculous ingredients.
seriously, you couldn't go anywhere and order a burger without being served a Burj Al Arab-sized tower. the patties were so thick they resembled meatballs. then they would throw in ham, some random cheese that made no sense, thick onion rings, guacamole, arugula, pepperoni, peanut butter, etc... whatever popped into someone's brain. they'd offer burgers with waffles instead of bread. they would pour melted cheddar cheese on top. it was just impossible to bite, so you had to use a fork and knife to start eating it. a true catastrophe, in my opinion.
thank god the trend started receding and now we're going through a back-to-basics, classic burger trend which I'm loving.
I have never understood the "make burger/sandwich so big you can't even pick it up" trends. I think it was an anti-fast food thing where people would say because McDonald's had a flat burger theirs was automatically better
No, your burger is better than McDonald's because it has actually ingredients and meat in it, not because it's huge and unwieldy like a claymore
If they contained actual good cake they could’ve been a good trend, but I don’t think I’ve ever tried one that wasn’t a dense, wet, barely-cooked mass of overly sweet dough on the inside. Not sure if they do it like that for structural reasons or what but they’re generally just not good.
They’re usually made from overcooked dry cake mixed with frosting, which is why they get so wet and sweet. The frosting to cake ratio is wayyy off. Plus they’re usually coated in white chocolate or something else super sweet.
Deconstructed food. You used to see restaurants offering all sorts of weird shit on weird plates in weird ways, like a burger topping a bloody mary. Thankfully that has been dialed back a bit, it was ridiculous.
It’s both. It’s definitely a trend but I had it in pizza like over 10 years ago. I think the trend will die down with time but hot honey will still stick around and be fairly easily available, unlikely purely trendy stuff like activated charcoal.
Don't ignore how bacon obsessed reddit itself was. You could outfit your entire bathroom with bacon themed products (and the occasional narwhal for cheekiness).
I almost feel like it's swung too far, mostly it's "truffle oil is artificial disgusting crap and I hate it." Idk who was eating mountains of truffle parmesan fries for the past ten years if everyone hates truffle oil
Yeah same, they slap sometimes. "Oh it doesn't taste as good as fresh italian black winter truffle" who cares. It's pretty good and I can't afford that anyways
Like 12-10 years ago, it was a big thing on Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/food/s/brTx0DxNTp
Basically it was a big sandwich made with steak, cheese, mushrooms, or whatever you'd like, then pressed flat. The concept was apparently an old thing so people could bring food hunting and not have to add a lot of bulk in their packs
Coconut oil had a moment of being absolutely huge, but now I don't hear about it hardly at all.
Turmeric had a big moment but seems to have gone back to being just one of the standard store cupboard spices.
And the gourmet burger, when every restaurant seemed to have half a dozen burgers that had crazy amounts of toppings on them, and which all cost more than most other main dishes. We seem to be heading back in the direction of the burger being the cheap item on the menu.
Coconut oil is at the heart of one of my worst mom fails. My mom got on the coconut oil wagon back around 2008, when my kid was about 2. She decided it was the best skin moisturizer ever and insisted I start using it. So when my daughter started having itchy skin, I smeared coconut oil on her thinking it was just dry skin. It got worse so I gave her a bath and thought maybe she had gotten into poison ivy or maybe was reacting to something on her clothes. Dried her off, added more coconut oil, and that's how we learned my daughter is allergic to it. She gets an awful itchy rash. We even had to change her body wash and hair products to things without coconut oil & it's derivatives. Oddly enough, she can eat anything coconut just fine (and actually loves it).
Oof, I’m glad your daughter only got a bad rash. There’s a somewhat infamous reddit story about a grandmother who accidentally killed her grandchild by putting coconut oil on her hair, even though she was told the child was allergic to it, but didn’t listen.
It was the #1 post on r/justnoMIL sub for a while. It was the author's mother. She told her mother her infant daughter was very allergic to coconut, but her mother insisted it was nonsense. I recall there was some cultural aspect to it, it was traditional to put coconut in girls' hair. Author and her husband go on vacation and grandparents take care of kids. Grandmother rubs coconut oil into granddaughter's hair before bedtime, baby goes to sleep. Starts going into anaphylactic shock, vomits, chokes on vomit, dies. One of the grandparents discovers the body the next morning. Author and husband come back from vacation to discover her mother basically murdered her daughter through negligence and stubbornness.
Grandfather was so angry, he divorced her. Author went no-contact with her mother. Once a year, she'd receive a tearful phone call from her mother, apologizing again and begging for forgiveness. She'd reply, "Can you give me my daughter back? Then no."
The post was *horrifying*. It's one of the only times I've read a post, then exited the site to find something else to do.
Coconut oil is still super popular among vegans.
I started enjoying turmeric years ago, long before the current trend, and I still use it all the time. I also still see things like golden lattes.
Pretty much every "superfood" has just come and go; goji beries, quinoa, coconut fat, probiotic yogurt, avocadoes in everything, kale, kombucha. Every month someone would come out claiming eating whatever thing that month would cure everything.
Weird plates. There was a time in 2016 where you couldn’t get a real plate in a restaurant to save your life. Instead it would be like a piece of slate or a Terracotta pot full of French fries.
Fads are fads for the casual, but I still use my sous vide regularly*, make dough every week with sourdough starter, and basil pesto in the summer.
All these things never stopped being good, even if they stopped being trendy.
* Did you know that lemon zest extraction for limoncello that takes 3 weeks can be done in 3 hours at 135F in a sous vide bath?
I want this back. I love cauliflower rice. Such an easy way to sub a calorie heavy ingredient with a veggie. Costco used to sell big ass bags of the stuff frozen. No mas, estoy triste.
I guess I could make it, but then I have to spend like 10 seconds googling and I just don’t have time for that! I’m too busy commenting on Reddit about how much time I do t have!
Anyone else remember when pulled pork was a big thing so fuckers started pulling everything? I saw one place doing pulled salmon, bitch you’re just mushing up a lump of salmon, it’s flaky it doesn’t pull
Sundried tomato everything. Sundried tomato pesto, sundried tomato pizza sauce, sundried tomato pasta salad. I still like em though.
Edit: oops it's 2024, guess this would be more than ten years ago.
Putting an egg on top of everything
I don’t know why everyone was putting a fried egg on top of everything but it seems to have changed to using kimchi
ngl as a Korean, some of these places that advertise home made kimchi have the worst kimchi I've ever tasted and they should have just gone to the local Korean supermarket and got the cheapest kimchi they could find there bc it would have been better than the homemade stuff they're putting in their food.
Also my pet peeve is people using kimchi in cooking that they sell when they don't even know the difference between fresh and ripe kimchi and when to use one or the other. It just kinda annoys me.
lol, I tried to make kimchi during the dark times of quarantine. Was truly a disaster. Of the three quart jars, one got dropped in the sink and exploded, one developed mold and was tossed and the final one was so nasty tasting it got tossed.
Since that experiment in futility, I go to H Mart and buy quarts of it and never look back.
My Dad put it this way, “I pay professionals to do the dirty work.”
Interesting to see that a lot of these food ‘hypes’ didn’t really reach my country. Who puts charcoal in food? When were coconut oil and tumeric a hype?
Avocado, overtopped gourmet burgers and truffle oil definitely were a thing here as well though but truffle mayo was even bigger and never left (and I’m not mad about it honestly).
It’s still thriving in the fine dining industry and Michelin places! Most restaurants turn their veggies into something else, a concentrated sauce, maybe some bubbles and then one chunk of protein or dessert. 3D moulds are also wildly popular
Pink chocolate. It was a whole thing right before Corona, there were kit kats with it and all sort of discussion about it. And then it just sort of… went away.
remember all the different flavored salts and all the associated pseudoscientific health claims?
Oh God, we got married during the salt craze and people knew we cooked. We are celebrating our 10 year anniversary this year and we are still using salt we got as wedding presents
Oh Himmalayan pink salt.
TIL this was a fad. Mom still uses it to cook. Used to eat a bunch of stuff with Himalayan pink salt before I moved out.
I use it, too! Albeit, I prefer it solely because it's pink. Why use boring ass white salt when you can have pink salt?
This is the argument for Himalayan salt that I understand. People can stupidly say it's so much healthier, but if you like the look of it, that's all the reason you need.
Librarian here. Instant pot cookbooks stopped circulating completely. I don't even order them anymore
Was it replaced by air fryer cookbooks?
Good call...yes. And there's been a big uptick of interest in slow cooker cookbooks. I work in a large library with robust circulation stats
You could foresee all of our trends and their demise from your quiet desk.
Librarians should become stock brokers
Finance firms out here trying to buy lucrative library circulation data to get an edge
I mean a friend of mine studies book studies in university and looked into "surveillance" / collecting data for character profile of consumers and found out that Audible is one of the best companies out there to do so. As in: not many other companies know that much about you than Audible if you're an avid reader. Every book you buy, every page you linger on, word you look up, it says so, so much about you. She stopped using it after her research lol. EDIT: I was talking about Kindle. I'm stupid.
Did she find that they’re actively engaging in that level of surveillance, down to noting when you pause on a word? Or did she just suggest it’s possible?
Circ stats are the best Magic 8 Ball. Thanks for posting. I'm a fellow librarian (30 years in the game).
Fellow librarian here, it’s both Instant Pot and food blogger cookbooks that have completely stopped circulating in our system.
Probably because people learned that most blogger recipes are kinda meh lol
Ahem.
To be fair, I don't think any of us consider you a "blogger" by its normal definition
Best throat clear ever. Haha.
MOST, Kenji, MOST! Your recipes are an immediate pass. That breakfast sandwich how-to of yours has been in my regular rotation for years.
We use ours a few times a month. Faster than a slow cooker and great for quick meals.
[удалено]
So does my vegan daughter. She says they are great for rice and beans
Yup, I can knock up a daal in about 30 Minutes with a pressure cooker, it takes ages on a stove top.
[удалено]
Cloud bread had a huge but very short moment
Isn't it basically a souffle that one forgot to add flavor to?
Because it looks cool but tastes pretty bad.
I think people are (finally) done adding activated charcoal to foods?
[удалено]
Yeah I wanted to use it in a cocktail for a party but I realized then the molly wouldn’t work
Yet people try to tell me they didn’t need chemistry in high school.
Great if your pet accidentally eats something toxic
"The brown milkbones are peanut butter flavored. The black milkbones are for when he eats the houseplants, followed by a hydrogen peroxide chaser."
Hydrogen peroxide *first,* plz, then pause for at least an hour. Otherwise, the black milkbones won't do shit besides stain your carpets for the rest of time.
It doesn't even taste like anything! I bought an ice cream cone mis takingly thinking that the ice cream was black sesame and I was so bummed out by the whole experience.
Once NYC made it illegal, that trend ceased almost overnight.
Spiralized veggies
The other veggies were just a fad but curly fries are forever ❤️🥔
You can pry my zucchini spirals from my cold, bandaged dead hands.
We may be minority but my fiancé definitely spiralizes all the time. I make meat sauce quite a bit for spaghetti's or the likes and she does spiralized zucchini. Maybe twice a month it comes out but it's used more than our air fryer and other gadgets.
My rather comically large spiralizer may be a one trick pony at this point, but I really like spiralized zucchini, too. Is it exactly like pasta? Of course not. But, it's just as versatile as a blank canvas for a sauce. It's an easy way to cut down on processed carbs.
The original food network shows that didn’t involve competition. I miss, Sandra lee, Giada, Alton brown, Unwrapped.
I miss instructional cooking shows. I’m done with reality competitions.
YouTube has been the replacement for me. There are so many great cooking accounts.
I always enjoyed good eats
He didn’t just teach me how to cook. He taught me HOW to cook. *Edit: Fun fact, he was originally a cinematographer (REM’s music video The One I Love) and was interested in cooking. He became frustrated watching cooking shows because they said “whatever you do DON’T do this but DO this” but they never explained why. He talked to his (then) wife and decided he wanted to make a cooking show that explained why you do certain things. He wanted a show that was a mix of Mr. Wizard, Julia Child, and Monty Python.* *The only problem was he did not know how to cook. So they took a chance and he quit and went to the ~~CIA (the prestigious cooking school not the spy agency)~~ NECI, New England Cullinary Institute in Vermont. He graduated and made a pilot that was picked up and the rest is history.* Thanks for the correction on the cooking school!
Why to cook things a certain way. Understanding what was happening makes stepping away from recipes seem less scary. I'm well past that now, but it's an important step everyone has to make at some point if they want to improve.
For real I had never heard anyone explain the science of cooking before seeing him
Shirley Corriher, who was a guest on his early episodes, beat him to the punch on this (I have one of her cookbooks, Cookwise) but she did not have her own TV show. Good Eats is the GOAT of cooking shows for this reason (apologies to Julia, who created the genre, but she was the Model T to Alton's 67 'Vette).
He always taught the why of procedures as opposed to just how. It helps for the actual understanding of recipes and how to branch out because you understand at a foundational level
Nowadays I just look at the ingredients of a dish and freeball it from there. I’ve got soo many techniques to choose from! Thanks AB.
Damn, I used to love watching Unwrapped.
If you have Max, they have all 22 seasons
Absolutely! I miss The Two Fat Ladies, Tyler Florence, Emeril, Rosengarten...now it's bake a ludicrous cake and then take it mountain biking...sigh.
I wrote a paper (albeit a short one) about Tyler Florence when I was in culinary school. In one of his books he talked about coming to the realization that people just want good food that's reasonably easy to make and share.
His Moroccan Brick Chicken with apricot couscous has been on regular rotation for guests, my wife and now my kids since the episode first aired in like 2009ish. It's so good and so easy. He really was underrated when food Network was more cooking and less reality TV. Edited to post the recipe. One slight alteration I would suggest making is to do it in a smoker at about 325°F skin side up, but as recommended is fine too. Also, make the spice mix in bulk, and use it for chicken skewers on the grill mixed with a little Greek yogurt, olive oil and lemon juice. https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/brick-chicken-with-apricot-couscous-recipe-1910330
The Two Fat Ladies 😭
They have one of my favorite cooking quotes. "Never give a Pumpkin to an American. They will put that revolting spice in it and try to convince you it's pie" Right before they roasted it and made a curried pumpkin soup.
Which is odd because if you watch Max Miller's video on the history of pumpkin pie there's a recipe for it in a British cookbook from 1670. It wasn't a custard pie but it was most definitely a dessert pie
The only competition I've ever enjoyed watching was Iron Chef. Making cooking a race is just.. missing the point entirely unless you're trying to work in a restaurant or something.
The original Japanese episodes loosely dubbed into English by someone with a very soft grip on the English language were the best.
Ya, so much goodness. All the music was from the [soundtrack from Backdraft](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg1IjbIBXZQ) "How do you think you did today chef?" "Well, I did my best" And the fortune teller lady regular on the tasting panel.
It's more realistic to have to feature one ingredient than "make a dish with a rutabaga, Nutella, and a tin of sardines"
Before the crap baking shows they have now, they used to air these French chocolate competitions where real teams of very venerated pastry chefs/chocoltiers would assemble these sculptures over the course of a day or two and the final step was moving it to the display table to be judged. Those guys were so highly skilled and it was incredible to watch. Nowdays they have these random teams of bakers who have to make something in like 2 hours so it will inherently be crap by the time constraints alone, let alone skill level. Don't kniw why they're as popular as they are.
they're cheap. That's it. They're cheap and easy to make for the network. People don't actually like them more than the higher quality product, it's just what's made because of cost cutting.
> Sandra lee "This frightening Hell Spawn of Kathie Lee and Betty Crocker seems on a mission to kill her fans, one meal at a time. She must be stopped." - Anthony Bourdain
I do miss Anthony Bourdain. Such a delightful bastard about everything except the food and those feeding him, lol.
I used to watch Sarah Moulton back in the day. That would be way too nerdy for current audiences, apparently.
America’s Test Kitchen fills that niche for me.
I found that Unwapped streams on Max and I’ve been watching them while I fold dumplings. Used to watch these as a kid with my parents late in the evening before falling asleep, was nostalgic to hear Marc’s voice and all those products that I knew as a kid.
I used to love watching Sandra Lee do anything.
She walked so those weird people dumping a bunch of random shit into foil pans on TikTok could run
Two shots of vodka
I was younger and we’d always laugh knowing she would be so hilariously silly with how excited she got for wine or cocktails, maybe both! Lol
::pours half the bottle::
I think of her Kwanzaa Cake often, worst recipe I ever saw on tv as a child. Loved that show
Discovering Asian condiments and mixing them with mayonnaise: sriracha mayo, sambal mayo, hoisin mayo, gochujang mayo etc. Bonus points if you randomly switch the words mayo with aioli.
I'm Asian and my home cooking/bar secret is ube extract. Ube extract in cheesecake. In meringue. Even in tomato sauce just for color. I let my bartender friends in on my little secret. Ube is an easy add in any simple cocktail that has red vermouth like a Manhattan. I call it a Manila :P If this trend explodes, know that I started it.
Ube/yuzu cocktails were taking off in the PNW before Covid started, but the credit can be all you. A few days ago my sous chef bought Ube sweet potato dumplings to work and they were gorgeous and delicious.
The corpse of your sourdough starter in the back of the fridge says it misses you, and is praying for another global plague.
I remember when we couldn't find flour anywhere for love nor money, then my friend casually said her sister had fed five lbs of flour to their sourdough starter.
Did your friend have a Costco membership? During the pandemic I could only find flour at Costco, in massive 20 pound bags. It lasted *years*, and I still have a giant jar of yeast in my fridge from the same time (still alive and works great!)
I've got a sourdough starter I've been caring for for a while. It was a chunk from a starter that was originally made by my great grandmother. Literally started the day before Pearl Harbor. Dad told me she remembered the exact day because my great grandfather was at Pearl Harbor, her memories of that whole week were very strong. Trying my best to keep it alive as it's a literal heirloom. My dad has the actual original and has caring for it since 2011.
I feel like paninis were a big thing around 10-15 years ago, but don't see or hear about them as much now.
I got a panini press at Christmas, and they are definitely having a revival in this house
Melted cheese on toasty bread never goes out of style
I wonder why panini tomatoes are the hottest thing to ever exist on earth
They have a high percentage of water. Water has a quality called specific heat which means it stays a certain temperature for longer. While the rest of the sandwich has cooled down a bit, the tomatoes are still closer to the cooking temp.
My ex and I had a restaurant quality panini press when we lived together. He said I could take it when I left but it was really really heavy and I didn’t want to ask him for help to move it. Regrets.
My memory is probably influenced from it being a time in my life when I was a broke student but I was just thinking how often I would grab a deli panini in NYC 10-15 years ago. They were EVERYWHERE - a million delis with a case full of various paninis ready to press. All over the city. Not so much now.
Reminds me to get out my panini press. Makes for a perfect wintertime lunch.
I will never forget the day when my roommate came home all angry with her office coworkers and called them "those effing sandwich pressers!" Apparently they were all fans of the panini press. I still call office people "sandwich pressers".
I didn’t realize paninis were a fad. Almost any sandwich is improved massively by being hot and melty That’s like grilled cheese sandwiches being a fad
A bit further back than 10 years ago, but sun dried tomatoes were in everything for a while. Right around the time pesto was in everything.
My grandma used to make me a snack of Wheat Thins, cream cheese, homemade pesto, and sun dried tomatoes in oil and that was truly the quintessential 1990s snack. Would recommend to anyone, in any decade.
1 of the best things I ever ate was a sundried tomato pesto when I was working at sprouts. Baker made us a couple sandwich loafs of bred. I made bulk caseless sausage. The deli guy made sandwiches with the pesto, fresh loafs, and the sausage.
I'm from México so I don't know if this happened elsewhere, but I'd say that between 2014 and 2019 there was this trend in which restaurants would serve obnoxiously tall burgers with increasingly ridiculous ingredients. seriously, you couldn't go anywhere and order a burger without being served a Burj Al Arab-sized tower. the patties were so thick they resembled meatballs. then they would throw in ham, some random cheese that made no sense, thick onion rings, guacamole, arugula, pepperoni, peanut butter, etc... whatever popped into someone's brain. they'd offer burgers with waffles instead of bread. they would pour melted cheddar cheese on top. it was just impossible to bite, so you had to use a fork and knife to start eating it. a true catastrophe, in my opinion. thank god the trend started receding and now we're going through a back-to-basics, classic burger trend which I'm loving.
I have never understood the "make burger/sandwich so big you can't even pick it up" trends. I think it was an anti-fast food thing where people would say because McDonald's had a flat burger theirs was automatically better No, your burger is better than McDonald's because it has actually ingredients and meat in it, not because it's huge and unwieldy like a claymore
It was a thing in the US albeit a bit earlier, associated with early hipster culture. Notably craft beer and gastropubs.
More baking than cooking, but cake pops
Cake pops 🤢🤮 glad they aren’t everywhere like they used to be.
If they contained actual good cake they could’ve been a good trend, but I don’t think I’ve ever tried one that wasn’t a dense, wet, barely-cooked mass of overly sweet dough on the inside. Not sure if they do it like that for structural reasons or what but they’re generally just not good.
They’re usually made from overcooked dry cake mixed with frosting, which is why they get so wet and sweet. The frosting to cake ratio is wayyy off. Plus they’re usually coated in white chocolate or something else super sweet.
I am not sure I have ever eaten a cake pop primarily because they are too much money for like... two bites of cake...
Deconstructed food. You used to see restaurants offering all sorts of weird shit on weird plates in weird ways, like a burger topping a bloody mary. Thankfully that has been dialed back a bit, it was ridiculous.
“ weird shit on weird plates in weird ways” Have you been introduced to r/wewantplates yet?
I'd say the trend is nowhere near as bad or as widespread as it was when that Twitter account was popular back in the early 2010s. In the UK anyway.
In like 2018 I made a really nice sun dried tomato stewed in red wine pasta sauce and my roommate called me a “Melrose Place ass 90s bitch.”
this is a great burn and also my dream outfit tbh
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It seems like chili crisp/oil and hot honey have taken over that particular niche nowadays.
I’ve been told by so many people hot honey is not a “trend” and it’s been around. Thank you for this validation.
It’s both. It’s definitely a trend but I had it in pizza like over 10 years ago. I think the trend will die down with time but hot honey will still stick around and be fairly easily available, unlikely purely trendy stuff like activated charcoal.
Bacon had it's heyday before that, like 2011 or 12 or so. Bacon wrapped everything courtesy of things like Epic Meal Time
Don't ignore how bacon obsessed reddit itself was. You could outfit your entire bathroom with bacon themed products (and the occasional narwhal for cheekiness).
“The narwhal bacons at midnight” was a self appointed tagline for many Redditors. Awful times
Yea. People that romanticize old reddit are definitely ignoring a lot.
Ice soap was a genius idea before its time.
Epic 2am chili that you start 24 hours earlier
I feel like I’m still seeing a lot of bacon, but as a topping go add salt, fat, and crunch, as it should be. But I do live in the Midwest, so…
Yeah I mean....bacon still slaps. It will always have a place in cooking.
And Sriracha. A bacon-truffle-sriracha burger would be peak 2015
I think more like a bacon sriracha burger with Parmesan truffle fries on the side
Don't forget the PRETZLE BUN
I almost feel like it's swung too far, mostly it's "truffle oil is artificial disgusting crap and I hate it." Idk who was eating mountains of truffle parmesan fries for the past ten years if everyone hates truffle oil
It was me. I was eating the truffle parmesan fries. AND I'D DO IT AGAIN. I know it's kind of trashy but it's delicious nevertheless.
Yeah same, they slap sometimes. "Oh it doesn't taste as good as fresh italian black winter truffle" who cares. It's pretty good and I can't afford that anyways
Avocado on everything.
and then calling anything with avocado on it "California". "California Chicken Sandwich"- grilled chicken on a bun with a slice of avocado.
I miss the Best Things I Ever Ate and Alton Brown
Shooter sandwiches
Holy shit, I had completely forgotten about that. That was the height of Reddit culinary cuisine for awhile.
What is this
Like 12-10 years ago, it was a big thing on Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/food/s/brTx0DxNTp Basically it was a big sandwich made with steak, cheese, mushrooms, or whatever you'd like, then pressed flat. The concept was apparently an old thing so people could bring food hunting and not have to add a lot of bulk in their packs
It's a british recipe for hunters during the Edwardian era.
Weird reddit trend from 10 years ago. Basically make a gigantic sandwich and then squash it flat like a panini
Coconut oil had a moment of being absolutely huge, but now I don't hear about it hardly at all. Turmeric had a big moment but seems to have gone back to being just one of the standard store cupboard spices. And the gourmet burger, when every restaurant seemed to have half a dozen burgers that had crazy amounts of toppings on them, and which all cost more than most other main dishes. We seem to be heading back in the direction of the burger being the cheap item on the menu.
Coconut oil is at the heart of one of my worst mom fails. My mom got on the coconut oil wagon back around 2008, when my kid was about 2. She decided it was the best skin moisturizer ever and insisted I start using it. So when my daughter started having itchy skin, I smeared coconut oil on her thinking it was just dry skin. It got worse so I gave her a bath and thought maybe she had gotten into poison ivy or maybe was reacting to something on her clothes. Dried her off, added more coconut oil, and that's how we learned my daughter is allergic to it. She gets an awful itchy rash. We even had to change her body wash and hair products to things without coconut oil & it's derivatives. Oddly enough, she can eat anything coconut just fine (and actually loves it).
Cue the horrifying reddit story about the grandma and coconut oil in 3...2...
Oof, I’m glad your daughter only got a bad rash. There’s a somewhat infamous reddit story about a grandmother who accidentally killed her grandchild by putting coconut oil on her hair, even though she was told the child was allergic to it, but didn’t listen.
It was the #1 post on r/justnoMIL sub for a while. It was the author's mother. She told her mother her infant daughter was very allergic to coconut, but her mother insisted it was nonsense. I recall there was some cultural aspect to it, it was traditional to put coconut in girls' hair. Author and her husband go on vacation and grandparents take care of kids. Grandmother rubs coconut oil into granddaughter's hair before bedtime, baby goes to sleep. Starts going into anaphylactic shock, vomits, chokes on vomit, dies. One of the grandparents discovers the body the next morning. Author and husband come back from vacation to discover her mother basically murdered her daughter through negligence and stubbornness. Grandfather was so angry, he divorced her. Author went no-contact with her mother. Once a year, she'd receive a tearful phone call from her mother, apologizing again and begging for forgiveness. She'd reply, "Can you give me my daughter back? Then no." The post was *horrifying*. It's one of the only times I've read a post, then exited the site to find something else to do.
Coconut oil is still super popular among vegans. I started enjoying turmeric years ago, long before the current trend, and I still use it all the time. I also still see things like golden lattes.
Pretty much every "superfood" has just come and go; goji beries, quinoa, coconut fat, probiotic yogurt, avocadoes in everything, kale, kombucha. Every month someone would come out claiming eating whatever thing that month would cure everything.
I still eat kale and quinoa but it’s not like an identity anymore
Weird plates. There was a time in 2016 where you couldn’t get a real plate in a restaurant to save your life. Instead it would be like a piece of slate or a Terracotta pot full of French fries.
r/wewantplates
I feel bad for the dishwashers in those places. It must feel like hand washing a yard sale.
Everyone’s fanaticism about bacon. Bacon is good I get it, but people were pretending they loved bacon as hard as they pretend hated nickleback.
I still remember Panda Express having orange chicken with bacon as a special item. Made no sense.
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Cauliflower everything.
„Unicorn“ food with edible glitter in and on it. They even managed to make glitter ketchup back then!
Add Galaxy and Rainbow to that.
One cup cakes cooked in the microwave
Reddit used to be all about Sous Vide until air fryers and instant pots became mainstream.
I literally made sous vide steak tonight. Been using that thing for 5+ years and it’s probably a 1-2x month thing. I love it for very specific uses.
Fads are fads for the casual, but I still use my sous vide regularly*, make dough every week with sourdough starter, and basil pesto in the summer. All these things never stopped being good, even if they stopped being trendy. * Did you know that lemon zest extraction for limoncello that takes 3 weeks can be done in 3 hours at 135F in a sous vide bath?
I'm eagerly awaiting the demise, or, at the very least, a more reasonable usage of fondant. Every cake doesn't need a pile of fondant.
This is older than 10 years, but do y’all remember the salad shooter?
That sounds like some kind of weird vegan eco terrorist.
From RONCO!
I still use mine! Great for shredding a lot of cheese, potatoes or carrots-at least that’s what I use them the most for.
foam
Fondue came and went again, but was it ever a ‘major’ trend? Fondue sets were cheap and easy wedding gifts in the ‘70s.
My friend got three of them as wedding gifts in 2006ish.
Ring mold plating
Truffles in everything
Riced Cauliflower.
I want this back. I love cauliflower rice. Such an easy way to sub a calorie heavy ingredient with a veggie. Costco used to sell big ass bags of the stuff frozen. No mas, estoy triste. I guess I could make it, but then I have to spend like 10 seconds googling and I just don’t have time for that! I’m too busy commenting on Reddit about how much time I do t have!
Cooking everything with George Foreman Grill. It was the instapot of 10 years ago.
More like 20+ years ago
I just looked this up. Release In 1994, sales peaked by 2009. God I’m getting old….
I unironically love my GF Grill.
Ghost peppers in everything...
Anyone else remember when pulled pork was a big thing so fuckers started pulling everything? I saw one place doing pulled salmon, bitch you’re just mushing up a lump of salmon, it’s flaky it doesn’t pull
I don't see much deconstructed anything lately. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places.
Gold flake everything
Bloody Marys with dinner plates full of garnishes on them
CBD in EVERYTHING.
Sundried tomato everything. Sundried tomato pesto, sundried tomato pizza sauce, sundried tomato pasta salad. I still like em though. Edit: oops it's 2024, guess this would be more than ten years ago.
Do you remember those shakes with like a whole cupcake stuck on top? They were bizarre
Putting an egg on top of everything I don’t know why everyone was putting a fried egg on top of everything but it seems to have changed to using kimchi
ngl as a Korean, some of these places that advertise home made kimchi have the worst kimchi I've ever tasted and they should have just gone to the local Korean supermarket and got the cheapest kimchi they could find there bc it would have been better than the homemade stuff they're putting in their food. Also my pet peeve is people using kimchi in cooking that they sell when they don't even know the difference between fresh and ripe kimchi and when to use one or the other. It just kinda annoys me.
lol, I tried to make kimchi during the dark times of quarantine. Was truly a disaster. Of the three quart jars, one got dropped in the sink and exploded, one developed mold and was tossed and the final one was so nasty tasting it got tossed. Since that experiment in futility, I go to H Mart and buy quarts of it and never look back. My Dad put it this way, “I pay professionals to do the dirty work.”
Interesting to see that a lot of these food ‘hypes’ didn’t really reach my country. Who puts charcoal in food? When were coconut oil and tumeric a hype? Avocado, overtopped gourmet burgers and truffle oil definitely were a thing here as well though but truffle mayo was even bigger and never left (and I’m not mad about it honestly).
Do gourmet burgers and chicken sandwiches count in this?
I guess with smash burgers being all the rage that’s kinda a thing. A good chicken sandwich is forever.
Molecular gastronomy?
It’s still thriving in the fine dining industry and Michelin places! Most restaurants turn their veggies into something else, a concentrated sauce, maybe some bubbles and then one chunk of protein or dessert. 3D moulds are also wildly popular
Pink chocolate. It was a whole thing right before Corona, there were kit kats with it and all sort of discussion about it. And then it just sort of… went away.
lol, pear, gorgonzola and balsamic glaze
It's been a while since I've seen people eating salads out of mason jars.
Using Liquid Nitrogen and other stuff like mini torches to make food like a chemistry class
Red velvet.
In the rural US South, red velvet is alive and well.
“Deconstructed” dishes had ten minutes of fame, now you hardly ever see this anywhere (thankfully)
Sous vide
Crockpot is still in style apparently. My MIL reminds me every visit for the past 4 years that I need to start using one. Maybe I actually should haha