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egging you on

Egging You On: Sourcing Great Eggs

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Great food always starts with great foodstuffs.

My readers in Europe, and many other parts of the world may not know why I’m on about sourcing your eggs. In most parts of the world, where there isn’t factory egg farming, as it’s practiced in the United States, eggs are expected to be big, healthy, nutritional, tasty things.

If you pop open a conventional US egg, next to a top-of-the-line pasture-raised egg, it’s like night and day: One is pale and putrid looking. The other is golden to yellow-orange and full of nutrition.

You are what you eat, so let’s understand what we’re eating!

The Four Kinds of Eggs (US)

Healthy eggs start with best practices at the farm.

There are four basic kinds of farming methods for egg-laying hens:

Conventional.

Birds crammed into small cages, in windowless barns, eating a science diet that produces anemic-looking eggs. They are cheap, but they are not very healthy.  

Conventional eggs are laid by hens given hormones. and antibiotics, that end up in their eggs, and you.

Their eggs are higher in cholesterol, and saturated fat, probably because of the hens’ lack of exercise. They are lower in Omega-3, vitamin E, and beta-carotene.

Cage-Free; 
Porch-Raised;
Barn-Raised.

Chickens are still in kept in dense packs in bigger enclosures. Not much better, and, not surprisingly, studies don’t find much improvement in the quality of the eggs over the conventional.

Free-Range;

Free-Roaming.

Humane Farm Animal Care’s Certified Humane®  sets the “Free Range” standards, as there is no Federal standard.

That’s a poulty-puny .19sq.m/2 sq.ft. per bird. These chickens still don’t move around too much.

Big Egg, the industrial egg farmers, try to conflate this category with Pasture-Raised to keep people stuck on the lie that all eggs are created essentially equal.

You’ll get romantic copy about ‘sunlit porches’ and other marketing mendacities (lies).

It is a bit more humane, but not much.  There is no data suggesting that the quality of the actual egg is better, yet you pay more for them.

Only one egg category has been materially shown to be better for both the birds, and YOU.

Pasture Raised

It should be a no-brainer.

We’ve known, for more than ten years, that pasture farming is better for both us, and the birds who lay the eggs.

The eggs, side-by-side with a conventional egg, look different. They’re richer, more orange in color, with the extra beta-carotene in the hens’ diet.

It’s taken at least that long for widespread, commercially viable pasture farming of chickens to make a big dent in the markets.

HFAC’s Certified Humane® “Pasture Raised” requirement is a limit of 1,000 birds per 2.5 acres, or 10sq.m./108 sq. ft. to a bird.

Hens scratch for bugs and worms, in addition to their food,  and get a lot of exercise.

The fields where they graze must be rotated, which allows the earth to rest. Chicken scat is washed into the soil, which is consumed by the plants, worms, and bugs in the ecosystem.

Hens are outdoors year-round, with some housing where the birds can go at night to protect themselves from predators.

They can be brought into barns for up to two weeks a year if there is very inclement weather.

A 2007 study found that pasture raised eggs are nutritionally superior to conventional commercial eggs. Compared to official U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrient data for commercial eggs, pasture raised may contain:

  • 33% less cholesterol;
  • 25% less saturated fat;
  • 66% more vitamin A;
  • 200% more omega-3 fatty acids;
  • 300% more vitamin E;
  • 700% more beta carotene

How to Buy Great Eggs

We pay a bit more for better ground beef or bison. We really spend on good coffees and teas. Eggs have always been that place where people feel like they can skimp.

Don’t skimp. Get the good stuff! Buy pasture-raised eggs.

The pasture category is not only getting more crowded, but it’s diversifying.

Vital Farms

When I first wrote this article, there was only one producer, nationally, of pasture raised: Vital Farms, a Texas producer which was kick-started with some Whole Foods’ venture capital money.

It now has more than 90 family farms all over the United States that pasture-raise their eggs, selling under the Vital Farms red dot.

Their eggs run $5-7/box, depending on your area, and how competitive the pasture-raised category is getting. They’re an eggscellent choice (sorry), nationally, but no longer the only one.

New Breed on the Block – Heritage Eggs

One of the new wrinkles, in 2020, are premium eggs from “Heritage Breed” hens. They’re chicken sub-species from the pre-industrial farm days. Eggs that you’d more commonly see from small, local producers at a farmer’s market. One company, nationally, features them, although you can find many local producers that hit farmers’ markets with them.

The Happy Egg Co.

The Happy Egg Co. offers both price-competitive eggs to Vital Farms, and a premium “Heritage Breed” egg, which is very pricey, about $8.19/dozen here in Florida, as of this writing, but the results of what they do to transform recipes… Look at my Swedish pancakes, made with Heritage Breed eggs:

One of the many teaching recipes here at TheJazzChef.com. Click the image to see it!

See how much the added beta carotene in the egg brings out the color of the pancake?

The taste, which depends on the egg, also amps up quite a bit, even from other pasture-grade eggs like Vital Farms, or The Happy Egg company’s regular pasture-raised.

Does the Shell Color Matter?

No, and yes.

No. All chicken eggs’ taste is a function of their diet, exercise, and, for some breeds, their emotional state. There’s a reason that some breeds were not heavily used for mass egg production. They just aren’t wired for it. Close proximity makes them insane. An insane bird doesn’t produce.

So, yes. White eggs are almost always from factory-farm, mass-production hens. They’re from Leghorns, the most common chicken sub-species. Farmers, and scientists, have used breeding to encourage higher egg production of an easier-to-use egg, with a thinner shell. The conditions in which the hens are kept also contributes to the more fragile eggshell.

Non-white eggs are better.

They come in many varieties. The most common? Brown; and blue. A few heritage breeds produce eggs that are: Speckled brown; green; and even chocolate-colored.

White ain’t right because the hens live in crowded dens, but, if they’re pasture raised, brown gets the crown; blue’s got a cool hue; and no one gets heckled for using a rare speckled.

Egg Labels Worth Knowing

Pasteurized

(Not Pasture-Raised) – Davidson’s Safest Choice® are conventional eggs, but they’ve been pasteurized in the shell.

They’re useful for making cold dishes, from high protein smoothies, to caesar salads, to ice creams in the Ben & Jerry’s recipe style, where you want the safety of a “clean” egg that is certified free of harmful bacteria.

For my germaphobes, don’t spend the money on these, if you only eat cooked eggs. When you cook eggs, where the heat rises above 59°c / 138°F it kills any potential bacteria.

Pasteurized eggs are conventional eggs. They lack nutritional value.

Since we generally don’t worry about the nutritional value of ice cream, though, and smoothies are generally packed with other nutrients, pasteurized eggs are really only best for cold applications of raw egg.

Davidson labels such eggs with a blue “P” to let you know that the egg has been pasteurized.

Egg Labeling That’s Total Hype

Label “lures” – Egg purveyors put all kinds of nonsense out there on the boxes to lure you to spend more money on buzzwords that they know you’ll fall for.

  • GMO-Free. The PC pitch. Pasture-raised birds’ feed has to comport to that standard already to be pasture-raised. Pure marketing hype, right up there with the “gluten free” label that I saw on one brand of chicken. Silly.
  • Organic – The other big pitch. We’re conditioned to think “organic” anything is better. Here, it just means that the feed that the birds receive, if they’re grain fed, is organic grain. That’s good, though, right? Not really. Organic grain can be the low-grade leftovers of organic grain products for humans. The remnants, lacking nutrition, are used in conventional egg operations, often with cheaper nutrient boosters. As long as the grain was raised organically, it passes the label test.
  • Omega-3 boosts – Farms touting this on their boxes usually add flax to the diets of their mass-production hens. It may make a caged hen’s mediocre egg a bit better, but they’re still eggs lower in nutrition, when compared to a pasture-raised egg. Pasture-raised are naturally higher in Omega 3, and outstrip the “diet-augmented” caged egg.

    Most Omega-3 is wasted by you, though. If you read my article on cooking the perfect egg, you’ll realize that 99% of pros, and home chefs alike, cook most of the Omega 3 out of the eggs anyway, using too much heat.
  • Vegetarian Fed –  Birds that can forage produce better eggs. If you are vegetarian and eat eggs, it is good to understand that the birds are better off eating what they like. Your diet isn’t theirs. Most of them aren’t too PC about downing a worm, or ten.
  • Hormones/Antibiotics Free – More marketing mendacities. Laying hens aren’t given hormones ever. Hens requiring antibiotics are taken out of production of eggs for human consumption.

How To Pick Out Great Eggs

Now that you know what the right kind of eggs are to buy, how do you sift out all of the brands?

  • What’s a good box of eggs?
  • Is it better to buy at the market, or wait for a farm at a farmer’s market?
  • What should I watch out for?

What to Watch For:

  • Egg brands – Eggs never landed much of a premium, or even much distinction from farm-to farm, until “Egg Beaters” started selling as a low cholesterol diet alternative through good branding. The farms jumped in. So now the game is on!
    • Cool box – Pretty packaging isn’t a guarantee of great eggs, but it’s also not a total scam.
    • Carpetbagger Egg Companies – Dairy farms with big names have jumped into eggs to see if you’ll take your brand-loyalty with you.
  • Feel Matters – Shell strength says something about the production. Legit pasture eggs are laid by hens that produce eggs built to withstand mother nature. Standards in the industry are voluntary, and egg scams are on the rise.
    • Open the box, and look at the eggs. Pick one up. 
    • Shells should be solid, not thin. Put a thin commercial egg and a pasture egg in each hand. Don’t worry if anyone is staring at you in the egg aisle. You can feel the difference.
  • Size Matters – Some pasture producers put out eggs as they come. So you’ll get a jumble of sizes. Some size like every other egg company. If you can use different sized eggs for different applications, then the jumble may be okay. If not, then get the consistent sized with good strong shells. 
  • Smell Matters – If there is a decided bacterial smell, or a strong whiff of sulfur which salmonella bacteria put out, avoid.
  • Condition of the Box Matters – If the box is wet, or egg-stained or other than firm, clean-smelling and right, grab another box, or another brand. Some companies use cheap boxes that damage eggs easily. If they aren’t willing to spend money to package them right to get them to market, what does that say about their “thrift” in production?
  • Date Matters – Look at the dates on the boxes. My big green Southern supermarket loves to buy stuff on the bare edge of its “Best by” or “use by” date, possibly because so many of its customers are probably right near their own “best by” dates.

LOCAL FARM-TO-TABLE EGGS AREN’T ALL THAT THEY’VE CRACKED UP TO BE

There are a growing number of people who raise their own chickens in their back yards, or on small farms, trying to cash in on the farm-to-table movement by selling them at roadside stands, farmer’s markets, etc.

Locally sourced is good, but several things that you should know if you buy local:

Buying eggs at one of the many local farmer’s markets that have sprung up sounds like a good way for smaller consumers to connect with their egg supplier.

Health-conscious shoppers tend to equate farmer’s markets or small roadside stands with “good” and “healthy” and “socially responsible.”

Don’t assume, just because they’re local, that they’re any of those things. Take reasonable precautions:

  • Ask if the eggs are their production. If no, where do they source their eggs?
  • How are the hens housed?  Ask how they produce. In stores, labels have to be right, or producers can face stiff penalties. Little operators at farmers’ markets have little to no oversight.
  • See how the eggs are stored at the point of sale.
    A cooler that’s minimally below 4°c/40°F is a must! The lower the temp the better, to keep salmonella, which can find its way INSIDE the egg, randomly, from growing.

    Thus this “homey” egg display, that you’ll see at many spring, and summer farmers’ markets, is a bacteria farm. Warm eggs provide a breeding ground for salmonella.

    If there is any indication that they’ve been out at room temperature, the heat, in the sun, avoid them!
    • Some roadside eggs will be in coolers. If the cooler isn’t below 4°c/40°F, take a pass.
  • Avoid reused boxes. A growing number of aspiring egg farmers grab used egg crates or egg palettes from restaurants and bakeries, sometimes even from dumpsters. That soft cardboard is a breeding ground for bacteria. If there is any sign of staining, or crusted dry egg on any of the boxes, don’t buy from that vendor!

Local Egg Culture

If you’re new to the area, and want to buy from folks hawking eggs on their property or at stands by the roadside, ask locals about the stands. Which ones are for real, safe, and which ones are not? Usually, people who live in the area know the great, good, and bad.

Transporting Eggs from Farmer’s Markets

Unless the egg hawker is using an actual refrigerator, which is rare, the eggs aren’t kept as cold as your supermarket shelf. If you are hell-bent on buying from outdoor stalls:

  • Bring a cooler with a couple of cold packs in it to keep your eggs until you get home.
  • Wash all eggs, but especially those that come off small farms or neigbors’ hen houses (see below) to avoid bringing salmonella or other bacteria from fecal matter into your refrigerator.
  • Regularly wash out all containers that you transport or store eggs in. Don’t reuse the cardboard containers.

Handling & Storage

Wash, Dry,
& Store Covered.

If you keep your eggs in the egg crates that they ship in, you obviously aren’t thinking through what you just put into your refrigerator.

Recall that eggs, not in sealed containers, are:

  • Handled by people at the egg farm as they’re loaded into boxes.
  • Handled by people at the supermarket who should have called in sick, who put them out.
  • Handled by the three people who got there before you, opened them and thought… “Nah… I’ll buy the cheaper ones.” who may also have the sniffles.
  • Let’s not forget the stuff that might have been spilled on the box, broken egg crates above, etc.

Likewise, popping the box into your fridge can contaminate it, as the boxes themselves can pick up bacteria at the producer, in a storage area, or even on the shelf with other eggs when a crate breaks, and Sparky, the lazy stocker, does a lousy job of cleaning up the mess.

Once in a while, you’ll catch the occasional bit of grass stuck to the shell, or the odd partial feather that falls into any commercial eggs.

There is always the chance of salmonella bacteria on the outside of eggs. The bacteria can be on the inside, although it’s rarer. Mostly salmonella comes from handling dirty shells that have trace amounts of fecal matter that carry the bacteria. Most of that cooks off easily, but if you touch the eggs, then pick up a utensil, you can carry the bacteria.

The eggs are washed at the crating point? Maybe. That doesn’t mean, though, especially for the pasture raised eggs, that they’re entirely clean.

Even Safest Choice® pasteurized eggs’ shells can, because of handling by people down the line, have outer shells with some contamination. An egg or two break, and Sparky, who has been handling other eggs, without washing their hands, switches an egg or two from the broken carton to fill out the dozen.

Safe Handling Practices:

I’m no germaphobe, but egg crates are a whole level of nasty. So, when I get my eggs, I:

  • Ask the market to bag the egg crate separately, then put it in my recycle/re-use bag;
  • Inspect them for debris. Remove anything visible.
  • Make an ice bath in a bowl with 20 or so ice cubes and cold water and a couple of drops of dish soap (Florida’s tap water is always too lukewarm) , one at a time, dipping them in the bath and gently rubbing the shell.  The ice cold water prevents the eggs from sweating, which draws their liquids to the micropores of the shell.  Quickly rinse them off again in cold, clean water to remove any soap residues;.
  • Carefully dry them with a clean cheap kitchen towel.
  • Put them into a plastic egg container with a lid.  A lid may not seem very important, but it is.
  • Write on a paper tape, or use a washable restaurant day tag the use-by date of the eggs, and put it on the lid;
  • Get them in the refrigerator pronto and always keep them closed up, and refrigerated at 4°C/40°F.
  • If you need eggs for a recipe, pull them out, then put the unused eggs back into the refrigerator immediately. Many of y’all leave ingredients out on the counter. The warming/cooling repeatedly? Not a good idea, in general, but especially bad for eggs!

Refrigerators can wickedly dehydrate eggs, which do sweat a bit of their moisture through the shell over time. Don’t leave eggs uncovered, or in most “egg” drawers built into refrigerators. Most of them let too much dry air in.

OTHER GOOD DO’S AND DON’Ts

There are a few other ways that you can get the best use of your eggs, and make better egg dishes:

  • DON’T buy too many eggs. Unless you bake egg-based stuff a bunch, that Costco flat of eggs may seem really appealing, but storing all of them means that they age, and eggs don’t age well;
  • DO either use or toss your eggs within a week or so of the Best by date on the carton. The older they get, the worse they make your food turn out;
  • DON’T leave the full container of eggs out on the counter. Take the eggs out that you will need for your dish, but don’t leave the container on the counter. Eggs should remain refrigerated at all times. Warming and chilling the eggs rapidly, likewise, is Salmonella’s best bud. Sweating is not good for eggs, or you.
  • DO wash your hands frequently when handling eggs. Even if you’ve cleaned them, you may reintroduce bad bacteria from other surfaces in your kitchen, or on tools that you’ve been using;
  • DON’T taste batters or anything made with raw eggs unless you are using Davidson’s Safest Choice® or other pasteurized (not pasture) eggs;
  • DO wash any spatula, whisk, etc. occasionally during cooking to reduce the risk of reintroducing bacteria to foods already past the temp point where they cook off;
  • DON’T use utensils with wooden spoons or forks to prepare or serve eggs. They can harbor bacteria that is conveyed to the cooked food.

BRANDS THAT I CAN RECOMMEND:

There are very few American egg producers that can hold a candle to the European ones. These are my top picks that are widely available nationally:

  • The Happy Egg Company Heritage Breed – Best heritage breed eggs on the market in North America. Hens roam on 8 acres, same as pasture-raised, but Happy doesn’t engage in all of the practices, so they can’t call them “pasture.” Still, an amazing egg. Richest of the commercially produced ones that we’ve tried, with the best cooking characteristics. Expensive, but worth every penny, until more heritage breed eggs compete and drive down prices;
  • Vital Farms Pasture-Raised Alfresco Eggs; Vital really walks the walk of pasture-farming. They pioneered the commercial form of pasture-raising hens. They still make the best eggs, overall, in the industry, at the large-scale production level.
  • Vital Farms Lucky Ladies Pasture-Raised – Whole Foods. Great if you can find them.
  • Handsome Brook Farms – Pasture Raised. The group was sued in the ‘teens for false advertising of pasture-raised. They seem to have their act together today.
  • Dare to Dream Pastured Eggs. Usually 30% more costly than Vital, but not 30% better.

BRANDS THAT ARE, IN MY OPINION, A WASTE OF MONEY:

Anything “organic” refers to the feed. The conditions in which the chickens live, which has a lot to do with the kind of eggs that they lay, make most of these little better than the rank-and-file commercial factory egg:

  • Organic Valley “Organic” eggs, in all non-pasture varieties. Nice boxes. They need to up their game in eggs.
  • Whole Organic Pasture Raised Eggs – The organic is a gimmick, not worth the price. Go Heritage Breed instead;
  • The Happy Egg Co. Organic – Pandering to those who put label over common sense. Buy their Heritage Breed eggs instead.
  • Eggland’s Best Cage Free – The Big Egg producer is testing the waters of big ticket eggdom. Not far enough, and they could do a LOT to move the scale of pasture production. PASS.
  • Nest Fresh “Free Range” “Non-GMO” eggs. All hype. Free-Range is not Pasture. GMO? Really? They’re eggs, not pea plants.
  • Horizon Organic Free-Range Eggs – Another dairy trying to extend its brand into the egg arena. Go cold turkey, Horizon, and put out the pasture eggs that are worthy of the milk that you produce.
  • The Country Hen, Organic Cage-Free Omega-3 Large Eggs – Uses every hyped ‘biz’ buzzword on the box. Half-dozen. Outrageously overpriced. Egregious hype.

It’s a lot of information about eggs, BUT, now that you know, you can buy the right egg for the right task, get better nutrition for your family, and keep your eggs safer until you use them!

TomatoALoveStorySQ

Tomato: A Love Story

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The world L-O-V-E-S tomatoes!

There are at least 10,000 subspecies of tomatoes out there. Even though it has been adopted by Italy as a  national food, they were late to the party there, making the scene in the 17th or 18th century.

The tomato, like the potato, and the eggplant, hails from Latin America, most likely Peru.

Their first major cultivation for human consumption was with the organized indigenous tribes of Latin America. The Spanish “discovered” them while conquering the Aztecs.  The Nahuatl (Aztec)  word xitomate became the Spanish ‘tomate.’  The English, to be different, changed from an “e” to an “o.”

The biggest shocker? Yes,  tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable.

In fact, it is the only fruit in the world consumed by more than a billion people daily. Commercial tomato production is between 37 to 41M metric tonnes a year. As a commonly grown home planting world-wide,  that number goes up to over 55M!

HEALTHY, IF PREPARED PROPERLY

Low in calories, the tomato can be an excellent source of dietary fiber, minerals, vitamins and antioxidants, if they are prepared properly.

Overcooking can easily remove every bit of goodness from them.  That happens more often than you would think: Most of the world overcooks tomatoes, turning the fats and/or the tomato a bit toxic.

COOK, DON’T KILL

When you work with them, let your mantra be less is more when applying heat.  Even sauces that call for long cooks can be kept fuller and richer by going low and slow, rather than using medium or high heat. With tomatoes, always trade time for temp!

Ceramic pans are great for preparing tomatoes. They deliver heat more efficiently, use less energy, and create a richer, fuller-bodied final product.

_________

Why is the tomato, above all other fruits and vegetables, so beloved?

IT’S THE CHEMISTRY, MAN

This is geranial, one of the 16 key volatile compounds found in tomatoes that also is a smell found in citrus fruit and lemongrass. It has a slightly lemony odor, and enhances the experience of the sugars in the tomato.

Tomatoes are globally popular because they are great flavor absorbers. They’re particularly good at channeling and blending strong aromas from savories like garlic, and onion, and the aromas of herbs.

What makes a tomato taste like, well, a tomato?

A tomato contains sugars, organic acids, free amino acids, and salts, along with about sixteen key volatile organic compounds that contribute to its flavor and aroma.

TOMATOES ARE WHAT THEY EAT

Soil and weather are another big part of their chemistry. Like peppers, where a tomato is grown can change the color, texture, and taste. Soils high in iron and other minerals can change the composition of the fruit. Wet years, dry years for conventional tomatoes can make a difference too.

Researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey found that sodium, potassium, and boron levels needed to be controlled to restore a “Jersey” tomato’s flavor after decades of breeding them into blandness for tougher skins, easy to harvest, and longer shelf life.

Location, location, location also influences the taste of a tomato. The soils of California and Italy are both very fertile, but they produce a different kind of tomato, even if they were both “Roma” varietals.

Tomatoes are grown year-round. What comes from California, and what comes from Chile, may be very different. Keep an eye on the labels, and know when your produce is changed up on you.

What else affects tomato taste?

CROP YIELD & TIME

How many tomatoes grown on a vine makes a difference in how a tomato tastes. Many varieties of tomatoes are grown to maximize their yield. More fruit on the vine often comes at the sacrifice of the compounds that give tomatoes their taste. Every tomato has to share the same source of nutrition.

Time on the vine is also important. If you buy a tomato that was harvested fully ripened from a local farm or vendor, that fruit has had time to “bulk up” on the good stuff.

There is no real way, from the outside of the tomato, to tell if it was vine ripened. A good produce vendor might open one up, if you’re not sure, to show what’s under the hood. Most of the common table tomatoes should be red throughout.

 

LOTS O’THE GOOD STUFF

Tomatoes are just packed with all kinds of good things that humans need:

  • Amino Acids. They give cells their structure. In the human body, they also play a key role in the transport and storage of nutrients. They influence the function of organs, glands, tendons and arteries. They’re also the thing that helps heal wounds and repair tissues, and they help your body haul off all kinds of waste deposits connected to your daily metabolism.
  • Vitamin C. Foods rich in vitamin C helps the body develop resistance against infectious agents and scavenge harmful free radicals, as long as you don’t cook them into your tomatoes to start with.
  • Potassium. It is an important component of cell and body fluids that helps control our heart rate and blood pressure caused by sodium and it’s a big part of the tomato.
  • Vital B-complex vitamins such as folates, thiamin, niacin and riboflavin, as well some essential minerals like iron, calcium and manganese, are found in varying levels in the many species.
  • Antioxidants protect against many cancers, as long as you don’t cook free-radicals back into your food.
  • Lycopene.  Double-blind studies have shown that lycopene lowers hypertension, and aids combatting prostate and skin cancers.
  • Zea-xanthin. It can help you protect  your eyes from age-related macular degeneration because it helps the body filter harmful ultraviolet rays.

REAL TOMATOES

If you grow fresh, ripen your tomatoes on the vine until they’re super-red and they drop off easily. If you gotta tug-o, then they don’t go into your sugo.

There are a lot of subspecies and hybrids of tomatoes out there. Different colors, and shapes are just the superficial level. How big their seed pods are, and how “meaty” they are vary widely, but that’s the key to figuring out how to use what tomato for what recipe/purpose.

The old saying, “you are what you eat,” applies double for tomatoes.

The soil type, or, if they’re grown hydroponically, the biochemical makeup of the natural nutrients they’re fed in water make some tomatoes stand out.

COMMERCIAL TOMATOES

The majority of tomatoes are grown commercially, for ketchup, sauces, pastes, and canning.

There have been a lot of hands in the breeding and crossbreeding of tomatoes, called hybrids, over time, but the University of California, Davis’ plant breeder,  Jack Hanna, developed a blessing for the bulk biz that has been the bane of buyers at the retail level:  A tough-skinned tomato that can be harvest by machines without being damaged, resists pests better, and ripens simultaneously.

These are usually picked at the peak of ripeness, cooked, canned or sauced within a few hours of leaving the field.

“SUPERMARKET” TOMATOES

Fresh tomatoes, harvested for supermarkets in the Northern Hemisphere, of any type, are mostly crap. I won’t buy them.

Like commercial tomatoes, they have been bred for shipping, not eating.

All that cross-breeding to make them tough and to last for weeks traveling to stores across the country or the world have caused them to lose both flavor, and some of the genetics that gave them big taste.

Tomatoes destined for your market are generally picked green or “pink,” well before they’re fully ripened on the vine, then refrigerated. It inhibits their maturation while they’re in transit. Refrigeration usually delays the maturation process, but if a tomato stays in low temp for too long, or at too low of a temperature, some of the volatile compounds that give it taste and smell are lost.

IT’S A GAS

Once they’re closer to their destination, supermarket tomatoes are gassed with ethylene. It’s a naturally occuring gas that decaying plant matter puts out that accelerates decomposition.

It occurs naturally on the vine. When one tomato starts to offgas, the others begin to ripen quickly as well. Growers halt that process because it reduces transit times from farm to table to a few days, or hours.

Tomatoes harvested commercially are quickly put into cold storage, or cold storage with products that absorb ethylene to slow down or stop their ripening.  When they get to their delivery point, they’re gassed with one of several commercial chemical ethylene products, usually corn or natural gas based.

If they spend more than a week in transit, or in cold storage, they will still turn red, BUT, the volatile compounds that make a tomato smell and taste good can disappear in part, or in whole.

Picking them before their sugars and amino acids are at maximum can make the fibers in the tomato seem tough or “sandy.”

There is a bit of hope, though. Researchers at the University of Florida, in 2017, identified flavor-associated chemicals in 398 modern and heirloom tomatoes, as well as the genes that had been lost to cross-breeding for durability.

Through “molecular breeding,” identifying which species to cross-pollinate at the molecular level, scientists can learn, in the horrible hybrids,  which actual tomatoes have a bit more of this and that that make them worthy to promote as breeding stock to bring the flavor back to conventional store tomatoes.

THE “VINE RIPENED” MYTH

Store-bought tomatoes on vines are still shipped green and gassed. If they were really vine-ripened, they’d be too ripe to stay on the vines!

Most of the “vine ripened” supermarket tomatoes that are not hydroponic get away with a fib, like “natural” doesn’t always mean “real.”

More often grown indoors conventionally in hot hoses, they are picked, with their vines, before fully mature, a pale red-green, by clipping the vine with a few tomatoes. Most have to travel,  and, of course, you’re buying the vine as part of the hype, so, while they may be a bit riper than the loose tomatoes in the bins, as they may get a few more hours or days on the vine to make the claim, they are also hit with ethylene gas closer to their point-of-delivery.

Really “vine ripened” tomatoes wouldn’t stick with the vines that they ship if they were as ripe as you want a fresh tomato. If you’ve ever raised your own, you know. When they’re very ripe, they pretty much drop off.

The hothouse improves growing conditions in terms of temperature and lower pesticide use, but there is one step further that is possibly the great red hope of the industry.

Now for the loaded question:

WHICH TOMATOES ARE BEST?

There are a few stand-outs in the ocean of tomato types out there. If you’ve tried one that I’m not familiar with, drop us a line or share on our facebook page.

SAN MARZANO FRESH OR CANNED

San Marzano is a variety of “plum” tomato. They come from the Campania region of Italy, which accounts for about 8% of Italian tomato production, but 90% of the high-end tomato biz.

The volcanic soil of Campania imparts a richness of flavor that is hard to find in a lot of others. Their flesh is thicker than a Roma and they have fewer seeds. The taste is stronger, sweeter and less acidic. They are ideal for sauces of all kinds, especially marinara and pizza sauce.

These are some of the most highly-prized tomatoes in the world! This tomato, grown outside of Campania, just isn’t the same. Which launched a whole sub-industry in “fake” San Marzano tomatoes, and, sadly, a few Italian growers who cut corners and substitute in either thick sauce or other plum tomatoes along with a few San Marzanos. The Italian government stepped in, gave the San Marzano designation a “controlled” status, so it is easier for the authorities to intervene.

They have thin but very hearty, tough skins, and, if you’re in the EU and find them fresh, for most applications, peeling them before cooking with them will be a good thing.

For the rest of us, we make do with the canned.

Cento’s Organic San Marzano tomatoes are my go-to for lots of dishes where their big flavor is needed, with as little waste as possible. They’re the only organic-certified fully San Marzano cans that I’ve found.

Remember, when you buy canned, that there is waste. Some of the tomato tops are hard. When you hand-crush tomatoes, you lose the top and stem core, the fibrous material that holds the seed pod together, and remove the odd partial peel or two. Typically 1/8th to 1/3 of a can, depending on the brand, can be lost to waste product. You use more cans than you think.

HYDROPONIC TOMATOES

Hydroponic tomatoes are often the most “ideal” fresh. They can grown locally year-round. The nutrients in the water can imitate any soil condition. The temperatures of greenhouses can be adjusted to reproduce just about any outdoor growing situation on Earth!

A tomato that is hydroponically grown LOCALLY, within a couple of hours of your store, is usually a great buy.  They’re much more carefully produced. The science of maximizing the plant’s “diet,” eliminating pests through greenhousing, maximizing vertical growing, and running on a 24 hour growing clock results in a higher yield of tomatoes, year-round, that are far superior to the best in-ground grown, and can well outstrip “organic” certified tomatoes for nutrition and chemical-pesticide-free growing.

They cost a bit more, but they last longer, with that shorter trip to your door, and taste better.

You can also grow tomatoes hydroponically yourself, if you have an outdoor or indoor patio or even a large closet or part of the garage or basement where you can put up an LED grow light or two. Be prepared to trade or sell the excess. It gets to be a lot.  We produced almost 300 lbs of cherry tomatoes in our far less manicured 6x8x12′ testing system outdoors!

Our Jazz Chef test hydroponic tomato unit produced well over 300lbs of cherry tomatoes in 90 days. We could have kept it going longer, but summer humidity in Florida causes tomatoes to stop sweating, then they explode! Indoors with humidity controls is better. Pests remain a problem, including white fly, outdoors, but we used bugs that eat the pests, rather than sprays, and still had excellent results!

WHAT IS An ‘HEIRLOOM’ TOMATO?

Typically an ‘heirloom’ tomato are hand-cross-pollinated varietals of tomato that pre-date the mass-production, commercial tomato hybrids of the 1950s and beyond. They’re quite popular with the modern millennial, who seeks out “authenticity.”

The whole heirloom thing is mostly branding hype, the fun thing of the moment to play with. They’re visually pretty, so they command big dollar in those clear plastic cases in which they’re entombed at the market.

I’ve truly had some interesting, amazing, and also tough, and some really crappy heirloom tomatoes. Of the 10,000 tomato species out there, a lot of the obscure ones are just awful. Too tough. Too bitter.

Yellows are lower in lycopene, one of the great wins of a tomato.  Fully ripe green heirlooms can have a higher content of the toxin solanine, found at times in nightshades like tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants. They’re pretty, but I tend to avoid them for that reason.

Like all tomatoes, how they’re grown is more important.  Maximal flavor is the thing. A chemical analysis of three of the same “heirloom” sub-species, grown in different soils or hydroponically will show you what I’m talking about. The sugar content, the mineral content, and volatile organic compounds all vary, based on what the plant is grown in.

The colors and other variations are visually appealing for a salad, or the odd dish or two, but they’re not a big win nutritionally or culinarily universally.

KNOW YOUR TOMATOES

We know (now) that all tomatoes are not created equal. 

When you run to Ralph’s or Publix to grab a few things, you just assume, when picking up a particular type of tomato by varietal, a Roma, Kumato, grape or Beefsteak, that they’re all exactly the same.

Now that we know that conditions in growing affect the taste, you also should make note of what is available, from different growers, even from season to season, and figure out which tomatoes make us look like great chefs, and which ones drag us down into lots of “corrections.”

YouR TOMATOES DIARY

Being a better chef is about your personal observations of everything that you use in the kitchen.  When you buy tomatoes, do a taste test, and make some notes on your impressions. An iPad with a LifeProof or other waterproof, sealed case is wonderful thing in the kitchen. You can not only store a bunch of cookbooks searchable in seconds, but, with Evernote, you can store notes and photos of all kinds. Here’s a great place to put it to use!

    • First, create a notebook for “Tomatoes” in your cooking notebooks.
    • Write down the name of the tomato as it appears on the label, or where it’s from if you got it locally, or grew it yourself.
    • Now cut it off a third. Is it mostly pulp and seeds, or is it meaty? Make notes.
    • Cut the other thirds in half to get three samples.
    • Take a small bite of one. Is it “dead on,” a balance of salty, sweet, and acidic? Is it too firm? Too soft? Meaty? Sandy? Make notes of your impressions. Is it rich and flavorful, or bland?
      • If it’s perfect, you have a great tomato! Keep cooking. (Buy more!)
      • If the texture is wrong, too hard or too sandy, you can band-aid it, but try not to buy them again. Go for thin-skinned, vine-ripened, quality canned, or GROW YOUR OWN.
      • If it’s bland, it probably needs salt. Sprinkle a little across a third and take a bite. Adjust until it’s right. If it gets too salty, then that’s not your problem. Next step.
      • If it’s bland and the salt helped, or didn’t, and oh, it’s still not quite right, take the unsalted third and sprinkle with dextrose, preferably, because it’s a better sweet, but you can also use any table sugar. Does it balance out?
      • Maybe it’s too acidic? Slice off a THIN untested bit and sprinkle a LITTLE bit of baking soda over it by grinding a pinch between your fingers over the surface. Sodium bicarbonate is a base interacts with the tomato’s acid. It produces a bit of carbon dioxide (CO2) as it neutralizes, so wait about 1-3 minutes for the chemical interaction to finish. Try again. If it’s too acidic, you will need to lessen other acids in your recipe, like wine, vinegar, etc.

Based on your experiments, you know what you’ll have to do with your recipes that use those tomatoes to make specific adjustments for them. If I’m teaching away from home, and I have a bad supermarket tomato for a salads, sandwiches. Tomatoes are always a sensitivity point for a lot of your favorite eaters. Adjusting in advance can keep you from over-correcting in any dish.

 

DE-GRANDMA YOUR TOMATO RECIPES

Now that you know how to “adjust” a tomato, let’s look at some of your family favorite recipes.

Your mother, or your grandmother, definitely used a lot of tomatoes that we don’t have anymore.  So it’s a good bet that great-grandma’s marinara from the old country probably used a tomato from before the 1960’s. The flavor of those tomatoes, and their physical makeup, was different.

When great-grandma came to America, she probably got a hold of a Jersey tomato, the most popular tomato cultivar from WWII through the 1960s. With a scowl at the acidity of her sugo,  she might have put in a touch of sugar to correct it.  She’d add the red wine, and the flavor improved, but the acidity soared. Not like “old country” tomatoes, which were lower in acidity, and needed the wine.  A little more sugar.

If you have a very old recipe, try to find modern equivalents. A farm-raised local tomato picked at the last minute will be close. So will a canned San Marzano.  You may also have to remove a few of the “fixes” that are in the recipe to adjust to what you cook with today.

 

COOK GENTLY

We abuse tomatoes, trading their sugars and their flavor absorption for their taste. The volatile compounds in the fruit that give it big flavor are very heat sensitive.

The longer that you cook a tomato, the more that it loses its antioxidant qualities, AND, oils that are overcooked tend to release free-radicals. If you use cheap cooking oils, loaded with hexane, that can cause additional negative health effects.

Tomatoes should be used toward the end of the cooking process. You’re just trying to warm them up, not kill them.

Tomatoes are almost always killed for a tomato soup. Either heat them slowly and gently in sous-vide, OR, tomatoes can be steamed in a metal steamer. Both are  gentle and nutrient-saving methods. When they reach 160-180°F / 70-80° c, then transfer them to a blender or put them in a pot with an immersion blender and texturize them from coarse to pureé as your recipe calls for them to be.

You can also pre-steam tomato halves before broiling the tops to get that “roasted” appeal and keep more of the nutrients.

Tomatoes cooked in a sous vide are amazing. They emerge from the water bath in their vacuum sealed containers with their full nutrients and much of their volatile compounds in-tact!

Even when reheating canned, it is already cooked. You don’t need to spend hours cooking a marinara to integrate a bit of garlic, onion, and herbs into it.

Start with strained tomatoes, or tomato sauce that’s thicker, and reheat. Not thick enough? Tomato paste is the “flour” of the tomato sauce world. It sucks up moisture like a sponge. Add a little until you get to the consistency you need, rather than sweat your sauce into exhaustion.

 

HOW DO I FIND THE BEST TOMATOES LOCALLY?

 

  • Canned/Boxed is AOK – For most applications, you don’t need fresh tomatoes. Organic or low-additive Italian-boxed tomatoes, picked at the peak of freshness, and processed within a few hours of coming off the vines, beat most of the “fresh” ones at the market that are handled poorly. POMÌ, Cento, and Muir Glen all make exceptionally good tomato products.
  • Sourced Close.  The closer to home that a tomato is grown, the more likely it is to be top-grade. Unless you live in California, Florida, or Southern Italy, encourage local and especially hydroponic farming in your area. Then you get year-round tomatoes shipped within hours of being picked!
  • Farms – If we live close to farms, then the ones that vend a little of their ripest product close to us are the places to grab tomatoes from first.
  • GROW YOUR OWN – Tomatoes are ridiculously easy plants to grow. A good LED grow light and a hydroponic tub with a little nutrient is a clean and easy way to produce a lot of what you need. Just keep it trimmed well. They grow fast!
  • Farmers Markets.  Don’t assume, because you’re buying tomatoes at an open public street market, even from a tent advertising itself that it is a “farm,” that they’re straight out of your local fields. A lot of these guys buy their produce at the same wholesalers that your market does. A street market seller should be straight with you about where they come from.
  • “Natural” markets –  Stores like Whole Foods do a bit better job of sourcing quality tomatoes, but, overall, they have the same shipping and volume consumption problems that most other big market chains have. That being said, WF is very very good at finding local suppliers of fresher produce, and they’re pretty up-front about where they source their stuff. For other markets, you have to ask the greengrocer who runs the department where they buy from.

THE CLOSER

The tomato love story goes on. The number of dishes made with them would seem to be almost infinite. At the Restaurant Am Steinplatz in Berlin, Germany, chef Markus Zimmer, recently acclaimed as the “Newcomer of the Year” by the Association of Berlin Master Chefs, created a dessert tomato recipe, with the tomato lightly candied and stuffed with pineapple and pistachio! The final frontier has been reached. Tomatoes know no bounds.

A DESSERT tomato candied a bit and stuffed with pineapple and herbs. Vanilla ice cream and pistachio “Dots”‘ as well. O…M…G!!!!!

Whether you’re just making pizza sauce, or creating something truly unique like this, your success depends on using the best available product, and treating it with a little delicacy, love and respect in your kitchen.

The Sweet Spot of our Top Toxic Treat

Finding the Sweet Spot of Our Top Toxic Treat: Sugars & Fake Sugars

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The Sweet Spot of our Top Toxic Treat

 

Humans love sugar.  Our brains are wired to crave it.

Too much of anything is a bad thing, though. We consume a lot of processed sugars, particularly in the industrialized world’s many sweet treats, boxed and prepared “fast” foods. Fake “zero” or “low” calorie sweeteners account for $97B in sales annually!

I’m no nutrition nazi, no food fascist, so I’m not telling you to run around the house and purge every last sugar bowl, syrup container, and honey bear.  Personally, I lost 32 lbs and live a lot better now by making smarter choices about how and when I take in sugar, and I still enjoy it, responsibly.

I will, however, tell you, unless you’re diabetic, and even then with grave reservations for your health, to More

MastersoftheHeat

Masters of the Heat: Using Chilis in Your Cooking

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Chiles can do all kinds of amazing things for your food. Understanding all of the amazing variations of the flavors and heat of the world’s chilis and the science behind them, help you become a Master of the Heat.

CHILE,  OR CHILI?

Chile (chee-lay) or chili (chill-eee) or chilli (chill-eee),  any works fine. Nahuatl peoples, including the Aztecs, were eating them before the Spanish “borrowed” them, and called them chillies. The Spanish word, Chile, is adapted from there.

The SCIENCE OF DA SIZZLE

Chilies get their sensation of heat from a natural chemical called capsaicin (/kæpˈseɪ.ᵻsɪn/). It’s why you can’t shake that heat for a while when you eat one.

Capsaicin is really good at getting into the cellular tissues of skin because it is carried along by natural oils in the chili. Add those to any other fats in your food and oils blend.

So, when oils with capsaicin molecules land on your taste buds (papillae), or in the skin of your mouth or lips, which always love them fats, they go in like a rocket at a cellular level and hang out, causing that burning sensation that we find oddly pleasurable when we eat chilis.

Capsaicin is hydrophobic: Its molecules repel water. Which is why drinking doesn’t take away the burn. A pinch of salt will, though, because salt is our body’s natural fluid exchanger anyway, and it allows fluids in to flush out the capsaicin. That’s why a margarita glass is lined with salt!  It helps with the burn.

ANATOMY OF A PEPPER

All peppers, from bell to bonnet, are relatives of the capsicum family of plants, whose seed pods with a waxy, cellulose flesh.

They have varying levels of capsaicin, from none in a bell pepper, to screaming amounts in a ghost chili pepper or a wiri wiri.

The heat isn’t in the meat of the flesh, or the seeds, for that matter. It’s in the connective tissues to the seed, the little white pith lines that run up the pepper to the stem.

Want to lower the heat, or remove the majority of it, from a fresh pepper? Strip the pith and remove the seeds. Peppers, like Jalapeños, have a really lovely flavor that emerges best when control the heat.

The waxy outer skin of a pepper slows its drying, which is possibly a reason why it became a useful foodstuff for people who didn’t have refrigerators. The skin, along with the right climates, especially in Mexico and the more arid parts of Africa, where humidity is low, let them just air dry into an easily stored food.

Most cultures dry peppers to extend their shelf-life, often making decorative hangings of them to both dry and attractively adorn a home.  In Mexico and throughout the American Southwest you might see this ristras, hanging from people’s portals, the breezeways and porches of a home near their doors.

When a pepper dries, the moisture is slowly drawn out. The skins and the high level of acids in chilies tend to retard spoilage in low-humidity, although the high sugar content of some chilies may cause a few to rot or develop mold in thicker walls of the chile or where the skin is thinner.

Two things also happen to a pepper when it dries.

  • The flavor, like jerky, intensifies.
  • The heat transfers to the outer meat/shell. Capsaicin is hydrophobic. It doesn’t dilute in water. So when the water escapes, a bit of the heat that is stored in the pith is sucked into the oils in the “meat” of the chile, and into the oils in its seeds.  How much varies by the type of chile. So the shell of a dried chile will be somewhat hotter than the fresh.

The pith still traps the majority of the capsaicin, so removing pith and seeds from a dried chile, or some of it, will bring down the temperature of the recipe in which you are putting the dried chile, but remember more of the heat stays in the dried than the fresh.  If you need tamer, try fresh deseeded and pith completely removed.

THE JALAPA GLOBETROTTERS

Peppers are a very adaptive kind of plant.

In just four hundred years, they have evolved a lot. There are 27 known kinds. Five of them are considered to be “domesticated,” e.g. they can be reproduced without variation anywhere.

The other 22 are essentially wild, even if they’re farmed, because they are a bit unpredictable in how they’ll turn out.

That’s because chilies, unlike the other Central and South American crops like potatoes that the Spanish and Portuguese exported all over the world are changed by three big factors: Soil, climate and weather.

Put the same plant in Texas, Mexico, or China, and it will change flavor because the conditions are not the same.

The African bird’s eye chili and the Thai bird’s eye chili are the same plant, but the shape and the intensity of the African one is smaller and much spicier. How is that possible?!

SOIL

You know the old saying: “You are what you eat?” That is especially true if you’re a pepper plant.

Peppers are super adaptive. Some plants won’t grow where the conditions aren’t right.

Peppers aren’t picky. The soil though, what is in it, changes them.

Which is why a Hatch chile featured in my Green Heroin article about New Mexico’s Hatch Valley green chilies, is only legit if it’s grown in that valley, in that soil. Which is why you can’t buy “generics” and have them taste the same if they aren’t grown in the same place.

 

Dirt is a such a “thing” in growing peppers that the fertile dirt in the Chimayo chile growing region of New Mexico is revered: The local Christians give it “holy” status.

CLIMATE

Climate or microclimate where they’re grown is the second factor in flavor.

Peppers can grow pretty much anywhere, from deserts to the tropics. Each adapts to its own climate, and microclimate.

The same pepper plants, grown in the mountainous regions of Africa are different than the ones grown in fertile riverbeds in the bust-and-boom of rain cycles in certain countries.

The climate creates the conditions that affect the soil’s nutrients and how compacted it gets.

Rainforests and deserts can both produce chilies, just very different variations of the same plant.

Which is why, when many of you buy pepper plants at a nursery where the flavor you’re used to comes from the dry soils of regions Texas or New Mexico or Morocco or Egypt, and you plant them in Florida or New York or London, the pepper pods don’t taste quite the same as the ones you’ll get from the store. You’ve changed the climate when you transplanted the chile, unless you grow it indoors and in soil amended to be similar to the soils where the chile is grown.

Climate is not weather, though, which has effect on the heat of chilies.

WEATHER

Climate and weather may seem to be the same thing, but they’re not. Even within a climate, chilies are highly weather sensitive. A dry year will produce chilies that tend to be spicier, and a wet year will tame the chilies down.

Climate affects crop yields too. Spicy chiles are thirsty for water like the people who eat them. Very dry years cause the plants to produce smaller yields with fewer seeds.

BUYING CHILiES SMARTER

For 99% of people, going to a market and tossing whatever they find available to them into the shopping basket is how they select both fresh and dried chilies. Be the 1% who do it smarter.

Knowing where and when your chilies were harvested, and comparing it to the weather in that area during its growing season may sound a bit extreme before you buy, but, since dried or roasted/frozen chilies keep for a couple of years, buying them in a year that matches to your temperature comfort levels can make a big difference.

FRESH

Fresh is best. I grow a few, buy from the farmers’ market or local market when available, or, for the hard-to-find ones that are regional, I get some by the Internet, straight from a farm or a co-op that I trust to put out a high-quality pepper.  Those are bulk box orders where freezing or drying becomes necessary to preserve them.

FROZEN

Freezing changes the texture of chilies, but from soups to sauces to stews, it provides more texture and depth than dried for many recipes where the chilies don’t dominate. It is a pretty close second, and essential if you are trying to use them throughout the year.  I roast chilies on the barbecue, or, in the case of jalapeños, occasionally smoke them to turn them into chipotle chilies.

Remove the stems and then freeze them whole. You can always chop them after being defrosted. It’s the same amount of work, but it keeps the integrity of the chile pod together which freezes without so many edges for the freezer to break down.

DRIED

Chimayo red chile from the Chimayo area of New Mexico is unique. Soil high in iron content gives it unique flavor.

Dried, chilies can be purchased whole or ground.  They are the base flavors and colors of Texas “chili,” a number of hispanic sauces, and pastes and marinades of African and Caribbean cultures. Coarse-crushed they are the “arrabbiata,” the spicy in Italian cuisine.

I prefer whole, and grinding it myself using a coffee mill that I keep just for spices. Here’s why:

  • Grinding yourself releases the essential oils, laden with a bit of capsaicin trapped in the skin/dried meat. The flavor is more intense and you can control the level of heat for that particular dish.
  • Ground only comes in one grind per vendor at most places, although, WorldSpice.com offers a grinding service for some of its product where they will vary the grind for you. Still, the more you grind a chile, the more you expose its essential oils to oxygen, even in an airtight, unless it’s vacuum sealed,container.

Buy whole for your dried chilies, if you can. They keep better, and allow you to control how to use them.

KNOW WHERE THEY GROW

paularps – Myanmar, 2013

Inquire where your chiles come from. You may like the more mild chile of Thailand rather than the spicy cousin from Uganda.  Some are sun-dried.  Others are oven or kiln-dried. I prefer the sun-dried ones. They have a richer flavor.

Increasingly dried chiles from the far-flung corners of the world are finding their way into Internet stores and more supermarkets in North America and Europe. If you don’t see them, venture to your local ethnic market, Caribbean, Latin, Asian, Indian, etc., where you’ll surely find them. If you’re not sure, ask! The grocers in small ethnic markets usually are quite helpful, and I’ve also found that people who cook shopping in these places love to tell you how to use this or that!

SpiceJungle.com is a great source, because I get great, well-sourced product, prompt response and they are very passionate about their products!

 

USING CHILIES IN YOUR COOKING

Peppers aren’t always about adding heat to your food, although they certainly can do that. They can also add color and a lot of subtle flavor palette to your foods.

CUTTING CHILIES

A great, sharp paring knife is your friend in working with chilies. It’s size proportionate and easy to make more delicate slices than a bulkier blade.

Using fresh chiles well in your dishes is all about how you cut them. A sharp edge maximizes control, and a sharp tip on the blade is useful because you want to be able to separate the connective pith and seeds for both heat control and appearance.

Their shape and thickness determine how they are perceived. If you grind them into a paste, they disappear, save the heat, and their flavor contributions to the dish. If you leave bigger pieces, say in an omelette, they can be both seen and tasted.  That can be very attractive, or it can set off warning bells for those who worry about heat.  When having guests over, always good to find out how much they like heat before firing up your foods.

Wafer-thin slices make a lovely garnish on meats, topping rice dishes, in soups and more.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT CHILIES FOR THE JOB

There are 27 chile varieties, and, because of the changes in the way they grow, hundreds of variations.  Usually how we pick them is by what’s available to us in the market where we do our shopping. The Internet has blown the barn doors off of our choices, though, so you have almost a limitless supply of choices within reach.

So, which chile to use?

The best way to learn your chiles is to cook with them in relatively simple recipes, and see what they can do. Many recipes, like a curry, or a dahl, are so full of other spices that heat is really the chile’s major role.

Most of the well known chilies are the ones that have a lot of heat-macho on the Scoville scale. Sauces in stores with names like “Ass Reaper” and “Kick U Momma” are novelties that people like to take home more for the bottles than the condiments inside.

Fresh & Frozen

Markets offer a wide variety of fresh peppers these days.

Fresh and Frozen, you should investigate peppers with great flavors.  I wrote up another article on the amazing Hatch green chilies of New Mexico. Fresh or frozen, they offer such big flavor you can make a simple stew with just pork, potatoes, onions, a touch of garlic, Hatch chilies and salt.

Jalapeños are often thought about more for their heat, but, when they are deseeded and deveined, they bring a big rich flavor with a little bell-peppery sweetness and a whisper of heat to dishes that normally use a lot of fats for happy, especially in all kinds of Mexican dishes. I use a bit of them them in omelettes and as riffs in things like my Mac n’ Queso.

Scotch Bonnets are a stock pepper for jerks and other Caribbean foods known for their heat, but if you knock the seed level down to your desired level of heat (or none), you will find that they contribute a lot of nice flavor to all kinds of dishes outside of their cultural corner.  They marinate well. I’ve used a half of one diced up in a nice ceviche, and even in the odd sushi roll that I make from time to time. They’re particularly good as a sub for jalapenos in Pho dishes and ramens too.

Diced or chopped chiles, fresh or frozen can be used in so many recipes that they’re too numerous to mention in one article.  The obvious dishes are from chile-rich cultures in African, Latin America and Asian cuisines, from jerk chicken to burritos to dals to hot and sour glass noodles.

DRIED

Chilies that are dried take on a bit more heat, but sometimes too they up their flavor.

Learn more about how to use Tepin chilies in our Spicedex!

Some smaller chilies like Tepins, look more like oversized peppercorn pods. Crushed in your hand and dropped into soups or marinades Tepins add a lot of savory flavor along with their heat. Use to your heat level.

I make a wonderful enchilada sauce with Guajillo Chiles where I strip out the seeds and pith and focus on the deep, rich flavor of the pepper pods themselves. Throw the dried chiles into a blender with onions, garlic, tomatoes, and a little beef broth and you have a base enchilada sauce that rocks the house!

You can find smoked jalapeños, or Chipotles, dried in stores. Strip the pod, decompress to your liking, and they add smoky goodness to roasted chickens that even have other flavor/culture bases.

When I make my Texas chili, I use Chimayo chili powder instead of the bland brown that they sell in the spice aisles of the local market. It has a depth and character, along with a couple of bottles of Shiner Bock beer, cannot be matched. If you can get the whole dried pods, that’s the best way to go.  Chimayo red also amps up all kinds of roasted meats with a rich flavor similar to when people coffee rub a meat.

They make a good salt substitute, because their flavor and heat lessen the need for sodium.

PREPARING CHILIES

For most peppers, save the bell, which is so big it’s easy to cut the top off of and de-seed, With fresh, I find that scoring the outside of the chile around the top, then running the knife downward from the score to the tip of the chile pod allows me to pop the seed pod, which is strongly connected to the stem, mostly in-tact. Two or three small scrapings and the connective tissues can be removed more easily.

For dried, make sure you have a bowl or trash can nearby. Use a long broad knife and cut through the top of the chile on a cutting board. Some seeds will pop out. I will sometimes scrape the seeds into a storage container if I think I can use them in another recipe later. You can also just dump them in the trash.

Roasting is one way to peel off the tough outer skin of a chile, and it lightly cooks the natural oils inside the pepper pod.   Some types of chilies can be roasted in bulk, and stored either refrigerated for a couple of weeks or frozen (better) for use later.

If you have a grill, you can roast chilies. Just char the skins pretty thoroughly, turning occasionally with tongs to get off all of the skin.  Make sure you use tongs and/or gloves when handling the roasted chilies.

If you have a gas stove, and you want to do one quickly, you can just put it on the rack over the burner and turn with tongs.

After roasting, some people shock them hot by dipping them in ice water after they cook, then peel the skin. Waiting for them to cool, though, leaves more flavor.

HANDLING

Needless to say, wash off all cutting equipment and boards well. Make sure you get handles and all side and bottom surfaces because capsaicin gets everywhere when you’re working with chilies.

Because the capsaicin in chilies can penetrate skin cells easily, it gets into tissues and causes a burning sensation.

Always good, if you’re handling chilies to work with food-grade gloves.

Washing your hands is a regular thing in good culinary practice in a home kitchen, but there is one trick that someone in New Mexico showed me once if you’re working with a lot of chilies: Wet your hands, then rub a little kosher salt between them, wait a moment or two, then soap up. The salt can help remove more of the capsaicin,  but not 100% of it.

Avoid touching your eyes, nose, or other sensitive areas of your body for a couple of hours with fingers that have been handling anything spicy. Anyone who works with chilies regularly can attest to what happens when we forget that golden rule.

Aye!

BetterButter

Buying Better Butter

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Grass.

If you want great butter, feed cows grass. The milk and cream come out that much sweeter and richer. Pasture-raised cows produce superior milk. That also means that there are fewer of them, and, in turn that this kind of butter commands a higher price than the grain-fed herd cows.

What you save, though, by avoiding buying a lot of boxed foods every year, especially cake mixes and other butter-dependent foods, more than makes up for using a quality product over the cheaper one.

Butter gets a bit of a bad wrap from the healthier-than-thou, especially when hydrogenated vegetable oils are so bad that they are being phased out and banned. Butter has its uses. In limited quantities, it is a simple, natural wonder.

There are different grades of butter, and different kinds.

  • Ghee – A clarified butter that is cooked to a wonderful, slightly nutty flavor, that can be stored in its jar at room temperature. Good for everything that requires butter and a pan or griddle, from eggs to griddle breads, and even can be melted down as a drawn butter for prawns or lobster.Organic Valley’s Purity Farms is the best, with Trader Joe’s a close second, and there is more information about using Ghee on our product page (All of our product pages go in depth to teach you before we recommend that you buy/try something.).
  • Salted Butter – Salted butter is most commonly used as a table butter, but it also is the go-to for any savory dish that needs butter unless a recipe specifically calls for unsalted or sweet cream butter.  For applications like crisping up the skin of a poultry dish, the salt in the butter is less about the skin, which already has a nice amount of fat, and all about the salt helping the butter penetrate the cellular level of the meat with small layer of butter fats that give it a richer taste.  It all depends on the brand you use to see how carried away that they get with the salt.  I recommend the Kerrygold Salted Pure Irish Butter.
  • Unsalted Butter – If controlling the sodium levels is important in a dish, you go to unsalted. Many cake and bread recipes do better with unsalted because they’re trying to bring out the sweetness of the buttercream. So does something simple like fresh corn. Want perfection? Go Irish! Kerrygold Unsalted Pure Irish Butter, which I’ve been using for years, makes a big difference because of where it’s produced.
  • “European” or Pasture Butter – What are tagged as “European” butters seldom come from Europe these days, but it generally refers to butter with a higher fat content, usually 85% or thereabouts.  I find that Vital Farms Alfresco pasture-raised butter, which throws off the Euro-pretense for “small batch” and “pasture raised” and “grass fed,” is the best of the high-fat butters. They’re good in limited quantities in baking, as a table butter, and as a topper for a good high-broil finish to a sous-vide steak, among other uses where a little dab of richness is called up.  Truth in advertising: Vital Farms does let you know that some of their farmers, particularly during the cold months of the year, augment the cows’ diet with some grain, and that some of that grain is not GMO-free.  Consuming milk or meat that is raised with some or all GMO grains has no basis as an issue in butter, but the PCer-than-thou crowd may bristle a bit.

Why are these “better” butters?  Taste, and consistency. All butters are not created equal. Variations in not only fat content but the types of milk being produced can have a large effect.

EXOTIC BUTTERS

There are a few butters popping up in the buffalo, sheep and goat milk varietals. Sheep’s milk has a very particular flavor which may not be for everybody. Goat, likewise, has its fans and detractors.

  • Fattorie Garofalo Burro di Bufala  – This buffalo milk butter is rich, aromatic, and has a nutty-grassy palette. Works well with charcuterie, and it makes a nice topper to a steak broil with a sprinkle of Hawaiian pink salt.
  • Meyenberg European Style Goat Milk Butter (California) – A high fat goat butter from one of the biggest goat milk dairies in the US, it has that classic goat milk tang that really pops as a topper on steamed green beans.
  • Liberte Goat Milk Butter (Ontario) – Perhaps the most nuanced flavor palette of any goat butter I’ve tried, it’s strong but it riffs all kinds of nutty and tangy notes along the way.
  • Haverton Hill Sheep Butter (California) – I don’t like many of the sheep butters that I’ve tried. They are usually strong and lack good distribution of their fats, which gives them an odd mouth feel to go with the odd taste, and a very weird melt point both on foods and in your mouth. Haverton Hill solves a number of my beefs about sheep butter. They make a European (high fat) butter that is small batch churned and has enough fat to stabilize the butter so it performs well. It’s still a bit more of an acquired taste in general applications, but I use it for the surface broil of my sous vide lamb chops, and it makes a nice spread on crackers topped with a bit of any good nutty cheese.

OTHER BETTER BUTTERS

Butters vary a lot by their fat to milk content. Typically cheaper production butters have more milk (water) to them. There are a lot of choices regionally on shelves, including a few that are priced to reflect their rarity.  Ones that I’ve tried/tested that are good, but a notch or two down from my top picks:

  • Anchor Butter (New Zealand) – This is one of the few grass-fed butters year round, so it’s pretty amazing stuff. I’ve never seen it in Florida, although it has surfaced in coastal cities like Los Angeles and New York, but if you’re in a part of the world where it appears on your shelf, move it to the top of the list.
  • Lurpak (Denmark) – For more than a century this Danish butter has been produced without compromise. The price, at least in the United States, has been a bit too lofty;
  • Evans Farmhouse Creamery Butter (New York) – Has that small batch richness and great mouth feel.
  • Organic Valley  (USA) – While we’re big fans of Organic Valley’s ghee, the butter just doesn’t have the same pop as either Kerry or Vital Farms’ products. Subjective, but I feel like there should be more taste to the cost here, but it’s definitely a quality product.
  • Guffanti Burro (Italy) – A sideline of a great cheesemaker, this is a great, higher fat butter for baking.
  • Straus Organic (California) – Another small batch butter. I don’t get access to it often in Florida, but it’s a high quality product.
  • Delitia Parmigiano Reggiano “Il Burro” – From one of Italy’s best Parmigiano Reggiano cheesemakers, the same wonderful nutty taste in a butter. Great on a simple pasta with butter, salt, and a little pepper.
  • Plugra (Texas) – A high-fat butter in the European tradition, the name is a variation of the French “plus gras,” or “more fat.” It’s a mass produced butter pretty commonly available across the US.  I’ve used it, principally in baking. The milk it starts with isn’t any big wow, so I don’t get much “wow” out of the butter either. Many home bakers whom I know swear by it, so, in deference to them I’ll pop it on the list.

 

GreenHeroin

Green Heroin: How to Buy Addictive Hatch New Mexican Chiles

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I have something to confess: I am horribly, horribly addicted… To Hatch green chiles!  I’m not alone. There are hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans (That square state next to Arizona that the weather man stands in front of while pointing at California and Chicago.) who as badly hooked as I am.

My only beef with the TV show Breaking Bad, set in New Mexico, where I used to live for many years, was that Walter White was a high school chemistry teacher cooking drugs. A Hatch chile grower in New Mexico would be far more believable.  Hatch chiles may be one of the most habit-forming foodstuffs on Earth.

Try Hatch green in one of my recipes, and you’ll understand why even McDonald’s puts a Hatch side on their menu in many of their New Mexico locations! Oh, and if you know anyone starting up a HatchAnon 12-step program, don’t tell me!

SENSORY

Hatch chiles have amazing taste and aroma. Their flavor that is hard to describe accurately. Spicy, savory, they are unlike any other chile.  They are often-mistaken for their cousins, the Anaheim, but  their aroma alone tells you the difference, and can put the broadest of smiles on the faces of New Mexicans, and those fortunate enough to have developed a Hatch habit.

Green chile stew, for which I have a killer recipe, is, at the core, just potatoes, pork, salt, onion, a little garlic and Hatch chiles. My riffs are more in how you prepare the meat and potatoes, but you let the Hatch do the talking in the dish.

TRADITION

Hatch chile roasting goes on around the state of New Mexico and into Colorado and Texas a bit. Roasters are custom built marvels. Photo: Nan Palmero/FLICKR

People may flock to the North every Fall to see the leaves turn, and I’ve never been up to Hatch at that time of year,  but in one of America’s oldest cities, Santa Fe, New Mexico, you mark Fall by watching the EZ-Up tents of the farmers in from Hatch rise in parking lots along Cerrilos Road, the main thoroughfare through the newer part of town.

Custom built roasting tumbler-cages are unloaded, and set up.

Then the pickup trucks fresh off the farms back up with sacks and sacks of Hatch chiles.

The phenomenal smell of roasting these green gems wafts into the street. It’s the best advertising in the world, as people grab their 10, 20, 30 lbs, and have them roasted on site.

Buyers take the roasted chiles home to process the gems into frozen packs, whole and chopped, that will last until the next harvest.

Chiles have long been part of the crops of the region which was first settled 9200 BCE.  The Spanish marched into the region in 1598 and chiles as part of the food life of the region evolved.

In 1894, pioneer horticulturist Dr. Fabián Garcia, at Las Cruces College and the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts began cross-breeding of fourteen lineages of pasilla, colorado, and negro chiles from across New Mexico and Southern Colorado’s old Hispanic and native American Pueblo communities to improve them as a cash crop for canning and export. The first chile released in 1913 was called ‘New Mexico No. 9’.  

One of the things that makes New Mexico chiles unique, though, are the valleys and mesas where they are grown.

Real Hatch chiles, not to be confused with the Texas or Mexican attempts at growing the same species, are a rare commodity that only emerge from the soils of the Hatch Valley in New Mexico.

The soil in Chimayo makes their red chile what it is, several growing regions in Southern New Mexico produce outstanding crops that are so unique that you will never taste anything like them anywhere else.  In the green chile game, though, the soil, the climate, and the altitude/rainfall, not the seeds, are what makes Hatch green chiles, well, Hatch.

BEWARE OF LABELING GAMES.

Chiles have been grown in several parts of New Mexico, Texas and Arizona, some for thousands of years, but the chiles that call themselves “Hatch” should come from Hatch, New Mexico.  Chiles that are grown around New Mexico will be labeled as “New Mexico Chiles” which can be excellent, but still are not fully “Hatch.”

Just because it says “Hatch” on the brand doesn’t make it Hatch green chile. Check the label’s ingredients, where misleading is a violation of Federal law.

There are a lot of companies touting Hatch, including one that uses the “Hatch” name as a brand that you’ll see in specialty markets and a growing number of supermarkets as well. They’re grown in other places outside of New Mexico, including Mexico and, for a few manufacturers, yes, China.

Production in Hatch, in spite of their product’s huge popularity, has been on the decline in recent years because of problems finding enough labor due to a lack of visas, and because of the carpetbaggers buying cheap chile from elsewhere to undercut the price of the real deal with product that just doesn’t taste the same.

The Hatch growers have been involved in legal actions to prevent an Albuquerque-based company from using “Hatch,” because, they contend, the brand using the Valley’s name buys chiles from growers not only from other parts of New Mexico, but from other farms in Texas, Mexico and elsewhere, a fact which the company doesn’t exactly deny:

“Most of the HATCH Select branded green chiles are sourced from local chile growers near the Village of Hatch and throughout Southern New Mexico.”

“Most.”  “[N]ear.”

Yet when you look at the ingredients list, where it is a federal crime to misrepresent a product, and the company has to comport with a 2012 New Mexico law that protects the growers’ product and the consumers.

If it doesn’t say Hatch green chile peppers, or Hatch green chiles, it’s probably a mixed product. If it says “New Mexico green chiles” it is a product grown around the state and blended.

The suit by the growers in Hatch alleges that companies either buy a small amount of Hatch and mix it in with other chiles, or just plain out use chiles from other places.  So, if it doesn’t outright say it’s grown in the Hatch Valley, or labels ingredients as “green chiles” or “New Mexico green chiles” buyer beware!

Another big chile producer, Bueno, guarantees their frozen chopped chiles are produced in New Mexico, and labels Hatch-sourced frozen chopped chiles correctly.  Trader Joes‘ gets buys of frozen hatch that is really good, and very authentic. Look in your local TJs in the fall. Likewise the Fresh Market chain in the Eastern U.S. gets a batch of Hatch into their stores, bagged and pre-roasted, every Fall.

If you want the real deal, I’ve been buying fresh chiles for years from the Hatch Green Chile Store, going back to the time that they used to call themselves Berridge Farms.

Young Guns is another great source, based in Hatch. They also bring you chiles right off their farm. I have not tried any of their product as of this writing, but other chefs and home chefs swear by them.

If you become totally hooked, check out the Hatch Chile Festival, every fall in New Mexico, usually around the first weekend in September, where you’ll meet fellow addicts, including, on occasion, me.

If you’re not sure, go to the GetNMChile.com, the site that tells you whether the product is legit.

PICK YOUR TEMPERATURE

Hatch chiles come in several different subspecies each with their own heat index. How hot they are is also a factor of how the weather is in New Mexico as they’re being grown.

The dryer the year in Hatch, the spicier the chiles, I’ve found. So you look at the climate data. Hatch is high altitude and generally a drier climate. Last year, when this was written, the peak growing months were very wet.

Rainfall frames your buying decisions here. I like hot chiles, but I have family where half do not. A medium chile works about fine.

You can find out more about the climate in the current growing season by going to US Climate Data, and the humidity levels (also important in the Hatch game) at Weather.com.

PICK YOUR CHILE

So, based on the weather, buy:

  • The Joe Parker (Medium) in a normal year;
  • The 1904 (Mild) in a dry year;
  • and Big Jim (Medium-Hot) in a wet year.

Like the heat? Order:

You can lower the temperature a bit by stripping some or all of veins connecting the seeds out of your roasted chiles, but it robs them of some of the flavor experience. The seeds don’t pack heat. The connective tissues to the seeds, which often dry on the seeds, do.

YOUR ANNUAL BUY

Chiles grow, as you might guess, seasonally. So what you do to get the rare Hatch chiles is: Order ahead.

Which is another reason that I like doing business with Berridge Farms, owners of the Hatch Green Chile Store online. They work off of pre-orders starting in the fall after the previous harvest, and give you a good deal for helping them know more precisely how much to plant and pick.

 

TYPES OF GREEN CHILE TO USE, WHERE, WHEN, WHY.

Fresh

Fresh is best, because the character of home-roasted green chile comes not only from the small yet beautifully integrated natural fats/oils resident in the chile, and their texture, which, when roasted, is denser and “meatier” than its cousin, the Anaheim, or the waterlogged and biting bell pepper.

PRE-Frozen

Frozen by the supplier before shipping is next down on the list because, freezing maintains character, but the larger batches of chopped chiles for frozen that are processed and bagged, or put into small plastic containers, often lose some of the oomph that you get in fresh chiles that you freeze yourself.

Fresh/Frozen/Pre-Frozen are great in/on:

  • Stews and soups
  • Breakfast burritos
  • Egg dishes
  • Topping for burgers
  • Home fries
  • Pastrami gravlax or even just a nice scottish smoked salmon
  • Green chile jam
  • With cheese and spinach as a filling for croissant
  • Mixed into a bagel dough or cornbread batter with a bit of queso blanco
  • An amazing steak sauce addition or steak topping!

Canned

The small tins are convenient, but you trade off both taste and texture.  The only fully legit ones that I’m aware of are Trader Joe’s

Dried

Dried will bring a little of the heat and some of the flavor, but it only works well in things that can set for a while to marinate and absorb some of the character. It’s good in:

  • Brines for jerky
  • Green chile tortillas
  • Breads where the moisture of the chile is a disadvantage
  • Rubs needing a “rustic” rough look
  • Ground into house-made seasoning blends

Powdered

It works in a dried seasoning blend, but the taste is really muted, so there is a big tradeoff here, other than saying you have Hatch Chile in your BBQ rub.

HOW TO ROAST & BAG YOUR OWN

Equipment:

  • Barbecue grill
  • Kitchen-grade cooking (not dishwashing) gloves
  • Large double-lock ziplock-style food grade bags
  • BBQ Tongs
  • Cutting board
  • Plate
  • Skins bowl or trash can
  • 1.2L or similar size (smaller) double ziploc-style bags.

HOW-TOS

  1. Heat up the grill.
  2. Inspect your chiles. Discard any rotten ones.
  3. Put batches of chile on the grill. Turning occasionally as the skins char, make sure that all sides of each are roasted. The skins have to be charred enough that most of the rest will peel off when it cools.
  4. When the chiles are roasted, remove from the heat and put in the ziplock bags. Seal to keep in the steam. This finishes the cooking process.
  5. Repeat until all chiles are cooked.
  6. When the bags cool enough that they’re not scalding hot, put on your gloves. The steam will have finished the process of lifting off the skins. Remove the chiles from the bag and peel the skins off, removing as much char as you can.  Put each on a plate and continue to the next.
  7. Remove the tops. You can either bag them whole, then, or chop them.
  8. Double bag to reduce freezer burn. Bleed all of the air out of the outer bag.
  9. Freeze any bag not being used within seven (7) days.