The art of whipping up a good marinade

I've noticed that I'm actually getting more and more pageviews on this blog. God only knows why, but hey, I'll take it. I feel obliged to actually write a little something, and I guess I will touch on something that's actually a little topical as we head into the summer months: marinade for grilling stuff.

The first thing you need to know about making a marinade, or pretty much anything else food related that isn't baking: this shit ain't science. I've posted a marinade recipe before, but sometimes I think that by focusing so much on recipes that we forget that just winging it sometimes can work. I made a marinade today with my friend Karla to use for portabellas and brussel sprouts, and it was a lot similar to the one I made before, but with a few differences. I decided I would try apple cider vinegar instead of white, since she had some, and I added some cayenne pepper. I didn't measure anything and my friend told me it was some of the best I'd ever made. I know everyone doesn't feel comfortable just "eyeballing" stuff, but I think a lot of cooking is about confidence and trusting your instincts. If you make something that's not so good, well that's fine -- we've all done it. I think it's good though to not be afraid of screwing up a bit. Also, it's hard to really screw up a marinade to the point where you make bad food. That's because you can (and should!) give it a taste before you actually use it. If it's good, you know to use it. If it's not, throw it out and try again.

Some thoughts on making good marinade:

1) Keep the ingredients list small. I subscribe to the idea that we should be as simple as possible in cooking. Never use seven ingredients when three will get the job done. Don't add stuff just for the sake of adding stuff. I think of this kind of like mixing paint. If you want to get a good color, keep it simple: yellow and blue will make green, for example. If you want a lighter green, carefully add some white. But you have to exercise some caution. If you insist on mixing in more and more colors you will just end up with an ugly grayish-brown.

2) Think of complimentary flavors. Brown sugar and cumin go very well together. Vinegars and fats work well together (especially balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil). Think of your favorite complimentary/contrasting flavors. There, you already have an inspiration for a really good marinade. Also keep in mind that not everything goes well together (which I why I discussed above that you shouldn't keep adding stuff, because if you do eventually you find two ingredients that don't like each other, or more likely, add an ingredient that conflicts with several of the ingredients you already added).

3) Don't go for subtlety. Marinades aren't about nuance. They are about hitting you over the head with "holy shit, that's really good" flavor.

4) Don't be afraid to experiment. This is how I found out that beer works really well in a marinade. You can always whip up small batches and give it a quick taste to see how it works. I'm doing to try doing something with red wine soon. (Suggestions always welcome.)

5) Soy sauce be salty, yo. It's great, don't get me wrong, and is a nice starting point for lots of marinades. But it's potent shit, so don't go nuts with it. I find it's good to cut soy sauce with broth or beer. (I don't think wine would work though. I have not tried it, but I feel pretty confident in that.)

"Chicken" noodle soup

What excuse do I have this time? I've used the I'm-depressed-because-some-soulless-harpy-tore-out-my-heart excuse in the past. I've used the I'm-a-busy-guy excuse. Neither of those apply. I'm just lazy I suppose. I've been incredibly unmotivated, which sucks because some people have been wanting this recipe since they tried it at a recent vegan potluck I went to. Potlucks aren't the best places for soups in general, but I wanted to show this off. So yeah, for those of you wanting this, I'm sorry it took me so long. Feel free to guilt me in the future bout stuff; it works as a good motivational tool for me.

Okay, this is my recipe for fake chicken noodle soup. It pretty much tastes like the real thing, as has been confirmed by several omnivorous friends, as well as my own memory.

Ingredients:

• Five celery stalks, chopped fairly thin
• Four large carrots (or like twenty baby carrots), chopped
• One medium onion, diced
• Five cloves of garlic, minced
• One teaspoon of red pepper flakes (or more if you like)
• About one cup of fairly well chopped seitan (use this recipe) 
• Extra virgin olive oil 
• Four cups of Better Than Bouillon vegetarian fake chicken base
• Three to four bayleaves (depending on size)
• Half a pound of dried linguine pasta (half of a regular package) 

I'm sure there are other good vegetarian chicken broths out there, but the Better Than Bouillon is the only one I can vouch for. It's damn good. I have to get it at Whole Food here in the Saint Louis area, but there's a good chance that other places carry it depending on your region. 

You're going to separately prepare the broth and the rest of the ingredients. The bouillon stuff I'm recommending  can get a little uneven in consistency and density, so it's best to taste it to make sure it's a consistency you want. Heat the four cups in a pot on the stove. Put on a low setting -- you don't want to boil the hell out of it, you just want it to get warm. Go ahead and get this going on the stove before you start with your other stuff. Also, throw in the bayleaves now so they start to infuse in the broth. 

In a separate pot coat the bottom of a pot with the olive oil and heat it on a medium-high heat. Then add your celery, onions, and carrots. Saute this for several minutes until your onions start to caramelize an the celery start looking a lighter green. Then cut the heat down to medium and add the garlic, seitan, and red pepper flakes. Let this heat up for a good five to seven minutes. 

Pour the broth into the pot and turn the heat back up to medium-high. Then you break up your pasta and throw it in. I suggest you break it into thirds, not halves, otherwise the noodles are a bit long and harder to eat. 

Heat it up to a boil then put the heat back down to medium. Don't crank it up here -- the point is to get a solid but gentle boil. You will cook this for a while until the noodles are nice and soft (well past al dente) and the carrots have pretty much no crunch to them at all. The broth should also soak into the seitan giving it a chicken-y tastes. Be sure to stir regularly. This should take at least 30 minutes but probably no more than an hour. 

On a personal note, in lieu of hair of the dog, this soup is the best hangover remedy I have ever had that didn't involve alcohol. My theory is that this soup will go especially well with a gin and tonic or three, and be pretty much the perfect hangover reprieve. 

The four most annoying types of vegans

Most people think vegans are annoying, and for good reason. We are. Generally speaking, our tribe tends to rub people the wrong way. A lot of that is just because we are different. However, a lot of the antipathy people have towards vegans is well deserved. So partially in the interests of showing we vegans can laugh at ourselves (but mostly just because I like making fun of people), and also because stereotypes are fun, I thought I would give a list of the four most annoying types of vegans - or rather the four I thought I could come up with enough funny stuff to write about. 

Mr. “I’m more vegan than you”

Some people don’t go vegan because they want to help animals, or even for health reasons. Some people go vegan so they can be better than everyone else. Inevitably, as omnivores (rightly) tell these self-appointed paragons of virtue to go fuck themselves, they turn their insecurities on the more patient and iron-deprived vegan community. Often these are so-called “abolitionists” crusading against the imaginary “welfarists” they constantly see lurking in the dark corners of the vegan world, who will try to make you feel guilty for doing anything even remotely resembling what they call “animal exploitation.” Using the wrong kind of toothpaste? Eating vegan crackers from the wrong manufacturer? Watching a porno with a cat who’s incidentally in the background grooming himself, who gets no royalties for his appearance? He will let you know how horrible a person you are, but at least he’ll be an asshole while doing it. He practices this trait regarding everything, up to and including chastising your appreciation cinematic classics that feature animals, such as Every Which Way but Loose and Smokey and the Bandit 2. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I refuse to sacrifice high culture just to satisfy the whims of some holier-than-thou jerk.

By the way, the Academy’s snubbing of Clyde’s performance will forever be remembered as a black mark on the Oscars.

The perpetually indignant vegan

People that go around looking for things to be offended about are going to be successful, and the perpetually indignant vegan certainly is that. Every small inconvenience and slight is legitimate cause for outrage. The sky is always falling, and not only is every small vegan-inconveniencing problem a travesty; it’s a goddamn war crime! Whenever PETA makes a stupid ad with scantily clad women, these are the first ones to express outrage at how this is an injustice of the highest order, on par with the Bataan Death March, the Holocaust, or the Michael Bay Transformers movies.

That motherfucker retroactively ruined my childhood.

Their pathological pessimism knows no limits regarding tact or context. But really, what constitutes true injustice? How woman are stoned to death in Saudi Arabia? Or how children are made into child soldiers in Africa? Come on – let’s have a little perspective here people! No, the local bistro taking one of their vegan sandwiches off the menu is obviously a worse injustice.

Sorry Baakir, but Emily not being able to get her bean sprout Panini deserves priority over your petty concerns. Back of the line, asshole!

The “Oh my God, this is SOOOOOOO good!” vegan

You know the people that think if it’s vegan then it has to be good? No matter how shitty or disgusting a dish is, this vegan will insist it’s one of the best things they have ever eaten. Then the next they try will also be one of the best things ever. And so on. “Mmmmmm! This vegan lasagna is seriously one of the best things I’ve ever had in my life!” No it isn’t. The only flavor that reminds you of animal products is the taste of paste like I used to eat when I was four. “Wow! This vegan Pad Thai is just amazing!” Wrong asshole – it tastes like peanut butter flavored toothpaste. In other words, it sucks. I know cognitive dissonance can be a bitch, but at least try to be discriminating!

“Dude! If we pan sear these with some sawdust, butternut squash, and liquid smoke… OMG it will be sooooo amazing!”

The conspiracy nut vegan

Think 9/11 was done by the government, who is also building secret concentration camps for us all in the upcoming American Holocaust? Believe that ancient aliens build the pyramids and Stonehenge, and gave King Solomon some sweet pick-up lines so he could fuck all those women? Or that the illuminati lizard people are responsible for the commercial success of Nelly? Well then congratulations - this is you! 

Okay, maybe there’s actually something to that one.

Is there something about veganism that attracts the wackjobs, or is it a deficiency of B vitamins that make a disproportionate number of vegans believe stupid, outlandish, crackpot theories? These gullible idiots will believe anything if it’s insane enough. I’m convinced that if I got one of them high enough (as most of them are stoners anyway) I could convince them that the world is governed by a cabal of celebrities that faked their own deaths, which includes Biggie, Tupac, Elvis, and Ike Turner, who all act at the behest of their leader, the most powerful and insidious of them all: Charles Nelson Reilly.

Now that you know the truth, bow to your true overlord .

Chili recipe -- my Xmas gift to you!

There are a few dishes I feel that I just have down. This includes my red beans and rice, and my gumbo (recipe coming soon). The first recipe I ever truly feel like I truly mastered though was my chili. I've been making vegetarian chili for probably 13 years or so now, and I have settled on a basic process -- it's like I make chili on autopilot at this point.

A lot of vegan chili recipes call for some sort of fake meat, like tvp, Boca crumbles, or something comparable. I tend to like fake meat products, but for some dishes like this I think it's best to leave out processed stuff when you can. The role of meat in this dish is played by the diced mushrooms. I prefer crimini mushrooms (as I love the flavor they add), but any mushroom will work. Note they are diced, not sliced! For one thing, having little cubes of chewiness is preferable to having large slices for the same reason that having smaller pieces of meat would be better than having large strips or chunks of meat in your chili. If you absolutely must, you can use a meat substitute, and for some things (like gumbo) it's kind of unavoidable to use something processed like that, but I like to avoid it when I can. One day I might experiment with dicing some seitan that I make myself, but i don't see it topping mushrooms.

I also don't like majorly non-traditional stuff in my chili -- no celery, no squash, and certainly no fucking carrots. This is not something that is supposed to be a montage of good healthy ingredients, or even stuff that you happen to like. It's supposed to be simple, flavorful, and robust. It's there to kick your ass, not be your artistic medium of culinary expression you fucking hippie. This is chili, not vegetable soup.

Another note -- the prep time for this chili is at the least two and a half hours, so keep in mind this is not something you can just whip up at the last minute.

Ingredients:

• Two medium onions, diced
• One large green bell pepper, diced
• One head (that's right, a whole head) of garlic, minced
• 16 oz of mushrooms, diced (I prefer criminis)
• Several tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• Red pepper flakes, however much you think you can handle (no more than 3 tablespoons unless you are really bad ass)
• Chili powder, 5-6 tablespoons
• Brown sugar, 4 tablespoons
• Salt, not too much (you can always add salt; you can't take it out)
• Large can of crushed tomatoes
• Large can of diced tomatoes
• Three cans of beans (I used one each of black, red and navy)
• A 12 oz. bottle or can of beer

Get a good sturdy pot and coat the bottom with your olive oil. Saute your onions and green pepper over medium-high heat. While doing this add at least some of your red pepper flakes. I like to get the heat going in there early. (I like to add more a little later after tasting for a sort of layered effect of the hotness, but that's not necessary at all.) After the onions are getting translucent cut the heat down to medium and add the garlic. Continue the saute for about two minutes and then add the mushrooms.

Keep the saute going until the mushrooms cook down and are saturated with moisture. Then turn up the heat to high and add the beer. Any type of non-flavored beer works, and will do slightly different things to the chili. I've tried IPAs, lighter wheat ales, darker ales, lagers, and they all work. During the colder months I like to use Schlafly Oatmeal Stout. Bring that up to a boil and add the chili powder and brown sugar. Keep this boil going for three or so minutes. Be sure to stir it to make sure nothing sticks.

After this add all the tomatoes and the beans. I don't drain the beans, I just pour the whole can in there. (Now you can use cooked beans of your own if you want of course, but you will need to add some water.) Bring it up to a simmer.

If you happen to do a quick taste at this point don't expect much. It won't taste great. You're going to have let this simmer for at least a couple of hours before it's ready. Make sure to stir it at least every fifteen minutes, scraping the bottom well so nothing sticks for too long. A little sticking will probably happen though, and that's no big deal at all, but you don't want any charring. During this time you can also give it an occasional taste to see if it needs anything, like more chili powder (as all chili powders are not created equal), or more red pepper flakes (or cayenne pepper if you want).

So after a few hours you will have a pot of kick ass chili. I like to eat mine over thin spaghetti noodles, also known as chili-mac (which is probably the Midwest's sole positive contribution to Western civilization).

Rotel "cheese" dip - way overdue update just in time for bowl season!

Okay, so I was out drinking last night with friends, and got scolded by The Little Vegan that Could for never updating this thing. She's right -- I'm just fucking lazy. Every time I make a new post I resolve to "do better." And I never do. Meh. Whatever. Maybe I will start to post more. We'll see.

So yeah, I've been meaning to share this dip that I whipped up a few weeks ago when I was craving cheese dip. As someone that LOVES college football, I'm glad I managed to get this post down before college bowl season, as this is a vegan take on a tailgating classic.

Aside about college football: It's been a great year to be an LSU fan. Not only are we* in the national championship game, but have the chance to become one of the best college football teams of all time. An LSU player -- a DEFENSIVE player no less! -- got invited to the Heisman Trophy presentation. This was a great year for us, and it will be even better after we kick Bama's ass again in Nawlins. Geaux Tigers!

*Yes, I use the inclusive plural pronoun -- roll your eyes all you want, I really don't give a shit. Plus I actually went to LSU, so I'm not a sidewalk alumnus.

Okay, this is a food blog, so back to food stuff. Here's how to do it:

Ingredients:

• A can of Rotel (whatever kind you like -- I like the hot kind)
• A can of coconut milk
• 4 tablespoons of garlic powder
• 5 tablespoon of nutritional yeast flakes
• Arrowroot slurry (3 tablespoons of arrowroot powder mixed with a cup of water)
• Salt to taste

This is super easy to make. Simple heat up the Rotel and c milk in a pot and add the dry ingredients when it start to simmer. Then all the slurry a bit at a time and stir it in. It should start to thicken pretty nicely. Add as much as you want to get your desired thickness.

This is great to dip chips in, and will legitimately remind you of the one good use for Velveeta -- making a fake cheese dip, only this time instead of the dairy-infused plastic product you are using coconut milk. This is perfect when you get that craving for food made out of petroleum products.

So enjoy bowl season y'all, and remember, Auburn sucks!

Obligatory. Also, my ringtone.

Stuff to do with baked potatoes

Potatoes are rad. They are easy to prepare, cheap, taste good and aren't inherently bad for you. Okay, about that last part... you know I'm about to suggest some bad-for-you stuff here. That's my shtick I guess, and I like to think I'm pretty good at it.

Baking a potato is super easy. All you have to really do is nuke it. Sure you could wrap it in foil and bake it for like 40 minutes (or longer), but why bother when you can stick it in the microwave for a few minutes and have a well baked potato? What I do is poke a large potato with a fork several times (after washing it), and stick it in the microwave for five minutes. Then I flip it over and put three more minutes on it. If you prefer the oven method more power to you, but this is more in line with my philosophy of general laziness and doing shit fast.

A lot of people have a favorite topping they like on baked potatoes, but I thought I would suggest a couple that might seem a little unusual, but really good. The first is margarine and and Italian vinaigrette. It sounds weird, but trust me, Italian dressing is an amazing baked potato topping.

The other thing I like to do with my baked potatoes is after cutting it open and laying it out, put a Moningstar Farms Riblet on it. Be sure to get all the sauce out of that packet and put it on the potato; that stuff is really good and it's a shame to waste any of it.

Speaking of not wasting anything: [*vrrrrooooOOOOOOMMMMM* redneck powers engaged!]

Okay, now that you've eaten your potato, you're left with a lot of potential deliciousness that most people just throw away. Yeah, I'm talking about the peels. Here's what I like to do with my left over baked potato peels: wrap them up or put them in a container in the fridge, and when the mood strikes you, throw them in a hot skillet with some oil, maybe some diced onion, and fry those bad boys up. I like to dump ketchup on top and eat this for a snack, though if you save them up you can make a nice little hashbrown-esque breakfast. Other stuff you can add are bell peppers, copped garlic, tomatoes, or pretty much anything else. Hell, I bet some fake sausage stuff would work well, though I've never tried it. Cracked black pepper is also good on it, though honestly if you just fry the potato peels up and add ketchup that's really good on its own.

RAEG!!!11!1 Self-righteous vegan stupidity

If there's one thing that pisses me off about fellow vegans (or anyone, really), it's when they seemingly go around looking for things to get pissed off about. I often say that if you look for something to be offended about then you will invariably be successful. Usually when self-righteous vegans go the "OMFGZ this is SO offensive" route it's in the form of criticizing something an omnivore wrote or said about the vegan diet. Often times this involves simple ignorance or bad logic being misinterpreted (often willfully) for maliciousness and deceit.

I'm not a guy that goes around being angry all the time. I'm like this in my everyday life, and I take that with me in my animal rights stances. I like to think I take things in stride. Sometimes though, I come across something that legitimately makes me rage, and this often comes in the form of vegans criticizing other, "inferior" vegans. There are two common types of sniping attacks vegans make against other vegans. The first is healthier vegans are better than vegans that eat bad-for-you food. Obviously I don't buy into this "philosophy" at all. I'm vegan for the critters, not for myself. The second type of vegan on vegan crime is a self righteous anti-fake meat position.

Now if you want to eat your super healthy hippy shit I'm cool with that. Just because I'm willing to put stuff that's less than good for me in my body, and believe that exercise is for women doesn't mean that I expect you to agree, much less live by this ethos. Similarly, while I love fake meat, I realize that the very thought of meat grosses some people out, so if they don't happen to share my personal tastes I try not to take it personally. I mean, that's just more seitan for the rest of us.

But I refuse to feel guilty because of my tastes, and when some self-righteous asshole tries to put me in my proper "place" I'm gonna call him on his shit! Case in point: this bullshit.

Yeah, well I know maybe I should expect this kind of nonsense from a mushy-headed liberal outfit like alternet, but unfortunately this kind of sentiment has a lot of currency within the vegan community at large. There are a lot of high-horse vegans that look down on people like me, that love seitan, Boca nuggets and chik patties, and those awesome Morningstar Riblets.

This is the thing: I LOVED meat. I didn't give up meat because I didn't like it, but rather because I didn't think it was right to eat it. Giving it up was not easy for me. It was damn hard. Frankly, it would be much harder to be vegan if it weren't for fake meat. So when someone writes something like this, I have to shake my head.

...the next time you go shopping, imagine what a kid gleans from veggie burgers, veggie bacon, veggie sausage patties, veggie hot dogs, Tofurky and all the other similar fare that defines a modern plant-based diet. While none of it contains meat, it is all marketed as emulating meat. In advertising terms, that’s the “unique selling proposition” -- to give you the epicurean benefits of meat without any of meat’s downsides.

...

[This is] the vegetarian industry selling itself to meat eaters by suggesting that its products aren’t actually all that different from meat. The problem is how that message, like so many others in American culture, reinforces the wrongheaded notion that our diet should be fundamentally based on meat.

For those who have chosen to be vegetarians, this message is merely annoying. But for those like [the author's young son] who are being raised as vegetarians, the message is downright subversive. It teaches them that as tasty as vegetarian food may be, it can never compete with the “real thing.”

Raising your kid vegetarian is great -- if I have kids I plan to do that myself. But if you have trouble coming to terms of how to explain to your kid that seitan, Tofurkey, and fake nuggets are different from meat, well no offense, but maybe you should not have had kids in the first place. Call me crazy, but stuff like sex, drugs and the like are the thing I know that I would worry about, not concern of explaining to my kid why these horrible things called Gardenburgers exist.

Make no mistake -- this kind of bullshit it NOT about concern for animals. This is about aesthetics. This is about people have an ideological problem with even the idea of consuming animals, and finding animal products undesirable for stylistic reasons rather than ethical ones. Ultimately this kind of all-or-nothing stance is not only detrimental to veganism and animal rights in general, but it's downright cult-like, imposing limitations on not only what we consume but imposing criteria on how we are supposed to think about what we consume. And we wonder why some people associate vegans with being cultist! It's dumbass garbage like this -- some of us unfortunately ARE cultists! (And hiding behind your child to justify your Orwellian views is not only lame, it's fucking pathetic.)

Like it or not, humans evolved eating meat. Many of us crave it (I know I do), probably for evolutionary reasons. This does not justify it from a moral perspective; just because something is "natural" doesn't make it moral or ethical. We don't need to consume animals to live, or even to live comfortably. Thankfully, thanks to some really great meat substitutes I don't need to kill an animal to get my meat fix. And I know I'm not alone. I honestly don't know if I could be vegan if I could not satiate my meat tooth -- I like to think that I could (I am pretty serious about being vegan), but there would be a lot of people that gave up being vegetarian if you get rid of the fake meat products. 

So you keep brainwashing your child Mr. David Sirota, instilling him with the evils tempeh BLTs and Tofu Pups. I'll keep making my vegan Alfredo sauce, my awesome seitan, barbecue sandwiches, tacos, and the like. And if you think I'm hurting the movement, then you may kindly kiss my chubby vegan ass.