I’m Meathead Goldwyn From AmazingRibs.com and This Is How I Eat

Obviously, Meathead Goldwyn knows a lot about meat, but it must be said that after nearly half a century of making a living by eating and drinking, he knows many other things as well. His site AmazingRibs.com is not only a treasure trove of knowledge about barbecue and grilled meats, but also a source of information on safety , cocktail recipes and many nutritional sciences. Being very generous, Meathead was kind enough to talk on the phone and share some of the knowledge he has accumulated over the years in cooking, including his love of real balsamic, his disdain for the bunch, and how he makes a real fried cheese sandwich. …

Location: Chicago, Illinois

Current Place of Work: Cookbook Writer, Recipe Writer and Publisher AmazingRibs.com

Let me start by saying that I love the video you sent in about your refrigerator.

I went to take a picture of my refrigerator and decided, you know, I have a bunch of things here. Why am I not filming a video? Why limit yourself to just a refrigerator?

I have specific questions about the contents of the refrigerator, but I want to start with a general overview. What do you usually eat for breakfast?

I’m not hungry in the morning. I usually do not eat anything until 11 o’clock or so, when I have fruit. And then usually for about an hour or two, I can make a sandwich. I love shakshuka – a couple of eggs cracked in tomato sauce. This is wonderful. Sometimes I make grilled cheese sandwiches or tuna just in a bowl. Tuna with chopped pickles and even egg salad. This is my typical lunch.

Do you make sweet pickle or dill pickle?

My wife makes the sweet marinade herself. We’re gardeners, or should I say she’s a gardener – she’s actually studying to be a master gardener. We have been gardening since we met 40 years ago. One of my favorite things you’ve seen in the fridge is the pickled green tomatoes you find in many Jewish grocery stores. In the fall, green tomatoes remain on the vine, which simply do not ripen. This year she made jam out of them, and it really was good. I think this proves that if you add enough sugar to something, you can make jam.

And she, by the way, is the best cook in the house. And I’m not saying that – she’s out of earshot. She is a jazz chef. I’m a symphony chef. She will take a little of this and a little of that, and in 30 minutes it’s all turned into a great dish. I have to work by prescription as the leader of the orchestra. There should be a musical score in front of me. If I try to develop a recipe, I can improvise, but I start by writing it down. She’s Miles Davis and I’m Tchaikovsky.

What kind of cheese do you put on grilled cheese?

Whatever is in the cheese basket in multiples. I try my way through the cheese department; I always buy interesting cheeses. I usually start with cheddar, and we have sliced ​​Swiss cheese, colby and pepper, and I can make a jumble of them. I also prefer to grill cheese. I mean, come on now. This is called grilled cheese, and you are talking to Meathead here. I love to make it on nice thick Texas toast and I use mayonnaise on the outside and I grill it, right on the grill, and flip it, flip it, flip it. It turns golden with a couple of good grill marks and has a slightly smoky character. It’s tasty. I have a gas grill right outside the back door and the back door is just a few steps from the kitchen. So it is neither fuss nor fuss; just open the door, throw it on the bars.

How many grills do you have?

Too many to count. This is an ever-changing cast of characters. About a year ago, my wife established a law: one enters, the other leaves, because the deck groans under the weight of everything that is there. But there is the good old Weber Kettle . If you cook for the public, you need to make sure that whatever you cook will work on a Weber kettle. I have a gas grill, only I have the coolest, the best gas grill ever known to man. This is Khestan . And you know, pellet smoker, gas smoker, charcoal smoker, Big Green Egg .

Getting back to cheeses in a nutshell: what is the best cheese for burgers in your opinion?

American cheese is the best choice for cheeseburgers. It has the right taste and the ability to melt. There’s a whole science behind melting cheeses – what makes cheese melt? I wrote about this . But if you’re going to make a cheeseburger, you need something that melts on contact with hot ground beef. You can put a dome on it to help it, but many cheeses just don’t melt fast enough. When you flip this burger, you have only a couple of minutes between flipping and cooking, and you will need to melt this cheese. American cheese is perfect for this. And tastes like a cheeseburger! It is as if you are going to make peanut butter and jelly, you are not using sunflower oil. You are using peanut butter.

Do you like crunchy or creamy peanut butter?

Crisp!

And what kind of jelly?

We’ve got a bunch of jellies here and we’re making our own. I have vines – seedless green grapes from the New York Agricultural Experiment Station, built for the cool climates we call “Himrod” here. This is a wonderful green table grape and we had a very large harvest a couple of years ago. I only had six vines, but I harvested almost a bushel. We made a wonderful juice, a wonderful jelly, and then I made it and made a cotto , which is a real balsamic vinegar. And this makes a wonderful jam, jelly or pasta. The Smuckers Red Raspberry is my favorite, I think. Fig jam. We were recently in Florida and were served wonderful pineapple and orange marmalade.

What is “real balsamic”?

In Modena, where balsamic vinegar is made, they don’t have really good naming rules, so it’s pretty easy to make industrial vinegar by taking red wine vinegar, cooking it a bit, adding a little sugar and food coloring, and just labeling it balsamic. I’ve written about this at length , but a real traditional balsamic sauce is made from a couple of certain grapes in a certain way. It is boiled in a cotto and then kept in a so-called “battery” – a battery of barrels, and a battery can contain up to 13-14 barrels. Various types of wood are often found, such as walnut and chestnut, cherry and oak. This takes many years. Every time you see age on balsamic, you realize that this is not real balsamic. Balsamic is made like sherry. They put it in a barrel, and as it ages, they move it to the next barrel and topping it up in the next barrel. This year’s harvest is then placed in a large barrel. So it’s a mixture and it goes all the way down. And in the oldest barrel there may be material 25-30 years old, but, in fact, these are several vintages.

This is one of such rare exotic products as truffles and caviar. And since we are gardeners, we grow fresh tomatoes, and they make the most unusual caprese. We don’t use it like crazy, but I always have a bottle of this substance. Suitable for ice cream and strawberries. It’s a little thinner than syrup, but just extraordinary. Very sweet, but very, very tart. I can drink straight from the bottle. And you can too. It’s almost like liquor.

Do you have a wine cellar?

Small wine cellars with a capacity of about fifteen boxes. I sometimes go to charity auctions, buy something special there, and we endure them, but almost everything we buy costs less than $ 15. Anyone can get great wine for $ 20 or more. The secret is, can you get great wine for kids under 15? We drink wine with dinner every night, I really can’t afford to drink gorgeous Bordeaux every night. So we hunt and bite. It’s better to know a good vintner than a good stockbroker. It’s right there with the knowledge of a good butcher. I have a great wine merchant and she turns me on.

Do you drink a lot of cocktails?

I’m mostly a drunk, but not so long ago I discovered Negronis. I became a Negroni addict. It is the perfect balance between bitter, sweet and tart. Beautiful colour. Fragrant. I don’t make many cocktails, but my next book has a whole chapter on cocktails affected by fire and smoke .

I noticed that the term “preacher of hedonism” is being applied to you.

I wrote this on my business card. I don’t know why I put that name on myself. Christian fundamentalists have reacted negatively to this. I enjoy. A little philosophy for you. I’m an old man. Now I have a philosophy: you walk through life, you have only five senses. Everything we know about the world is what we collect through these five senses. It’s criminal if you don’t use all of them.

I think there is an idea that the food has to be bad in order for you to enjoy it, but that is not necessarily the case.

Lord, a ripe tomato? You put me next to a really ripe tomato and a nice steak and it’s a difficult choice. I love both of them equally. Sweet corn? I don’t water the corn with oil or salt. We just steam or grill and I eat naked. When our garden blooms, we will live a week without meat or a few days. I once spent 30 days without meat for a challenge. I protested against CAFO , animal abuse and food factories. It was not difficult. We have eggplant. We have zucchini, we have tomatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers – we have everything! Pepper – oh, we love peppers. We can and save them. I smoke peppers and make peppers. I make smoked paprika. I make chipotle. Prepares pickled spices, prepares tomato sauces. Our tomato sauces are so much better than anything in a can.

Going back to the jars in the fridge: I noticed that you have margarine and butter, mayonnaise and Miracle Whip.

I am AC / DC. I go both ways. We also have butter and crunchy peanut butter. Here are just a few times when you want something to spread easily, and when you just want to butter a piece of bread or something else, if your butter is rock-hard, margarine comes in handy. Many Europeans don’t use oil. We just don’t. I am married to a food safety expert. We’re pretty careful about this sort of thing, but maybe a little overly obsessed with it. In any case, the American oil is different from the European one.

How to choose Mayonnaise or Miracle Whip?

Oh God, I was hoping you didn’t ask about this. My wife mayonnaise, and I am a miracle whip. I have a sweet tooth. I love Miracle Whip. But don’t put Miracle Whip on top of your grilled cheese sandwich. Only mayonnaise will do. Are you familiar with this hack ? I like it more than butter. And by the way, have you ever made mayonnaise with fish? It is a very good non-stick food for fish, especially grilled fish. I wrote about this in my book a few years ago, and now it is gaining momentum.

Ahead of the curve.

We were ahead of everyone else in the area of whispering back . Well ahead of the curve in reverse. We’re experimental. We are interested in science.

Reverse toasting – your favorite way to cook a steak?

Thick steak. This is not the best trick for preparing a thin steak. Thin steak you have a hot, quick flash. But definitely a thick steak. We call this “sous vide bumpkin”.

How to cook chicken?

Many of them are dirty on the grill. And some of them are made in a convection oven. In a conventional oven, the skin is really crispy and I love the good crispy crispy chicken skin. I am always amazed how many chefs advise you to tie your legs. You want darker meat to cook more than white meat. If you twist your legs, you basically pull it in so that it becomes part of your thermal body mass, and your legs won’t cook as much and you will end up with a heavily overcooked chest. If you let your feet fly, you will have better air circulation around them, they will heat up faster and cook more. Even Thomas Keller – all these guys – always tie the bird up and put it in these braziers. You must raise it above the pan so that warm air can pass underneath and cook the bottom. I never cook poultry in a pan. I cook it on the counter above the brazier, but not in the brazier.

And you should definitely use digital thermometers, especially when cooking poultry. It is the most important tool in the kitchen. It’s 2020. Anyone who is not attached to a digital thermometer does not know how to cook and risks the health and well-being of their loved ones. In the barbecue world, there are a lot of boobies who punch and say, “I don’t need a thermometer.” We converted them. My wife confessed to me that she thought we sold more thermometers than the USDA and FDA combined because every recipe on our website talks about the temperature at which you cook. You just can’t risk overcooking a steak at current beef prices. To make matters worse, you don’t want to send your grandmother or youngest child to the hospital on July 4th with undercooked chicken. Poultry is kryptonite if not cooked properly, and the coldest part of chicken is where the thigh and body meet.

It is another matter to understand the different types of energy. When you grill, you have three types of energy. You have conduction, which occurs when meat or vegetables come into contact with metal, which can be very hot. Then you have airflow and then you have radiation. You can put your hand in an oven with a temperature of 200 degrees and hold it there for 30 seconds, a minute or even longer, and it will not burn you. But if you touch the wall of this oven, which is also 200 degrees, when you return from the hospital, you will understand that energy is important, not temperature. They are both two hundred degrees, but the warm air will not burn you like this warm metal. Once you understand the three different types of energy, you can cook.