Entries tagged with 'Tennessee'
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Nick Kindelsperger of The Paupered Chef (and Serious Eats Dinner Tonight contributor) left Chicago last weekend to spend forty hours in Memphis. He stopped at four of the city's most vaunted barbecue haunts: Cozy Corner, Rendezvous, Interstate Barbecue, and Corky's....
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Crispy Critters preps its whole hog entry at last year's Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. The Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest enjoys the saucy subtitle, "Superbowl of Swine." Like the football game that sorta shares that handle, it can be almost impossible for spectators to get up close to the sizzling hot action at Memphis in May, which starts Thursday and wraps up Saturday. It’s like going to a party and being told to stay away from the buffet. After watching the mouthwatering competition on the Food Network, hundreds of ‘cue fans make the pilgrimage to the annual event only to be bummed when they learn it’s not cool to walk up to...
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I've been trying to get my boyfriend to dress up as champion eater Takeru Kobayashi for Halloween for a while now, but now that Kobayashi has his own line of t-shirts, maybe he'll actually consider it. (Think about it: just a t-shirt with some strategically placed ketchup stains, shorts and a hot dog. So easy.) Kobayashi admits he didn't have a hand in designing the shirts, but they're still pretty funny. They say things like: "Kobayashi Eats Chestnuts for Breakfasts," "Kobayashi Ate My Homework" and of course "Kobayashi Banzai." Thrillist caught up with the competitive eating star today and got a little insight into his own personal hot dog habits. Do you ever casually enjoy a hot dog? Yes,...
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Photo composite by Clay Gordon Every year for the past seven years I have joined hundreds of other pastry professionals in an annual pilgrimage to two of pastry's meccas: The World Pastry Forum and the National and World Pastry Team Championship. I have just returned from my 2008 journey, which took me to Nashville, Tennessee, and the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. The World Pastry Forum is actually an educational event. More than a dozen world-class pastry chefs present a program of hands-on and demonstration classes in all aspects of pastry, baking, and confectionery. Highlights this year included the hands-on Chocolate class taught by Stephane Glacier MOF and Stephan Iten, the hands-on Wedding Cake class taught by Colette Peters and Nicholas...
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The news hit me like a ton of grits. Smuckers, the company that bought the White Lily flour company, is closing the White Lily plant in Knoxville, Tennessee, at the end of the month. After that, White Lily will only be made at two plants in the midwest. According to the company, the While Lily flour produced at the two new plants is indistinguishable from the old. A.) I'm sure that's not true. B.) The product itself is not what's at stake here. To every Southern baker I know, White Lily is synonymous with the South. It represents the soul of Southern baking tradition. Move White Lily out of the South? That's insane. That would be like moving Kossar's Bialys...
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Fried pickles from Wintzell's Oyster House in Mobile, Alabama. When visiting a couple weeks ago, I was more excited for these than the actual oysters. To save a half-second, just call them "frickles." Snackable like French fries or popcorn shrimp, these deep-fried discs have the briney flavor of salt and vinegar chips and the addictive quality of, well, anything deep-fried. Apparently pickle spears can get too soggy, so most restaurants serve the bread-and-butter kind usually found on hamburgers. To cut the vinegary punch, orders are usually served with a creamy dipping sauce. See what restaurant kitchens are sizzling pickles, not just potatoes and onions, after the jump. Note: Frickle-making is especially common in a certain region of the country....
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Editor's note: Occasionally what looks at first glance to be a conventional guidebook transcends the genre in surprising ways. John T. Edge's Southern Belly is just such a read, which is why I'm pleased that he has allowed us to excerpt selected items from it on Serious Eats, where they appear every other week. —Ed Levine By John T. Edge | In fine-dining circles, tales of temperamental French chefs are rife. Neophytes who fiddle with the foie gras or diddle with the duck confit are sure to stir the ire of the guy in the white coat and pleated tocque outfit. But who would expect such an outburst of temper from a guy in a flour-streaked apron, the proprietor of...
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Editor's note: Occasionally what looks at first glance to be a conventional guidebook transcends the genre in surprising ways. John T. Edge's Southern Belly is just such a read, which is why I'm pleased that he has allowed us to excerpt selected items from it on Serious Eats, where they appear every other week. —Ed Levine By John T. Edge | Jane Barton, whom everyone seems to call the Mayonnaise Queen, has been on her feet since 4:30 this morning. Her gray hair is fashionably coiffed. She wears a paisley smock over Bermuda shorts. Her reading glasses dangle from a gold herringbone necklace. This is her 49th year of service at the Waffle Shop, a Lenten-only canteen set in the...
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It's cold enough to kill hogs. OK, it's not. But, it should be. And, hopefully, it will be soon. For most of us, hog-killing isn't the family, social, community event it used to be. But then, most of us don't spend our spring worrying about the health and survival of our suckling pigs while eyeing the cold day in late fall (the cold day that heralds the coming of many more cold days) when those same pigs will provide sustenance for a long winter. Ever wondered how it is Southerners took to the hog so devotedly? The answer lies in our relatively recent pioneer past. In his great book Eating, Drinking, and Visiting in the South, Joe Gray Taylor explains,...
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On the way back from Greenwood, Mississippi, we stayed in Memphis. We arrived in downtown Memphis at 10 p.m. to find ourselves in a sea of Elvis impersonators. They were having a huge Elvis impersonator concert and contest. I'm not kidding. There were two Elvis impersonators checking in ahead of us at the Peabody Hotel. We were not there to see faux kings, we were there to eat barbecue. In the name of research, because Bon Appétit had named Charlie Vergos' Rendezvous one of its three finalists in its search for the best baby back ribs in the country, and also because it was a two-minute walk from our hotel and it was too late to eat at someplace like...
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