Our Authors
Max Falkowitz
- Location: Queens, NY
- Favorite foods: Noodles and dumplings in most every form. Pastrami. Eggplant. Chilies, coconut, and ice cream (occasionally all at once). Beets and sour cream. Lamb and goat. Curry leaves and mustard seeds. Cabbage and kale.
- Last bite on earth: Dry aged steak tartare. Pass the sour cream.
Recent Posts
Comments
A Beginner's Guide to Drinking Better Oolong Tea
@Archagon Glad you asked. To be honest it completely depends on personal taste, the particular tea, and what characteristics you want to get out of it. And to be more honest I don't weigh my tea most of the time, just eyeball it. So first and foremost, do what feels right for you and have fun experimenting with each tea in your stash to see what tastes best. I usually have to spend a few sessions "dialing it in" with a new tea to see what I like the most.
Now for me, I usually prefer a strong cup, so I brew heavy, especially on darker oolongs like Wuyi teas and roasted tieguanyin; I find doing so helps me get more of that lingering sweetness in the back of my mouth and throat. For lighter oolongs like Taiwanese high mountain styles that are a little more about aroma and lightness, I don't fill the pot quite as heavily, but a heavy brew still makes for a tea with richer body. Really up to you though! If you favor lots of aroma, try brewing lighter, or longer with fewer leaves. Lots of options.
Pear, Riesling, and Ginger Sorbet
@LemonCake I leave the skins on for added flavor, but the sorbert will be a smidge smoother if you peel them. Works well either way.
How to Make Your Own Chocolate Dip (aka Magic Shell), Ice Cream's Most Magical Topping
@revbenj Afraid panna cotta won't be cold enough--you'll need something frozen.
The Tea Lover's Way to Make the Best Cold Brew Iced Tea
@Tkocareli There's no reliable home way to completely decaffeinate a tea short of steeping it for a long time, discarding the steep, and steeping again. That brew will definitely taste weaker.
If you're looking for lower caffeine teas, try roasted, aged, or heavily fermented styles, which aren't necessarily lower in caffeine but often are. Or it's best to stick to herbals.
The Tea Lover's Way to Make the Best Cold Brew Iced Tea
@Tkocareli Glad you're enjoying it! As for caffeine content, it's a really complicated question and the jury's still out on the science. Caffeine also affects everyone differently, and it's not the only stimulant in tea, so I'd say try out a few different brewing methods and see what's most agreeable to you. Hard to make firm rules.
Why Tea Addicts Go Crazy for Pu-Erh
@toothgnash Absolutely. There are many, many schools on ways to do it, but they mostly boil down to regulating heat and humidity; relatively high amounts of both accelerate the tea's fermentation and aging, though over-abundant humidity can cause molding. Overall, keep your pu-erh away from light and strong-smelling areas like the kitchen and aromatic wood cabinets. A little airflow doesn't hurt. And in the long term, it may be wise to separate your raw and ripe cakes, though short-term contact won't cause any problems.
Pu-erh junkies who know a lot more about the subject than I do have written some smart treatments on the subject worth reading. Lotta variables to think about.
@zwolft EoT is a great vendor with unique stuff, though as you point out it's more geared toward experienced drinkers. There are so many vendors worth including, but as this is more an introductory piece I wanted to keep the list brief.
Why Tea Addicts Go Crazy for Pu-Erh
@punchjc Best advice is to take a short walk a little north of Chinatown to T Shop.
Why Tea Addicts Go Crazy for Pu-Erh
@ironbarista I really dig it. Very complex and rewarding but immediately smooth. And it takes a long, long time to steep out.
Why Jianbing is China's Most Popular Street Breakfast
@CityMinx A few stalls in Flushing carry them. Best I've had so far is from the Golden Mall basement.
So You Want to Pitch a Food Article? What to Do (and Avoid)
We definitely pay!
So You Want to Pitch a Food Article? What to Do (and Avoid)
@Veganomics We do indeed accept pitches from outside the U.S. And meat is by no means a requirement.
For a Better Frozen Cocktail, Try a Blended Blood and Sand
@Amarlado There's a link to the recipe at the bottom of the post. Here it is as well.
An Illustrated Tour of Ice Cream Styles Around the World
@bsd Pretty much!
A Beginner's Guide to Drinking Better Green Tea
@peyotetheatre I need to drink more of them!
@flatpack The only way to really find out is to taste it. Old tea doesn't really go "bad," it can just get stale. But if it still tastes good, keep brewing it!
@aleb Funny you should ask.
A Beginner's Guide to Drinking Better Oolong Tea
@Catholicizer It's your tea, so anything you want to add to it is totally up to you. Lots of roasted oolongs are really nice with milk, though I tend to leave them unsweetened since they have a natural sweetness of their own.
That said, I think its worth trying any tea unadulterated at least once to get a baseline taste for it, then adjust from there.
A Beginner's Guide to Drinking Better Green Tea
@VeganWithaYoYo I'm not a fan of most decaf teas, but have you looked into roasted or aged greens, oolongs, and puerhs? Roasting and aging both tend to reduce caffeine content in tea.
@EFahl That's what I use for most Chinese greens, though sometimes I go the easy way out and just brew in a glass. I prefer to brew Japanese greens in a kyusu though, to catch all the fine leaves.
Better Than Snickers Ice Cream
@atelouise High-viscosity bases like PB churn especially fast.
This recipe was written with an archaic swirl technique; I've updated the copy to reflect a better approach that should make for less melting and re-freezing.
Tea Essentials: The Only Teaware You Really Need
@konks Totally works. Though make sure you clean it well if it has some coffee residue on the inside and in the filter.
Sip Your Kitchen Scraps: Fizzy Ginger Cocktail With Pickled Watermelon Rind
@badseed1980 Clear your browser cache and try again? There was a glitch this morning but it's showing for me now. Also here: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/07/ginger-cocktail-prosecco-watermelon-rind-pickle.html
Chicago's Harold's is the Best Bad Fried Chicken on Earth
Noted without further comment: I lived on the South Side of Chicago for four years and enjoyed Harold's regularly.
The Trouble With Strawberry Ice Cream: How to Nail the Trickiest Dessert
@scalfin You'd think, right? On both counts. This recipe took me a lot longer than expected because I had the most success with a lot of counter-intuitive approaches. The problem with high butterfat bases is they take in a lot of air, and if you're not careful that air can lead to an icier product, particularly in bases that don't have the emulsifying power of eggs. So high butterfat doesn't always equal creamier ice cream. And if you want denser ice cream, lower butterfat is the way to go.
I tried macerating the berries to drain away some water, then concentrated that liquid into a very dense syrup. Tasted good, but a ton of work, and not that much better than going fully raw.
For blueberries I actually prefer some cooked, caramelized flavors—they're less delicate and bloomy, so I'd probably try the maceration and reduced syrup approach above.
@Brew Drink Repeat You certainly could, though I find the flavor of fresh fruit is usually superior, and you get more fiber/pectin if you purée your own. For fruits that you can't get fresh, nectars are an option. Sites like L'Epicerie sell high quality fruit purées worth looking into.
@Chicken Lover It's pretty much the procedure I describe in the post. Use this recipe, but instead of puréeing your berries, quarter them and toss with sugar. Let them sit for two hours, then drain, purée the berries, and reduce the liquid down into a very thick syrup (bubbles should stack). Add to the purée and proceed as normal.
@M. Birman It's a great approach! But I found it only a marginal improvement that took a lot of extra time in an already somewhat complicated recipe. So it was more a calculated move to make a more approachable final product. Definitely all sorts of ways to optimize things though.
@phelsom I've yet to taste a freeze dried strawberry that tastes like fresh. They can taste good, and have good uses, but that tannic dried-out flavor isn't what I want here.
@BentoBoxer Doable, but they'd freeze at different rates and melt differently in your tongue. I think it'd be weird.
@AndroidUser @pbandanne I think those approaches overly complicate something that I'm now satisfied has a workable solution.
The Best Bowl of Pho in Boston's Dorchester
@BostonAdam We did, and it was solid, but didn't stand out to me in any way. I found it pretty sweet and too light on the aromatics, but without the depth that some of the other bowls on this list negotiated more carefully.
The Trouble With Strawberry Ice Cream: How to Nail the Trickiest Dessert
@sababa To sub one sweetener for another, it helps to know what their relative sweetnesses are. For example, corn syrup is only one third as sweet as sucrose, so you need three times a given mass of corn syrup to achieve the same sweetness. This chart (PDF) has some good values to help you along the way.
@Liam781 No argument from me on classic Haagen-Dazs, they're tops. But their strawberry is still basic.
@Ananonnie @badseed1980 Definitely a worthy route! I've had some great ice creams with freeze-dried berries that soften up just a bit in the churn. But they don't have the fresh, pure flavor I was going for here—they get more tangy and powdery-tasting. Still good, though, and less fussy than my approach. As for sour cream strawberry, that's my favorite, too. SOME DAY.
@Vegan Hmm, try working in 3/4 cup strawberry purée into that base. You may need to up the corn syrup. May not be perfect but probably won't suck.
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@paulraphael Have you tried the recipe? The mix is made with all whole milk, not cream, precisely to avoid those textural issues, and this ice cream is scoopable at freezer temperature.