In Search of the Best Croissant in Protest-Filled Paris

in Food & Drink | May 11th, 2023

An Ital­ian tourist went to Paris in search of the best crois­sant. A nat­ur­al thing to do. Except he did it amidst a city-wide strike, one pre­cip­i­tat­ed by Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to raise the min­i­mum retire­ment age in France. It all makes for a unique kind of food/travel video.

So what boulan­geries (bak­eries) made the list? Tout Autour du Pain on rue de Turenne; Car­ton Paris on Boule­vard de Denain; Stohrer (estab­lished in 1730) on Rue Mon­torgueil; Du Pain et des Idées on Rue Yves Toudic; and Cedric Gro­let OPÉRA on rue de l’Opéra.

And what bak­ery takes the prover­bial cake? Turns out, it’s Du Pain et des Idées. When we vis­it Paris in June, we’ll be sure to stop by…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent

French Café Adds Extra Charge for Rude Cus­tomers

See Rid­ley Scott’s 1973 Bread Commercial—Voted England’s Favorite Adver­tise­ment of All Time

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Harvard’s Free Course on Mak­ing Cakes, Pael­la & Oth­er Deli­cious Food

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A Culinary Videos Series Shows Every Conceivable Way to Cook Eggs, Potatoes, Pizza, Bacon & More

in Comedy, Food & Drink | April 28th, 2023

So you think you know your way around a pota­to, eh?

No doubt you excel at boil­ing, mash­ing, roast­ing, bak­ing and twice bak­ing …

You may make a mean pota­to chip or pomme frite…

Per­haps you’ve per­fect­ed some tricks with a microwave or air fry­er.

But before you’re puffed too full of brag­ging rights, have you ever thought to sub­ject this hum­ble root veg­etable to a blow torch, an iron, a dish­wash­er, a juicer or a gaso­line pow­ered gen­er­a­tor plugged into a giant dim­mer switch?

No?

Con­grat­u­la­tions on hav­ing avoid­ed some tru­ly dread­ful meth­ods for prepar­ing a pota­to, judg­ing by the results of some of Bon Appétit Con­tribut­ing Edi­tor Amiel Stanek’s more out­ré, tongue-in-cheek exper­i­ments, above.

Wait, maybe there aren’t real­ly 63 ways to cook pota­toes?

The prepa­ra­tion we’re legit­i­mate­ly eager to try is pick­ling, for spuds Stanek declares “very sweet, salty, acidic”, a wel­come addi­tion to a cheese board or a cru­dité plate.

And there’s an argu­ment to be made for turn­ing a waf­fle iron into a dual pur­pose device by mak­ing hash browns in it.

Stanek fares less well, pip­ing pre-mashed pota­toes into a Rol­lie ® Eggmas­ter, “a weird, made-for-TV device that is made express­ly for cook­ing eggs:”

Ewww, no, why is it like that? This is dis­gust­ing!!!

If you’re won­der­ing how that Rol­lie ® does with its intend­ed ingre­di­ent, Stanek’s got an answer for you:

Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, oh my god, it looks like it’s in a con­dom. This is the most dis­gust­ing egg thing we have made all day…it tastes like bad seafood. I don’t know why, it tastes plastic‑y. This is hor­ri­ble!

Mean­while, those in long term rela­tion­ships with part­ners hold­ing dif­fer­ent views on the best way to scram­ble, fry or poach an egg may find them­selves feel­ing vin­di­cat­ed by this episode.

Either that or hor­ri­bly betrayed.

Oth­er than pota­toes and eggs, the only episode of the 10 in the Almost Every series not exclu­sive­ly geared toward cook­ing flesh is the one devot­ed to piz­za, which at 32 meth­ods, ties with chick­en breast. (Only whole chick­en, at 24 meth­ods, has few­er options.)

Veg­ans will like­ly feel unim­pressed, in addi­tion to left out, giv­en that there’s near­ly that many sug­gest­ed hacks for melt­ing plant-based cheese.

Per­haps a vis­it to Moon­burg­er, a meat­less Hud­son Val­ley chain where Stanek is Culi­nary Con­sul­tant and the shakes are dairy free is in order?

Those crav­ing ever more off­beat attacks, how­ev­er, will find them­selves enter­tained by Stanek’s efforts involv­ing an Easy-Bake Oven (yeah, nope, not good at all),  a Teenage Mutant Nin­ja Tur­tle Piz­za Machine (the whole cheese sitch looks a lit­tle bit demented…bummer, dude), and a crust that’s baked around a sil­i­cone cone, then filled with a “molten, dan­ger­ous slur­ry” of sauce and cheese (this thing looks demon­ic to me, like an ani­mal horn meant for a Satan­ic rit­u­al…)

If that’s not our cue to seek out a restau­rant with a wood burn­ing oven, per­haps it’s a sig­nal we should order out.

Watch a com­plete playlist of Bon Appétit’s Almost Every here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

10,000 Vin­tage Recipe Books Are Now Dig­i­tized in The Inter­net Archive’s Cook­book & Home Eco­nom­ics Col­lec­tion

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

The Recipes of Famous Artists: Din­ners & Cock­tails From Tol­stoy, Miles Davis, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, David Lynch & Many More

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Why the Ancient Romans Had Better Teeth Than Modern Europeans

in Food & Drink, History | April 21st, 2023

The cas­es for trav­el­ing back in time and liv­ing in a past era are many and var­ied, but the case against doing so is always the same: den­tistry. In every chap­ter of human his­to­ry before this one, so we’re often told, every­one lived in at least a low-lev­el state of agony inflict­ed by tooth prob­lems, to say noth­ing of the unimag­in­able unsight­li­ness of their smiles. But as jus­ti­fied as we prob­a­bly are in laugh­ing at the pearly whites on dis­play in Hol­ly­wood peri­od pieces, the his­tor­i­cal record con­flicts with our belief that the fur­ther you go into the past, the worst every­one’s teeth: ancient Romans, as explained in the Told In Stone video above, actu­al­ly had bet­ter teeth than mod­ern Euro­peans.

That’s hard­ly a high bar to clear, a mod­ern Amer­i­can may joke. But then, the Unit­ed States today takes den­tal care to an almost obses­sive lev­el, where­as the cit­i­zens of the Roman Empire had prac­ti­cal­ly noth­ing to work with by com­par­i­son. “The stan­dard, and often sole imple­ment employed to clean teeth was a tooth­pick,” says Told in Stone cre­ator Gar­rett Ryan. These “were paired with tooth pow­ders, which were rubbed over the teeth and gums with an enthu­si­as­tic fin­ger.” Ingre­di­ents includ­ed “pumice, pul­ver­ized bone, pow­dered glass, and crushed shell,” or some­times “sheep­’s sweat and the ash of a wolf’s head.” — all a far cry from any­thing offered on the tooth­paste aisle today.

“Bad breath was a chron­ic con­di­tion in the clas­si­cal world,” and “toothache seems to have been almost equal­ly preva­lent.” The treat­ment most com­mon­ly prac­ticed by Roman den­tists was extrac­tion, per­formed with­out anes­thet­ic. Yet only about a third of the pre­served skele­tons recov­ered from the ruins of Pom­peii and Her­cu­la­neum were miss­ing teeth, “and rel­a­tive­ly few had cav­i­ties.”  Though many soci­eties today take den­tal con­di­tion as a mark­er of class, in ancient Rome the rela­tion­ship was, to a cer­tain extent, reversed: “A young girl wear­ing expen­sive jew­el­ry, for exam­ple, already had five cav­i­ties, prob­a­bly because her fam­i­ly could afford to give her plen­ty of snacks smoth­ered in expen­sive and sug­ary hon­ey.”

Indeed, “in the absence of processed sug­ar, oral bac­te­ria were less aggres­sive than they are today.” Romans got cav­i­ties, but “the per­va­sive black­ened teeth and hol­low cheeks of ear­ly mod­ern Europe,”  an era at the unfor­tu­nate inter­sec­tion of rel­a­tive­ly plen­ti­ful sug­ar and rel­a­tive­ly prim­i­tive den­tistry, “were near­ly as dis­tant from the Roman expe­ri­ence as they are from ours.” Some of us here in the sug­ar-sat­u­rat­ed twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, with its con­stant pur­suit of den­tal per­fec­tion, may now be con­sid­er­ing the poten­tial ben­e­fits of shift­ing to an ancient Roman diet — with­out, of course, all those tiny, enam­el-abrad­ing stones that had a way of end­ing up in ancient Roman bread.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Try the Old­est Known Recipe For Tooth­paste: From Ancient Egypt, Cir­ca the 4th Cen­tu­ry BC

Explore the Roman Cook­book, De Re Coquinar­ia, the Old­est Known Cook­book in Exis­tence

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er an Ancient Roman Snack Bar in the Ruins of Pom­peii

Bars, Beer & Wine in Ancient Rome: An Intro­duc­tion to Roman Nightlife and Spir­its

The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved: Why Has Roman Con­crete Been So Durable?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Historical Italian Cooking: How to Make Ancient Roman & Medieval Italian Dishes

in Food & Drink, History | April 11th, 2023

Italy is wide­ly cel­e­brat­ed for hav­ing vig­i­lant­ly pre­served its food cul­ture, with the result that many dish­es there are still pre­pared in more or less the same way they have been for cen­turies. When you taste Ital­ian food at its best, you taste his­to­ry — to bor­row the name of a Youtube chan­nel whose suc­cess has revealed a sur­pris­ing­ly wide­spread enthu­si­asm for the cui­sine of bygone eras. But some of Italy’s most glob­al­ly beloved comestibles aren’t quite as deeply root­ed in the past as peo­ple tend to assume: there are no records of tiramisu, for instance, before the nine­teen-six­ties; cia­bat­ta, the Ital­ian answer to the baguette, was invent­ed in the ear­ly nine­teen-eight­ies.

Nei­ther of them appear any­where in His­tor­i­cal Ital­ian Cook­ing, a bilin­gual blog in Eng­lish and Ital­ian that teach­es how to par­take in far more ven­er­a­ble culi­nary tra­di­tions. A vari­ety of peri­ods are rep­re­sent­ed: the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry (Neapoli­tan cala­mari, tagli­atelle and beef stew), the Renais­sance (cros­ti­ni with guan­ciale and sage, elder­flow­ers frit­ters), the Mid­dle Ages (monk’s stuffed-egg soup, quails with sumac), and even the time of ancient Rome (cut­tle­fish cakes, Horace’s lagana and chick­peas).

You can also see these and oth­er dish­es pre­pared on His­tor­i­cal Ital­ian Cook­ing’s Youtube chan­nel, which offers playlists orga­nized by era, region, and chief ingre­di­ent: Medieval Tus­can recipes, ancient fish recipes, ear­ly medieval recipes at the court of the Franks.

His­tor­i­cal Ital­ian Cook­ing’s most pop­u­lar video shows every step involved in mak­ing “the most famous ancient Mediter­ranean sauce, garum.” The recipe comes straight from De Re Coquinar­ia, the old­est known cook­book in exis­tence, which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. If you’d like to try your hand at mak­ing this bold condi­ment, make sure you’ve got the time: you’ll have to let the fish it’s made of it sit for at least a few days, stir­ring it three or four times per day, though some recipes sug­gest con­tin­u­ing this process for three or four months before the garum is ready to eat. If, on fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion, you’d pre­fer to make a piz­za, His­tor­i­cal Ital­ian Cook­ing can help with that as well: just make sure you’ve got enough lard and quails.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Free Course from MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once

The Futur­ist Cook­book (1930) Tried to Turn Ital­ian Cui­sine into Mod­ern Art

Tast­ing His­to­ry: A Hit YouTube Series Shows How to Cook the Foods of Ancient Greece & Rome, Medieval Europe, and Oth­er Places & Peri­ods

When Ital­ian Futur­ists Declared War on Pas­ta (1930)

Explore the Roman Cook­book, De Re Coquinar­ia, the Old­est Known Cook­book in Exis­tence

Ital­ian Advice on How to Live the Good Life: Cig­a­rettes, Toma­toes, and Oth­er Pic­turesque Small Plea­sures

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How to Develop Photographs with Coffee

in Food & Drink, Photography | April 5th, 2023

James Hoff­mann knows some­thing about cof­fee. He’s authored The World Atlas of Cof­fee and runs a pro­lif­ic YouTube chan­nel, where he cov­ers every­thing from mak­ing cof­fee with the Aero­Press and MokaPot, to brew­ing the per­fect espres­so and also pro­vid­ing basic cof­fee mak­ing tips & tricks. Pret­ty bread and but­ter stuff, if you can use that expres­sion when talk­ing about cof­fee. But he also cov­ers some sub­jects at the mar­gins of the cof­fee world–like how to devel­op pho­tographs with cof­fee. Above, Hoff­mann intro­duces you to Caf­fenol, a process where­by pho­tographs can be devel­oped with cof­fee and some­times Vit­a­min C. To take a deep­er dive into the sub­ject, you’ll want to explore PetaPix­el’s primer, Caf­fenol: A Guide to Devel­op­ing B&W Film with Cof­fee.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know about the Bialet­ti Moka Express: A Deep Dive Into Italy’s Most Pop­u­lar Cof­fee Mak­er

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

Deep Fried Cof­fee: A Very Dis­turb­ing Dis­cov­ery

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Understanding Espresso: A Six-Part Series Explaining What It Takes to Pull the Ideal Shot

in Food & Drink | March 28th, 2023

It does­n’t take long to learn how to pull a shot of espres­so. Search for that phrase on Youtube, and you’ll find hours’ worth of sound instruc­tion, most of it in the form of brief and eas­i­ly digestible videos. All of them cov­er the same basic stages of the process: grind­ing, dos­ing, tamp­ing, and brew­ing. When exam­ined close­ly, each of those stages reveals a for­mi­da­ble body of knowl­edge to mas­ter. If any one Youtu­ber can lay claim to hav­ing mas­tered all of them, it must be James Hoff­mann, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his videos on sub­jects from deep-fried cof­fee to the clas­sic Bialet­ti Moka Express. In the six-part series above, he offers view­ers an overview of all they need to know to achieve a true under­stand­ing of espres­so.

Episode by episode, Hoff­mann explains how to choose the right dose of cof­fee, ratio between the amount of ground and liq­uid cof­fee, brew time, grind size, brew tem­per­a­ture, and pres­sure. Of course, there is no sin­gle uni­ver­sal­ly cor­rect set­ting or amount of any of these things: each is a vari­able with its own range of effects on the shot of espres­so ulti­mate­ly yield­ed.

Each drinker, too, has a dif­fer­ent con­cep­tion of the taste and tex­ture of the ide­al espres­so shot, and con­sis­tent­ly real­iz­ing those qual­i­ties — or at least get­ting close — neces­si­tates no small amount of tri­al and error. But those who lis­ten well to Hoff­man­n’s expla­na­tions will sure­ly end up with few­er errors, and in any case get more enjoy­ment from the tri­als.

Watch “Under­stand­ing Espres­so,” and you’re going to want to know how Hoff­mann pulls shots for him­self. This he address­es in a bonus episode — unsur­pris­ing­ly, the longest one of the bunch — which shows his entire process in detail, from prepar­ing the beans to stir­ring and sip­ping. Along the way, he also intro­duces the vari­ety of spe­cial­ized devices he uses: a strong draw for his many cof­fee-gear­head sub­scribers, but one he presents with the caveat that you real­ly don’t need to go high-end all the way in order to live your best espres­so life. Even so, the ded­i­cat­ed home enthu­si­ast must put in con­sid­er­ably more time and atten­tion than the aver­age chain-cof­fee-shop barista. “Cafés want to make good espres­so as quick­ly and eas­i­ly as pos­si­ble,” he reminds us. “We want to make incred­i­ble espres­so every time.”

You can watch the entire playlist, from start to fin­ish, at the very top of the post.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

Cof­fee Col­lege: Every­thing You Want­ed to Know about Cof­fee Mak­ing in One Lec­ture

All Espres­so Drinks Explained: Cap­puc­ci­no, Lat­te, Mac­chi­a­to & Beyond

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know about the Bialet­ti Moka Express: A Deep Dive Into Italy’s Most Pop­u­lar Cof­fee Mak­er

Life and Death of an Espres­so Shot in Super Slow Motion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Jancis Robinson’s Wine Course: Explore the TV Series That Introduced the Wines of the World (1995)

in Food & Drink | March 15th, 2023

“The word ‘con­nois­seur’ is not an attrac­tive one,” writes Jan­cis Robin­son in her mem­oir Tast­ing Plea­sure: Con­fes­sions of a Wine Lover. “It smacks of exclu­siv­i­ty, pre­cious­ness and elit­ism.” Indeed, “con­nois­seur­ship is not a nec­es­sary state for wine appre­ci­a­tion. It is per­fect­ly pos­si­ble to enjoy wine enor­mous­ly with­out real­ly under­stand­ing it. But a con­nois­seur sees each indi­vid­ual wine in its his­tor­i­cal, geo­graph­i­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal con­text and is tru­ly sen­si­tive to its pos­si­bil­i­ties.” Those who drink wine too care­less­ly or too strin­gent­ly, “those who will not meet a wine halfway, and who con­sis­tent­ly ignore the sto­ry each wine has to tell, deprive them­selves of a large part of the poten­tial plea­sure asso­ci­at­ed with each bot­tle.”

How best to expe­ri­ence that plea­sure — or rather, how best to attain the state of con­nois­seur­ship that makes it acces­si­ble in the first place? One could do worse than start­ing with the works of Robin­son her­self, who’s not just one of the most respect­ed wine writ­ers alive today, but also one­time super­vi­sor of the lux­u­ry wine selec­tion on British Air­ways’ Con­corde and advi­sor for the wine cel­lar of the late Queen Eliz­a­beth II.

Since she began cov­er­ing wine pro­fes­sion­al­ly near­ly half a cen­tu­ry ago, she has pro­duced a great deal of work in print as well as for the screen. Among the lat­ter, per­haps the most ambi­tious is Jan­cis Robin­son’s Wine Course, whose ten episodes orig­i­nal­ly aired on BBC 2 in 1995 and are now avail­able to watch on Robin­son’s own Youtube chan­nel.

With this $1.6 mil­lion pro­duc­tion, Robin­son was “set loose on the wine world, far too much of the time in full make­up, with fresh­ly done hair and clothes sub­si­dized by an offi­cial BBC bud­get.” Ded­i­cat­ing each episode to a dif­fer­ent grape vari­etal “allowed us with­in a sin­gle pro­gram to vis­it more than one region — and there­fore vary the scenery, archi­tec­ture and cli­mate. It also reflect­ed my pas­sion­ate inter­est in grape vari­eties and my con­vic­tion that com­ing to grips with the most impor­tant grapes pro­vides the eas­i­est route to learn­ing about wine.” The year­long shoot took her and her team around the globe, vis­it­ing wine­mak­ers wher­ev­er they could be found: France, Ger­many, Aus­tralia, Chile, and even north­ern Cal­i­for­nia, where they man­aged an audi­ence with auteur-vint­ner Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la.

“The con­flict between the New and Old Worlds of wine was com­ing nice­ly to a head at just the right time for our series, Robin­son notes.” Those worlds have set­tled into a kind of rel­a­tive peace in the decades since — as has the “Chardon­nay boom” of the mid-nine­teen-nineties, about which Robin­son lets slip some frus­tra­tion onscreen. Despite her vast knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence of wine, Robin­son sel­dom shows any hes­i­tan­cy to crack a joke, and sure­ly her con­tin­ued promi­nence as a wine edu­ca­tor owes some­thing to that sense of humor, on dis­play in the Talks at Google inter­view about her 2016 book The 24-Hour Wine Expert. More recent­ly, she entered into anoth­er col­lab­o­ra­tion with the BBC, specif­i­cal­ly the new BBC Mae­stro online edu­ca­tion plat­form, to cre­ate the course “An Under­stand­ing of Wine.” In all pur­suits, under­stand­ing is the basis of plea­sure — but in wine, even more so.

Episodes of Jan­cis Robin­son’s Wine Course:

 

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Vin­tage Wine Course (UC Davis, 1973)

High-Tech Japan­ese Cam­era Proves That the Shape of a Wine Glass Affects the Fla­vor of Wines

Sal­vador Dali’s 1978 Wine Guide, The Wines of Gala, Gets Reis­sued: Sen­su­al Viti­cul­ture Meets Sur­re­al Art

Storm: New Short Film Cap­tures the Artistry of Wine­mak­ing

How to Open a Wine Bot­tle with Your Shoe

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Cookery Course: Free Video Lessons

in Food & Drink, Television | March 6th, 2023

Our def­i­n­i­tion of bud­get cook­ery may dif­fer from celebri­ty chef Gor­don Ram­sey’s.

True, the world famous restau­ran­teur and cook­book author speaks of cheap cuts with mes­sian­ic zeal, but the episode of Gor­don Ramsey’s Ulti­mate Cook­ery Course ded­i­cat­ed to Food on a Bud­get, above, also finds him pay­ing a call to Lina Stores’ SoHo loca­tion to dis­cuss ham, sausages, and sala­mi with the late “deli mae­stro” Anto­nio Sac­co­mani.

It’s not exact­ly Cost­co.

Nor can we buy bone-in Lamb with fried bread as a cost con­scious dish, though the accom­pa­ny­ing milk soaked fried bread — home­made crou­tons real­ly — will cost slight­ly less to make this year, as the USDA is pre­dict­ing that dairy prices will fall after 2022’s his­toric lev­els.

As long as we’re at peace with the idea that the man is not ever going to be found stretch­ing rice and beans to feed a fam­i­ly of four for a week when there’s left­over risot­to to be res­ur­rect­ed as aranci­ni, the series is a gold­mine for chefs of all bud­gets and expe­ri­ence lev­els.

It’s not so much the final dish­es, as the short cuts and best prac­tices on the jour­ney.

His “chef in Paris” might indeed kill him for ugly­ing up a dish with deli­cious­ly hum­ble pan scrap­ings, but his iron­clad max­ims to waste noth­ing and use avail­able ingre­di­ents will ben­e­fit home chefs with an eye on the bot­tom line, as well as pros in high end restau­rants where prof­it mar­gins turn on a knife’s edge.

In an age when any fool can Google up dozens of fool­proof meth­ods for cook­ing rice, some­times it’s reas­sur­ing to get this sort of intel straight from the lips of a glob­al­ly rec­og­nized expert. (We’re big fans of Julia Child’s scram­bled eggs…)

How does your method mea­sure up against Ramsey’s freely shared secret for cook­ing per­fect rice?

Weigh out 400 grams of rice on a kitchen scale

Rinse with cold water

Sea­son with salt and pep­per, and — going up the food chain a bit — 3 pierced car­damom pods and a star anise

Add 600 grams of water (that’s a 1:1.5 ratio for those play­ing along with­out kitchen scales or the met­ric sys­tem) 

Bring to a boil, and steam, cov­ered for 8–10  min­utes 

No peek­ing!

Remove pot from heat and fluff

Such uni­ver­sal tips are the most per­sua­sive rea­son to stick with the series.

Ramsey’s rapid fire deliv­ery and lack of linked recipes may leave you feel­ing a bit lost in regard to exact mea­sure­ments, tem­per­a­tures, and step by step instruc­tions, but keep your ears peeled and you’ll quick­ly pick up on how to extend fresh herbs’ shelf life and keep cut pota­toes, apples and avo­ca­dos look­ing their best.

Oth­er episodes reveal how to grease cake tins, pre­vent milk from boil­ing over, remove baked-on residue, peel kiwis and man­gos, deter­mine a pineapple’s ripeness, seed pome­gran­ates, skin toma­toes, and keep plas­tic con­tain­ers stain-free…

Seri­ous­ly, who needs Tik­Tok when we have Gor­don Ram­sey 2012?

Ramsey’s advice to bypass expen­sive wine when cook­ing those com­par­a­tive­ly cheap cuts of meat low and slow gets a chef’s kiss from us. (In full dis­clo­sure, we would hap­pi­ly swig his brais­ing vin­tage.)

As to the slow-cooked duck, truf­fles and caramelized figs with ricot­ta, we must remind our­selves that the series is over 10 years old. These days even eggs feel like a splurge..

Per­haps some stress free cook­ing tips will low­er our stress lev­el over this week’s gro­cery expen­di­tures?

Here too, there seems to be some dis­crep­an­cy in Ram­sey’s def­i­n­i­tion and the gen­er­al pub­lic’s. His idea of stress free is achieved through lots of prep­work

If your idea of de-stress­ing involves skin­ning & debon­ing a salmon or mak­ing home­made fish stock, you’re in luck.

Obvi­ous­ly the end prod­uct will be deli­cious but the phrase “chili chick­en with gin­ger & corian­der” acti­vates both our sali­vary glands and our impulse to order out…

Watch a full playlist of Gor­don Ram­say’s Ulti­mate Cook­ery Course here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Antho­ny Bourdain’s First Food-and-Trav­el Series A Cook’s Tour Free Online (2002–03)

Watch 26 Free Episodes of Jacques Pépin’s TV Show, More Fast Food My Way

How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life: A Short Ani­mat­ed Film Fea­tur­ing the Wis­dom of Michael Pol­lan

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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