A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich - Is American Cheese Really Cheese?

Episode Date: May 13, 2020

Is American cheese a worthy representative of these United States on your charcuterie board, or a chemically derived imposter? Today, Josh and Nicole are debating: 'is American cheese really cheese?' on this episode of A Hotdog Is A Sandwich. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. American Cheese, a worthy representative of these United States on your charcuterie board or a chemically derived imposter. Today we ask, is American Cheese really cheese? This is A Hot Dog is a Sandwich. Ketchup is a smoothie. Yeah, I put ice in my cereal, so what? That makes no sense. A Hot Dog is a Sandwich.

A Hot Dog is a Sandwich. What? Welcome to our podcast, A Hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. What? Welcome to our podcast, A Hot Dog is a Sandwich, the show where we break down the world's biggest food debates. I'm your host, Josh Scherer. And I'm your host, Nicole Handizadeh. And today is the first day that I've decided to record shirtless because we are still in our homes and it is 83 degrees and I've been dripping sweat since 11 a.m. Can confirm Josh is shirtless. He is on video chat with me right now. When I decided to go shirtless though, I forgot that I was on video chat because I have like, you know, a whole other screen pulled up. It's a safe for work screen.

The point is I look naked on the video, but I'm not. So know that I'm wearing clothing. Josh, let's talk about the topic at hand. Okay, go ahead. Explain to them what we're going to argue about. Okay, today we are answering the topic at hand, okay? Go ahead. Explain to them what we're going to argue about. Okay, today we are answering the question, is American cheese really cheese? Nicole, what do you think about American cheese? American cheese is a million hundred percent cheese. I will die on this hill, Josh.

I don't think American cheese is cheese. I think American cheese is delicious, but I think it's not cheese because we live in a society, Nicole. Then what is it? If it's not cheese, what is it? American cheese is a pasteurized processed cheese product in the same way that nacho cheese is not a standalone cheese as it is.

Think of American cheese as an entire dish. And you are the perfect person to think of American cheese as an entire dish, because I see you just unwrap American cheese singles and peel off the edge of the wrapper and then eat it plain. My favorite snack in the world, a la Martha Stewart is a single slice of prepackaged Kraft cheese. It's delightful.

It's delicious. It does the job, man. It is cheese. I'm sorry. Like whenever, go ahead, go ahead.

Sorry. I'm very passionate. Does Martha Stewart really do that? Yeah. That's her, that ahead, go ahead. Sorry, I'm very passionate. Does Martha Stewart really do that? Yeah, that's her preferred snack. Martha Stewart is a huge fan of Kraft single cheese. I imagine she does it the same way that like Gwyneth Paltrow. I think every Sunday she has a single glass of red wine

and a cigarette and she like sits in front of her fireplace and smokes a grit and drinks a thing of wine. I imagine Martha Stewart doing that, but with American cheese. Yeah, a hundred percent. In front of like, she's wrapped in a pashmina in front of a roaring fire, just gnawing on some Kraft Singles. Yeah. I mean, that's great, but we're not arguing whether or not Kraft Singles are good or not.

The whole idea of this is what is the definition of cheese? And the government has a really specific definition of, well, not necessarily what is cheese, but what is not cheese. The reason American cheese is not technically considered cheese by the government, why they have to put pasteurized process American cheese product on there. And we're specifically referring to Kraft American Singles, the most popular brand here. There are others that we can get into. But Kraft American Singles, they basically take cheese that is Colby and cheddar, and they literally grind it up with different emulsifiers.

So lecithin and then other sort of dairy ingredients. So it's ground with like milk fat solids and cream and all that and then reformed into cheese. That's the same way to make nacho cheese in a can, which I would argue is not a standalone cheese. Same as queso. Queso is just ground up cheese with other ingredients melted. You know what I i'm saying so american cheese to me it's a cheese dish and also this whole argument comes down to like should the government be defining foods and trying to keep people safe or keep intellectual property safe via like labeling laws and stuff what is what is the safety of labeling something that is not cheese quote

unquote as cheese like what what is the life what is the safety concerns that you have what it comes down to is like protecting the sanctity of american cheese i mean protecting the sanctity of cheese that is made in america so like the difference between a legit vermont aged cheddar you know i'm saying that's been cared for and god i wish i knew more about the actual cheese making process to add any verbs here. But something that has like taken years to age and craft and all that versus like a big industrial product. I think at some point, we need to have certain standards and definitions of what something is and isn't. I get it though. Yeah, just slice of American cheese to your sandwich. Then you know, that's literally acting as cheese and like, what's the difference?

But for me, like, you know, protect the artisans at all costs. Honestly, man, I just like, let me tell you. So do not smell your armpits. Oh my gosh. I'm so sweaty. I'm sorry. I keep forgetting I'm on video. You should have a bottle of water next to you like me.

I have a bottle of water and a cup of coffee next to me in case I get parched or I start sweating. See, there we go. What does that mountain do? no okay this is a mountain valley spring water bottle uh-huh this is really embarrassing um it's it's my favorite sparkling water to order in restaurants because i'm a bougie young man yes you are uh thank you uh and i literally bought a single bottle to fill and refill and refrigerate during quarantine to make it feel like i was at a restaurant so when i sit down when i sit down to a nice romantic dinner with my girlfriend a

little humble brag yeah i have a partner uh i fill up this bottle and i put it on the table so it's like we're at a restaurant oh man that's cute if only it was like fizzy water you know oh i got a soda stream and i'll pour it in there do you have a soda stream well i can't put this i can't shove this directly into the soda stream oh yeah since i used I used to drink like nine LaCroix's at the office, I got a soda stream, but now I'm drinking four liters of fizzy water a day. And combined with the amount of bananas I eat, it makes me real burpy. We should make a banana LaCroix. Why doesn't that exist? I don't know. Maybe like fizzy bananas is a weird thing for people. Cause like mean like fizzy uh pamplemousse is delightful

why not fizzy banana drink i think it's because it would be better if it was dairy based like a yogurt banana fizzy drink sounds better to me than just a banana fizzy drink you know what i mean yo but outside of the middle east like fizzy yogurt is not a thing that people seem to enjoy i love it the abali yogurt soda what's it called drew drew no no josh josh no no no it's not yeah go ahead it's duke duke okay better not there give me that this whole podcast nicole teaches josh farsi in 22 minutes sorry i think we should talk more about cheese so listen my dream job when i first went to culinary school was to work at craft did you know that no that was my like the way that i

convinced my parents to let me go to culinary school was i'm going to be a research and development chef for craft i'm going to be developing blah blah blah blah blah blah blah so i just have a very deep-seated respect and love for the craft people because without them my parents wouldn't have let me go to culinary school so i think more more or less it's anecdotal why i believe that the cheese is cheese but also i feel like if we went like out into the open and if we asked the average american is this considered cheese and i put a craft single in front of their face chances are they would say yes because it is cheese you know it goes through

the same process of cheese the only difference is is the percentages of cheese that goes into it correct that is true yeah legally uh if there's less than 50 percent cheese by weight i believe then it has to be considered like a pasteurized processed cheese food product i mean there is cheese in there so i think the logic of like is queso considered cheese yes but it's an altered cheese product but i would still consider queso like the dish queso to be a cheese dish and the way that squeeze cheese or what is it called? What's that? What's that jar cheese that you like?

Cheese whiz? Yeah, cheese whiz. I think cheese whiz qualifies as cheese. I think nacho cheese qualifies as cheese. Any sort of cheese like product that I can shovel in my mouth and enjoy and put on a burger or macaroni and cheese or anything else of that sort qualifies it as cheese for me you know it's it's comforting it's it's like if i put a block of applause in front of someone's face or if i put a craft single in front of someone's face who do you think would grab the applause you and i would because we're bougie stupid people but normally i feel like

people would grab the craft cheese single and just like go to town, man. I don't know if they necessarily would. I think there is a lot more anti-American cheese sentiment than you think there is. So anytime, like I use American cheese, um, a lot in recipes and stuff. And anytime I post a video or anything, there's so many people who are like, man, that ain't cheese. That's plastic. I don't know who this person is or where they live man that ain't cheese that's plastic uh those are your tiktok fans josh but the point the point is a lot of people there are a lot of myths about american cheese that are out there like there was this video trend that was going viral a couple years ago where people would take a craft american single and they would take a lighter to it and it wouldn't melt it would actually burn almost like plastic it would turn black and people are like see there's actual plastic in this cheese that's fake people there's no plastic

in the cheese the reason that it doesn't melt like that is because if you take a lighter to a slice of cheddar the oils are actually separating from the proteins yes but in america in american cheese it won't do that because it's emulsified through chemical processes and whatnot and so that's why american cheese melts really well on indirect heat. But it's like, if you ever thrown American cheese under a broiler, it doesn't like melt and ooze like cheddar. It'll just kind of singe. No, but I put it in a microwave and I've had to throw away multiple bowls as you've seen me do. So yeah, it has odd properties. I'm not going to disagree with the fact that the properties of the cheese are questionable and a little effed up but it's still cheese man i'm just trying to sow the seeds of discord to say that the average american doesn't love american cheese as much as you think they do

i know it's very popular but there's a lot of anti-american cheese sentiment i need you to tell me josh where is the line at which it is no longer cheese for you where does that line get crossed tell me look right now is not the best time to say do whatever the government tells you to do. But I will say, I think I trust them when it comes to cheese on this one. And you have to kind of look at the history of American cheese. Like it literally started because in the 1790s and stuff, you know, I'm about to try and explain American history. This is hilarious. I've almost failed high school and easily failed college. But you had a lot of local cheesemakers in New York who came over from England, they were continuing the cheddar tradition from England. And

that's where this whole like Vermont, New York cheddar sort of tradition got started. And then American cheese, as it was known back then, an American made cheddar was already considered kind of a crappy version of the English thing. So it already kind of got denigrated. And then in like the 1910s is when Bob Kraft, no, that's the owner of the Patriots. I guess he's directly descended of. Anyways, the Kraft Corporation in the 1910s basically started making something called American cheese that was ultra processed and like even way crappier than what people

considered a crappy american cheddar so to me you have to like look at the history and the reasons why they had to differentiate at the time they're trying to like save this american cheddar industry and whatnot and so there needed to be a new definition for this even more denigrated product that i happen to love but i'm a garbage person so for me the line in the sand is whatever the government decided it was. God, I'm going to be terrible in the revolution. God bless America and God bless American cheese. Okay, but where do you draw the line on what is and isn't cheese? Because you think that like nacho cheese is just considered cheese as itself.

But what about like a beer cheese soup? Is that just cheese? No, there's too many things added to it. So it's not cheese anymore. It's a cheesy thing. It's a cheesy soup. What? Okay.

But if you look at like nacho cheese, right, you could theoretically add enough milk to that to thin it out into a soup, which I say theoretically, like I haven't eaten nacho cheese as a soup. I feel like you're the Lord patron saint of nacho cheese. But like, at what point do you add enough milk to say a nacho cheese or something like that to the point where it no longer becomes cheese but becomes a different dish in itself um that's a good question i feel okay like i said i think nacho cheese and queso are still cheese queso has vegetables in it though like once you start adding vegetables to cheese, it's still cheese. Oh no. I'm just talking about like, Oh, like simple, like cheese,

milk, flour, butter. Like whenever you start adding things to it, that's when it alters. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. When you add too many things, whenever you, okay. I think that you draw the line at when you add vegetables and or like beef products and stuff like that. I think that's whenever it starts to transform also the viscosity again we always come up to this conversation of viscosity of things the viscosity of the cheese and the product that you're making is what differentiates it oh we knew someone okay so last time we talked about viscosity and flow rate i discussed the need to uh for a physicist to come on the show to discuss when a

soup is no longer a soup and becomes a sauce based on its rate of flow. And I had a guy Twitter DM me saying like, I'll do it for 50 bucks. I'm like a post-grad student in physics. And now I really wish we would have reached out to him because this seems to keep coming up. I would ask you though, if you're saying that once you add something like a vegetable or animal product to cheese that isn't dairy, it no longer becomes cheese. Is that correct? No, I'm saying I'm saying whenever you add a liquid in addition to the vegetables and the other things. So you're saying that pepper jack is cheese, but once you melt pepper jack down with a tablespoon of milk, it is no longer cheese. No, more than a tablespoon. If you add like, well, again, it's the ratio. ratio it's not a tablespoon of milk it's like half a cup of milk and for you this is this is something that is intuitive there's no legal standard you're saying that if you if you know you know a cheese when you

see it the same way that the government knows pornography when they see it you know cheese when you see it what what oh that's like a fan that's like a famous supreme court ruling on obscenity law isn't that like what nwa had to deal with i think so yeah the obscenity law i think it was literally a supreme court decision i believe god someone should fact check larry flint is that his name i was gonna say gary flint gary flint larry flint's brother yeah i think i think it was the larry flint case where they literally decided that it's kind of intuitive. Like you understand obscenity and pornography when you see it. So it's something that you know kind of deep in your heart based on your own moral code and that of the general public.

You're saying you think cheese is porn. Yes. Well, I'm satisfied with that answer. Yes. No, but this is why I say that american cheese isn't cheese and why i'm deferring to a higher power much like alcoholics anonymous that's a weird reference to say that's a weird reference go ahead and backtrack that one young man definitely strike that from the record uh but no that's why i defer to a higher power because we get so murky and so in the weeds on

what is considered cheese and what is considered a cheese product or a cheese dish that i will willingly throw myself at the mercy of the government and say, you know what, you tell me what is cheese and you tell me what isn't. Josh, is vegan cheese cheese? Because it's not using milk, but it still works exactly the same as cheese because it shreds like cheese and melts like cheese. It behaves like cheese, but instead of milk, we're using cashews. Is it still cheese though? No, that's my trick to but instead of milk, we're using cashews. Is it still cheese, though?

No, that's my trick to pull, where I go, well, okay, is... Welcome to the wonderful world of a switcheroo. Well, a veggie burger slipper. No, what I will say, vegan cheese is not cheese, vegan cheese is vegan cheese. So American cheese is not cheese, it is a cheese product. Nacho cheese is not cheese, it is a cheese dish, but it is not in itself cheese.

And again, there's nothing wrong with that. Like, here's the difference between, um, so there's a really big case, uh, about government legislating food that has to do with mayonnaise. There's a vegan mayonnaise company, Just Mayo, that, uh, made a really fantastic vegan mayonnaise. And it was like really putting pressure on best foods and all those brands because they made it without eggs. Yes. I remember we talked about this. Yeah, and then Unilever sues Just Mayo saying that you don't satisfy the standard of mayonnaise set by the government, which means it must include egg. And so they don't, you know, aren't allowed to legally use the term mayonnaise now because of it. And I think that is a little

bit messed up. So I agree that the government can overreach because this thing, by all accounts, you know, was mayonnaise. It's spread like mayonnaise. It tastes like mayonnaise. It was better for the environment in the sense that it wasn't using animal products and the government stepped in and shut them down. And I think that is a problem. However, with the cheese thing, like there's no moral benefit for American cheese to be able to be called cheese. I do see that it's an upsetting precedent. It's amongst friends, Josh. Imagine you're hanging out with your friends and then everyone has a name tag, but your name tag says something else

other than everyone else's. You would feel crappy, man. Just let the cheese be called cheese. It's sad. It behaves exactly like cheese it has milk it uses rennet and it goes through the curds and whey process it does everything cheese does so why not just call it cheese what's what what is the point of not calling it cheese i don't get it man yeah why not just call it cheese it is what it Well, because now I'm thinking about burrata.

Hell yeah. I'm always thinking about burrata. And I'm thinking, if we don't call American cheese cheese, then we don't call burrata cheese. Okay, exactly. Because burrata is the same thing as American cheese, essentially, right? It's cheese blended with dairy products. There probably aren't as many chemicals and emulsifiers in burrata.

I forgot I made burrata with Mimo. Yeah, you've been in the trenches, dude. You literally were at a cheese processing plant. You were living my dream of going into a cheese processing plant. So tell me more about your experience. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, him talking about the, I think we, we tend to see the term processed as a bad thing and a thing that cheapens an ingredient, I suppose. But then anything that you eat is processed in some way. So is there, I guess, to me, a meaningful difference between processing American cheese by way of adding lecithin and, you know, dairy solids and all that? Is there a meaningful difference between that and

Mimo Bruno, mi amicoica italiano with his beautiful volleyball playing italian sons you know blending mozzarella with cream and then stuffing that inside a mozzarella ball yeah and i'm sure they have guidelines and i'm sure they have i'm sure they've gone through the process of legally defining it as cheese but where do we draw the line you know where does burrata get off being called cheese when there's so much additives in it and why does craft get the short end of the stick unfair it's unfair josh you had me with the emotional appeal about the name tags too thank you you know the what's in a name thing yeah you've been there huh you've experienced that before it's it's a personal thing you like how i do that to you

i'm sorry it's a good good tactic. I'm sitting here. I feel physically vulnerable because, again, I don't have a shirt on. And so there's no physical protection for my emotions. I totally forgot you were shirtless, by the way. I was like, hmm. I'm cold now. I got the cold sweats. I went from hot sweats to cold sweats.

And I smell like eggs because I ate nine of them yesterday. I don't know. Quarantine's a weird time. Being shut up in my house is just where I can fully be myself is not a good thing. I need society to keep me in check. I realize that. All I've eaten today is a pound of yogurt, a banana, and a single chicken leg, and we're coming up on 2 p.m. That's not good. Someone should have told me, like, hey, Josh, eat a normal meal. Hey, have some granola or something, but no. Anyways, what I was going to say is thinking about the government overreach in this like mayonnaise

decision right makes me think that there are probably a lot of things in this cheese decision that i'm ignoring right uh what is it that george w bush famously said uh fool me once shame on me fool me twice you're not you're not gonna fool me again and so that's i suppose what i would say about this government decision i need we need to like send a mole in to the fda and see what their reasoning behind all this stuff was and is because i'm sure there was a lot of dollars spent on that a lot of like weird uh cia black site killings about you know the american cheese decision that we don't know about yeah so now i'm sitting here and i'm getting all distrustful of the government and i don't know if i want their

hands on my cheese well you just said you want them to control your cheese so what's going on i'm going through a lot of hot and cold emotions yeah that's that's been a theme for me lately yeah you're like flip-flopping like a like-flop. Yeah, my back's all sweaty. What's going on? I don't know anymore. I think the fever's taking me. So, American cheese. I think, thinking about Mimo Bruno and the Burrata,

thinking about like small producers, I'm willing to call America cheese, only in the sense that I'm willing to call Americaica cheese i'm willing to call american cheese cheese only in the sense that i don't want the government reaching into my cheese anymore because they could really botch the mayonnaise decision because i also think that miracle whip deserves to be called mayonnaise because i love miracle whip it's like a coleslaw flavored aioli it's delicious and thinking about the differences in the term processed and how processed can literally mean blending mozzarella with cream to make burrata and that's essentially american cheese i do think we need a physicist just because i think we need smarter friends

i think we're smart i think we qualify as smart people i still watch jeopardy we're not smart we're like smart in their own way kids you know like when you're in high school and like someone's mom was like oh that's nicole she's smart and then like a teacher would be like yeah she's smart in her own way yeah but she's failing every class yeah yeah but she's smart in her own way oh what a diss i think we probably both had that complex in high school the only way i passed my classes in high school was making my teachers mixtapes. Did you know that? No, that's weird. The only way I passed was befriending my teachers and saying, hey, oh my gosh, I don't know, like, oh, you like Tony Braxton?

Here's a mixtape of songs that sound like Unbreak My Heart. And I passed my classes that way. I failed AP Chem, but I did convince my teacher that it was more worth my time to go bench press at the 24-hour fitness than it was to learn about ionic bonds. She was like, I can't just give you a grade, but I do accept that your time is better spent doing that. Wow, what a woke teacher. Yeah, Mrs. Gaines, shout out to her. And look how I turned out. I'm kick-ass.

I'm recording a podcast shirtless in my room sweating. And you're not talking about ionic bonds covalent covalent bonds ionic bonds i remember i never took chemistry by the way i wasn't smart enough hey speaking of ionic bonds yes what recipes do you use american cheese for i put american okay so i'm only laughing because i'm watching ryan just flip out ryan's a producer by the way who's typing us questions into like a chat function and just shaking his head red as a beet for some reason sorry if we're sorry for disappointing you ryan um i use american cheese on so many things i love to put american cheese on my

burgers i even like to spoon it into my mac and cheese whenever i'm feeling a little you know when you said a little you know you had this is gonna get cut but you sounded like you had the emotional energy of like a woman in a tampon commercial that's what i'm trying to do oh that was i did read that correctly this is my commercial voice what do i put american cheese on well let me tell you that's my commercial voice josh what do i do when i'm not feeling so fresh let me tell you like that's what it came up oh yeah pretty much that's that's that's my commercial lady voice but i use american cheese a lot i do i like the channel the dad in the yo play yogurt commercials there's always a dad in's a lot i do i like the channel the dad in the yo play

yogurt commercials there's always a dad in like a yo play yogurt commercial like a very female facing yogurt brand and there's just like an idiot husband dad character who's like picking up a a lawn bag filled with leaves and tripping over himself and he's like oh honey you got boston cream pie in the fridge and she's like it's a yogurt oh yeah yeah i remember those oh yeah she said she got boston cream pie and then he's like looking all over through the cabinets for boston and then she just opens the fridge like you dummy i met you play yeah and then and then he's like honey i want a divorce i've been cheating on you for eight years and i eat activia anyway so we're talking about american cheese um there are invaluable uses for american cheese american cheese is irreplaceable in a lot of respects

for things like burgers right like an in-and-out burger would not taste the same without american cheese i did like a homemade burger night recently Julia got cheddar cheese instead of American for homemade burger night and we're making double cheeseburgers and I had to put cheddar cheese in the double cheeseburger which is not a thing that I enjoy and I was very I was peeved about it and now this is the outlet that I'm choosing to express myself uh but what I'm saying is like there are uses for American cheese that is completely indispensable compared to any other cheese I like a good fancy cheese on a burger sometimes. Well, so do I.

But as far as an American-style double cheeseburger, it's got to be American because the emulsifiers and all the dairy that's been blended in, it lets the cheese melt at such a low temperature and it melts at such a beautiful liquidity that it melts in with the beef fat and creates its own emulsified sauce in your mouth. So it is a beautiful product. That's, I agree.

It's so useful. I mean, a burger would not be a burger without American cheese. Let's just be frank. Dang, I shot myself in the foot this whole episode. I almost don't want to give you a win because I feel like it was an own goal, you know? But Josh, you and I both know that my obsession and love for cheese was going to convince you one way or another doesn't matter what avenue i took i knew i would bring you over because you yourself love american cheese as much as i do so calling it anything else other than

cheese just wouldn't be true to yourself and i just want you to be true to yourself all the time so you're saying that this is really about the true definition of patriotism. It's not blind trust in the government, Nicole. It's knowing that the government and this nation can be better and that we pick and choose the parts of America that we love, like the cheese, to really believe in. Does this mean I won? Yeah. No, you do. And I do agree that American cheese is cheese. I think me the thing that really sold it one you're emotional please two what's in a name you know really like deciding that that is an important factor and it's not enough to just be able to

call it a cheese food because most people would consider cheese and then the burrata thing that kind of really hit me because i never thought about that before you're the one who brought it up again an own goal i i fully switched teams and I just blasted this into the top left corner past my own keeper. So you win on the scoreboard, but I know that I struck that ball with my foot. Give me a young tick on the win, Mr. Ryan Moody. Buckets. Sorry, Ryan. I feel like we botched this one for you.

I feel like you had an idea of how it was going go and then me and Nicole started talking about nipples mostly Nicole we've heard what you and I have to say but now it's time to find out what other wacky ideas are rattling out there in the twitterverse it's time for a segment we call opinions are like everyone's got one and it smells like onions underscore stephanie d heart says gummy bears and ice cream they get super hard and it's fun to chew them i think that's delicious i actually am a big fan of like gummy bears that get really really cold i like that i get the idea again as someone who represents the soft teethed community um i i'm offended by this uh it it makes my teeth hurt when i chew them and sometimes it'll pull out fillings so no no but i actually don't like anything in my ice cream typically i'm not a toppings or mix-ins

guy i don't even like most ben and jerry's flavors because there's just like so much going on if i'm eating ice cream i want the ice cream man uh i disagree with that wholeheartedly man you ever been to a cold stone uh my high school girlfriend used to work at cold stone and i would uh go in and i'd tip her a dollar and then she would have to sing i think i did that too much and then we we broke up and she never talked to me rightfully so what is she a show monkey fair i But once I did, there was a Greek cafe right next to that Cold Stone, and I brought in a thing of baklava from the Greek cafe, and she mashed it into my Cold Stone ice cream, and it was really good.

Okay, read the next one. At MrSoldMan, buffalo sauce is overrated. Nah, it's rated pretty high. I think it's rated appropriately. It's the best sauce. Put it on everything. It's the perfect balance of flavors too.

Like you talk about the idea of salt, fat, acid, and heat all creating a delicious dish. Like Buffalo sauce has heat. It's got salt. It's got acid. It's got fat.

It's like the perfectly balanced sauce to go on literally everything. I love Buffalo sauce. Big fan. Don't understand why people think it's overrated. Okay. Richie underscore rich four, five,3 says scrambled eggs, crunchy peanut butter, and sriracha goes well together. People think I'm crazy.

So do I. That's crazy. That's gross. Don't do that. Maybe if it had like rice and like peas in it, like then it could be like a fried rice situation. But like those three together? No.

Wait, hold on. Hold on. What if you if you took hmm i'm trying to figure this out what if you took like the crunchy peanut butter and you mix it with rice and then you topped it with like sriracha and a fried egg that sounds really good to me that makes sense you need the addition of some sort of like starch like a noodle some rice i don't know like a piece of flatbread to make sense of that i i don't like this the flavor combinations work you just i think you need to work on your your architecture and presentation richie rich unless you're keto because when people are keto it's just like uh do whatever i have no more opinions about your food because you're just eating like a pound of cheese and ham a day yeah and like you you do you man yeah no judgment all right at limby fisher bread mayo and ketchup only that i have done this when

i was a kid this is like a fantastic poor person snack that I grew up on. And I'll tell you why I did this. Because I obsessed about the flavor palette of fast food when I was a child. I loved Carl's Jr. and Burger King so, so, so much. And I was like thinking about what are the two flavors that I really love from them. And I realized that it's hot mayonnaise and ketchup that they combine to put on their burgers. And so when I was a kid, I would take bread, mayonnaise and ketchup,

make sandwiches and eat it. And it's very delicious. I'm down with condiment sandwiches. Yeah, I will just eat a bread and mayonnaise sandwich. I prefer mayo on my bread over butter. What? Yeah, oh, you've never seen me do that. Josh, that's effed up.

Yeah, I would much rather have just toast and mayonnaise than toast and butter. Okay, we'll talk about that another time. That's a little weird. I can't believe I just came out to you about that. That dude Sully says, I dislike almost all condiments and dressings. The only thing I like is ketchup. I mean, you just got to expand your horizons.

Like we're condiment people. Josh and I love condiments because they add to the food. If you think about it as a food addition, I think that'll create like a more like open mind for you. I think Sully needs a gateway out of ketchup because one thing I think you and I both love about condiments is that they're so customizable that you can combine two condiments and it becomes a completely different condiment. So like you take ketchup and you mix it with like, you know, a little bit of mayonnaise and then you get like fry sauce. You take ketchup and you mix it with some brown sugar and you got barbecue sauce. Start with barbecue sauce, man.

It's basically ketchup. Yeah. I love condiments. Open your horizons. Okay. We got at A, it's Meeps. Who can eat liver and onions when it tastes like cardboard? Liver and onions taste like a lot who can eat liver and onions when it tastes like cardboard um liver and onions taste like a lot i love liver and onions me too i don't know where they're getting cardboard from

maybe they eat it cold could that be maybe they're just overcooking the crap out of their liver because that's the thing people don't know that like a good like medium to medium well-cooked liver like something with a little bit of color in it yeah and when you make like jewish chopped liver like you're supposed to leave some color in it otherwise it's super super gray um it can kind of get like over like hell a mealy so maybe they're having that i i mean i love a well-prepared liver to me it's fantastic i actually haven't had it in a while and i just started craving liver yeah i love liver i when my sister was pregnant i would make her beef liver and I would put it in whole wheat flour and then I would cook it.

I would pan sear it and then I would leave it to come to temp and then I would add onions to it and then I would deglaze it with sherry and add some butter and stuff. It's amazing. Truly underrated. People need to eat more liver. I need to eat more liver. I've been neglecting it yeah me too my local deli got rid of their chopped liver uh plate though and i'm pretty mad about it it's okay marv's deli and sherman oaks please bring back your chopped liver

i know your wife took it off the menu because no one was ordering it and that i know your sons all work at wb and they got good paying jobs union jobs so owner marv told me um but you got to bring back that liver plate dude there's so many delis in like sherman oaks and stuff yeah but i like marv's i like i like the atmosphere there but i'm i just wish they had the liver that i want anyways let's do a whole episode about delis let's see librarian underscore cop stars raw cucumber will wholeheartedly improve every meal and i mean everyone yeah man yeah they're preaching to the choir on this one yeah i love like when you get thai food and there's just like the the raw cucumber on the side that

like you're eating some fiery chilies you know some like ground pork lop and you get that raw cucumber ditto with vietnamese food because they'll have like the fish sauce dipping on the side of a lot of things you can just dip the raw cucumber in that yeah i'm diggity down with raw cucumber really good on with like middle eastern food too as like a snap of freshness with all the like beef and like dairy it's a really good cut through all that those strong flavors so i agree with you you know what i started doing i never thought i would be this person but the other day i made guac and i was eating it with chips and i also had it was a really hot day i was shirtless i was sweating because i've been like that through all this quarantine what else is new right but i uh i just chose to dip cucumber

in the guacamole instead of chips not for health reasons because you've seen my lifestyle i just decided that i would do it and it tasted better so i'm now that level of adult where i will willingly choose a vegetable over a fried corn chip do you put tomatoes in your guac no i'm i respect people who do but like personally i'm anti-t tomatoes in your guac no i'm i respect people who do but like personally i'm anti-tomato and guac same i hate tomatoes and guac yeah except like that's that's just pico de gallo with avocado in it agree as well like to me i want it to be separate i want two separate flavor profiles from it and i used to think that there was like some sort of authenticity to it um of like not putting tomatoes and guac or putting tomatoes

and guac but apparently like grandma to grandma all around mexico all different regions have completely different recipes and ways to make guac one thing though i did hear that i also agree with is that the lime you add to guacamole and this speaks to my personal preferences the lime that you add to guacamole shouldn't really add an acidic flavor it should be just enough to stop the browning process. And salt should be the main flavoring agent of the guac. And I agree with that. I like under acidulated guacamole.

I love salt in my guac. I agree with you. Too much lime really, really screws up the whole like equilibrium of the dish. Fruit underscore pepper. Swedish fish is the worst candy. I agree. That stuff is gross. What?

You don't like Swedish fish? fish no it tastes like cough medicine yeah again it's i have a respect for a lot of these candies that existed before good flavors were around in the world but why why do you think that way i think it's i mean i have a really high tolerance for artificial weird flavors and i think it honestly might be because of the amount of weight lifting supplements that i've eaten in my life probably like i got like i'm drinking this like watermelon strawberry pre-workout these days and i got like a banana pancake batter vegan protein and just imagine the amount of artificial sweetener and flavors that are in both of those things that i generally consume before 9 a.m yeah i guess that's what it is so to me after that swedish fish just tastes like mild and fruity yeah so i dig it also there's a much worse much worse swedish candies out there uh i

had a roommate who was from sweden and his mom brought these like eucalyptus they're like menthol eucalyptus treats and they just taste like poison it's like you're eating a smelling soul ew no thank you okay this one i like heather renee 9007 celery is the stock of the devil agreed i've been on the record i even tried to eat raw celery the other day to see if i liked it now no still hate it always replaced with fennel when necessary i've never thought of that but that makes sense i think fennel is i'm thinking about like in cooked preparations like the thing with cooked celery is that it's not that strong of a flavor once it's cooked you know it really whenever it's the most

intense is when it's raw like putting fennel in it is like the opposite though i feel like fennel is just that really strong licoricey anise flavor like throughout the whole thing doesn't matter if it's cooked doesn't matter if it's raw i think it's too overpowering. I'm team celery. You guys need to think about your hatred of celery. Well, no, I like celery in cooked dishes. Like in gumbo, you have celery. That's part of the trinity. In French mirepoix, I dig on celery.

I use it in my own soups and stuff. There's a reason I even had celery in the house. But raw celery, I would probably appreciate replacing with fennel. I also, though, sometimes I'll replace with Swiss chard stem if I have it on hand because I'm a bougie.

Smart. At Spear underscore Aquatic says Mexican cuisine is the best food on the planet. Yup. Yeah. Top three. That's all I got.

Mexican food's the best. My top three. And on that note, thank you for listening to A Hot Dog is a Sandwich. We've got new episodes for you every Wednesday. If you want to be featured on Opinions Are Like Casseroles,

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