The Best Kitchen Tools for Fighting Off the Undead

Arm yourself against the zombie hordes with these handy utensils

 

When the zombie apocalypse befalls us, hordes of desperate survivors will be raiding the gun stores. You, scrawny nerd that you are, won't stand a chance at landing a Glock. Let's face it--when the pandemic arrives, no one is going to be civil about it. It'll be a full-on survival of the fittest hardcore challenge, and you're not going to come out on top by sheer strength. You haven't lifted a weight since gym class in high school and your New Year's resolution to run more often lasted until you realized that it was cold out there in the great outdoors. You're slow and you're weak and you don't even have a car that you're sure can go above 90 anymore. What's a geek to do in the apocalyptic aftermath?

Luckily, you're brighter than some of the bulbs in the box. And you've been around a kitchen long enough to figure out how to cook food with tools beyond your standard aluminum saucepan. You're also crafty enough to realize that a lot of the objects most people will overlook as weapons for fighting the horde actually can be repurposed for some clever, clever violence. While the rest of your middle American town busts for the closest weapons depot, you're going to be high-tailing it the other way toward the Williams Sonoma. Because while you may be too nervous and clumsy to fire off a real, live magazine, you're one damn fine cook. And you're off to serve up some serious zombie pain. 

Here's your arsenal. Use it well.

 

Meat Tenderizer

The meat tenderizer was actually invented as a torture device in the middle ages. It only made its transition to the kitchen when one dungeon guard realized they could do the same thing to their tough, dry rations that they were doing to their prisoners' faces--wallop them into tasty, tender oblivion. Now in the zombie-infested landscape, you'll get the chance to bring the tenderizer full circle back to its roots by turning undead skulls into delicious bloody pulp.

Cast Iron Skillet

The classic blunt object. The original face-flattener. They don't make 'em quite like they used to, but this 12-inch Lodge classic provides a convenient handle so you can keep a good grip when you're swinging it around. 

Bialetti Pizza Chopper

Designed to slice entire pizzas in half in one go, this Bialetti blade works similarly on zombies. It's actually very difficult to slice a human being perfectly in half--even the nasty, gooey, rotting kind--so you'll probably want to go for a little above the legs or right at the neck. The instructions for use apply equally to cutting a freshly-cooked pizza as they do to mowing down the undead: "Simply grasp the handle at opposite ends and rock the blade back and forth to create portions in the desired size."

Double Sided Paddle Grater

It's like a big ol' spankin' paddle, only it has sharp holes in designed to take big things and turn them into smaller things. Usually the big things are vegetables and the smaller things are grated vegetables; in your case, the big things are brainless, hungry zombies and the smaller things are tiny shards of former human.

Set of 6 Hors d'Oeuvre Picks

If you're not very good at darts, I suggest you begin your training now. You'll need top notch hand-eye coordination when you're facing down a rotting mob and your only hope of survival is a sharpened hors d'oeuvre pick to the cerebellum. Steady your hand and aim true, my friend.

Fluted Biscuit Cutters

Turn your enemies into biscuits and gravy. Wrap a hand around the handle of the biggest cutter you can find and treat it like a set of brass knuckles. Punch it into the nearest zombie to create neat, fluted, and hopefully deadly puncture wounds.

Kitchen Torch

When metal isn't enough to finish off the monsters, you need to turn to fire. With this convenient battery-powered pocket-sized torch, you'll be able to up the ante in your dueling. A quick draw of the flame-bringer ought to get you out of the stickier situations in your brutal ongoing struggle for survival.

 

 

News Flash: Potato Chips are Fattening

What other foods pack on the pounds?

 

The standard dietary wisdom: “Don’t eat crap” still stands out as a way to keep off the pounds. Paying attention to the number of calories consumed and increasing your amount of physical activity isn’t the only way to diet or remain weight-conscious; it’s also important to pay attention to what kind of calories you eat.

 

A recent study just published  in The New England Journal of Medicine and primarily paid for by grant from the National Institutes of Health studied the effects of eating and lifestyle choices on weight gain. The study followed the eating and exercise habits and the resulting weight gain or loss of over 120,000 participants over four years in three separate groups. The average weight gain of the participants in the study was 3.35 pounds over the four years.

 

The results of the study indicated that a few food culprits are associated with the largest increases in weight gain: potato chips, potatoes in any form, sugar-sweetened beverages, and both processed and unprocessed red meats.

 

Several foods in the study had the opposite effect: an increase in the amount of vegetables, whole grains, fruits, nuts, and yoghurt showed an inverse relationship with weight gain.

 

The study also demonstrated which activities and lifestyle choices both positively and negatively effected the weight gain of the participants. Exercise was the key lifestyle choice for weight loss, while alcohol use, quitting smoking, and television-watching ranked right up there with potato-chip eating in terms of increasing the amount of weight gain per year in the participants.

 

The researchers in the study are paid lecture fees by a wide variety of pharmaceutical companies and organizations related to nutrition and food. Most notably, Dr. Hu, who is one of the researchers, reported earnings from the California Walnut Commission. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that any of the results regarding the healthfulness of nut consumption are flawed, it is interesting that nuts were included in the paper as a food source helpful to avoid weight gain.

 

That said, the large size of the study and the amount of controls for variables that the researchers employed seem to indicate that the results of the study should be fairly accurate. In addition, common sense and traditional wisdom tells us many of the same things that the study did. In this day and age, I don’t really think anyone thinks of potato chips or coca cola as diet foods or beverages, and exercise has long been known to help fight weight gain.

 

 

Barbeque causes a groundswell of regional American pride

Which region's BBQ is best?

Perfected everywhere from Texas to North Carolina to Kansas City, barbeque is one of the most American of food traditions.  Smokey, sweet, spicy—creating the perfect blend and the “ultimate” in barbeque recipes is a matter of regional pride amongst barbeque aficionados. What is the history of this epitome of summertime foods?  What is it about this particular sticky, sauce-coated delicacy that inspires so much pride in one’s hometown?  Here’s a brief history of barbeque:

--It must be cooked over a wood fire.  Any piece of meat smothered with barbeque sauce does not make it barbeque.  Some barbequing techniques call for up to 18 hours of smoking. 

--The word might have come from the Spanish “barbacoa,” but nobody knows for sure.  When the Spanish landed in Caribbean, they supposedly coined the natives’ meat slow-cooked over a wooden platform “barbacoa.” Others say the word is Haitian or that it originated from a tribe in Guyana that spit-roasted its captured victims. 

--Pork is the meat of barbeque.  In the late 19thcentury South, pigs and corn were the most prominent ingredients available.  So, pork was used for barbeque and corn bread became the side dish of choice.

--Because the cuts of meat required for it were cheap, poor Southern blacks clung to barbeque.And took it with them when they moved north.  They ate it with fried okra and sweet potatoes.  

--Barbeque is the great equalizer.  In the 19thcentury, politicians used huge barbeques to win over their constituents.  Featuring lemonade and whiskey, voters of all classes would attend these barbeques.

--Barbeque shack restaurants.  Early barbeque restaurants were exceedingly simple, consisting of a barbeque shack with a bare concrete floor and corrugated tin roofs and walls.  These shacks were often only open on weekends, but each “pit man” developed difficult and personal techniques for his sauce and for roasting his hogs. 

--Later in the 20thcentury, three types of barbeque restaurants evolved from the barbeque shacks.  The first was black-owned, the second was upscale urban white and the last were white “joints.” Still, blacks and whites of all classes frequented all three varieties of barbeque restaurant before the 1950’s and segregation.

--Memphis. Memphis barbeque is a pulled pork-shoulder with a sweet, tomato sauce that is eaten either on its own or in a sandwich. 

--Kansas City.The only Midwestern barbeque specialty, Kansas City barbeque consists of ribs cooked with a dry rub. 

--North Carolina.These southerners smoke the whole pig in a vinegar sauce.

--Texas.Texans shirk the pork tradition and grill beef mesquite style.

--The World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.  Held in Memphis every year, barbeque chefs from around the world come to Tennessee to prove that their recipe is the best. Visitors can act as judges and eat the best barbeque the world has to offer.  The Championships also host the Cooker Caravan, where visitors can get the latest tips on cooking barbeque, and Ms. Piggie Idol, a men-only beauty contest, in which contestants dress in tutus and pig noses and sing songs with barbeque-related lyrics.   

The Disgruntled Food Critic: 7-Eleven Extravaganza

Philosophers spend their time debating lofty topics like the essence of morality, the existence of the afterlife and the ethics of ecology, which is all well and good, but maybe they ought to turn their attention to certain aspects of everyday life. Take the 7-Eleven convenience store chain. Let it be known that 7-Eleven is the king of all franchise businesses. There is no company in the world with more stores than 7-Eleven, not even McDonald's. There is at least one store in 18 countries around the world and a truly staggering number per capita in its chief markets of its homeland in the United States and the country of its current owner, Japan. As such a pervasive corporate entity, 7-Eleven has plenty of branded products it uses to compete with many of the items in its regular stock. A lot of these are "private label" products, essentially items made by another company and licensed to the retailer under a different name, while others are straight homebrew. Here's a rundown and review of a few of the store-brand items that feed millions of people worldwide every single day.

The Slurpee

The first and probably greatest private label item at 7-Eleven is that staple of the convenience store, the Slurpee. Now, let's get something straight: A Slurpee is just a re-branded Icee, but in a predictable twist of fate the Slurpee, by being the flagship product of the ubiquitous 7-Eleven, is far more common than the Icee. It's so common that the term "Slurpee" has become modern parlance for any drink of syrup-flavored crushed ice. All in all, I think the Slurpee has improved over the years, veering away from its sickly sweet red and blue concoctions to aim for subtler but still sweet flavors like Pina Colada and Banana. Big props to 7-Eleven for being cool with self-serve mixing, as a lot of those flavors mix remarkably well.

 

GO-GO Taquitos

Let's be honest about pretty much all the solid foods under the 7-Eleven brand. These things are not good for you. They are greasy, processed and full of preservatives. Not only should their very presence in a 24-hour convenience store be a clear indication of the risk involved, your own body's reaction to them should be a true indicator that 7-Eleven brand foods are kinda poison. That said, the torture that follows the consumption of as few as two of their Cream Cheese Jalapeno taquitos is a worthwhile expenditure of your mortality. Not so much the other flavors and God help you if you make the mistake of eating one of the vile breakfast taquitos, especially since they sport a wholly unwelcome potato filling along with their fake egg, cheese and bacon.

 

Deli Sandwiches

Is there a word any more abused in cuisine than "deli"? Make no mistake, the "fresh" foods at 7-Eleven are thoroughly corporate eats. Their sandwiches consist of impossibly geometric bread filled with meat, vegetables and condiments that are clearly meant to represent the ideal of what they mimic but fail to capture the flavor or texture of actually fresh ingredients. Again, this should come as no surprise, but it still wears on the soul to eat one of these things. Be smart and skip anything with "salad" in the name (egg, chicken, tuna or just plain eat-it-with-a-fork salad) and get the most bang for your 4 or so bucks by grabbing the footlong hoagie. Use the money you save to grab some antacid tablets.

 

Frozen Foods

There is a war between 7-Eleven and TGI Friday's, a terrifying conflict waged in the freezer chests of late-night convenience stores. Which plastic-like, fried food will win the affections of the desperate and the stoned? Brand recognition is one thing, but price and humor tends to triumph. Somewhere down the line, a corporate manager at 7-Eleven decided that fried cheese sticks were so 20th century, resulting in the Mozzarella Cheese Plank. The deceptively fancy-sounding Panko Breaded Onion Petals are undercut by the questionable alchemy of whatever the hell "Aussie Sauce" is and the Cheddar Bacon Potato Skins somehow manage to be as depressing as those off-brand frozen pizza bagels from the 90's, which is no small feat. Final recommendation: Don't eat any of these items sober and you should be fine.

Yixing Teapots Part Two: Where to Purchase an Yixing Pot

In Part One of this series on Chinese Yixing clay teapots I discussed a some general information about Yixing clay ware and tried to nip some common misconceptions in the bud.  As the series continues, I’d like to explore the sometimes difficult task of choosing and purchasing a good Yixing pot.  To start, let’s talk about some good sources for quality Yixing ware. 

The selection of good Yixing ware is one of those Catch-22 situations, in a couple of different ways.  Firstly, it’s better to choose a teapot for purchase in person, where you can visually inspect the pot, hold it, and likely test out how well it pours and handles.  However, the number of good quality in-person Yixing dealers in the US is quite low.  More often, you’ll probably come across Chinatown vendors selling inauthentic and inferior examples with prices that either reflect their low quality or are extremely overblown.  Without firsthand experience with quality and authentic Yixing ware, it can be pretty difficult to determine a pot’s quality, even if it’s right in front of you.  Secondly, online teapot shopping is difficult because you can’t see or hold the pot in front of you and must rely on the vendor’s description.  There are just as many (if not more) cheap and inauthentic Yixing pots available online as there are in Asian markets, and the fact that you can’t physically experience the piece only adds to the difficulty.  And yet, one of the best ways (at least here in the US) to build up a Yixing knowledge base is by reading and purchasing from trusted online vendors. 

Purchasing from a well-known online Yixing vendor is a mixture of trusting the opinions of other tea heads (such as myself) and the amount and quality of the information that’s provided by the vendors about the pots.  Here are a few recommended vendors:

Teamasters: Stéphane lives in Taiwan and retails tea and teaware from his blog—his new teapots are reasonably priced for Yixing novices, they’re made from decent quality clay and have a reasonable standard of craftsmanship.  You won’t find any antiques here, but if you’re just starting out then there’s no need for extremely expensive pots.

Jing Teashop: Jing and Sebastian live in Guangdong province and have recently begun improving their Yixing selection.  The pots are available in a wide variety of sizes, clays and styles, they’re all hand-selected and authentic, and the site offers extremely helpful information about the pour speed and which types of tea might be well-suited to the pot.  The only downside is that shipping from mainland China is variable and usually takes at least a couple of weeks on the faster end.

Hou De Asian Art: Guang and Irene are Taiwanese and have an impressive collection of antique teapots—most of the Yixing ware they stock is generally on the older side, which means the prices are usually high, though the product is quality, with good information and guaranteed authentic clay and craftsmanship.  The other issue is that the teapot selection on this site is only occasionally updated and the new pots usually sell quite quickly—the stock that remains is generally larger pots that aren’t necessarily of ideal size for most gong fu brewing.

Essence of Tea: David and Kathy live in England and travel to Yunnan province, Taiwan and Fujian for their teas and tea wares.  The pot selection ranges from quality new productions to antiques and the prices match the date range.  The information provided is very helpful, including tea type recommendations and good info about pour speed and quality.  The only downside to EoT is that the shop deals in British Pound Sterling, which is often punishingly strong in comparison with the US Dollar.

A couple of sites that act as examples of where not to buy quality Yixing ware are 5000Friend on eBay (pots are purported to be 100 years old yet often cost around $30) and Mrs. Lin’s Kitchen, which sells the types of novelty Yixing pots that are made from inferior clays and often end up being the first mistakes of many long-term Yixing collectors. 

Join me for the next installment when I discuss what to look for when purchasing a Yixing pot.

Vegetarian Sausages: The Great Sausage Experiment

Which Fake Sausage Won?

I am a carnivore in a city of vegetarians and have often been forced to eat vegetarian sausages. The entire idea of a vegetarian sausage is disturbing at best to me as a truthful meat eater, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t empathize with those who are unable or who choose not to eat meat. In the spirit of sharing information, I’d like to pass along Juliet Lapidos fake sausage reviews from her article in Slate.

Lapidos’ experiment was highly scientific; she invited no less than six carnivores to taste-test three vegetarian sausages of the Italian-style variety. For "The Great Sausage Experiment*,” she included the following three sausages:  Field Roast, Tofurky, and Lightlife. Each sausage was then judged by four criteria: Resemblance to meat, taste, appearance, and juiciness.

 

Here are the results:

Field Roast sausages came in first in “The Great Sausage Experiment.” The researchers all agreed that the Field Roast sausages were easily the most unattractive of the entire bunch. Possibly the best recommendation for the vegetarian sausage came from a carnivore “who said he could eat one every day.”

 

Torfurky sausages came in second in “The Great Sausage Experiment.” From Slate:

‘If the sole purpose of fake meat products were to fool a carnivore into grabbing a vegetarian product off the grill, Tofurky would have easily won the competition with its reddish-brown, accurately-tubular, fake Italian sausage.’

Unfortunately, the incredible sausage looks of the Torfurky were not enough to make it the best fake sausage ever. In fact, one the carnivorous researchers described the taste of Torfurky as Play-doh, while another carnivore called it “peppered cardboard.” (Which, does beg the question of what the testers usually eat.) The vegetarian writer had a different perspective on Torfurky and went so far as to say that she would eat a Torfurky sausage in lieu of a second Portbello mushroom. In addition, at least one meat-eater had kind things to say about the Torfurky sausage.

Lightlife sausages came in last in “The Great Sausage Experiment.” The researchers concluded that these particular fake sausages bore little resemblance to actual meat partially because of their more rectangular shape. The taste of the Lightlife sausage was described as bland and faint, while the texture was described as rubbery.

 

*”The Great Sausage Experiment is my name for the vegetarian sausage taste test that Juliet Lapidos conducted and not hers. Apologies to Juliet Lapidoes for giving the experiment a name and kudos to her for devising and conducting such a cool experiment in the first place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yixing Teapots Part One: What is an Yixing Teapot?

One type of tea-brewing equipment you’ll undoubtedly come across if you get deep enough into tea is Chinese Yixing (pronounced “ee-shing”) clay tea ware.  They’re usually much smaller than an English-style teapot, but they come in a huge variety of different sizes, shapes, motifs and colors, and they’re both useful and highly collectible.

Like many Asian tea-related subjects, Yixing ware is often misrepresented in the budding Western tea-drinking world.  The general party line regarding Yixing tea ware is this: Yixing clay and pots originate from Yixing, a city in China’s Jiangsu province, where the clay is said to be remarkably pure and unlike any other clay in the world.  Most Yixing clay pots are unglazed, allowing the porous clay to interact with the tea, improving the tea’s flavor.  Because the pots are unglazed, they absorb some of the tea that’s brewed inside and will eventually build up a patina of tea residue inside.  Because of this, a Yixing pot should be dedicated to one type of tea so the patina doesn’t interfere with another tea type’s flavor.

Like much information about Chinese tea traditions, this description has been repeated so many times that it’s taken as gospel truth.  In reality, it’s a mixture of fact and marketing and people truly interested in Yixing ware eventually learn the full truth the hard (and expensive) way.  Here’s a bit of emendation: Yixing clay is famous and possesses the characteristics described above.  However, over time the Yixing clay mines’ output has dwindled and many Yixing pots are cheaply made from (at best) clay from other locations in China or (at worst) inferior industrially-dyed liquid clay that is hosed into molds.  Yixing tea pots areunglazed and willaccumulate patina, but in reality the dangers of patina “interfering” with or greatly enhancing the flavor of a brew are pretty low.  In my experience, the greatest benefit of authentic Yixing pots is that the different clay types affect tea differently, so certain clay types are better-suited to certain types of teas than they are to others—whether or not patina is affecting the tea’s flavor is secondary to how the clay affects the tea, which will usually be more pronounced (especially since patina takes years of repeated use to significantly build up).  For example, porous clay often draws out intense flavors and softens the mouth feel of tea, so these types of clay are usually used with heavily roasted tea in order to mellow its flavor.

Traditionally, Yixing tea pots are most often used to brew oolong and pu-erh teas, but in reality some of the clay types will benefit green, black and white tea brewing, too—it just depends on whether or not the clay type performs well with the tea.  Finally, because of their small size, most Yixing tea pots are best-suited to what’s known as gong fubrewing—a traditional Chinese tea preparation method that uses a high leaf-to-water ratio to steep a tea repeatedly using very short infusion times, often resulting in a tea session that reveals a tea’s many different characteristics a little bit at a time, developing with each steeping. 

In part two of this ongoing series, I’ll discuss the somewhat confusing process of purchasing a quality Yixing tea pot. 

The Food Safety Budget is Underfunded

The Food Safety and Modernization Act might not improve food safety at all.

Just last year, The Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA) was passed with the intent of ensuring that more of the food on American tables is safe to eat. Specifically, the monumental piece of food safety legislation was designed to reduce the amount of foodborne illnesses in the United States by tightening restrictions on food safety and giving the FDA more control.

 

FSMA gave the FDA more control over inspecting food that is imported into the United States. Unfortunately, the legislation is not likely to be quite as effective as it was intended to be because of probable budget cuts to the FDA’s food safety budget. A Republican-controlled sub-committee just cut the FDA’s food safety budget by nearly 20%, which in effect means it is unlikely that the FDA will be able to follow through on developing the methods needed to inspect foreign food products.

 

As this TIME magazine article points out, passing the food safety legislation may have been a complete waste of time because of the budget cuts. In fact, the actual food safety budget that passed the appropriations sub-committee is less than it was before the FSMA legislation was even passed. Some experts are saying that imported food will actually be less safe than it was before.

 

Since one out of six Americans ends up severely ill or hospitalized due to food safety issues and illnesses such as e coli and salmonella, it seems like budgeting a bit more for food safety should be somewhat more of a priority in congress.

 

(Granted, the FDA is not the only federal agency to take a hit on the budget; HERE is a LINK to an article which gives the ugly truth about the United States budget.)

 

It’s also surprising to note that the food safety budget has not been affected by the recent e coli outbreak in Europe that has thus far killed 15 people in Germany and 1 person in Sweden. The European e coli outbreak should serve to underscore the seriousness of food safety as well as the importance of food inspection.

 

In addition to the loss of health and life that foodborne illnesses cause, the countries who have exported unsafe food suffer economically for quite some time after any kind of food-related outbreak. If the FDA were able to inspect all of the food before it was admitted into the United States, it would prevent many of the illnesses and would alert growers’ in the exporting country to any problems in advance. As result, our food would be safer and growers would be able to stop more problems before they happened.

 

 

Cool Ranch Doritos

1980s nostalgia got the better of me this week, as I started thinking about ranch flavor and Cool Ranch Doritos in particular.

As a middle-aged person, I find that Cool Ranch Doritos are the only Doritos flavor that don't give me instant heartburn, so they have that going for them. (I still have to be careful not to eat them within 2-3 hours of bedtime, lest I awaken with my gut churning with acid. Listen up, kids: it will happen to you, too.)

Doritos used to be my #1 go-to snack of choice. I would reliably buy at least two or three bags a month. But over time, I began phasing them out of rotation. They aren't any good for you, it's true, but it's more the case that I prefer a different kind of salty snack these days.

The great downfall of Doritos as a whole is that they are so clearly made of reconstituted corn pulp. They are the particleboard of snacks. As such, when you chew them, they turn back into a paste in your mouth. They have that airy crunch that tells you that there is little of substance inside. And more to the point, in a humid climate (like where I live) you have about five minutes after you open the bag to enjoy them. They get sad and damp and stale quite quickly, even if you use a chip clip.

(The only exception to this is when you have a misfire, and bite down such that a sharp corner jabs into your gumline or the roof of your mouth. Man, that hurts.)

I have also been moving more towards simpler foods, Pollan-esque foods. Lay's Original potato chips have three ingredients: potatoes, oil, and salt. Cool Ranch Doritos have 29 ingredients, and that's just counting the top-level stuff.

Whereas the trend in recent years has been for the "extreme-ification" of Doritos flavors, Cool Ranch remains relatively steadfast. It is a mild taste, which - for better or worse - facilitates an extensive snacking session. Each chip is heavily dusted with a festive blend of red, green, and yellowish powder which is no doubt meant to invoke the ingredients of ranch dressing, but which I am sure is at least 95% salt.

The predominant flavor is a tangy dairy taste, the distinctive buttermilk flavor of ranch dressing. It's basically that, salt, and an onion flavor. A surprisingly simple flavor mix, and surprisingly delicious for it. Even though when I type it all out like that, it sounds disgusting.

We Americans love the flavor of dairy. In Asia, they think we're insane. But we return the favor by getting squicked out by fermented foods. I have learned that in some places in Europe, Cool Ranch Doritos are called Cool American Doritos. Aside from being a bit of pandering to any American tourists wandering through the Danish grocery aisles, this is probably just accurate reporting. If anything deserves to be called "the American flavor," it's ranch.

Oh wow, someone please take this bag away from me! My protestations aside, I clearly can't be trusted with it.

Flavors of the 80s: Ranch Dressing

Ranch dressing may have been invented in the 1950s, but it surged to national prominence during the 1980s. This delicious topping is as quintessentially a 1980s flavor as pesto or Jolt Cola!

Ranch dressing had its humble beginnings with a homemade dressing that a man named Steve Henson developed. When he and his wife opened a dude ranch in 1954, they named it Hidden Valley Ranch, and they served Steve's special dressing there to their guests.

That's right: Hidden Valley Ranch is a real place!

The house dressing served at Hidden Valley Ranch was quickly named "Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing," and history was made. The dressing was so popular that the Hensens began selling it in a dried spice packet - just add buttermilk and mayonnaise and let it sit refrigerated for a few hours. This was inconvenient, but tasty, and very popular on a national scale. My father reminisces about his mother (my grandmother) mixing up ranch dressing for Sunday dinner in the 1960s, where they would apply it to their iceberg lettuce salads as a special "fancy dinner" treat.

Fast forward a few more iterations and we come to the year 1983, when Clorox (which bought the brand in 1972) developed a shelf-stable bottled dressing formula. This meant no more mixing of packets: you could just grab the bottle and you were good to go.

This invention brought ranch dressing into the homes of Americans everywhere. The 1980s was the decade of single working moms in power suits and latchkey kids. We didn't have the time, interest, or resources to mix our own dressing. What were we, hicks? Being able to buy pre-made ranch dressing made it suddenly ubiquitous.

The flavor was so popular that it was quickly applied to just about everything. People found that you could use it as a dip for French fries, pizza, cheese sticks, and crudités. It made a topping for everything from sandwiches to baked chicken breasts (oh, and salad, too).

"Ranch flavor" became the popular rallying cry for mass market foods, from microwave popcorn to Cool Ranch Doritos (introduced in 1987). You cannot patent the contents of a recipe, so once people cracked the ranch dressing code, everyone was free to make their own "ranch flavor" whatever.

According to food writer Brendan I. Koerner, ranch dressing became so popular because it is both bland and rich. Americans love that buttery dairy flavor (other countries are not as smitten with that end of the food palette). As far as an actual salad dressing goes, Ranch manages to be fattening without being too challenging. As a dipping sauce its blandness makes it the perfect accompaniment to almost any food, be it spicy, fatty, or a raw vegetable.

If you think about it, "ranch" is barely a flavor at all. Not compared to other national flavors like salsa (Mexico), miso (Japan), sambal (Thailand), olives (Greece) and a dozen others. But ranch is uniquely American in its ubiquity, its genial ability to mix and match with just about everything, and its horrifyingly high fat content. And all that started in the 1980s!

Photo credit: Flickr/Generation X-Ray

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