FRANKENFOOD

Talk about getting set in your ways……Folks, I get, that people get tired of the traditional standards when it comes to recipes. Every now and then, I’ll find something I haven’t tried before that blows my skirt up, and wonder why I didn’t know about it. But this whole concept of Frankenfood, has got me questioning.

Not long ago, this nice gal at Wal-Mart was dishing out samples at one of their little stands, and she had apple slices with some kind of mixed spice concoction they were promoting, sprinkled on the slice. OK….I bit. But it was like putting steak rub on an apple.

My first experience was with some kind of Chicago chili recipe that had cinnamon in it.
YUCK!....on both experiences!

Granted, I enjoy a TV food show now and then, but the one I watch mostly is The Chew. This season seems all about mixing contrasting ingredients. What the hell! I’m about to ditch The Chew. These are the same people that don’t even cook like this at home for their families. It’s all a show.

Frankenfood is just not my bag. The 3 voting choices seem fair enough. Weigh in.

Ya need to watch Junior Chef---these kids are w-a-y over our pay grade. Just outstanding dishes and Chef Ramsay drama to go along with it !!

Gary Byrum said:

Talk about getting set in your ways……Folks, I get, that people get tired of the traditional standards when it comes to recipes. Every now and then, I’ll find something I haven’t tried before that blows my skirt up, and wonder why I didn’t know about it. But this whole concept of Frankenfood, has got me questioning.

Not long ago, this nice gal at Wal-Mart was dishing out samples at one of their little stands, and she had apple slices with some kind of mixed spice concoction they were promoting, sprinkled on the slice. OK….I bit. But it was like putting steak rub on an apple.

My first experience was with some kind of Chicago chili recipe that had cinnamon in it.
YUCK!....on both experiences!

Granted, I enjoy a TV food show now and then, but the one I watch mostly is The Chew. This season seems all about mixing contrasting ingredients. What the hell! I’m about to ditch The Chew. These are the same people that don’t even cook like this at home for their families. It’s all a show.

Frankenfood is just not my bag. The 3 voting choices seem fair enough. Weigh in.

Click to expand...

I'm going to hazard a guess that you wouldn't be interested in trying my infamous chocolate-beer chili, then ...

My wife thinks I look at the kitchen as a chemistry lab, which I do. The kids dubbed it 'Danger Food' when Dad cooked. I feel I have a much undeserved reputation but to be honest- I made a Shrimp Etouffee not even the cats would eat. Yes- my Mom had me tested....really!

I don't believe in recipes. I'm more into ... guidelines.

It usually works. Sometimes, less so.

Usually the term "Frankenfood" is reserved for GMO food that has been genetically modified and sold as food. But I take it you are not talking about that and are talking about bizarre recipes instead.

If someone else makes it, I will try just about anything once. Doesn't matter if it sounds weird or gross, I'll take a bite.

But the things I make at home are not usually all that weird. Sometimes I work straight from a recipe, and other times I just wing it. I know what kinds of ingredients go together, and I can usually go to the fridge, pull out whatever is there, and throw something together that will work.

My wife and I both work from home, sometimes right up to dinner time or later. My wife will start to get hungry and start saying things like, "Oh my God! I'm starving! I don't think we have anything for dinner! What are we going to do?" I tell her to keep working on her project and I'll go see what we've got. I generally find something I can work with, whip up a decent meal, and call her out for dinner. When she asks me what it is, I say, "Something I pulled out of my butt."

YodaMcFly said:

I'm going to hazard a guess that you wouldn't be interested in trying my infamous chocolate-beer chili, then ...

Click to expand...

Those are prime ingredients in the chili I make in the winter months.

I like very much the Lindor chili-chocolate bars and Pepperidge Farms Chili-Chocolate Milano cookies. Just something about chili and chocolate that go together.

I add the dark beer as additional liquid to the chili recipe.

ThirstyBarbarian said:

Usually the term "Frankenfood" is reserved for GMO food that has been genetically modified and sold as food. But I take it you are not talking about that and are talking about bizarre recipes instead.

If someone else makes it, I will try just about anything once. Doesn't matter if it sounds weird or gross, I'll take a bite.

Click to expand...

True that about GMO food, but the Urban Dictionary also defines it as mish-mashed recipes.

I too, have no problem trying something new. In fact, I've always been that way, but rarely do I taste something new that changes how I make something or prompts me to buy it. But that's just me. We all have different tastes and I'm sure some folks like bizarre, "out to lunch" concoctions. Let's take the good ole tater salad. There are literally hundreds of variations on this old favorite, some of which I thought were pretty decent. But none of them made me want to change the way I make mine.

I've seen the commercials. Haven't seen the show. I really have no idea how to vote.

o1d_dude said:

Those are prime ingredients in the chili I make in the winter months.

I like very much the Lindor chili-chocolate bars and Pepperidge Farms Chili-Chocolate Milano cookies. Just something about chili and chocolate that go together.

I add the dark beer as additional liquid to the chili recipe.

Click to expand...

I like the combination of a small amount of chili pepper spice in chocolate and also cinnamon in chocolate. I love mole sauce. I've had some great chocolate bars that included these flavors. Most were described as Mexican or Mayan inspired and they were awsome. I'm not sure I'd really like chocolate or cinnamon as an ingredient in chili con carne.

o1d_dude said:

Those are prime ingredients in the chili I make in the winter months.

I like very much the Lindor chili-chocolate bars and Pepperidge Farms Chili-Chocolate Milano cookies. Just something about chili and chocolate that go together.

I add the dark beer as additional liquid to the chili recipe.

Click to expand...

Yeah, my guidelines are a small amount of semi-sweet chocolate, and along with high-quality chili powder, when possible, I use fresh peppers as well. The type and quantity of peppers vary depending on spice-tolerance of the intended victims consumers.

The beer replaces some of the beef stock that's the base, as you mention, but it has to be a good match to the other flavors. I've used various smoked porters, full-on Rauchbier, and a few others, but the absolute best are Rogue's Shakespeare Stout and Young's Double Chocolate Stout ...

Hmm, now I'm craving chili.

You needed to have choice "D" - Willing to try a taste. Take it or leave it did not fit that, and indeed not so sure Take it or leave it was a good option.

I will if I had voted, i'd never vote for "Love it", because I realize most "Frankenfood" recipes are not going ot be so good, so committing ot loving it didn't fit. And I'd never vote "Hate it" , since that means there COULD be some great stuff being missed by never ever willing to try.

Given my new eating habits, keeping carbs within limits, and trying to expand the envelope, I'm definitely willing to try some new things.

One of my favorite foods is a bit of a Frankenfood, and I still eat it once in awhile. It starts out traditional - Barbecued Pork sandwich, chopped fine, with a special vinegar-based BBQ sauce that has a very unique flavor, and a little bit "hot". So, balancing out or contrasting the flavor of the sort of hot vinegar based BBQ sauce, is KFC's Cole Slaw on top.

The result is an incredible taste. Kind of the taste you get when you have some great "sweet and sour" food. But it's not sour, I'm just trying to get across the idea of that specific BBQ sauce and the KFC cole slaw being so different and yet OH so good. So good that at times I have had sandwiches with Turkey meat (lots of left over turkey meat Thanksgiving and Christmas).

Now, I do not expect other BBQ sauces to provide a similar effect, but maybe. Simply that decades ago, I had this at a certain restaurant, with their in-house cole slaw. And loved it. But 10 years ago, they went out of business. Well, the restaurant closed, but the sauce is sold in local stores and by mail-order. But it was not the same without their in-house cole slaw. No store-bought cole slaw tasted the same, the magic mix was not there. Then one day I went to KFC, and had a side of their cole slaw. OMG, it tasted EXACTLY the same as the BBQ restaurant's tasted! So, the magic was back.

Fortunately the vinegar-based sauce is very low carb, 2 grams a serving. And the meat virtually none. But the cole slaw is not low carb. So, I have to be careful not to have too much (and use one piece of Lite bread per BBQ sandwich). But oh man, such a treat.

Yet most would probably think of a sort of hot vinegar BBQ sauce and cole slaw as a Frankenfood, and never want to try it. So from that experience, I'd love to discover some other fantastic magic combo….. willing to take a shot, realizing most will not turn out so good.

What I have a bigger issue with is not being able to sample it, to taste it but say getting that as my whole meal and two bites into it, realizing it's so bad I don't want to eat the rest …. and being stuck with finishing it all or not eating anything (a recent experiment went bad, but I was at liberty to stop, trash it, and make something else.).

Now, I am not a fan of the "Food shows". I don't get the popularity of so many of them. But that's OK, it's fine that others like them, as long as the food shows don't knock other shows I like off the air. It's not like there's any good sci-fi shows on the Food Network. And shows like "The Chew", well, soap opera fans are the ones to be upset as IIRC it replaced an old famous one….. doesn't matter to me.

- George Gassaway

My wife made chocolate covered bacon strips once....kids loved it but I wasn't all that thrilled with it.

Meals are pretty traditional in my house.....meat'n'potatoes, casseroles, pizza, burgers'n'fries....and meat is usually moose, venison and chicken.

georgegassaway said:

You needed to have choice "D" - Willing to try a taste. Take it or leave it did not fit that, and indeed not so sure Take it or leave it was a good option.

I will if I had voted, i'd never vote for "Love it", because I realize most "Frankenfood" recipes are not going ot be so good, so committing ot loving it didn't fit. And I'd never vote "Hate it" , since that means there COULD be some great stuff being missed by never ever willing to try.

Click to expand...

Thank you George for critiquing my voting options and your displaced feedback. Taste, FYI, was well included in my attempt to get my point across. If you didn't like my options, why did you bother weighing in? It's no wonder so many members listed in the TRF community, haven't posted anything here in decades. Maybe they got tired of rusty remarks? It might behoove everyone, to consider trying to put forth some positive input, rather than doing their best to kill a thread.

For the record,the "hate it option", was because I have found little to nothing being introduced into the market, worthy of buying. And the food shows consider contrasting flavors as a taste trend. Nuff said.

[video=youtube;o1Izq-E3o7Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1Izq-E3o7Y[/video]

Fusion cooking is interesting, it ether work or it doesn't. But a lot of our traditional stuff is fusion based on what people could find when they immigrated here. Spaghetti and Meatballs is American as is Corn Beef and Cabbage. As for cooking shows nothing beats Good Eats (Julia Child, Mr. Wizard and Monty python being the 3 inspirations for the show, you can't go wrong with that), I learned a lot about food and cooking from Alton Brown, including the too facts above. Some of his recipes are a bit involved but they come out quite tasty.

Frankenfood: Food that is still alive somehow.

I was thinking that you were referring to GMO foods. I would change my vote to "I'll take a bite" and see.

The famous "Cincinnati Chilli" has chocolate in it.

mjennings said:

Fusion cooking is interesting, it ether work or it doesn't. But a lot of our traditional stuff is fusion based on what people could find when they immigrated here. Spaghetti and Meatballs is American as is Corn Beef and Cabbage. As for cooking shows nothing beats Good Eats (Julia Child, Mr. Wizard and Monty python being the 3 inspirations for the show, you can't go wrong with that), I learned a lot about food and cooking from Alton Brown, including the too facts above. Some of his recipes are a bit involved but they come out quite tasty.

Click to expand...

Alton Brown is great. I learned a lot from him too. He explains a lot about the chemistry of cooking, which I find interesting. Most of his recipes that I have tried have turned out great.

ThirstyBarbarian said:

Alton Brown is great. I learned a lot from him too. He explains a lot about the chemistry of cooking, which I find interesting. Most of his recipes that I have tried have turned out great.

Click to expand...

Alton Brown IS a good chef. I used the Hummus recipe he posted on YouTube and discovered I did not like the lemon juice in it, (which btw is traditional) so I left it out of my 2nd batch. Made a great garbanzo bean dip! He's prolly one of the better authentic cooks out there, unless you wanna put a stick of butter in all your recipes with the likes of Paula Deen.

Alton Brown's Hummus contains lemon juice. I have had hummus from Europe, Iraq, Israel, Saudi, Kuwait, and various other locations and I have never tasted lemon in it. Either the hummus I ate was lower in lemon juice and Alton Brown adds too much or I just have never had authentic hummus in my travels.

FYI - I lived in 4 of those locations over a 4 year span.

cwbullet said:

Alton Brown's Hummus contains lemon juice. I have had hummus from Europe, Iraq, Israel, Saudi, Kuwait, and various other locations and I have never tasted lemon in it. Either the hummus I ate was lower in lemon juice and Alton Brown adds too much or I just have never had authentic hummus in my travels.

FYI - I lived in 4 of those locations over a 4 year span.

Click to expand...

That's interesting Chuck. When I was researching Hummus recipes and watched a lot of videos, most of them, if not all, used lemon juice. I've never bought store brands, so I can't comment on those. Although, a great many of the videos were from middle eastern people that used lemon juice. Nuff on that note though. I quickly found out that this recipe had that FRANKEN factor going on with lemon juice turning it upside down so I simply left it out. It's a hit with everyone I make it for. My brother found out real quick, that it goes well with Tostito's chips. I still like it with pita bread, but it's pretty good with a chip as well.

Remember that there are not only regional differences in the way that food is prepared, but also economic ones. It may very well be that lemon is added by poorer people to cover the taste of other lower quality ingredients, or, contrarily, if it is expensive, then perhaps it is added by the well-to-do as a display of their wealth. The way blue-collar people and many wealthier people here make hamburgers can be quite different so who knows?

Maybe Alton's recipe called for too much lemon juice, and the flavor wasn't balanced right. I've never made humus myself, but I've had it plenty of times from stores or in restaurants. I don't really remember noticing an obtrusive lemon flavor. If it is a common ingredient, then it must not be very much.

I've never made hummus, but I've researched lots of recipes, and I've definitely seen lemon juice. Very interesting.