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Beer and cheese bread, courtesy of Flickr user gin_soak

According to the Nielsen Company, the Super Bowl is the 8th-largest beer-selling event of the year. This sounds a little low, but I’m guessing it has to do with the season (July 4 is #1).

Although I enjoy a beer now and then, I find it too filling to have more than one or two in a sitting. It feels more like a meal than a beverage. In fact, why not turn it into a meal? Beer imparts great flavor to all kinds of dishes, and a surprising variety of cultures use it in their cooking. It makes sense. After all, people cook with wine all the time.

Here are five good ways to use your next six-pack (which leaves you one to enjoy while you’re cooking):

1. Chili. I tried a lot of chili recipes before I hit on one that had the right depth and concentration of flavor for my taste: this Game-Day Chili from Southern Living magazine (I substitute ground turkey for the chuck, and chicken broth for the beef broth, and no one seems to mind). The magic ingredient (aside from lots of spice), is dark beer. I’ve tried various kinds, including a chocolate stout and a brown ale, and all seem to work.

2. Pasta Sauce. Wine is used in tomato sauce all the time, but it never would have occurred to me to use beer until I saw this recipe for Pasta with Spicy Tomato-Beer Sauce on Saveur magazine’s site. Made with Italian Bock beer, capers, sun-dried tomatoes, anchovies and Kalamata olives, it sounds pretty intensely flavored, but delicious.

3. Seafood Stew. Many Latin American cultures add beer to their seafood stews, like this Arroz con Mariscos from the Food Network, or this Enchilado de Camarones from Steven Raichlen’s Healthy Latin Cooking.

4. Bread. Considering that beer’s invention was probably related to bread making, it seems fitting to combine the two. The blog Farmgirl Fare (which has an adorable home-page illustration) offers several delicious sounding recipes, including Beyond Easy Beer Bread with cheddar and dill, Whole Wheat Beer Bread and Onion Rye Beer Bread.

5. Dessert. As I discovered last St. Patrick’s Day, Guinness and chocolate make a delicious cake—if you measure carefully. Apparently, you can also use stout to make a Beer Cream Pie, as they did at the blog Beer at Joe’s. If you prefer lighter beer, you can use Belgian white beer to make these spicy White Beer Cookies, an entrant in the Food Network’s Ultimate Recipe Showdown.

Recipes, like songs and poems, are passed down from generation to generation. But some holiday recipes seems to have fallen through the cracks; they’re passed on through songs and poems, but have become a thing of holiday lore rather than practice.

The famous poem “The Night Before Christmas” makes reference to sugar plums: “The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar plums danc’d in their heads.” When reading this poem growing up, I always pictured some sort of fairy, most likely the influence of the Sugar Plum Fairy from the Nutcracker. Turns out, sugar plums are a type of Christmas sweet. (They’re also a specific type of small, sweet plum.) Use Real Butter has a recipe for sugar plums that calls for toasted almonds, dried apricots, honey and plenty of cinnamon. She concludes that the confection was named for its shape, not the specific ingredients. Miss Ginsu (who unfortunately has stopped blogging) posted a similar sugar plum recipe that called for dried figs and cocoa powder.

Another treat that lives on in song instead of practice is wassail from the Christmas Carol “Here We Come A-Wassailing.” Wassailing simply means caroling. In the Victorian era, beggars and orphans would go door to door singing and hoping to get a bite to eat or a drink. The name comes from the Middle English phrase wæs hæil, which means “be healthy.” Wassail is a drink made from ale or beer and spices, kind of like mulled wine. Other versions includes hard alcohol such as brandy or even rum. Most wassail recipes call for some kind of fruit, generally apples, which makes wassail remind me of a British version of sangria. Epicurious has a version made from sherry, brandy and plenty of spices. Chow’s recipe includes cranberry juice, apple cider and an apple brandy.

Of course, perhaps the most famous Christmas food item that no one has ever eaten might be figgy pudding, known, of course, from “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.” Unlike the sugar plum, figgy pudding actually has figs in it. But the name still manages to be misleading as figgy pudding is more of a cake than a pudding. While it was popular from the 15th to the 19th centuries, figgy pudding’s long cooking time (at least a three-hour steam) and high saturated fat (most recipes include suet, a form of fat found near an animal’s kidneys) has curtailed its popularity in modern times. Good Housekeeping has a simplified recipe that uses boxed cake mix and bakes rather than steams the pudding. Dorie Greenspan, author of Baking: From My Home to Yours, presented her more traditional, steamed recipe on NPR.

If you’re feeling adventurous and in the Christmas Spirit, try one of these recipes. If not, at least you’ll know what figgy pudding is next time you hear “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.”

Sugar plum courtesy of kevandem/flickr

iStockphoto

Stuffing is an integral part of any Thanksgiving spread, but this holiday tradition has the potential to be a holiday hazard. In the past few years, a debate has started about whether or not it’s safe to cook stuffing inside the bird.

The safety issue arises because when ingredients are put into a raw turkey, they come in contact with juices that could be contaminated with salmonella. Consequently, they have to be cooked to a minimum of 165 degrees to kill any possible bacteria. Sure, that seems easy enough. You’re probably thinking that because you took the temperature of the meat, and that was at a nice and safe 165, the stuffing should be good to go. Right?

Wrong. As a general rule—this applies to everything, not just turkeys—the outside cooks faster than the inside. So, while your bird might be sitting pretty at 165 degrees, the stuffing on the inside might only be at 145. If you cook the turkey until the stuffing reaches 165, the meat on the outside might have reached 180 and will be dry. Therein lies the problem. It’s a battle between undercooked and possibly dangerous stuffing and the classic Thanksgiving mistake of dry turkey.

Stuffing a turkey isn’t inherently evil, though a certain celebrity chef might want you to believe otherwise. Here are some tips to help you avoid both salmonella and a dry turkey.

1. Forego the tradition and cook the stuffing outside of the bird.
Both Alton Brown and food scientist Harold McGee advocate for this method.

2. Use ice packs while thawing the turkey.
McGee has an innovative way to cook the dark meat of a turkey (which he says is best at 180 degrees) while not overcooking the white meat. While thawing the turkey, he puts ice packs over the breasts of the turkey. When the rest of the bird has reached 60 degrees, the breast will only be at 40. While he doesn’t approve of stuffing a turkey at all, this method could allow the stuffing to reach a safe temperature before the meat gets overdone.

3. Cook the stuffing separately and stuff it inside the turkey while it’s resting.
This is Alton Brown’s preferred method. You can ensure that your stuffing has reached the proper temperature and then let it soak up some turkey flavor while the bird rests.

If you must stay traditional and cook the stuffing inside of the bird, the USDA has a few recommendations:

1. Stuff loosely.
The denser the stuffing in the bird, the more time it will take to get it to a safe temperature. Allow for expansion, and stuff the bird loosely. The USDA recommends ¾ cup for every pound of turkey.

2. Cook any raw meat, poultry or shellfish product before stuffing it into the turkey.

3. Stuff with a moist stuffing.
Heat destroys bacteria faster in a wet environment than in a dry one.

Although I haven’t attempted my own turkey dinner yet, I think I’ll opt for the safest method of just cooking the stuffing outside of the bird. No fuss. No worries. Plus, the top of the stuffing gets nice and crunchy.

How do you usually cook your Thanksgiving turkey?

One year ago, on November 21, a blog was born here at Smithsonian.com. A FAT little blog, you might say.

But let’s leave the baby metaphor behind, shall we? Because it’s going to get kind of weird if we tell you to eat our baby. Think of FAT more as a friendly cafe, or maybe a street cart, serving up heaping helpings of food news, science and culture. (Hey, that’s catchy. We should use that as a tagline or something.)

We’ve prepared a special birthday menu of past posts to peruse. We hope you enjoy the feast, and as always, we welcome your feedback! (Not your food back. That could be gross.)

Bite-Sized Food History

Bagels

The Potato

Hamburger

Caesar Salad

Chocolate

Chewing Gum

Drinks

Hallucinogenic Coffee

Hungarian Wine

Vintage Violet Cocktails

Beer Behemoths

The First Margarita

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Cocktails

Healthy Stuff

Quinoa, the mother of grains

Cinnamon on the brain

Should sugar be a controlled substance?

Is eating red meat dangerous to your health?

Is your food safe?

Dieting through the ages

Five Ways to Eat

Figs

Apples

Beets

Winter Squash

Brussels Sprouts

Tomatoes

Seafood and Poultry

A Taste of Geoduck

Sustainable Seafood

Cracking Into Crabs

The Best Fish & Chips in Ireland

How The Turkey Got Its Name

The Flap Over Foie Gras

Asides

What was manna?

What is American food?

What the heck is breadfruit?

Why does nothing rhyme with orange?

What would you choose for your very last meal?

Sweet Treats

Cider Donuts

Gingerbread History

All You Ever Wanted to Know About Chocolate

Ice Creams for the Savory-Toothed

Sugar on Snow

Oh, No Dessert For Me, I’m Just Looking

Shetland cod with pig's trotters, tripe and ears, perhaps showing up on a menu near you soon, courtesy of Flickr user Sifu_Renka

‘Tis the season for the trend prophets to release their forecasts for the upcoming year. Last week restaurant consultants Baum & Whiteman, the Nostradamuses of the food world, announced their annual list of 12 food and dining trends for 2010 (pdf). In a word, it’s going to be offal. (I didn’t just write that, did I? I should be pun-ished. Can one’s journalism degree be revoked?)

A unifying theme was that people are paring down in response to the economic climate (the list itself seemed to be following its own prediction—there was one fewer trend than last year). People’s priorities are shifting to the more personal, and they are looking for comfort and a connection with others—what the consultants call, metaphorically, the “campfire experience.”

I have already noticed some restaurants moving in the direction of the second item on the list—a greater emphasis on small plates, different portion-size options, and plates for sharing—which they call “putting the focus on the left side of the menu.” I heartily welcome the shift to smaller portions; I can rarely finish what’s on my plate when I eat out, and I don’t always want to carry around leftovers. Why should I pay for $25 worth of food when I’m only hungry for $15?

I’m also happy to note that, according to the list, our palates are becoming more attuned to tartness. Like Michele Hume, who wrote “What’s Wrong With Chocolate” at the Atlantic Food Channel, I almost always prefer a tangy lemon dessert to a chocolate one, and I add lemon juice to everything from vegetables to chicken soup. Although the publishers and devotees of the recently rejuvenated bestseller Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child might disagree, I concur with the consultants’ reasoning that “classic French cookery, based on excesses of butter and cream, is in decline because it puts the taste buds into snooze mode…. We’re all getting older and we need more zing in our food.” Hear, hear!

And, yes, there was a reason (though probably not a good one) for the offal pun. Baum & Whiteman predict that tongue, trotters, gizzards and other spare animal parts will be showing up on more menus to augment downsized portions of prime meats. This, I assume, has the double benefit of lowering food costs while making diners feel adventurous and in-the-know. I suppose it also cuts down on wastefulness, which is good. I still don’t think I can bring myself to eat it, though. When I was about 6, my grandmother, a big fan of tongue, once fed it to me without my knowledge. I liked it—until I found out what it was and couldn’t stop picturing myself biting my own tongue.

If organ meat isn’t scary enough, the list warns hotels and restaurants that they “no longer control what’s said about them.”  The old “Voices of Authority,” such as Gourmet magazine, are disappearing in favor of the “Instant Opinion Makers”: bloggers, Twitterers, Facebookers and their ilk, who “broadcast ‘buzz’ and bad news to a million gullible people in the blink of the eye.” I started to feel the slightest bit guilty about the role of blogs such as this one in the demise of quality food magazines, but then I got over myself. First of all, I don’t think the editors of Gourmet would agree that they ever allowed restaurants to control what was said about them. And, while I regret the decline of print journalism in general (which, after all, provides the bulk of my livelihood), I don’t think what we’re doing here at Food & Think is a replacement for the restaurant reviews, recipes and beautiful food photography that such magazines offer.