Japan creates Umeboshi Pickled Plum and Takuan Pickled Radish colas to pair with rice dishes

   –   RocketNews24

The unusual new flavours are designed to go down well with traditional Japanese meals.

While a lot of attention has been given to Pepsi Japan and its unusual lineup of limited-edition flavours, there’s a smaller home-grown company that continues to give the beverage giant a run for their money, with a range of colas that showcase more traditional Japanese ingredients. Based in Shizuoka Prefecture, the Kimura Drink Company is known locally as a “carbonated drinks entertainer” and is considered a pioneer when it comes to the development of new, unexplored beverages. They made a splash with their unagi eel-flavoured cola last year, and now they’re back with two new varieties that combine the taste of pickles with the refreshing zing of a sparkling cola beverage.

According to the company, regular cola drinks taste fantastic with western-style foods like hamburgers, so it was a natural step for them to develop a new type of cola that would taste equally delicious when paired with the country’s staple dish, white rice. Two ingredients with a long history of accompanying rice dishes immediately stood out as ideal candidates for the task: umeboshi (pickled plums) and takuan (pickled daikon white radish).

Whereas umeboshi has been mixed with alcohol before, particularly in Chu-hi mixed drinks made with shochu distilled liquor, blending takuan into a beverage was an entirely new concept. It turns out that the sour acidity from both ingredients makes for a perfect addition to the sweet cola base. Each mouthful is designed to have the same salty, pickled flavour of the original ingredient, only with a pleasant and refreshingly sweet aftertaste that makes you want to come back for more.

▼ With the bright yellow colour of the Takuan Cola perfectly resembling the juice from a pickled daikon, this is definitely one to try with a good serving of white rice on the side.

The drinks are currently available to pre-order from the company website, in 20-bottle boxes for 3,700 yen (US$33.57). Delivery within Japan is scheduled for 18 June, which coincides with the country’s “Onigiri Day”. If you’re in Shizuoka after this date, be sure to check the drinks section at service areas along the highway and at souvenir shops in the area, where individual 240-millilitre (8-ounce) bottles can be found.

Brisket Burger with Squash Pickles

Isaac Toups   –   Today.com

Give your summer cookout some Southern flair — because no one does brisket like they do in the South! Here, Isaac Toups of Toups’ Meatery shares his recipe for a meaty brisket burger topped with homemade squash pickles and creole aioli. 

Ingredients

    • 28 ounces ground brisket, chilled
    • 4 ounces pork fat, chilled
    • 4 slices bacon
    • 4 ounces aged cheddar, sliced
    • 4 buns
    • 4 ½ tablespoons chili seasoning (recipe below)
    • Creole aioli (recipe below)
    • Squash pickles (recipe below)
  • CHILI SEASONING

    • 2 tablespoons ground arbol chili
    • 2 tablespoons aleppo pepper
    • 2 tablespoons fresh ground black pepper
  • CREOLE AIOLI

    • 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
    • 2 tablespoons creole mustard
  • SQUASH PICKLES

    • 1 quart mixed yellow and green summer squash, sliced thin like 1/8 inch
    • 1 1/4 cup cider vinegar
    • 1 cup water
    • 1/3 cup sugar
    • 1 teaspoon salt
    • 2 teaspoon turmeric
    • 1 teaspoon curry
    • 1 teaspoon chili flakes

Preparation

Combine chilled brisket and pork fat together, mix by hand, folding the mixture on top of one another four to six times. Make sure not to emulsify. You want it to be kind of crumbly.

Separate into 8-ounce portions, form into approximate 5 inch patties. Make sure to make a thumbprint in the middle of patty to insure even cooking. Chill for at least thirty minutes.

Make burger seasoning:

Mix ingredients.

Make pickles:

Bring liquids and seasoning to boil making sure salt and sugar is dissolved. In 1 quart mason jar or food safe container, pour hot pickling liquid over squash. Cool to room temp and refrigerate.

Pickles are ready when cold but better after 24 hours. Shelf life is 2 weeks.

Make aioli:

Combine equal parts mayo and Creole mustard.

Prep the patties:

Generously season patties with kosher salt and form a good crust on each. Salt the patty before adding the seasoning blend. This is important!  Add about 1-1 ½ tablespoons seasoning blend to each patty. In a cast iron or French steel skillet, get grapeseed oil on high heat until just starting to smoke.

Sear burgers for two minutes on each side or longer, keeping in mind 120F is rare and 130F is medium.

I suggest 130.

Transfer to wire rack to rest for one minute.

While burgers are resting, assemble buns with generous dollop of aioli on each side.  Then add patty, cheddar, bacon, and pickles,  to bottom bun and add sauced top bun. Serve!

 

Tito’s 2016 Sweets & Snacks Expo

Sweets & Snacks Booth 2016

It was a great week at the 2016 Sweets & Snack Expo.  A lot of people interested in Tito’s pickles and peppers.  Amazing how many people, even in the industry, have not seen pickles in a pouch or portion packed sliced jalapenos.  In Chicago some people had never even tried pickles jalapenos.  They do serve some great giardiniera up there though!

Tito’s Summer Sausage at Sweets & Snacks 2016

Titos Sausage Product Showcase

Texas Tito’s Summer Sausage is featured at this years Sweets & Snacks Expo new product showcase.  Tito’s is exhibiting in booth # 72 starting tomorrow.

Plenty of pickles fill my diet: Selena Gomez

Selena Gomez enjoys pickles whilst backstage on tour.

Pop star Selena Gomez enjoys pickles whilst backstage on tour and also loves a “good plate of fried chicken”. The 23-year-old “Good For You” hitmaker is currently in the midst of her Revival world tour and is ensuring she stays fit with a “pretty simple” backstage diet, reported Female First.

“I keep things pretty simple backstage. Plenty of water and pickles. On the tour bus, hot Cheetos and chocolate are staples. I love a good plate of fried chicken,” Gomez said. The singer recently revealed she is “obsessed” with pickles as it is a regular staple in Texan diets. “I am obsessed with them. That is my thing and I drink the juice from the jar too. They sell them at gas stations and movie theatres in Texas. I go to the movies and have popcorn and pickles. It’s not weird. It is a thing back home that I do.”

Mr and Mrs Meenakshi-mami: The cutest couple in the world of pickles

By: Team Express FoodIE   –   The Indian Express

Vedapuri Subramaniam and his wife Meenakshi work 18-hour days to make pickles, spice mixes and more at their home, which are delivered to all parts of India via their year-old website. They’re only in their 70s.

Vedapuri Subramaniam is a lean, wiry, young entrepreneur of 76. His wife Meenakshi, after whom their website Meenakshimami.com has been named, turns 70 this year. Their day usually begins before sunrise at about 5am and winds up at about 10.30pm. “Yes, I do get tired,” says Subramaniam, with a touch of defiance, “but I don’t care. I don’t call this my home. This is my factory.” A large part of his Navi Mumbai residence has been turned into a processing unit of sorts. Rows of large, cylindrical plastic cans, filled with pickles, have been lined up.

“We made avakaya pickle just last week,” says Meenakshi. The Andhra avakaya pickle has to be stirred every day for at least six weeks. The stirring bit is Subramaniam’s responsibility, while his wife checks for taste. “It’s almost like how guests at a wedding tell the host that the sambar needs a dash of salt, or the rasam is too tangy so some water can be added to adjust its taste,” says Meenakshi.

Every pickle needs some minor adjustments – salt needs to be added or more oil goes in – and the couple makes almost 400kg of 11 varieties of pickles every year, including avakaya, gongura, kadu maanga, ginger, mahani (sarsaparilla), green chilli and lemon. “My mother-in-law’s the official taster and my father-in-law does the rest from sourcing the ingredients to supervising the vegetables being cut to preserving them,” says Sonali, their daughter-in-law, who, along with her husband Shriram, helps out with the website and delivery of the products.

Subramaniam left his home town Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu in the mid-1950s to work in the food manufacturing industry in Mumbai, and supplied ingredients to various companies that made pickles and ready-to-eat foods for close to four decades. “If you see how some of the biggest companies make pickles, you wouldn’t want to eat them,” he says. “This is why I ensure that cleanliness is the most important aspect of my pickle-making.” Meenakshimami.com is not the couple’s first entrepreneurial venture. They burnt their fingers with an earlier operation that manufactured ready-to-eat food. “The competition ate me up. This is why I want to build this slowly. We need some more time to set up hassle-free delivery to other parts of the country.”

Subramaniam travels as far as Tiruchirapalli every year to source the mahani root for the sarsaparilla pickle. “Adivasis from the forests in Trichy pick these roots, and this is the most difficult pickle to make because cleaning it is tedious. But it is also one of our most popular pickles besides the ginger pickle.” Egged on by their son and daughter-in-law, he took his business online last year. “It’s mostly Maharashtrians, Tamilians and Gujaratis from Mumbai who order our pickles.” Unlike most Andhra pickles available in Hyderabad, none of these pickles contain garlic and more reasonably priced than those on supermarket shelves.

What is the couple’s favourite pickle? “Avakaya,” says Meenakshi, without blinking.

“Pickle is a must in our home, but I can’t eat too much of it at this age,” she adds. Her husband, on the other hand, doesn’t quite like p ickles. “I like these powders,” says Subramaniam, pointing to the vatha kuzhambu spice mix. “I have beaten my wife at making this. She spends hours making this at home, but with my recipe you just need to boil water, and it’s done in 10 minutes. My recipe is also one step ahead in taste.” The couple, who were been married for 47 years laughs together. When Meenakshi is out of ear shot, he says with a beaming smile, “She makes good pickles. Very good pickles. I would say the best.”

 

 

Jalapeño and Lime Hummus

by    –   gluten-free goddess

Make Mine with Jalapeño and Lime

I love weekends. Not because they provide a significantly different routine for us. We work at home. Translation: we work every day. But the energy is somehow more relaxed on the weekend. I don’t feel guilty blogging in my pajamas on a Saturday (past noon, that is). And we do at least *try* to knock off work earlier than usual, reconnoitering at the fridge in late afternoon to assess the food situation.
We typically begin our rummaging in the kitchen pantry, looking for a snack. Some tasty tidbit to tide us over until dinner. We might make guacamole, or pesto, or hummus. We sit and nosh. And talk. Make plans. Lately it’s been all about the big move to New Mexico.

Which is why I flavored my hummus with jalapeños and lime. Of course.

And, Babycakes, was it ever good. Me gusto!

Jalapeño and Lime Hummus Recipe

Recipe posted March 2006.

The unbiased husband’s review: “I’m not usually a fan of hummus, but this was far and away the best damn hummus I’ve ever had.” Phew. Traditional, it’s not. But who cares about tradition when right now inspiration tastes so good?

Ingredients:

1 15-oz. can chilled chickpeas or garbanzo beans, drained, rinsed
Juice of one large fresh lime
1-2 tablespoons peanut butter
3 cloves fresh garlic
2 heaping tablespoons jarred jalapeños, drained
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro leaves
Pinch of cumin, to taste
Red pepper flakes, to taste
Pinch of sea salt, to taste

Instructions:

Combine all of the ingredients in a food processor until smooth.

Makes about 3 cups.

Serve with my gluten-free Brown Rice Tortilla Chips, Buttermilk Flat Bread or Savory Grain-free Crackers.

Karina’s Notes:

This naturally gluten-free hummus is a fab dip with crisp fresh veggies and tortilla chips, but it’s also quite tasty as a side dish. Try it with a plate of roasted vegetables and brown rice. It’s a lovely way to add a complementary protein to a vegan or vegetarian meal.

This burger is 1,400 times hotter than a jalapeno and needs a LEGAL WAIVER signed before you can have it

THERE are some of us who like a challenge when it comes to food, but a new burger takes things to a whole new level.

Australian restaurant Johnny’s Burgers has created the Devil’s Revenge – a combination of ingredients so lethal you’ll need to sign a LEGAL WAIVER before you’ll be served it.

Yes, this is most definitely not one for those of you who like your korma curries.

In fact, it’s been estimated it is 1,400 times hotter than a spicy JALAPENO CHILLI.

Chef Jonny Wong owns the Perth eatery, and he’s warned that it is most definitely not one to opt for if you’re of a nervous disposition.

“One man finished it, but he left with the shakes and shivers and had to take the next day off work,” he told WA Today.

“I’m very cautious about who takes the challenge and we ask competitors to sign a waiver that they don’t have any pre-existing health conditions that might preclude them from taking part – and that they take part at their own risk.”

That means anyone with a weak heart or dodgy tummy won’t be allowed to face the challenge, plus you’ll need to sign a legal paper stating you have someone who will drive you home.

The burger itself is an unassuming little thing on first glance.

In fact it cloaks itself under the guise of a cheeseburger, but it’s what’s lurking beneath that’s the problem.

It has a hot sauce which boasts two chillies. To give you an idea, there is a heat-measuring scale for this kind of thing and they rank 3.5 million Scoville units. Jalapenos are usually just 2,500 units.

The rest of the burger is pretty normal, including bacon, cheese, salad and chips, and it costs $25 (£12).

bout 300 people have tried the burger since it’s been available, but it’s just that one guy who’s been able to finish it.

Jonny suggests getting a milkshake with the fiery meal as that can help dull it – a bit, anyway.

his is far from the only unusual creation the chef has dreamt up.

Those who are feeling particularly peckish could order a Burgerzilla, which weighs a staggering THREE KILOS.

If you manage to munch it within 45 minutes it’s free, otherwise it’s $50 (£25).

Not sure you could stomach that? How about a Donut Eat It Burger, which boasts a beef patty, bacon and cheese, all encased in two Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

A pretty pickle – Mamidi Avakai Recipe

DECCAN CHRONICLE | PRIYANKA PRAVEEN

Continuing our love affair with mangoes, this week too we give you recipes that use raw mangoes — pickles to be specific.

Mamidi Avakai
Ingredients

3 medium raw mangoes
1 cup mustard seed powder
1 cup red chilli powder
¾ cup, powdered rock salt
1¼ cups of groundnut oil
1/3 cup of garlic cloves
1½ tbsp methi seeds
w Pickle jar (for storage)

Method
Wash and soak mangoes in water for an hour. Clean the mangoes with a cloth and cut them into eight pieces. Clean the pieces with a soft cloth and leave to dry. Grind the rock salt to a fine powder. Keep it aside. Peel the garlic and keep aside.

In a large bowl add red chilli powder, mustard powder and salt and mix well. Add methi seeds, garlic cloves and 3/4 cup oil and mix well. Add the mango pieces and mix well with your hands, coating the mango pieces with the mixture. Place the spice coated mango pieces in the jar. Pour ¼ cup oil on top and cover the pickle jar with the lid. Tie a cloth over the lid and keep it in a moisture free area. Let the pickle marinate for three-four days. After four days, mix the pickle carefully with a clean and dry ladle and add the rest of the oil.

Tips while making pickles
Always keep in mind that the mango pieces need to be wiped dry. After you wash the mango and cut it into pieces, wipe it dry with a cloth and let it dry for a while, or the pickle can get spoilt.

After the pickle is made, on the fourth or fifth day, place it into a wide vessel.
Mix well with a long ladle that is clean and dry. Also, add more oil so that it covers the entire pickle as it helps preserve it.

The best way to get a long-lasting and delicious pickle is to get the freshest ingredients. Whether it is the mangoes or even the chilli powder and the other ingredients, make sure everything is fresh.

Mamidi Turumu
Ingredients
1 green mango
2 tsp mustard seeds
1½ tsp fenugreek seeds
1½ red chilli powder
1½ tbsp salt  w 2 tbsp oil
1 tsp mustard seeds
2 red chillies
1 tsp asafoetida

Method
Wash and peel the mango. Grate it with a coconut scraper and keep aside.
Dry roast fenugreek seeds, let them cool and grind into powder. Grind mustard seeds into a powder. In a mixing bowl, add the ground powders, salt, red chilli powder and grated mango. Mix well and keep aside.
Heat oil and add dry red chillies, mustard seeds and asafoetida. Let it cool. Pour the cooled mixture over the grated mango-spice marination. Serve in a bowl.

Pickle Party at Grand Central Market

Tangy, tart, and fabulously fermentable times are just ahead downtown.

The pickle is pretty darn quirky, and we’re not just talking about its fun-to-say, oh-so-charming name.

It’s a specific foodstuff — everyone knows what you mean when you say “I want a pickle” — and yet oodles of other edibles can be pickled. Which makes the pickle much like salt, and a roast, and toast, in that what they are, and what they can do to other foods, are two deliciously distinct things.

his is solid information to possess before your mosey over to the Pickle Party atGrand Central Market. The downtown landmark is hosting the tart-to-the-taste-buds bash on Sunday, May 15, but know that you won’t just be noshing upon the green-hued classic, the one sitting in a jar inside your fridge door at this very moment.

There shall be pickling knowledge, helpful tips shared by “fermentation guru” Sandor Ellix Katz. And Mr. Katz will oversee the rather amazing main draw of the event, the “1,000 Pounds of Kraut” project.

What is this? It’s “a crowd-sourced communal sauerkraut-making session” involving a “day-long ‘Kraut Mob'” that’ll be behind the ongoing creation of, you guessed it, one thousand pounds of flavorful kraut goodness.

If you take a break from all the kraut-makery, be sure to check out the chefly demos dotting Grand Central Market, like those involving “Asian and Latino pickles and condiments.”

There’s also a pop-up Pickle Marketplace to peruse, too, and various vendors will sell “special pickle menu items” in honor of the happening.

Are you already sensing that your summertime barbecues, regardless of the main meat or veg, are about to step it up in terms of divine pickled delectables?

We wouldn’t dare suggest that pickle people ever forsake the green bumpily spear, the one we love on the side of our sandwich plate, for other, er, less greener horizons.

But the pickling planet is large, and it is welcoming of all sorts of cuisine-cool comers.

Really, what can’t be pickled (or salted or roasted or toasted)?

It’s an old kitchen calling with major implications for our contemporary entertaining. May pickled bites continue to lend tang wherever tang is needed.