¶ Intro / Opening
Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this is the podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
And I'm Mark Scarbrough, usually the writer in our duo, the writer of over three dozen cookbooks, but in this episode of Cooking with Bruce and Mark, I'm going to be directing the cooking. We're going to make something wild on this podcast, something that you probably don't even think that you should or even could make, but we're going to do it.
We've got a one minute cooking tip, and we're going to tell you what's making us happy in food this week, all while also reminding you of our latest cookbook, the Look and Cook Air Fryer Bible, wherever books are sold, you can find it or in the podcast notes to this episode, you can find a link to buy that book. That would be terrific. We would appreciate your support. So let's get to it.
¶ Our one minute cooking tip: use a rack in the saucepan for the best hard-cooked eggs.
What's our one minute cooking tip.
The next time you want to make hard boiled eggs. Put a trivet, or a rack in the bottom of your pot, when you boil the water, that way when you put the eggs in, They're not sitting on the bottom of the pot. And why is that important? Because if they touch the bottom of the pot, they get super heated and they don't cook evenly and they cook too fast and you end up with overcooked hard boiled eggs, which is not really what you're looking for.
It has that green tinge to it, So put it in there. The writer is being really specific here because it's got to be a heat safe rack. And in other words, if your metal rack has little rubber feet on it, you can't. Put it in the pot. It has to be fully metal. And if it's a Tiffany Crystal tribute, right? Oh, well, yeah. Don't put your grandmother's Tiffany Crystal tribute in the pot. Okay, you know what? Our listeners are not idiots. So, um, let's see. Don't do that.
But, um, I'm sure you already know, don't do that. All right. That's our one minute cooking tip about how to get better eggs out of a pot. This works for, uh, soft boiled eggs, jammy ramen eggs, and hard cooked eggs. But up next, I am directing us in the making of get this Worcestershire sauce.
¶ We're making Worcestershire sauce! Get ready. It's a long list of ingredients AND it needs to ripen for a while in the fridge before it's ready.
Did you know you could make a Worcestershire sauce from scratch? Well, we're going to do it.
Whenever we give people a taste of this Worcestershire sauce that Mark makes, they are undone. And this goes from friends of ours who are not foodies to friends of ours who are foodies to friends of ours who are restaurant owners, and they are. Undone by this homemade Worcestershire sauce. Yeah,
in fact, we knew a chef of a rather fancy restaurant in New England, and I would bring him this Worcestershire sauce. Now, you can't use it in the kitchen and in the restaurant, because, of course, it's not food safe. I mean, our, our, um, kitchen here is not. You know, uh, well, what do I say? We don't have the state certificates to create food for consumer use in our personal kitchen at home, but I would bring it to him and he would use it in staff meals like crazy.
He would just practically drink it down. It was insane. And in fact, I even got him making his own Worcestershire sauce using this recipe. So I'm going to direct Bruce on what
to do. Okay. What do I, first of all, you have taken out the biggest pot we have.
It's
a giant. This is a. 16 quart stockpot. You can cut everything in half that we're doing. If you don't want to make this much and use a smaller pot, you know, a standard pot, you might boil pasta in, but we are using this giant one. So
what's going to happen is it's going to, I'm just going to tell you, it's going to Royal up at a certain point. And so we want a lot of pot to catch the roiling, use a big Dutch oven. Use the biggest thing you have
to get on the stove. So I'm going to be putting things in this pot as Mark tells me to. So let's start. What's the first thing I'm pouring
in here? What I'm going to tell you is, I'm going to tell you this both in terms of the metrics and in terms of the U. S. volume measurements. That way, wherever you're listening to this, you can do this. So we're going to start with four cups or 950 milliliters of malt vinegar.
Splashing in
my vinegar. Um, and you know malt vinegar is the stuff that you put on fish and chips. You can find it in any supermarket labeled malt vinegar, four cups of it, and then four cups or 950 milliliters of distilled white vinegar. Okay,
because malt vinegar is kind of expensive, so it's nice to have another vinegar that's It's not as expensive. And we're not talking
white wine vinegar. No, no. Don't, don't use anything fancy, white balsamic, we're talking the, you know, the old cleaning product. Yeah. Distilled white vinegar. Then two cups or 475 milliliters of soy sauce.
Okay, soy sauce is one of those things in this house that often causes, you know, a little friction. Mark loves cheapo, cheapo, cheapo, middle America, Chinese restaurant, soy sauce. You know
what? You know what? You can take the boy out of suburbia, but you can't take suburbia
out of the boy. And I like, I mean, I don't use super high end soy sauce, but I do like, you know, Pearl River Bridge, which is typical Chinese restaurant soy. Kikkoman. Kikkoman. In this recipe, use a high end if you can find it. Don't use Lechoy unless that's all you can find in your store. But try and find, like, Pearl River Bridge or something like that. For
me, Kikkoman is up. Lechoy is more my taste. I'm telling you, you can take the boy out of suburbia, but you can't take suburbia out of the boy, even though he makes Worcestershire from scratch. Okay, then we're gonna add... cup or 250 grams of tamarind concentrate, not tamarind
paste. And what's the difference? Well, tamarind paste is just like a puree. It's basically the tamarind that comes in a block. It looks like if you buy. Tamarind that's like, it's almost raw state. It comes in like pods, then you could buy it with the inside scraped out and it's full of seeds. Or you could buy it as a paste where the seeds are removed, or you could buy it as a concentrate where it's been cooked down and it's super thick. It's almost like tar and that's what we're using.
And I love the brand Tamacon. If you could find it, that's often in available in a lot of Indian. market. So that's a good one to use. And
we also found this, I know, at an Arabic market. So you can find it there, or you can find it online. And let me say, before we get on to the next thing, that this recipe is in the show notes. So you don't have to be writing this down. You can just take our word for it and then go from there. Okay, so then we want two cups or 650 grams of molasses.
Now, I like to up the game here. And what I actually have in front of us is black treacle molasses is a byproduct of sugar processing and the way you make white sugar is to basically remove the molasses from the raw sugar product and the way they make brown sugar is they add some of the molasses back in black treacle is a different product. It is flavored a little like molasses. It's much, much thicker as a bitter edge.
If you can find it in a British market or in the uh, Ethnic, believe it or not, part of your supermarket, which is where it is where we live in New England. But otherwise, any good unsulfured molasses will do. Yeah,
and listen, most of the time when I make Worcestershire, I just make it with regular old molasses. Then we've got two thirds a cup of kosher salt. Do not use table salt. Because kosher salt has larger grains, and if you use table salt, your Worcestershire sauce will get too salty, because you'll get more salt in there. So, two thirds of a cup of kosher salt, then one cup, or 160 grams, this'll kill ya, of brown and yellow mustard seeds. Wow. Where do you find...
You know, besides 5, thousand dollars a bottle of mustard seeds.
Unfortunately, if you go to buy them in the spice rack in your supermarket, they will be expensive like that. So try and find a spice store, even something like Penzi's. They're very high end. Your best bet at getting really inexpensive is in an Indian market. So if there is. Any East Indian market near where you are, or if you could find one online, you will get pounds of mustard seeds for the same price that you would get like an ounce in
the supermarket. And now we're not near done, and now we're just going to start adding spices. Okay. So, two tablespoons or twelve grams of whole cloves. Okay. Two tablespoons or 10 grams of coriander seeds. Got that. A tablespoon or 8 grams of black peppercorns. A tablespoon or 8 to 10 grams of white peppercorns.
Interestingly, these white, white peppercorns, if you don't know, are basically just black peppercorns with the, uh, hole removed. Yep, yep, exactly.
They have a very musky flavor. Which adds to the depth of the Worcestershire. A tablespoon or 8 grams of ground dried peppers. Turmeric. Love this stuff. Now, we've already got this done and chopped up, but here's something you have to do in advance. I have four medium white or yellow onions that we have taken the rough skin off of, the papery hull skin off of, and we've roughly chopped these four onions up. So that goes in the pot too.
Be careful of splashing at this point. We've got a lot of stuff in there.
Right. Okay. And then this isn't about, about 30 dried chilies de arbol or other long dried red chilies. I advise you to stem them because the stems are slightly bitter. So I advise you to take the stems off and chop them out. If you're concerned about the heat here, you can pull out some of the seeds.
So here's my tip for doing this. Use a scissor, right? These aren't very big, and if you chop them, they're gonna sort of fly all over the counter. I like to use a scissor, and what I do is I cut them in half with a scissor, and then the stem part, I sort of jiggle and most, jiggle and many of the seeds fall out. That way I keep some of the seeds, but not all the seeds. And I just use a scissor to cut them up. Okay.
Beyond that, do you get how this recipe is? It's crazy. So beyond that 10 to 12 to 14 garlic cloves, peel them and then put them on your cutting board and smash them with the. Edge of a large knife or the bottom of a sauce pan. Don't crush them in a garlic press. No. No. You want this to be big pieces smash, right? Yeah. Right. Okay. So then we have about 24 green cardamom pods. And again, these have been smashed by the side of a knife. Mm-hmm. or underneath a pot.
And make sure that you keep all the cardamom seeds intact.
I can't tell you how good this already smells, all these spices, you're not me done. Oh, I know.
So then four, three. inch cinnamon sticks or we're talking about about seven centimeter eight centimeter cinnamon sticks two star anise pods we're still not done a two inch or five centimeter piece of fresh ginger that you peel and chop and by the way i should tell you that i often up this amount of ginger and even double it because I like a really gingery taste in the sauce. And then finally, at the very end here, here we go, we have two ounce tins of anchovy fillets.
We've got two of those two ounce tins of anchovy fillets. We've pulled them out. We've chopped them up and into the pot.
We've also drained them. I don't want the oil in this, right? So you don't want the oil. You just want the anchovies. They've been put in there too. Now that's 20 ingredients. It's insane. And we have a flame on this, right? I'm stirring this up. I'm making sure all is dissolved. I'm going to simmer this for 10 minutes, right? And this is going to go for 10 minutes. The smell in your house is going to be amazing. And then after 10 minutes. There's a 21st ingredient.
Okay, we're back. And here's the 21st ingredient. Once that thing has simmered for, start before it's done, so after it's simmered, just barely come to a simmer, and then it's going to simmer for 10 minutes, take 2 cups or 400 grams of granulated white sugar, or caster sugar, and I want you to put that in, preferably a non stick skillet, and then put a medium low flame over it and let it melt.
You'll have to stir it occasionally as it melts. It'll eventually all melt and turn golden brown. You're burning the sugar. You're making caramel. You want that burned sugar taste. And the trick of this is really fun because How far can you take it? Right? You want to take it so you have a super burned caramel flavor, but you don't wanna go too far. So it tastes bitter.
And let me tell you a little trick about caramelizing, the sugar too. You actually wanna leave it alone for a while, and I know you're gonna really tend to disturb it because you know you're gonna look at it and say, well, nothing's happening. It looks exactly like what happened in the band and. Don't worry, it's starting to melt on the bottom. And if you stir it too soon, you're going to end up with white lumps.
You can eventually crush these down with a wooden spoon as it continues to heat, but it's better to just leave it alone a bit until you start to see the brown caramel, especially around the edges of it. Okay.
So the whole process of this is going to take about. Eight to nine minutes. Yeah. So we'll come back when this is beautifully caramelized, there'll be a little smoke coming off the top of it. And then Mark will tell you what we do with it.
So we're back. And now what we're going to do is take that caramelized sugar and now You're going to pour it into that bubbling cauldron of spices, and this is where it roils up. So pour slowly, carefully,
slowly. But look, it's also seizing up at the bottom. Some of this is, is not dissolving in. So I'm going to keep stirring this until what's seized up remelts.
So basically what you want to happen now is get it in there and now you're going to have something that has, again as Bruce says, caramelized or re solidified at the bottom of the pot. Keep stirring for about five minutes and let that pot continue to boil on the stove with all that cauldron of spices in it. Can you believe what it takes to make Worcestershire sauce? I don't think anybody can believe this. It's worth it though.
five more minutes and then let me tell you what we're going to do because we're just going to let this go and then we'll come back much later as a tasting we have some actually already made we're just making a new batch here so we're going to come back and do a tasting of it but let me tell you what happens here so after you've let this boil for about five minutes and made sure that caramelized sugar is completely incorporated and melted into this cauldron then set it off the heat and let it cool down to room temperature.
At that point, get yourself a giant glass jar. You can go to a big box store someplace with a giant canning jar. About how, how big is this?
This is a gallon size glass flip top canning jar.
Okay, great. So once it's cool to room temperature, we're going to pour all of this spices and all into that canning jar, then we're going to. Lock the lid on to it, and it's gonna go in the back of the fridge for a minimum of four weeks. If not better, eight weeks. We're gonna let it ripen. It's like eggnog. It has to, we should do a podcast in which we make eggnog, in which it has to to ripen. So 48, I know this is insane recipe. Nobody ever does
21 ingredients. Two months.
If you want to actually watch me make this, there is a YouTube video on our YouTube channel cooking person mark in which I make this on camera. But again, this recipe is in the show notes to this podcast.
And the fun part of that video, the best part of it is marks COVID here. Because we did that in the middle of COVID, and he looked like he was in some, some British import band from the 60s.
I do have really long hair. It's really embarrassing. Um, so anyway, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna let this thing cool to room temperature, get it in the jar, get it in the fridge, and it's gonna ripen for four to eight weeks. After that...
You strain it out through a strainer, and when I say strain it, what you're gonna have to do here is either use a very fine mesh strainer or you're gonna have to line a colander with cheesecloth or less, preferably a double layer of paper towels and pour slowly through that into another ball to get all of the solids out of it. Okay, let's come back. And let's taste an old batch that we have in the fridge. Right. So we've actually re decanted this.
We, as I say, we strained it out and Bruce then puts it into smaller, uh, jelly jars so that, you know, it's not quite so unwieldy as a big jar of it.
I have some baguette here and I'm just dipping some bread into it. I have poured a little into a dish and I'm dipping bread into it. This is so sweet and spicy and savory and salty and yummy, it's like candy and a condiment.
So I'm putting a little in my palm, just a drop or two in my palm, and now I'm going to let my palm warm it up. You have to store this in the fridge of course, even after you strain it, because you're not bottling this, it's not shelf stable like the stuff you buy in the supermarket, so you've got to keep it in the fridge. And now I'm going to just taste it off my palm like you do olive oil. And...
Wash your hands first because you're going to be licking your palm.
I've already done it. Um, so, it's, I'm perfectly clean. It's delicious, it's It's got this incredible savoriness with that word I hate so much. If you listen to our podcast, which I hate so much, shut up with the, uh, shut up with the soy sauce and the anchovies. I hate that word. Um, it's got all of that going on.
What do you do with this? My favorite thing besides just dipping bread into it. Like I would do aged balsamic. I like drizzling. Parmesan cheese, like I do balsamic. Yep. I also like mixing it into ground beef for hamburgers. It makes it delicious. You also marinate steaks in it. I marinate hanger steaks and skirt steaks in it with a little olive oil. It is just like.
And also we can make a dumpling dip out of this.
Equal parts of this and rice vinegar. Oh my goodness.
Right. So you just take. equal parts of your homemade Worcestershire sauce and rice vinegar. It's a great dip. It will improve even frozen dumplings beyond anything you can imagine. I know this is the most insane recipe you've ever heard on a podcast, is to make your own Worcestershire sauce. And you're going to make a ton of it. So get yourself some of those little jelly jars with lids, divide it up once you've strained it into those, and then give it away as Christmas gifts.
Give it away as holiday gifts. Give it away as Hanukkah gifts. Give it away in any way that you want to friends when you come over for a dinner party. And I know they're going to say, what in the world? You're bringing me Worcestershire sauce. But honestly, they won't believe what it is that they taste. So that's our recipe in this episode of Cooking with Bruce and Mark again. I've said it a million times.
I'm going to say it again, right in the show notes to this episode, you'll find this recipe written out for you. No problems in terms of taking it down. You'll find it there and we really hope that you'll make it and you'll share the results with us. And the Facebook group Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
¶ What's making us happy in food this week? Toasted coconut-covered marshmallows and chopped salads.
Okay, let's get to the final segment of this episode of Cooking with Bruce and Mark. What's making us happy in food this week?
Toasted, coconut covered marshmallows. Oh, God. I was at our local farm stand.
Children.
It was my childhood. I was at our local farm stand. Well, the funny thing is when I was a kid, the only time we ever had that was at my grandmother's house and they were kosher and she would only get them like around the holidays. Jewish must make KO gel. It was like probably fishbone gelatin, but our local farm stand that we go to, Oh, you know, they have all the impulse buys, you know, checking out of chocolate covered Oreos.
But last week they had little bags of toasted coconut covered marshmallows, and I'm not one to resist toasted coconut covered marshmallows.
No, and um, you're not one apparently to worry about your A1C, but okay.
Well, I am, but I only ate one of the marshmallows.
That's really great. I'm going to go in a completely different direction and say that what's really made me happy in food this week is something that we've started doing constantly. You may know this from previous episodes of our podcast. But I've kind of decided to be, uh, mostly a vegetarian except for one meal a day. So I won't eat meat more than one meal a day, which means if I have bacon for breakfast, then I'm a vegetarian for the rest of the day.
Usually what that means is I have a piece of chicken or something at dinner anyway. The whole point of this is at lunch I don't really usually eat any meat and we have been having a ton of chopped salads and I just love chopped salads.
And if you're not sure what a chopped salad is, the way I make it is I chop up little grape tomatoes, I chop up cucumber, I chop up bell peppers, sometimes I add celery. Notice there's no lettuce here. It is good olive oil, cheap red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, and dried oregano.
And I. put a little hummus on my plate and put the chopped salad on top of the hummus. And if I get really crazy, I might crumble a little feta on it, but I usually don't have feta, so I usually don't crumble it on top of it. I eat it with those wasa crackers, those rye wasa crackers.
Oh, and also the wasa gluten free crackers.
Oh, I just love it. It's like. Unbelievably delicious lunch. So that's our podcast for this week in the fourth season of Cooking with Bruce and Mark. Thanks for being with us. If you could subscribe, rate, talk about this podcast, talk it up amongst your friends and neighbors, um,
we're not kidding.
Be a little nicer to principal Skinner. If you know what I mean, another Simpsons reference. Um, so if you could do all of that, that would be fantastic, we would highly appreciate that because this work is otherwise unsupported and we like it that way.
And please go to our Facebook group Cooking with Bruce and Mark. I post videos, I post recipes, we have great conversations about food. We'll see you there and we'll see you back here for another episode in the fourth season of Cooking with Bruce and Mark.