Raiding the fridge with Condiment Claire

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Butter or ketchup? I'm going to say butter. Butter, okay. Sticking with you, Claire. Mustard or mayonnaise? Mustard. Okay, so we've got butter versus mustard. Who wins in that battle? That's so hard. I know. They're so different. But my favorite condiment of all time is Dijon mustard, so I'm going to have to go mustard. Summer cookout season is officially here. Just wanted to give you a little sizzle. Thank you. I appreciate that.

So we, Ben, you and I, recently hosted a very serious competition. The Battle of the Condiments. Playing along with us was Condiment Claire, a TikTok creator and author of The Condiment Book, which features the Condiment Bracket Challenge. She invites all of her readers to fill it out. And it is spicier than any sports tourney bracket you've ever seen. Turn into you, Ben. You ready? Pickles or kimchi?

Well, kimchi is pickles, so I reject the question. You're not allowed to reject the question. Pickles or kimchi? I think pickles. What is like a condiment that you will refuse to not just make from scratch? Like I will not buy tartar sauce. Right. Because I have pickles. I have mayonnaise. I have lemon juice.

I have capers, and I have salt. Yeah, and you know the way you like it, and so you get to make it yourself, and you know it'll just suit your taste buds, right? Yes. I would say I would never buy a salad dressing, only because... You know, each salad is different, but even if it's just a simple French vinaigrette, I know how to make that. I have shallots at home. I have good Dijon mustard. I have fresh lemon juice. You know, there are certain key elements that...

you can't really buy in anything store-bought. I also think a Caesar dressing, while, you know, I'll have a Caesar dressing and a Caesar salad at a restaurant quite often because I'm a big fan. But if I'm having it at home, I know the way I like it. I mean, very anchovy heavy, let's be honest. Preach, Claire, preach.

Claire has a million and counting followers on TikTok, where she posts about the watermill in France where she lives part-time with her dad, the food she eats while traveling, and the culinary experiments she conducts in her home-based kitchen in London. in, usually having to do with condiments. Condiment Claire, of course, is not her government name. My name is Claire DeNewt. I never thought I would be in the world of condiments, but now condiments are my job and I will take it any day.

Well, today, condiments are our job, too. I'm Ben Tartar Saucy Boy Johnson, and we'll take it any day. I'm Amory Celery Salt-Severtson, and you're listening. to endless thread. Coming to you from WBUR, Boston's refrigerator door. We're digging into our refrigerators and talking to Kahneman Claire about why you should never rinse a jar. And about what happens when you mix a fascination with flavor and online fame. I'll tell you what happens. Things get delicious.

Is there a difference between a condiment and a sauce? You know, a sauce is a kind of condiment. because condiment actually comes from the latin verb condire which means to enhance the flavor of so it's anything that's added that you don't really need So whether that's a sprinkle of salt on top of a beautiful sourdough loaf with butter, that sprinkle of salt then becomes a condiment. But if you're cooking with salt,

then it's an ingredient. You know, there are certain condiments that are ingredients and condiments, but it just depends on their use, whether or not we can consider them a condiment. People have been using condiments to enhance flavor for millennia.

In ancient Rome, they were crushing fish innards and fermenting them to make something called garum, which began as a fish sauce and eventually got used in the first iteration of ketchup. In China... around the 4th century, they were figuring out how to process soy into a delicious, salty sauce. But, Claire told us, there's one condiment that historians believe predates ketchup, soy sauce, and anything else in your fridge right now. The chilies.

Back in the day, they actually weren't used primarily as condiments, but more so as weapons. So the Aztecs used chilies during war. Parents used chilies to kind of tame their children at home. Let's call it that. Wait a minute. As weapons like you feed a chili to your child and it humbles them because they've been owned by the chili. No, so they would actually, they would hold their children above these fires filled with chilies if they were misbehaving and kind of burn their eyes.

Eventually, people saw there was potential for a more palatable type of chili pepper pain. Hot, spicy flavor. which I'm so glad about because I would not have liked being a child placed above a hot smoking chili. Or maybe you would have because you have the sort of...

you know, you have the proclivity for Chili's. Yeah. Maybe you would have been that baby. They would have held you over the smoke and you would have just laughed and continue to create mischief. Amazing. Love it. Thank you, mom. Thank you, dad. Claire mostly grew up in California, but she spent a lot of time in Europe with her family. Her dad is from France, where condiments are a cultural keystone. Somewhere along the way, Claire was introduced to the idea that eating while traveling...

could be an occupation. I grew up watching Anthony Bourdain. It was always my dream to be him. All throughout college, I emailed, emailed, emailed ZPZ, which was the CNN subsidiary at the time that was working on Parts Unknown. And I was like, please hire me. Please hire me. I'll do anything. You don't have to pay me. I just really want to work on something like this. Wow. You know, to be able to travel.

world and learn about different people through food is always what I wanted to do so I emailed and finally you know they said if you move to New York you can work on this show we'll figure something out I was like great I got an apartment in New York I went on my graduation tour Unfortunately, Anthony Bourdain passed away during that time. So I got to New York and I was like, uh-oh, my idol's dead and I have no job. What do I do? What Claire did was work for another production company.

Eventually, she got a deal to host her own show. The idea was that Claire would cook with grandmas in kitchens around the world. That's a nice idea. I'd watch that. It's beautiful. Yeah. But then... The pandemic happened. Bad time to travel and an especially bad time to visit other people's grandmas. Claire was out of a job. So she did what a lot of people did during the pandemic.

She downloaded TikTok. My username at the beginning was Claire from Ware because it was all about the fact that, yes, I sound like this, but I'm also half French and I've kind of lived all over and I just moved to London and I was in Prague. Let's just say people were confused. And so it was Claire from Ware. W-H-E-R-E. Exactly. And so when Lockdown Lifted and I started getting recognized, people would call me out and say, hey.

You're Condiment Claire. You're the condiment girl. Within that month, I changed my username to Condiment Claire, and I figured, this is kind of a gag. Let's roll with it. Everything is fake. We're all still semi in lockdown. Nothing's real. So Claire kept cooking, really mixing, I guess, right? On TikTok. And the algorithm kept serving up her condiment takes to people around the world.

Hello. I have one radish left, so let's make a radiber together. So here's some sardines and some tomato sauce. Yum, yum. Look at that shlutiness. It says not to cook or pour hot liquid onto the sea grapes, so I guess this is like a cold-only snicky snack. Her most viewed video is about at-home butter churning.

I have my first driving lesson in England in 30 minutes, and when I tell you making butter is so easy, even if you're turning it yourself by hand, that I feel zero stress right now. Like many of her videos, it's filmed on her phone in her kitchen. Claire is vigorously turning the handle of a little device that fits into a mason jar. You feel it under your hand. Once you really get used to it, it goes from getting hard to like uneven because it's like sloshing.

That butter churning video has 33 million views. Claire now posts on TikTok almost every day, sometimes more than once.

So I say this with no actual shade towards TikTok because I think TikTok is incredible in many ways. But as a person who grew up watching Anthony Bourdain and these really beautiful, highly produced TV shows about. you know, food and travel and culture. Were you a little wary of TikTok, of making that your medium?

Completely, completely. And I've never been a social media person, you know, even though I adore TikTok and, you know, I will never say a bad word about it because it gave me the opportunities that I have today. I think nowadays, even though I don't necessarily agree with it. you get opportunities based on following. And that to me is still very odd. But again, I can never bash it because that's, you know, the reason I have a book. So I'm so...

grateful for it. And so I started on TikTok for that, you know, to be able to use TikToks as a means to an end. What I do like about TikTok as well is the fact that it is so casual. You know, none of my videos are highly edited. Like, sure, I'll take some time editing and making sure the captions are correct and all that, but...

There is something so personal where you feel like you're FaceTiming a friend, where you feel like... because i'm trying that maybe you can try that or you know maybe if i'm going to this place and showing you this like random donut shop in spain that's behind a monastery you can also go there whereas i think when something is on TV and really beautiful and really edited, there's a certain—

almost glass wall in between where sometimes it doesn't feel accessible. The beauty of TikTok is that there is that community aspect there. I really do recognize, you know, the names in my comments. I think it's an amazing place for that. I love that people can watch from all over the world. that real-time feedback. You're able to communicate with people. So the community aspect is really nice on TikTok as well.

How would you describe the Condiment Clare community? What kinds of things are people saying in the comments? Do people kind of, yeah, what's the sense of the community? You know, it's so, it's really so lovely. Everyone's so curious. I think I'm very lucky that people are from all over the world. So I don't have, you know, 80% US following or 100% UK following. People are really from all over.

And because of that, you'll have people in the comments be like, okay, in my culture, we eat it like this. Or in my culture. We have tomatoes in June versus August, et cetera, et cetera. And so people have conversation in the comments based on where they're from, which I just think is so... lovely and the fact that you know i can make a video about mayo and someone from chile can say hey we we use a ton of mayo in our sandwiches and someone from belgium can be like okay well we we put

mayo on our fries. And there's that back and forth conversation. And I also get to learn so much from it. So I would say curiosity and just the fact that everyone is international just makes it really Really interesting. Another thing about social media and anyone who could be seen as an influencer, even if your influence is condiment themed. There is this kind of hunger from the following to get to know you, to feel like they know you, to know more about...

your personal life and how, in your case, all of these condiments fit into your personal life and preferences. And that's not so much a... A feature of your channel. You do show people like, this is my family's farm in France. But we don't know that much about you, per se, just from the channel. Can you talk about why that is? Yeah, you know, I think... Again, I never thought I'd be on social media. I do really respect...

my own privacy and also my loved ones' privacies. If I'm eating dinner with my friends, you know, I'm never going to pull my phone out and just be like, hold on, let me film a TikTok. And I think that gives me a really nice work-life balance now that this is my work. And I do feel like I don't need to share everything with the internet. You know, I'm never going to...

film a video being like, oh, here's my boyfriend, or I'm going for a breakup, or oh, I'm having a really sad day. Or, you know, I just think that it's really important to do that. And even though people do feel like they know me, I think... They do know my flavor preferences, which, again, I think is a super personal thing as well.

And I know that sounds ridiculous, but it really is a personal thing to be able to talk to someone about flavor and what they like. Because again, it's really based on how you grew up, your culture, what you eat every single day. And that does give you an inside look. Coming up, we give Claire an inside look at our refrigerators after a snack break. Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Mehrotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business.

In a recent episode, the head of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable weighs in on tariffs, doge, and more. There's a philosophy there that there is waste, and some of this stuff is wasteful, and we need to address that. That's more difficult to argue with than taking the chainsaw to it. Follow wherever you get your podcasts and stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of the episode.

We had sent you some pictures of the insides of our refrigerators. I love it. And I'm eager and terrified to find out what you thought about those. Maybe we'll start with Ben's fridge. Both fridges? great in the sense that everyone has their own taste buds you do you and so I think to judge anyone for the plate in front of them or what's in their fridge is just not It's not a nice thing to do. Oh, come on. I'm begging for the judgment. Very diplomatic. Ben's looks a lot like mine.

in the sense that there are lots of condiments, there are lots of Asian-y condiments as well, and that's a flavor profile that I love. So even that black vinegar at the end, I was like, okay, yep, this is a bit of me. Game, respect, game. There you go, tartar saucy boy. Yes. You can bring on the judgment to my refrigerator then. No, no. See, this is why Claire's big tent. She's big tent condiments. And I respect that. Yeah, there you go.

Well, was there something missing from either of our refrigerators or maybe not missing, but based on what you saw in our refrigerators, you were thinking like, oh, I bet they'd like this or they need something like this would go with that.

You know, I would say the one thing missing were condiments in the works. In the sense, you know, you didn't have fruit getting ready to be jammed or you didn't have any chilies fermenting ready to be hot sauce. Such a good call out. And I think as long as there's... Always.

you know, something about to be made, then you're keeping it interesting. Like, I know my fridge, I'm always going to open it. And granted, this is my job now, which I'm so grateful for. But there's always going to be, you know, whether it's a miso in the works, in my pantry. or, you know, strawberries macerating so that I can make jam the next morning, or pickles or something fermenting. It's always fun. There always needs to be at least one experiment going in my fridge.

You have something on your TikTok called the Never Rinse a Jar series. Can you describe what this is? Yes. So in my household... I refuse to ever rinse a jar, which means if there's a jar of jam and there's only one little dollop at the bottom and you can't scrape the edges. you're not gonna rinse that jar out. If you have a squirty ketchup bottle, you're not gonna rinse the squirty ketchup bottle out before you recycle it. You're always gonna use that.

that last little bit of condiment up and what that does is well one I just refuse to waste food ever so even you know rinsing that away makes me feel extremely guilty because it's just my own self-conscious but It also allows you to play with flavor because it forces you to try and match that condiment with something that could work. What's a creation that you sort of stumbled upon that you're like, oh yeah, I'm going to like purposefully make this now.

Oh, I look forward to finishing jars just so I can do new things. One that I really loved is there was this kind of pickled, fermented... mushroom sauce situation that was quite peppery and had like Worcestershire sauce at the bottom. And I finished that and I was like, hmm, what am I going to do with that? And that day I knew I wanted to have friends over and I was going to make kind of a Greek spread. So I knew I wanted to make some hummus.

tzatziki, all that. And I figured, why wouldn't I just make the hummus in that same jar? So I made the hummus, and then instead of putting it in a new Tupperware or a new glass jar, I put it directly in there. So I think just... The idea that you can put leftovers in jars that are basically finished, that's one of my favorite ways to use them up. Because instead of having to, you know, use a mini spatula and put that little bit of condiment left on whatever you have.

you can just put it directly in the jar. So this kind of mushroomy hummus was not something I was planning on doing, but it worked really well.

Along with pictures of the insides of our refrigerators, we also each sent you a particular condiment that is in our fridge, is almost empty. And we look to you for guidance on how to not rinse that jar, but to repurpose the dregs of that particular condiment into some new condiment. Of course. Walk us through that. You can start with, I don't actually know what Ben sent you, I don't think. Well, we can start with yours, which was chili oil, right? Chili crisp, yep. Chili crisp. Okay.

I mean, I think the easiest way to use up anything that has, you know, oil or a bit of fat in it is to make eggs because you just put it directly in the pan and then you don't need to butter your pan or oil your pan, anything like that. So I would say plop a few eggs in that chili crisp.

shake it up and then put it directly into your hot pan and then you can make scrambled eggs super easily and then you have all that flavor that you wanted in the first place then you get the chili crisp like nice and toasty too just by heating it up so really like that Another way I like to use chili crisp is by making, oh, you're vegan. Yes, but that's okay because I have just, have you ever, have you heard of Just Egg? Yes.

Okay, so as long as you're open to that. I am, yeah. Just Egg is really good, and that's made out of mung beans. We are not sponsored by Just Egg, but hey, Just Egg, if you want to sponsor us. I love what you're doing. I could pour some of that liquid mung bean scrambled egg. egg replacement into the jar. And I feel like I put Chili Crisp on that already, but I wouldn't have thought to like pour it in, shake it up and then scramble.

Yeah. And another thing you can do, you know, I think with chili crisp, what's really fun is making a quote unquote salad within it. So whether it's tinned fish or like... cold, cold roast chicken. And in your case, you could do lentil, chickpeas, and then you just mash it up directly in there instead of having to dirty another bowl. Because that is always a really nice element in any cold salad, you know, potato salad.

otherwise you know i there's actually this soy yogurt that i like to use and i'm not vegan but there's this one soy yogurt in the uk that is really nice and has a good texture. It's nice and savory. And that, if I'm making, you know, a dip for certain things, if I'm having friends over in a crudite platter,

I'll put the yogurt directly into a jar. So, for example, this would work with a chili crisp. And then you'd get this, like, slightly spiced yogurt dip. That's a great idea. What did you send her, Ben? I sent her a long video of different condiments and I think, I think the, uh, I mean, I think that the black vinegar is probably the one that has like... And I don't even... I'm embarrassed to say this because it's in my fridge, but...

That's been around for so long at this point that it's like it's hardened. Like that's not even really liquid down there, if that makes any sense. I know. You know what it does? There are deposits at the bottom of my black vinegar, too, and I use it. I think it's just the nature of black vinegar. Heck yeah. All right. What do I do?

So the thing with black vinegar is if you're listening to this and you've never seen what the bottle looks like, it's a big glass bottle. So it's tall. You can't really, it's not like a jar that's easy to put things in. No, chopstick is your best bet. And even that, it's pretty tall.

Exactly. And sometimes the shape of the bottle can determine what you do with the condiment. So again, it makes it more fun. Just think of this all as a game and how you're going to get maximal flavor out of what you have, what you're working with. So I would say for that, the easiest... thing to do is make a salad dressing or makes a sauce for example because you can pour in different liquids

to the black vinegar because the spout's small enough for that. Just shake it all up and then it becomes part of the sauce. So I love putting black vinegar on silken tofu. So a really easy weekday night meal, you know, you'll have a block of tofu and then you can make this black vinegar. vinegar sauce super easily in that bottle. Nice. Just pour it on top and then you're good to go. All right. In. Done. Great. All right. Great. I'll let you know how it tastes. Please report back.

I know that this whole focus on condiments started, maybe not by accident, but that it wasn't exactly what you were imagining. And yet... It seems clearly you have a lot of people following you and wanting to learn more about condiments. What do you hope is the impact that you can have in the food world? on TikTok and beyond. Yeah, I think, you know, as long as people are experimenting in their kitchens and there's...

no longer scared to try new things, whether it's new combinations or new flavors from different cultures. I think that's my main goal. You know, people are... very afraid in their kitchens. And I'm not a chef. I'm the first person to say that I'm not a chef. You know, a lot of my friends are classically trained or worked in kitchens.

I have not. But I do know how to create flavor. And, you know, that flavor may not be for everyone, but it's what works for me. So I think just learning about your own taste buds is something that's really special. So if I can, you know, inspire people, just learn. more about their own taste buds. That's all I can really hope for.

I want to know what condiments our listeners love. Like I was in New Orleans. I had a remoulade on some crab cakes that I will never forget. You know what I mean? oh yeah i had like a like a hoagie spread in philly that i will never forget so like i feel like there's like a real sort of regionality to condiments you know And I'm curious what our listeners either make. That would be awesome.

or they buy, that's not just like you go to the store, you buy your Grey Poupon. Like what's the weird, what's the thing that like you can only get in that one grocery store chain in your zone? You know what I'm saying? That I need to know about. Please, listeners, please tell me because my fridge, it does not runneth over with condiments as much as I would like it to.

This is very Ohio of me, I guess, but I didn't know that that was how you pronounced Gray Poupon. Poupon? Haven't you ever seen the Gray Poupon commercials? I've seen the Grey Poupon. Poupon? You haven't seen the Grey Poupon commercials? Emery, have you been pronouncing it Grey Poupon this whole time? I've never said that out. loud in my life. I have no idea what it is. Yeah, tell us about your Poupon and all their shades. And how you prepare your Poupon.

Oh, no. And we won't poo-poo it. Oh, God. Emery had to be the one to take a thing about food and just insert poop into it somehow. This episode was produced by Grace Poupon Tatter. It was co-hosted by me, Ben Tartar, Saucy Boy Johnson. And me, Emery Slatter-It-On-Severson. Yeah. Mixed in sound design by our production manager, Paul Vikas. It was edited by Meg Kramer. The rest of our team is Frannie Monaghan, Dean Russell, Emily Jankowski, and our managing producer, Samata Joshi.

Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between a bottle of tomato ketchup and a bottle of fish intestines. If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, a wild story, a recipe. For the best condiment. A poupon for the people. A poupon for the people. Or anything from the internet that you want us to explore. You can hit us up. Endless Thread at WBUR. .

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a podcast from the Mehrotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. Listen on for a sneak preview of a recent episode with J.D. Chesloff, President and CEO of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable. I do think it is instructive to think about the philosophy behind this current environment. And I think philosophically, what is driving it is an attempt to reverse or address.

globalization. And I think that's an interesting opportunity for a debate. Do we acknowledge that we're in a global economy or do we want to be more insular? When we were down in DC last week, we were having a conversation about this. And someone said to us, you know, we were talking about the uncertainty that tariffs are creating in each of our states. There were probably, like I said, 17 or so state roundtables down there. And the response was...

Look, if our country is beholden to another country, if they control our supply chain, if there is a trade imbalance that's in their favor, then they could impact the supply chain and our economy at a moment's notice. And that is what the proponents of this current policy, terror policy, are trying to address, right? There is uncertainty there, is what we were told.

And that uncertainty is something we want to address. So it's a different philosophy. And so if you are looking to be less active in globalization, a global economy, then yeah.

i think what they're doing makes some sense if you don't believe that and you believe we are a citizen of a global economy then perhaps it's not the right strategy Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Mehrotra Institute for Business Markets and Society at ibms.bu.edu.