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Good Eats Reloaded - General Discussion

Meredith Quill

By Meredith Quill
in Good Eats Reloaded

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b2H

b2H

A small rant:

Unless you live in a large metropolitan area, never believe him when he says some of these crazy ingredients can be found in your local mega-mart.  I live in the suburban Twin Cities..  Dear hubby, a retired chef and baker, wants to make the super apple pie - the one in the tart pan.

First, it is not a tart pan but a quiche pan.  The tart pan is only about an inch high.  We need the two-inch.  Only available on line (Williams-Sonoma) after checking the usual suspects.  Had to be ordered.  Out of stock in all of the local stores.  Even reached out to a local baker who told me this size pan is hit or miss for availability.

Second, the ingredients - apple jelly, tapioca flour and Grains of Paradise.  No grocery store had the grains or the apple jelly.  We are subbing the recommended ground cardamom and black pepper, but cannot find the apple jelly anywhere.  On line, even, is out of stock.  Smuckers was the only site that seemed to have anything, but that is gonna include shipping.  Found the last bag of tapioca flour at the fourth and final store I checked for these things.

Not sure where he is getting his ingredients but no one should have to come up empty after four stores, two of them upscale and respected.  Local mega-mart indeed.
 

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Gramto6

Gramto6

I have a feeling he has inroads with the producers if these ingredients and they ship direct to him. I live in the boonies in MT and no way would any store within 100 miles of me have some of these ingredients!

I've noticed chefs posting online during quarantine how companies are sending them food boxes of products to use. Life is tough for them...NOT!

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Yeah No

Yeah No

4 hours ago, b2H said:

A small rant:

Unless you live in a large metropolitan area, never believe him when he says some of these crazy ingredients can be found in your local mega-mart.  I live in the suburban Twin Cities..  Dear hubby, a retired chef and baker, wants to make the super apple pie - the one in the tart pan.

First, it is not a tart pan but a quiche pan.  The tart pan is only about an inch high.  We need the two-inch.  Only available on line (Williams-Sonoma) after checking the usual suspects.  Had to be ordered.  Out of stock in all of the local stores.  Even reached out to a local baker who told me this size pan is hit or miss for availability.

Second, the ingredients - apple jelly, tapioca flour and Grains of Paradise.  No grocery store had the grains or the apple jelly.  We are subbing the recommended ground cardamom and black pepper, but cannot find the apple jelly anywhere.  On line, even, is out of stock.  Smuckers was the only site that seemed to have anything, but that is gonna include shipping.  Found the last bag of tapioca flour at the fourth and final store I checked for these things.

Not sure where he is getting his ingredients but no one should have to come up empty after four stores, two of them upscale and respected.  Local mega-mart indeed.
 

I think a lot of stuff that's usually in stock has not been replaced because the pandemic has affected restocking of a lot of things.  Lately I am finding it difficult to find things that were once always available.  Flour was affected because suddenly everyone who was quarantined decided it was time to bake, lol.  And specialty items are not being given any priority at all to replace once they go out of stock.  I can't even find my favorite variety of BBQ sauce because they're only carrying that brand in the "original" style right now.  Also my favorite brand of Stevia, which was always very easy to find is getting scarce both on the shelves and online.  And stuff is unavailable even online that would normally be found there with no problem.  Everyone being at home ordering this stuff is even making it hard for the internet stores to keep up with the demand.  I'm sure this season was filmed before the pandemic when all of those things were easier to find.  Actually a lot of those things would probably be hard to find even in a major metro. area right now.  Even though some of the more obvious things are back on the shelves the stocking is still not consistent.  One week they have something, the next week they don't.  Last week one of my local supermarkets didn't have any pork.  Just zero pork aside from bacon and a couple of shrink wrapped half hams.  I thought we were past those kinds of shortages but I guess they're still happening here and there.

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b2H

b2H

20 hours ago, Yeah No said:

I think a lot of stuff that's usually in stock has not been replaced because the pandemic has affected restocking of a lot of things.  Lately I am finding it difficult to find things that were once always available.  Flour was affected because suddenly everyone who was quarantined decided it was time to bake, lol.  And specialty items are not being given any priority at all to replace once they go out of stock.  I can't even find my favorite variety of BBQ sauce because they're only carrying that brand in the "original" style right now.  Also my favorite brand of Stevia, which was always very easy to find is getting scarce both on the shelves and online.  And stuff is unavailable even online that would normally be found there with no problem.  Everyone being at home ordering this stuff is even making it hard for the internet stores to keep up with the demand.  I'm sure this season was filmed before the pandemic when all of those things were easier to find.  Actually a lot of those things would probably be hard to find even in a major metro. area right now.  Even though some of the more obvious things are back on the shelves the stocking is still not consistent.  One week they have something, the next week they don't.  Last week one of my local supermarkets didn't have any pork.  Just zero pork aside from bacon and a couple of shrink wrapped half hams.  I thought we were past those kinds of shortages but I guess they're still happening here and there.

My key to this is if there is an empty space on the shelf where the item should be, then yes, you are absolutely correct.  Typically, there is a label on the shelf where the item would be and my regular store has a ‘temporarily unavailable’ label.

But for some of these items, there is no space, no label, nothing.  They just don’t carry it no matter when.

 

Perfect Xero

Perfect Xero

Grains of Paradise is definitely still a specialty order in most of the country, but Tapioca Flour and Apple Jelly are both usually stocked at the local Kroger where I live (not a major city, to be sure). I think I might have had to find Tapioca flour on the Health Food isle in the past rather than with the other flours.

Granted Good Eats shoots in the Atlanta area and AB spends a lot of time in the NYC area doing other food Network things, so he probably has a pretty skewed sense of what's widely available at the mega mart.

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Yeah No

Yeah No

3 hours ago, Perfect Xero said:

Grains of Paradise is definitely still a specialty order in most of the country, but Tapioca Flour and Apple Jelly are both usually stocked at the local Kroger where I live (not a major city, to be sure). I think I might have had to find Tapioca flour on the Health Food isle in the past rather than with the other flours.

Granted Good Eats shoots in the Atlanta area and AB spends a lot of time in the NYC area doing other food Network things, so he probably has a pretty skewed sense of what's widely available at the mega mart.

That's true too, that some items don't get put where you'd think you'd find them.  Like my favorite imported tea which is not in the regular tea aisle but in the "international" aisle.  And anything labeled "organic" might be put in a separate section, too.  My favorite brand of flour was not in the regular flour aisle but in the organic aisle.

Most TV chefs seem to have a very skewed idea of what's readily available to the rest of us.  I see them do that all the time, telling us to make sure we get certain obscure varieties of things that only come to them from the most expensive markets out there that might only supply restaurants.  Even Rachael Ray does it.  For a while she was hawking this special brand of vegan mayonnaise that no one, not even Whole Foods carried.  I found it in one specialty market in NYC.  And I hate it when they tell us stuff like how to clean a scallop - even the fish market that supplies all the restaurants around here doesn't give you uncleaned scallops and even the little muscle is removed.  Or when they say, "Ask your fish monger", like we all have a special "fish monger", LOL.  Well, actually I do, but she's just the owner of a little local fish market, not some huge full service place with everything, LOL.

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ElectricBoogaloo

ElectricBoogaloo

I have experienced the same thing @Yeah No. There are things that used to be readily available at every store and are now very hit or miss, even now that the major hoarding has tapered off. There are some stores that are randomly wiped out of staples like peanut butter or mayonnaise and then have plenty the next time I go (I tried just ordering a case of peanut butter directly from the company but even they were out of stock). The flour section has been hit pretty hard due to everyone deciding that they were going to make their own bread. Even the less popular types of flour (like cashew flour) have been missing.

And if you're looking for something that you don't normally buy, the grocery store doesn't always put things where you would logically expect to find them. In the past, I have found arrowroot powder in the baking aisle, the herb section, and on the very top shelf of the oatmeal aisle at various stores.

Ha, and I too always laugh at the "ask your local _____" (despite the fact that I do have a local fish monger, but she's the woman who fishes with her husband and sells whatever they catch at the farmers' market, so there's no full service counter where she can do special requests on the fly).

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skipnjump

skipnjump

On 6/20/2020 at 8:19 AM, ElectricBoogaloo said:

No surprise but damn, this episode made me really crave some eclairs! I'm glad Alton realized the error in his ways. Nothing wrong with vanilla pudding but that is not eclair filling.

My Mom saw the episode and wanted to make cream puffs again.  Not that she ever had issues making them, but she wanted to try Alton's technique.  But with Covid-19, she doesn't have anyone to share them with, so she won't make them.

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arachne

arachne

Saw the cocktail show this week. I was unaware that Deb Duchon, the nutritional anthropologist, had passed. Not only was she most informative in every show she was in, but she was a great foil for Alton as well. (Remember the original Thanksgiving show, where she counters Alton's diatribe on historic authenticity with "What is anthropologically correct?") RIP. 😢

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b2H

b2H

1 hour ago, arachne said:

Saw the cocktail show this week. I was unaware that Deb Duchon, the nutritional anthropologist, had passed. Not only was she most informative in every show she was in, but she was a great foil for Alton as well. (Remember the original Thanksgiving show, where she counters Alton's diatribe on historic authenticity with "What is anthropologically correct?") RIP. 😢

Yes, we saw that and my curiosity got the better of me, so I looked it up.

She had some kind of rare brain cancer, for Heaven's sake.  She died in October 2019.  Sad for sure.

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