Dudek – Page 3 – Indestructible Food

Jiffy Pop

Popcorn becomes a fad…

Remember Jiffy Pop? I hadn’t thought of it in years, but a reader suggested looking into it so here we are…

Jiffy Pop was invented in 1958, but I really can’t figure out why. I’ve searched all over the internet, but no one provides a reason to invent an expanding disposable popcorn pan for popping popcorn on the stove. You could ALREADY pop popcorn on the stove. In a regular pan! Jiffy Pop just made it take slightly longer. I’m looking for help here, friends. If you have thoughts, shoot ‘em over. (Was it because the nation was enamored with space travel and shiny aluminum, maybe?)

I know some of you might say, “Dudek! It’s for camping!” And I agree that popping Jiffy Pop over a fire is not to be missed. But the original ads showed a mom making it on a stove. No campfire in sight. I’ve also heard a few suggestions that it is “safer,” but is it? Really?

Why ever it was invented, it was a huge hit. People oohed and ahhed and happily shook that pan for 1000 minutes to see the Jiffy Pop pan expand and accommodate those exploding corn kernels. And then all those families enjoyed popcorn that was a little less good that the kind you pop in oil on the stove. (My bias is showing.)

Microwave popcorn was really a nail in the coffin for the popularity of Jiffy Pop. In 1983, Orville Redenbacher introduced his version. It was fast and easy and safe, and clearly the popcorn of the future. But microwave popcorn is its own story, and one we will get to soon enough.

(A note after the fact… Now that I think about it, Jiffy Pop is a little like space ice cream: A product designed to treat you to an interesting, yet slightly disappointing experience. Sorry, kids.)

Stove Top Stuffing

How the side dish became the star…

People have been stuffing things since the beginning of time. Or, like, early, anyway. Because stuffing something (vegetables, meats) helps it to retain moisture. It also helps the dish to go a little further. Stuffing was so popular it became a side dish in its own right. Even if there was nothing to stuff. But that is the story of real stuffing. Stove Top Stuffing is a science project from start to finish. And an awfully successful one.

In 1970 or thereabouts, the marketing department at General Foods said, “We need an instant stuffing product.” Domestic Scientist Ruth Siems rose to the challenge. And it WAS a challenge. The secret behind Stovetop is the particular size of the bread cubes and the time it sits and absorbs the added water. But Ruth figured it out. And the product was an “instant” success. I know! I’m the worst!

Remember how it was the marketing department who wanted this novel product in the first place? Well, it wasn’t to go with turkey. It was really engineered to replace potatoes in a weekday chicken dinner. (What focus group requested that? Tater haters!) Early ads showed families rejecting mashed potatoes in favor of Stovetop. But for me, Stovetop ads reached their peak when they showed two kids inviting each other over for dinner so that they could eat Stovetop TWICE IN ONE DAY. I never did that even once, but I dreamt of it.

Folks still buy 61 million boxes of Stovetop every year for Thanksgiving. There are a bunch of flavors to choose from. And yes, I watched Dave Chapelle tell his Stovetop joke before writing this article.

Corned Beef Hash

There’s nothing like leftovers for breakfast…

Corned beef hash does what the best recipes do. It stretches food for longer, serves more people, and wastes nothing. You know how some people like leftovers better than the original meal? Well, corned beef hash is leftovers. From a New England Boiled Dinner, of all things. See, hacher is French for “to chop,” and that’s how you make hash. You chop your leftovers. And fry ‘em.

The New England Boiled Dinner has Irish immigrant roots. But not in the “corned beef came from Ireland” way that you might expect. Corned beef WAS made in Ireland, as a cheap export of questionable quality. And as cheap as it was, most Irish could never afford to eat it. But after the Great Famine (caused by the potato blight in 1845) Irish immigrants came to the US, and made enough money to be able to afford corned beef occasionally.

And where did they get this corned beef? Well, in NYC, it came from Kosher butchers, of course! Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe were making high quality corned beef brisket, and Irish immigrants were buying it, boiling it with potatoes and cabbage, and making hash out of the leftovers.

The ideal hash ratio is 1 part potatoes to 1 part beef, but you have to assume that most hash consumed by the poor had a lot more tater and a lot less meat. But it was delicious. And it spread across the US. And today they sell it in a can. Don’t worry, it’s still leftovers, but of industrial food production instead of your home kitchen. Waste not, want not!

Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix

The great cornbread debate…

Cornbread is, and has been important in America since the beginning. Native Americans were using corn in a million ways when colonists came here, and the inception of a European-style bread came quickly thereafter. Corn was plentiful, cheaper than wheat, and a good way to fill up bellies. Corn!

As time went on, regional differences emerged. There were people who said that cornbread was a little bit sweet, and people who said that cornbread was not sweet at all. I always heard that this was a Northern/Southern thing. But it is way more complex than that.

With the advent of industrial milling, sweeter white corn was passed over in favor of cheaper, less tasty yellow corn. So families that couldn’t afford the more expensive, but naturally sweet white cornmeal, tended to add sweetener to their cornbread recipes. This brings us to Jiffy mix. Which was invented in the 1930s to help poor families put delicious baked goods on the table. The brand was made to be cheap. And easy. That was the whole point. And, you guessed it, the mix had an awful lot of sugar in it.

This is the part where I say that nothing about food and class is simple. That we absorb our tastes from our families. And that means that your comfort foods lag behind your financial position by at least a generation.

PS: If you want to read an interesting piece about the cornbread divide and race, Kathleen Purvis wrote a great one for the Charlotte Observer a few years back. A lot of these facts were learned from her.

PPS: If you want to get a 12-pack of Jiffy baking mixes for $6!!! go to jiffymix.com (Not a paid endorsement, because I’m not really anybody. I just like Jiffy.)

Lentils

May you acquire a plentitude of coins…

Here’s a lucky food for New Year’s Day. Italians have a tradition of eating lentils at the stroke of midnight to usher in wealth for the coming year. Because lentils look like coins. There are only two problems with this: Lentils don’t really look like coins, and no one gets rich because they have a lot of coins. But lentils are are worth discussing anyway…

Lentils are super old. They’ve been found in human settlements from 11,000BC. They are nutritionally spectacular, packing as much protein per ounce as steak and a ton of fiber, too. And they are pretty much our eco-friendliest crop. So, you know, if you want to keep living here on Earth, tuck into good-luck-lentils a little more often.

You can prepare lentils in about 5,000 ways. Here is an incomplete list of ideas: Lentil soup, red lentil dal, lentil burgers, lentil salad, misir wat, lentil fritters, marinated lentils, lentil hummus. Basically, if you type “lentil” before any food a google search, you will find a recipe for it. And some of those recipes might even be good. Use your own judgement, please.

Finally, if you’re like me, you cannot think of lentils without thinking of The Young Ones. Which is a British comedy series from the 80s that you should watch if you like lentils. I think it brings good luck for the New Year.

Sauerkraut

A “moist cabbage side dish” for a modern lifestyle…

It’s New Year’s Eve. And we need to talk about Sauerkraut. Because apparently it’s good luck to eat it today. Cabbage is green and that means money. (You will be rich!) The long strands mean your life will be long. (You will be old!) It is a perfect New Year’s Eve food. A note: Kimchi brings this luck, too! But that post is coming soon, so…

Sauerkraut is a German word, but rumor has it that China was making suan cai a LONG time before Europe was making sauerkraut. The idea was that if you took cabbage and layered it with salt and let it ferment, you could have nutrients when you had no fresh food on hand. (Bye, scurvy!) During WWII, American Sauerkraut makers renamed their product “Liberty Cabbage,” to avoid any associations with Germany. (Take a seat, “Freedom Fries.” Americans are old-school uncool.)

These days, sauerkraut is known as a popular “moist cabbage side dish” worldwide. You can find it atop pastrami sandwiches and hotdogs, inside pierogi, or dunked in soups. It’s even served with Thanksgiving turkey. What people used to eat out of necessity, they are now consuming on purpose. Brilliant.

The only real downside to sauerkraut is flatulence, and even that will not offset the good luck you’ve accumulated by eating it. So Happy New Year, friends. I wish the best for you.

Pickled Eggs

When an egg is a snack food…

Eggs were not always a year-round food. It used to be that you had eggs when your chickens were laying. Which was generally when the weather was warm or mild. When you had eggs, you probably had a LOT of eggs. And when you didn’t, you might have wished you did. Pickling was the solution to all of that. (That was a pickling pun, albeit a weak one.)

As far as history, some people say that there were pickled eggs on the Mayflower. Some say that they originated in Germany in the 1700’s. They were certainly around England by the 1830’s. But everyone agrees that pickled eggs were a great idea and a useful snack in saloons and taverns. And that makes sense, because eggs contain an essential amino acid that promotes liver function. Which you’ll need if you’ve been drinking enough to think that fishing an egg out of that giant jar is a good idea.

Manwich

Another kind of loose meat sandwich…

In the late 1920’s loose meat sandwiches came on the scene. First in Montana, and shorty thereafter, Iowa. As you might suspect from the name, these were hamburger buns piled with ground beef crumbles. You might have ordered a “Maid-rite” or a “Nu-Way” or a “Tavern Sandwich” but you were always asking for the same thing: a loose meat sandwich.

Loose meat sandies were, and are, so good because there is way more surface area of the beef to brown. And season. Condiments can mix right through the pile of beef instead of just sitting up on top. And then there is the challenge of keeping your pile of crumbles on your bun as you bite it. We just love challenging foods.

The next evolution, the “Sloppy Joe” began popping up in the 1940’s. Remember how we talked about loose meat sandwiches being awesome because the condiments could mix in with the meat? Well, some folks took it even further, binding the loose crumbles with a thick tomato-based sauce. Amazing.

And then in 1969, Hunt’s introduced “Manwich,” a sandwich made of men. No! I’m kidding you! It was really a can of tomato sauce to mix with your waiting skillet of beef for a fast-and-easy at-home Sloppy Joe. This seems like a manufactured want, but it caught on, and we are still eating Manwiches 51 years later.

Brown Bread

It’s bread, but in a can…

If you haven’t eaten a can of bread, you haven’t lived. You just open both ends and push out a loaf. It feels awfully novel for a 100-year-old idea.

But this brown bread itself (sans can) came about much earlier. Remember those British colonists we talked about in our last article? The ones who made all those beans? Well, they also needed bread. So they tried to grow their grain of choice, which was wheat. But the poor soil in New England made that difficult. In the end, they fell back on the tradition of mixed-grain loaves, which had been made by the lower classes in Europe for ages. They used a mixture of wheat, rye, and a new-to-them grain: cornmeal. Then they added molasses, because they were already becoming American, and Americans like sweet foods.

The bread was originally baked, but some folks liked to prepare it as a steamed pudding. Which lead to a steamed loaf. Which lead to the steamed-in-a-can bread emerging in the 1920s. And the tradition of a Saturday evening supper of brown bread, baked beans, and hotdogs.

All history aside. It’s a can of bread! If you haven’t had one, it’s worth a try.

Baked Beans

This illustration shows a giant can of beans sitting in a park. A man and his dog look on.

A journey of beans…

It’s Boxing Day, so I’ll talk about a British fav: Beans.

Native Americans were baked bean experts: baking them underground with bear meat and maple syrup. The result was predictably delicious. Then British colonists said, cool, we’ll make these, too. Let’s use pig meat and brown sugar, instead. And maybe we can cook them over a fire for a while before we bake them. That was also tasty. But due to British taxes on sugar, the colonists changed the recipe again to use locally produced molasses as a sweetener.

In 1895, H.J. Heinz Co. started producing canned baked beans, which were not baked at all, but rather blanched and steamed in the can. Those beans were the first convenience beans to be sold overseas. To the United Kingdom, of course. (See how this story keeps looping back on itself?) Anyway, British folks were like, why are these beans so sweet, you weirdos? So the recipe was altered again. Now the British beans had a firmer texture and were nestled in a tomato sauce. They were no longer sweet.

Today, baked beans are available in a ton of varieties. You can see ‘em with BBQ or at a picnic or in your Full English. And you can even buy that British version of Heinz baked beans. In the international section of your grocery store.

This is a long story, but a pretty good reminder that all food is political. It’s never just a can of beans.

Minced Clams

A can of clams sits in a tranquil undersea scene. A submarine drifts by.

A feast of fishes…

Today’s the Feast of the Seven Fishes. It used to be that on the eve of a feast day like Christmas, people were supposed to fast. Then Roman Catholics were like: Ok, you don’t have to fast, but def don’t eat red meat. But then southern Italians were all: Let’s make it another feast day, but it’s all fish, so it’s still alright. They literally rewrote the rules to add more eating. Which is incredible.

“Seven” Fishes is an American thing. And it’s not even necessarily 7. Sometimes it’s 9. Or 13. But it all makes sense, because it’s all eating with friends and family. You all get together and prepare 7 or more fish dishes and holler and hug and tell each other stories, and I’m depressing myself, because 2020 is nothing like that.

I hope you are all leaning into tradition in whatever way this year allows. Whether or not there is any fish.

Quaker Oats

A canister of oats sits under a shining sun, flanked by oat stalks. The smiling quaker fellow denotes quality.

Some thoughts on oats…

If you say, “Oats are a boring thing to draw!” you should read on…

The man in quaker garb was chosen to denote quality. This was especially important at a time (late 1800’s) when there was no federal regulation on food purity. With adulteration de rigueur, few products were what they claimed to be. Quaker Oats were, like, oats. And they still are. Oats.

For a time, Quaker Oates used the slogan: “It’s the right thing to do.” Which seems more like a commandment than a breakfast option. Also, Quaker hired Wilford Brimley. The ultimate oat-pusher. A million memes were born.

The empty canister is, and always has been, for storing treasures.

Instant Mashed Potatoes

A towering box of Idaho Spuds sits in a snowy landscape. A child on a sled glides by.

A longer-lasting potato…

Potatoes are a celebration food, and they became popular, in part, because they take so long to go bad. But during WWII, the government was greedy, and they decided to push for an even longer shelf life by dehydrating potatoes into granules. Which were then made into extraordinarily gummy and awful mashed potatoes for the soldiers. Like many wartime innovations, there was in interest in making these reconstituted mashed potatoes into a consumer product. They just had to be a little less terrible.

A major turning point was the realization that “flakes” beat “granules” as far as mashed potato texture went. A government facility in Wyndmore, PA developed a process called “The Philadelphia Cook” This involved precooking potatoes, cooling them, cooking them again, and then drying them. Into flakes. Obviously. These new instant mashed potatoes were less terrible than before and saved the hassle of peeling potatoes forever and boiling a towering cauldron of water. A big win!

I hope you are celebrating this season with special foods. And if Christmas is your kind of holiday, I hope it’s a jolly one.

Beef Stew

Lumberjacks need stew…

Dinty Moore Beef Stew was invented by a lumberjack named Dinty Moore. For a while, he put his thumbprint on every can, but his thumb got tired and he quit. We can take some consolation in the fact that the label is still plaid.

There is also a “recipe” for a roast beef sandwich on the internet which is just a can of Dinty Moore poured onto a submarine roll. I don’t feel super great about that. (This blurb has some truth and some fiction, but that bad recipe is true.)