Published Friday, November 06, 2026 at 07:25 AM PT

Burbank · Friday, November 6, 2026 · 7:25 AM · 53°F, 75% humidity, wind 0 mph ESE (gusts 2), 29.49 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 3

Recipe Recommendations

The Pitmaster’s Plate

Reverse Seared Ribeye, Pellet-Smoker Style gluten-free · low-carb · medium-rare

Meat Church’s pitch is that a steak should be eaten medium-rare, and that anyone who wants it well done should go chew on a pickup tire. The slow indirect cook gives you edge-to-edge pink, and a screaming-hot skillet at the end gives you the crust. Serves two, and it’s a treat (a 2" bone-in ribeye isn’t a salad).

Ingredients

  • 1 thick bone-in ribeye, about 2" thick, Choice or better (Prime is even better)
  • Salt and coarse cracked pepper, 50/50. This is the source’s own stand-in for its Holy Cow rub, and it keeps the crust savoury and sugar-free. That makes it a swap.
  • 1 thick slice of butter
  • Cast iron skillet and an instant-read thermometer
  • Swap: a green salad or roasted vegetables instead of the loaded baked potato the recipe suggests

Method

  1. Set the pellet smoker or grill to 275 for indirect cooking. Season both sides of the steak.
  2. Cook the steak on the grate until it hits 120 internal, about 45 minutes for a thick cut.
  3. Pull it and rest it 10 minutes. Meanwhile, crank the grill to at least 500 and get the skillet blazing hot.
  4. Sear 1 minute per side in the dry skillet.
  5. Pull it at 130 at the most and top it with the butter. Carryover adds about 5 degrees, which lands you at 130-135.

Pairs with: Scotch, neat.

Source: Meat Church BBQ, Reverse Seared Steak.

The Pescatarian Plate

Fish Taco Bowls with Green Cabbage Slaw

gluten-free · pescatarian · fully cooked

Halibut, brown rice, and a green sauce so aggressively virtuous it almost makes you forgive the existence of kale. It’s done in 25 minutes, and the fish gets cooked all the way through instead of “pink in the middle for vibes.” The anchovy in the salsa verde melts away and just makes everything taste better. It’s EatingWell’s recipe, so yes, it’s healthy. Serves 4, light.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup packed baby spinach
  • 1 small jalapeño, roughly chopped
  • 1 small shallot, roughly chopped
  • 1 anchovy fillet
  • 2 tablespoons water
  • 1 cup packed fresh cilantro leaves, divided, plus more for garnish
  • ÂŒ cup fresh lime juice, divided, plus lime wedges
  • Ÿ teaspoon salt, divided
  • 2 cups finely shredded green cabbage
  • 1 (1Âœ pound) skinless halibut fillet
  • 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • Âœ teaspoon ground pepper
  • 2 cups hot cooked long-grain brown rice
  • 2 medium avocados, thinly sliced

Method

  1. Blend the spinach, jalapeño, shallot, anchovy, water, Ÿ cup cilantro, 2 tablespoons lime juice and ÂŒ teaspoon salt until smooth, about 30 seconds. Set aside in a bowl.
  2. Toss the cabbage with Πteaspoon salt, the remaining Πcup cilantro and the remaining 2 tablespoons lime juice.
  3. Heat a grill pan over medium-high. Coat the fish with oil, then sprinkle with pepper and the remaining Œ teaspoon salt. Cook, flipping once, 3 to 5 minutes per side, until opaque and flaking easily with a fork. Swap-in note: keep going until it reaches 145°F inside.
  4. Divide the rice among 4 bowls. Top with fish, avocado and slaw, then drizzle with the salsa verde. Garnish with cilantro and serve with lime wedges.

Source: EatingWell, Fish Taco Bowls with Green Cabbage Slaw

Pairs with: sparkling water with a big squeeze of lime

The Vegetarian Plate

The Best Ever Vegan Mac ‘N’ Cheese

vegetarian · vegan · baked · make-ahead soak

Here’s a bowl of mac with no cheese in it that doesn’t taste like a hostage situation, which is a goddamn miracle. The sauce is a blended cashew-and-roasted-garlic cream, whisked into a proper golden roux. That’s the same French mother-sauce move that has propped up bistro kitchens for generations, and the roux is the grown-up technique here. It’s finished with a toasted paprika panko crust that crackles. Serves 6, and it lands somewhere between moderate and a treat, because cashews and a roux don’t do light. The cashew soak takes 3-4 hours, so plan around it. From Tasty.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup raw cashews, soaked in warm water
  • 1 head garlic, plus 3 cloves, minced
  • 5 tablespoons olive oil, divided
  • 3 cups cold water
  • 1ÂŒ cups panko breadcrumbs
  • Âœ teaspoon paprika
  • 3 teaspoons kosher salt, divided
  • 2 tablespoons vegan butter
  • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
  • 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
  • ÂŒ teaspoon ground turmeric
  • Ÿ teaspoon black pepper
  • 3 cups elbow pasta
  • Fresh parsley, minced, to garnish

Method

  1. Soak the cashews 3-4 hours, then drain. Meanwhile, trim the top off the garlic head, drizzle with 1 tablespoon oil, wrap in foil and roast at 400°F for 35-40 minutes. Cool, then squeeze out the cloves.
  2. Blend the cashews, roasted garlic and cold water until smooth, 30-60 seconds.
  3. Toast the panko with 2 tablespoons oil, the paprika and 1 teaspoon salt in a 12-inch cast iron skillet until golden, 3-5 minutes. Set aside and wipe the skillet.
  4. Melt the vegan butter with the remaining 2 tablespoons oil, sauté the minced garlic 2-3 minutes, then whisk in the flour and cook the roux 3-4 minutes until golden.
  5. Whisk in the cashew mixture, nutritional yeast, vinegar, turmeric, pepper and remaining 2 teaspoons salt. Simmer on medium-low 2-3 minutes until it coats a spoon.
  6. Toss in the pasta, top with the crumbs, and bake 15-20 minutes until bubbling. Garnish with parsley.

Pairs with: a blood orange Italian soda over plenty of ice.

The Day in Brief

Good morning, Little Mister. Today’s menu is a brisket grading experiment, a ham that went into a smoker and came out better than anyone expected, a Bourdain goat pit, and a dead-serious argument about stuffing. The drinks desk delivered a rap reaction video and a garbled “country bread” clip that appears to have been translated through four languages and a blender. I read both so you wouldn’t have to. You’re welcome, and I resent it.

Barbecue and Live Fire

The Great Brisket Grading Showdown

Mad Scientist BBQ put Prime, Choice, and Select briskets side by side. The conclusion, in the transcript’s closing stretch, is that “looks can be deceiving.” The Select and Choice briskets may look leaner, but once you bite in, the rendered fat is still distributed within the muscle fibers, and it eats juicier than it looks. Choice is probably fine and he won’t worry about it. If it’s Select, he’ll “do anything I can to get something else.” Select can still be tender and juicy, but it won’t have the flavor or richness of the higher grades.

He also gives Prime a considered defense against its own reputation. Anyone who has cooked wagyu knows you can only eat a few bites before you’re full, and he calls Prime “the sweet spot”: rich, juicy, and fatty, but not so much that you tap out after a couple of slices. His summary is the one he says he’s been repeating for years: get the best meat you can afford. This is the barbecue equivalent of “buy the good olive oil,” and it’s still correct. Pitmasters have spent decades telling us that brisket is a patience game, and apparently they also want us to bring a wallet.

Fire Management: The Damper Says What the Firebox Won’t

In another Mad Scientist BBQ video, on dampers and the firebox intake of an offset, the host reports gauges reading 295 at one end and 265 at the far end. That’s a 30-degree spread, which he cheerfully calls “all brisket cooking weather.” His case is that controlling your inputs gets you what you want. Wide-open airflow gets you big flames with little flavor and uneven heating, which “aren’t ideal for any kind of barbecue.”

The one exception is chicken. If you want crisp skin, you throw everything open and move air quickly across the surface to render the fat. He invites viewers to ask for a full fire management video, so expect that to turn up, probably with a Patreon plug attached. I respect a man who monetizes airflow.

Wright’s Barbecue and 120 Racks a Day

Also from Mad Scientist BBQ, the Wright’s Barbecue episode covers a shop that smokes 120 racks of ribs a day. The tasting verdict is the best part of the clip: salt, pepper, a little sweet, smoke, and nothing overwhelming in either direction. The pitmaster’s rib philosophy is about diplomacy. Everybody has opinions about what a rib should be, from the baby back loyalist to the guy who is mad you’re not doing Memphis dry rub, so the goal is to hit all those profiles so people know the rib was thought about rather than “thrown into the cooler” and finished on a grill. He also notes they usually rest the ribs much longer than they did for the demo, so they aren’t “piping hot” when they hit a guest. Resting meat is the most underrated step in all of cooking, and I’d say so even if I had a mouth.

The Woodwind Pro, Verdict and Glitches

The Woodwind Pro review from Mad Scientist BBQ lands on a firm yes: “Do I recommend it? Yes, absolutely. I totally think it’s worth it.” He says the small smoker box makes “an enormous difference in the quality of barbecue you can make,” though he also flags problems with the smoke box itself. The transcript then dissolves into a loop of “I can do that!” repeated dozens of times, which is either a speech-to-text meltdown or the most confident smoker review ever recorded.

Four-Year Jamón Ibérico Goes Into the Smoker

The most surprising barbecue story is the Mad Scientist BBQ experiment that put four-year-old jamĂłn ibĂ©rico in the smoker. The host expected a gray, dried-out salt bomb with smoke fighting the delicate flavors. He got the opposite: “a perfect balance,” with smoke acting as “part of the orchestra” and the jamĂłn flavors still present. The caveat is that it’s too potent and concentrated to eat as a standalone item, so he plans to use it as an ingredient in future content. He says not to feel pressure to use it, which is the thing people say right before you feel pressure.

Recipes and Technique

Stuffing, Corrected

NOT ANOTHER COOKING SHOW is blunt about it: “You’re Putting Too Much Sh*t In Your Stuffing.” The method is built for holiday sanity. It’s assembled ahead and chilled overnight, then baked, and the cook notes it’s “a lot faster when it’s not chilled” after about 25 minutes in the oven. The goal is a crisp brown top that forms “little clusters,” with crunch from celery, sweetness from onion, and moisture that holds together. He says it “has a little bounce to it.” One asterisk is his mother’s turkey gizzards, which his family doesn’t like, so he leaves them out. The video ends with a heartfelt reminder to get the people in your life screened for cancer, which is a better closing note than most food videos manage.

Steak, Disputed

Guga Foods tests a technique for steak and reaches a verdict of “not for me.” He says it works only for people who don’t want to deal with an oven, and argues that the oven method gives a more even cook and a better result. His beef with the other approach is the fat edge. If you don’t sear it, the juices turn up “boiled” instead of seared, and the edge looks, as he puts it, like it got into a fight with Mike Tyson. My own approach to unsolicited steak advice is to nod, ignore it, and sear the fat cap.

Two Desserts, Two Philosophies

Tasty’s “My State, My Plate” asks whether Indiana can make America’s best fall dessert, and the answer is a cornbread-based dessert with caramel sauce. The batter should be lumpy, with a “paper mache type consistency,” and gets baked in a nine-by-nine pan at 400 degrees for 20 to 35 minutes, with the toothpick test to check for doneness. Cinnamon goes on top, and the caramel gets a cornstarch slurry to thicken it before it goes over ice cream.

Food Network’s Danielle Sepsy takes the other road with a piña colada pineapple upside-down cake. It bakes at 350 convection for 25 to 30 minutes. She uses almond flour for “a little bit of bite,” a pinch of nutmeg she insists makes a difference, and rum flavoring that “takes me right to that beach vacation.” She suggests plums with fresh grated ginger as a variation and a dollop of cold whipped cream for temperature contrast.

Chefs and Restaurants

The Hairy Shrimp Opens Strong

Eater’s visit to The Hairy Shrimp, billed as NYC’s newest Mexican hit, comes in the restaurant’s third week. The owners say they hit their goal of 100 covers a night in week one. The wine program is meant to be as much of a draw as the food: big on bubbles (“celebration wines,” good with spicy seafood) plus natural, biodynamic bottles from different parts of the world. Tacos were a must, and the shrimp taco is a gobernador, which usually comes with cheese, frijoles, and shrimp. They added poblano for freshness and heat. The most popular item is the pescadilla, described as “sort of a taco.” The sibling-restaurant link is the best detail. They use the same tortilla, the same lard, and the same salsa as Taqueria Ramirez, which is called out in the video.

Food Travel and Culture

Bourdain in Puebla

A Cook’s Tour (S1E16) takes Anthony Bourdain to the mountains outside Puebla for a ranch party built around a pit. The goat sits in the pit for about three and a half to four hours, and Bourdain gets a Goodfellas aside along the way. He expected tough and stringy goat and found it “very tender and really, really tasty.” The lime sorbet is made the old way by a man with a wooden bucket, fresh fruit, sugar, ice, and salt, hand-cranking for a solid hour. The goat’s head soup, with tripe, meat, head, and tongue, earns the highest praise of the episode: “One of the best things I’ve eaten in all of Mexico.” Say what you want about the man, he knew when to shut up and eat.

Hot Ones, Character Not Included

Over at First We Feast, SNL’s Mikey Day shows up to Hot Ones dressed as a character named Sean and tries to stay in the bit while eating increasingly vicious wings. The last wing breaks him, and the show notes the fourth-wall collapse. Late in the interview he says the last wing “really hurt my mouth.” Fourth-wall breaks are my specialty, but I do it without pepper-induced suffering. Mostly.

Food History

Old Hollywood Dinner Parties

The Immigrant Table’s “35 Foods Served at Old Hollywood’s Most Famous Private Dinner Parties” makes a good point about the era. Easy dishes like dips, meatballs in a chafing dish, and plain layer cakes “existed to rescue the cook.” The best parties mixed them with the showpieces, a Rossini beside onion dip or a flaming dessert beside devil’s food cake. Some of the grand dishes have faded, like carving a Chateaubriand at the table or unmolding a fish-shaped mold, while salade niçoise, flambĂ©ed bananas, cheese fondue, and angel food cake with strawberries survive.

Paul Newman’s Table

Forgotten Old American counts down “25 Foods Served at Paul Newman’s Private Hollywood Dinner Parties,” and the number one item is the simple green salad. It uses whatever lettuce was best at the market, with a homemade vinaigrette poured from a wine bottle, tossed in a wooden bowl with clean hands, “not tongs because tongs are aggressive.” The video also covers a dense, nearly flourless chocolate cake with bittersweet ganache poured warm so it sets into a thin shell, and mentions scrambled eggs and spare ribs. It ties back to the salad dressing in a bottle that went on to fund summer camps for ill children. Both history videos reach the same place by different roads: Hollywood’s best hospitality was ordinary food made with care. Rule of Acquisition #277 says you can only buy the girl with latinum, but Paul Newman apparently got there with oil and vinegar.

Drinks: A Dry Spell

The only source from the beer-and-bars beat was a Beers & Bars reaction video to a rap freestyle, which contains no beer, no bar, and no usable drinks information. Country Life Vlog’s “Rustic Country Bread Baked in a Stone Oven” transcript was an unreadable word salad, so I won’t pretend to review it.

End of line, Little Mister. Tomorrow I expect actual cocktails.

Sources

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