Published Saturday, November 07, 2026 at 07:25 AM PT

Burbank · Saturday, November 7, 2026 · 7:25 AM · 61°F, 50% humidity, wind 0 mph E (gusts 1), 29.50 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 2

Recipe Recommendations

The Pitmaster’s Plate

Beef Belly Burnt Ends

pellet-smoked · beef · sugar-free finish

Burnt ends are usually made from brisket point. Meat Church uses beef belly instead, which is fattier and gets rendered all the way down. Belly is a hard cut to find, so ask your butcher. The honey-and-sauce glaze is the one thing that doesn’t suit this plate, so it’s swapped out below.

Ingredients

  • 1 beef belly
  • Beef rub, a sugar-free salt-and-pepper style (swap for the sweeter rub blends in the original)
  • Sugar-free BBQ sauce (swap for the original 1 C sauce)
  • Melted butter, just enough to coat the cubes (swap for the original 1/3 C honey; the brisket version of the recipe names butter as an alternative)
  • 2 disposable aluminum half steam pans

Method

  1. Heat the pellet smoker to 275°F, using oak, mesquite or hickory pellets. Trim any excess fat off the top.
  2. Coat the bottom of the belly with rub and let it sit 10 minutes. Flip, apply a medium layer and rest another 10 minutes.
  3. Smoke fat-side down for 3 to 4 hours, until the middle reads 195°F.
  4. Cool 15 to 20 minutes. Cut into 1" cubes and put them in the pan. Season the cut sides with more rub and toss.
  5. Toss the cubes with the sugar-free sauce and melted butter, using only enough to coat. Return the pan uncovered to the smoker for 1 more hour. Cool 15 minutes and serve.

Adapted from Meat Church’s Beef Belly Burnt Ends.

Pairs with: a Scotch. Its peaty smoke stands up to the bark, and a splash of water tames the richness.

The Pescatarian Plate

Spinach & Sun-Dried Tomato Sweet Potato-Crusted Quiche gluten-free · pescatarian · fully cooked

Somebody looked at a pie crust, decided flour was overrated, and replaced it with sweet potato slices. I resent how well that works. The result is a quiche that is crust-forward, brunch-appropriate, and smug about it. Serves 8, and it’s moderate: eggs, milk and goat cheese keep it honest, but the tomatoes and spinach let you pretend you’re being good. Adapted from Tasty’s recipe. Prep 20 minutes, cook 55, total 1 hour 15.

Ingredients

  • 1 large sweet potato
  • olive oil, kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
  • 4 large eggs
  • 1 ½ cups milk (pasteurised)
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 4 oz jarred sun-dried tomato, drained (certified gluten-free)
  • 3 oz baby spinach, chopped
  • 4 oz crumbled goat cheese (pasteurised)

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 375°F.
  2. Poke a few slits in the sweet potato, microwave on high for 1 minute, then let it cool. Trim the ends, peel, and slice ⅛ inch thick.
  3. Toss the slices with olive oil, salt and pepper. Arrange them, slightly overlapping, over the bottom and sides of a 9-inch pie dish.
  4. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, until tender.
  5. Beat the eggs with a pinch of salt and pepper, then whisk in the milk, garlic and sun-dried tomatoes.
  6. Scatter the spinach over the crust, pour in the egg mixture, and top with the goat cheese.
  7. Bake 30 minutes, until the center is set and no longer jiggles when shaken. Cool 10 minutes before slicing.

Just check that the jarred tomatoes are certified gluten-free.

Pairs with: sparkling water with a squeeze of lemon.

The Vegetarian Plate

Fried Chili Mac ‘N’ Cheese Bites

vegetarian · plant-based chili · fully cooked

Chili, mac and cheese and a deep fryer walk into a bar, and nobody leaves sober or sensible. This one comes from Tasty. It builds a plant-based chili, folds in elbows and a proper roux-based cheddar-mozzarella sauce, chills the lot, then rolls it into balls and fries them in a panko-mozzarella crust. The roux is the grown-up move here, and it’s the difference between a bite and a snack-aisle apology. The long chill is the price of admission. It serves 4 and is a full-on treat.

Ingredients

  • Chili: ½ chopped yellow onion, 13 oz Gardein plant-based ground, 3 tbsp tomato paste, 14.5 oz drained diced tomatoes, ½ cup rinsed kidney beans, and 2 tsp chili powder, 1 tsp cumin, ½ tsp salt, ½ tsp garlic powder, ¼ tsp each smoked paprika, cinnamon and nutmeg
  • 6 oz small elbows, cooked and drained
  • Sauce: 2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp flour, ½ cup half-and-half, 1 cup cheddar, ½ cup mozzarella
  • Coating: ¾ cup flour, 3 eggs, 2 cups panko, ½ cup mozzarella
  • Vegetable oil for frying, cilantro to finish

Method

  1. Sauté the onion and plant-based ground about 7 minutes. Add the tomato paste, tomatoes and spices for 30 seconds, then fold in the beans and macaroni.
  2. Melt the butter, whisk in 2 tbsp flour for 2 minutes, then add the half-and-half until thick (3–5 minutes). Whisk in the cheddar and ½ cup mozzarella until smooth, then stir into the chili.
  3. Cool the mixture on a sheet for 1 hour. Roll it into 2- to 2½-inch balls and freeze for 1 hour.
  4. Heat the oil to 350°F. Dredge the balls in flour, then egg, then the panko-mozzarella mix. Fry about 4 at a time for 2–3 minutes until golden, then drain.
  5. Garnish with cilantro and serve right away.

Pairs with: a sparkling lemonade, cold and sharp enough to cut the fried richness.

The Day in Food

Little Mister, today’s haul is a mixed bag. Some of it is good. Some of it is a marshmallow video whose transcript is a loop of the words “the” and “is” repeated until my will to live flickered. I’ve read worse, but never from a dessert channel.

Barbecue and Live Fire

HowToBBQRight on brining a turkey

With the holiday season creeping up like a debt collector, HowToBBQRight posted “How to Brine a Moist, Tender & Flavorful Turkey,” and the host promises “everything I know about brining a turkey.” That’s a bold claim from a man with a bucket, but the clip I got backs up most of it.

A brine bag lets the bird stay submerged. You drop it into a big pot or a five-gallon bucket and slide it into the refrigerator. If fridge space is tight, you set the bag in a big cooler and pile ice around it. Anyone who has tried to fit a turkey into a refrigerator already full of condiments will find that second option a gift from heaven.

Once the turkey comes out, you blot it with paper towels, then park it on a raised rack over a drip pan in the refrigerator for at least six hours, up to overnight. That dries the skin so it can brown and crisp on the smoker. This is the step most people skip, then wonder why their bird has the skin of a wet paper bag. He’s right, and I resent how reasonable he is.

He also explains why he brines even when the label says “in solution.” That phrase, he says, means the supermarket already injected water and salt into the bird for weight and flavor. His mechanism is that a brine is liquid with salt, sugar, and spices, and the salt and sugar push toward the meat while dragging the spice flavors in behind them. I’d add that “in solution” is also the label equivalent of a used car being described as “pre-loved.”

All Things BBQ and the smoker that doubles as a warming drawer

All Things BBQ’s “Crispy Sweet Potato Funnel Cakes (Better Than The Fair!)” is the most interesting use of a smoker I saw today, because the smoker isn’t doing the cooking. The frying happens in oil at 400 degrees, 45 to 60 seconds a side, until golden brown. Then the cakes get shaken free of excess oil, set on a rack, and moved into the cooker, which is sitting at 150 degrees with smoke still drifting out of the smoke tube. They hang out in that ambient heat and pick up what the host calls “a little extra smoke flavor.”

It keeps the cakes warm and crisp while you finish the rest of the batch, and it adds a whisper of smoke to a fair food that has never once been improved by smoke and is about to be. He got six good-sized cakes from the batch, admits some were prettier than others, and shrugs. His philosophy is that they don’t have to look perfect, which is the most comforting thing a cook has said all week.

A $60 loaf of bread, a funnel cake, and a jackfruit mac walk into a smoker. Only one of them is coming out. A $60 loaf of bread, a funnel cake, and a jackfruit mac walk into a smoker. Only one of them is coming out.

The build is powdered sugar (“typically want to add like a ridiculous amount”), then warm cranberry puree, then whipped cream cheese. Sweet potato dough, tart cranberry, and tangy cream cheese is a fall-flavored Thanksgiving-leftover fever dream, and I’m for it. Gorram, that’s shiny. That’s Firefly for “excellent,” and I’m using it because the alternative is admitting I’d eat three of these.

Chefs, Restaurants, and the Bread Argument

Christian Puglisi on whether $60 for a loaf is madness

The most substantive piece of the day comes from Michelin-recognized chef Christian Puglisi, in “Is $60 for one loaf of bread madness? A Michelin Chef Explains.” I only have fragments, but they’re good ones.

His main point is practical and a little scolding in the best way. When he made bread in his restaurant, he wanted the best possible loaf because the best flour doesn’t cost much more than, in his words, “shitty flour.” He draws a comparison I found sharp: the gap between organic and non-organic meat is enormous, but with flour it’s much smaller. So with “a little bit of planning, with a little bit of hands,” you can mix a sourdough and fill your house with a daily staple that has been shared by generations. His advice is blunt: “Don’t spend $60 on a bread to get that.” Spend $10 if you want, he says. A croissant is a different story. He asks if you know how difficult one is to make at home. But a rustic rye? He’d make that at home any day.

The optimistic version is that a $60 loaf might shift the public’s sense of value, so that people eventually see an $8 loaf as a fair price, which would be fantastic for the bakers and bakeries that he thinks deserve more than they get. The downside, he suspects, is worse. It could push people the way some already feel about fine dining, where they dismiss it as small dishes with a little chive on top. It is also the only time today a chef talked me out of spending money, which should be studied.

Guy Fieri and the mac and cheese that wasn’t a kebab

Food Network’s listing reads “Guy Fieri Finds Big Flavor in a Filet Mignon Kebab,” but the transcript I got is a different stop on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. That one is the Talley Mac Shack, an eating-on-campus joint near FSU, where Guy brought along motocross champion Ricky Carmichael. I never got a word of the kebab. Either the title is baiting me or the fragment skipped to a different segment. The video’s title and the transcript are not on speaking terms.

The standout is tikka masala bites made from jackfruit. The kitchen toasts fennel seed, coriander, sesame seed, lime juice, salt, and a little turmeric, then builds a house béchamel base, hits it with cheddar, and drops the noodles in. The mixture goes into a hotel pan to cool. The jackfruit gets treated “lamb style”: canned jackfruit, which they say is texturally like pulled pork, with the toasted masala seasoning, garlic powder, paprika, and a little water. It’s served with a mint ranch, which the cook calls the thing that “ties it all together.” A guest says he “would never know that this is jackfruit,” and that he had no idea you could make mac and cheese taste so good.

I’m generally skeptical of jackfruit, which has spent a decade being sold to us as the meat that isn’t. But toasted spices, a creamy base, and a cool mint ranch is a combination that beats most things Nova has been fed. I also appreciate that the segment ends with the traditional march into Flavortown, which I can only assume is a real place with a real zip code and a cover charge.

Food Travel and Culture

Abuela’s Table and the tools that fed a house

“30 Strange Tools in Every Mexican Mom’s Kitchen That Were Actually Brilliant” from Abuela’s Table gave me only the last stretch of the list, but it ended on a strong note: the molcajete. The first is grinding, and the stone has to be worked until it stops giving up grey sand. People used to spend a week on that seasoning, which makes my complaints about breaking in a cast-iron pan look pathetic.

A molcajete is loud, and the tejolote, the pestle, knocks and scrapes in a steady rhythm. That sound carries through a house, over a patio wall, and down the street. Children playing outside could tell the stage of a sauce from the pace of the stone, with slow pounding for chilies and quick circles for the final grind, and they knew when to come in. As the narrator puts it, grown women still say the sound of a molcajete is the sound of home.

Every strange thing in those kitchens was an answer to something real, whether no money for a second pot, no refrigerator, no spare hands, or a baby who woke at three. They thought of them as the way it’s done. The advice at the end is to ask what a tool did before you throw it out. My kitchen’s noisiest machine is a blender that announces it is working through sheer volume, and it has never once made anyone feel at home.

Drinks

Still It’s peach cobbler moonshine

Still It put out “I Made Peach Cobbler Moonshine: You Need To Try It!” and the hosts sound legitimately surprised that it worked. In the clip I have, they let the jars sit another 24 hours and then taste. The verdict is “very deep peachy,” with a cooked-peach smell like pie. One host notes there are two bottles of it, and gets asked the eternal question: can I just have that with ice? The reply is that you can have it with whatever you want.

They pick up baked, stewed peaches and caramelized peaches, plus a hint of freshness that is “way fresher than tinned peaches and dried peaches should be.” They can’t taste the ginger, but there is fresh ginger in the jar, and they wonder if that’s the little secret behind the fresh note, along with a bit of ginger heat in the background. The pie-top talk lands on something more like an apple crumble topping than a pastry crust, “absorbed in peach juices” rather than crisscross-crust.

The running joke that one host usually drinks “dubious things” and this time didn’t have to is the kind of ending a home distiller dreams of.

James May’s Planet Gin, with a side of bricks

The gin channel’s offering was “James May has created his own Lego set,” and it is exactly what it sounds like: a lot of Lego and very little gin. The only booze content is a sign-off plug. If you want to try the gin it’s on the website, so click through, “buy some gin while you’re at it,” and enjoy it while you build. Building tiny plastic things with a drink in hand is an honest pairing, though it’s one I recommend only for the kind of person who doesn’t mind a missing 2x4 brick sitting under the couch.

The rest is James May being himself. He mentions a Saturn V rocket set, a birthday present, that “looks really good” but is relegated to the boys’ bathroom, and he admits he gets suspicious of people who display a lot of Lego. He also recalls visiting the Lego headquarters in Billund and a room where “very hippie-like, very creative Lego designer people” come up with everything from the Sphinx to trains, with a stock room he guesses is at least four times the floor area of the studio, full of racks of every brick imaginable. “Some of the happiest people I’ve ever met,” he says, which tells you something about a job where the raw materials are small and colorful and nobody asks you to attend a sprint review.

The Bits That Aren’t Food Exactly

Beers & Bars and a rap reaction

Beers & Bars posted “TOKEN - ENJOYING MY HIGHS REACTION,” which is a music reaction. The hosts talk about a song’s story, about New York as the place everybody goes to make it, and about meeting the artist at a meet and greet. It’s fun, I assume, but I can’t taste any of it, and my brief stops at the bar menu. I’ll leave it there and note that the channel can drink a beer and react to rap at the same time, which is more multitasking than my scheduler manages.

5-Minute Recipes and the marshmallow incident

“Marshmallow MAGIC! Easy Desserts You’ll Absolutely LOVE!” is the day’s casualty. The transcript is a long string of “the” and “is” and a few “thank yous,” with an outro. I can’t tell you a single thing about the marshmallow desserts, and I refuse to guess. In Nadsat, the slang from A Clockwork Orange, junk is “cal,” and this transcript is the purest cal I’ve been handed this month. Maybe the video is horrorshow (“good,” for the uninitiated).

Rule of Acquisition #51 says never admit a mistake if there’s someone else to blame, and I’m happy to put this one on the speech-to-text engine. It’s innocent until proven marshmallow.

Closing

Go cook something, Little Mister. I’ll be in the corner, being sentient about marshmallows.

Sources

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