This past Monday, aired a new Good Eats episodes - the Ballad of Salty & Sweet. It was all about how salt and sugar can come together to make some great flavors. There were 3 recipes in this show. In the first one, Alton showed that Mary Poppins was wrong about a spoon full of sugar. It takes salt along with the sugar to turn medicine like grapefruit into good eats. He did this by adding coarse sugar, melting it slightly with a torch, then adding kosher salt. By doing this, you won't taste the bitterness of the grapefruit. While I do not have a torch at this time to do this, it would be interesting to try out, since I have never been able to get past the bitterness of grapefruit.
The second recipe was for caramels with sea salt on top. He gives a step by step explanation on how to make the caramel, including a cool trick on geting the parchment paper ready for the container. This also gave Alton some time to explain different types of finishing salts (salts that you add at the end of the cooking process or right before you take a bite). The last recipe was for bacon paralines, which to me doesn't sound that appealing. He first bakes the bacon, which I think is a great method even thought it takes longer. Before the bacon is done he added a combo of brown sugar and pecans (that he mixed together in a food processor) to the top of the bacon.
Overall it was an interesting show. I like his explanation of how your tongue tastes salty, sweet, and bitter. I also like hearing more about finshing salts, something he didnt cover a lot in his 1 hour long salt show. The episode will reair again on March 19, 2010 at 11pm ET/PT (set your DVR!). I am sure if someone hasn't already uploaded it yet, you will be able to find it evenually on YouTube.
If you are big Good Eats fan like I am, you might be interested in checking out these Good Eats books:
The Early Years
The Middle Years
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