It has been said that there is no true American cuisine, because everything we cook comes from somewhere else. That may be true, but we have a tendency to take recipes from all over the world and change them to make them our own. That’s especially true of barbecue, which is now truly American. In this video, young women in Korea try American barbecue for the first time, in three modes: pulled pork, brisket, and ribs.

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I did not expect to enjoy this video as much as I did. Now I’m hungry. For a pulled pork barbecue sandwich. -via Viral Viral Videos

It's hard to become well liked by the general public for being a proud abuser of hard drugs, since only stoners are seen as humorous or lovable, but everybody loves a drunk.

Whether the drunk in question is a famous star of stage and screen, a rock n roll icon or a witty journalist who writes drunk and edits sober, some of our favorite famous people have been shameless sots.

Humphrey Bogart played a river boat captain who couldn't live without his Gordon's Gin in The African Queen, but in real life Bogey was partial to scotch.

Hollywood royalty Richard Burton was said to drink four bottles of vodka a day, but the old pro "cut down" to three bottles a day while filming Under Milk Wood in 1972.

And we all know Hunter S. Thompson enjoyed his booze with a side of drugs, but what  about Charles Bukowski?

It was said Bukowski got his creative juices flowing by drinking two six packs of beer and a pint of Cutty Sark, because “when you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.”

-Via Dangerous Minds

Freeport, Maine isn't the kind of town where franchisees build fast food joints like McDonald's all willy-nilly, with giant golden arches and clowny architecture ruining the classic look of that colonial town.

In fact, Freeport wasn't even open to the presence of a McDonald's restaurant until the owners suggested they build their restaurant inside the historic Gore House.

Now the home of L.L. Bean also has one of the classiest and most unique McDonald's restaurant locations in the world, with a drive-thru fit for a royal carriage.

-Via Design You Trust

Food blogger Through the Eyes of My Belly offers up her first blog post and boy is it a doozy! She carefully wrapped bacon strips around foil molds, then baked them solid. She then coated the interior with chocolate and filled them with a mixture of milk and Kahlúa.

I like that combination! Peppermint schnapps might also be a good choice for this unusual and edible shot glass.

-via Foodiggity

(Photo: Manila Social Club)

This isn't a simple cake donut from your local shop. The Manila Social Club, a restaurant in the trendy Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, offers only the finest donuts for the most elite tastes. Chef Björn DelaCruz made this donut with a Cristal champagne frosting, filled with an ube mousse, and coated in 24 karat gold. Each one costs $100.

In an interview with First We Feast, DelaCruz explained why he devised this novel take on the humble donut:

We have this doughnut program where we make doughnuts every Friday, and you can only order them online on Thursday. The reason why we do this is because we’re not a doughnut shop. The Golden Cristal Ube Donut came along because there is a brewery in Bushwick called Braven Brewery, and we know the owners Marshall and Erik. We both started our businesses around the same time. We had a doughnut event where I unveiled a doughnut with icing made with Braven White IPA, dusted with gold. That was the beginning of the golden doughnut [idea].

The reason that gold leaf and Cristal were added was because I love all different champagnes. I wanted to add something [to the menu] for the new year to celebrate how long we have been going. I didn’t know people would go and order a dozen [of these] at a time! But then again, it is New York, and there are people willing to put down a grand for a dozen doughnuts.

Cheeseburger Soup | Image and Recipe: The Recipe Critic

Some meals are not only nutrititious parts of your diet but they can also be problem solvers. Soup is one of those helpful dishes. A hearty soup can be a one-dish meal; easier to prepare than an entree with several sides, and cleanup is quicker as well. Those who aren't confident cooks often feel less intimidated when taking on the preparation of a soup. It's a great food item with which to task a kid who is learning to cook. Even if they aren't in charge of the dish, they may learn quite a bit during the prep phase. 

Winter is in full swing, and a tasty soup would be just the thing for your lunch and dinner table. The linked article presents no less than fifty soup recipes for you to taste test. More than a few of them look absolutely delicious. Check them out and see which dishes appeal to you and your loved ones. 

Tortellini Soup with Italian Sausage and Spinach | Image and Recipe: Yellow Bliss Road


Chicken Cordon Bleu Soup | Image and Recipe: Chef in Training

Roasted Tomato and Basil Soup with Croutons | Image and Recipe: Cooking Classy

Pour hot chocolate or caramel sauce over the sphere. It melts quickly, revealing an ice cream treat inside. It's a luxurious and beautiful dessert that I want to eat right now.

In-N-Out Burger is a fast food restaurant chain famous for excellent hamburgers in towns where people don't have access to a Whataburger. Its loyal fanbase loves the chain's famously large burgers which are improved with a not-so-secret secret menu.

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If you're in the mood for something a bit fancier than burgers for breakfast, than FoodBeast has you covered. In this video, FoodBeast chefs turned In-N-Out foods into a pie. After laying out a pie crust, they put down French fries, then sliced hamburgers, more fries, and special sauce. The only item they neglected to add was a chocolate milkshake. Presumably that will come in the next video.

-via Gifsboom

Since so many delicious recipes for baked goods are all about the spices, and any avid cook knows that with knowledge comes chefly power, Alton Brown created this list of Spice Do's and Don'ts.

It's heavily sprinkled with words of wisdom about how long the budding baker should keep ground spices around (no longer than 6 months), how they should be stored (in airtight vessels away from light and heat) and whether you should consider vanilla a spice (you should!).

And even though the whole thing will only take you about five minutes to read it'll change your spice loving life forever!

Read Alton Brown's Spice Rules: The Do's And Don'ts here

New Year traditions are often a matter of “do such-and-such on January first, and you’ll have good luck all year.” In the American South, that means eating the new year meal, traditionally hog jowl, collard greens, and black-eyed peas (also called field peas or cow peas). My family eats ham or pork chops, black-eyed peas, and a spinach salad. We do it out of tradition more than superstition, but I know older people who get nervous if there aren’t the right foods in the house when the New Year holiday approaches. As you go further south, those field peas are served more often, and in some places are an everyday dish. Maybe you didn’t know that field peas come in different varieties, with different uses and flavors.

Because the seeds were usually passed down through families, they come in so many varieties that no one has an exact count. The have the best names — turkey craw, washday, red ripper, old timer, whippoorwill. Different kinds have different applications in the kitchen. Crowder peas, named for the way they crowd into the pod, are big and meaty and mix well with rice. Cream peas are bright and delicate and mash well.

The tiny Sea Island red pea, a rare variety that since the 17th century was cooked into a ruddy gravy in the rice fields of the Carolinas, is being revived by dedicated students of Southern culinary history, some of whom gathered on a Sunday afternoon last month at a historic antebellum house in Charleston, S.C., for what organizers said was the most elaborate Southern field-pea tasting ever assembled.

Read about the history of black-eyed peas and the effort to expand the selection at your local grocery store at the New York Times. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: jeffreyw)

As the cake turns, it changes color. Also, I get hungrier. How?

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YouTube user CharlotteSometimes doesn't explain, but commenter Nyphetamine Blue says that it's done by airbrushing color onto the icing from different directions. The ridges help delineate where one color begins and another ends. Turning the cake exposes alternate sides of the ridges.

-via Gizmodo

Christmas time means cooking and baking for friends and family, and while some are so adept they give homemade goodies as gifts others try their best to cook for guests and end up failing miserably.

With all the stress, shopping madness and rushing around to get things done in time it's no wonder so many people fail to properly prepare even the simplest of dishes.

But sometimes we fail because the person who posted the recipe exaggerated about how easy it is to make, resulting in an embarrassing mess that's supposed to resemble Mr. Claus.

See 20 Terrible Christmas Fails That Really Tried To Be Festive here (note: not all fails in this article are food related)

Lipton Onion Soup Mix is one of those things I always have in the kitchen, although I’ve never made soup with it. Well, I have thrown a packet into a homemade vegetable soup before, but I’ve never made the soup by itself. Those packets are instant flavor, good for casseroles, gravy, dip, stir fry, or any kind of cooked meat. The soup mix was introduced in 1952, and became an immediate hit with cooks.

For Ashkenazi Jews in America, onion soup mix was both familiar and new. Rather than slicing or browning onions for noodle kugel, blintzes, and brisket, busy housewives could obtain the same onion flavor in a fraction of the time. When I asked my grandmother—an avid home cook who makes nearly everything from scratch—why she used a packaged food in brisket, she matter-of-factly said that it’s because her mother used it. “I actually do really like the taste of it too,” she said. “It’s also one less thing that I have to do while cooking. You never just make brisket. You also make a lot of other things to go with it, so if I can just take a package and throw it in there then it’ll save me some time and some pots and pans.”

I agree. Why use your time cutting and caramelizing onions when you can open a packet? Read more about the wonder that is Lipton onion soup mix at Lucky Peach. -via Digg

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I'm not sure whether these strange videos posted on Facebook by Showry are foodporn or postmodern feminist comedy made with a South Korean sense of humor in mind, but they definitely whet my appetite for internet oddities!

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Showry's sexy food themed videos are meant to poke fun at the South Korean social media trend of Muk-bang, or "eating broadcasts", which feature attractive guys and gals gorging themselves on food.

But unlike the seductive cam model element found in traditional Muk-bang vids, Showry's strange foodie funtime is more likely to make viewers lose their appetites.

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See more from Showry at BuzzFeed

(Photo: Endless Simmer)

What, you didn't think that they'd just throw the snout away, did you? Aside from the feet, that's the tastiest part of the pig! The Tenderloin Grill in Kansas City, Missouri offers this delicacy. According to the menu, it costs $3.99. It comes with hot sauce, as any pork sandwich should.