Sauced

Before it had a sauce, Chicken Tikka was cooked dry and charred in a tandoor. On its way from Delhi to curry houses in Scotland and England, it picked up a spiced tomato gravy, and more than one kitchen has a fair claim to that moment. Chicken Tikka Masala is Indian food that kept evolving as it traveled, and each place it passed through changed it.

We follow that journey from a tandoor kitchen in Delhi to a Glasgow legend involving a tin of tomato soup, and to the foreign secretary who called it a true British national dish. Then we cook the home-style version, test a long-held belief about the yogurt marinade against a 2023 lab study, and name the ingredient most home curries are missing. A maple-syrup smell that hung over Manhattan in 2009 leads back to one of the finishing spices. There's no alcohol in the dish this week, so we save it for the drink alongside.

This week's cocktail is the Masala Mango Lassi, a mango lassi blended with cardamom, salt and dark Demerara rum.

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Follow us on Instagram: @sauced.pod

Thanks to all of this week's partners:

Palomo Mezcal: https://pkgdgroup.com/mezcal-palomo

Underberg: https://underbergamerica.com/

Spain's own dictionary defines the word as a person or thing of little value, and it traces back to the Latin for a boar. Birria kept the insult and became the taco people now line up down the street for. The trail runs from Jalisco's wedding and baptism tables to Tijuana's red, cheese-stuffed version to everyone's feed.

We ask whether the one most people know matters more than the original, weigh goat against beef, settle whether the meat ever sees a sear, and work out why that slick of fat on the consommé earns its place. Then the booze gets decided live, with a nod to two Mexican states, and one of those bottles stays open for what we pour afterward.

This week's cocktail is The Sizzle Swizzle, Amontillado Sherry and Mezcal over pebble ice with lime, grapefruit, ginger and falernum, then painted with Peychaud's.

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Follow us on Instagram: @sauced.pod

Thanks to all of this week's partners:

G4: https://pkgdgroup.com/g4-tequila/

Underberg: https://underbergamerica.com/

El Buho Mezcal: https://elbuhomezcal.com/

New England claims Clam Chowder as its own, but the dish carries a distinctly French accent. Its name comes from the chaudière, the cooking pot Breton fishermen brought across the Atlantic. Centuries later, the man who set the modern standard made the same trip.

We read the oldest printed recipe in full, a 1751 poem that calls for a bottle of red wine, and sit down to Melville's bowl on Nantucket. From there it's the long-running feud between New England and Manhattan, including the year a Maine lawmaker tried to outlaw tomatoes in chowder, plus the era when clam shells could cover Harvard tuition. Then we lock in our non-negotiables, size up our options at the seafood counter, and settle the roux question. The pairing stays on the coast.

This week's cocktail is The Harry Johnson, a tall build of Manzanilla Sherry, ginger honey syrup, and lemon over pebble ice, topped with a spritz of peated Scotch.

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Follow us on Instagram: @sauced.pod

Thanks to all of this week's partners:

El Ateo: https://pkgdgroup.com/tequila-el-ateo/

Underberg: https://underbergamerica.com/

The pork shoulder spent most of its life as a cheap, tough poverty cut. Then Pulled Pork went from Carolina pits to a London street-food trailer to menus across the city, and worldwide searches for it peaked in the spring of 2020. We trace how the humblest cut on the pig became a global craze, and what a pandemic had to do with it.

We also get to the bottom of why the shoulder is sold as a butt, settle our non-negotiables for smoking one at home, and make the case for the sauce that really belongs on the table. It even finds its way into the glass.

This week's cocktail is The Francis Bourgeois, a riff on the classic Stone Fence with apple brandy, Angostura bitters, and hard cider.

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Follow us on Instagram: @sauced.pod

Thanks to all of this week's partners:

Asil Raicilla de la Sierra: https://pkgdgroup.com/raicilla-asil

Underberg: https://underbergamerica.com/

Online, the rule gets enforced like scripture: shepherds keep sheep, so Shepherd's Pie means lamb, and beef makes it a Cottage Pie. The oldest recipe usually cited for the dish asked for cold meat of any kind. For most of its life, nobody was checking what sat under the potatoes.

We trace how a Monday-night leftover earned two names, meet the pharmacist who sold France on a crop it thought was pig feed, and ask why Americans eat so little lamb. The build settles which booze goes in the filling, where cheese belongs, and what keeps the mash from sinking. Real mint sauce gets a defense, and the herb finds its way into the glass, too.

This week's cocktail is the Parmentier's Fancy, an Irish whiskey and dry sherry sour with lemon, ginger, Garden Party bitters, and a peated Scotch mist. Sother makes them himself: https://creativedrunk.bigcartel.com/product/cocktail-bitters/

For the full recipes and more, become a premium subscriber at https://sauced.supercast.com/

Follow us on Instagram: @sauced.pod

Thanks to all of this week's partners:

Mezcal Ultramundo: https://pkgdgroup.com/post/ultramundo/

Underberg: https://underbergamerica.com/

Americans eat about 20 billion hot dogs a year, roughly 70 per person, and close to 7 billion between Memorial Day and Labor Day alone. It is five centuries old and lives in our songs and our slang, yet it still loses top billing to the burger. From a $1.50 warehouse counter to $200 under gold leaf, no food is more American, or harder to pin down.

We get into where it really came from and why the famous origin story is a myth, how to cook one so it snaps instead of splits, and the regional map that sets New York against Chicago. Plus the one debate we are never going to settle.

We also turned the hot dog into a drink. This week's cocktail is The Ballpark Martini, a savory, briny mix of potato vodka, pickle brine, and celery.

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Follow us on Instagram: @sauced.pod

Thanks to all of this week's partners:

Arriesgado Ancestral Tequila: https://pkgdgroup.com/#our_brands/

Underberg: https://underbergamerica.com/

Everyone assumes the Caesar is Roman, or at least Italian. Instead, it was invented in Tijuana on the Fourth of July, 1924, by an Italian immigrant who worked a border crossing from San Diego because Prohibition had left his side the only place you could still sell a drink. It began as tableside theater, improvised from what a holiday rush left in the kitchen.

We get into whether the anchovy everyone argues about earns a place in ours, where we land on breast or thigh, and how a dish that began as luxury became the most shelf-stabilized salad around.

Meanwhile, this week's cocktail is The Aviator, a dirty daiquiri of white rum, fresh lime, and olive brine that carries the salad's savory side into a drink.

For the full recipes and more, become a premium subscriber at https://sauced.supercast.com/

Follow us on Instagram: @sauced.pod

Thanks to all of this week's partners:

El Acabo: https://pkgdgroup.com/#our_brands/

Underberg: https://underbergamerica.com/

For most of its life, Shrimp and Grits was a morning meal, the thing shrimpers ate at dawn while the season was running. Its old names say so plainly: "breakfast shrimp," and the earlier "shrimp and hominy." Then a Chapel Hill chef did the daring thing and moved it onto the dinner menu, and a 1985 New York Times write-up sent a humble plate national.

We get into how it climbed from the docks to the white tablecloth, why grits and not shrimp are the real non-negotiable, where we land on booze in a dish with barely any room for it, and the Charleston bottle that ties the glass back to the plate.

Fittingly, the drink leans into those breakfast roots. This week's cocktail is the Not Your Modern Milk Punch, the Southern style made with real milk instead of the clarified version, split between bourbon and brandy.

For the full recipes and more, become a premium subscriber at https://sauced.supercast.com/

Follow us on Instagram: @sauced.pod

Thanks to all of this week's partners:

Tequila El Viejito: https://pkgdgroup.com/#our_brands

Underberg: https://underbergamerica.com/

This is a bonus episode that first went out to our premium subscribers in January. We're dropping it in the public feed today so you can hear what bonus episodes are like. They typically feature deep dives into a single technique, ingredient, or side dish, or historical deep dive.

Mashed potatoes might be one of the simplest dishes to make, but getting them right? That's another story. We're breaking down where things go wrong (gluey textures, waterlogged spuds, the "point of no return") and how the pros avoid them. Along the way, we unpack Joël Robuchon's legendary 50% butter ratio, debate the ricer vs. food mill, and settle on the definitive preparation for Sauced mash.

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The hardest part of a Beef Wellington isn't the beef. It is getting a crisp pastry shell and a rare, rested center out of one hot oven, both finishing at the same moment, and one wrong move ruins the whole thing. We take the build apart so it finally stops being intimidating.

We trace how a French classic wearing a British hero's name became the most obsessed-over showstopper on the internet, right up to the chef who turned it into a meme. Then we get into the one cut of beef that works, the pile of small techniques that make it feel harder than it is, and where we land on the mustard, the barrier that keeps the pastry from going soggy, and the temperature you actually pull it at. The booze runs through the dish too, so it runs into the glass.

This week's cocktail is The Wellington Manhattan, built on overproof rye and the same Madeira that goes into the mushrooms, with a mushroom bitter to tie the glass to the plate.

For the full recipes and more, become a premium subscriber at https://sauced.supercast.com/

Follow us on Instagram: @sauced.pod

Thanks to all of this week's partners:

Palomo Mezcal: https://pkgdgroup.com/post/palomo-who-we-are/

Underberg: https://underbergamerica.com/

Wines 'Til Sold Out: https://www.wtso.com/

Buy this episode's wine: https://www.wtso.com/shared/product/ID89439/

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