The Mind of a Chef (2012) s03e08 Episode Script
Bourbon
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I like the way bourbon turns me into a redneck.
A Korean redneck.
Very little has changed in the way our whiskey is made over the past 200 years.
And yet it's a drink that's still barely understood.
It's like a Southern redneck and an Indian get in a room together and they start dancing.
But what exactly makes a great bourbon? It's like a 60-year-old drag queen wearing, like, old leather and smoking a pipe.
What do you do on the weekends? Let me show you my Kentucky.
Enter The Mind of a Chef.
All curious chefs, they're just fascinated by their surroundings.
That is intense.
They don't teach you this in cooking school.
I spent a long time drinking bourbon.
But I've only spent a small amount of time drinking bourbon right.
And that was something that I learned in Kentucky.
It is a rite of passage.
It's one of the few times where the lightbulb really goes off in your head, and you say, "Holy, have I been doing this wrong my entire life.
" Bourbon is not just a drink-it-fast-and-get-drunk drink anymore.
It's got a proper place in the pantheon of high-end spirits, and we should respect it.
I would just like to say the instructive part of that sentence was it's not a drink-fast-and-get-drunk spirit anymore.
I'm going to jump right into it.
I've got this little thing I've set up for you guys.
We're going to taste three different bourbons, right? So this is a little secret thing, kind of.
It's very well known in Kentucky, it's called Ancient Age.
And it is a cheap bourbon.
And you can tell because it's got a plastic cap.
Yes, it does.
It's still glass.
It's still glass.
Is that to recommend it? Some of the other ones are like all plastic.
In many blind taste testings, it will beat out bourbons double the price.
So it makes a great, great bourbon.
So one of the things is, bourbon is made from corn.
So what better way to sort of introduce kind of a flavor profile and how to pair foods than popcorn? So this is just dry popcorn.
Obviously, it's going to be a very simple pairing.
The corn and the corn in the bourbon is going to kind of start to resonate.
And so this is a ten-year.
Really, that's a ten-year-old bourbon? It's a ten-year.
So we're talking age, but not incredible amount of age.
I wouldn't even have guessed a cheap bourbon would be ten years old.
You know, everyone always asks me, like, "What kind of bourbon should I pair with this?" You know, "I'm eating barbecue.
" And I always say it matters less the bourbon, but it matters the age.
Oh, okay.
Because the longer the bourbon sits in that barrel, the more exposure to the tannins and the wood and the char, it's going to develop more flavors.
Bourbon is a whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon.
And by law in 1964, U.
S.
Congress said that bourbon had to be the following: made in the U.
S.
, made with at least 51% corn, aged in new, charred oak barrels, and no coloring or flavor added.
The initial bourbon coming off the still is very raw.
It's called white dog.
It's something that you can drink, but you really don't want to drink.
When you put it in the barrel, that's where the color and most of the flavor comes from.
Younger bourbon is just like, you know, a small child.
It's young, it's raw, it's not good.
It really takes some time in this barrel to become mature.
Then it gets to be six or eight years old.
So it's like a teenager and it's a lot more flavor, but not there yet.
Still able to drive, but probably a little scary.
Then you get to, say, a ten- or 12-year-old, and now you're starting to talk about a young adult that has some refinery, and it's very nice and very enjoyable.
You can drink it neat, it's very easy to mix it with a good cocktail.
Better the whiskey, better the cocktail.
15-year-old it's quite a real drink of whiskey, real kick in the pants.
Because it's 107 proof out of the bottle.
Then you get to, say, our 20-year-old, and that's more like a lady.
That's really refined, it's soft on the tongue and that's what we want.
I call it "butter whiskey.
" It's just so soft and smooth.
Then all of a sudden because it stays in the barrel a little longer, it gets a little more edge to it and starts to get to that point where it's an old man and you need to put him out to pasture maybe because just scary, just too old, get him out of here.
Brisket's fun because it sort of can hold up to cooking a long time.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
It's almost like you can't beat it up.
Oh, I've seen plenty people beat it up.
There's no question about that.
Paul Qui's a chef of Qui Restaurant in Austin, Texas.
We have a shared love of bourbon.
It's always fun to cook with someone like that.
All right, so first thing I'm going to do is make a rub.
I got just salt, dark chili, black pepper and cinnamon.
I'm just going to score it a little bit.
It helps the bourbon to penetrate into the meat.
I'm going to start rendering off some of the fat here.
You know, I try not to use a super high quality bourbon, actually, for cooking.
Especially with stuff like this.
Like medium, middle of the road is fine.
I feel like except for desserts.
Desserts I think the quality shines.
Take a shot of that.
Cheers.
All right, so I'm going to throw some aromatics in here.
Will you actually help me and do some carrots for me? Sure.
I think people have just tapped into these days the idea that you can use the bourbon barrel after the bourbon's been drained to flavor things.
And it's pretty cool, it's like bourbon takes on a second life.
Yeah, after.
So what I do is actually with this so I've got bourbon in there as an ingredient, but I've also got the bourbon barrel soy sauce.
That's the Kentucky stuff, huh? Yeah, yeah, it's fermented and then it's aged one year in old bourbon barrels.
Balsamic vinegar.
This is just beef broth.
Two bottles of stout beer.
It adds bitterness, a little hoppiness, it also adds body.
It makes sense with the caramelization and the smoke.
And then of course bourbon.
And, you know, again I have recipes for this, but I always just eyeball it.
Shot number two.
So this is going to go in the oven for about three and a half hours.
I go along and I adopt these recipes that I learn from the rednecks, right? Throw some soy sauce into it and I'll throw some other stuff into it.
Soy sauce makes sense with bourbon.
In this, yeah.
Any time I add bourbon to a dish, it forces me to simplify the dish because it's like all of a sudden it becomes very humble, you know.
I can't start adding liquid nitrogen to a dish because it just doesn't work with bourbon, so.
I like the way bourbon turns me into a redneck.
A Korean redneck.
Can you smell that? That smells good.
Good, huh? Whenever I'm using an ingredient I love to use it like kind of twice or three times.
Yeah, I agree with that.
So we're going to do a little sweet jalapeño jelly.
I like refreshing things.
So you're going to get and this is going to be a purer form of bourbon.
Bourbon, yeah.
Shot three.
I'm going to make my turnips.
That's the most beautiful sound in the world.
Oh, nice, perfect.
Just do one slice.
Like a turnip here.
Turnip there.
Few raw slices of turnip.
Just want to get it all over.
I like a lot of sauce on my plate.
That's a lot of sauce.
That is a lot of sauce.
Braised brisket with bourbon.
Can I ask you a question about pairing? Yes.
So like I feel like there are two principles to pairing: one is complementary and one is contrast.
Ooh, you're talking my language, yeah.
So we've been doing complementary.
Yes.
I love bourbon so much that I order it at times when I think it's probably not the right thing to pair with what I'm eating.
If you were going to contrast with bourbon, what would be something that would make sense? Well, first of all, I'm going to say there's no wrong time to drink bourbon.
Thank God for you, Ed Lee.
And it's probably harder to do with bourbon than it is with wine.
Just because wine still sort of toes that acidity line very well.
You have zero acidity in here.
Right.
Now what I would say, though, is we have this wonderful thing we can do with bourbon, which is mix it into a cocktail.
Yes.
And when you do that, all of a sudden it boom.
I want to make octopus because you would normally think, "Oh, octopus and bourbon, doesn't go together.
" No.
But Now will you just give me a hand here and just hold this for me above your head? No, this is a serious culinary thing.
You have to hold it above your head.
I am not your baby chef.
So anyway, this is an octopus.
And you know, it's It's gross.
It's the easiest thing in the world to cook.
Like this is it.
You could just do this and this is it.
So I'm going to put a lid on this and get a drink.
So this is my bourbon, actually.
This is bourbon mixed with a little bit of rye.
And rye's going to give you a little spice.
I think it adds a layer of complexity.
Explain to me what the difference is between rye and bourbon.
Bourbon is 51% corn, the rest could be rye, wheat.
Rye whiskey has to be 100% rye.
Oh, okay.
I want to do slightly more refined food, but I still want to drink bourbon with it.
To me this is a more refined bourbon whiskey, and I could see that this would not interfere with your food.
And the great thing is, it'll still get you drunk just as fast.
But it just is in a little more refined way.
Which is my shortlist criterion.
You want to take a look at this? What do you think it's going to look like? Like the predator right before it attacks.
Voilà .
Yeah, it looks more octopus-y now.
You know what I mean, like what you kind of typically think of.
So I'm going to add a little bit of bourbon.
And instead of adding salt, I'm going to add bacon.
I think that's a great idea.
How do you keep your octopus from getting tough? There's two ways to eat octopus: you either cook it high heat really fast, like dunk it for 30 seconds, take it out, slice into it.
That's like the Japanese way.
Or it's low and slow.
That's like the Mediterranean.
But everything in the middle is going to be tough and nasty.
Are you ready? Yeah, I'm ready.
What's going to happen? Animal All right, now the fun part begins.
Now it looks like octopus.
But I always look at sea creatures in general, to me they all look like aliens.
They do, they do.
Like from another planet.
I scuba dive and it's like being on another planet.
Crazy stuff down there.
I mean what if aliens really are just like they don't land on land, they just go right into the ocean.
Slip into the ocean.
Heavy stuff.
The bourbon is kicking in, my friend.
All right, so I mean literally fingerling potatoes that's been boiled.
And I do the really fancy culinary technique.
Just do that.
So when you were at the Cordon Bleu, you were That's what they taught me.
You want to smash one? Yeah, I do want to smash one.
Okay, don't kill it.
Look, I'm a big woman, I have very large, muscular hands.
Firm but tender.
All right, what we're going to do is turn up the heat.
Okay.
I'm going to add a touch more oil.
I'm going to And I took out a little bit of the bacon pieces too.
And I always say like when I do this, I'm not even cooking.
Like the cast iron is doing the work.
I'm just applying heat to it.
The more you mess with it the more you're just getting in the cast iron pan's way.
Just going to add a little bourbon to it.
And then the olives.
I love adding lemon juice while the pan is still hot.
It kind of steams that lemon juice.
And that's pretty much it.
Give that a little bit of Well, this is complex and rustic at the same time.
I'm like I would never think of making something like this.
And then I'm going to get just a little bit fancy.
This is just a little yogurt that's got some spices in it.
This is a little jalapeño puree.
Again, I think you would see this and go, "Oh, maybe a nice sauvignon blanc or chenin blanc," but I think it could easily straddle into a bourbon world.
Bourbon always and it still is it's a working man's drink.
A generation ago or two generations ago bourbon wasn't something you sat around and you took notes on, took tasting notes and compared.
There was a time in history where bourbon was very unpopular and a lot of distilleries went under.
It's scary to think, but there was a time when bourbon could have disappeared.
But there was a group of very stubborn people in Kentucky who said, "No, we're going "to keep making this stuff.
We're going to keep making it the right way.
" What comes out of the mash still is that clear corn whiskey.
People will argue differently, but I would say there's not much difference in that flavor between corn mash to corn mash to corn mash.
The true flavor of bourbon, the true color, everything to me that distinguishes itself as bourbon comes from the cooperage.
When you see those barrels being burned, you are witnessing the essence of bourbon flavor happening right there.
It is the corn whiskey and the charred wood that get together.
That's bourbon.
The smell of the charred wood, it's intoxicating.
What you smell is just that starting point of what bourbon is going to be.
I think, you know, as a chef you're constantly thinking about things that can make your food unique.
The big sort of evolution for me of cooking with bourbon was to look back and notice this barrel.
Once that barrel has been drained, now you've got this barrel that has ten years of alcohol that's been sitting in there.
There's a lot of flavor in there, but it's also trapped in there.
So what do you do with it? This is a bourbon stave.
This is one piece of the barrel.
If you run your finger along here, you actually pick up a lot of char.
So that char flavor is really, for me, it's the essence of smoke.
I've always dreamt about sort of using this as food.
Because it smells great and it actually has a flavor.
You know, I mean I cook with ash, I cook with fire, I cook with wood, I cook with smoke.
Why can't we cook with charred bits of bourbon barrel stave? So we started thinking about this as an ingredient.
We serve a dish on there at the restaurant.
We do a bison carpaccio.
But we actually heat up the bourbon staves so that your very thin slices of bison are hitting this sort of warm wood.
And what that does is it releases the vapors of the bourbon inside.
But it also, because the meat is resting on this char, and as you can see my hand's already picked up all this resin and charcoal, so does the meat.
And so you just get this delicate flavor of sort of charredness from something that's completely cold, right? So it just plays in your head a little bit.
I treat this piece of wood with a lot of respect.
It's gone through a lot.
It's lived a very long time.
And it continues to give us life.
This is the last bourbon I wanted to taste for you guys, and I want you to look at this.
I don't open this for just anybody.
Tears.
This is not an old bourbon, it's probably somewhere between ten and 12 years, but the bottle itself probably bottled some time in the '60s.
Love that: "Your key to hospitality.
" It's adorable.
Isn't it awesome? To me this is a living treasure.
The idea of bourbon and the lore being passed on to me is very special.
I understand how dear it is, I understand how precious it is, and it is one of the few things that are truly precious.
So here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to give you a little bit.
So I want to do a little more sorghum on this popcorn, but I'm also going to add Matt Jamie's smoked sea salt.
And one of the things that's very important in the culture of Kentucky is to sort of, you know, man up and drink your bourbon.
It gives me like kind of library and old books, and a burned down fire, and leather and pipe in all of these really comforting ways.
Now this to me is is rough.
It's hairy.
You know, it's got fisticuffs.
I think that stylistically the bourbon of the last generation was this.
And all the bourbon we drink now is a little bit more It's a little bit more pinky in the air, and it's a little bit finer and it's a little bit more refined.
It's much more than just a drink that is in the glass.
It is a rite of passage.
It is a ritual.
It is something that and you pass it on.
And it's done in a way that's very familial.
So to be a part of that cycle for me, I treat it with honor.
Just close your eyes, smell it.
Pipe.
Yeah.
Grandfather Meerschaum pipe, mm-hmm.
I just get lots of leather.
A lot of leather.
So many jokes I could make right now.
It's like a 60-year-old drag queen wearing like old leather and smoking a pipe.
What do you do on the weekends? Let me show you my Kentucky.
Come.
For more information on The Mind of a Chef, go to pbs.
org/themindofachef.
Support your PBS station.
I like the way bourbon turns me into a redneck.
A Korean redneck.
Very little has changed in the way our whiskey is made over the past 200 years.
And yet it's a drink that's still barely understood.
It's like a Southern redneck and an Indian get in a room together and they start dancing.
But what exactly makes a great bourbon? It's like a 60-year-old drag queen wearing, like, old leather and smoking a pipe.
What do you do on the weekends? Let me show you my Kentucky.
Enter The Mind of a Chef.
All curious chefs, they're just fascinated by their surroundings.
That is intense.
They don't teach you this in cooking school.
I spent a long time drinking bourbon.
But I've only spent a small amount of time drinking bourbon right.
And that was something that I learned in Kentucky.
It is a rite of passage.
It's one of the few times where the lightbulb really goes off in your head, and you say, "Holy, have I been doing this wrong my entire life.
" Bourbon is not just a drink-it-fast-and-get-drunk drink anymore.
It's got a proper place in the pantheon of high-end spirits, and we should respect it.
I would just like to say the instructive part of that sentence was it's not a drink-fast-and-get-drunk spirit anymore.
I'm going to jump right into it.
I've got this little thing I've set up for you guys.
We're going to taste three different bourbons, right? So this is a little secret thing, kind of.
It's very well known in Kentucky, it's called Ancient Age.
And it is a cheap bourbon.
And you can tell because it's got a plastic cap.
Yes, it does.
It's still glass.
It's still glass.
Is that to recommend it? Some of the other ones are like all plastic.
In many blind taste testings, it will beat out bourbons double the price.
So it makes a great, great bourbon.
So one of the things is, bourbon is made from corn.
So what better way to sort of introduce kind of a flavor profile and how to pair foods than popcorn? So this is just dry popcorn.
Obviously, it's going to be a very simple pairing.
The corn and the corn in the bourbon is going to kind of start to resonate.
And so this is a ten-year.
Really, that's a ten-year-old bourbon? It's a ten-year.
So we're talking age, but not incredible amount of age.
I wouldn't even have guessed a cheap bourbon would be ten years old.
You know, everyone always asks me, like, "What kind of bourbon should I pair with this?" You know, "I'm eating barbecue.
" And I always say it matters less the bourbon, but it matters the age.
Oh, okay.
Because the longer the bourbon sits in that barrel, the more exposure to the tannins and the wood and the char, it's going to develop more flavors.
Bourbon is a whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon.
And by law in 1964, U.
S.
Congress said that bourbon had to be the following: made in the U.
S.
, made with at least 51% corn, aged in new, charred oak barrels, and no coloring or flavor added.
The initial bourbon coming off the still is very raw.
It's called white dog.
It's something that you can drink, but you really don't want to drink.
When you put it in the barrel, that's where the color and most of the flavor comes from.
Younger bourbon is just like, you know, a small child.
It's young, it's raw, it's not good.
It really takes some time in this barrel to become mature.
Then it gets to be six or eight years old.
So it's like a teenager and it's a lot more flavor, but not there yet.
Still able to drive, but probably a little scary.
Then you get to, say, a ten- or 12-year-old, and now you're starting to talk about a young adult that has some refinery, and it's very nice and very enjoyable.
You can drink it neat, it's very easy to mix it with a good cocktail.
Better the whiskey, better the cocktail.
15-year-old it's quite a real drink of whiskey, real kick in the pants.
Because it's 107 proof out of the bottle.
Then you get to, say, our 20-year-old, and that's more like a lady.
That's really refined, it's soft on the tongue and that's what we want.
I call it "butter whiskey.
" It's just so soft and smooth.
Then all of a sudden because it stays in the barrel a little longer, it gets a little more edge to it and starts to get to that point where it's an old man and you need to put him out to pasture maybe because just scary, just too old, get him out of here.
Brisket's fun because it sort of can hold up to cooking a long time.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
It's almost like you can't beat it up.
Oh, I've seen plenty people beat it up.
There's no question about that.
Paul Qui's a chef of Qui Restaurant in Austin, Texas.
We have a shared love of bourbon.
It's always fun to cook with someone like that.
All right, so first thing I'm going to do is make a rub.
I got just salt, dark chili, black pepper and cinnamon.
I'm just going to score it a little bit.
It helps the bourbon to penetrate into the meat.
I'm going to start rendering off some of the fat here.
You know, I try not to use a super high quality bourbon, actually, for cooking.
Especially with stuff like this.
Like medium, middle of the road is fine.
I feel like except for desserts.
Desserts I think the quality shines.
Take a shot of that.
Cheers.
All right, so I'm going to throw some aromatics in here.
Will you actually help me and do some carrots for me? Sure.
I think people have just tapped into these days the idea that you can use the bourbon barrel after the bourbon's been drained to flavor things.
And it's pretty cool, it's like bourbon takes on a second life.
Yeah, after.
So what I do is actually with this so I've got bourbon in there as an ingredient, but I've also got the bourbon barrel soy sauce.
That's the Kentucky stuff, huh? Yeah, yeah, it's fermented and then it's aged one year in old bourbon barrels.
Balsamic vinegar.
This is just beef broth.
Two bottles of stout beer.
It adds bitterness, a little hoppiness, it also adds body.
It makes sense with the caramelization and the smoke.
And then of course bourbon.
And, you know, again I have recipes for this, but I always just eyeball it.
Shot number two.
So this is going to go in the oven for about three and a half hours.
I go along and I adopt these recipes that I learn from the rednecks, right? Throw some soy sauce into it and I'll throw some other stuff into it.
Soy sauce makes sense with bourbon.
In this, yeah.
Any time I add bourbon to a dish, it forces me to simplify the dish because it's like all of a sudden it becomes very humble, you know.
I can't start adding liquid nitrogen to a dish because it just doesn't work with bourbon, so.
I like the way bourbon turns me into a redneck.
A Korean redneck.
Can you smell that? That smells good.
Good, huh? Whenever I'm using an ingredient I love to use it like kind of twice or three times.
Yeah, I agree with that.
So we're going to do a little sweet jalapeño jelly.
I like refreshing things.
So you're going to get and this is going to be a purer form of bourbon.
Bourbon, yeah.
Shot three.
I'm going to make my turnips.
That's the most beautiful sound in the world.
Oh, nice, perfect.
Just do one slice.
Like a turnip here.
Turnip there.
Few raw slices of turnip.
Just want to get it all over.
I like a lot of sauce on my plate.
That's a lot of sauce.
That is a lot of sauce.
Braised brisket with bourbon.
Can I ask you a question about pairing? Yes.
So like I feel like there are two principles to pairing: one is complementary and one is contrast.
Ooh, you're talking my language, yeah.
So we've been doing complementary.
Yes.
I love bourbon so much that I order it at times when I think it's probably not the right thing to pair with what I'm eating.
If you were going to contrast with bourbon, what would be something that would make sense? Well, first of all, I'm going to say there's no wrong time to drink bourbon.
Thank God for you, Ed Lee.
And it's probably harder to do with bourbon than it is with wine.
Just because wine still sort of toes that acidity line very well.
You have zero acidity in here.
Right.
Now what I would say, though, is we have this wonderful thing we can do with bourbon, which is mix it into a cocktail.
Yes.
And when you do that, all of a sudden it boom.
I want to make octopus because you would normally think, "Oh, octopus and bourbon, doesn't go together.
" No.
But Now will you just give me a hand here and just hold this for me above your head? No, this is a serious culinary thing.
You have to hold it above your head.
I am not your baby chef.
So anyway, this is an octopus.
And you know, it's It's gross.
It's the easiest thing in the world to cook.
Like this is it.
You could just do this and this is it.
So I'm going to put a lid on this and get a drink.
So this is my bourbon, actually.
This is bourbon mixed with a little bit of rye.
And rye's going to give you a little spice.
I think it adds a layer of complexity.
Explain to me what the difference is between rye and bourbon.
Bourbon is 51% corn, the rest could be rye, wheat.
Rye whiskey has to be 100% rye.
Oh, okay.
I want to do slightly more refined food, but I still want to drink bourbon with it.
To me this is a more refined bourbon whiskey, and I could see that this would not interfere with your food.
And the great thing is, it'll still get you drunk just as fast.
But it just is in a little more refined way.
Which is my shortlist criterion.
You want to take a look at this? What do you think it's going to look like? Like the predator right before it attacks.
Voilà .
Yeah, it looks more octopus-y now.
You know what I mean, like what you kind of typically think of.
So I'm going to add a little bit of bourbon.
And instead of adding salt, I'm going to add bacon.
I think that's a great idea.
How do you keep your octopus from getting tough? There's two ways to eat octopus: you either cook it high heat really fast, like dunk it for 30 seconds, take it out, slice into it.
That's like the Japanese way.
Or it's low and slow.
That's like the Mediterranean.
But everything in the middle is going to be tough and nasty.
Are you ready? Yeah, I'm ready.
What's going to happen? Animal All right, now the fun part begins.
Now it looks like octopus.
But I always look at sea creatures in general, to me they all look like aliens.
They do, they do.
Like from another planet.
I scuba dive and it's like being on another planet.
Crazy stuff down there.
I mean what if aliens really are just like they don't land on land, they just go right into the ocean.
Slip into the ocean.
Heavy stuff.
The bourbon is kicking in, my friend.
All right, so I mean literally fingerling potatoes that's been boiled.
And I do the really fancy culinary technique.
Just do that.
So when you were at the Cordon Bleu, you were That's what they taught me.
You want to smash one? Yeah, I do want to smash one.
Okay, don't kill it.
Look, I'm a big woman, I have very large, muscular hands.
Firm but tender.
All right, what we're going to do is turn up the heat.
Okay.
I'm going to add a touch more oil.
I'm going to And I took out a little bit of the bacon pieces too.
And I always say like when I do this, I'm not even cooking.
Like the cast iron is doing the work.
I'm just applying heat to it.
The more you mess with it the more you're just getting in the cast iron pan's way.
Just going to add a little bourbon to it.
And then the olives.
I love adding lemon juice while the pan is still hot.
It kind of steams that lemon juice.
And that's pretty much it.
Give that a little bit of Well, this is complex and rustic at the same time.
I'm like I would never think of making something like this.
And then I'm going to get just a little bit fancy.
This is just a little yogurt that's got some spices in it.
This is a little jalapeño puree.
Again, I think you would see this and go, "Oh, maybe a nice sauvignon blanc or chenin blanc," but I think it could easily straddle into a bourbon world.
Bourbon always and it still is it's a working man's drink.
A generation ago or two generations ago bourbon wasn't something you sat around and you took notes on, took tasting notes and compared.
There was a time in history where bourbon was very unpopular and a lot of distilleries went under.
It's scary to think, but there was a time when bourbon could have disappeared.
But there was a group of very stubborn people in Kentucky who said, "No, we're going "to keep making this stuff.
We're going to keep making it the right way.
" What comes out of the mash still is that clear corn whiskey.
People will argue differently, but I would say there's not much difference in that flavor between corn mash to corn mash to corn mash.
The true flavor of bourbon, the true color, everything to me that distinguishes itself as bourbon comes from the cooperage.
When you see those barrels being burned, you are witnessing the essence of bourbon flavor happening right there.
It is the corn whiskey and the charred wood that get together.
That's bourbon.
The smell of the charred wood, it's intoxicating.
What you smell is just that starting point of what bourbon is going to be.
I think, you know, as a chef you're constantly thinking about things that can make your food unique.
The big sort of evolution for me of cooking with bourbon was to look back and notice this barrel.
Once that barrel has been drained, now you've got this barrel that has ten years of alcohol that's been sitting in there.
There's a lot of flavor in there, but it's also trapped in there.
So what do you do with it? This is a bourbon stave.
This is one piece of the barrel.
If you run your finger along here, you actually pick up a lot of char.
So that char flavor is really, for me, it's the essence of smoke.
I've always dreamt about sort of using this as food.
Because it smells great and it actually has a flavor.
You know, I mean I cook with ash, I cook with fire, I cook with wood, I cook with smoke.
Why can't we cook with charred bits of bourbon barrel stave? So we started thinking about this as an ingredient.
We serve a dish on there at the restaurant.
We do a bison carpaccio.
But we actually heat up the bourbon staves so that your very thin slices of bison are hitting this sort of warm wood.
And what that does is it releases the vapors of the bourbon inside.
But it also, because the meat is resting on this char, and as you can see my hand's already picked up all this resin and charcoal, so does the meat.
And so you just get this delicate flavor of sort of charredness from something that's completely cold, right? So it just plays in your head a little bit.
I treat this piece of wood with a lot of respect.
It's gone through a lot.
It's lived a very long time.
And it continues to give us life.
This is the last bourbon I wanted to taste for you guys, and I want you to look at this.
I don't open this for just anybody.
Tears.
This is not an old bourbon, it's probably somewhere between ten and 12 years, but the bottle itself probably bottled some time in the '60s.
Love that: "Your key to hospitality.
" It's adorable.
Isn't it awesome? To me this is a living treasure.
The idea of bourbon and the lore being passed on to me is very special.
I understand how dear it is, I understand how precious it is, and it is one of the few things that are truly precious.
So here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to give you a little bit.
So I want to do a little more sorghum on this popcorn, but I'm also going to add Matt Jamie's smoked sea salt.
And one of the things that's very important in the culture of Kentucky is to sort of, you know, man up and drink your bourbon.
It gives me like kind of library and old books, and a burned down fire, and leather and pipe in all of these really comforting ways.
Now this to me is is rough.
It's hairy.
You know, it's got fisticuffs.
I think that stylistically the bourbon of the last generation was this.
And all the bourbon we drink now is a little bit more It's a little bit more pinky in the air, and it's a little bit finer and it's a little bit more refined.
It's much more than just a drink that is in the glass.
It is a rite of passage.
It is a ritual.
It is something that and you pass it on.
And it's done in a way that's very familial.
So to be a part of that cycle for me, I treat it with honor.
Just close your eyes, smell it.
Pipe.
Yeah.
Grandfather Meerschaum pipe, mm-hmm.
I just get lots of leather.
A lot of leather.
So many jokes I could make right now.
It's like a 60-year-old drag queen wearing like old leather and smoking a pipe.
What do you do on the weekends? Let me show you my Kentucky.
Come.
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