Y’all go back to your low carb diets and leave us bread eaters alone with our crusty breads.
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Crusty breads are fine. Just cut off the crusts.
I’m ok with crust, but one of the tiny things that will make me big mad is getting something like chicken salad served on some homemade sourdough with a crumb so open that half of the sandwich falls through the bread and into my hand when I pick it up.
Open crumb is only good for photos. It’s functionally terrible.
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You guys are trying to use a screwdriver to hammer a nail!
Not all bread serves the same purpose. 
Or when you eat a sandwich on crusty bread and when you bite into it, the crust doesn’t break off in your mouth it just kinda smooshes the two pieces of bread together, so all the sandwich ingredients press out the sides of the sandwich and plop onto your plate. God I hate that.
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Give me milk bread or give me death.
@EmpireMan
9 years ago I saved your Egg Nog recipes from 2+2, and every year since then I forget about it until just before Christmas, and never end up making it.
I remembered today, and I went to the liquor store for Tequila and Sherry, going to take a crack at it tonight. Do you have any updated tips in the decade since?
Below is what I have saved. Additionally - do they make blenders that you can do a full gallon in? I think I’ll have to make half batches.
RUM BRANDY EGG NOG (makes one gallon)
12 large eggs
18 oz by vol / 450g by weight of sugar, superfine
3 tsp nutmeg optional
generous dash salt optional
12 oz brandy
12 oz spiced rum
36 oz whole milk
24 oz heavy cream
freshly-grated nutmeg to garnishTEQUILA SHERRY EGG NOG (makes one gallon)
12 large eggs
18 oz by vol / 450g by weight of sugar, superfine
3 tsp nutmeg optional
generous dash salt optional
12 oz anejo tequila
15 oz amontillado sherry
36 oz whole milk
24 oz heavy cream
freshly-grated nutmeg to garnishPROCEDURE
–beat eggs in blender for one minute on low/medium speed, we’re not trying to blend them to death, just shooting for evenness and an eggy harmony.
–it’s especially important to go easy on the blending if you have a fancy vitamix or similar: too much heat and the eggs could actually cook
–while still gently blending, slowly add the sugar, the nutmeg, the salt, both alcohols, the milk, and then finally the cream, slowly, until all combined
–chill the drink, at least overnight
–in a perfect world, serve in a chilled glass with freshly-grated nutmeg to garnish (use a microplane)DISCUSSION
Sugar: the original recipe called for 18oz of sugar by volume, but it’s a lot easier to go by weight and superfine sugar obv dissolves better than granulated. The amount of sugar in above recipes is too sweet for some people and it’s fine if you cut back, the drink’s not going to suck or explode. If you do measure the sugar by volume and for some reason you don’t have a measuring cup handy then according to the very fussy online converter I just used, 18 oz of granulated sugar is 32.665 tablespoons, good luck with that.Booze: Spiced rum best. Sailor Jerry’s is pretty cheap and while it’s not great in some drinks, for whatever reason it’s terrific here. (Sidebar: if you like Dark and Stormys then Gosling’s Black Seal is awesome and also not bad in the nog.) Don’t splurge on the brandy but also don’t use a bunch of minibottles from your last southwest flight to vegas…garbage in, garbage out. And make all the faces you want but the tequila/amontillado recipe is amazing, if forced to pick then I’d choose it over the rum version. Anejo tequila is unfortunately the priciest phylum of tequila and on a video I watched the guy was casually turbopouring a $130 bottle of it into his eggnog–insulting and unnecessary. Any respectable tequila will work, anejo and reposado especially, but even a decent blanco isn’t a catastrophe. The idea is that the sweet of the tequila will mesh with the dry of the amantillado. We’re shooting for a brand of amantiallado that’s more nutty/less citrusy, for more info ask Montresor.
Aging: IMPORTANT: Chilling it overnight is plenty and will make a tasty drink. But keeping it in the fridge for a month is even better, and letting it rest for six months to a year is maybe perfection. For the record your eggnog isn’t fermenting or gestating or anything MCATable, it’s just sort of loitering and I suppose reacting and the flavors are still developing. It’s totally safe even after a year, here and here are two links discussing that. I’ve never had an mega-aged eggnog but I’m pretty sure that the more it ages the more the alcohol edges will blend in.
Storage/Lore: traditionally stored in an airtight container covered in tin foil with the shiny side out. Traditionally stored with one nut of nutmeg that I guess will then be used/grated for the garnish. Probably a good idea just to gently agitate the ingredients from time to time, but note the ingredients are still going to separate and you’ll have to shake it a little before serving. I just keep mine in mason jars so this part is a snap.
Density: by design this eggnog is lighter than the processed goop we’re used to buying at the grocery store. Apparently this was the style >150 years ago when these kinds of drinks (flips, essentially) were popular and people would ride around to each other’s apartments on gigantic bicycles to drink whatever Archibald and Zachariah had been aging in their cellar since last season’s turnip harvest. Note if you ignored all my warnings and blended it too fast then you’ll probably be drinking scrambled eggs and it will be a lot thicker.
When you’re inevitably asked for this recipe then feel free to pass it on, but traditionally you have to act like you are giving up the biggest secret since the holy grail or yellow king. The basic idea is to not to post it on an internet messageboard.
Happy holidays!
REFERENCES: this isn’t my recipe, I combed through a bunch of Best Eggnog Recipe Evers to land on this one, which is essentially pro bartender guy Jeff Morgenthaler’s and I only made a couple small tweaks. If anything’s wrong then it’s my fault, I don’t cook, and I’m also not a lawyer but my understanding of the law is that by reading this sentence you are waiving all rights in the event you drink this and it somehow rearranges you into something contagious or moribund. And yes I realize only two of you actually read this far and so legally I’m still on the hook. Btw if that goddamn carpet unrolling gif gets posted now then a discriminating reader will consider it a red carpet showing you the way towards a better life.
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hi cornboy and yes absolutely, some big changes, and over time I rewrote the above so it’s less obnoxious. This is where the email is now:
I’ve tweaked below for years and feel like it’s getting close. Tbh the last few years I’ve been slowly reducing the sugar (and it could probably be reduced even more), but people seem to like it this sweet. The problem is that everyone always whines about how this is going to end in death by salmonella so even before covid I was forced to rename it…
PLAGUE NOG
(makes half-gallon)
6 eggs
200g superfine white sugar
25g light brown sugar
dashes of cinnamon
fewer dashes of nutmeg
even fewer dashes of salt
4oz bourbon (W.L.Weller Special Reserve 90-proof wheated bourbon)
4oz brandy (E&J VSOP Brandy)
2oz benedictine
18oz whole milk
12oz heavy whipping cream
–blend the (whole) eggs slowly in blender
–slowly add the above in the above order
–don’t blend too aggressively or the cream will start whipping
–in a perfect world serve in chilled glass with freshly-grated nutmeg to garnish (use microplane)
–many bourbons and brandies can work but these two were the best combo after a zillion candidates, bonus is they happened to be cheapo brands too
–dark horse alcohol combo if you’re feeling crazy would be 5-6oz of anejo tequila and 5-6oz of a nuttier amontillado.
–classic combo would be 5-6oz of spiced rum and 5-6oz of brandy
–refrigerate, agitate every week or so, don’t worry about spices that settle at the bottom
–shake before serving to remix/froth (I store each batch in two 1-quart mason jars and shake in jar)
–it’s noticeably better after three days and peaking at three weeks
–supposedly it keeps and improves for a whole year,
–but I’m not vouching for that. I recently tried a batch of ten-month and it was funky, hostile, sentient…I didn’t get sick but it was not refreshing
–note: this style of egg nog is way lighter than the processed goop we’re used to buying at the grocery store. Apparently this was the style >150 years ago when these styles of drinks (flips, essentially) were popular and people would ride to each other’s farmsteads on gigantic corny bicycles to drink whatever Archibald and Zachariah had been aging in their cellar since last season’s turnip harvest. But if you ignored my warning and blended it too fast in a fancy vitamix then you’ll be drinking literally scrambled eggs and it will be somewhat thicker
edit for cornboy: I make it a half-gallon at a time and pour each blenderfull into two 32-oz mason jars, it’s a good system. Have fun dude
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also sorry about the tequila and the sherry!! Maybe palomas & andalusian bucks?
Wonderful - thank you! I’ll let you know how they turn out.
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sure thing and PS rereading that, I guess the weller isn’t exactly a cheapo brand any more, that bottle is prob at best $60 now, but buffalo trace would be totally fine
Holy shit this guy nogs.
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Why do Americans refuse to learn how to use a pita? This popped up on my feed. Its like making a grilled cheese sandwich by taking two sliced of bread placing it on top of each other and putting a slice of cheese on top.
You got a handy vid on proper pita use?
I think you’re supposed to scoop with the pita not spread shit one it
i was gonna say it’s like videos on how to breathe, but i guess there are plenty of those.
Also, I think you should open the pita at the top and put food inside the pocket that is formed after you split it. But a lot of folks (myself included) use pitas as substitutes for flatbreads (just throwing stuff on top of the unopened pita and eating it like an open faced sandwich) or tortillas (put stuff on top, fold entire pita in half and eat it like a taco)
Not all pita has pockets…
True. Especially if the oven wasn’t hot enough the pita doesn’t inflate well and you don’t get a nice pocket. Those pitas are most likely to get the flatbreat/tortilla treatment in my world.