the bird on fire

The Bird is the Word: Sophisticated Schoolyard Shenanigans

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My favorite ways to cook a steak.

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Hungry? This article will leave you yearning for a steak. Ike the Food Dude will break down the various ways to cook a steak. While some methods are easier than others, all sound delicious, and all are worth a try. Get cooking. — Roman Rickwood, Editor

By Ike Spry, Food Dude

Since the dawn of time, we humans have asked questions. Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? And, most importantly, how do I cook a steak? 

Well, I have the answers (to at least one of those questions). Whether you like your steak still mooing, or tough as leather, there are a few basic cooking principles that will get you a perfect steak. It seems like nowadays everybody cooks steaks differently: grilled, front seared, reverse seared, pan seared, smoked or even sous vide. At the end of the day, a lot of methods work, and I’m not here to say which one is best for you, although I think a pan-seared steak is probably the most consistent. There really is no perfect steak for everyone, but these tips can work for any cooking medium and any preferred temperature.

Probably the most important aspect of a great steak is your control of the internal temperature. Experienced home cooks can tell the temperature of a steak just by touching it. But, that takes a lot of practice. That’s why I think it’s important to invest in a meat thermometer. I definitely don’t promote poking a one-inch thick steak full of holes every 20 seconds to see if your steak’s cooked. But, if you’re making a thick steak or roast, these things come in really handy. Also being able to “predict the cook” on your steak can relieve a lot of stress for your Sunday dinner. Going back to feeling a steak by touch, especially for those smaller steaks, I recommend getting a feel for it. Some chefs tell you to relate the touch to the give of different parts of your body–like cheeks, forehead, or chin. But if you really want to be consistent, just start touching your steaks. A more rare steak will have less give, a medium/ medium rare steak will feel sort of springy, and well done will feel a lot tougher. My best advice is just to get the feel for touching steak, and it shouldn’t take long to really nail down what the temperature is. It is also worth noting that this technique can work with other proteins like chicken or fish.

A sous vide steak from seriouseats.com

Another really important tip is to SEASON YOUR STEAK. I don’t mean you need to bring out the whole spice rack; I mean don’t be afraid to generously coat your steak with salt. At the end of the day, any spice/rub is optional; the only thing that isn’t optional is salt. Use more than you think. You could have a perfectly cooked golden brown steak, but if you didn’t add enough salt, it’s gonna taste bad. Even some steak rubs don’t have enough salt in them, as weird as it sounds taste the rub, the rub should almost be as salty as salt itself. You definitely shouldn’t make your steak oversalted, but be generous with it. You’re most likely not using enough.

My third tip is the heat of your cooking medium. I find it pretty rare for someone to prefer a boiled and grey steak to a golden brown one. If you cook your steaks on too low of a heat, they will probably be overcooked with a thick grey band, and usually no crust. Especially if you’re cooking your steak in a pan or skillet, really crank up the heat, wait for your oil to start shimmering–almost smoking–and probably turn off your fire alarm. Or, if you’re grilling a steak, get your ambers or grates really hot. You also want to leave the steak alone, you should not be flipping it every 30 seconds, but at the same time if you don’t flip it enough it will probably have a grey band around the steak and be overcooked. If you’re cooking the steak in a pan (usually my go-to depending on the steak), be wary of adding too much oil or something like butter in too early, you should always be using a high smoke point oil, like canola, avocado, or grape-seed; don’t use olive oil or butter because it will burn. Also be cautious of using too much oil because it will boil the steak, and stop you from getting a good crust.

My very last tip is super important, but also the easiest. You need to let your steak rest. Depending on the size of the steak, you could let it rest as long as you cooked it. Just make sure it’s for at least 5 minutes. If it doesn’t rest, it will lose a lot of its juices, and the center will probably be undercooked (if you’re going for mid-rare). Resting the steak not only makes a juicer steak, it will continually cook the inside of the steak, leading to less of a grey band and an overall juicer steak.

At the end of the day, people like their steaks differently, and you should respect their opinion. But if you keep some of these basic principles in mind, you’ll pretty much be certain you have a good steak. Another thing worth mentioning is to be consistent. If your steaks are sometimes amazing and sometimes not as good as last time, you should probably be more consistent with one or more of these principles. Thank you for reading this post, and good luck with the next time you cook a steak.

*P.S. These principles are designed for cuts like New York strip, ribeye, and filet. They will also work for other cuts on a broader scale, but these are the benchmarks.

A Love Affair with Food

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I hope to one day find someone who loves me the way Ike loves cooking. Food enthusiast Ike Spry shares with us his never-ending love story with cooking and how he hopes to spread that love in the future…” — Editor Jesse Denyer

By Ike Spry, Food Dude

We live in the age of industrialized food. You could go to the supermarket and get a rotisserie chicken for literally the same price as a whole uncooked chicken. Certainly, if you really despise cooking, you have plenty of options to avoid it. Plenty of people I know live off frozen food and Doordash, but the ability to do so is only a product of the industrial revolution. Going back to our hunter-and gatherer life, we relied on food for our nourishment because there was no butcher who would cut the meat for us, package our food in cans, and put it in microwave-safe plastic. We found and cooked food for the sake of feeding ourselves. 

It’s changed now. I cook, for example, out of love. I love to feed people; I love to bring back memories, and it makes me feel good to master a technique and see my family and friends gobble up something I’ve spent years nailing down. Certainly, some people don’t have a choice about cooking at home because cooking at home is usually more economically beneficial than eating out every night; and while eating off the one dollar menu at McDonalds may be cheaper, it certainly isn’t healthy. It doesn’t feed our family what they need to live long and nourishing lives. The thing is, there aren’t a lot of concrete reasons to cook at home anymore. It’s not always cheaper to cook at home–especially if you’re buying expensive steak or random spices that you’ll put in the back of the cabinet after making the recipe and never use again. Also, eating out supports local businesses, it can be beneficial to the environment, and really is just less of a hassle for many people. 

The English roasted potato so beloved by Ike

But, I like the hassle. I love learning what makes my hollandaise sauce split, or my French macaron rise perfectly, but it’s not fun for everyone. A lot of people hate cooking. My mom would rather clean the kitchen and the tornado of dishes I leave behind than cook enchiladas another time. The reason I love cooking is the feeling I get from it. Cooking brings me joy, seeing people stop talking and just eat the dinner I prepared for them makes me happy. But, more than anything else, it’s about tradition. My English ancestors who overcooked everything, and hated garlic, were not in the same situation that I am. I stand in my kitchen working over a hot stove because it’s what my parents did. The techniques and recipes my father taught me are tangible evidence of his love. I’ll teach my kids the same recipes and techniques, and hopefully they will teach theirs. It gives me comfort knowing that the humble, roast potato, that seemingly only the English know how to make best, is in my cooking arsenal. The pecan pie, with extra pecans, that reminds me of my grandmother, is still something I know how to make. It’s what I remember her by. Memories are why I cook. The scene from Ratatouille where the fastidious food critic eats a well plated, peasant dish of stewed vegetables reminds him of his childhood and brings a tear to his eye–we can all relate to that. When I feel alone, I remember the food my family cooked, and I make the food they made. It gives me comfort knowing that when I slave over the shrine of my hot stove, the fractured remnants of my lineage live on when I cook the food my family made me even when I was too young to appreciate it.

It’s a Raw Deal

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I’m Sorry. The raw diet doesn’t make sense.

By Ike Spry, Cooking Guy/Food Dude

Obesity is rampant in the United States: 73.6 percent of adults 20 years or older are overweight or obese (CDC.gov). Children are becoming overweight as well. Obesity numbers are climbing, and they don’t seem like they’re going to stop anytime soon. But, maybe there’s a solution, and I’m not saying solving obesity is easy. We need to consider socioeconomic conditions, physiology, and food deserts. Also the mass processing of food products is a relatively new phenomenon. Obviously companies are incentivized to use as little money as possible, and it doesn’t help when we subsidize food like corn just to make snack food companies, like Nabisco, use cheap and unhealthy ingredients like corn in multiple manifestations.

Look, pretty much everyone wants to lose a little bit of weight. We follow the fad diet, and hate high-fat foods for a couple decades, only to find out carbohydrates are the enemy, only to find out you need to go vegan, and on and on . . . . I don’t want to convince you which diet is the best, as I’m not very knowledgeable about these things, and food scientists and nutritionists are not my peers. I just want to give you the facts. The raw food movement, traced back to the 1800s when a doctor named Maximilian Bircher-Benne, proposed eating raw apples was a cure for jaundice (health.usnews.com). Since then there have been numerous studies stating whether or not eating raw foods is a plausible option for losing weight, and I want to address the elephant in the room. Yes, you can lose weight by eating raw foods, or keto, or paleo or really any other calorie-restrictive diet. Even if it isn’t necessarily a diet based on calorie suppression, at the end of the day that’s what controls weight loss. Calorie suppression controls weight loss. Even if it was by accident, eating 300 calories less a day will make you lose weight. We could argue about an energy balance in terms of weight loss, and you could talk about the carbohydrate-insulin model, and we could both be arguing about it all day.

I’m not denying genetics play a factor. I just want to tell you about the contradictions of fad diets like the raw diet. First of all, cooking food is vitally important for our human evolution. Our brain becoming larger is most importantly a metabolically expensive process. It is much harder to absorb nutrients and calories from a raw and hard potato than a cooked and starch-filled potato; just like eating raw steak, or raw eggs for example, has less protein than their cooked counterparts. Recent scientific studies have proven the homo erectus’ brain became larger as our teeth became smaller, meaning most likely, absorbing the nutrients from food made us less reliant on constant grazing, and more inclined to absorb more nutrients, and more protein (theworld.org). While some people suggest that fire, obviously the most important part in cooking food, was only used some 500,000 years ago; other scientists suggest cooking food has been traced back over 1.8 million years, which is long enough to support this evolutionary hypothesis (pnas.org). 

thegreatcoursesdaily.com

At the end of the day, what works for you, works for you. I’m sure following a strict raw diet can be beneficial in weight loss, just like anything that involves a caloric deficit. All I want to say is be wary of being caught up in the next fad diet, especially if their fundamental foundation is not necessarily backed by science.

chiaroscuro

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The days grow shorter. Darkness comes sooner. Ike, in the following poem, looks to those spots of light in the dark.

By Ike Spry 

When the sun decides to leave us

And the moon looks abnormally large

The moonlight pricks up my arm hairs

And the streetlights shine bright, but are dull

The moths are led to the brightness

But I don’t think that was their free will

Maybe it was a shining beacon 

Or a gateway to the afterlife

The light will bring us together

And give us shelter in the abyss

But when the sky begins to brighten

And the sun creeps through the clouds

There’s nothing left to distract us

And our dullness is left to shine

Pumpkin Spice Lattes for Dummies

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It’s that time of year again, and pumpkin spice lattes are back in season. Instead of blowing your entire paycheck at Starbucks, try making one from home. Ike’s got two fabulous pumpkin spice latte recipes you can try. — Editor Jesse Denyer

By Ike Spry, Food Dude

Fall season is upon us, and what could epitomize it more than a pumpkin spice latte? Everybody loves them, and if you don’t, you’re probably lying to yourself. So, let us embrace our basic white girl, and let me show you two ways to make these delicious drinks, and save you the time and hassle of driving to Starbucks.

Pumpkin spice itself is pretty simple; it’s just cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg. I will be using pumpkin in my recipes; feel free to use as much as you like. A good recipe for pumpkin spice would be 1 part cinnamon to ¼ part nutmeg and ginger, and ⅛ part cloves. Now you can rearrange the ratio if you would like, for it to be more floral, use more ginger and cloves. But I think this ratio is perfect. A recipe would be something like, 1 tablespoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg, ¼ teaspoon ground ginger, and ⅛ teaspoon ground cloves (allrecipes.com). While this will give you the nostalgic feeling, I do recommend toasting and grinding these spices fresh yourself, but only if you have the time. Next, you will need the pumpkin; again you can use fresh, but it would have to be specifically pie pumpkins, as they are the sweetest and work the best. Otherwise, you can use canned pumpkin puree. If using homemade pumpkin, you’ll need to first scoop out the seeds and roast the pumpkin at 350, until fork tender (about 45 minutes). Then blend, process, or mash until smooth, and add water as needed.

For the first drink, I’ll be making a regular pumpkin spiced latte. For this you should use espresso. If you don’t have an espresso machine, use ground espresso. But first, use the desired pumpkin puree, and add sugar in a 2:1 ratio. It would look something like 1 cup of puree and one half cup of sugar. Then add the pumpkin spice mixture we made earlier about ½ tsp per cup–a little more if you like. Then heat the puree mixture in a saucepan on low for about 10 minutes. Blend or process together until smooth. For the latte, add ¼ cup of the puree mixture into a cup, along with 2 oz of espresso. Mix together and pour in about a cup of milk, and then top with either whipped cream or frothed milk and garnish with more pumpkin spice. 

Or, . . . you can try an iced-pumpkin-spiced latte with cold milk foam. This one is a little more adventurous, but could be a new favorite of yours, especially if you love iced coffee. The recipe is very similar to the latte. You’ll just let the espresso get to room temperature and add ice. For the milk of choice, I like oat or almond milk but feel free to use any kind you like. For the foam, I highly recommend using skim milk, as it foams up the best. Again, you can just use whipped cream. To make the foam, you can use a milk frother or milk frothing blender attachment. Or, you can experiment with using the blender, adding something like xanthan gum. This would make the foam more stable if you don’t have the right equipment. Also you can use a whipping siphon like they do a Starbucks, but most people don’t have one. If you do have one, just charge the skim milk with one charge. Another cool hack, if you have a whipping siphon, is to make a rapid cold brew. Cold brew usually takes a while to make, but with a whipping siphon and nitrous oxide, you can make the cold brew in about 30 minutes. 

wholefully.com

Keep in mind these recipes are just a guideline. You don’t even need the puree, although I highly recommend it. You can experiment with other kinds of milk. I’d love to find out what works best for you. Leave me a note in the comments. If you have your lattes with extra pumps of sweetener, feel free to add something like maple syrup to the drinks. Anyways, try it out, and see if you like it. You might just save yourself some money and another trip to Starbucks.

Michelin Gives, and Michelin Takes Away

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It doesn’t always take top dollar to eat the best food in the world. The Michelin Guide, in 2016, embraced food for the common food goer by awarding a Michelin Star to a food stall in Singapore. But, in 2021, they took that star away. What does this mean for the future of humble fine dining?

By Ike Spry, Food Consultant and Guide

Back in 2016, Chan Hong Meng received a coveted Michelin star at his Singapore food stall Hawker Chan. His soya chicken rice dish, at only $2.25, surprised the public by becoming the world’s cheapest Michelin-starred meal. Chan Hong Meng took this success and opened up multiple restaurants in other countries. It seems this new success and growth of the restaurants, however, undermined what gave Chan his star in the first place. Now, in 2021, Michelin’s food guide of Singapore has left out any mention of the famed Singapore food stall. 

A representative from Chan Hong Meng’s restaurant told CNN that “Chef Chan Hong Meng has prepared his famous soya sauce chicken rice since 2009 with his secret recipe and cooking method, which has not changed since the beginning of Hawker Chan in 2009. He has always believed that his food should be freshly prepared daily and cooking should not be done in a central kitchen. We do hope to understand why the Michelin Guide has left us out of the list this year. However, we also understand that everyone has their own opinion when it comes to food choices. We will continue to serve delicious and affordable meals as that is our vision and mission.” The restaurant seems like they’ll try their best next year to earn the star again on the Michelin Singapore Guide although they don’t seem too upset. It’s business as usual.

economictimes.indiatimes.com

The Michelin Guide has very high standards and usually is awarded to expensive fine dining and extravagant tasting menus, especially as you approach two or three stars (the most any restaurant can get is three stars). A restaurant that is a food stall charging $2.50 a dish rarely (never?) earns even one star. The food stall losing its star, which put it on the map in the first place, may impact the business, but nobody’s quite sure yet. I really hope this restaurant succeeds without its star, as it proves that the Michelin Guide isn’t just reserved for “pompous” fine dining restaurants. A humble stall in Singapore can serve a delicious meal under 3 dollars and still be designated “fine dining.”

I have to take my pills

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Poem by thebirdonfire.org staffer Ike Spry

I have to take my pills

I’m a different person without them

Sure, maybe It’s not truly who I am

Or maybe I’m a failure without Western medicine

All the suffering I’ve faced

And the pain I’ve instilled

It doesn’t hurt me anymore

Knowing I live a “fake” persona

Maybe I’m lying to myself

The industry is a scam

I’m running in circles

And everyone’s a sheep but me

Maybe I’ll go off my pills

Sleep on the roof

Fall in love for the sake of my loneliness

And threaten to kill myself for attention

Or maybe

I’ll swallow down the truth

With a cold glass of water

And come to accept 

I have to take my pills

It’s Hot in the Kitchen!

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By Ike Spry

Working in the culinary world is one of the hardest jobs in the service industry. Experienced chefs work countless hours before achieving professional kitchen standards. Working as a line cook can be extremely stressful, and many cooks turn to vices to calm their stress. The standard for higher level culinary jobs is rigorous. Unlike being a waiter, you need plenty of former experience, and cooking is not something you can immediately pick up or adjust to. 

This brings us to the salary ordeal. Chefs barely are making a liveable wage, and usually they make less than waiters and waitresses–who get tips. The problem is that restaurants are incentivized to pay less to their staff. No business wants to lose money if they don’t need to. Restaurants are consistently pressured to lower overhead and prices, and chefs, as a result, often get lower wages. While most people assume that waiters make higher tips for better service, studies show that it is a cultural standard to give waiter tips so they can have a liveable wage. Tipping as a custom is really only a thing in the United States. I’m not going to say that waiters should be paid less, or chefs should be paid more because that won’t do anything. My suggestion is to get rid of the tipping system. Restaurants could universally raise prices because it is not the customer’s job to give a worker a liveable wage; it should be the business’s job to pay a minimum wage. If a customer doesn’t have to pay a tip out of pocket, they are likely to pay more for an entrée. Restaurants can legally pay under minimum age and let tips equalize the rest. Federal law allows businesses to pay tipped workers as little as $2.13 an hour (dol.gov). If there was less of a demand for restaurants to lower prices, restaurants in turn could use the money to pay their staff’s wages appropriately. The chefs making high wages are usually celebrity chefs, or partial business owners. Line cooks, sous chefs, and even head chefs are struggling with wages nationwide. Thus, many cooks and chefs are becoming private chefs and caterers, as they can make more money, and there is usually less stress involved. I think it is important that people are aware of the issues that chefs and waiters face, as working in the service industry is becoming harder during a pandemic. 

I hope one day soon restaurant owners can abolish tips and give their staff a livable wage. Being a cook is one of the hardest and most stressful jobs out there. Yet, chefs aren’t making enough money. Accomplished chefs I’ve met in person have told me, “Don’t go into the industry.” That’s unfortunate. I have a passion for cooking and would like to make it my living, and until the industry provides sufficient salaries, I’ll be looking at the many, less stress-inducing jobs available as private chef.

Give MSG a Chance

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By Ike Spry

We’ve all experienced the four basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. But, what if I told you that there was another taste, one responsible for the meaty and savory flavor that deepens and intensifies our dishes. Umami, Japanese for “essence of deliciousness,” is the fifth flavor compound. 

Glutamic acid is a synthesizable flavor compound in proteins, responsible for the distinct taste of parmesan cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms, and many other foods. Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda discovered this fifth taste and created a glutamic-acid-derived flavor compound. It was called Mono-sodium Glutamate, or MSG. Nowadays, we usually hear of this food additive in a negative connotation. It is common to see Chinese restaurants stating they don’t use it, or snacks stating they avoid it. In the 1960s, a letter written to the New England Journal of Medicine bogusly stated that MSG causes adverse effects and illness. The article claimed that MSG can cause headaches, chest palpitations and nausea. It is worth mentioning that some people can have an allergy to this food additive, but the condition is extremely rare. In the article the supposed adverse effects were called “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome,” as fifty years ago the food enhancer was rarely found in snack products and more commonly used as a seasoning in Asian cooking. In the early 1900s, when Italian food became more prominent in the United States, people created a negative connotation between garlic and Italians. This connotation lived on for a long time. Today, garlic is widely used in cooking, and I’d love to see the same happen for MSG. Nowadays, MSG isn’t used as much in Chinese cooking due to the public’s misbegotten fear of MSG. It does appear in several snack foods, though; Frito-Lay has been using MSG as a flavor enhancer for years now.* If you consider yourself allergic to MSG, I would steer clear of several Frito-Lay products like Doritos and Cheetos.

The war against MSG has been happening for over 50 years now. I’ll admit that at first I was cautious of MSG, so I went to the store and bought some. I tried raw MSG, and it tasted exactly like Doritos. Crazy, right? I didn’t get a headache from MSG, just like I don’t get headaches from eating Doritos. It’s simply a common food additive, used more than you think. All I want is for you to try it as well; tasting it by itself is a true epiphany as it tastes like so many Frito-Lay snacks. So, before you rip on this near completely safe food additive, try it. (As long as you have no allergies.)

*Frito-Lay disclaimer regarding MSG: “Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) is commonly used in many foods as a flavor enhancer. Some people report sensitivity to Monosodium Glutamate and prefer to avoid foods containing the ingredient. If we add MSG to our products, it will be listed in the ingredient statement as Monosodium Glutamate.”