The Tuck Room’s Adam Seger Shows Us the Art and Science of Cocktail Making

Liquid nitrogen may look fun and pretty, but it serves a purpose beyond soliciting the expected “oohs” and “ahhs” from easily-entertained (a.k.a. tipsy) bar patrons. Just ask The Tuck Room‘s Adam Seger, a master in creative cocktail making.

In tandem with a team of innovative, bold, and risk-taking mixologists, Seger has created a menu that celebrates alcohol’s flavor, science, and, most importantly, versatility. From Drunken Doughnuts (including a 151-proof whipped cream and boozy sauces) to the liquor-infusing Heisenberg (a mixing and filtering contraption that looks straight out of Breaking Bad), no idea is seemingly too challenging or out of the ordinary.

Perhaps the most captivating element of Seger’s craft is his commitment to using only fresh ingredients. Whether it’s a farmer’s market fruit or restaurant-grown herb, each component capitalizes on all of the senses for a drinking experience that rivals that of eating. Something as simple as a radler (shandy with grapefruit juice) or as complex as a Chicago style hot dog whiskey smells and looks as good as it tastes and feels going down. It’s all about striking a balance.

We caught up the head bartender and advanced sommelier for a lesson in concocting modern cocktails. Check it out in the clip above and prepare to be inspired. Or just prepare to up your homemade happy hour game with these helpful tips and recipes.

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Blueberry Pie

When blueberries are in season, what better to do with them (other than eating them straight from the basket) than make blueberry pie?

Blueberries have been found to be a “superfood”, so good for you that you should go out of your way to eat them. (As if we need a reason, right?)

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A Comprehensive Guide to Fried Chicken

While pork may be the most commonly consumed meat worldwide, it’s chicken that’s the most versatile. Fried chicken, our favorite variety (duh), comes in all types from all parts of the globe. We’ve rounded up some of the most popular to provide a comprehensive guide on each dish’s unique preparation and cooking process. From Nashville Hot and Maryland-style to Korean and Katsu, every finger-licking-good iteration is covered below.

Nashville Hot Chicken

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How to Prepare

Like most Southern-style fried chicken, the breast, thigh, wing, or drumstick should marinate in buttermilk before being dredged in a flour and spice blend. Nashville Hot Chicken’s famous fiery paste, typically one part lard to three parts cayenne pepper, sugar, and spices, is applied immediately after the chicken has been fried. This allows for it to penetrate the skin as it cools, all while maintaining its crispness.

How to Fry

Use a pressure fryer or deep fryer, though many restaurants opt to pan fry.

How to Serve 

Prince’s Hot Chicken, Nashville’s original, serves their bird on sliced white bread with a side of pickle chips. To calm the taste buds, it also tastes great with a small serving of creamy coleslaw.

Chicken Maryland

Serious Eats

How to Prepare

Preparation is similar to any Southern-style fried chicken. Pieces marinate in buttermilk and are dredged in a flour and spice blend before being cooked to perfection. It’s the frying process where this geo-specific dish differs from the norm.

How to Fry

The chicken is pan-fried in a cast-iron skillet, unlike most Southern variations that use heavy amounts of oil (for deep fryers) or a heavy amount of shortening (on a stove top). While the chicken is frying in a shallow amount of oil, milk or cream is added to the pan to create a decadent white gravy.

How to Serve

Top the fried chicken with the remaining gravy and serve with any typical dinner side. We recommend a refreshing summer salad.

Chicken Katsu

Chowhound

How to Prepare

A pounded and butterflied chicken thigh or breast is salted, seasoned with white pepper, and dredged in a beaten egg. Japanese sweet wine is typically added before the chicken is coated in panko bread crumbs and deep fried.

How to Fry

Toss these cutlets into a deep fryer. Since the cut’s thickness is even, it will ensure even cooking throughout.

How to Serve

Typically, the chicken is sliced into strips and served with tonkatsu sauce (almost like a Worcestshire) next to cabbage, rice, or miso soup. You can also treat it like parmesan chicken and top it with your favorite sauce.

Korean Fried Chicken

BonChon

How to Prepare

Chicken is very lightly dredged in flour, dipped in a batter, and placed immediately in the fryer. Traditionally, all flavors and seasonings are added after the cooking process, but Americanized versions will add salt, pepper, and paprika beforehand.

How to Fry

What separates Korean fried chicken from its fried chicken counterparts is that it is fried twice, most commonly in a deep fryer to achieve a crunchier, less greasy skin. Since chickens in South Korea are smaller, they are sometimes fried whole and chopped into pieces upon cooking. Either way, you want your oil temperature to be lower (around 350 degrees) and for your chicken to cook for only ten minutes. Immediately shake off the excess oil and allow the poultry to rest for two minutes. The chicken then returns to the fryer for another ten minutes before it becomes the perfect, crispy (almost translucent) golden brown.

How to Serve

Korean fried chicken is typically seasoned and served three ways: huraideu (basic with salt and pepper), yangnyeom (spicy), and ganjang (garlicky soy sauce). The respective sauces (or lack thereof with huraideu) are brushed onto the chicken immediately after frying. All varieties pair well with a beer, soju, sesame seeds, and pickled radishes.

Chinese-American Fried Chicken

Chowhound

How to Prepare

Unlike Korean fried chicken, the Americanized Chinese love their flour and cornstarch-heavy batters. Whether you’re making sweet and sour, orange, or General Tso’s, the base usually consists of a flour, spice, egg, and water-based batter to achieve a breaded, light brown crust.

How to Fry

Most Chinese-American fried chicken dishes are prepared in bite-sized pieces. You can either pan-fry the chunks in a shallow pan of vegetable oil or toss them in a deep fryer. Either way, be sure to not overcook. Undercooking the breaded pieces so that the batter remains somewhat soft is what makes the dish a delicacy.

How to Serve

The possibilities are endless, though many Chinese-American chefs will allow their chicken to cool a bit before dousing them in heavy, sweet sauces.

Buffalo Wings

Chowhound

How to Prepare

If you’re hoping to make these anything like the inventors at Anchor Bar, there’s no need to dredge the raw chicken in any sort of batter or seasoning. Instead, just toss them into the fryer and let the oil and resulting skin do the talking.

How to Fry

Though healthier recipes boast oven-baking alternatives, placing your wings and drums into a deep fryer is the best option. Unflavored oils like canola are the best, as to not detract from the signature sauce.

How to Serve

Making homemade buffalo sauce is quite easy. Mix a cup of your favorite vinegar-based pepper sauce like Frank’s or Crystal, 12 tablespoons of melted butter, and a few bulbs of minced garlic. Simply toss the wings in the sauce and serve with a side of celery and bleu cheese dressing.

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Fuchs North America Holds Grand Opening Ceremony for New Headquarters Facilities

Fuchs North America, a leading maker of seasonings, flavor systems and taste solutions for the food manufacturing, retail and foodservice industries, held a grand opening ceremony for its new headquarters facilities on Friday, June 30 in Hampstead, Md.

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Micro-Steamed Asparagus With Poached Egg and Walnut Vinaigrette

A poached egg and walnut vinaigrette round out this steamed asparagus, made by harnessing the power of your microwave. Get Recipe!

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Walnut Vinaigrette

This is the vinaigrette featured in our recipe for Micro-Steamed Asparagus With Poached Egg and Walnut Vinaigrette, but it's also great on roasted vegetables, like beets or sweet potatoes, or on robust bitter greens, such as radicchio, endive, or frisée. Get Recipe!

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Tsamma Watermelon + Coconut Water

Frey Farms, the creators of Tsamma Watermelon Juice, launched its newest addition to the cold pressed watermelon juice line up, a 12-ounce Watermelon Juice and Coconut Water blend.

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Easy No-Bake Cheesecake

This no bake cheesecake is as simple as they come, no fancy ingredients or techniques involved. I like to mix things up with Biscoff rather than graham crackers in the crust, but whatever you decide, the filling itself is refreshing, tart, and only lightly sweetened. The trick is to give the crust and filling plenty of time to chill, which makes them easier to slice. Right before serving, top with fresh fruit for a light and summery dessert. Get Recipe!

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Nourish Snacks Granola Bites

Nourish Snacks Granola Bites varieties include Chocolate Banana, Coconut Vanilla, Blueberry Apple, Chocolate Peanut Butter, Double Chocolate.

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Favorite Products: May 2017

It’s summer, and it appears that Prepared Foods readers have cold treats on their mind. Readers named Arctic Zero Fit Frozen Desserts as their favorite new product of May 2017.

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The Role of Your Beer Glass Is More Important Than You Think

When I first encountered it, beer only came in cans or Solo cups. But now that tailgates and off-campus parties are but faint memories and my options are more craft and less mystery keg, I decided it’s time to step up my game and find out – just why are there so many different shapes of glasses for beer?

A better first question might have been – Why use a glass at all? It has to do with the fact that your nose and mouth are a dynamic duo when it comes to your sense of taste. When you drink out of a bottle or can, you leave your nose out of the party. There’s a case to be made that the eye is an important part of this equation, as well. Pouring a beer into a glass shows off its color, clarity, bubbles, and foam, a view that can add to your excitement when you’re about to partake in the refreshing elixir that’s been delighting humankind since approximately 9,000 B.C..

Compared to the thousands of years that humans enjoyed beer out of stone, wood, and even sacks of leather, the proliferation and popularization of beer glasses is relatively new, given that glass wasn’t mass produced until the late 1800s. Our journey charting the history of beer glasses will take us on a trans-Atlantic journey starting in jolly old England around 1920.

Beer Mugs

The first mass-produced beer glass was the 10-sided pint mug. The mug replaced pewter tankards but maintained a handle, which kept pub patrons’ hands from inadvertently warming up their brews. After WWII, this model was replaced by a shorter and wider mug embellished with a grenade-like pattern. While not designed to enhance the taste of a beer, the mug’s character, sturdiness, and size makes it a great addition to a party, and it’s recently experienced a resurgence across the pub scene. Buy them here.

Nonic Pint Glasses

By the 1980s, English pub owners had a new option that was easier to store and clean. These “nonic” pint glasses resemble the American pint glass we’re used to seeing, with the exception of a bulge about two inches below the mouth of the glass. This bulge protects the rim of the glass from being chipped, or nicked (hence the name). A close cousin of the nonic is the tulip pint glass (see the Guinness glass). British ales, lagers, porters, and stouts will feel right at home in these vessels. Buy them here.

Goblets, Snifters, and Tulips – oh my!

For the next stop on our tour de glassware, we’ll cross the Strait of Dover from England into Belgium, where brewing dates back to the monasteries and abbeys of the Middle Ages. Here we’ll encounter some dark beers and strong ales served in goblets and their sturdier cousin, the chalice. These two glasses have wide mouths that allow for big gulps and direct the beer to the back of your tongue, home to the taste buds that detect bitterness. Two other glass varieties, snifters and tulips, resemble the goblet family, but they narrow at the top to lock in the beer’s aroma and allow for swirling, which can continually refresh a beer’s scent. Buy them here, here, and here.

Stange

Crossing Belgium’s southeastern border, we’ll encounter a few more kinds of glasses in Germany. Stange, which means “pole” in Germany is the easiest glass to describe — it’s simply a glass cylinder. The thin shape of a stange glass preserves the carbonation in delicate beers like kolsches. Some are purposefully short in order to prevent the beer from getting too warm or losing its fizz in the glass. But don’t worry — that doesn’t mean you won’t be drinking as much! Traditionally, stanges arrive en masse in a “kranz,” German for “wreath.” Buy them here.

Weizen Glass

Weizen glasses are designed to accentuate all the qualities of Bavarian style wheat beer. Their rounded tops preserve the fluffy foam head, enhancing your aromatic experience of the beer, while the thin glass shows off its bright hue. While some bars serve wheat beers with a lemon or orange slice, be warned: citrus juices can erode your beer’s head, thus eliminating some of the fun for your nose. Buy them here.

Pilsner Glass

From Germany, we’ll head further east to the Czech Republic, home to what may be defined as the Miss Universe of beers: the sparkling golden pilsner. When pilsner was invented in the Bohemian village of Pilsen in 1842, its light clarity was like nothing the beer-drinking world had ever seen. In many ways, the tall and slender glass that widens toward the top is designed to showcase the color and carbonation of the beer that’s been turning heads since the 1840s. Other light beers like bock beers and blonde ales will shine in a pilsner glass too. Buy them here.

American Pint Glass

Back in the U.S.A., the American pint glass is more or less omnipresent in bars and restaurants. The primary appeal of this glass is utility: it’s cheap to make and buy, easy to stack, difficult to break, and versatile (it’s sometimes referred to as a “Shaker Pint,” as its straight edges line up nicely with a shaker when crafting a cocktail). The American pint glass is more or less neutral — it won’t necessarily help or harm your experience of drinking beer. The one exception here is if you’re drinking something strong like a Belgian ale. In that case, if you can’t get your hands on a chalice or snifter, you’d be better off with a wine glass than an American pint glass. Buy them here.

IPA Glass

But it’s not all business as usual back home in the states. In fact, one of the newest members of the beer glass universe debuted here in 2013, born from a partnership between American breweries Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada with German glassmaker Spiegelau. This 19-ounce glass resembles an elongated goblet atop a ridged bottom. While the rounded top preserves the head and locks in flavor, the ridges agitate the beer, continually releasing the hoppy aroma and flavor characteristic of IPAs. Buy them here.

Just how much does the shape of a glass affect the taste of a beer? It’s a subject of much debate. Some contend that the proliferation of beer glassware is nothing more than a money-making scheme, and I’d be foolish to think that wasn’t part of the equation. But I’m also a sucker for a good story. Sure, I know that the Belgians and Czechs were enjoying Trappist ales and pilsners before the widespread use of chalices and pilsner glasses, but now, these shapes have become symbols of the people who brought these beers to life. The chalice evokes the Thirteenth Century monks serving beer in their abbeys while the pilsner sparkling in its slender flute recalls the Bohemian villagers who looked on with wonder as a new clear brew flowed from their casks. The shape of a beer glass may enhance a beer’s look, taste, and smell. But for me, it certainly adds a fourth dimension: a story. And adding history to hops makes enjoying one of humankind’s oldest delicacies just that much sweeter.

— Head photo: Personal Creations.

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