Condiment Expert Guesses Cheap vs Expensive Condiments | Price Points | Epicurious

I'm Scott Norton and I'm a condiment expert let's dive in so we'll start with ketchup a here smooth glossy reflecting a lot of the light that comes off it with the sheen and we'll give it a sniff some sweetness that we smell and a little bit of spice you can also start to see a little bit of water pooling around the edges of ketchup a water is leeching out of the tomato particles out of those cell walls which have collapsed when cooking and this we call sinner esis this is a bit of a glue P product definitely an industrial ketchup that is really quintessential for a ketchup and ketchup B texture is radically different you see almost a chunkiness here something that has little ridges a little bit less sinner esis and is generally more of a textured product giving that a sniff it's more muted less tartness little less sweetness not as much spice and maybe a little bit more bitter and this is actually a looser product as you can see here it's actually got less viscosity and it's dripping off the spoon so first we're gonna taste ketchup a here and what better to dip it in then it's best friend the french fry and dip that in there give it a munch it's a nice salty fry and we get the acid and we get the sweetness of the ketchup coming through definitely a classic compliment all right let's move to catch up B now let's give this the Fri test coach the primary well doesn't have the acid that it needs doesn't have the saltiness that it needs even with the presence of salt on the French fries I have to say this is definitely a different ketchup than a classic ketchup ketchup a is something that is gonna immediately speak to us because it's the ketchup of our childhood a ketchup that we formed an emotional bond with when it was one of the first foods that we could actually control ourselves at the dinner table when our parents gave us a bottle of the stuff you know that this ketchup has a big market a big audience this is the ubiquitous ketchup in America and because of that ubiquity there's very high production volumes which allows the price to decrease whereas ketchup B here is likely made with a more artisanal small-batch process my wager would be that ketchup a is the cheaper of these two ketchups and ketchup B is the more expensive let's find out there's a huge difference here ketchup B is almost nine times as expensive as ketchup a that is a massive difference when we think about two things that have the same name and are more or less the same product so just because these two ketchups have very different price points doesn't necessarily mean that one is better than the other don't let anyone tell you what ketchup you should or shouldn't be eating based on nostalgia or based on the culinary arts in fact beauty is in the eye of the beholder and nowhere is that more true than in ketchup too delicious looking mayonnaises clearly we immediately see a difference in color with mayo a being a little bit more yellow a little bit more golden may be communicating to us that there's a higher egg yolk content Mayo a quite mild a little bit vinegary a little bit sour you can see from the texture here that this one is really thick without a lot of air pockets in it this is really like a homemade Mayo has stiff peaks and holds its character really really well with a nice yellowish color and in Mayo B we have something that's a bit more white perhaps less eggy Mayo be pretty inert not a lot of flavor coming off of this one and looking at the texture it's a bit more gloopy and anemic with less stiff peaks and higher air content and air content like this which suggests that perhaps it was made more with a an industrial mill then with a typical homestyle blending method so why don't we taste Mayo hey let's dunk one of these bad boys in there and see what we get hmm great mouthfeel really compliments the starch in the fries and the salt and the fries and that fat carries the flavors and dials in them up so now may OB let's give it the Fry test you have a dip here texture is actually quite nice cloud-like it doesn't quite hold up to the fry it doesn't accentuate the saltiness and I could taste that synthetic preservative that I don't love as much I can also taste far less egginess far less of that rich and savory flavor that you get from mayo a which would suggest to me that this has less egg yolk in it looking at both mayo and mayo B I would wager to guess that mayo B is the less expensive of the two so let's see where we're in together well the proof is in the pudding at much higher price point we have Mayo a at 74 cents an ounce and much less expensive 14 cents an ounce for mayo B so a very wide margin between the price of these two mayo's if you're shopping from mayo you want to look for a male that does have a relatively high calorie count something that packs a punch when it comes to fat that's gonna drive it a little texture that's gonna lubricate your sandwich better and that's gonna stand up great in something like a tuna salad or a potato salad it looks like we have two mustards here my guess is that these are actually two different types of mustard this one is likely a yellow and this one is either a Dijon mustard or it's a yellow mustard that has oxidized and gone off let's try mustard a let's give it a sniff we get some acid on the nose and it's pungent and a bit spicy so something that we should remember with mustard is that there are a couple different types of spiciness or heat there's the spiciness and the heat that we know from Chili Peppers which comes from capsaicin kind of burns the mouth that's very different than the type of heat that you get from mustard which is a gustatory heat that actually is felt in the nose this is a mustard that has a bit of that gustatory heat though it isn't an intense spicy mustard we'll start with a tasting spoon here you see when we look at this yellow mustard right here it's got a strong vibrant hue which comes from both the yellow mustard seeds and the turmeric which is bright yellow it's totally homogeneous this one doesn't have any flecks of anything in it and with mustard B it's a bit more mild almost a bit sweeter actually and less spicy in the nose this mustard here when we look at it closely we'll see that there are these little brown flecks in a see a light golden yellow those brown flecks are likely the exterior of the brown mustard seed and give it more of a pungent flavor so now why don't we try giving them a taste let's taste it with a pairing in this case a pretzel mmm really nice really flavorful though the bitterness comes through additionally as we have the salt and the the crunchiness of this pretzel here looking at mustard beads we'll taste it with a pretzel sophisticated yet strong this is a mustard that unlike this mustard here actually pairs quite nicely with the pretzel and complements the saltiness and the crunchiness of this pretzel so looking at these two mustards are yellow mustard over here which is very vibrant and straight ahead and our Dijon mustard over here I can likely infer some differences in quality and costs and impress there are three types of mustard seeds the first is yellow which is likely what mustard a is made out of yellow in color and potent but not overly spicy the second type of mustard seed is a brown mustard seed that has an exterior which is brown and an interior which is lighter that's likely what mustard B is made out of third type of mustard seed is an oriental mustard seed it's stronger and it's much more rare to find oriental mustard in America the price of mustard seeds doesn't vary that much but the price of the white wine which likely went into this Dijon mustard and the scale of production that a yellow mustard like this probably enjoys would lead me to believe that this is the less expensive mustard of the two and this is the more expensive monster so let's see what we get all right the Dijon is four times as expensive as the yellow that's a significant difference in price and likely to be expected Dijon mustard is famously a premium product as evidenced in advertisements of two people in Rolls Royces coming next to each other and asking each other for a product like that this is a more quotidian mustard but it's hard to find a bad mustard if you're eating a simple hotdog a ballpark Frank this might be the perfect mustard to complement it but you might not put this on a cheese board instead you might lean for something like a Dijon mustard a milder more complex flavor and a decidedly more grown-up mustard ranch the granddaddy of dressing salad dressings in America are about a three billion dollar market and a ranch is 40 percent of that it's by far the most popular dressing in this country and for good reason so let's start with ranch a here we immediately see that there's an off-white almost eggshell color to it a little bit creamy a little bit brown as we give it a sniff we don't get much it's fairly mild not very acidic and nutty I don't quite know what's driving that nutty flavor when we look at ranch B we see a very similar texture but actually almost more rubbery almost more like Elmer's glue and decidedly more white with more pronounced specs as we smell it almost no nose on this there's not really any flavor volatile coming off of this it's relatively inert but let's taste it and give it a try so why don't we taste B we have a carrot on a carrot it really holds its own see a carrot is mostly water and so you need the saltiness and the savoriness and intensity of the fat in this ranch dressing to balance out with a carrot and it actually does that quite nicely this would do the trick of making a salad tastes fatty and savory and salty and basically distracting someone from recognizing that they're eating vegetables in the first place tasting ranch a hmm decidedly less going on here there's less savory flavor less fatty flavor and this nuttiness has become almost a sweetness I don't quite know how to describe what I'm tasting before we fully judge it let's try it with a carrot stick and see what we think it almost disappears on the carrot doesn't have the saltiness doesn't have the savoriness it doesn't have the intensity in the fattiness this is likely a lighter dressing when it comes to calorie counts and probably doesn't have any agents that make it more savory as I look at these two ranch dressings pretty hard to determine the quality of ingredients because the fattiness of it really overwhelms the details that you get likely the spices that are used are relatively similar they I think both come from dry spices though both the fattiness of this and the savoriness of this to me would suggest that this is probably a more recognizable mass-produced industrial product and this one is maybe a less well-known brand or an off-brand of some kind both of them deliver that ranch flavor but ranch B certainly seems like it's more straight and narrow in terms of what people expect when it comes to ranch ranch B is the least expensive of the two and ranch a with it's interesting nutty flavors going on is probably the more expensive of the two but let's see what they are cut off 60 cents for ranch a and 30 cents for ranch B ranch a is essentially double the cost of ranch B and I think that's fairly consistent with what we taste it here the tricky thing about ranch is that the flavors that you might love and respond to so much might be synthetic ingredients and chemicals that you might not want to eat so it's really important to read the ingredient list of ranch and all dressings that you're gonna be eating and actually taste them to see what you like you can find ranches that are natural that will taste much stronger and more potent and much more delicious than ranch a here so I don't necessarily want to give non-traditional ranches a bad name just because we had this experience with ranch a at the same time if you like the intensity and then nostalgia factor and the savory flavors that you might get in a ranch like B give that a try so let's take a look at barbecue sauce a if we pick this up and we look at the texture we can see here that it's it's not very biscuits it's pretty watery actually the color is a nice deep red and when we give it a sniff it has a really satisfying flavor a bit acidic a bit sweet and a bit smoky but certainly barbecue sauce egg doesn't really have any thicker than it at all and it doesn't have enough sugar content to really make it gloopy and jammy the way that B is as we look at barbecue sauce B we'll see here that the texture is significantly thicker and a bit gloopy err giving it a smell we have a lot more smokiness a lot more sweetness and the color of course is a deep brown molasses significantly darker and we said earlier it's kind of thicker and almost gloopy texture which might suggest that this is a much sweeter product with a higher sugar content let's taste barbecue sauce a but of course we can't just eat it on its own we have to eat it with at least some type of meat even though this is not a barbecue product but we're working with what we've got mmm brings wonderful Tang eNOS the perfect degree of smoke the perfect degree of sweetness and a very difficult texture as a condiment tear myself a true respect for what they've done with this barbecue sauce so how does this sweet smoky and ardently spiced product stack up when it's on a chicken tender really approachable really easy to eat but doesn't have the tang that I'd like but I think if I had to guess a kid might prefer this barbecue sauce over a because barbecue sauce B has that sweeter profile I might think that it could be made with something like a high fructose corn syrup which as we know is cheaper than a cane sugar or potentially even a fruit sugar which is what a might be made from tasting barbecue sauce a and B I would definitely guess that barbecue sauce a is the pricier of the two and barbecue sauce B is the less expensive so what do we have here I'm right this is about half the price that barbecue sauce a is about compared to some of the other condiments we've seen today the difference of these prices one being double is not nearly as much as we've seen in other categories where it's been up to four or even nine times in some cases if you're actually cooking with a barbecue sauce I would recommend a barbecue sauce that is like a which is less sweet and more acidic the acid is gonna cook tenderize and marinade the meat a bit more and also sugar is one of the first things to caramelize so if you were to coat a piece of meat in barbecue sauce B and then grill it that sugars gonna carbonize but if you don't pull it off in time it's gonna almost taste like burnt toast which isn't a very attractive flavor these are both really edible approachable barbecue sauces though I still have a favorite in hey pardon me for double dipping a lot of people have preconceived notions about what a continent should or shouldn't be but you don't necessarily have to follow that dogma or that nostalgia condiments are all about individualizing and adding your own flavors to food it's about customization so go outside your comfort zone try new things and follow your gut

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 1,443,356

Rating: 4.7842455 out of 5

Keywords: condiment, condiments, cheap vs expensive, price points, cheap condiments, expensive condiments, condiment expert, cheap vs expensive condiments, cheap, expensive, cheap v expensive, expert, best ketchup, best mustard, experts, cheap expensive, making ketchup, tasting mustard, types of condiments, ketchup, mustard, expensive ketchup, expensive mustard, mustard expert, expensive bbq sauce, expensive ranch, expensive mayo, mayo, ranch dressing, bbq sauce, barbecue, bbq, epicurious

Id: gsNeLX0Pd7M

Length: 18min 24sec (1104 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 20 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/conventionistG]

Cheap vs Expensive Expert expert guesses Cheap vs Expensive Experts.

[u/SchemeWork]

This mans obsession with condiments is alarming, yet also somehow calming at the same time.