Pastrami, How to Make Homemade Beef Brisket in Juniper Brine

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• Peppercorns - Green, Pink, White AND Black Peppercorns!

  Not sure of the difference between black and white peppercorn? What about pink peppercorns? Or green peppercorns? This will sort you out! For more information and great tips, tricks and techniques, show notes and more detailed information, check out the website at www.ThrillbillyGourmet.com, and read all about it on the blog! One of my very favorite ingredients to work with when cooking is pepper. Now pepper is ubiquitous, it's all over the place. Salt and pepper is very, very common but there is so much more than that. You're probably very familiar with simple black peppercorns. You can get them in all kinds of sizes, shapes and varieties. You just crush them up and apply as much or as little as you want. But that is not all there is to pepper, and a lot of it depends on the life cycle of when the little seeds -- well, they're drupes -- are picked. So -- if you don't let them get all the way to the black peppercorn stage you start out over here, with green peppercorns. Now these are very similar, they have the same chemical compound that give black peppercorn it's little peppery kick. That distinct little bite that nothing else has. Now these are done in several different ways. You'll often find them sold like this, in little tiny jars and they've been packed in a salt water brine or sometimes in vinegar, and to use them this way -- let's see if I can make this happen -- just crush them with the back of a spoon. Just open them up and you've got that wonderful peppery kick. It's softer though, and if you've gotten rid of the salt brine, you have this beautiful, soft blossom of flavor, but without quite as much strength. Now go on up in the life cycle and you wait a little bit longer, a white peppercorn is simply a peppercorn that has been picked right before it has developed that black outer casing. Now these are also done dry, and done just like you would do a black peppercorn. A lot of times white pepper is reserved for white dishes. If you want to do a pretty béchamel and don't want black pepper flecks, or if you run a puree of potato and don't want the black pepper flecks, use the white pepper. You get much the same flavor but you don't have, you know -- little specks. And finally, over here, we have pink peppercorns. Now this is a slightly different species than these other three, but they do have much the same flavor. You can buy these dried, and if you can see this, this one's set aside by this, what you have is this little tiny husk, and this little kernel on the inside. Now that husk is what it makes it so pretty, and pink peppercorn -- and green peppercorn too -- both have been rising in popularity recently. I've noticed that from browsing online -- lots of people have been posting recipes. Next time you're looking at pepper -- give one of these other ones a try. You'll love the difference in flavor, and the variety, and you won't be limited to just the black!

• Fond - how to work with fond for amazing flavor!

  Want one of the best tricks you can do in the kitchen? Learn how to work with fond - the foundation of amazing flavor! For more information, tricks, tips and techniques, check out the website at www.ThrillbillyGourmet.com, and visit the blog as well! One of the most important things that you can learn how to do if you're teaching yourself how to cook, is to learn how to cook with this stuff. Now, you're going to hear this talked about in two different ways. There are going to be people who have studied classical French food and they're going to be calling it suc -- think of the French word sucre for sugar -- that's what that is. Here in America we call it fond, even though fond in classically French cooking is the next step. But we're going to call this entire process of development fond. And I remember it, and help my kids remember it when I'm teaching them by remembering we're fond of fond. Now fond in French means foundation and what you're doing with this stuff is building from it. And it's the most valuable thing which you can develop in your kitchen. This is the first step in deglazing and this is the first step in developing a pan sauces. Now what I've done in here, is I've browned off a whole bunch of bacon, and then I've browned chicken on top of it. All this luscious, lovely stuff down here in the bottom? That's where the outsides of my foods have caramelized or developed their sugars. It's incredibly rich, it's incredibly deep in flavor. Now my next step is going to be to use the fond, all of this wonderful stuff as a base for a sauce that I'm going to build to go with my chicken. I'm going to do that by simply deglazing my pan. Deglazing is not hard. You put some kind of liquid in there, keep it over the heat, scrape it up with a wooden spoon, and that's what gives you the basis for just about any kind of pan sauce you want to develop. In this case I'm using some white wine, some chicken broth and some veggies, but you can use just about anything you can think of. And that's all there is to it. So -- fond. We're fond of it. It's the foundation for all of our recipes. This is how you get really fabulous flavor!

• Vanilla! Vanilla Beans, Vanilla Paste, Ground Vanilla, Vanilla Extract

  Curious about vanilla beans? Not sure what to do with the ones that come fresh and fragrant? What about vanilla paste or ground vanilla? Learn about these beautiful additions to your pantry, and how to include them in your dishes! For more great tips, tricks and techniques, check out the website at www.ThrillbillyGourmet.com, and click through to the blog! Video transcript: To use a vanilla bean, take a sharp knife -- and you're after all these little tiny seeds that are inside of it. I don't think anybody but me has called that caviar, but that's how valuable they are to a baker. And if you take the tip of your knife and run it this way, that is pure vanilla. And if you've ever eaten a custard or an ice cream that had all those little tiny black flecks in it that's where they come from. Now that's the good stuff, use that when you're cooking, but don't throw the pod away. Once you've harvested the caviar, because this still has 100,000 uses. For example, dry it off, throw it in a container of sugar, and you'll have vanilla sugar. You can let these sit there for a couple of weeks and the scent of the vanilla is already in the sugar. The scent is unbelievable -- to die for. And the cool thing is you can keep adding sugar as you use it up, and it'll continue to develop the flavor for a long time. I think I've changed this one out probably three times and it still has got a tremendous amount of flavor. Now if you really love to bake, and you really want to play, extracts and whole beans are not the only way you can do it. This is ground vanilla bean, and what this has done, a manufacturer has taken an entire vanilla pod, probably after they have been used for extract, they've allowed it to dry and then they have ground it up. And you can use this in a custard, or in a cake or in ice cream, anywhere you would use real vanilla, and it's probably -- well -- I've used it in a one to one ratio -- a teaspoon of vanilla and a teaspoon of the ground vanilla bean. Really great flavor and the price is awesome - a fraction of a lot of the great vanilla extracts. Now this one you don't find often, outside of commercial bakeries, but this one is -- I'll try to pour this left handed so y'all can see. This one is a vanilla paste. And it's the same thing. It's ground vanilla -- there we go. See how it's almost like syrup? It's been sweetened, usually with a corn syrup of some kind. So you can only use this in a sweet application, the corn syrup doesn't work really well if you're making a savory vanilla sauce for a pork loin. But if you're making cookies, and if you're making cakes, you can certainly use vanilla paste. Ok -- so that's it. Pretty much what you need to know about vanilla. You need to go try some of these! For more information, check out the website at www.ThrillbillyGourmet.com - and thanks for visiting!