Helpful Cooking Tip #1 - Buying For Quality

Going to try and do daily cooking tips to force myself to keep updating...

Helpful Cooking Tip #1 - Buying For Quality

One of the most standard problems that most home cooks have is their virtual stinginess when it comes to the products they use in cooking. Generic bargain brands taste the same as the "real" stuff, right? Sometimes- yes. There are some products where it is almost impossible to tell the two apart- Salts (brand wise), Celery,  etc. Think of things which you contribute to the greater whole as opposed to the ingredients that you are really showcasing in a dish. Generic brands tend to drop in quality directly correlating with more ingredients/processing effort. Why? Well, they are cheaper for a reason. In many cases, it is because they are using the cheapest products they can find to make their product. Making one more logical leap, the cheapest quality produce/meat sold at market is likely to be of lower quality than the stuff that can actually be sold at a higher price.

"Hold on," you say, "Chefs are always talking about cheap cuts of meat being the tastiest and their not expensive!" Very true, there is a slight problem though. These cuts are cheap for a reason- they need time to get where they are edible/delicious (i.e. 3-4+ hours slow and low). You can't sear off a slab of chuck or shoulder and expect to be able to eat it like a tenderloin. All the intramuscular fat will make it akin to chomping into a nice slab of beef flavored rubber. But when you cook the meat low and slow- that fat renders and the meat falls apart.  

However, often times, even these "lower end" cuts are still often too expensive for generic manufacturers, especially if we are talking about stuff that can be blended together so that visually and texturally the quality of the initial ingredients just doesn't matter. For them, the amount of beef in their product is a statistic as apposed to something tangible (i.e. 10%  or 12% of product weight is "meat"). They are looking for food grade beef that is slightly above what the dog food manufacturers look for. If their primary selling point is that they are cheaper/bigger than their competitors, that's what the company cares about maintaining. Taste is an after thought. If you fry it or cover it in dough, add the right amount of high fructose corn syrup, salt, pepper, and textured soy filler, even dog food could probably be made to taste palatable to a human.  

Benefits of buying quality:

1. Easy to cook- if you start out with ingredients that taste great even in their "raw" form, you actually have to massively screw up when you cook to come out with something that doesn't taste good. Take a salad for example. If all the parts going into a salad, the lettuce, the onion, the tomatoes, the cheese, etc. all taste great individually, they are probably going to taste just as good or better together. Simple concept. 

2. More nutrients. Do you know why Safeway can sell tomatoes at 1/3rd of the price of a small farmer at a market? A couple of reasons:

• It is probably a variety of tomato bred (literally) for shape, color, and shelf-life. Most people have little understanding about the food they eat. So when they see a gnarled up heirloom variety that looks like something out of a horror film contrasted with a softball globe beefsteak that is half as expensive, which is the average shopper reaching for? I'll give you a hint, it isn't the one that tastes better or has the most nutrients. 
• Unfortunately, nutrient dense produce spoils very fast. This is because there are actually things in the vegetables that the billions of little bacteria floating around microscopically in the air can/want to eat. Supermarkets don't like nutrient dense produce not because they purposely want to sell you garbage, but because spoiled produce = lost profits. Pure and simple. So even though you are paying twice as much for a tomato, all tomatoes are not created equally. 
• That beefsteak sitting in the produce bin was probably picked weeks ago, shipped up, and gassed to induce ripening. Even though it was picked weeks prior, once ripened, it will last longer than a heritage variety picked at the same time. And that is literally what the plant varieties sold in most major grocery stores have been selected to do (in the same way that most dog breeds were bred for specific activities).  
• Stores can import from warm tropical countries where these varieties can be grown year round due to climate, taking advantage of cost effective economies of scale, whereas the American farmers are somewhat handcuffed by Mother Nature.
• Most consumers have unrefined palates and (unless they focus really hard) they literally are incapable of distinguishing the difference between a tomato that is rich in nutrients and one that isn't, especially if the ingredient isn't being showcased in the dish

3.  Nutrient dense food tastes better and keeps you going longer. Try eating a McDonalds cheeseburger and see how long until you feel hungry again, then try to "re-create" the same cheeseburger using roughly the same amount but better quality ingredients (approximate or cut the burger in half if you have to). In all likelihood, you should feel full longer from the latter cheeseburger than you would the former. Why? Because you are getting exponentially more substances your body needs to function in the latter burger. 

4. You don't need to eat/use as much of the stuff when it is good quality. A true balsamic vinegar has the viscosity of syrup, is much less acidic, and has dramatically more complex flavor than its cheaper imitators. If you don't believe me, go to a place where they do olive oil/vinegar samplings and see for yourself. It's worth springing that extra $2-5 on the bottle when you only have to use 1/2 to 1/4 as much each time you use it.

Disadvantages:

A. Price- Yes, you have to pay more for the good stuff. But if you plan ahead, buy things that freeze well in bulk, and do your best to ensure you are not wasting anything, you'll find that it really isn't that much more expensive (or that you can use less of the expensive products and pop out with something tasting twice as good as if you used double the lower quality stuff). 

B. Convenience - I know that the busy shopper wants to go to a single giant Super Walmart where they can buy everything they need for the month and not give shopping a second thought. Good quality can be found for cheap, but you often have to go out and visit your local butcher or baker's shop (which unfortunately isn't conveniently located next to the hardware aisle or place where you can pick up laundry detergent). You'd be shocked at what you've probably settled for at Albertsons when you could have gone around the corner and found something much better...

So- Cliffnotes:
Buying Quality=
- More nutrients
- Better tasting
- Easier to cook
- More satisfaction/pleasure
- Can be more expensive
- Often not as convenient