Beef Tingler. Beef Tingler. Beef Tingler.

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Nov 27, 2019

Thanksgiving is coming up, which means as the greatest food writer in all of history, I’m obligated to write about what this holiday means to me.

Then, what will happen is that I will win a James Beard Award, get an Emmy nomination, a Grammy nomination, win an Oscar for Worst Food Newsletter/Blog, and probably an MTV Video Music Award.

But since I am generous (lazy), I do not have an illuminating piece on how my Korean immigrant family treats Thanksgiving. If I did, the entire world would read the piece, nod, and say, “I understand your culture and experience and value it. I will put kimchi on my burger today while thinking of you.”

All I have to say is that every Thanksgiving we eat shrimp cocktail and none of us really remember why. Shrimp cocktail rules.

Speaking of cocktails…

70s Dinner Party @70s_party

Time to Tingle!

I follow this account, 70s Dinner Party, on Twitter.

This recipe for a warm beef cocktail showed up on my Twitter feed. I…I had to do it. You know I had to do it.

So I did it.

Out of most of the recipes I’ve followed straight from the book, this one’s pretty simple.

You heat the soup and brandy, and put whipped cream on top.

Haha. Hahaha. HAHAHAHA NO.

Campbell’s uses the word consommé on this label, which means this shit is fancy. I think I paid $0.88.

A traditional consommé is a real pain in the ass to make. It involves a lot of time and complicated things, which is why it is a very nice soup even though it appears very boring.

And speaking of complicated, check out the intro to this modern version of the recipe. It’s hilarious. Your eyes are going to roll into the back of your head and you are going to punch the air indiscriminately until you eventually hit your computer, rendering it completely useless.

In goes the brandy!

I bought one of those bottles that lives in the case that has to be unlocked, since it is pretty small and people have a bad habit of stealing them.

“I’d like that bottle of brandy, please,” I said.

The employee pointed at one of the bottles. “That one?”

I pointed at the other bottle. “This one.”

He immediately picked up a random bottle and said, “This one?”

“No. The one below it. That one.” He nodded his head and grabbed the bottle next to it.

“Sorry, I meant that one.” I crept up as close to the bottle as I could, pointing to it so closely that my fingertip was one nanometer away.

“You can just grab the one you want,” he said.

Death.

This is where things get weird.

The whipped cream portion also contains vanilla extract and nutmeg, but no sugar. Ever have vanilla in a savory dish? I had it once in whipped potatoes for some expensive dish ages ago.

Have you ever tasted something and immediately become angry? Because that’s how I felt when I tried it.

Chefs try to do interesting things to make themselves feel very clever and also to get you to basically throw money at their faces. Then when you try those interesting things, and you don’t like them, you must say, “That was so innovative,” when you mean, “Why did you make me eat that? I don’t like you as a human being anymore.”

Making whipped cream by hand is a pain in the ass, but unfortunately worth it.

The texture is way better than the canned stuff. I’m not just saying that. If you’re just buying a spray can to shove up your nose, that is one thing, but if you’re actually going to ingest it through your mouth area, freshly whipped cream really is that much better.

There’s no reason to buy a brand new electric hand mixer. Go to the thrift store and buy a shitty-looking electric beater for $3. Electric beaters are tanks and as long as it looks like it won’t burn your house down, then you are okay.

I got my mixer from my friend Joe. He died later, but those stories are unrelated.

After assembling in the glass, I decided that this Beef Tingler is a weirdly attractive cocktail.

It looks kind of like a freshly poured Guinness.

Please, do not drink a Beef Tingler. Remember what I said earlier about the vanilla mashed potatoes? There’s not only vanilla, there’s also nutmeg, and orange zest in the unsweetened whipped cream. Jesus. I have to say that the reason why we don’t make recipes from the 70’s anymore is because everyone who ate them vaporized into a fine mist and never returned to this mortal coil.

The cream mix on top wrecks the MSG laden Campbell’s impostor beef consommé. You smell the orange zest first, so your brain says, “Oh, hi, orange. I like you.” Then you take a sip and your brain says, “Orange, why do you taste like cheap beef broth? This is a bad situation, you must run.”