Flamin' Hot MTN Dew vs. Flamin' Hot Cheetos MTN Dew

and a not-so-blind taste test

Howdy, clowns!

At the end of last week’s newsletter about jelly bean cassoulet, I teased something about an event happening in Chicago on October 4. And…here’s the reveal: My long-time friend John Carruthers and I are working on another pop-up, for his rogue pizza operation, Crust Fund Pizza! The event is taking place this coming Monday at The Kedzie Inn (4100 N. Kedzie), at 5 P.M.

John started Crust Fund Pizza during the pandemic, and basically the gist of it is that he’ll post a “theoretical” menu on Instagram once a month, and followers will send him a DM to see if there’s any slots available. If there are, and they donate at least $25 to the Chicago non-profit he picks, he’ll make them an absurdly delicious tavern-style pizza.

John is humble about it, but he’s raised thousands of dollars for different causes, and not many people can say they’ve done that by making pizza at home. It’s pretty wild. In case you would rather watch a video than read these words, check out this TV feature about him.

We released the menu and the pre-order info today, and not realizing the power of social media, I had no idea that it was going to sell out in TWO MINUTES. Two minutes! That’s wild.

But for those who couldn’t snag a pre-order, there’s limited walk-in pies available. If the speed of today’s orders are any indication, those’ll go fast too. Just a heads up.

I’ve got a special pizza designed, and no, there’s no poison or dog food on it.

I’m ashamed to say, I created an actual pizza. I think my growing contingent of Korean readers of the newsletter (hi, I see you! 제발, 이 뉴스레터에 대해 엄마에게 말하지 마세요.) will be delighted to know this is based off a popular Korean dish called buldak, or fire chicken.

Davida came up with this excellent name, “What a Load of Buldak,” and it’s got the usual tomato sauce, parmesan, and mozzarella, along with smoked fire chicken, sesame seeds, green onions, and it’s finished with Samyang Fire Chicken ramen (if you know, you know) hot honey.

Speaking of John, when we did our test run of pizza at The Kedzie Inn, he gifted me a can of Flamin’ Hot MTN DEW.

You know what? I hate that they spell it MTN DEW now and not Mountain Dew. Calling it MTN DEW is rotting a hole in my brain, for one, and it’s as if PepsiCo is admitting that the beverage is the farthest thing from nature possible. We don’t need a reminder that it’s probably just some of The Incredible Hulk’s urine sample from his annual checkup.

Now, this shit was limited-time-only, and John managed to snatch some up before they sold out online. For the people who are sorely disappointed that they missed the opportunity to try Urinary Tract Infection Hulk Pee, I decided to see if I could replicate it myself, and compare it to the real thing, by way of feedback from my very lovely blind test subject, Davida.

Basically, all I’d do is soak Flamin’ Hot Cheetos in regular MTN DEW, to extract its flavor into the sweet, sweet, Hulk piss.

Then I’d let Davida try both to see if she could identify which was which.

It’s practically a match made in heaven, when you think about it. I mean, the MTN DE—fuck it—the MOUNTAIN DEW, and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos both probably came from some delicious radioactive science experiment gone wrong. Obviously, they belong together.

I stirred the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and Mountain Dew mix together, and the liquid instantaneously transformed into the color of a post-apocalyptic sunset.

As you can see, Harvey keeled over with alarm. That’s his alarmed expression.

I took a tiny sip from the deli container and Davida said, “…you’re going to strain that, right?”

Oh, uh, right. Strain.

It is really, really, difficult for me to describe how red this stuff is.

Speaking of red, one time, years ago, I crushed a whole big bag of Xxtra Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (the spicier version) in one sitting. The next day I took a dump, and it came out bright red, and I nearly started crying. It didn’t occur to me I’d eaten a whole bag of what essentially amounted to highly concentrated food dye the day before. I considered going to the emergency room, but then I realized what happened, and so I decided I didn’t need to cry.

Thank you for reading my memoir.

Seriously.

I told you this stuff was red.

A side effect I hadn’t anticipated was that the Cheetos had leaked a thin layer of grease into the Mountain Dew.

Davida sniffed the air. “Ew,” she said. “It smells like downtown.”

Sure enough, it did smell like sewage water. There’s something sulfuric-smelling in Cheetos that really comes out when they’re soaked in liquid.

Turns out the real Flamin’ Hot Mountain Dew product is orange, not pestilence-red.

What is this bullshit? I want to look at a glass of Mountain Dew and consider my own mortality in its hue. Well, now that I think about it, I recently got a jug of windshield wiper fluid that was this color. Maybe that’s what we were about to imbibe.

Okay, fine, fine, it still looks like some form of death.

The real deal stuff is in the glass on the left, and the Flamin’ Hot Cheeto version is in the mason jar on the right.

Please notice that the Cheeto-soaked version is opaque. That is really impressive.

Here’s my pretty taste-tester, Davida.

She donned a sleeping mask and said, “Make sure you mention the fact that it’s just a sleeping mask and not a sexual thing, okay?”

Davida sat on the couch and I immediately made the mistake of handing her the glass of the real Flamin’ Hot Mountain Dew product, muttering, “Well, you’re gonna know by the shape of the glass.”

Then she said “What do you mean, I’m gonna know by the glass?”

“Because you saw what I was pouring stuff into,” I replied.

“So this is not the big mason jar, which means this is the real one. You already fucked it up!” I briefly considered having her sip the death sodas while I held each glass instead, but then I noticed another key factor: The Cheeto-soaked Mountain Dew was much warmer than the Flamin’ Hot one that had been chillin’ in the fridge.

Plus Davida had already determined that the Cheeto-soaked version smelled like downtown Chicago on a blisteringly hot summer day, and the smell was getting more pronounced the longer it sat at room temperature.

Well, there went my cover. How did I mess that up so quickly?

“So this isn’t even a blind taste test!” she said.

“Not anymore, because you figured it out!”

She took a sip of the actual product and said, “Are you punking me? Is this the regular Mountain Dew? This is really the Flamin’ Hot one? It literally tastes like Mountain Dew, except it just tingles in the back of your mouth a little more.”

I handed her the mason jar of the macerated Flamin’ Hot Cheeto drink, and she took a sip. Then she said, “Eyyahguhhghh. This just tastes like Cheetos.”

“Is that bad?” I asked.

“Can I have another sip?” I handed her the glass again. It smelled like hot garbage.

“It smells worse than it tastes. It just tastes like liquid Cheetos,” she said, after trying it again. “It doesn’t even taste much like Mountain Dew. I don’t know what the sweet spot is there, to get it to taste like Mountain Dew and Cheetos, but both you and PepsiCo failed.” Brutal.

Later Davida brought up the fact the Flamin’ Hot Mountain Dew wasn’t supposed to taste like Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, it was just supposed to taste “Flamin’ Hot.” Which isn’t really a flavor, when you think about it, but rather, a physical state of being.

Whoa.

That makes me wonder, can PepsiCo make you, as a human being, Flamin’ Hot? Would the corporation just dip you in a vat of red food dye and acid? I’d agree to that, if I could get some kind of certificate for it, to slap on the wall.

Flamin’ Hot Dannis Ree. Hell yeah.

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Okay, time for the usual: If you’re a happy reader of Food is Stupid, don’t forget to share these posts on social media, because it helps me grow this thing every single week.

And, second of all, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. This is basically like my version of a public radio broadcast funding pitch. You’ll get exclusive content and you’ll be able to read the archives at foodisstupid.substack.com. Plus, you’ll have my eternal thanks.

Speaking of public radio, I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but I was interviewed by NPR for a small segment last weekend. You can listen to it here. It was about Pokemon Oreos, if you can believe it. Life is wild.

I’ll see a few of you at next week’s pop up, I’ll hop into your inboxes again soon, and as always, I love you all.