Even An Old Shoe Will Taste Good With Enough Steak Sauce On It

This piece first appeared in April 9th, 2009 edition of the Pioneer Tribune, a weekly newspaper from Manistique, Michigan. Please visit their website: http://www.pioneertribune.com/

My brother hates steak sauce. It seems he is on a personal, one-man war against the stuff. It bothers him when people use steak sauce. He’ll often say, “Don’t you like steak?” to someone who has the nerve to use such a terrible substance on a steak. The reply to his question is, naturally, “Yes, I like steak.” To which my brother will respond, “Then why are you covering up the flavor of the steak with that sauce?”, and here is the beginning of a big argument about something that no one really cares about.

I know that he is just being an antagonist, and I bite my tongue to keep the peace.

Assorted condiments are used on a wide variety of food. I have no problem with that. But as much as I hate to admit it, my brother is right ... in a manner of speaking.

People do use various condiments and seasonings to make sub-par cuts of meat more palatable. Even the most flavorless cut of pork will taste decent with enough barbecue sauce.

My good friend, Wayne Genghis, loves barbecue sauce on almost everything. I asked him once if he ate barbecued food because the food itself tasted better with barbecue sauce or if the food was just the vehicle for the sauce. He claimed that it was the combination of the two things. I remain unconvinced. I think it’s really a vehicle for the sauce, for him.

Wayne then asked me if I eat potato chips because of the potato or because of the salt. I couldn’t lie, it’s the salt. Thinking about it, an unsalted potato chip would have a certain lack of appeal.

I can understand dressing up a potato, in any form, to make it taste better. A plain potato has little to be desired.

Changing things that already have an abundance of flavor makes little sense to me. Take coffee, for example. A cup of black coffee is loaded with flavor, especially some of the darker roasts. Even with this abundance of flavor, many of us seek to change that flavor to something that bears no resemblance to the original form; change it from what it is, to what we like.

I have a preference for Colombian coffee with no cream or sugar. I never use cream or sugar ... unless I’m in a restaurant, then I use both. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. It sure doesn’t taste like coffee anymore when I do add the stuff. Cream and sugar severely alter the taste of a plain cup of coffee. Some people take it a step further by using flavored coffee, creams or syrups. It can end up tasting like over-glorified hot cocoa.

With the widespread growth of microbreweries in the past 20 years, beer now has its share of altered flavorings as well. While I welcomed the return of full-flavored beers over the bland dreck that was the mainstay of U.S. breweries since the end of Prohibition, I was never too keen on the beers that were flavored to taste like something other than beer.

A few years ago, while buying beer at a grocery store in Marquette, a college student behind me in line asked if I had tried the Strawberry Cheesecake muffin, or some other equally ridiculous flavored version of the beer that I was buying. She said that it was her favorite. I politely replied that I like beer-flavored beer. Fruity tasting beers make me wonder why a person wouldn’t just drink a fruity wine. It’s like drinking tequila flavored schnapps (such a thing does exist). Why not just drink tequila?

It makes me wonder if flavored beer is made for people who don’t like beer? Perhaps flavored anythings are made for people who don’t like what the substance is supposed to be in the first place?

Menthol cigarettes may be the best example of this. Of all the things that can have their flavor changed from their original form, menthol cigarettes may make the least sense of all to me.

Once again I am reminded of something my brother often says. He says that menthol cigarettes are for people who want to smoke cigarettes but don’t like cigarettes.

It makes me think that there might be people out there who wouldn’t be smokers at all if menthol cigarettes didn’t exist. Would they have made the decision to smoke if there weren’t these minty flavored cigarettes?

While it doesn’t always make sense to me, I find it interesting that we do alter the flavor of things in a multitude of ways. And while I do find it interesting, I can’t completely agree with my brother’s line of thinking that just because a person prefers a flavored version of something, it means they don’t like the whatever it is that is being flavored.

He’ll never admit it, but I don’t think my brother completely believes that himself.

My brother was visiting a while back and we were having pasties for lunch. Now, I never use ketchup on a pasty, or anything else for that matter, but my brother does.

As he was drenching his pasty in the most widely used flavor cover-up of them all, I couldn’t resist asking, “Don’t you like pasties?”