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Episode 201

How to Pair Baijiu with Food

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How to Pair Baijiu with Food

Episode 201

What’s shakin’ cocktail fans?

Welcome to Episode 201 of The Modern Bar Cart Podcast!

We’re joined by former guest, author, and Baijiiu expert Derek Sandhaus, as well as friend of the podcast Brett Steigerwaldt, head distiller at Windon Distilling, makers of Lyon Rum. With their powers combined, these two gentlemen put together a program where we could taste seven of the twelve officially recognized styles of Baijiu alongside traditional Chinese dishes from the regions where they are produced.

In this blockbuster Baijiu pairing and Chinese food smorgasbord, some of the topics we discuss with Brett and Derek include:

The base grains, production methods, and flavor profiles of seven – count em – SEVEN different baijiu categories, including: rice aroma, light aroma, laobaigan, phoenix aroma, strong aroma, sauce aroma, and extra strong aroma.
The relationship between baijiu and food, both at a basic level, and in the context of each different region and culinary tradition
How different Baijiu styles “hack” the very foreign (to us) looking production method involving microbe-packed grain bricks called “Qu” and giant steamers to create flavors and aromas that are vastly different from one another.
We also talk about what a phoenix smells like, how various traditional spicy and numbing ingredients affect how baijiu tastes, why food and drink exploration is an important act of cultural ambassadorship,
And much, much more

FEATURED COCKTAIL – THE MING RIVER PINEAPPLE SMASH

This episode’s featured cocktail is the Ming River Pineapple Smash. To make it, you’ll need:

50ml (or a little over an ounce and a half) of Ming River Baijiu
25ml (or a little over ¾ oz) of lime juice
15ml (or about a half an ounce) of simple syrup (or agave syrup)
A handful of basil leaves
And a slice of pineapple

Muddle the basil and pineapple in the bottom of a cocktail shaker, then add ice and your liquid ingredients, shake vigorously for about 15 seconds, then double strain into a stemmed cocktail glass, and enjoy.

The combination of lime juice and pineapple juice in this cocktail produces one of our favorite colors in the cocktail world: an eerie yellow-green. Sometimes you’ll see this in cocktails that contain Suze, but in this case it’s achieved completely with natural ingredients that happen to perfectly complement the insanely tropical flavor profile of the Ming River Baijiu.

The other great thing about this drink is that it’s simple, scalable, and can be made with just one bottle of Baijiu and a trip to the grocery store, fitting in nicely with our past guest Maggie Hoffman’s approach to “One-Bottle Cocktails.”

SHOW NOTES

We have a ton of resources and photos featuring both the bottles we enjoyed and some of the food that went with them. Check out the gallery below for some fun shots that might give you a hankering for some Baijiu and authentic Chinese cuisine.