Out shell of its
Peanut butter moves past lunchbox staple to restaurant menu star
IT’S a rare American who’s never had peanut butter with jelly in a sandwich, but chefs are using the beloved spread in lots of new applications, many of them savory.
The peanut butter burger has been available in some parts of the country for years — mostly as an under-the-radar cult favorite — but Jacob Sanders had never had one before he created the Sriracha and Peanut Butter Bacon Burger for Brewer’s
Cafe at Barley’s Casino & Brewing Company in Henderson.
“I’ve always liked peanut butter, all my life,” said Sanders, executive chef for Station Casinos’ Wildfire Gaming Division. “I eat peanut butter on my pancakes and French toast.”
He had been thinking up a concept for a new breakfast burger, maybe with peanut butter and jelly. But Sanders also consumes a lot of sriracha. In fact, he likes the Asian hot sauce so much, he said he often puts it on every bite of whatever he’s eating, just to be sure it’s been thoroughly drenched. So his mind naturally went to sriracha, and a combination so offbeat it might just work.
“Stuff with spins on it — that’s the new thing right now,” Sanders said.
The finished product was a beef burger with applewood-smoked bacon, sriracha, peanut butter, caramelized onions, cheddar cheese and a fried egg, all served on a brioche bun.
“It’s the peanut butter, it’s the sriracha — it’s the mixture,” he said of the flavor profile. “Sriracha is hot, but it’s got kind of fishy on the back of it. The meat juices go with the peanut butter oils. The egg over medium kind of breaks, and then you’ve got that buttery bun. It really goes together.”
He hasn’t ended up with a peanut-butterand-jelly breakfast burger, but the wheels are still turning.
Bryan Forgione, executive chef of Buddy V’s Ristorante at the Grand Canal Shoppes, has never had a peanut butter burger, but he’s had peanut butter shrimp, a recipe created by his father, esteemed chef Larry Forgione.
PEANUT
Bryan Forgione said he loved peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches as a kid — maybe a little too much.
“I think I had a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich every day when I came home from school,” he said. “I got a little — let’s call it husky — by the time I was in third grade. Now that I’m older and paying attention to what I eat, I’ll just walk by, open the container and take a big whiff. Even the aroma — there’s just something about it.”
He considers himself a bit of a peanut butter connoisseur, although the nature of that may surprise you.
“The natural stuff is still good,” he said, “but there’s something deliciously awesome about the Jif and the Skippy. Whatever they put in that, it’s good.”
But back to the shrimp. Forgione said when he was a young man, his father created a recipe in which the shellfish were basted with a peanutbutter-and-ale barbecue sauce.
“I think that was my first memory of taking something like peanut butter that I just looked at as a fat-kid snack and turning it into something rustically elegant,” he said. “To this day, we’ll pull that out and do it at events. I even did a father-son dinner with my father with the peanut-ale shrimp, just because it was one of my favorite memories of him and his cooking.”
Forgione said he’s also successfully used the barbecue sauce on chicken wings.
Marc Marrone, corporate chef for the Tao Group, said Tao restaurant at The Venetian uses peanut butter quite a bit in savory applications.
“The peanut butter gives it a smoother texture,” he said. “I’ve also used it in salad dressings, like a peanut butter vinaigrette that turned out really well. It had a lot of acid in it, and the texture and viscosity of peanut butter helped stabilize it.” Marrone said he’s used a peanut butter-and-truffle vinaigrette on a duck salad at Tao.
“The texture is beneficial because you can go either way with it — you can go with savory applications or sweet applications,” he said of peanut butter. “It takes heat very well but also works very well in chilled applications. When you cook it, it doesn’t break as often as many other things.”
As far as sweet applications, Marrone said they do a 20-layer peanut butter-chocolate cake at Lavo at Palazzo.
Ashley Costa, pastry chef at Carnevino at Palazzo, said the chocolate-peanut butter torte is very popular in part because it’s so well balanced.
“It’s not too sweet,” she said, made with a layer of feuilletine, “this really good, almost cookie-like texture” mixed with praline cake and chocolate, with a layer of chocolate mousse, topped by a layer of peanut butter mousse with mascarpone and powdered sugar.
“The key, I think, is to not doll it up too much,” she said.
Mickey Harden, executive pastry chef at the Hard Rock Hotel, said that as a kid, he liked peanut butter warmed up and poured over vanilla ice cream. Today, he said, he uses it a lot in desserts such as the Nutty Ice Cream Sandwich, peanut butter ice cream on a brownie, served with bacon-caramel popcorn. And The King — “that was like a peanut butter chocolate mousse with a bacon nougatine and caramel banana ice cream.”
Next time you’re hungry, consider opening a jar of peanut butter.
“When you think about it,” Forgione said, “you look at how much peanuts are used widely in Asian styles of cooking. It makes more sense when you look at it from that perspective, instead of a jar of Jif that’s supposed to go with white bread and jelly.”
“People are starting to put everything on stuff,” Sanders said. “Some of it’s really weird, but they just mix.”
Contact Heidi Knapp Rinella at Hrinella@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0474. Follow @Hkrinella on Twitter.