The Pittsburgh Dish
Do you really know the food scene of Pittsburgh?! The Pittsburgh Dish introduces you to the people, places, and recipes that make our regional cuisine so special. By sharing personal stories, weekly recommendations, and community recipes, we aim to inspire you to connect with local taste makers and experience the unique flavors that shape our city.
The Pittsburgh Dish
027 From Backyard Barbecue to Chef Success with Jon Lloyd
(01:00) Ever wondered how a Father's Day gift can ignite a passion and transform a career? This week, we sit down with Jon Lloyd, a self-taught barbecue enthusiast who turned his newfound love for smoking meats during the pandemic into a thriving private chef business in Pittsburgh. He shares the variety of services he offers, including intimate dinners, large catering events, and cooking classes at local venues like the Kitchen by Vangura and Third Space Bakery.
(06:49) Get inspired by the success story behind “Holy Smokes BBQ,” Jon's YouTube channel that has captivated nearly 8,000 subscribers. With his background in graphic design and marketing, Jon crafts appealing and authentic content that resonates with viewers, like making crispy chicken wings on a smoker.
(14:20) Learn about his pivot into the private chef world, how his Southern roots influence his bold culinary creations, and he teases some new pursuits into the culinary TV world.
(29:13) Later on this episode, we dive into wine serving temperatures with insights from wine expert Catherine Montest, helping you elevate your culinary experiences at home. And we end with elevated crispy treats from Sophia Lo of the Citycast Pittsburgh Podcast. Tune in for a deliciously inspiring conversation filled with practical tips, personal stories, and a shared passion for food.
Welcome to the Pittsburgh Dish. I'm your host, Doug Heilman. What does a self-taught barbecue enthusiast, a private chef and an Airbnb booking have in common? Our guest Jon Lloyd shares the answer Is a glass of warm wine. Not your thing, Definitely not here. Well, we're in luck. Catherine of your Fairy Wine Mother shares her take on temperatures for serving wine and looking to dress up your Rice Krispie treats. We have two variations from Sophia Lo of the CityCast Pittsburgh podcast. All that ahead, stay tuned. If you love what we do, you can become a sustaining supporter of the Pittsburgh Dish for just $3, $5, $8, or $10 a month and cancel anytime. Just tap the Support the Show button on our website, wwwpittsburghdishcom, and thanks for listening. Thanks so much for coming over and for being on the show. Of course, Would you introduce yourself and what you have going on right now in food.
Jon:Yes, absolutely so. My name is Jon Jon Lloyd. I am a private chef based here in the Pittsburgh area, and that is really what I have going on right now. I'm kind of really deep into the private chef world and doing a lot of in-home events. I do a lot of catering. We're just getting over the hump of grad party season, so that's kind of winding down, and now we're getting into the fall season where you know I'll have various types of things to do and then I also, you know, have a couple of cooking classes that are planned and demonstrations and stuff like that that's cool.
Doug:I first learned about you really because you submitted a recipe to the show a couple months back maybe that's right and we talked a little bit, but I definitely wanted to get to know you more and since then, like you said, I've just kind of started to now see you everywhere.
Jon:I think I just saw you on KDKA. That's right. Yeah, I was on Pittsburgh Today Live.
Doug:How did that go?
Jon:It was great. It was a great experience. Hosts were very friendly. They seemed to really love the food and it was cool to kind of see the behind the scenes of how that whole thing gets pulled off.
Doug:Yeah, I think we'll talk about it in a little bit, but you sort of like the television vibe of food don't you?
Jon:I do, I do, I think I at the risk of sounding a certain way, I do think I do well behind a camera.
Doug:Yeah, I thought it was a great segment. Why don't we just explain to folks if they're interested in your services? Like you said, you would do anything from coming to somebody's house. Yep, are you just cooking for them, or do you actually do lessons too?
Jon:So it all depends. I like to define what I do as a unique, craftable culinary experience, so it can literally be what you want it to be. So I've done things as small as, for example, this past February, I had a couple who wanted me to come into their home and do a private Valentine's day dinner for them. But they, they had kids and they didn't want to have to go out to a restaurant on Valentine's day, bring the small kids. So they said, let's put the kids to bed, then we'll have you come over and make a dinner. And it was great. I think that's amazing, yeah. But then I've also done things where we'll, um, you know, rent out a local place and have a class or a demo for 30 to 40 people, um, and then all the way up to full blown catering things with a couple of hundreds. So it's it's, it's all based on what the what the person wants to do.
Doug:I love that. I also noticed, and you mentioned a second ago, you're doing some classes around town in several places. Can we, can we list a few where you're doing classes now?
Jon:Yeah, for sure. So I'm doing. I do classes out at in North Huntington at the kitchen by Vangura. Vangura is a local family owned countertop manufacturer, but they also have a gorgeous demo kitchen this is an amazing demo kitchen.
Doug:I have seen it and it looks like it could be on, you know, like a food TV competition. It's a huge kitchen, so it's great and that's sort of you're in the round, People get to watch you do your thing.
Jon:Yep, and then they have setups for doing traditional indoor cooking things, and then, on the flip side of that, there's an indoor, outdoor setup. So it's a grill area with with big hoods and stuff, so you can actually teach grilling indoors. Yeah, so I do a lot of stuff out there and let's see, I am doing some stuff down at Third Space Bakery.
Jon:Yes, Third Space is good friends of the show, yeah, yeah. So they're good people out there and I'm going to be doing actually, later this month, going to be doing a cooking demo out there as well.
Doug:So we're recording in August, so later August, later August. Yeah, all right.
Jon:So Phipps is one that we are actually about to add. We're still working out the details there, but I do fully expect that we'll be able to do some classes over at FIPS in the fall.
Doug:That's really cool. They have this space called Botany Hall and another really cool kitchen space.
Jon:Yes, and some of the freshest herbs you can get anywhere.
Doug:Oh, absolutely, it's amazing. So tell me, with all of this sort of teaching and instruction you're doing like, where does that come from? Give me a little bit about your food journey to here.
Jon:Yeah. So the funny thing is I didn't really start cooking in the sense of like chefing, until the pandemic hit.
Doug:Okay, so the last four years, last four years, yeah.
Jon:And it was crazy because really, the only reason that I started was because there was nothing else to do. So for Father's Day in 2020, my wife got me my first outdoor smoker and I didn't really know what to do with it. I loved to grill, but had no idea what to do with a smoker or anything like that. And just research to the craft of outdoor cooking and live fire cooking and wood and all that stuff I just found really fascinating. And I started creating videos of myself, mostly just so that I could look back and kind of have a way to catalog my recipes. And were you putting those on YouTube? Then? I was, but not so that anyone would find them. I basically had them online but had the whole channel like private. Yeah, it was just so that I could go back and look at stuff.
Jon:And I showed my wife and she said you know, this is actually really good, you should make these public. And I'm like, oh gosh, I don't know. I don't know if anybody would tune in. I felt like if I got to like a year of doing this and I had like 20 viewers, I don't know, I don't know if anybody would tune in. I felt like if I got to the like a year of doing this and I had like 20 viewers. I would feel worse than if I had zero, so uh, but yeah, we, we did it and turned it on and uh, ramped up, did, started doing weekly content and um, and now you know we're almost four full years into this thing and um, about to hit a million views?
Doug:What, okay? So let's back up for our listeners. So is the channel mainly based on, uh, smoking barbecuing outdoor? It is yep, okay, and what is the name of the channel?
Jon:it is holy smokes barbecue, so the holy smokes barbecue channel on youtube yep, and not to be confused with any other.
Doug:Correct by that name. Correct, just go to the affiliation. It is just the YouTube channel because locally we have something else named. Yes. Okay, a couple of things. Yeah, all right. Uh, are you still doing the YouTube videos?
Jon:I am, um, it's, it's. It's just been crazy how it's taken off. You know, um, I, I remember I actually have a like a post on my Instagram saying like I can't believe I got 150 subscribers and you know, now we're almost to 8,000. And, uh, it's, it's just so wild to think that that many people are interested in the content that I'm putting out. You know, it's, it's pretty humbling and I've I've made a lot of really cool connections through it. I've gotten some some really cool sponsorships through it from some several companies. Yeah, it's been great.
Doug:Yeah, I have heard that, the grilling and smoking and the barbecue world, especially in the YouTube space is a popular place to be.
Jon:It really is, but by virtue of that it's also a very kind of competitive space for eyeballs right so you really have to create dynamic, engaging content, and that's something that I, you know, admittedly didn't do very well when I first started, because, again, the purpose of it wasn't to ever go anywhere. So I didn't care how I sounded or how I looked or anything, I was just focused on, again, cataloging the recipe, and I wanted to do video format because I'm also a creative type. So I've done, I've had stints of work in graphic design and marketing and video creation and stuff, and so it was a way to kind of merge these two passions together.
Doug:I think when we can bring some skills we have from one part of our life to a passion that we have for another part, and it all works. It's sort of the recipe for success. Yeah, yeah, it's very, very fulfilling. And did you find yourself with the videos? You were sort of doing them in a way to teach yourself back and indirectly you became a great teacher for others.
Jon:Yeah, it's, it's, that's very beautifully put, that's exactly, that's exactly how, how, how it happened I? I've always sort of had a um, a desire to teach and to lead. In fact, my my wife tells me a lot of times that I miss my calling. It should have been a teacher, but I love instruction, which is one of the reasons that I love doing these cooking classes, but also a reason I love doing this YouTube stuff because I'm doing it to show people that, for in a lot of cases not a lot of financial demand you can create something very delicious outside using very simple ingredients and stuff that's very easy to come by. And so now it's really. The motive behind the channel has become not really at all about teaching myself more, but it's been about transferring that knowledge to others.
Doug:If you're in media creation, I think that's what you need. Actually, you need that purpose that's beyond just you doing it for you, and it brings the success around it, even leaving the cringy videos on, from the first couple steps you know, it's great because I think people love seeing the progression of that yeah, we have a.
Jon:I have a video where I did, um, this like smoked uh, barbecue baked beans side dish, and at the very end at the end of all of my videos, I taste it and I always say holy smokes. At the end of all of my videos I taste it and I always say holy smokes at the end. It's kind of like my shtick right, yeah, your sign off right. And the baked beans were so good that I dropped my spoon and it clanged on the table and clanged on the cast iron fell on the ground. And in that moment I had to decide do I leave this in or do I take it out? And instead of taking it out and making it real polished, I actually accented it a little bit and mix it up and put it in black and white and stuff. And to this day, when my daughter watches it, she will actively seek out that part of the video to watch.
Catherine:It's the best part.
Jon:Yeah, it's raw, it's real, it's just the way it happens. It's what people love.
Doug:I would imagine when you mentioned, you had sponsors and I think you've said this to me before. You have more than one grill now to say the least.
Jon:Yes, um, what are you up to? Well, I had to. I had to actually get rid of a couple because there was literally no space left on my patio. I let's see. Currently I have, um, a cabinet smoker. That's also a grill combo, so they're two, two devices kind of built into one. Okay, I have, um, a what I would call a stick burner, which is kind of a, a barrel that uses wood chunks in the bottom of it. Yeah, um, I have just a full-on pellet grill, which, uh, it's, it's. I use that for more like large things because it's very large two flat tops, tops sort of like, you know, blackstone things Outdoor griddles Right.
Doug:Outdoor griddles Fired underneath.
Jon:Yep. And then I have just a traditional propane grill that is connected to natural gas, and then I have a small portable yakitori grill that I use occasionally for, you know, if we have friends over or something. It's sort of like fondue, but yakitori in the middle of the table, which is kind of fun. That's great. I think that's about it. That's about it.
Doug:I can see why. Probably wifey was like uh, one of these has to go right, or no more.
Jon:She's like you are. You are now officially impeding on my patio set.
Doug:Do you have a favorite outdoor method or is it just depend on the dishes?
Jon:I think my favorite outdoor methods of cooking are anything that involve a lot of time.
Doug:Okay.
Jon:Because I think that the more time you put into something, I like to say that, when it comes to barbecue, you can taste the time you really can. I like to say that, when it comes to barbecue, you can taste the time you really can when you're making something, that you get up at 4 o'clock in the morning while the world is asleep, and you're putting an 18-pound brisket on a smoker and then you're going back in bed and then you wake up again a little bit later and you just check on it, and all throughout the day, and then, like two or three days later, you're finally pulling it off and it's almost like you've got a story to tell of how much time you put into that.
Jon:You put a small vacation into this piece of meat, exactly, and it's worth it. It's worth every minute of it.
Doug:I don't know if I've ever had something that's been cooked for two to three days that I know of Right Right you may have. I didn't know. Is there a particular dish or a video that's gone crazy or that's your most popular? Yeah?
Jon:My most popular video is actually a video that I made to solve a common problem in the world of barbecue. Okay, and that is that it is very difficult to get anything to be crispy on a smoker. Oh, yeah, right, because the, the, the smoker, you know it generates some moisture inside A little humidity, a little humidity With all that smoke.
Jon:Yep, exactly, and one thing that people love to have crispy are their chicken wings, right, and so I did a video on how to make crispy chicken wings on a smoker. Still to this day, and that video is almost three years old and still it remains my most viewed video. I think it averages about 3000 views a day.
Doug:People will have to check out their crispy smoked chicken wings.
Jon:Yes, I tried to make another one later because I thought, oh man, let me do an updated version of this, and it didn't do as well as the first one. The algorithm is weird, the OG one is fine, yep, and they were really good. This is Chef Jon Lloyd and you're listening to The Pittsburgh Dish.
Doug:So we know that the barbecue, the outdoor cooking world, is really big for you. Take me into, then the Chef Jon Lloyd world. Take me along the journey house.
Jon:We love hosting parties, we love having friends over, and we would have friends over and a lot of times I would be outside on the smoker making something. Sometimes they'd come over and it would be either freezing cold because we live in Pittsburgh, or it would be raining because we live in Pittsburgh, so uh, so I would kind of bring things indoors and start making some stuff and I just kept getting all of these kind of like rave reviews from friends and from the people that were closest to me, who I knew would be brutally honest with me.
Doug:That's good yeah.
Jon:From there I started sort of developing some recipes and started dealing a little bit more into side dishes instead of just kind of proteins, started experimenting with foods with which I was unfamiliar cooking and really just found that I sort of had a natural ability for it.
Jon:And, um, you know, I I grew up in the South and so I brought, I bring sort of a lot of that Southern bold flavor with me to kind of everything that I do. And so, throwing some of that stuff in with what I had been doing with barbecue and the things I'd come to learn about seasoning and and how seasoning interacts with various proteins, and then what, what are good pairings for sides and how can I take a kind of a boring side and make it a little bit more exciting, all of that stuff kind of clicked one day and I said, you know, I should consider being like a chef, but I knew I didn't want to work in a restaurant. Yeah, I, um and I applaud chefs that work in restaurants. I think that that's an amazing thing. I just didn't think it was for me. And so the freedom of being able to say I'm a chef, you want a chef, let's make something together has been really, really exciting and it's led to some really cool opportunities.
Doug:I know that you said you don't really have a lot of planned menus for your guests, but let's just give listeners a little taste of some things you've made that have been big hits in your private chefing.
Jon:Yeah, so uh, one of my kind of most popular appetizers is a? Uh, a cold. It's kind of like a pasta salad, but it is a? Uh. It's a lemon pepper, farfalle pasta with a light cream sauce and kind of shaved basil on top. It's a perfect complement to an Italian menu. Also kind of down that Italian road, a panna cotta dessert served in a wine glass. I do like a vanilla cinnamon panna cotta that has edible flowers on top. Yeah, and you serve it in a stemless wine glass. I do like a vanilla cinnamon panna cotta that has edible flowers on top.
Jon:Yeah, and you serve it in a stemless wine glass and people seem to love that as well, and that's a lot of fun to make as well. As far as like a kind of a main, I recently started doing this delicious Peruvian chicken thigh that has like a traditional Peruvian green sauce, and then these strawberry balsamic glazed Brussels sprouts, which you wouldn't think strawberry and Brussels sprouts would work together. But again, that's one of those things. It's like these two things might not work together, but we never know unless we try it. And I put them together in the kitchen one day and it was actually my wife who was like that's the best Brussels sprout I've ever had.
Doug:The alchemy of cooking. You just don't know sometimes. Right, that's crazy, but I love it. You have all of these great ideas and the success that's going on. You mentioned earlier you're from the South, and it kind of leads me to my next question. Yeah, where exactly did you grow up?
Jon:Yeah, I grew up in a small town in Southeastern North Carolina, about an hour and 15 minutes from the coast.
Doug:Oh wow. Would you take us back to growing up, Like what was food like for you at home?
Jon:Yeah, food growing up for me, my family didn't come from a lot of means, and so a lot of times our dinner was let's just look what's in the cupboard and see what we can put together. Which led to a lot of barbecue chicken. It led to a lot of casseroles. I don't know if you know a lot about casseroles, but there's really no definition for a casserole. It's just whatever you got, put it in a baking pan and throw in the oven, and so a lot of casseroles, a lot of pasta, a lot of spaghetti, stuff like that, and then my dad would be outside grilling.
Jon:He would always like grill chicken or burgers or stuff like that, but that was kind of like it wasn't a very wide variety of food that I had growing up. But one thing that that did is it even at an early age it caused me to be really appreciative of what I had and to understand that now, as a chef, I don't want to have to go out and break the bank just to make one meal. I want to see what do we have and then how can we use what we already have to make something.
Doug:That's incredible it built you like the resourcefulness and the intuition. When did you start cooking?
Jon:Yeah, as a young person I didn't. I didn't cook a whole lot, I was best friends with my microwave, so so big on like easy Mac and stuff. But but yeah, so it wasn't until you know, later in life that I even got started cooking.
Doug:Were you a picky eater or were you pretty open? I was pretty picky.
Jon:Oh really, I was pretty picky, and this is going to sound pretty unbelievable, but I don't think I had garlic on purpose until I was at least 18 or 19 years old. Yeah, there were certain foods that I didn't even know existed, just because we never had them in my house. I was a typical kid where, like I don't like that, well, why don't you like it? I just don't have you ever tried it.
Doug:No, no, of course you are my nephews or my own kids, for that's happening with my or my own kids, for that matter. Yeah, I know Kids do that. So many kids do that. Yeah, what age do you think you were where you had some of those breakthroughs? You tried garlic. You started trying new things.
Jon:Yeah, I think it was kind of late high school, early college, okay yeah, actually, where we have this hilarious story about a broccoli casserole that my mom used to make and she would make it all growing up and I never would ever even taste it because I don't like that and I'd also never even tried broccoli. So I was like, no, don't like that, don't like that. So it wasn't until I got married and my wife tried my mom's broccoli casserole and she loved it, and then she started making it and now I love it. So now it's one of my favorite things to have at parties, isn't that interesting? And my mom was like I could kill you.
Doug:Oh, that's one of the best stories and so real for so many families. Right, and when did you make your way up to the Pittsburgh region.
Jon:Yeah, so my wife and I met through a mutual friend and she was from this area out in Washington County and we met and then she moved to the south to be with me and we spent the first 10 years of our marriage there. We had all three of our kids there and then we moved up here in 2013. Oh, that's great. And then we moved up here in 2013. Oh, that's great.
Doug:Where did some of this inspiration for cooking come from, after family?
Jon:I consume a lot of media and, you know, watch a lot of cooking shows and it's I mean, I'm from the era where we used to fall asleep watching Emeril at night, me too.
Jon:Yeah, me too, yeah on the Food Network, and we'd watch that all the time Me too, me too, yeah on the Food Network and would watch that all the time. And then the advent of the internet and the short form video on TikTok and long form on YouTube and stuff really just became quite addicting as far to just watch people do this and people that weren't like celebrity or well-known chefs, just your average Joe next door throwing together something that looks absolutely incredible. And so I started thinking, man, I could, I could do that, you know, and uh. And so I started just playing around with stuff and seeing what worked.
Doug:It's funny how, growing up in this era of media, how inspiring and yet accessible it can all feel. When you were talking about Emeril and some of the older food programs, they were very teaching and now most of them are very competition, right, I think you and I share a little something about that. Tell me a little bit about your love, your relationship, your interaction with competition shows what's going on there that you can talk about.
Jon:Yeah, I can talk as much as I can. Last year I was really fortunate to get an invitation to be a semifinalist for a nationally televised cooking competition Amazing, and it was a show that I had been watching for 13 years.
Doug:Okay.
Jon:And, like every single episode of every season was one of my favorite cooking competition shows, and I almost didn't even apply for it, but my wife. During one episode, they announced they were doing auditions for the next season and so I filled out an online application. I believe it was in May of 2023. And then I got a call in September that they were seriously considering me, and I went through just all kinds of different things in the process and then I finally found myself landing out in LA.
Doug:They flew you out.
Catherine:They flew me out to LA. Yeah, Okay.
Jon:And there's still some more to come on that that I can't really touch on much, but yeah, it was the experience of a lifetime for sure.
Doug:How incredible. So when you were flown out to LA, was this then like a non-camera competition? Like were you, did you cook? I did cook, and how many other folks were there?
Jon:when you were there. Of the over 6,000 that applied, there were 73 of us.
Doug:Okay, so in that vetting you out of 6,000 other people. You were like this 70-ish group of people that were doing like the final tryouts.
Jon:Yes, yeah, I did get, I did get filmed, I did get you know to have some camera time and did get to meet some really cool people.
Doug:Oh, I'm so happy for you. That's incredible and you know, keep, there's a lot of those shows out there. Let me just tell you.
Jon:I have some familiarity.
Doug:So, yeah, keep doing it. It's great. And you know, you know, I would say too just even that experience of seeing everyone else in your world, you know how did that feel for you? Was it validating? Was it just like awe, inspiring?
Jon:It was. It was really validating, because the particular show that I was out there for, none of these people were chefs, they were all just home cooks and just people who had a passion for it. Self-taught, yeah, self-taught, and I was able to speak to people on that level, that same level that we could communicate with one another and really understand the plight of our own effort to just really utilize this universal language called food.
Doug:Yeah, I think that's incredible and I wish you all the best in any of that stuff that might still be in the works. Thank you, that's great. I do want to kind of move forward for some of our listeners too. We talked about you having this private chef business. Would you take a moment and plug your website? How people can find you or follow you online and maybe even mention that YouTube channel?
Jon:Yeah, for sure. So my website is chefjonlloyd. com and I always tell people it's Jon with no H, lloyd with two L's, so chefjonlloyd. com. On there there's actually a link to my YouTube channel, but if you're just looking for that on it's lonesome, it's a youtube. com slash Holy smokes bbq and uh. And then on the my website you can find my event calendar of all of the different classes that I have coming up. There's a contact form on there, uh, if you are interested in booking something, and then you can. Also if you have any friends or family that are coming into the Pittsburgh area and staying at an Airbnb. I'm also the Pittsburgh area culinary ambassador for Airbnb, so anytime someone books an experience here, they can book a private chef with me through the Airbnb app.
Doug:Okay, that's incredible. I've booked Airbnbs, but I've never booked an experience, and so what we're saying is if someone's coming to Pittsburgh, they're staying, but they also want a private chef experience You're. You're their guy.
Jon:I am Yep. No matter where they book in Pittsburgh, I'm the culinary ambassador.
Doug:What a treat. I've never heard of culinary ambassador.
Jon:It's a relatively newer program that Airbnb has started doing. But yeah, I'm the guy in Pittsburgh. Well people want experiences, especially when they're traveling. That's already an experience, but yeah, why not?
Jon:Yeah, and what's cool about that is that the menus are tailored to Pittsburgh, so they're kind of representative of the city, but kind of new takes on it, like like one of them is a, a pierogi soup. So it's it's not necessarily just like pierogis laid out on a plate, it's a. It's a soup containing the same components. It's seasoned up a little bit differently. It's it's kind of modern takes on Pittsburgh staples. I would love to try that.
Doug:Jon, just before we move away. I also follow you on instagram. What's the instagram handle?
Jon:yeah, instagram is uh, @chef jon lloyd. Okay, so they can see like really great pictures.
Doug:Yes, yes, all right, john, I sort of have a customary ending to this show. The name of the show is the pittsburgh dish. Right, what is the best dish you've had this past week?
Jon:Oh, gosh, the best dish that I've had in this past week probably would have to be low country shrimp and grits. And did you make this?
Doug:I did. When we say low country shrimp and grits, give us a little description.
Jon:So I get most of my seafood from Wholey's down in the strip, and of course they're. They have shrimp that are quite terrifying in size.
Jon:You mean big, yes okay, yeah like I mean, you're familiar with like a 16 to 20 count shrimp. Well, they have like two to four count. Whoa, that's a monster like I would never want to encounter a shrimp like that. That's that. That seems like baby lobster, right, exactly. So I, um, I actually did a sort of a modern take on shrimp and grits, where I took two giant shrimp, uh butterflied them and then kind of cooked them, par cooked them a little bit which which shrimp is very quick and then actually stuffed them with the grits wow, top them with cheddar cheese and torch them on the top.
Jon:It was very, very and you just pick it up and kind of bite it. It's almost like an appetizer. Wow, that's amazing and it is one of my all-time favorite dishes anyway. And it's low country because the recipe kind of originates in the Charleston South Carolina area. Down there in that area of the country.
Doug:That's amazing. I want to see that. Chef Jon Lloyd, thank you so much for being on the Pittsburgh Dish.
Jon:Thank you so much for having me.
Doug:If a glass of warm wine is as bothersome to you as to me, we're in luck. Catherine Montest of Your Fairy Wine Mother stopped by and she gives us her take on some of the best temperatures for serving wines. Hey everybody, we're back with our resident wine expert, Catherine Montest. And Catherine, when you were here last, we actually talked about wines that went well with grilling and you gave us a sangria recipe. It got me thinking, as you were coming by today, about the temperature of serving wine, and I know there's a little difference between red wine and white wine, being the white wines colder, I think. Right, correct, but I sometimes like my red wine a little bit cool, but I don't actually know what the right temperatures are. Can you give us a little information on what you know about wine temperatures?
Catherine:Absolutely, doug. In fact, I had an event this week where I was serving three different wines that all needed to be served at three different temperatures. Oh, wow, yeah. So that presented a little bit of a challenge and I had to kind of sit down and stare at those three guys and like, okay, what do each of you need and how can we do this and transport them to the event site and serve them all at the right temperature at the right time. So I was looking at a pretty tall order.
Catherine:So first thing in the morning I got up and I put two bottles of each of the wines in the fridge to get them all chilling down and I made sure I made note of who needed to be served at which temperature. Our first course was with the white wines. So when I got there I opened up all the bottles so they could breathe and be their best selves. When it was time to go to the glass the white wine I poured that first because it needed to be the coldest. And as soon as I poured the white wine because it needed to be the coldest I took one of the reds out and put it on the table because I knew it was going to be a good 45 minutes to an hour before it was time to pour it, and letting it sit on the table for a little while was going to help it to come up in temperature a little bit.
Doug:Okay, so for most of us at home we may not have the wine fridge right. We're using a regular fridge and you're just south of like 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so what you're saying is like the white wine can basically come out of the fridge and be served almost right away.
Catherine:Pretty close to it.
Doug:Yeah.
Catherine:Yeah, sparkling wines and champagnes and dry whites right out of the fridge, 45-ish degrees, you are good to go. My challenge with the white was keeping it that cold to be ready for serving.
Doug:Right For like a big party or a big event. It gets trickier. So I guess you probably want for whites you definitely want, like ice buckets, that kind of thing to keep it at the right place. Now for reds I guess that's a little more cloudy for me, like I don't know what is even generally a good temperature for the majority of the reds.
Catherine:For the majority of reds. You're going to kind of want to serve them around 55 degrees.
Doug:I would love that. Actually I like my reds feeling like they're like a little on the cool side. I don't like when people just leave them out at room temperature and a lot of places and a lot of folks serve them like that the thought about room temperature is we keep our rooms kind of warmish?
Catherine:because, we're mammals. We like to be warm. It's kind of a thing. But wine, when it's in the um the winery, it's mostly hanging out around 55 degrees during most of its storage time, before it's packaged up and sent out to to us at home.
Doug:But this would be even like natural wine caves, like that's the temperature, like in that basement, kind of thing right.
Catherine:So we're here in Western Pennsylvania. Have you been to Laurel Caverns? Definitely much cooler Once you drop underground. That temperature is between 55 and 57 degrees all day, every day, 365. That's about the right temperature for a lot of your reds. You just want to put a little bit of a chill on it and it's going to help brighten up and wake up those flavors.
Doug:And so what you're saying in this second wine that you served is you pulled it out of the fridge about an hour or so before, and that gave it enough time to go from 40-ish degrees to probably the 55-ish in a room that was probably around 70 degrees. Exactly, got you.
Catherine:That's a lot of math.
Doug:That's a lot of math.
Catherine:Another way to approach it would be take your red wine off the shelf. It's been hanging out at room temperature. Pop it in the fridge for about 20 minutes. Oh okay, take it out, that'll get you where you're going.
Doug:Oh, I like this.
Catherine:That's looking at it kind of from the other perspective.
Doug:Yeah, so let's summarize this for a red. If you actually had refrigerated your red fully cold, you want to pull it out about an hour or so before serving, but if it's been sitting on your shelf and it's completely room temp, put it in the fridge for about 20 minutes to bring it down before serving. Exactly Nice. Now you were saying you had a third wine and you needed to serve it at a slightly different temperature.
Catherine:The third wine was a very fruity red, okay, and I was serving it right around 50 degrees. So about 10 minutes or so before I was going to pour it, I pulled it out of the insulator bag and set them on the table, just so they could come up a little bit. And here's a fun thing Get a glass of wine that's pretty doggone cold, sniff it, drink it. Think about what you're experiencing, what you're feeling Now. Take your hands and cup them around the bowl of that glass and hold them there for a few minutes and that's going to warm the wine up.
Doug:Yeah, you're definitely going to heat it up that way.
Catherine:Yeah, and that's why you hold wine glass by the stem, by the way. So by holding that wine glass by the bowl and warming it up and hold it there for a good three or four, maybe even five minutes, and then go back and sip it again and see if the character of that wine changes, it's probably going to open up all kinds of different notes and flavors.
Catherine:Well, depending on the wine, it's either going to open them up or shut them down. Interesting. Yeah, For a red it's probably going to open them up and for a white.
Doug:It might shut some of them down Right, which is why, back to the end, whites are served more chilled and reds are served 55-ish, 55-ish. All right, catherine, what an education. Thank you so much.
Catherine:It's always fun talking with you, Doug. Thanks again.
Doug:Thank you. You can follow Catherine on Instagram at your Fairy Wine Mother. That's the letter U, the letter R Fairy Wine Mother. This week's recipe comes from Sophia Lo of the CityCast Pittsburgh podcast team, and it's her dressed up Rice Krispie Treats. Let's give her a call and learn a little bit more about her recipe.
Sophia:Hey Doug, how are you? Hey Sophia, how are you doing? Good, I'm really excited to be here.
Doug:Oh, I'm so happy to have you on the show and thank you so much for this recipe for your dressed-up Rice Krispie treats.
Sophia:These are one of my favorite things to make when it's really hot in the summer. I don't have to turn on my oven. Also, they're really quick and easy and since they don't have to bake, you can eat them pretty quickly.
Doug:Oh my gosh, they are right up my alley for summertime as well. I want to get right to it. I mean, the Rice Krispie treat is pretty straightforward. You know, you got the Rice Krispies, you've got marshmallows, you've got melted butter nothing wrong with any of that. But you have two different variations. Can you talk about the first one with the blueberries, and what do you do? A little different.
Sophia:Okay, so the first variation I do is sort of a blueberry maple one, so I guess good for the fall or the summer. So this involves toasting some of the like krispie cereal in maple syrup, and so there's like a few little uh chunks in within the rice krispie that are like extra mapley, and then you throw some freeze dried blueberries in the mix too. I will say you know, it's pretty simple. Uh, it just takes a couple extra steps. Uh, I also do brown all my butter for the Rice Krispies to get that sort of extra nuttiness too. I think, even if you don't have maple or like blueberries, just browning the butter for the Rice Krispie treat already takes it up another level.
Doug:Absolutely. I love that. You know deepening the flavor, you get those little toasty notes. It sounds so good. It's like my version of a granola bar. Let's just do that.
Sophia:Yeah, it can be breakfast. No one's stopping you, right, it is cereal, of course.
Doug:Okay, let's talk about the other one, which involves, like it's, a roasted green tea, right? Can you tell me how to pronounce it?
Sophia:Yeah, so hojicha, it's a roasted green tea like you said. It's super yummy. So this Rice Krispie Treat second variation is chocolate and hojicha. So, uh, in the marshmallow mixture you take a couple packets of hojicha tea. I usually do three, but obviously all this can be adjusted to your taste. If you want a stronger flavor, and then you just put the tea leaves into the marshmallow mixture. Um, for this I think usually, like you know, uh, tea bags usually work, so that way you're not getting like a whole leaf or anything in your mouth. And then I also chop up some chocolate so that gets thrown into once you're mixing all of like the marshmallows and the Rice Krispies together. So some extra sweetness, some extra earthiness, and I'm a huge chocolate person.
Sophia:So I think this is a really fun thing to do too.
Doug:Oh, super fun and I love the unique flavors. I mean, I've had green tea. It also like just gets me thinking you know all these other sort of infusions we could do to keep dolling up our Rice Krispie treats. Sophia, did you come up with these on your own?
Sophia:Yeah, so my friend was in town. Her name's Lillian. She is a professional baker so whenever she's around both of us love to cook together, so we kind of tag team. Both of these Lili's unfortunately based in Long Island, not Pittsburgh but. If anyone's ever in that area. Follow her Instagram. It's at Lili's Baked Goods L-I-L-I and then Baked Goods. So we did these together and it was just so much fun. Like it's also a really easy thing to make with friends, with your kids. So also, I think, another reason to make Bryce Krispy treats.
Doug:Of course, loving all of this. Sophia, thank you so much for the recipe. And Sophia, if people want to find and follow you, but where can they find you?
Sophia:And Sophia if people want to find and follow you, but where can they find you? Yeah, so I'm a producer with CityCast Pittsburgh. We're a daily local news and culture podcast and we also do a food episode every single Thursday. So if people want even more after listening to Pittsburgh Dish, check out CityCast Pittsburgh. Our website is citycastpittsburghfm and then we're also on Instagram at citycastpgh. And, doug, we'd also love to have you on the show at some time too, would love it.
Doug:I would love to come on over for a Thursday episode. I always listen on Thursdays, for sure.
Sophia:Oh, thank you.
Doug:All right, sophia Lowe, thank you so much for being on the Pittsburgh Dish.
Sophia:Thank you so much for having me.
Doug:So happily I was able to catch up with Sophia and the CityCast Pittsburgh team. You can check out my episode on their podcast from August 8th at CityCast Pittsburgh. And don't forget, you can share a recipe of your own with us at our website, wwwpittsburghdishcom and look for the share a recipe form. That's our show for this week. We'd like to thank all of our guests and contributors, and to Kevin Selecki of Carnegie accordion company for providing the music to our show. We'll be back again next week with another fresh episode. Stay tuned.
