Note: In exchange for a brief review, I received the following products:
Today’s mentions include Beet Performer‘s beet juice, Black & Bolyard‘s brown butter, and Primal Kitchen‘s chipotle lime mayonnaise, Greek vinaigrette, and dark chocolate and almond bars with collagen.
Beet Performer is a canned beet drink that comes in two varieties — one with passion fruit juice, and the other with added vitamin B12. It is primarily marketed towards athletes – beets are high in nitrates, which are converted into nitric oxide once consumed. This can help improve oxygen and blood flow, while also extending endurance and stamina.
Folks, as with any food/drink-related claim, take it with a grain of salt. Not literally, of course. Fact is, I really like beets, and was quite satisfied drinking both types. However, the beet juice totally overpowered any hint of passion fruit/B12.
I’d totally buy Beet Performer again, but not because of their reputed health benefits. Suggestion to the R&D team…how about a citrus + beet combo?
The two chefs behind the eponymous Black & Bolyard might be best known for their stints at Manhattan’s Eleven Madison Park, and for their Brooklyn-based Tasting Society supper club. However, brown butter marks their first entry into the retail scene.
They only started selling brown butter – which comes in three types, original, bay leaf, and Aleppo pepper – in October 2015, and are currently managing every aspect of the business by themselves. That said, they expect to be expanding and adding new flavors later this year.
Briefly, brown butter is the result of melting unsalted butter over low heat, letting it separate into butterfat and milk solids, then browning the milk solids over a low heat. You can use it anywhere in place of standard issue butter, but I recommend using it everywhere. The Aleppo pepper flavor was very slight, and I may have gone overboard by melting some of the brown butter on a slice of babka.
Primal Kitchen sent me a sampler package that including chipotle lime mayo, Greek dressing, and dark chocolate almond bars. They were founded to offer mostly organic, paleo, non-artificial sweetener/dairy/soy/GMO products to those who don’t mind taking a few seconds to read nutrition labels. This isn’t to say that they’re healthy, but they’re less unhealthy than many competitors.
Whereas I thought that the mayonnaise and dressing were quite light and true to their names/ingredients lists, I found that the dark chocolate almond bar was too savory, and unexpectedly chewy. Is that the “grass-fed” collagen’s fault? Perhaps, but of the three items they sent, the only one I wouldn’t seek out again is the chocolate bar.
Have you tried any of the above?
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