Chef and Normals Taste Test Pretentious Ingredients Vol.13 | Sorted Food

Buckle up for a highly opinionated, extremely foodie, yet suitably fabulous episode of Taste-Testing Pretentious Ingredients! Hit play to hear our Chef’s thoughts.

You can check out the products we reviewed using the links below:

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#PretentiousIngredients

[pothospathic]

Ben being linguistically irritated at a cube shaped croissant is fabulous. I'd expect no less from him.

[chrismoorefinch]

Given Ben's comment at the end about resetting what is considered normal, I'd be interested for these guys to go back over what they had previously said was pretentious, see if they still agree with themselves.

[thorn]

Time for another episode of 'We raided Barry's kitchen in secret'

[AnnaRay]

I want to be part of Ben's world of going to the bakery and returning back with croissants in a basket on the bike <3

[lunatickgeo]

I agree that the chicken may be pretentious, but it's not like the earlier episodes. Most of these are just expensive. Ben's right, pretentiousness comes with the packaging, the claims, and the marketing. These ingredients are just expensive and some of them are rightfully so but even then, they aren't packaged that way. Where are my ingredients with diamond dust or gold foil or the ones with claims to extend my life or align my chakras?

[milesward]

It's an interesting question of "what is pretentious?" The bacon in of itself isn't pretentious, Barry serving it as part of his wine and canape party on a salt block is pretentious. There are a lot of very premium ingredients here.

Then there is the chicken, which is so disgustingly pretentious I nearly gagged. Ben, if you won't call a chicken fed on 25 special botanicals and essential oils pretentious we need to get James back, because you've gone off the deep end and we need some Scottish sensibility.

[JaiIgnacio]

"Highly opinionated, bespectacled chef" - Haven't giggled so much in ages.

[saralopezCR]

Hi! Spaniard here. Ben is absolutely right about iberico flavour being best as is. In Spain we have something "similar" to iberico bacon. It's basically a cube of iberico fat cured in salt, and my favourite way to eat it is veeeery thinly sliced and on a piece of hot toast, so that it melts a bit on the bread and it's DELICIOUS

[ashleysavona]

Barry was pretty spot on with the Chawan-mushi pronunciation👍🏻

[ant-onemusic]

I live at the border between France and Spain, my grandparents served us iberico almost every week end (grandpa retired butcher with connections) it's just amazing

[mariaconcertina]

I think what pushes the chicken into pretentious for me is that last diet of herbs and cows milk. My sister's chickens will eat a snake like a spaghetti noodle. Chickens aren't herbivores and giving them unnatural end of life food and then calling it better feels weird.

[ShakeSujiko]

Fan in Tokyo here. Barry's pronunciation of Chawan-mushi is spot on! I'm amazed!

[PokhrajRoy.]

I cannot disagree with the fabulousness of the Normals but the opinionated, bespectacled chef is awesome too!

[twoone]

I miss the days of Unicorn Blood. We need an episode of unquestionably pretentious ingredients!

[kittykatinabag]

I would have immediately gone to french toast with the croissant cube, but I'm also not British so I have ambivalence towards bread pudding.

[MickeyOHare]

"The excessive cheese there has made it inedible" - Ebbers

This is not physically possible. This sentence is nonsense.

[sarahlc]

I feel like some of these foods are just more "premium" than pretentious. To me the definition of pretentious is "just because you can, doesn't mean you should" and therefore the croissant bread is definitely pretentious 😂

[shawnmcdowell]

Pretentious is the STORY you have to tell to justify a product being different than it original form. You put chicken on the dinner table you don’t have to tell the family where I came from, how it was raised, the food it ate, etc. You spend $55 on a bird you WANT to validate it with an explanation!

[TheWhite]

You have a chicken fed with essential oils and Ben gives it a grade of "nearly pretentious"? If that isn't pretentious then I'm left to wonder what could possibly make him say something is pretentious? Maybe we should have a competition, the normals bring in the most pretentious ingredient they can find, anyone who can get Ben to admit that it is pretentious wins a free pass on one round of a future poker face video

[JOBdOut]

I think I've said this in each of the last 5-6 "Pretentious Ingredients" videos but it feels like the Sorted crew has strayed from the original intent of their series and lost track of what pretentious means on a measuring scale.