Top chefs say that sometimes supermarket brands are best

The New York Times has a recent article, ‘When Local Sourcing Means Aisle 12′ that helps bring some perspective to the constant media drumbeat to buy all local, all organic, all farmers’ market, all the time. They interviewed a variety of well-known chefs who each confessed to sometimes just needing, wanting, or indulging in a good old-fashioned supermarket item.

As they put it, “Ask around, and it’s rare that you’ll find a leading light in the culinary world who doesn’t have a semi-secret fondness for at least one of these supermarket stalwarts, whether Hellmann’s mayonnaise or Skippy peanut butter, Premium saltines or Oreos or Cheerios, American cheese or generic ice-cream sandwiches.”

This article is definitely a guilty pleasure, we hope you enjoy it. And to all our American readers, we also hope you enjoy the 4th of July. And when adding ketchup on a hot dog or burger, remember that while many of these chefs confessed to making homemade ketchup for their restaurants, none actually preferred theirs to Heinz – still the gold standard.