11.21.08
Slurry up and wait
As both a wordie and a foodie, I’m completely embarrassed that I’ve never before encountered the word slurry. I discovered this word after entering a recipe contest sponsored by The Oriental Wok, a restaurant in the Cincinnati area (Northern Kentucky to be precise).
(As an aside and an admission, I will point out that everything else I say here is to give me an excuse to point out the fact that my recipe made the important first cut and will be judged in the finals this coming Sunday. My friend Karen over at SoupAddict’s Blog also made the finals. I believe Karen will place above me because of a secret signal communicated by the misspelling of my first name as “Wiiliam” on the Wok’s website. Perhaps someone believed that my recipe was a virtual food, cooked properly with a Nintendo Wii.)
Anyway, I patrolled the recipes posted on the Wok’s web site. There, in a list of ingredients for orange chicken, was “cornstarch slurry for thickening.” Neither the concoction nor its intent surprised me. A little cornstarch in water thickens sauces and juices when heated, much like flour in a gravy, though with a thinner texture. I’ve used this, what I called a “thickening agent,” perhaps hundreds of times before. Even so, the word surprised me. In a nonfood context, slurry is a thin mud. The word derived from slur, also a thin mud. As well, the muddy physical slur gave us the verb slur—to figuratively stain with mud.
Now, my recipe for this particular contest entry calls for no slurry, neither with cornstarch nor with mud. And I’m hoping that after the judges taste it with a slurp (unrelated word), they won’t be tempted to bestow the figurative mud of slurs upon my entry in their evaluations.
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JohnnyB said,
November 21, 2008 at 11:04 am
Congratulations on making the finals and good luck on Sunday.
Should I say “good luck”? or should I say, “break an egg”?
Fritinancy said,
November 21, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Break an egg, indeed! Let’s hope there’s no electrical outage in your vicinity: You’d have a slurry with the fridge on “stop.”
Soupaddict Karen said,
November 21, 2008 at 4:00 pm
I think that’s a brilliant idea, Wii-liam: “Guitar Hero” for foodies (spatulas in both hands, arms flailing, woks swirling, animatrons smirking).
Don’t let humble Bill fool you – he plays hardball: he’s already admitted to me that he told the restaurant manager that I’m going to poison the food we have to prepare for the finals.
On the slurry-related note, I only first heard the word a couple of weeks ago when I took my sick kitten to the vet. He told me to take this can of cat food [handing me a can of Science Diet cat food] and if he (the cat) doesn’t show much interest in eating by morning, then add water to the food and warm it in the microwave to “make a slurry.”
While I was puzzling over what the hell a slurry could be, he added an $11 charge to my bill for a can of cat food that retails for 99ยข (and which the kitten later didn’t want any part of, slurrified or otherwise).
Bill Brohaugh said,
November 22, 2008 at 8:13 am
JohnnyB and Fritinancy: I delayed so long in replying because I was trying to come up with a pun worthy of response. I couldn’t. I bow to you.
Soupie: Had I actually told the manager that, I’m sure she would have then offered me a job as official taste-tester. What Soupaddict Karen is really trying to say is she’s certain there will be enough of my recipe salsa left over when the judges refuse to eat it that she can feed to her cat. It will only make little Fluffy even sicker, though . . .
JohnnyB said,
November 23, 2008 at 1:51 pm
My egg yolk doesn’t deserve the same praise or receggnition as Fritinancy’s “slurry with the fridge on stop”. That is souperior!
roe_cat said,
May 21, 2009 at 7:11 am
So is slurry – meaning animal manure – (not something i want to associate with my food) a British English use (or Hiberno-English – does tend to throw up the occasional word that I am shocked to discover aren’t used outside Ireland)