Catch Kevin’s entire interview with culinary thought leader Charlie Baggs of Charlie Baggs Culinary Innovations. Get inspired as Charlie shares his thoughts on 2019’s emerging trends and their impact on foodservice.
From Kevin Wilson’s LinkedIn Video Blog: Connect and comment here https://bit.ly/2D52qHb
Full Transcript
Intro Voice: What’s new in food? Influencer.
Kevin Wilson: What’s new in food? Welcome to 2019. Everyone’s asking what the new trends are for the year, what’s gonna be hot, what products might take off or be different? Today, I am here with one of the leaders in culinary, thought leaders of all of food service, Charlie Baggs, superstar chef. Charlie, talk to us a little bit about some of the trends for 2019.
Charlie Baggs: I get stimulation from a lot of different places as it relates to trends, but the overarching trend really is around clean label and minimal ingredients.
Kevin Wilson: Absolutely.
Charlie Baggs: People want to be able to have some type of understanding of every ingredient. And one of the rules of thumb is if your grandmother didn’t recognize the ingredient, it’s not clean label. With that said, it segues into another overarching theme that I’m seeing, and that’s around whole foods. I think processed foods are always gonna be around, they’re very practical for a lot of reasons. They’re shelf stable, they make it through distribution, all those things. But I think what we’re gonna find is that, with all the flexitarianism and the people interested in health and wellness, that there needs to be a combination of consuming whole foods with processed foods.
Charlie Baggs: Processed food could just be like a tortilla.
Kevin Wilson: Right.
Charlie Baggs: It could be done just like you would make at home, but it’s processed and it comes from a factory. If you’re gonna eat a processed food you should combine it with a whole food. When you make tacos you’re gonna eat a tortilla. You might have some ground meat that’s processed. We’re gonna take some fresh whole tomatoes and chop them up, and maybe a fresh head of lettuce and chop it up. Now you’ve combined processed food with whole foods.
Kevin Wilson: You told me a great story earlier that when you’re feeding your kids and they take a snack even, if they take something processed they have to take something whole. I love that story, and your kids have adopted that, they’re bought into it.
Charlie Baggs: Yeah, you know you gotta make sure you have a lot of bananas, apples and oranges, and grapefruit. And avocados. Yeah, as long as you set them up for success, it’s a pretty easy concept to grasp.
Kevin Wilson: Speaking of things that we talked about, whole foods, eggs are becoming very hot, and one in particular caught my mind, the bing. Can you talk to me about the bing?
Charlie Baggs: Yeah. Eggs, just first in general, it’s such a great source of protein, and it’s a fairly neutral flavor and taste profile. And also, you can use an egg in many different cooking techniques to apply all different textures. A bing is a Chinese, kind of an egg omelet. It’s a really thin egg carrier, and like the Indian cuisine they have something called a dosa that they put on a griddle.
Kevin Wilson: Oh, got it.
Charlie Baggs: It’s real thin, and it’s a carrier. In the Mexican cuisine we have tortillas. They can either be flour tortillas or corn tortillas. It can be blue corn or yellow corn, a lot of variety. The bing is all about this thin egg that you can use kind of like a tortilla and I think it’s gonna be the next big fusion cuisine.
Kevin Wilson: Got it.
Charlie Baggs: Remember when we had the Korean tacos?
Kevin Wilson: Everywhere, yeah, yeah.
Charlie Baggs: Well, this is gonna be the Chinese carrier. Imagine, they go around the country with something that’s always tasty, incredible. We’ll say like Carolina barbecue.
Kevin Wilson: Barbecue’s always tasty.
Charlie Baggs: Take some pulled pork, some coleslaw, and put it in a bing and now you’ve got a bing thing.
Kevin Wilson: Now you got a bing thing, I love it.
Charlie Baggs: The bing is not gonna take away from the flavor. It’s gonna be an incredible carrier, extremely versatile. Right now, when you make it, it’s a very customized dish. You make them kind of when you go, like crepe, [inaudible 00:03:56] preparing right now.
Kevin Wilson: Right.
Charlie Baggs: But, you know, I do see that there’s gonna be a day where you buy these and they’re already made for you.
Kevin Wilson: Yeah, well, that ties into … Everybody looks into the customized right now anyway so the fact that they have something they can fast finish, put a customized bing together with whatever favorite ingredients are, it’s fantastic.
Charlie Baggs: Well, imagine one of the fast casual chains that puts tortillas in a crust to warm them up to make them more pliable, could you also put a bing in there using the same equipment. There’s a lot of reasons why I think the bing will be a trend and I think it’ll be widespread fairly quickly.
Kevin Wilson: Any other specific trends you wanna talk about while we’re here?
Charlie Baggs: Well, I think we could do a little more focus on eggs. One of the things I find really interesting about eggs is that, I have two kids that are lacto-ovo vegetarians.
Kevin Wilson: Got it, got it.
Charlie Baggs: They eat cheese and they eat eggs. It’s really the best source of protein. It’s really difficult for a vegetarian or a vegan to get enough protein, so eggs for a lot of reasons are consumed by flexitarians, vegetarians, and us carnivores. But, you can poach an egg.
Kevin Wilson: For sure.
Charlie Baggs: You can fry an egg, you can make omelets with it, and it’s also the great ingredient in a lot of baking applications.
Kevin Wilson: I see eggs being everywhere and it’s all the talk on the food networks. I know that’s gonna be a big ingredient. Talk to me about side dishes. Is there anything new in side dishes?
Charlie Baggs: Side dishes, nowadays, people want to customize what they do.
Kevin Wilson: Absolutely.
Charlie Baggs: Side dishes and sauces, along with, say with a bing thing, this burrito or whatever, if you’ve got three sauces and three side dishes, and one bing that has three different potential fillings, now exponentially you have like 27 different options with just three things. So it gives you versatility and it really ties into the customization.
Kevin Wilson: Customization’s gonna be huge. I want to thank you for your time. This is the first of maybe a few videos we’re gonna give you guys this year on culinary. And maybe how to use culinary, not only while you’re a restaurant or restaurant chain, or you’re a manufacturer trying to be more culinary pitching to restaurant chains. You’re gonna see a lot more Charlie and we appreciate your time today.
Charlie Baggs: Now, you know in the next phase, I really look forward to doing a demonstration on how to make a bing for you.
Kevin Wilson: Absolutely.
Charlie Baggs: And showing you some real life examples.
Kevin Wilson: If you guys want to see Charlie cook something, just hit me on the direct message below and we can talk about it.
Charlie Baggs: Yeah.
Kevin Wilson: Thank you very much.
Charlie Baggs: It’s another beautiful day.