What is Your "Comfort Food?"
Several years ago, I joined the Army and went to Basic Training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. It was just like they show you in the movies—lots of push ups, lots of shooting, more push ups, obstacle courses (and some push ups), and basic soldiering skills like first aid and rucking. Some nights, we would return to our group building (called the Battery) drenched in sweat despite the frigid winter air, barely able to move from exhaustion. I remember once I exerted myself so heavily (dragging a three hundred pound soldier to safety with my neck) that I could no longer hold up my head unassisted.
While I was at Basic Training, every single night I looked forward to only one thing: the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I’d make myself with dinner. It didn’t matter what we were eating—lumpy stew, overcooked chicken, amorphous mass of protein—I always accompanied it with a PB&J.
When things got hard or unfair? Think about the PB&J. When I could no longer feel my fingers and could barely walk from my numerous blisters? Just look forward to the PB&J. When I missed my wife so much it hurt? I’d plan the perfect PB&J to make her.
As I sat on the hard concrete outside my Battery, keeping my head down to avoid the wrath of my Drill Sergeants, eating that PB&J became a meditative experience that in a way returned me home and made me feel whole again. By counting off the hours until my next PB&J, I eventually made it through Basic Training. And indeed, the week I returned home, I made my wife a trio of PB&Js, one including homemade peanut butter and wine-infused jelly, one grilled with bacon and cheddar cheese, and one made from French toast stuffed with crunchy peanut butter and raspberry jam.
This story, to me, is the soul of comfort food.
What is Comfort Food?
These are just my thoughts, and I’m sure ideas vary all over the place, but to me there are six common trends that help me define and understand comfort food:
- Familiarity in chaos: A food that reminds you of better, more stable times, like a culinary time machine to your happy place. It's your edible safe space when the world is trying to crush your soul.
- Personal tradition: A repetitive, ritualistic food you can count on. It's always there, like your very reliable friend.
- Nostalgia wrapped in carbs: The best comfort foods are tied to memories. It’s food that connects you to people or places that offer emotional grounding. But on top of that, it tends to be both nutritionally dense and calorically dense. Though I’ve noticed it veers more toward nutritional density than mere caloric indulgence.
- Healing properties: Comfort food makes everything better, even if it’s just temporary relief. That’s why comfort foods most often are very “warming” foods (think of meals that make you feel nice and toasty while it’s gusting snow outside), or in my case with the PB&J, the food was full of fat and sugar, which kick-starts your metabolism and causes a warming sensation.
- Emotional crutch: Comfort food gives you the ability to power through hardship by offering a brief moment of zen amid chaos. It’s more psychological than physical sustenance.
- Hearts, Hardship, and Holidays: The three most common times and places you’ll encounter comfort food are when you’re cooking or eating with those you love, when you’re going through (and overcoming!!!) something difficult, and when it’s that magical time of year.
All in all, comfort food is more than just calories—it's food that emotionally supports you when life is beating you into the ground. It's the culinary equivalent of a weighted blanket or trip to the jacuzzi.
A Recipe for Peanut Butter and Jelly???
Have I gone mad, you ask? Am I utterly insane? Do I think you a stuttering bumpkin who needs help tying their shoes and can’t tell up from down?
Bear with me… just try this PB&J and it’ll change your life.
Matthew's Stuffed French Toast
At home I call this "Freedom Toast." It's French toast, but stuffed with freedom. In other words, it's the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich I've ever had. I made a few decisions for this sandwich strategically: The white bread needs to be a whole loaf that you slice yourself so you can slice it as thick as you want, and it needs to be spongey and airy. French or Italian bread don't work here, you need some sort of rustic white loaf. Raspberry jam is my go-to for this because it is more acidic than grape and strawberry jam. This is some thick, custardy French toast, so having plenty of acid to cut through it does a lot of good. Again, this stuff is thick and custardy. To get good texture variety, I opt for coarse, crunchy peanut butter. You might disagree. Finally, to make this stuff super custardy, you need to give it enough time to soak. This isn't one of those times where you make a dredging liquid and then just "dip dip" your bread in and throw it on the griddle. You're going to give it some time in that dredging liquid to get nice and soggy.
Prep time:
Cook time:
Ingredients:
Cook time:
1 loaf artisan white bread, uncut
sugar-free, crunchy peanut butter
raspberry jam
2 cups whole milk
4 eggs
Directions:
1. Slice the white bread into slices at least twice as thick as a regular slice of bread used for sandwiches.
2. Use a sharp knife to carefully cut a pocket into each thick slice of bread.
3. Fill each slice with peanut butter, and then with jam, being careful not to rip the crust of the bread and ruin the pocket you created.
4. Whisk your eggs into your milk. I find it most convenient to do this in a large casserole dish so that you can lay your bread side by side.
5. Preheat a griddle to 400∞F.
6. Place your slices of stuffed bread in the dredging liquid. Wait for about thirty seconds, and then flip. Wait for thirty more seconds.
7. Remove your bread from the dredging liquid and immediately put it on the hot griddle. Flip once it gains a golden brown color.
8. Eat it.
2. Use a sharp knife to carefully cut a pocket into each thick slice of bread.
3. Fill each slice with peanut butter, and then with jam, being careful not to rip the crust of the bread and ruin the pocket you created.
4. Whisk your eggs into your milk. I find it most convenient to do this in a large casserole dish so that you can lay your bread side by side.
5. Preheat a griddle to 400∞F.
6. Place your slices of stuffed bread in the dredging liquid. Wait for about thirty seconds, and then flip. Wait for thirty more seconds.
7. Remove your bread from the dredging liquid and immediately put it on the hot griddle. Flip once it gains a golden brown color.
8. Eat it.
Recipe formatted with the Cook'n Recipe Software from DVO Enterprises.
What’s Your Comfort Food?
I love chicken soup and beef stew as much as the next guy, but my curated list of personal comfort food is a little more, well, personal:
- BBQ made by me over a long weekend and shared with friends and family
- Eggnog when it’s not the holidays
- My mom’s chili dogs
- Cazuela de pollo (the national dish of Chile)
- The famous peanut butter and jelly sandwich
Anyway, enough about me. What’s your comfort food and why? Seriously, I’m dying to know. Some of you have become friends to me during my time with Cook’n, and I’d love to hear from you. Drop a comment below!
Matthew Christensen
Weekly Newsletter Contributor since 2023
Email the author! matthew@dvo.com
