Filthy soda

Hey, clowns!

In case you missed it, last week’s edition of Food is Stupid was a really fun one to write (for paid readers), regarding some really weird pizza from the Netherlands. That cookbook is going to live on our coffee table forever. I wonder if anyone will notice the typo on the cover.

That being said, I’m tackling a food trend this week that just won’t go away: dirty soda. If the words “dirty soda” don’t mean anything to you, consider yourself lucky. (Or more like, where the hell have you been?!) Dirty sodas are regular sodas that have either syrups, juices, or most popularly, some form of cream added to them. They’ve been all the rage for the past few years, and though we can trace their current popularity back to goddamn TikTok, we can thank the Mormons in Utah for making them such a huge thing right now.

No, really. It’s because Mormon folk don’t imbibe alcohol or “hot drinks” (such as tea or coffee), so you’ve got to get your basic sins from sugary soda. Consider it a sort of loophole. I mean, it makes sense — soda hits that immediate pleasure receptor in your brain thanks to all that sweetness, but it also doesn’t really seem to count as being against any sort of religious commandment. Unless we’re talking about Crumbl cookies, which are a true abomination, but also loosely Mormon-affiliated (its founders are Mormon).

Dirty soda’s gotten so big that even fast food’s in on that shit, just to maximize some bucks out of our sweet teeth. McDonald’s recently released its own line (I got to try them at McDonald’s HQ for work, if you can believe it), and my beloved Taco Bell currently serves its own version. But man, am I getting sick of hearing about them.

So I said to myself, “Dannis Ree, as the greatest food writer in all of history, you must make the grubbiest, grimiest, filthiest soda of them all to make everyone stop, look deeply within, and cease this madness.”

I went to the store and picked out a bunch of stuff with Davida to make my filthy soda.

Basically, I found all sorts of degenerate sources of cream, like flax milk (this is a completely new milk to me), an extra proteinated soy milk by Silk, cold foam in a bottle, and chunky milk, otherwise known as cottage cheese.

But for the soda portion, I went full-on hellbound mode (sorry Mormons) by using Mountain Dew Baja Blast.

Not just any Mountain Dew Baja Blast, but the hard stuff. This shit has actual alcohol in it, but no sugar and caffeine, which is too bad.

We don’t use ice very often, so I ended up walking over to Wendy’s to pick some up.

The idea of spending money on a cup of ice (I was too shy to just ask for it) is probably the most vulgar thing I’ve done for the newsletter yet. God will never forgive me, and I will never forgive myself. Thanks, Wendy!!!

I started my first attempt at a filthy soda using a Red Lobster-branded pint glass full of Wendy’s ice.

I poured the hard Mountain Dew Baja Blast in first, because I wanted the cream to cascade down into it all photogenically and shit.

But as soon as I started pouring in the flax milk, I knew I was in for a real treat.

That’s because one, pouring milk from those rectangular cartons is impossible (so I spilled a bunch), and two, it all coiled up like intestines or loose stool on the bottom of the glass.

Scrumptious! Now, it takes a lot to rattle my culinary nerves, but God, that was gross. What’s worse is that the coagulated flax milk kept descending in these thick squiggly clumps. I swear, if I wasn’t so busy farting, I would have audibly heard them plopping down in that pile.

Next was the Silk High Protein Soy Milk, if we could even get past the seal.

The foil cap on this thing was on there so tightly I swear it was welded on. I had to call Davida over to help me out, and even then we ended up having to use a knife to remove it.

This proved to be a little less dramatic than that strange flax milk, thankfully.

It poured into the glass a little easier, presenting a cruddy and cloudy result.

At least it wasn’t like, in more piles on the bottom of the pint glass. The high protein soy drink looked more like mildly curdled milk (I call it “cold-aged”) after you’ve left it in the fridge for a month too long.

And finally, the cold foam product, which is something you can get at the grocery store now.

This is in case you want to live that trendy barista life at home. It comes out of a whipped cream dispenser, but rather than puff up like your usual whipped cream, it sort of flows out uneventfully. I find it fascinating that people go bonkers for this kind of thing, but that’s okay. Whatever joy something dispensed from a tube can give you is better than nothing in this cold, cruel world of ours.

Finally, my abuse of this filthy soda was complete.

I will not acknowledge the fact that Harvey is riding a horsey in this picture, nor will I discuss where I got this horsey either. Hi, horsey!

God, this shit looked horrific.

I can’t believe the Mormons unleashed this upon us, though I do not think this is the end goal they intended upon. I mean, putting cream in acidic soda is already kind of a gross concept, but I will concede that they probably didn’t consider me pouring three types of creamy products into a hard soda.

Fortunately, this disaster tasted much better than it looks. The plant-based milky stuff masked the artificial flavor of the hard Baja Blast Mountain Dew, and if this thing was in an opaque glass, I’d definitely tolerate it just fine. I could barely make out any Baja Blast anyway; there’s a bit of artificial citrus that comes through, with a tiny bit of alcohol, but what mostly registered was the flax and soy milk. I drank this thing with a straw and did sort of move it up through the milk layers, but it all just tasted like milky sweet liquid.

“I would drink this,” Davida declared, after taking her first revolting-looking sip through the straw.

Now, to take it one step further, I made a second version of my filthy soda, except this one had a bed of cottage cheese at the bottom of the glass.

Not only is dirty soda having its time in the sun, so’s cottage cheese. People have been abusing the shit out of it lately, because they want to max out on extraordinary amounts of protein that their bodies probably don’t need. I pictured the large-curd cottage cheese as a dairy-based boba pearl, adding some chewy texture to each sip, but like, in a disturbing way.

Aside from the addition of cottage cheese, I built the drink like I did before, with the soda, flax milk, soy protein drink, and cold foam, along with the hard soda base, all over ice.

This presented four distinct nasty layers, none of which I wanted to partake in, but this is my own personal burden which I have assigned myself for no reason.

But my first and only sip of this one resulted in one reaction I wasn’t expecting: panic.

Man, this was so bad. First of all, the cottage cheese was way too thick to fit up the narrow straw, so I had to kind of poke around the base of the glass, sucking things up like a bottom feeder, until I got a few curds that actually made the journey to my facial orifice. But it was the flavor that killed me. I don’t know what this combination might have done scientifically, but the mix of hard soda and cottage cheese resulted in a bitter mouthful, which is not what I was expecting. I suppose when you mix chemicals with cottage cheese, any outcome isn’t going to be a good one, but Jesus.

Davida succinctly declared that she would be bowing out of this part of the taste test. Perhaps my screaming was an indication that this was the prudent decision. Maybe it was the tears running down my face. Who knows? But hopefully, this edition of the newsletter makes it to the entire world (lol), and makes everyone reconsider the continuing proliferation of dirty soda. The idea by itself is, well, dirty. Making everyone drink it is downright filthy.

(Sorry, Mormons.)

Well, now Davida and I have all this hard Mountain Dew to drink. Did you know it comes in other flavors, like Baja Blast Mango, Pineapple, and Punch? Don’t be surprised if you see me raging shirtless in the streets one night.

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As always, I love you all, and I’ll hop into your inboxes again soon. (Next week might be tricky, I have a lot going on.)