MinkDog: Top-Quality Ingredients That Will Change the Way You Cook and Elevate Your Culinary Experience

There’s something about a home-cooked meal. Whether you call yourself the chef of your kitchen or just consider yourself an enthusiastic eater, food that’s fresh out of the oven or straight off the grill just hits different.

Even with all our newfound hours spent eating in, it can be tricky to take the leap from cooking hobbyist to kitchen legend. Serving up great food is a lifelong endeavor, requiring hard work and a refined palette.

Here’s a secret most chefs would be happy to share; An incredible meal starts with its ingredients. Quality ingredients bring powerful flavors. Powerful flavors get you the “yum” you’re searching for.

By ingredients, we’re not just talking about the meat, vegetables, or flour you’re working with — we’re also talking about those little additions that make your recipes pop. That’s why we’re so excited to introduce you to a new brand from Chef Tyler Lewis and Robert Downey Jr. called MinkDog Bespoke Blends.

MinkDog Bespoke Blends offers artisanal, expertly crafted concoctions and quality ingredients that take your home cooking to the next level. Packaged with love and care, it’s our new kitchen obsession for every meal.

Keep reading for the story behind the brand and to learn more about their many distinct products.

The Story Behind MinkDog: Chef Tyler Lewis’s Long Term Love Affair With Food

For Chef Tyler Lewis, MinkDog is the culmination of a lifelong relationship with food. He grew up in a close-knit Italian-American family that valued being immersed in nature and gathering around the table for meals.

During his childhood, Chef Tyler remembers foraging for edible mushrooms and bonding with the natural world. His family taught him that lovingly crafted dishes are more than the sum of their parts—they’re what brings us together.

That love of home cooking sunk deep into his psyche. While getting his undergraduate degree in environmental science and eco-design, he picked up shifts working for local restaurants.

It was always a side job. Until it wasn’t.

After school and a few years spent denying what was plain to see, Chef Tyler embraced a career in food, becoming the head chef at a restaurant in Burlington, Vermont. Two things became clear very quickly:

First, he adored making food for people. Curating menus and working with distributors up and down the East Coast became Chef Tyler’s passion.

Second, the restaurant industry wasn’t his dream. Long hours and the inherent stress of running a kitchen kept Chef Tyler too busy to spend time creating the cuisine he loved.

So he sailed for sunnier shores, choosing instead to become a personal chef for clients from the Hamptons to the Caribbean. In many ways, this role brought him full circle. He was back working in home kitchens. Back preparing meals for small, intimate settings. And back searching for the highest quality ingredients around when possible, plucked directly from the natural world.

That brings us to the distinct and taste-bud-pleasuring products that are a part of MinkDog’s first line.

Shop the spice line that you won’t be able to live without here.

Let’s Get to the Good Stuff: MinkDog’s Flavor Profiles and Products

We want to apologize in advance if this section inspires you to salivate a bit. Kind of an occupational hazard.

What is a bespoke blend, anyways? It’s basically a shortcut. If you’ve cooked from a recipe book or website, you’ll know the feeling of breaking open your pantry and combing through to find the exact mix of seasonings called for. Usually, this comes with a moment of dread when you realize you don’t own thyme or turmeric or coriander.

MinkDog’s original blends are a welcome solution to that problem as well as a professional boost to amateur chefs everywhere. With their locally sourced food products and flavorful standalone ingredients, MinkDog offers plenty of opportunities to take your dishes to the next level.

The high-quality ingredients add powerful flavor to any meal, and they have some custom recipes you can plate up once you’ve added MinkDog to your kitchen.

Fennel Pepper: A Spicy, Aromatic Secret Weapon

Fennel Pepper is the coveted seasoning that improves everything it’s in. If you’ve ever bitten into a dish made with fennel, you know the intensity of the flavor. Lively and mouth-watering, fennel is an excellent addition to soups and rice dishes.

Chef Tyler recommends using it on chicken, rubbing the seasoning blend onto a dry-patted bird. Truss your chicken (because you’re a real chef now) and allow it to rest before roasting it for a little over an hour. Give it some time to cool down and retain its moisture after pulling it out of the oven and take a second to congratulate yourself on cooking something that smells that good. Carve up and enjoy.

Add some zing to your dish with Fennel Pepper.

Hampton Boil: A Bite Straight Out of New England

Inspired by Chef Tyler’s years in the seafood haven of the Hamptons, this blend packs a citrusy and smoky heat. Lemon, garlic, and the addition of aromatic cardamom make this an inspired bespoke blend, perfect for clam bakes and summer seafood.

For the Hampton Boil, Chef Tyler has prepared a recipe for crab cakes. He says the key to a perfect crab cake comes down to the patties themselves.

For those, you’re going to need a lint-free cloth. Squeeze the excess moisture from his signature crab mixture—crab, a variety of sauteed vegetables, Hampton Boil blend, and binding agents you’ll have in your fridge already. Pay special attention to how you fry them and bake for an additional thirty minutes to achieve the perfect texture.

Whether you’re serving them as an appetizer or just gobbling them up for dinner, the flavor profile is sure to stun.

Bring summer to the table with the Hampton Boil spice blend.

Maple Java: A Spicy, Sweet, and Smoky Finish

It’s a Saturday morning. You’re having guests over tonight and have decided to make the most delicious, melt-in-your-mouth ribs possible. You’re hungry, but most of all, you’re craving something sweet, savory, and signature.

Enter, Maple Java. Packed with organic maple sugar, sourced locally from small farms in Vermont, and paired with chili peppers, Maple Java offers a robust taste.

This blend is perfect for rubbing onto anything you want to grill, but Chef Tyler has offered a recipe for oven-roasted pork shoulder that will elevate your taco game. Time is the key component here, with the pork and a bed of vegetables spending at least four and a half hours in the oven. The smell in your kitchen will be nothing short of divine all day.

Spice up any meal with smoky Maple Java.

Maple Products: A Dash of Flavor

Next, there’s MinkDogs selection of standalone maple products sourced from local producers in New England. Sadly, these top-quality ingredients will ruin all other pancakes for you, but it’s a small price to pay for flavor this good.

Maple Syrup: Extracted from the woods of Vermont, this maple syrup is the good stuff, richer and deeper in color than most of the syrups lining grocery store aisles. It’s also 100% organic and non-GMO.

Maple Sugar: Regular sugar is fine, but maple sugar brings a level of flavor to the table that you didn’t know was possible. Stir a spoonful into your coffee or swap it into baked goods for a delightful maple touch.

Maple Heaven: An addictive vegan or dairy-free maple cream product, Maple Heaven goes on just about everything in our houses. Cinnamon rolls, yogurt parfaits, and oatmeal all become sublime with a drizzle or spread of this stuff.

Support local businesses and sweeten up life with MinkDog maple products.

Sea Salt: A Dash of Flavor

MinkDog’s New England sea salt is the perfect finishing touch to any meal, whether you’re serving maple pancakes or a decadent steak dinner. You can buy MinkDog’s top-shelf sea salt as a standalone product and bring the shores of New England straight to your kitchen.

• Coarse Sea Salt: Hand-harvested from the shores of New England, this instant kitchen staple is perfect as a finishing touch for when you want that crunchy, flavor-filled blast on fresh-baked bread, a soft-boiled egg, or even a chocolate chip cookie.
• Smoked Sea Salt: With its darker, smoky flavor, this sea salt is a match made in heaven with roasts or other meat and fish. Rub it into steak, ribs, or tuna and enjoy the hand smoked, hardwood flavor.

Each of our maple and sea salt products is locally sourced, supporting artisanal and small-batch farmers. Because you should feel good about the ingredients you serve your friends, family, and most importantly, yourself.

Are You Ready To Eat? Some Last Thoughts on MinkDog Bespoke Blends

One of the features we love most about MinkDog (besides their top-tier ingredients) is their commitment to supporting small farms and other businesses. Their bespoke blends and ingredients are packaged with quality assurance in mind, and the brand seeks to be a friend to the environment that provides us with the flavors we love so much.

If you’re anything like us, you’re literally chomping at the bit to stock your pantry with MinkDog Bespoke Blends, maple products, and sea salts.

We definitely recommend you check out their website and see what all the flavorful fuss is about. There, you’ll find recipes from Chef Tyler, learn a little more about the friendship that led to these incredible products, and find more information on each spice blend.

Fair warning, you won’t learn everything. A secret recipe has to stay secret, after all.