What will we be eating? To determine the greatest candy of all time, we asked the Complex staff to vote on their go-to sweets. What follows is the ultimate candy countdown, featuring everything from corner-store classics to tasty Japanese imports. Will your favorites make our list? What will be crowned #1? Check out the link below to find out…

• CLICK HERE TO START THE CANDY COUNTDOWN!!

Truth is though, we’ve been fans of Carl’s Jr.’s ads (and those of its East Coast brotha company Hardee’s) for years now—they’ve always combined hot chicks (or at least witty jokes) with burger porn in a way that makes us hungry every time. To celebrate JB’s new work with the company, we decided to go back in the vault and find the 10 best Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s commercials of all time. Bon appetit!

#10 COMMERCIAL: Frisco Burger
FEATURING: Dude on a lawn chair and a giant dog
• Yes, this commercial is pauseworthy, but damn if it didn’t make us wanna eat like 15 Frisco Burgers. Wait, does that make us…

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#9 COMMERCIAL: Little Thickburger
FEATURING: Big Thick & Little Thick
Slo mo burger landings: it’s impossible to watch this commercial in HD and not be hungry.

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#8 COMMERCIAL: Original Roast Beef
FEATURING: Some fat dude
• An oldie but goodie—do it for the biscuit!

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#7 COMMERCIAL: Biscuit Holes
FEATURING: Various shopping mall denizens
• Clearly, somebody at Hardee’s knows the value of a good pause joke. Laughs + associating your comp with doodoo = marketing gold.

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#6 COMMERCIAL: “Fist Girl”
FEATURING: Fist Girl
• The grill’s a little busted, but we wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating a Thickburger.

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#5 COMMERCIAL: Charbroiled Steak Sandwich
FEATURING: Some smokin’ hot super babe in a blue dress and her d-bag boyfriend.
• We love the dress code at Carl’s Jr. (shirt + shoes = culinary bliss), but damn dude, for that super fox, we’d at least grab a button up!

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#4 COMMERCIAL: French Dip Thickburger
FEATURING: French maids
• Just when you thought Hardee’s couldn’t possibly get any better, they introduce a French Dip. Crazy.

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#3 COMMERCIAL: Spicy BBQ Burger
FEATURING: Paris Hilton
• We weren’t the biggest Paris Hilton fans, then again, we were vegan until we tried the Spicy BBQ Burger, so call us impressionable if you must.

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#2 COMMERCIAL: Teriyaki Burger
FEATURING: Audrina Patridge
• We’ll admit we were skeptical about grilled pineapple on a burger, but we weren’t sold at first on a reality show about vapid girls in Orange County, either. And now look at us, munching on delicious Teriyaki Burgers and watching The Hills reruns.

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#1 COMMERCIAL: Western Bacon Thickburger
FEATURING: Padma Lakshmi
• D-d-d-amn! We love Hardee’s Western Bacon Thickburger (like love love love), but we’ll admit, we’d even lick wack ass Whopper juice off Padma Lakshmi.

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We met with the company’s president, Dan Cox, and his Coffee Analysts crew to help us out with a coffee-related article in our October/November issue, on stands now. Watch our video interview with Dan Cox below, and then read on for the five rules of coffee that will help you lock down the perfect cup…

1. Buy fresh-roasted coffee.
Freshly roasted coffee has the best taste, so try to find coffee that has been roasted within the past two weeks. Even if the expiration date is for a year away, understand that flavors diminish and staleness sets in as time goes on, no matter what. The best way to eliminate stale coffee and off-flavors is to buy whole beans in a sealed bag, and if you’re copping from a bin, only do so if the beans have been roasted within the past few days. Anything in a can is ground commercial grade coffee, and is going to have some serious staleness issues.
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2. Grind beans right before you start your coffee.
When you grind coffee, you increase the surface area of exposed coffee and speed up the oxidation process that leads to stale coffee. Grind only what you need and make the coffee immediately – you’ll have more consistently fresh coffee.
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3. Understand that water has a lot to do with taste.
New York coffee is considered good because they have great public water. Know that a cup of coffee is 98.5% water, so if you’re in an area with particularly hard or soft water try using filtered or bottled water for your cup. Ideally you’re making coffee with a neutral pH and limited chloramines or minerals.
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4. Take it off of the burner.
Hot coffee that stays on a burner for more than 15-20 minutes is going to start tasting burnt, over a half hour, and you’re pouring crap into your cup.
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5. Store beans in an airtight container in the freezer.
Some coffee nerds argue that storing in the freezer messes up the beans’ structure and freezes flavor particles. Dan Cox, owner of Coffee Enterprises disagrees, and we believe him. The first rule is to store whole bean coffee in an airtight container, and then if you can get it in a dry, low-temp environment, that’s even better. Coffee beans pick up moisture, so the freezer (cold and dry) is preferable to storing coffee in the fridge (cold and damp) – you don’t want your beans tasting like last night’s Chinese takeout.

Dessert doesn’t need to be gussied up, it just needs to be cold and sweet and make you feel like a kid. So take it back to the ice-cream man. No Big Worm, no Master P, just some good humor. In this month’s Style & Design issue of Complex we co-signed old-school ice cream (after having a hot model taste-test them for us), and now we’re getting more specific with our five favorite choices…

BEST ICE CREAM SANDWICH: MOUNTAIN HOUSE ICE CREAM SANDWICH
Price: $1.80
There have been many competitors, like the “Chaco Taco” and the “Chip-Wich,” but nothing beats the O.G.

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BEST ICE POP: FLA-VOR-ICE
Price: 50 cent at the local corner store; $3.99 a box online
This is the desert you started to buy during that summer you first started to notice that chicks didn’t have cooties any more. The go-to method is allowing the the ice to melt a little bit, then drinking the artificially flavored liquid like it was a quarter-water.

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BEST MULTI-FLAVORED ICE CREAM: POPSICLE PUSH POP ICE CREAM
Price: $2.00
Sherbert is for pussies, but as long as it’s in Push-Pop form, you can get away with it. The Flintstones had its own line of these things that were banging as well.

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BEST DESERT-FLAVORED ICE CREAM: STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE
PRICE: $1.50
Bakereis got tight when strawberry shortcake went from cake to ice cream bar. Haven’t had one of these? It’s like eating awesome.

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BEST ICE: POPSICLE SNOW CONE
Price: $2.00
What else did you expect at #1? Ice cream men and Mr. Softee still have jobs thanks to the amount of (colored) ice they sling.

Appleman knows his stuff, and if you’re ever in San Francisco, make sure to check out his two spots—A16 for pizza, and his osteria, SPQR, for more serious getting-down, Italian-style. Hit the jump for two must-have recipes for Memorial Day this weekend: a bacon-infused burger and grilled fruit kebabs. If you get these two things dialed, you’re set, but when you mix an extra day off and a pitcher of margaritas, you might be looking at one of the greatest Sundays of the year. Hit the jump and get on it…

Photography by Stephanie Leibowitz

SMOKED BACON BURGERS

Appleman says: “I was making a burger one winter and wanted to get that smoked grill taste in the pan, so I came up with the idea to put smoked bacon in the burger. As you can imagine, this is an awesome dish, no matter what the season is.”

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 pounds ground chuck (80/20 meat/fat mix)
• ½ pound smoked bacon or bacon
• kosher salt or sea salt to taste
• kaiser rolls
• For cheese spread:
• 1 tub spreadable cheddar cheese
• Pickled red peppers, julienned (“I like Rick’s Picks, Pepi Pep Pep, a bold-flavored pickled roasted pepper.”)
• Mix these together, using as much red pepper as you like.

STEP BY STEP:
1. MIX THE MEAT.

“Burgers taste good when there is a high fat content, and I say go 80/20 on the ratio most of the time. If you can find 75/25 (meat to fat), that’s gonna be an amazing-tasting burger, but since we’re going to be adding in a half pound of bacon, 80/20 is just fine. Take the bacon and put it in a food processor and chop it up, adding in some salt (1 tablespoon or so). After you get that nice and ground up, mix it in with the beef.”

2. SHAPE THE BURGERS.

“Once you have this mixture of awesomeness, shape your burgers in your hands. Think of this amount as making six burgers and divide the meat evenly. A big mistake that a lot of people commit when making burgers is they allow the burger to take the shape of their palm (domed on either side). Try making the burger into a flat disc shape with uniform thickness so that the meat cooks evenly.

3. ADD A DIMPLE.

“One other trick with burgers is to create a dimple in the top of this – some people think that this helps keep the juices in and on the meat (because they don’t spill off and into the grill as the burger cooks). I’m not 100% sure of that, but might as well, just in case.“

4. WORK THE GRILL.


“You want to have a nice and hot charcoal grill with an even heat throughout. Once you get the grill up and running you give the fire some time to burn out a little. You’ll know the grill is ready when the coals have all caught fire and burned down to an ashy-gray color. If you’re cooking burgers, have a medium- to medium-hot grill. You get this by having the grill near the coals and cooking while the coals are hot, directly following the burn out phase. As far as grilling the burgers, get the grill up to a medium- to high-heat and get them on there. You’re gonna figure four minutes or so on each side for medium/medium rare, but always use the finger test/rule of thumb guidelines.

5. ADD THE CHEESE.
“If you want to melt some cheese on these guys do it towards the end of the second flip (duh), but for this one, I’m going to use a cheese spread.”

6. FINISH THEM OFF.

“The rolls that I used for this session were really fresh, so I chose not to toast them. Having a soft fresh roll will soak up some of the juices from the burger which I like, but toasted rolls are always good, so that’s your call. To finish off these bacon-burgers, I whipped up some cheddar-cheese spread with some roasted peppers—basically take a tub of cheddar spread and mix it in with chopped peppers. This time around I used a brand called Rick’s Picks. I dressed them with pickled tomatoes from Rick’s Picks to give them a little bit of extra zing, and they’re awesome. For a backyard BBQ, it’s fun to let your guests customize their own burgers, so you could create a build-your-own-burger bar with different cheeses, condiments, types of pickles and greens, etc. ”

7. PRESENT YOUR MASTERPIECES.

“These bacon burgers are pretty awesome on their own, and don’t really need a ton of toppings. To assemble, spread a generous amount of cheese on the bottom of the bun and place the patty on top. Add pickled tomatoes and/or greens on top and seal with the bun, spiking the burger with a skewer or toothpick if it’s too unwieldy.”

Hit “NEXT” to see the finisher recipe: Nate Appleman’s Grilled Fruit Spiedino

We’re far from picky eaters at Complex, so when we read the news that a Serbian chef is releasing The Testicle Cookbook: Cooking With Balls, we weren’t immediately disgusted. After all, we’re big fans of Fear Factor, and the Testicle recipes are for actual cooked food'testicle pizza, battered testicles and barbecued testicles made from the nuts of stallions, ostriches, bulls, pigs and turkeys. According to the chef, balls are rich in testosterone (go figure) and operate as a powerful aphrodisiac.

Who knew'besides our lady friends'that balls could taste so good? Have we been missing out on other crotch-area culinary goodness? We scoured the globe for the top 5 dishes made from private parts…


DISH: Donkey penis
COUNTRY: China. Quelle surprise.
BENEFIT: Enhances your virility
RISK: Choking when attempting to swallow and say “pause” at the same time

DISH: Cow placenta
COUNTRY: India
BENEFIT: Protein and iron
RISK: Uhh. It’s placenta.

DISH: Pig rectum
COUNTRY: Dominican Republic/China
BENEFIT: Can say you’ve eaten pig rectum
RISK: Mistaking fecal matter for spring onions

DISH: Cow udder
COUNTRY: France/Italy
BENEFIT: Protein
RISK: Getting turned off to titties

DISH: Chicken nuggets
COUNTRY: U.S.A.
BENEFIT: They taste fucking good!
RISK: The sneaking suspicion that it’s actually fried chicken vagina you’re dipping into that sweet and sour sauce

Yesterday in Osaka, Japanese dignitaries gathered at the World Instant Noodle Summit for the unveiling of a new statue depicting Momofuku Ando, which was erected outside Nissin’s Instant Ramen Museum. After the jump, explore the Ramen Museum with some weird German tourists.

[New Launches]

The tracker allows customers to follow the progress of their pies on Dominos.com from the time they hang up the phone to the time their meal is being delivered. Over 3,400 Domino's Pizza stores are equipped with the big brother type technology that will show customers when their order is being prepped, when it's out of the oven and when it's left the Domino's location. You'll even get the first name of the person who's delivering your food, which will allow you to hold he or she accountable if they're dragging their feet. Shape up delivery boys and girls, the streets is watching.

Their unusual menu includes everything from chocolate-covered scorpions to crocodile curry to ant snacks (they have a whole section on their site called “INSECTIVORE”). Our favorite item: Weasel Coffee. No, there aren’t weasels in the coffee, but…“This Coffee is first eaten by Weasels which then regurgitate it, no one knows why they do this but it is then collected by locals in remote forest areas and then cleaned and roasted.”

Check out more unusual Edible products after the jump…

[Click on an image to view larger]

All products are available on Edible.

[NOTCOT]

-Fix a dead outlet
-Perform CPR (correctly)
-Fillet a fish
-Change oil and filter
-Bleed brakes

But we’re not total girly-men. We do have some skills:

-Paint a room
-Build a campfire
-Fix a bike flat
-Back up data
-And one of the most manly on the their list: Protect your computer.

So looks like we can pee straight after all. According to their list, how bitch are you?

[Source]