Cooking at Home: Delicious Food Made Easy

00:00:00.000 | you know, there's a lot of data, I'll put it in the show notes about the safety of microwaves

00:00:04.000 | and all these myths kind of pretty much getting debunked across the board.

00:00:06.880 | I mean, there's microwaves get people really mad. And I see it with commenters on social media,

00:00:12.640 | like, you're you're spreading cancer and carcinogens. I'm like, What the fuck are

00:00:17.600 | you talking about? Didn't you read that article that just came out? Like, what article are you

00:00:22.800 | talking about? You know? So yeah, the microwave gets people very upset. That's for sure.

00:00:30.320 | Hello, and welcome to All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money and travel.

00:00:34.880 | My guest today is David Chang, a culinary icon known for founding the renowned restaurant group

00:00:40.240 | Momofuku. But wow, has he done so much more. He's received six James Beard Awards, had three New

00:00:46.720 | York Times bestsellers. He hosts two podcasts and has four original TV series. With a resume like

00:00:52.960 | that, we could take this conversation in so many directions. But I want to focus on cooking at home,

00:00:58.400 | which is not only something Dave is super passionate about, but it's also the title of

00:01:02.720 | his most recent book that he released during the pandemic. And if you didn't know, Dave is on a

00:01:07.040 | mission to empower people to become masters of their own kitchens. We're going to cover a range

00:01:11.680 | of topics like his favorite easy home cooking techniques, some underrated ingredients, a lot

00:01:17.040 | of home cooking hacks, the biggest of which might be using your microwave more, a device he's called

00:01:22.080 | the single best piece of equipment in a kitchen, and so much more. Before we get started, if you

00:01:27.200 | could give us a thumbs up, it would definitely help the algorithm. And if you're new here,

00:01:30.800 | please consider subscribing. Okay, let's do it.

00:01:33.520 | Dave, thanks for being here. Excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Chris.

00:01:42.560 | Yeah. So I know a lot of people know you for your restaurant world, but I think almost no

00:01:48.880 | one listening runs a restaurant. And so I'm far more interested to spend some time talking about

00:01:53.840 | everything. You've really spent a lot of time talking about recently in the past few years,

00:01:58.000 | cooking at home. Why do you think home cooking and restaurant cooking is so different? And what

00:02:03.280 | are people getting wrong when they maybe try to emulate all these recipes they find online?

00:02:08.160 | Restaurant cooking is something entirely different than home cooking. And a lot of

00:02:13.280 | the things that we, I would say probably 50/50, if I had to throw a percentage out there,

00:02:18.480 | 50% of many of the things that home cooks use and do are distilled from fine dining concepts.

00:02:25.680 | And the rest, they're just like whatever works best. But I would say most of the times,

00:02:32.960 | however you cook in a high-end professional kitchen does not translate whatsoever in a

00:02:39.120 | home kitchen. And I jokingly say it's like learning how to drive an F1 race car, right?

00:02:48.080 | So it's the same thing as a car, as a Prius, but very, very, very different.

00:02:52.480 | And as crazy as it sounds, I do think it's somewhat applicable because

00:02:58.000 | how I would drive a race car is very different than I would drive at home. And a lot of things

00:03:06.640 | are just sort of unnecessary. And so much of professional cooking is about volume,

00:03:11.200 | exquisite knife cuts, getting specific kinds of ingredients. They're just really not

00:03:18.320 | at all useful for the home cook. And I had never cooked at home before.

00:03:22.880 | I watched my mom cook, but I never cooked myself. In college, I never cooked.

00:03:28.400 | So my real first job cooking was in a professional kitchen. And when you start

00:03:34.400 | cooking professionally, if you have friends that cook in restaurants on the line or something like

00:03:39.200 | that, you'll probably hear them say they never cook at home because they just are always too tired.

00:03:44.800 | And the last thing they want to do is spend all day cooking on their one day off.

00:03:49.840 | So you fast forward, I don't know, 15, 20 years later, I had never cooked at home. And almost in

00:03:56.960 | all of my apartments, I had paper plates or those plastic bundles of salt and pepper and soy sauce

00:04:03.040 | and chopsticks and plastic, you know, forks and knives. Those were my utensils. And I never had

00:04:09.440 | anything. I never had a plate or cups until I started dating my now wife. She was like aghast

00:04:15.440 | at the fact that I didn't have anything to cook with or eat on. So literally, I never cooked at

00:04:20.640 | home. And then when my wife became pregnant with our first child, that's when I started to cook in

00:04:25.520 | earnest. And everything that I did was not how I would ever teach anybody else to cook. They were

00:04:32.720 | very, very, very, I would almost say inappropriate ways of cooking. Because it was almost perverse.

00:04:40.000 | But the thing that allows me to do it is I understand food science, and understand technique,

00:04:47.760 | and I can sort of reverse engineer how to get to the end goal of a dish, which ultimately is

00:04:53.280 | delicious. So long story cut short, I figured out a bunch of hacks that that worked for me,

00:05:00.480 | and some of them work for other people as a home cook.

00:05:03.600 | I love it. Because I feel like I had the opposite thing. I was cooking at home a lot.

00:05:06.960 | And then we had kids about three years ago. And it's like, where's this time? I don't have time

00:05:11.040 | to cook. And we went through a few cycles. And in preparation for this conversation, I read your

00:05:17.360 | cooking at home book. And I was like, okay, I'm ready to get back into it. Because we went from

00:05:20.800 | we have no time. And we tried hiring someone to meal prep and deliver food to us. And then I was

00:05:25.840 | like, okay, you know, we tried a lot of stuff. I'm ready to get back into cooking, but in a much

00:05:33.440 | more casual, not high stress way things out like ridiculous way. So all these hacks are great,

00:05:40.080 | and I want to hear them. But you mentioned you have all this background in the science,

00:05:43.760 | you understand it all. Does everyone need that?

00:05:45.680 | I think science is important to at least trust, or to have some understanding of.

00:05:53.440 | Because I think a lot of the taboo things in a home kitchen stem from, oh, you can't cook it

00:05:59.520 | that way. Or you're not allowed to do it a certain way, because this is how it's always been done.

00:06:05.520 | And if you don't like challenging the status quo in life, in the kitchen is probably not the

00:06:13.280 | easiest thing to sort of do. Because cooking seems like the provenance of keeping it safe,

00:06:20.400 | keeping it simple, keeping it wholesome. But you know, if you believe in science,

00:06:26.480 | then it's a lot easier to do certain things that you may not normally do.

00:06:30.480 | Okay. Are there some principles that we should just lay out front before we chat about things

00:06:36.320 | people just need to kind of either throw out the window old wisdom or science to kind of

00:06:42.000 | understand and lay a foundation? I mean, there's so much.

00:06:44.960 | I mean, there's so much just stupid shit. Let's do it.

00:06:50.080 | I mean, I don't even know which ones. You just have to see it to do it. Like,

00:06:53.760 | I saw like, some people were telling me, oh, you got to soak your chicken in milk. I'm like,

00:06:57.120 | why? Why? Oh, because it takes out the blood. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, well,

00:07:06.560 | you're not brining it. You're just soaking it for what? And they don't even know. If you ask them

00:07:12.560 | why they're like, you know, because my mom did it. That's the kind of stuff that happens where

00:07:21.200 | you're like, okay, like, it's not necessary for you to do that. I mean, even things like,

00:07:27.520 | you know, browning with your, you know, you can brown things with aluminum. That's not a problem.

00:07:35.360 | You know, it just it's certain things about time and temperature that that's all that matters. But

00:07:41.840 | you know, I think the one that's the easiest thing that I talk about the most is probably

00:07:45.040 | the microwave. Most people think the microwave is like a quick place to reheat leftovers. I in the

00:07:50.640 | last week have talked to a handful of people. All of them seemed like it was crazy when I told them

00:07:54.880 | we were cooking full meals in the microwave with like meat and fish. So what do you want to tell

00:08:00.960 | these people that think the microwave is not a not a way to cook? Because I think you've said it's

00:08:05.920 | the single best piece of equipment you have in your kitchen. I mean, it's a joke. It's like

00:08:10.160 | culinary arbitrage. It's like the best play. If you are going to try to make a financial trade

00:08:15.040 | here, it's in every it's in like 91% of all U.S. households collecting dust. And if people use it,

00:08:23.360 | it's usually for popcorn or for reheating leftovers or a mug of water for something.

00:08:30.960 | And the reality is, I mean, it's not a joke. It's sort of like if you press a button

00:08:39.280 | and things get hot, it's like the most magical element I could possibly think of.

00:08:45.200 | It's unfortunate that the U.S. and the U.S. is so bad on microwaves across the board

00:08:52.400 | and the marketing of it, because if the microwave technology came out today,

00:08:56.560 | I don't think you'd call it a microwave. That's what happens when you leave it to the military

00:09:00.000 | to come up with sort of marketing. It probably be called the turbo chef, right? Because that's what

00:09:07.040 | that's what you use when you go into a Starbucks and they reheat all your food. It's a convection

00:09:10.400 | oven and a microwave, but it's called a turbo chef. And that's going to be coming to a kitchen

00:09:15.040 | near you. And it's going to be marketed as the new convection oven that's going to dramatically

00:09:19.040 | chop off 75% of your cooking time. And it will conveniently drop that it's using microwave

00:09:25.200 | to microwave technology to cook your food faster. People are using microwaves all the time.

00:09:30.240 | When they go out to eat, they may not realize it. But ultimately, if you understand the science,

00:09:34.880 | you're using microwaves to effectively heat the water molecules inherent in foods.

00:09:42.800 | And that's all that's happening. And it's steaming in and of itself. So

00:09:49.840 | it's the most energy efficient way of cooking. It is also the I mean, I think the data will start

00:09:59.200 | to come out that it's probably again, if you cook for two hours, it's probably not right for the

00:10:05.120 | microwave, right? But for cooking, like, say, blanching some broccoli or something like that,

00:10:10.640 | why would I take four liters of water, take 12 minutes to bring that to a boil,

00:10:18.000 | steam or boil my broccoli when I could do that in five minutes in a microwave, it's just

00:10:22.080 | more energy efficient. Number one, number two, it's going to be the most nutrient dense way of

00:10:28.720 | preserving all the stuff in your food because there's no osmosis, there's nothing happening

00:10:33.200 | where you're going to lose any flavor or any nutrients to the water or to the outside environment.

00:10:41.680 | So three, there's like, you can cook cleaner than anything else, I don't have to add anything

00:10:50.000 | to a microwave, right? Like I don't have that oil, I don't have that fat. So it's

00:10:55.040 | theoretically, because you can make delicious things with no fats whatsoever, if you should

00:11:00.400 | so choose. And it's if you look at it just as a steamer, with an ability to be anything that

00:11:13.120 | is steamed, or basically, it's really good for anything that doesn't need to be crispy, right?

00:11:20.800 | Or long braise for that matter, we're trying to break down, you know, muscle fibers, etc. So

00:11:27.280 | most people would think that it's crazy to cook a lobster in a microwave,

00:11:30.400 | right? They'd say that's insane. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And trust me,

00:11:34.960 | I used to be one of those people and tell like, like, Oh, yeah, the science sort of makes sense.

00:11:39.200 | And not the science doesn't make just sort of sense. It makes a lot of sense.

00:11:42.400 | And I'd argue that you could butter poach a lobster in the microwave within any day better

00:11:48.640 | than you could, and more consistently than any other way of cooking lobster.

00:11:53.600 | That's crazy. I haven't I haven't made it to that point. And for anyone listening that

00:11:57.680 | isn't familiar with any day, it's a set of microwave cookware that is not just for the

00:12:02.800 | microwave. The one thing you didn't put in your points was the thing you're cooking with is also

00:12:08.080 | the thing that you can store leftovers with and the thing that you can put on the plate to serve

00:12:12.080 | with. And you can and you can put it in an oven, you know, so it's like, so this morning, I just

00:12:17.120 | made a package of Korean wheat noodles, fresh noodles. I had a package of like one and a half

00:12:26.800 | pounds of frozen chicken thighs. I had some leftover shiitake mushrooms, I had a couple

00:12:31.120 | cloves of garlic. We're leaving town on Friday. So I just want to use all the stuff we have in

00:12:34.720 | the house. And now that I'm at the office a lot more the studio, I'm cooking all my meals ahead

00:12:40.560 | of time. So my wife, whoever's at home, they can still have a freshly cooked meal, they're just

00:12:45.600 | reheating it usually in any day. So I took a large deep any day, I took out the chicken thighs,

00:12:54.480 | and I put it in them, I covered it in any day, and I microwaved it for about seven and a half

00:12:58.880 | minutes. I took out a pair of scissors, and it's still raw in the center, right, this block of

00:13:05.520 | frozen chicken thighs, and I just cut it up. Again, seems insane. Taking scissors, you know,

00:13:13.360 | kitchen shears. And I'm cutting into little bits. The main reason why is as a home cook,

00:13:19.680 | I don't want to wash more dishes than I need to. I'm always worried about cross-contamination with

00:13:24.960 | poultry. So it's not like I want to use chicken, put it on. So if I take the chicken raw, put it

00:13:31.680 | on a cutting board, I have now chicken all over my hands, I'm going to cut it. So I have to wash

00:13:37.280 | the knife, I have to wash the cutting board, I have to wash my hands multiple times, if you're

00:13:40.800 | going to do it correctly. And now if I just do it in any day, I don't even have to wash my hands

00:13:45.440 | because I've never touched chicken. I put the lid on, I cook it for about seven and a half minutes

00:13:49.840 | so it's thawed out, but the center's still going to be raw. I could cook it all the way, but there's

00:13:55.360 | no need. And so I'm taking frozen chicken. Usually if I have to defrost it, that's at least a day,

00:14:01.120 | but you know, how else are you going to defrost it? You have to like just leave it out. So I've

00:14:06.480 | done that in seven and a half minutes to defrost it. Now I've chopped it up into bits. I've taken

00:14:10.400 | the garlic and I've taken the shiitake mushrooms. I've added some, you know, momo soy sauce,

00:14:15.200 | some dark soy sauce, some agave, some neutral oil, and I'm just sautéing that, added some scallions.

00:14:21.280 | And as that's cooking, I added my chopped chicken and all the juices that accumulated

00:14:28.160 | and pretty much sauté that for like a minute. And then I add the noodles that I cooked,

00:14:34.240 | you know, re-season and I'm ready to go. Put it back into any day and they're going to reheat

00:14:40.320 | that for lunch. So again, is it pretty? Absolutely not. But I'm not like cooking for an audience

00:14:49.040 | other than my family. The final product looks delicious, tastes delicious, but you know,

00:14:54.560 | it was a roundabout way of getting there, but it was extremely quick. I cooked that in 10 minutes.

00:15:00.240 | You know, while the water was boiling, I microwaved the chicken. So to do a delicious

00:15:04.640 | dish in 10 minutes, I mean, it's hard to beat. Yeah, I've had a great experience. In fact,

00:15:11.120 | I think I'm going to talk with the team. So I'm just going to tell everyone listening

00:15:16.560 | that by the time this comes out, hopefully if you go to allthehacks.com/anyday,

00:15:20.800 | we'll have hooked up a deal for everyone to check it out. But I have a couple of questions.

00:15:25.040 | Are there other things that are uncommon that you cook? You know, fish. I think you've talked

00:15:30.880 | about veggies. I mean, lobster. Listen, I say lobster because that's the people go "What the

00:15:36.080 | fuck?" But the reality is, if you just like eating vegetables, it's what you're going to use all the

00:15:43.440 | time, every day. If you have kids, it's how I cook almost everything for my kids as well.

00:15:52.480 | Vegetables work extremely well. Frozen vegetables work really well.

00:15:55.440 | I make gravies in there. And I can make a one-pot mac and cheese from scratch faster than a box

00:16:02.480 | mac and cheese that tastes way better. But my kids probably will still want to eat the box mac

00:16:07.840 | and cheese. And when you're making it, is it just throw in water, pasta,

00:16:12.320 | butter, cheese? You can throw it in or...? Well, yeah. A lot of it's again,

00:16:17.920 | just understanding the food science of it all. So, if I add water just to cover the macaroni

00:16:24.880 | or any pasta shape, and I add some salt, but not too much salt because the salt is going to reduce,

00:16:32.240 | right? Because I'm going to evaporate most of the water away. I leave that uncovered for,

00:16:36.720 | say, I put a cup and a half, two cups of pasta, cover it with water. So, it's barely,

00:16:43.600 | you know, maybe a couple of millimeters over the pasta itself. I'll pop it in the microwave

00:16:52.400 | uncovered for about nine to 10 minutes. I will take it out. That water now is going to be

00:17:00.480 | concentrated with starch, right? So, it's going to be almost viscous. But I want to microwave it

00:17:07.360 | to the point where most of that water has evaporated. There are some left. For the same

00:17:11.120 | reason, when you make pastas, a lot of times you're adding at least a scoop or two of the pasta

00:17:15.440 | water back into the sauce because of the starch that's now in the water. The pasta is now pretty

00:17:22.080 | seasoned because of the amount of salt that I put in. Now, all I need to do is make a roux, right?

00:17:29.440 | Because to make a bechamel, because that's how you traditionally make macaroni and cheese.

00:17:33.760 | You take flour, you take butter or some fat, and then you add milk to it. And you thicken that up,

00:17:41.840 | turns it into a gravy more or less, and then you can mount it with cheese. And that's your cheese

00:17:45.920 | sauce. That's a lot of pots and pans already, right? If you're doing it that way. All of this

00:17:51.920 | is going to be in one pot. So, I take, after nine to 10 minutes, I'm taking the pasta out. I'm going

00:17:55.680 | to throw a couple, maybe a tablespoon or two of butter right in there. I'm going to add a

00:18:02.560 | tablespoon of flour. I'm going to add a little bit of milk, maybe like three or four tablespoons.

00:18:09.200 | I'm going to mix it up and I'm going to put it back in the microwave for about three minutes.

00:18:13.840 | It's going to come back out. I'm going to stir it up. And I don't have to worry about lumps

00:18:19.200 | because the macaroni itself is an agitator, except that I don't, it's like every piece of macaroni

00:18:25.040 | is effectively a whisk, right? So, all I have to do is mix it around. I can even put the lid on and

00:18:32.160 | shake it up. And it's an extremely sort of like thick bechamel now. And now I can add in the

00:18:38.080 | cheese and it's now ripping hot. So, I add the cheese in now because it starts to cool it down

00:18:44.080 | so I can more quickly serve it to my children. They don't have to wait, right? I could have

00:18:48.320 | added the cheese earlier, but all about, this is all about how do we save as much time as possible?

00:18:53.120 | So, I can take the cheese, I can liaise it with the sauce and I can help like bring the temperature

00:18:58.720 | down. And I have velvety, beautiful macaroni and cheese. I didn't have a colander. I didn't use a

00:19:04.720 | double boiler. I didn't use a pot to bring that. I mean, that's a four-pot, at least a four-pot

00:19:10.000 | endeavor to make home-cooked mac and cheese. And I did it in 12 minutes in one pot, in an hour.

00:19:16.560 | I love it. Yeah, I have not gone as deep as I plan to. One thing I've always wondered,

00:19:21.920 | is the microwave something where you have to get the time right? And the way I'll ask the

00:19:27.120 | question is, is six minutes, stop it and start it again for one minute. Is that the same as running

00:19:33.280 | it for seven minutes? Can you fine tune it or does it take a little bit of warm up each time?

00:19:38.000 | I mean, the microwave manufacturing divisions, they need to get their act together because

00:19:45.120 | they're all working off of different platforms, more or less. So, almost every microwave,

00:19:49.760 | even if you buy it from, say, Panasonic or any of the big microwave producers,

00:19:55.360 | they change their wattage yearly sometimes for no time or reason. So, every microwave is going

00:20:03.120 | to be different. It really is crazy. You need to find the wattage and there's a lot of different

00:20:09.040 | things you can do to find that. But it's really getting to know your microwave. And the wattage

00:20:13.600 | really has a lot to do with the time. So, the things that are going to affect the microwave

00:20:17.760 | are no different than, say, cooking turkey. If you put an eight-pound turkey in, it's going to

00:20:21.440 | cook way faster than a 28-pound turkey. The laws of thermodynamics don't change in a microwave,

00:20:28.080 | right? So, if I put a huge piece of pork butt in that I'm trying to cook, it's going to take a

00:20:37.200 | long time, right? No matter what the wattage is on the microwave, it's going to take a long time.

00:20:42.640 | But again, if we're cooking pasta and I'm trying to bring some water to a boil, a lot of that

00:20:48.400 | depends on the power of the microwave. So, some microwaves won't be able to do that in seven

00:20:52.960 | minutes. So, the microwave I have in the studio is less powerful than the one I have at home.

00:20:57.120 | So, you can really screw up a recipe pretty quickly if you don't get it dialed in. And the

00:21:05.040 | other thing people don't use is the power levels of a microwave. Again, I hope to one day make a

00:21:11.760 | microwave, but the first thing I would do is change the interface where I don't have to press a

00:21:19.120 | button after I put in six minutes to find power level 30 and then press start. It's so not

00:21:26.240 | intuitive whatsoever. The power level, all that is, if I say power level 30, it basically means

00:21:35.200 | for every minute, it's only on 30% of that time. Interesting.

00:21:40.640 | The waves are only hitting 30%, right? It's on 30%. And then you can hear the microwave click

00:21:46.960 | on and off when it's at a lower power level because it's not hitting the food with microwaves

00:21:52.800 | consistently. So, it's not actually reducing the strength, it's just reducing the time of

00:21:57.840 | all the microwave doing its thing. Correct. Correct. And you can cook very,

00:22:02.640 | very delicate things. You can cook some of the most beautifully steamed fish

00:22:06.560 | in a microwave. Again, I love steamed fish. The older I get, it's not just because I love

00:22:11.840 | Cantonese food, just steamed fish is just dope. The older I get, the more I want to eat steamed

00:22:15.920 | fish. But I don't have a double boiler and I'm not going to steam fish in a wok setup.

00:22:22.480 | You know what I mean? Again, these things that are easy to do in a restaurant are not so easy

00:22:28.080 | to do at home. How often do you eat steamed fish? Probably not that much, right?

00:22:32.640 | I can't even think of... It's almost always on a skillet.

00:22:36.000 | Right. Or in the oven.

00:22:37.680 | Steamed fish is delicious when you have a nice piece of fish. So, these are things that you can

00:22:43.200 | do. But yeah, I could talk about the microwave all day long, but most people fuck up on the

00:22:48.640 | microwave by putting plastic in. Plastic is what is bad.

00:22:51.600 | I read some of the science and I don't think we need to have a conversation about all the

00:22:55.680 | crazy things some people say about microwaves. My mom sent me an article

00:22:59.200 | when I told her we were cooking in the microwave. She's like, "Oh, it's 10 things you should never

00:23:02.400 | put in the microwave." And it was like this a little bit ridiculous article because it was

00:23:06.480 | like, "Well, you never want to put this in because it might get too hot." And I'm like,

00:23:09.280 | "Well, that's not a problem with the microwave. That's a problem with

00:23:11.440 | you just making something hot." But there's a lot of data. I'll put it in the show notes about

00:23:17.200 | the safety of microwaves and all these myths pretty much getting debunked across the board.

00:23:21.920 | I mean, microwaves get people really mad and I see it with commenters on social media like,

00:23:27.280 | "You're spreading cancer and carcinogens." I'm like, "What the fuck are you talking about?

00:23:32.720 | Didn't you read that article that just came out?" I'm like, "What article are you talking about?"

00:23:37.760 | So yeah, the microwave gets people very upset. That's for sure.

00:23:44.000 | To go to a few other things outside of the microwave, let's talk a little bit about

00:23:48.640 | food and what kind of food you're buying. You talked about fish. How important is quality and

00:23:54.000 | are there areas where quality matters a lot, whether it's higher quality or organic and

00:23:59.120 | areas where it doesn't matter? How do you think about what you're shopping for?

00:24:02.160 | Well, I guess just start with fish. Most fish in the supermarkets is hot garbage.

00:24:12.000 | It just is. Even the best supermarkets have dodgy fish markets. It is not that way in Asia,

00:24:21.840 | for a lot of Asia. There are certain places that do a good job with, say, fish, like

00:24:29.280 | Bristol Farms does a good job with fish, but it's still not awesome.

00:24:33.600 | I think we have a long way to go to get to some of the best fish purchasing that we have

00:24:41.200 | in other parts of the world. But for the most part, it's really hard to understand when it

00:24:46.480 | was caught, how it was handled, and storing it on ice and water is actually not what you want to do.

00:24:52.560 | You want to keep it away from these things. So again, how things are handled in a professional

00:25:02.640 | kitchen are very different than what you see in a supermarket. So more often than not,

00:25:06.240 | I think sometimes the best fish is maybe sometimes the salt cod or the frozen fish.

00:25:12.960 | I mean, I have a lot of frozen fish. Whether it's organic or not,

00:25:18.880 | let's just worry about the quality first, the freshness levels.

00:25:22.880 | I know that the floor on a piece of frozen fish is way higher than the floor of a potentially

00:25:34.560 | fresh fish. The ceiling is lower as well, but at least I know exactly what I'm working with.

00:25:40.080 | I do think there's probably mislabeling. There's just a lot of the handling is wrong,

00:25:45.920 | and I think that's maybe human error. But I tend to buy more fresh fish from

00:25:51.840 | fish butchers that I know or from the restaurant. There's a place in LA that's great. It's called

00:25:56.800 | The Joint. And there's a lot of fishmongers via the pandemic that started selling fish

00:26:01.360 | from wholesale originally to now retail. So I think that's going to become easier.

00:26:05.920 | But I would predict that in the next 5 to 10 years, you're going to see

00:26:10.800 | wholesale changes in how supermarkets handle their fish, for sure. Mainly because they're

00:26:17.200 | going to have a longer shelf life of fish if they handle it a little bit differently.

00:26:20.960 | Well, when you say frozen fish, do you mean like you go to Safeway and you see bags of frozen fish

00:26:28.800 | in the freezer section? Yeah, I'll take that all day long.

00:26:32.640 | Okay. No, I mean, I'm asking. I'll take that all day long. I tend to not eat that much.

00:26:39.600 | I am the worst kind of food snob. I eat super high-end stuff and super low-brow stuff and

00:26:46.880 | everything in between. But what I want is a piece of fish that I know has been handled right. And

00:26:54.640 | if it's not organic, that's fine, too. I have Arctic char that's frozen that's not organic or

00:27:01.200 | wild. I'm okay with that. Where I'm not okay with is, say, salmon. I think salmon is a seasonal fish

00:27:08.480 | and it should be smoked or preserved. But having...

00:27:14.400 | Ora King is good, and that's from New Zealand. But for the most part, there's striped bass

00:27:20.000 | from Mexico that's farm-raised. Not all farm-raised is the same, number one. I don't love

00:27:27.440 | farm-raised salmon, mainly because of how it's raised and how it's fed. I just try not to eat

00:27:39.760 | things like that. But do I? Yeah. Sometimes I'll go to a Trader Joe's or something and I'll buy

00:27:44.480 | some just because I know it's what my kid will eat. And I'll take a cut of salmon that I know

00:27:51.440 | is okay. It's really hard to judge the freshness on something. Again, I guess I just opened Pandora's

00:28:01.520 | box because we could talk two weeks about fish programs in general. So, I don't know where to

00:28:06.480 | begin. Well, I'll throw people the direction of your podcast because I feel like one of the

00:28:11.520 | most fun things that I've heard you do is you just go deep on one thing. So,

00:28:15.120 | I bet that somewhere in those episodes, there's something on fish or something like this. So,

00:28:18.880 | if anyone wants just a deep dive on any of these topics, I bet there's something there. So,

00:28:24.240 | I'll throw that out. People should buy some salt cod. It's a delicious thing. Most of Europe

00:28:30.000 | wouldn't be here today if we didn't have salt cod. So, honestly, salt cod is wonderful. They

00:28:35.040 | take something that was plucked from the ocean at its peak freshness and then preserve it in salt.

00:28:41.360 | So, it's like, you know, I'll eat a lot of tinned seafood too. That's fine. Just because,

00:28:47.200 | like, you know exactly how it's processed. And another thing is frozen vegetables.

00:28:51.120 | I would say a lot of frozen vegetables, I don't know all clearly, but frozen vegetables get a

00:28:59.040 | bad rap. But very similar to frozen fish. I would take frozen peas over fresh peas any day of the

00:29:08.480 | week. Because the starch content changes on peas, unless you're literally plucking it that day and

00:29:15.280 | eating it that day. And not everyone's so lucky to live in the Bay Area or Southern California,

00:29:20.320 | where you might be able to get fresh peas that day. Like, you know, there's an idea with farmers

00:29:24.800 | that I talked to, like, they shucked peas because that's how some chefs want it, right? Because that

00:29:30.160 | perfect sweetness level before the sugar turns to starch. Well, that's a very hard product to come

00:29:37.120 | by. Well, a frozen pea is literally plucked at its peak sugar level, and then frozen immediately,

00:29:44.960 | flash frozen. So, again, the floor is definitely, like, higher than a fresh pea, but the ceiling is

00:29:52.640 | not that much lower. So, there's a lot of things, if you start asking yourself, is it better or

00:29:57.280 | worse? I don't think that's the right question. And even going back to fish, it's like, what are

00:30:01.360 | you looking for, right? Are you looking for a piece of fish that tastes delicious and that,

00:30:07.760 | you know, is of, like, high quality? I don't even mean, I think freshness is the word

00:30:13.440 | that is important. But even freshness isn't the right word, because a lot of fish, I think,

00:30:16.720 | moving forward is going to be dry-aged, right? So, how are you going to sell a fish when people

00:30:24.000 | ask, is it fresh? And if you say, if I'm behind the counter, like, no, that's been aged 32 days.

00:30:30.880 | That's going to throw people for a loop. - Yeah. And how much of, is this thing taste good,

00:30:38.480 | is the food, or I think you said, like, one of the most important things people should learn

00:30:42.800 | is how to season things. You know, does that, is that equally more important, less important than

00:30:49.600 | the freshness when it comes to, at the end of the day, I assume, as long as you're not getting sick,

00:30:53.440 | what's most important is, does it taste good? - Yeah, of course, you know, but a lot of times,

00:30:58.480 | you know, the reason I talk about water is if you store it in ice and water, it sort of accelerates

00:31:02.800 | the production of ammonia in fish, right? So, it's counterintuitive to, like, keep fish away from

00:31:09.280 | sitting on ice, right? So, it doesn't matter what kind of fish, if it tastes like ammonia,

00:31:15.120 | it's not going to be delicious, right? So, we put that away. It's also why I like, let's just say I

00:31:20.480 | use a block of frozen fish, right? I get some frozen sockeye salmon, which I don't love. I

00:31:25.440 | don't like sockeye, but, you know, it's something that I might serve to my child. What I want is,

00:31:31.760 | what I'm looking at that is really is like, okay, I could turn this into something that's tasty,

00:31:36.240 | right? In and of itself, maybe not so delicious as, say, a king salmon, but what could I do? I

00:31:41.360 | could add some soy sauce. I could add some herbs. I could add a little sugar. I could turn that into

00:31:45.120 | teriyaki. So, I'm just trying to always figure out, like, how do I make it tasty, right? And

00:31:51.520 | you can't really do things with -- you can make good food with bad product, but it's really hard

00:31:56.240 | to do consistent. Yeah. And when you're trying to make things tasty, do you think there's some

00:32:00.320 | underrated ingredients that people should be keeping in their kitchens to make things taste

00:32:05.600 | better that they're probably not using right now? I mean, people should cook more with MSG,

00:32:12.240 | but they won't. Why? As someone who's done zero research, other than I feel like I know that

00:32:18.240 | there are a lot of people that say no MSG, which inherently makes me assume it's not good, but

00:32:23.360 | based on what you just said, it makes me think maybe that's totally -- Again, it's like science.

00:32:27.120 | Show me one scientific report that proves that MSG is actually bad for you. It's usually these

00:32:35.200 | really faulty double-blind studies. It's always a screwy study. You can be sensitive to MSG,

00:32:42.240 | but you can't be allergic because it's a glutamic acid. You die if you are allergic to

00:32:47.200 | glutamic acid. You need it to survive. It just so happens that it can also be very delicious.

00:32:55.680 | When you dry-age beef, you produce and harness more glutamic acid. The production of certain

00:33:04.000 | fermented foods create a lot more umami, MSG, monosodium glutamate.

00:33:09.680 | The artificial form is created, and that's what you can sprinkle on, but it's naturally

00:33:15.920 | present in so many fucking foods. Parmesan is basically just dairy MSG.

00:33:22.000 | I've talked about it a lot in, say, our Ugly Delicious episodes. The reason I get so upset

00:33:28.400 | about it is because it's these -- Similar to the microwave, it's something that is widely

00:33:32.880 | held to be true on what? These are the ideas that I really like in food and culture in general.

00:33:39.200 | I love searching for the bad ideas. I ask myself, "Why is it a bad idea? Is there data?

00:33:45.840 | Like overwhelming data that supports it's a bad idea, and the hypothesis is tested? Or

00:33:52.480 | did some dumbass with stupidity and bias and prejudice say it was a bad idea?"

00:33:58.400 | More often than not, those are the things that happen to be the things that I care about,

00:34:04.640 | and MSG is one of them. There's a few factors that happened in the '60s that created a lot of the MSG

00:34:14.320 | syndrome stuff, but people eat MSG all the time. When you eat a Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich and

00:34:20.400 | you go to get a Popeye's crispy chicken sandwich and people love it, the same person that says

00:34:26.320 | they're allergic to MSG, they're eating MSG. Almost every snack food that you get, right?

00:34:32.880 | Delicious, delicious chips. You know what they have? MSG. To me, it's funny because people eat

00:34:40.080 | it all the time, both naturally and artificially in their foods, whether they realize it or not.

00:34:46.000 | Yet it just so happens that if it's like Chinese food or Asian, then it's bad for you.

00:34:52.400 | I'll leave it at this. The marketing behind MSG and the faultiness behind it is so great that

00:35:03.120 | currently, that if you go to any supermarket, people buy it all the time in MSG in its pure

00:35:07.840 | form, uncut, pure MSG. It's in your supermarket right now, labeled not as MSG, not with some

00:35:18.640 | dragon Asian bullshit font on the packaging. Accent. Have you ever heard of accent, the

00:35:25.600 | seasoning salt? Yeah. Right now, people buy it. They add it all the time, a lot of secret family

00:35:32.160 | recipes. And if you look at it, it says the only one ingredient, monosodium glutamate produced by

00:35:38.320 | Ajinomoto, the largest producer of MSG in the world. So people add chicken bouillon cubes.

00:35:45.920 | You know what that is? It's basically a cube of MSG.

00:35:50.000 | So it's like, yeah, people, I'm not saying dump MSG and there's things that they can do to make

00:35:58.160 | the food more delicious. They do that with parmesan. People add parmesan to everything.

00:36:02.960 | Why? Well, it tastes good. Why does it taste good? Well, because it's parmesan. It's like,

00:36:07.360 | oh, because of the buffalo milk bullshit? No. Because it's got a lot of glutamic acid in it.

00:36:16.000 | Okay. So MSG, any other things you keep out a lot to either spice things, flavor things? I mean,

00:36:22.000 | I know it's really a personal question, right? Like for one, for me, I could probably put

00:36:26.800 | gochujang on a lot of things and my kids will never eat it. But we use that a lot in our house.

00:36:33.680 | But I'm curious if there are other things to add, flavor, salt, whatever it is.

00:36:38.960 | We use a lot of olive oil. I have several kinds of olive oils at home,

00:36:44.480 | mainly for health benefits because I have to eat certain diets because as I get older,

00:36:50.640 | my cholesterol. But in general, I think olive oil is a beautiful thing because there's so

00:36:55.200 | many flavors and heats to it, especially if it's fresh or fruity. There's cooking olive oils,

00:37:01.040 | there's dressing olive oils and everything in between. So I think for me, it's like a baseball

00:37:06.480 | pitch. I have like three olive oils on hand all the time. One to cook with. And again, I'm not

00:37:14.160 | cooking with a super fragrant, very expensive olive oil because all those fragile compounds

00:37:21.680 | that make it delicious will be destroyed in that violent cooking process. So there's no reason to

00:37:27.760 | do that. I mean, besides the own Momo products, I use savory salt in everything. And that doesn't

00:37:35.200 | have MSG because there's other ways to harness it. The one thing I don't add all the time to

00:37:40.800 | my food is black pepper. I just don't do it blindly and religiously like everybody else.

00:37:48.800 | But I do think salt at home is probably the salt and fat are the two big difference makers.

00:37:54.400 | If you had to think, I've had to think quickly with home cooking versus professional cooking,

00:37:58.800 | the amount of salt and the amount of fat used in a professional kitchen is quite frankly,

00:38:02.640 | gross compared to what you would use in a home kitchen.

00:38:04.720 | And you talk about pepper and spices. Do you use spices a lot? Like do you have a,

00:38:10.080 | you know, the average American home has, you know, the spice rack with 25 different things.

00:38:15.680 | Whether it's Laboie or SOS chefs, there's so many great spice shops. I tend to stay away from like

00:38:23.280 | the stuff. Do I have like garlic powder and onion powder and stuff like that? Yeah. But

00:38:29.360 | do I have a kefir lime leaf? And do I have razzle new? Do I have different

00:38:35.040 | spice blends? Absolutely. And I think, you know, black cardamom, green cardamom, things that

00:38:42.960 | I have, I purchased in small amounts, right? Mainly because it has a shelf life

00:38:49.680 | and there's no reason to buy a large amount because by the time I get to the end of it,

00:38:55.840 | it will have gone bad. So I have a lot of small jars of like one or two, like I have two

00:39:02.000 | pods of cardamom. I have like two things of cinnamon.

00:39:05.280 | I would imagine that the average person listening right now has not replaced the spices in their

00:39:12.320 | spice rack for over a decade is my guess. Well, longer than that, I'd probably say

00:39:17.520 | some people right now, I bet you, if you look into your spice rack, if you bought an existing home,

00:39:25.440 | there's probably the spices of the previous owner still there.

00:39:29.120 | Yeah. So I have talked earlier in a past episode about the need, like you're not going to get the

00:39:34.560 | flavor you want out of, you know, dried oregano if it's 25 years old.

00:39:38.880 | It dissipates. Like, I don't understand why people would think that it doesn't, you know, like

00:39:43.600 | if film and cinema like degrades over time and like, why would it like a spice? It just does.

00:39:51.440 | So yeah, I think spice is a huge thing. Spices in general are an amazing way to unlock flavor.

00:39:58.480 | I mean, for a home cook too, like the freezer, I don't think people use the freezer enough

00:40:03.840 | as a pantry, right? I view anything as a freezer as almost like a shelf-stable product.

00:40:08.960 | And freezing foods are the best way to preserve and to ensure quality. So whenever I cook at home

00:40:19.440 | now, whether it's an any day or not, like I have chicken soup. I made chicken soup and

00:40:24.240 | I hate throwing food away. So I'll serve, you know, enough chicken soup for dinner for the night,

00:40:32.560 | even if I'm not home, it's all set up. And then I'll preserve the other half into smaller

00:40:39.040 | containers and put them in the freezer. So I can just reheat that at any time. So that's a

00:40:42.720 | huge tip. People don't use the freezer enough because I think it gets a bad rap.

00:40:48.320 | I mean, when it comes to kids, we'd be like, okay, well, let's make oatmeal and then freeze like

00:40:54.560 | small pieces of it so that you could throw in the microwave and heat it up real quick.

00:40:59.280 | Let's, you know, if we make a lasagna, double the recipe, make a massive lasagna and freeze

00:41:04.240 | half of it. Exactly. Another thing on reheating, just for people, not all ceramic is good in a

00:41:10.480 | microwave. Most are, depending on the glaze, but not all plates. This is another bullshit thing.

00:41:16.720 | If you look on, say, Amazon or most places that sell a plate that says it's microwave safe,

00:41:24.320 | they're straight up fucking lying. Because if it's plastic, it's plastic. And

00:41:29.840 | there's a ton of stuff out there that's plastic that says it's microwave safe and it's not

00:41:36.000 | microwave safe because it's still plastic. Even containers that you might buy as a microwave

00:41:40.240 | dinner in a plastic that says it's microwave safe, it's not microwave safe. I wouldn't

00:41:45.760 | microwave in that plastic. And, you know, the only things you can microwave safely are silicone,

00:41:52.000 | certain shapes of metal and glass. That's it. Yeah. I think the metal one will throw people,

00:41:56.000 | but that's for another conversation. And then when you buy ingredients,

00:42:00.640 | is there an argument to just, you know, you talked about how you could just cook

00:42:03.600 | chicken straight out of the freezer. You know, I think one of the things that we've found

00:42:07.120 | ourselves is, you know, you buy ingredients, you're like, oh, you know, it's running late

00:42:10.240 | and it's expiring, throw it in the freezer. Is there an argument to just put it in the

00:42:13.840 | freezer right out the gate if you're not sure if you're going to use it for a while?

00:42:17.840 | I mean, yeah, that's basically how my mother cooked. You know, she was like,

00:42:23.040 | what was it? Yeah. First in, first out instead of last in, first out.

00:42:29.280 | Yeah. My grandparents did a little bit of that, but then sometimes you'd be like,

00:42:34.160 | this thing expired two years ago. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy because

00:42:39.440 | sometimes I find myself doing the same thing. Like, let's just say it was like cheese,

00:42:45.520 | block of cheese. My mom would buy so much damn cheese and then freeze all of it. Buy a new block

00:42:51.760 | of cheese, take out the frozen one and put the fresh one in the freezer. Right? I find myself

00:42:58.720 | doing some things like that, for sure. So let me ask you a few like rapid fire things,

00:43:03.680 | because I know you have some strong opinions that are a little contrarian. Peeling?

00:43:07.600 | Not for everything. I mean, peeling carrots, I think is dumb, for sure.

00:43:14.400 | I mean, that's what people are here for. It's like, what am I doing wrong? How can I be more

00:43:19.280 | efficient? So, yeah. I mean, yeah, just take a clean sponge and you can wipe it down. I mean,

00:43:23.760 | carrot peeling, for example, even potatoes, if you just wash it. But a lot of it's just aesthetics,

00:43:30.960 | but a lot of that flavor is in the skin itself. What about ginger? I feel like that's the most

00:43:35.440 | pain in the ass thing to peel. No, ginger is easy to peel if you just use a spoon.

00:43:40.080 | Okay. How do you peel ginger? I peel with a spoon, but sometimes the ginger is like so small

00:43:45.040 | that you're like, you know, if you get a big piece of ginger, great. If you get one of those like

00:43:49.760 | fraggle all around, you're like trying to dig around and break off the nubs and all that stuff,

00:43:54.160 | I'm like. But you've got to peel with the right amount of pressure, because even with a spoon,

00:43:59.360 | if you peel it, you can cut through those knobs with the spoon. Okay. But in general, like,

00:44:06.000 | sometimes I might just if I'm lazy, I'm not peeling the ginger. I'll just give it a quick wash.

00:44:10.480 | Fruit, wash all fruit? Yeah. But I don't wash. If I go to the farmer's

00:44:17.840 | market and I get like berries and blackberries and raspberries, I don't wash them. I wash them

00:44:24.080 | before I'm going to eat them. My wife has been experimenting with what's the way to make berries

00:44:28.080 | last the longest. And like, the answer is not wash them and put them in the fridge wet.

00:44:32.880 | It's like get them as dry as possible. Like put a paper towel around them, like do what you can. So

00:44:39.200 | that gives them a lot of extra shelf life we've found. I feel like I grew up in a house where

00:44:43.440 | it's like you get a piece of chicken, you get a chicken breast or chicken thigh, and it's like

00:44:46.400 | trim off all the fat of the chicken and then cook it. Waste of time or? That's a sad. That's a sad

00:44:55.040 | dinner or whatever that is. Okay, so no. No, I mean, like, that's your friend. Why do you want

00:45:02.800 | to cut that out of your life? It's ridiculous. Yeah. Okay. And then last, you talked a lot about

00:45:07.440 | kids. Any tricks for people with kids that have made your life easier?

00:45:11.760 | I'm probably not the right person to ask because I think if they ever develop some kind of eating

00:45:16.240 | disorder, it's because of me. Because I make them whatever they want. I'm the worst kind of parent.

00:45:21.760 | They tell you, you know, offer one thing to your child, and if they don't want it, then you should

00:45:27.040 | just like hold it aside till they eat it later. Not me. I can't. I end up making like, sometimes

00:45:34.720 | four things. Five things until they eat something. Because as a parent, all you want to see is them

00:45:41.280 | consuming some kind of calories, you know? That's all I want. So I have been known to make quite a

00:45:50.000 | few things quickly for them. And I think they understand the power they wield over me now.

00:45:55.520 | But I would say, like, the one thing as a quick thing to try for your kids is a crepe. You make

00:46:02.640 | crepes for your kids? I don't think I've ever made a crepe for my kids. I've made it before kids,

00:46:06.720 | but... All right. Well, again,

00:46:08.720 | there's restaurant crepes, and then there's home cooking crepes. And most of the things I say that

00:46:13.680 | I cook at home, I would never cook it that way in a restaurant, right? In a restaurant, you need a

00:46:17.760 | specific shape and thickness and aesthetic. So you need one egg to one cup of milk to one cup of

00:46:24.160 | flour, basically. And you could add olive oil or some kind of butter, melted butter. And I put that

00:46:29.920 | into like a little blender. And that's it. Very, very quick. On a nonstick pan or black steel,

00:46:38.000 | you just pour a little bit over medium heat, and then that's it. So you want to get the right

00:46:43.200 | thickness, but it doesn't matter. You know, you just want to get as thin as layer as possible.

00:46:47.200 | And then now you can turn that into just about anything. I can turn that into sort of crepe

00:46:52.320 | pancakes. So it's not necessarily traditionally pancakes, but then I can sort of roll them up

00:46:57.280 | like they're crepe Suzette or something like that. And then just what I'm trying to do with

00:47:01.600 | something that is like a crepe is constantly change the shape and form of it so it looks

00:47:07.040 | like it's different to them and put different feelings in. So if it's a crepe, then I can

00:47:15.520 | get it more crunchy on the bottom. I can get it super crisp, like it's almost like a tortilla,

00:47:20.240 | and I can put cheese and ham and I could turn that into like a crepe quesadilla like thing.

00:47:26.000 | Or I could even crack a scrambled egg in there, put some cheese and some bacon and roll that up.

00:47:30.640 | So it gives me a lot of flexibility. And I found that if you are sort of stuck in your ways of

00:47:36.240 | presenting something to a child, then you're going to be limited. And I think being able to tweak

00:47:42.720 | things on a daily basis prevents them from getting bored from eating. So the crepe is the only thing

00:47:48.960 | left in my pitching arsenal that they still can't hit. And part of this is just getting comfortable

00:47:55.840 | with experimenting any, you know, words of wisdom to someone who feels like gosh, they have to

00:48:00.720 | follow a recipe for everything they're doing. We wrote a book during the pandemic, you know,

00:48:05.600 | cooking at home. And I posit, even though it sounds ridiculous, that recipes are actually

00:48:12.240 | responsible for bad cooking. Because if you follow recipes, and I see this a lot, like if I post

00:48:19.600 | something, or I make something, someone's like, oh, how'd you make that? And I give them like,

00:48:24.160 | I did this and this. And they're like, no, what are the exact measurements?

00:48:27.600 | I think most of the best cooking in the world happens with no recipes.

00:48:34.720 | It just so happens that in America, and some of the Western world, people can't cook without

00:48:39.120 | recipes. I find it that long term, it's probably hurts your ability to develop intuition. And

00:48:46.480 | yeah, I love recipes to a degree, but I also think that they're not the best thing for you

00:48:53.520 | if you want to learn how to be a better cook. Because, you know, if you're cooking at home,

00:48:59.120 | it's improv every night.

00:49:01.120 | Or at least it should be, maybe.

00:49:03.840 | Yeah, yeah.

00:49:05.280 | We did something a little crazy. Neither my wife or I are Korean. But there's this thing,

00:49:10.640 | you probably know it. It's like Samchil Il. It's like, three, seven week. It's like the 21 days

00:49:16.960 | after you have a baby, someone comes to live with you. So we'd learned about this. And we thought,

00:49:22.080 | well, that sounds like something great. Like someone's helping take care of mom and the baby.

00:49:25.920 | So we hired this woman to live with us for, I think it was like 30 days after our baby was

00:49:30.880 | born. We did it again. She went then went did it with both my sister's kids and no recipes for 30

00:49:37.520 | days. She cooked three meals a day, zero recipes the entire time. And we were like, oh, we're doing

00:49:43.440 | it all wrong. Like she was like, what if I try to make a pizza out of a kimchi pancake and like

00:49:49.360 | just do other stuff? Like it was just so creative. And I don't know, it just changed our perspective

00:49:55.280 | on how we cook.

00:49:57.360 | Well, I'm glad you got the sanghari is the pronunciation. But it's like the fourth

00:50:04.160 | trimester is a big deal in Korea. And yeah, I'm glad that you did that. But also like,

00:50:10.640 | you know, my mom never gave me a single recipe ever. And I think I wish she did sometimes,

00:50:18.240 | right. But, you know, if you have a recipe that you want from your mom or your aunt or your uncle,

00:50:24.560 | I think what you find more often than not, what I'm guilty of, and I'm sure everyone else's Hey,

00:50:29.680 | text your mom. Hey, can you tell me how you make that dish? And then like, can you give me like

00:50:35.040 | specifics? I think probably what would be more impactful and I don't want to seem cheesy or

00:50:39.680 | hokey is like get on a flight, spend a long weekend and make it with them. You know, like,

00:50:45.760 | that's what I think is missing. A lot of these things is like the recipe can actually prevent

00:50:51.040 | you from actually learning actually how to actually make it right. For example, I've lived

00:50:56.160 | in Los Angeles for two years. And I don't know the names of any of the fucking highways. Because all

00:51:00.400 | I do is follow GPS, right? I'm never going to follow the names. People ask me like, Hey, you

00:51:04.240 | just go to wheelchair and you're here. I was like, I don't know. I'm never gonna know. But you know,

00:51:08.960 | I understand that most people's cooking is like, you know, car GPS for them. So yeah,

00:51:14.320 | I know, I know you're not focused as much on the restaurant thing. But I asked some listeners if

00:51:18.880 | there's any questions I should ask you. One thing people want to know is when you go to a restaurant,

00:51:23.200 | how do you decide what to eat? Is it just whatever you want? Or are you trying to figure out what the

00:51:28.400 | best thing is? And what tactics do you have for someone who's like, I want to find a great

00:51:32.800 | restaurant, have a great dish. And I don't know anyone. It's not like I'm friends with the chef.

00:51:37.200 | So maybe the answer is you don't have to do that because you know all the chefs. But what would

00:51:40.480 | you tell someone who doesn't know that? I think first and foremost, probably do some research,

00:51:45.200 | but don't just follow Yelp. Right? Or if let's just say you do follow Yelp and you find,

00:51:49.520 | you know, that there is sort of truth to say a restaurant that has a three star rating,

00:51:56.880 | or like a three and a half star rating, but that restaurant has a lot of fives and a lot of ones.

00:52:02.720 | That right off the bat looks someone that's probably gonna be awesome.

00:52:06.880 | Right? If you deep dive deeper into the data, and you realize most of the people that give it ones

00:52:12.880 | are people that don't understand the kind of cuisine. Most people that give it fives are the

00:52:18.000 | people that do understand the cuisine. Like, that's probably a good thing. So the numbers

00:52:23.840 | don't always tell you the truth, but what's behind it. I also think it's probably best to just like

00:52:30.560 | use the guides that are there to do your own discovery. Finding what's best is sort of

00:52:36.080 | ridiculous. And I know that's easy to sell and easy to explain. But for example, if you go to

00:52:42.000 | Tokyo, and you go to any of the, like the really sushi expert aficionados, right, that I know,

00:52:48.560 | if you say, Hey, I want to go to the best sushi restaurant, they're going to erase you from their

00:52:51.760 | phone. Because it's like, you're just a dumb ass to them. It's so overreductive. I think what they

00:53:00.320 | want to say is like, do you understand the nuance and understand that at given any given moment,

00:53:04.880 | there might be like five to seven serving the best stuff that night. So a lot of it is like

00:53:09.600 | the feeling the price range, right? And I think doing the homework never hurts. But the best thing

00:53:18.240 | to do is just to go out there and do it yourself. And I think the hard thing clearly is ever, you

00:53:23.440 | know, people are on a budget, and they can't go eat out all the time. So I think at that degree,

00:53:27.920 | it really doesn't hurt to go to the places that are like tried and true, right? So like, for

00:53:33.040 | example, in New York, if people were saying, Hey, where do I go, my parents are there, my

00:53:39.920 | grandparents are coming, and like, it's a good celebration for like eight of us. And they really

00:53:45.120 | want to like blow it out, I'd say like, go to go to a little Bernadette, or even if it's a good

00:53:49.120 | little Bernadette. Because like, it's the kind of restaurant that make everyone happy. And it's

00:53:53.840 | delicious. And it's not like a four hour tasting menu. You know, if my my friend who I know likes

00:54:02.320 | to spend a lot of their disposable income on high end restaurants, and I know that like they're

00:54:08.240 | coming to town and they want something, I'm just like, Okay, I got a table at Brooklyn Fair, like,

00:54:13.120 | you know, I mean, like, each restaurant probably has a purpose, right? Some are catchalls. Some

00:54:19.920 | are specific. If I was in San Francisco, it's like, okay, like, we'll think about Corey Lee,

00:54:27.840 | the great chef, my good friend, he has been new and he has sent home on the Korean barbecue spot.

00:54:32.480 | One is for specific occasion for dining. Dining is very different than eating. Right?

00:54:38.240 | Dining is feeding your brain simultaneously. And eating is San Juan, which is delicious,

00:54:43.040 | and everyone gets it. So again, part of it is understanding and reading the room. I think before

00:54:48.320 | you even figure out where to go is like, Who am I eating with? And like, what, what is the desired

00:54:54.240 | result? And if you're thinking like, hey, I just want to check the box, I want to go to three

00:54:58.000 | mission star restaurant. Then like the mission guide isn't always the best indicator, but it

00:55:04.640 | gives you a sense of what is there. And even all those lists give you a sense of where to go and

00:55:10.240 | what to eat. But at the end of the day, I think going in the chat rooms, just reading everything

00:55:16.720 | possible. Instagram is a great, great feed. Like if you find the gourmands out there,

00:55:23.440 | if you follow them, like little Megan Japan is a perfect example. I think she's one of the great

00:55:27.840 | connoisseurs of food in the world. She where she eats is the good shit. You know what I mean?

00:55:35.200 | And that's what we have right now. Don't we live in a world where you have instant information to

00:55:42.160 | a degree. And you have people that are doing the work for you, you just got to find those people

00:55:47.840 | first. So I before even going online, I would probably find the people that like you follow

00:55:54.160 | that you might like, you get a sense of, oh, if they like something, I might like something too.

00:56:00.080 | And they're almost like a proxy. So that's another recommendation that I would follow people online.

00:56:05.120 | Yeah. One tactic I've always used is find a restaurant that you like, that you have liked,

00:56:09.440 | you know, for five, 10 years, they go look it up online. And invariably, there's probably a

00:56:13.360 | restaurant you like that's like a three star restaurant. You're like, Whoa, this is it breaks

00:56:17.840 | your brain because you just assume that a three star restaurant on Yelp might be bad. And it just

00:56:23.120 | changed my perspective. I was like, Oh, I actually like this restaurant. The internet says it's not

00:56:28.160 | a great restaurant. So maybe I don't always have to trust the internet.

00:56:32.000 | Well, yeah. Again, I'm looking for the either or numbers, right? If it's a three star restaurant,

00:56:37.920 | where every review is a three, that's probably not for me. I'm looking for, wow, you either love it

00:56:44.160 | or hate it. Yeah. You know, when I was doing some homework, I was looking at you got a show coming

00:56:48.480 | out on Hulu. And you mentioned people you could cook with anything. And I've watched this one

00:56:53.040 | scene in it where someone's cooking with like a closed steamer. So talk a little bit about Secret

00:56:57.920 | Chef because, you know, I didn't I didn't get a preview. I didn't get to watch it. But it looks

00:57:02.800 | pretty interesting. This was a show that we were working on for a while. So I was excited. I can't

00:57:08.960 | believe of all the pitches that we made for Hulu that they actually said yes to this one, because

00:57:12.640 | it was the most insane one. It was also going to be the one that was a big budget and we were going

00:57:16.800 | to need a giant soundstage. So we shot it down in Atlanta where like they shoot Marvel films,

00:57:21.680 | everything like these huge airport hangers. And we built this crazy set up where the contestants

00:57:28.400 | never saw each other, you know, while they were cooking without revealing too much. And then as

00:57:34.160 | the challenges happen, what we wanted to do was make it where it was a game. It wasn't just about

00:57:39.920 | the food. The food was a vehicle for the contestants to play a game. So it was different

00:57:47.040 | kinds of strategy and different elements that I don't think you've ever seen in a food reality

00:57:52.160 | show thing. And I was excited about the challenges we put them in because I think they're very fresh

00:58:01.360 | and there are things that you've definitely not seen on camera. And if you haven't seen it,

00:58:06.400 | I don't even know what I'm embargoed to say or not to say. So I'm going to err on the side of

00:58:11.200 | being conservative here because I don't want to get Disney upset. But in one of those challenges,

00:58:17.360 | I will say that we gave everybody household products, right? Or not products, things that

00:58:23.680 | you would not normally cook with to make a meal out of. And one of which was a clothing steamer.

00:58:34.000 | And they were supposed to cook something beautiful with that.

00:58:36.720 | I saw that in the trailer, but I don't know what they came up with. So I'll have to check it out.

00:58:42.960 | It's a fun show, Secret Chef. I was really excited that we could finally get that out in the world.

00:58:48.240 | Awesome. Anywhere else you want to point people online to keep involved with what you're doing?

00:58:53.520 | We have some stuff coming out with Major Denma Media. We have some products. We have some more

00:58:59.920 | shows coming out. We have the podcast and we have a few things coming out on the Momofuku side from

00:59:06.640 | this consumer product goods and from the restaurant side coming out soon as well. So just stay tuned.

00:59:11.920 | Awesome. I'll put a link to all that in the show notes and thank you so much for being here.

Cooking at Home: Delicious Food Made Easy

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