A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich - Is Deep Dish Pizza Actually A Casserole?

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

Whether you love it or hate it, we have to answer the question-- is Deep Dish Pizza even a pizza at all, or is it.... a casserole? To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. Hey, if this podcast sounds a little bit different, we're doing this from home again, because Josh keeps forgetting to bring his mic back to the studio. Despite being the biggest Chicago icon since Kanye West, there's no more malign Midwest food than the deep dish pizza. Whether you love it or hate it, you still have to answer the question, is it even a pizza at all, or is it, God help us, a casserole? This is A Hot Dog is a Sandwich.

Ketchup is a smoothie. Yeah, I put ice in my cereal, so what? That makes no sense. A hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. What? Welcome to our podcast, A Hot Dog is a Sandwich, the show where we break down the world's biggest food debates. I'm your host, Josh Ayer.

And I'm your host, Nicole Hendizadeh. And today, Nicole, we are taking on, this is a hot button topic. This is maybe the most controversial thing that we have ever talked about on the show. And I'm so very excited for it. So we are talking about whether or not deep dish pizza actually qualifies as a pizza, or if it should be considered a casserole. And this was brought up i know it's a huge thing and something that i likely never would have thought about if it was

not for john stewart's epic rant about it which i shall now read in its entirety and stay buck stay buckled up if you're in a car what do we we mean stay buckled up? How long is it? Oh, it's super long. The podcast in general, it's like 45 minutes too long. Oh my gosh. Okay. Okay. Now I shall read Jon Stewart's epic anti-deep dish pizza rant in its entirety. Okay.

I was going to be nice, but now you've gone too far. So let me explain something. Deep dish pizza is not only not better than New York pizza, it's not pizza. It's a freaking casserole. I'm surprised you haven't thought to complete your deep dish pizza by putting some canned onion rings on top of it. It's a cornbread biscuit, which you melted cheese on. And then in defiance of God and man and all things holy, you've poured uncooked marinara

sauce atop the cheese, atop the cheese, on top the sauce, naked cold on display, like some sort of sauce whore. Damn it. You know the expression, there's no such thing as bad sex or bad pizza your pizzas like sex with a corpse made of sandpaper let me tell you something this is not pizza this is tomato soup in a bread bowl this is an above-ground marinara swimming pool for rats let me tell you something about your freaking not pizza I want to know when I get drunk and pass out on my pizza that I'm not going to drown.

Let me tell you something. I look at this. Look at this. You son of a biscuit. When I look at this, me, I look at this. When I look at your deep dish freaking pizza, I don't know whether to eat it or throw a coin in it and make a wish. And I'd make a wish.

It would be that I would wish for some real freaking pizza. Now, in all due respect, I realize it's very cold in Chicago. Very cold, it's windy, you need to be able to, I don't know, have a pizza and maybe cut it open and climb inside of it like a tauntaun to keep you warm. Seriously, who you kidding? Who uses an iron skillet to make a pizza? You don't use an iron skillet to make a pizza, you use an iron skillet to fend off someone who tries to serve you a freaking pizza made with a skillet.

Here's how you know I'm right. You call it Chicago-style pizza, you call it deep dish pizza, stuffed pizza. You know what we call it? You know what we call this? We call it pizza. Oh, that's nice. And by the way, you don't put tomatoes and celery salt on freaking hot dogs either. You know what I'm saying? Everybody knows there's three acceptable condiments for a hot dog. There's mustard, onions, and stagnant hot dog cart water. That's it. Wow. Wow. Jon Stewart, in a way that only Jon Stewart can do. I'd like to hear

Trevor Noah's version of the anti-deep dish rant, but I mean, that's huge shot fires. Jon Stewart's a New Yorker. He's got strong views. Chicago deep dish pizza, obviously a far cry

from New York pizza. Do you think it's far enough to be called a casserole? What New York person doesn't have strong opinions on pizza? Have you ever met someone that's from New York

and eats an LA slice and like, this is garbage patouille i feel like every new yorker has big opinions about pizza but no i think it it's i believe that deep dish pizza is still a pizza the quantities might be a little confusing to the average person but at the end of the day it is dough it is sauce it is cheese it is in a triangular shape when you cut it typically and you put on a plate and you go nom nom nom with a fork and a knife yeah it's a little obtuse and weird but you still do it it's still pizza i so i get man you got to look at the functionality of pizza and what it's meant to do right and i totally understand someone someone who views new york pizza as the end all be all I do. So there are a bunch of other celebrities

and whatnot who have weighed in on this. Like now dead judge Antonin Scalia said that the only true, I don't know why I chose to call him now dead, former, but former, I don't know. Former alive. Former alive. The late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia said that the only true pizza is Neapolitan and therefore Chicago deep dish pizza is not a pizza. Also, I think Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that a hot dog is a sandwich. Anyways, Supreme Court justices do not get to rule on food opinions.

You and I do, Nicole. And we're just as impressive as Supreme Court justices. Who'd you clerk for? I am the RBG of Mythical Kitchen and you're the Scalia. I don't want to be Antonin Scalia. I mean, you're Sotomayor. You're Sotomayor. How's that?

You can be Sotomayor. I'll be Sotomayor. That's totally fine. Okay. Okay. If we look at the functionality of what a pizza is. Okay. It's funny that Antonin Scalia references Neapolitan pizza and that is the OG pizza,

right? There's the associazione, verita, blah, blah, blah. There's the whole like governing board that defines things as pizza or not pizza. However, you can't hold talking about Supreme Court. I am not a constitutional originalist. I believe in a living constitution. I believe in a living definition of pizza. And so like, I don't think Neapolitan is the end all be all of pizza.

To me, we define pizza across the world. That's the pizza huts, the dominoes, these multinational corporations that have now spread to Malaysia and Dubai and all the other continents of the world. I think New York style pizza is the end-all be-all because you know what you eat Neapolitan pizza with? A knife and fork. Yeah, of course you do. So people who try and use the knife and fork argument to discredit deep dish pizza as a casserole, I don't know if that's compelling. However, I would look at the total like size and weight and proportions of a deep dish

pizza to possibly call it a casserole. And I understand that there's leavened dough and there's sauce and there's cheese, but it's in such a different proportion in a way that makes it completely different from every other style of pizza entirely. I'd be willing to call it a casserole. But it's not a, I mean, it's just a regional pizza style. If, okay, let's just say our lovely, who owns, who owns the bazaar? Jose Andres. Okay. We all know that Jose Andres did a beautiful rendition on a Philly cheesesteak, right? He had the airbread, and then he had the Wagyu, and then he had the foam of the cheese and whatever.

It's still, for all intents and purposes, a cheesesteak, right? No. No, disagree, disagree, disagree, disagree entirely. So you think molecular gastronomy takes away from the original, like the original meal that they're serving i think it's a form of high of high art in the way that when when renee magritte painted a picture of a pipe that said ceci ne pas un peep this is not a pipe it's an image that was like an artistic rendering of a pipe in the same way that jose andres is crazy philly cheesesteak which is a very cool dish by the way it's like it is some sort of aerated dough stuffed with what is it like the steak on it is like raw and then they torch it

i think it's raw wagyu and then he makes a foam out of cheese and he puts it inside of the air bread but i've never had it before i've never had original dish. But let's just say I'm going to El Bulli or I'm going to the bazaar, one of these high or Alinea. We're going to a fancy restaurant, you and I, me and you. And then they have pizza on the menu. And we're like, oh, my God, we're going to eat pizza at a fancy place. I wonder what they're like toppings all over it. I've blown cheese balloons. You have?

That's really cool. That's literally how you make burrata is you take like stretchy mozzarella and then they used to like just put it over their mouths because when lucas and i went and shot at that uh burrata and mozzarella factory yeah the dude was telling us about like working in old school burrata makers uh back in italy and he was like they used to all smoke cigarettes and then they would blow up the mozzarella and then he did it and he's like and now people say burrata don't taste the same no because it no longer tastes like unfiltered winston's i was like that's hilarious that's so interesting wow so the smoker's lungs used to used to perfume the burrata yeah i mean this is just from like one dude so i don't think it's something that can be like in the historical

culinary canon that's still a really cool anecdote though yeah i thought it was great anyways you were saying about the 36 hour dehydrated yeast cracker. Yeah. But Josh, like if we went there and then we ate it and then we had the sensation like, oh, my God, we're eating pizza. Is that still a pizza? Isn't the deep dish pizza just an artist's rendering of pizza instead of it being a high version?

Let's just say a more of a lower version, a more accessible version, a thicker version, a heartier version. But there are thicker, heartier versions of pizza that do not go so far as Chicago deep dish, right? Like what? Detroit style, right? You look at, so when Antonin Scalia said that Neapolitan is the only true pizza style, whatever, like, I obviously don't think that's true because you look at the traditions that have come out of Rome and Sicily and other reasons. And then also how immigration and, um, what's that one word? Duh,

diaspora and how the Italian diaspora sounds like a, a manufactured drug. Yeah. I'm going to take diaspora for my heart palpitations. Um, but anyways, and like how immigration and diaspora has affected pizza styles and whatnot. But you look at,

you know, a Sfincione, I think it's called from Sicily, which is like a very thick pizza that some could call deep dish. And then that is actually what is transformed into say Detroit style pizza, which I find really interesting that people, people do tend to pick on Chicago style deep dish. And I think for a reason, because like, Detroit style pizza, it's very thick, right? Anyone who says that pizza needs to have a thin crust, I don't think is absolutely true. Detroit style pizza is thick, but it's still like a majority bread. And I think that is maybe where my issue comes down to is what percentage by weight? Is it topping sauce and cheese versus dough?

Because Chicago style pizza, that's where it differentiates the most to me. It's not eating with a knife and fork because Neapolitan pizza is traditionally eaten with a knife and fork. It's not the fact that, you know, there's cornmeal on the crust or that the cheese isn't on the top. To me, it is purely a ratio issue when pizza pizza needs to have some sort of like majority bread dough component in chicago deep dish does not allow for that but the structure of the dough allows for that because it creates this this vessel almost like a casserole dish oh almost is it almost like i said almost

have you ever had a pizza casserole? Like someone that just takes a bunch of bread and then puts cheese and tomato sauce on it. And like toppings and they put in the oven. That's not a pizza. That's a pizza casserole. You just described Chicago. That's what a Chicago deep dish pizza is. It's like a bread.

It's a bread bottomed casserole. No, no, no, no, no. That's a pie. That's a pie. That's a pie. A deep dish pizza is a bread. It's a bread-bottomed casserole. No, no, no, no, no. That's a pie. That's a pie. That's a pie. A deep dish pizza is a pie. I would maybe accept that. But do you consider all pizzas to be pies?

Because there are people. That's another question that a lot of people have asked us. No, all pizzas to me are a form of flatbread. Key issue here is flatbread. No, no, no. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. What if you have a pizza and it doesn't have the crust, the crust isn't raised, that's a flatbread. But when I have a pizza and the edges and I have a distinct,

specific visual crust that on the sides, like a nice little reach. But how are you, how are you going to, how are you going to measure that? With my eyes, with my eyes. I have eyes. I look at it before I eat it. Well, it's funny because like the term pizza pie, pizza is relatively new to the U.S.

Like obviously there have been Italian immigrants in the U.S. for a long time, probably making it within their own communities. But a lot of people don't credit the explosion in the U.S. until after World War II, when a bunch of servicemen came home and and they were eating pizza in Italy, and all that. And so like, the original sort of name for pizza was pizza pie, to make people understand what the hell it was, right? Because like, you just say a new foreign word to people in America, they're not gonna understand what it is. But if you say like,

oh, this is a pizza pie, they'll understand that something cut slices out of. But to me, that's a complete misnomer. Like, I consider pizza yeah because i don't think the raised crust is necessarily like endemic to what a pizza is i think something like a flatbread that doesn't have a raised crust and flatbread like still has leavening in it right like you're not just eating a cracker i would argue this is interesting then because like to to call chic deep dish a pizza, you have to decide what exactly a pizza is. Since St. Louis pizza does not have leavening in the dough, right? St. Louis style pizza to me, we have a bunch of one stars on Apple podcasts

because I talk crap on St. Louis pizza. Well, thanks for that, buddy. I don't care. I don't care how far our rating goes down from the city of St. Louis. St. Louis pizza is to, the worst regional pizza style. It is like a Lunchables pizza in full size. We'll order some from Emo's or Elmo's or whatever it's called online. Have them delivered.

I feel like it's only fair. Like, if I'm going to say something's the worst, I need to try it. You know, I can't just piggyback on what you say all the time. You know, when it's safe to do so, we should fly to St. Louis and sample all of their best delicacies because they also invented the toasted ravioli, which to me is an absolutely beautiful food. I love toasted ravioli. But the pizza to me is somewhat of an abomination because it's on, it's essentially like a matzah pizza, right? Like it's like the pizza that you make if you were wandering the desert. But that's pizza to me.

No, matzah pizza to me is not a pizza. It's a matzah. To me, when you use the term matzah in pizza, you are disqualifying it from being a pizza because you're specifying this is on matzah, not on pizza dough. I believe pizza dough does need to be leavened and raised which is why i wouldn't consider i don't think i don't think i again it doesn't need to be okay i take back what i said about raised crust it needs to be a visible crust on the outside but i know what you're gonna say what if the guy puts the sauce all the way to the

corners and some cheese gets on the side is that still pizza yes it is i don't know i don't know in my mind in my mind this is all making sense you're contradicting your arguments in real time instead of letting me do it i love it yeah because i know what you're gonna say it's one of my talents i also do the same thing with my fiance he goes what am i thinking and i say diglet the pokemon and he's like how did you know that so it's the same exact thing but I'm basically trying to say that like what is what is Diglett is Diglett an animal that burrows in the ground or is it like the ground itself what is Diglett Diglett is is the little guy that pops his head out in threes I believe no that's that's Doug Trio the evolved form of Diglett was Doug Trio Diglett's just a single one but that that's what I'm saying. Like, is it like an animal? Because it's kind of just like a, it's shaped like Dots the Candy.

You know what I mean? It's just like a little half sort of cylinder guy. But is it supposed to be like a little animal that burrows? Or is it the ground itself that's anthropomorphic? Oh my gosh, that's a really good question. I like to think that it's the animal, what did you say, anthropomorphic? Yeah. Yeah, I believe it is an anthropomorphic ground thing.

Can you eat it though? Can you eat the ground? No, no. Well, could you eat a Diglett? What would it taste like? Could you eat all Pokemon? Oh yeah. So that's the thing.

You can, there's a whole storyline where Slowpokes, the Pokemon, are being poached for their tails. Oh my gosh. Because people eat them. Yeah, no, you can definitely eat Pokemon. What Pokemon would you want to eat the most? My favorite Pokemon of all time would be Dratini. I don't know if you know who Dratini is. It's like a dragon, right?

No, I'll show you a picture. I call her her. I don't know what the gender of Dratini is. Dratini is the most beautiful Pokemon I've ever seen in my life. And I would probably eat her because she kind of looks like an eel. And I would probably chop her up and saute on a little bit of ginger, soy, glaze, marinade situation. How about you? Unagi, I think Snorlax.

Here's the thing. So there's a lot of like easy sort of analogs you can bring to the eating Pokemon debate. Like Cloyster is just a big old oyster. That'd be fun, right? You could eat Toros is just like a wild bull. Psyduck. Psyduck is a duck. But no, I would want to go Snorlax

because whatever animal Snorlax is, I don't know if it's like a bear, it kind of looks humanoid or like a beanbag, but it's like the Kobe beef of that animal. It spends its entire life sleeping and being super lazy it's it's fattened up completely whatever that is i would want to get a tenderloin from snorlax yeah yeah i know dratini evolves into dragonite i believe and i would eat both of them i've been watching a lot of pokemon unwrapping videos i'm sorry wow what a tangent this was a deep tangent

man this is probably the deepest thing I've ever been on. Back to pizza. So you're talking about the raised crust being a necessity. But like you said, that doesn't necessarily make pizza pizza. Because like a Detroit-style pizza, you would say is a pizza, right? Yes. There's no raised edge crust on Detroit-style pizza. The cheese is actually what-

No, but it's intended. But it covers but it covers the sides like a pie but the cheese is actually what extends all the way outward you know the cheese is the last layer there's still a little bit of a lip there's a distinct lip it's just instead of it being up and curved like a like a pizza crust it's underneath and on the side okay see what i'm saying that makes sense side. Okay. See what I'm saying? That makes sense. That makes sense.

I see what you're saying. There's like the intentionality of creating a raised crust. This is all, I've learned that this whole podcast is all about intentionality. Basically, what the chef is bringing to you is what it has been decided. Like, he is God. Chef is God. God give food to you, patron. Patron eat what the God give you. I think you give a man a

pizza, he eats for a day. But you give him a nice big hearty pizza casserole, like deep dish pizza from Chicago, he's gonna eat that for like a week. Who can eat a whole deep dish pizza in a day? I don't know. When's the last time you had deep dish pizza? It was, there is a chain. I don't even know if it's from Chicago or if they opened in California, but I went after an LAFC match. It's called, God, I feel like I want to look it up. There's one in Long Beach also. But anyways, it's a really good like Chicago style pizza chain. And they both do.

No, La Monica's is New York style. That's in Westwood. Foreman's Chicago? No, it's called Rance's. Rance's deep dish pizza. About a year and a half it's called Rance's. Rance's deep dish pizza about a year and a half ago it's probably the last time I had deep dish pizza but I do I do love deep dish and it was a huge part of my childhood because like there were there were two different competing pizza places in my hometown that you would go to like after your

last game of like a youth basketball season uh and one of them one one of them was called ballpark pizza, which I absolutely loved. It was a New York style, but they had the little basketball video game, you know, where the Papa shot that was really good at. And I stake a lot of my self-esteem and identity on being good at that game. I would challenge anyone in the world to a Papa shot competition. But anyways, there was another place called Selma's Chicago deep dish place. It was really funny is I didn't know that you're supposed to eat deep dish with a knife and fork back then. Oh, no.

So, as, like, a very – It's like, you've seen pictures of me from my youth basketball days. I was a 5'8", 240-pound, 12-year-old power forward, absolutely crushing it on the court, playing bully ball like Charles Barkley. You were a little cutie. I would have – If I was friends with you back then, I would have, like, definitely, like, made you my friend, like forced you to be my friend. Like I did right now. I fine but no so i was like a child and i was just like you know picking up a half a deep dish pizza and shoving it in my face just covered in sauce uh probably dousing it in ranch as well no yeah once i made a deep dish pizza in the car big mistake big mistake do you do the thing that i do where you get your

hands dirty in the car and then you just wipe it under your seats and then you accidentally reach under your seat oh me neither no no i don't do that no i lease my cars i don't purchase them i would never give a car back with like pizza pizza doo-doo on the bottom of it i have integrity i like to put my car in park and have plenty of napkins just in case of emergencies. I have 15 kombucha bottles rolling around in the backseat floor of my car. And every time I make a turn to get on the freeway, I think they're going to shatter, but they never shatter. Sounds like a Christmas tree in there. Back to pizza, back to pizza. I truly don't. I wanted to play devil's advocate. I don't think

there is a compelling argument for Chicago deep dish being being a casserole i think it's something that people say i'm very interested by the fact that people say it especially someone as smart as john stewart because it just shows how how much new yorkers like to insult people like pizza pizza is such he also would probably say that barbecue chicken pizza isn't pizza which of course it is right like? Of course it is. It's got sauce. It's got cheese. It has other toppings on it, and it's on a pizza dough.

That's obviously pizza. But people from New York, they hold so much of their identity into the $1 foldable big floppy slice that they will go so far as to spread lies and propaganda to call Chicago Deep Dish casserole. That doesn't make sense. What casseroles have a leavened bread bottom? None. None. Right. That's stupid.

If, if anything could be considered a pie, I do think there is a case to be made that Chicago pizza is not pizza though. And when I say Chicago pizza, we mean the deep dish because there are other regional Chicago styles. Yeah. But there is a big case to me that this is not a pizza simply for the ratio aspect of sauce and toppings to the bread. I think you can maybe consider it a pie. I'm team pie because pizza pie is a thing in my mind. So calling it anything other than a pizza pie would just be wrong. I think it's wrong. I think when we're defining our notion of pizza hood, because that's what this is all about. To me, do you agree that pizza needs to have a leavened

crust or a leavened, sorry, not a leavened crust, but leavened dough to create it? No. No. Because I'm a girl that grew up making pizzas with tortilla bread from Mission Hill, that grew up making pizzas with tortilla bread from Mission Hill, ketchup, ketchup and shredded cheese in the microwave. I'm not going to front. That's who I was. That's who I still am sometimes. But do you think you could reasonably call that pizza?

Do you think you could open a restaurant? Because I've, God, I've done that too many times. Open a restaurant, no, but I could feed it to a little kid and be like, hey, look, here's pizza. And they're like, thank you. Our barometer cannot be, can I trick a child with this food? To me, that is not an appropriate argument. You can call it. That's how I determine all my arguments.

Like, will my niece and nephew accept this? I fully respect that. And I have made a lot of tortilla pizzas in my day. You take a big floppy flour tortilla, you put it in a pan, sauce, cheese, throw it in the oven until it's crispy. It's fine. But to to me that is not pizza if any restaurant served that calling it pizza i would not consider it what if they put a descriptive a descriptor in front of the word like lazy girl pizza that's fine but i think in the same way that if you call avoided check a check it's serving the opposite purpose of a check right it's like an open-faced sandwich right the term the descriptor open face is literally telling you this is not a sandwich

open oh well well yes well yes okay i stand down does that so i think by calling it like a tortilla pizza or something then i think and john stewart kind of hit on this in the rant where he said like you have to call it deep dish pizza because you know it's not a pizza. We call our pizza pizza. But I don't think that's the case for everything. But Josh, if I go to a party and I bring, I said, hey, I'm bringing pizza and I bring deep dish pizza, do you think people would be upset? I mean, if the party was in New York, maybe. Flat out, yes, I think people would be upset because especially, right, this is, no, I think this is a really important point. Like, even if you brought a bunch of like individual tiny neapolitan pizzas that had wet centers i think people would also

be upset right because if you're bringing because i think pizza is such like an ultimate sort of game day party food because you can just pick up a slice with one hand have a beer in your other hand or a nice glass of skinny girl rose whatever your drink of choice is and you can eat it portably but if you told pizza you're bringing if you told people you're bringing pizza to a party and you brought just a big old sloppy, wet, deep dish casserole and said like, have fun. They're like, oh, I don't have the appropriate plates and cutlery and napkins for this. This is a party.

What are you doing, Josh? Are you kidding me? I went to a house party long ago and they said, hey, we're going to order pizza. And I'm like, okay, whatever. They're going to get Domino's. I saw like eight pizza on a boxes and i was like hell yeah so so i guess you just are a man of convenience and you just have one way of thinking if someone brought me apollonia's pizza to a pizza party i'd be like holy cannoli like look at you if someone brought me a deep

dish pizza i'd be like oh my god you are such an overachiever. If someone brings pizza on, it's a done deal, bro. You have to set your own prejudices aside though, right? You need to set your prejudices aside, young man. I love Chicago deep dish pizza. I love it. Whatever it is, I think it's absolutely delicious. I think it offers something different completely

than New York pizza. It's something that I like actively crave. I want to taste 80% toppings. But to me, the fact that I even might even love it more than New York style pizza. But to me, that might indicate that it's not pizza because it offers such a wildly different experience, which I'm all for. I just think we need to rename it something. I don't think it's a casserole because again, bread, there's no bread based casseroles that i know of at least uh unless you talk about like uh you know something like a spanish strata where you're using pre-cooked bread there's no like raw dough that's a bread pudding yeah that's its own category to me i believe chicago deep dish pizza god help me should be

considered a pie i think the dough is like just unleavened enough to be considered like a crispy pie dough. And when you cook it, it should be crispy, right? Like a pie dough. Yeah. And then you have a majority, an overwhelming majority by weight and volume of sauce, cheese, other toppings.

To me, that constitutes a pie where the filling is a majority of it, but the crust is still important. The real question is, do you ever take Prilosec OTC after you eat a deep dish pizza? No, I like to suffer. I like to suffer for my art. But I know the commercial you're talking about where the dude's just sucking down a deep dish. Is it literally the cable guy? I don't know. I just Googled acid reflux medicine. It was the first thing that came up.

Wait, you preemptively got acid reflux just from talking about Chicago deep dish pizza? If that's not an endorsement of a food, I don't know what is. Yes. Nine days out of ten, I have acid reflux anyway. Today's PSA for keeping your gut healthy brought to you by Nicole. So we've come to an agreement. Yeah. Deep dish pizza is pie.

It's pie. It's neither a pizza nor a casserole. I think you could consider it adjacent to both, but I believe it exists outside of the structures. All right. Well, can you order me pizza? Dude, I was just, I'm we're both,

we both complained right before this, how hungry we are. We both only ate a banana right before this. Yeah, dude, I'm ordering deep dish tonight. All right, Nicole,

we've heard what you and I have to say. Now it's time to find out what other wacky ideas are rattling out there in the Twitter verse. It's the time for a segment. We call out what other wacky ideas are rattling out there in the twitterverse it's the time for a segment we call opinions are like casserole everyone's got one and they smell like onions all right first up we got anani mama this is wild dude chips and pizza with frosting ideally some kind of buttercream i think it's the salty savory savory, sweet thing that gets me. And it's similar to the chili and cinnamon roll combo, which is also divine. So this person's taking pizza and they're slathering it in frosting and then covering it in chips or they're doing chips and frosting separately? It says chips and pizza with frosting.

So in my mind, this person has a pizza. They're crushing chips on it. They're folding it and they're dipping it into the frosting. Like say you want a ranch or a Cholula. Okay, hold on, hold on. Let me think this through. I love ranch on pizza because it's white and creamy and I think that's delicious. I love honey on pizza as well.

You take some of that Mike's hot honey, you drizzle it on a spicy pizza. Yeah. I think that's delicious. What is frosting but a combination of the sweetness of honey and the creaminess of ranch? Sugar. Sugar. But you get the sugar from the honey. That's what I'm saying. It doesn't have to have vanilla.

You think there's any real vanilla in the Duncan Hines white frosting? No, no, no. That's too expensive. What is white? Wait, what does white frosting taste like if not vanilla? Just white? Just sugar. Yeah, there's vanilla flavored frosting and then there's white frosting? No, no, no. That's too expensive. Wait, what does white frosting taste like if not vanilla? Just white? Just sugar. Yeah, there's vanilla flavored frosting and then there's white frosting, which tastes like white. What does white taste like? Exactly. No, no, no. This combination vaguely disgusts me. Frosting and pizza, that's a no from me,

but I love that someone's doing that. And I love snacking on canned frosting. Yeah, I can't get my head around the frosting. But if it was maybe something else that was like a little bit less intense, I don't know what that is. Nutella. No, no, no. Chocolate. Chocolate and tomato.

No, thank you. It tastes like vomit. That tastes like vomit. Ugh, no thanks. It's pre-vomit. All right. Rebecca Derecka says- Great name. Great name.

Green peas are an acceptable addition to tuna salad. Yeah. Any way you can shove veggies into something where they don't belong, I'm for it. I love green peas. I think they're delicious and you should throw them wherever you want, especially in your tuna. Do you know that there's a lot of people who really hate green peas i think they're delicious and you should throw them wherever you want especially in your tuna do you know there's like a lot of people who really hate green peas no i guess because i i like never grew up with like hating a vegetable that much you know people like broccoli or brussels sprouts i never had that no me neither i the only thing i really hated when i was young

was uh raw tomato because i couldn't get past the texture of the seeds but now i absolutely love tomato and i've always loved peas peas have always been one of my favorites, even though I grew up eating canned peas, which are just like, it's like a puree in molecular gastronomy spherical form because they're so mushy. But now I love using frozen peas and throwing them in literally anything.

Like I was making just like a kind of kitchen scrap lasagna because I had lasagna noodles and a bunch of kitchen scraps to use up. And I had some like bacon and chicken and mushrooms. And I just like threw a bunch of green peas in that. Yeah. And then posted a photo of me eating this lasagna covered in ranch dressing

because you eat pizza with ranch. Why not lasagna with ranch? And I thought people were gonna be disgusted with the ranch dressing, but they were just like, who puts peas in a lasagna? You are disgusting. And I was like, no, it's good.

I'm happy for you. Thank you. Thank you, Nicole, for always accepting me for who I am. You're welcome. All right, we're going to go to CassieBear320. I sometimes like to rip and dip, mostly but not exclusively, the crusts of my PB&J sandwich and milk as one would do a cookie. Lots of people think it's gross.

I think their palate is underdeveloped and can't handle my genius. I fully agree with this. I make a, I will dip a peanut butter and whatever sandwich. Cause I mostly eat peanut butter, banana and honey. Although the other day I ran out of honey. So I made simple syrup that I flavored with molasses and vanilla to give me a

drizzle for it. Cause I'm a fancy young boy. Are you going to make a cocktail with that later? Oh yeah. That'd be good in an old fashioned. You should. Yeah, man.

Are you kidding me? What was it? Molasses and what? Molasses and vanilla. Oh my gosh. You should absolutely make a cocktail with that. Wow. I have bitters.

I have whiskey cubes. Yeah. We're doing an old fashioned later. Yeah. Yeah. Do it. Do it. I love,

I love dipping my sandwiches in milk. Uh, it's like, it's's like, it's like a janky choice late chase cake, you get to like, suck that milk out of the bread and you get the little bit of sweetness from the jelly or honey or whatever's on there. I think I think they can't handle your genius, Cassie, but we can. I appreciate your genius. I wish I was this genius. What I do something that I learned from one of my first culinary jobs, shout out to Yvonne, one of my favorite people I've ever worked with. She would take a slice of chocolate cake and saturate it in milk, and she would call it milk cake.

She'd be like, milk cake. She was really funny. She was like one of my favorite people I've ever worked with. And she's like, try this. And I'm like, what is it? She goes, milk cake. And I'm like, okay. That? She goes, milk cake. And I'm like, okay. That's just uno leche cake.

Yeah. And like literally I was like, whoa, this is delicious. So sometimes I eat milk cake and I think of Yvonne because she was my favorite. I'm down with milk cake. Okay. Let's see what's next. HPF and M therapy. Favorite meal.

White rice. Yellow curry chicken with diced white onions. Raisins. Peanuts. Banana slices. Desiccated coconut. Pineapple tidbits. Okay.

This sounded like a regular, you know, curry plate. Curry plate. And then it got into ambrosia salad territory real quick. All you're missing is some marshmallows and a Midwest accent. I know. I think this is a Swede. I think this is a Nordic person because that for whatever reason.

So I had a friend from Sweden, shout out to Ida Storm, who once made me her favorite meal, which was what she called chicken curry, but she didn't even have any curry powder. She was out. So that eliminated any amount of curry from it. But she put banana and pineapple and canned pineapple

in just like a chicken saucy dish uh and i think there was like yogurt mixed in as well but like to her that was chicken curry interesting and you see that on like swedish pizzas as well they'll put like banana and pineapple on a shrimp pizza with curry powder yeah we've had that before yeah for whatever reason this like weird tropical fruit and curry powder thing became a combination uh in sweden maybe i'm misreading it and this is just hpf and m therapy's own creation um i've had it it's not my favorite thing i think it's a regionally defined taste that i have not quite acquired because that is a lot of fruit in a meat sauce a lot of fruit in a meat sauce.

It's a lot of fruit. I do love meat fruit, but this is a bridge too far. Too much fruit for the meat fruit. Too much fruit. All right, we got Leah was here. Ooh, this is a spicy one. Any pizza that doesn't have red sauce isn't a pizza. Shut up.

Shut up, Meg. Shut up, lady. Well, I mean, this is a perfect example of what we talked about about where pizza since there's so much like regional identity tied up in it you're just willing to like say lies right this is a lie i mean if you consider that pizza is an italian you know invention and that even predates italian statehood which is only in thes, like tomatoes didn't even make its way out of North America until, you know, like the mid 1500s. And so like, people have been making pizzas for a long, long, long time that never had any sort of tomatoes. They didn't even freaking exist. Like you look back at street vendors in ancient Rome. I mean, they were making things that look like

pizzas today. And then you look at the Alfredo chicken pizza from Olive Garden. That's absolutely delicious. Think it ain't got any red sauce. It's definitely a pizza. Yeah, absolutely delicious. I think whoever says this stuff is myopic. Is that the correct word? Myopic.

Yeah. You are myopic. And that is a good word to put on your Scrabble board. So get wrecked. Study for the SATs, y'all. Standardized testing is a scam, but you still got to do them. ProtoHuman says,

naked wings dipped in sauce are better than wings tossed in sauce. All the flavor plus crispy skin. Huh. It depends how important crispiness is to you because I, like Josh, like the saturated crispy yumminess that comes with like a chicken wing that has the crispiness

and the saturated sauciness on it so i don't really agree because i like that to that like texture and sensation a lot i totally agree with you i actually get really mad when someone advertises something as a buffalo wing and it is not completely doused in sauce to me that's like that's part of the pleasure of a buffalo wing is you get all that butter and the hot sauce that soaks into the chicken fat and the skin and then it gets smeared on your face no no and then you get to dip that into ranch and you can't dip something into two sauces i'm i'm opposed to that ethically so no i'm not you can't i don't i there's something about it like like cross contaminating the sauce like i saying, like dipping the same bite into two different sauces.

Then you cross contaminate it. It's something I do with ketchup and ranch and ranch and hot sauce. Okay. I guess I do it a lot. Yeah. What are you talking about? My point still stands. All right.

At Ethan Yeats, tuna salad made with miracle whip, of course, must be eaten with Fritos scoops like it's a dip. Yeah, this is absolutely spot on. One, put some damn respect on the Miracle Whip name. I don't care if it's not allowed to be called mayo. It is a coleslaw flavored aioli and it is absolutely delicious. Two, tuna salad, to me, if you look at tonnato sauce, right, the northern Italian tradition, like it should be loose and dippable

in my opinion i think tuna salad is more of a sauce than than a salad itself and i do believe it should be eaten as a dip even if it's with toast points you're just putting a slice of bread in your palm and pawing at a tub of tuna salad i think it's a better dippable food than it is a sandwichable food. Uh, no. First of all, I would like to quote Kanye West, mayonnaise colored Ben's, I push miracle whips. That's all I wanted to say. I've never heard that line.

Really? That's incredible. Yeah, he's a real, he's a real artist. Really? That's incredible. Yeah, he's a real artist. I've never, I guess I just don't realize the difference between mayonnaise and Miracle Whip. Like I haven't done a side-by-side comparison before.

So maybe that can be our next experiment in the Mythical Kitchen. And then I love tuna salad. I grew up eating tuna salad in everything because I was a good kosher girl. And then I started to eat a pork and I was a bad girl. But I mean, I like taking chips and dipping it into tuna salad. So I agree. But again, I don't, I guess I'm just not a Miracle Whip girl, I guess. I don't know. You know, my grandma makes a tuna dip. It's like her like 1970s party recipe that for whatever reason has gelatin. But it's not like a jello thing, but there's gelatin in the recipe to give it this just weird thick mouthfeel.

Interesting. And condensed. It's like tuna, gelatin, and condensed cream of mushroom soup and mayonnaise and sour cream. And it is absolutely delicious. Shout out to Granny for the mushroom tuna salad dip. That made my acid reflux act up. All right. Last one. For the mushroom tuna salad dip. That made my acid reflux act up. All right.

Last one. Cosmetic Nomad 42 says, do drink opinions count? Yes, they do. Because if so, I like mixing Coke with Sprite. You're crazy. Cosmic Nomad, you're wild. I like you, but you're wild. I've never done this before.

Really? No, what I've done before is I've you, but you're wild. I've never done this before. Really? No, what I've done before is I've mixed them all like at like, you know, the store. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. McDonald's being the food store that I'm thinking of. I have mixed Coke with Sprite and it weirdly tastes like cream soda to me. It has this like vanilla quality to it.

But I am fascinated by the flavor chemistry behind like you said when you just run your cup through every single option at a soda fountain yeah there are three there are three flavors that come through you get the aspartame from whatever diet drink was on there you get the the scent of root beer and then you get the citric acid from lemonade so it's like everything else doesn't matter if you just combine diet coke root beer and lemonade that would taste like the entire panoply the smorgasbord of soda selections and i'm fascinated by it you know that one random thing that you forgot to mention josh that that like high c stuff that fruit juice stuff that's like in there i think i think high c they pulled it out of mcdonald's officially that's wrong i used to prefer that to orange juice with my mcdonald's breakfast when

I was a kid. That's how like nutritionally devoid I was, where I tasted real juice and I was like, ugh, gross. And then I had just the orange sugary high seed that's just corn syrup, citric acid, food dye. And I was like, yes, this is what a drink should taste like. And I stand by that. It's delicious. And on that note, thank you for listening to a hot dog is a sandwich. If you want to hear more from us here in the Mythical Kitchen, we got new episodes for you every Wednesday. If you want to be featured on Opinions Are Like Casseroles, you can hit us up on Twitter at MythicalChef or nhendizadeh with the hashtag OpinionCasserole. For more Mythical Kitchen, check us out on YouTube where we launch new videos every week. And of course, if you want to share pictures of your dishes, hit us up on Instagram at Mythical Kitchen.

We'll see you next time. Can I eat lunch now?