A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich - What The Heck Is Pudding? ft. Ben Ebbrell

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

Today, Josh and Nicole are joined by chef and co-founder of Sorted Foods , Ben Ebbrell, and now that we've got a British person here, they're getting to the bottom of what actually is pudding. Is it a dessert? Is it hot? Is it cold? Is it just a vibe? Leave us a voicemail at (833) DOG-POD1 Check out the video version of this podcast: http://youtube.com/@mythicalkitchen 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

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Is it custard? Is it cake? Is it sausage? Is it porridge? No, baby. It's pudding. 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 the Sandwich, the show we break down the world's biggest food debates. I'm your host Josh Sherer.

And I'm your host, Nicole Inarty. And today we have a very special guest on the pod. He's a chef, a founder and the ringleader of a merry band of culinary-cautic comrades over on the YouTube channel, Sorted Food. Please welcome the incredibly talented Ben Ebrool. Awesome. What an intro. Thank you.

Nicole, Nicole wrote it. That was her. I did that on purpose. We have been meaning to do this podcast. For years. For literally years. It's been on the same Google Doc that we've had to. that we've had going since, like, May of 2020.

Pending thoughts. Pending thoughts and also pending a real-life British person to come on show. No pressure, then. Now that we've captured one. Israel. I touch the shoulder, Israel. I know a leprechauns are Irish, but you're sort of like the sprightly, like a Hobbit, I think, is the British version of a lepricons. The hairy toes give it away. You can't call her guest a Hobbit.

I'm so sorry. Part of his culture. I'm so sorry. But we are discussing what is pudding because from the American perspective, when we see, black pudding and Yorkshire pudding and figgy pudding and hasty pudding which is my favorite pudding by the way to know you got a favorite pudding that leads me to believe that the term is a little bit too nebulous and might need some explaining from somebody who has a deep culinary and

cultural understanding of it yeah it's it's loose and I just feel like it's a vibe it's a feeling okay it's a mood sure it's a comfort blanket pudding is all of the above and probably is still waiting to evolve into more things. Welcome podcast is over. See you later. I feel I feel good about that. Do you, the American version of pudding, do you have... Confuses me. It confuses you. What do you think American pudding is?

It's like a custard or a, uh, something set with starch and egg, right? Correct. Always cold. Always cold. Always cold. Have you ever had warm pudding before? My dad used to... So our pudding, either it comes in two forms. You're dead correct.

It's similar to a custard, but depending on what, I feel like the French would not call it a custard, is generally not set with eggs. You can make pudding with eggs. You can, but the American way is with cornstarch. It's with cornstarch. It's just milk, cornstarch, and sugar. And yummy. And it's generally either served in a little cup that you rip off of foil packing on the top and eat it during school lunch.

You forgot to lick the top? Always. Always lick. Yeah, but then once that top is going to kind of paper cut your top. tongue and you're never going to do it again. It happens to us all. And then the other form is it comes in a little box of powder and you put that on a stovetop with milk. You're talking, but you're talking about the like capitalist commodification of pudding. Which is like, the way that you know it. The only American food culture is that of commodification. Right? And so I think convenience. Convenience. And so

that's where we've ended up with pudding. And don't get me wrong, like custard, I think, is a human right. I feel like it's one of those things, like, it's, whether it's hot or cold, whether we're talking trifle layers of custard sponge and jelly, or hot and steaming over a pudding, it's, it's just something that everybody should be entitled to enjoy. I agree. And also, the condimentification of custard is something I didn't know as a thing until I was in South Africa. Okay. And any dessert that we had, like cook sisters, are these, like, delightful, you know, like fried pastries. but they just brought out what to me, you know, there's the Mexican brand

of fruit nectar called Jumex. Yes. I call it Humex. You call it Humex? I like the Jewish mix confusion. I call it Humex. I don't know. But it's in these like quart-sized

heavy cardboard containers with the powder waiting to be turned into pudding. Well, no, I thought it might have been, but it was just a giant carton of custard that you go and you squeeze. Do you have that in? Britainland? Yeah, we have tinned and canned custard. We have cartons of custard. We have pots of custard. We have dried custard. We have frozen custard. Obviously, custard is important. It's not pudding. But it is a component part of pudding, perhaps. So my question is, where does creme on glaze go into the conversation? Is creme on glaze a thinned version of custard? It's a bougie, chefy version. French for sure. It lacks the food colouring you get in birds custard that makes it yellow. That is like school canteen and family dinner vibes.

It said it's looser and softer and more vanilla and delicious. Right. But that's, yeah. I just put that together. Is that, like, the French saw an English custard and then said, ah, English cream, creme anglaise. Like, that's, is that where it's sort of. Oh, hello? Yeah.

Cremeonglaze is, yeah, English cream or English custard, but just refined. Interesting. I don't know which came first. So, like, from the American pudding point of view, we would see your custard and we would say that is our pudding. Sure. But then we. We get a mass of coagulated pork's blood inside of an intestine cooked until it is nice, hard, sliceable, and fried and served with eggs.

For breakfast. For breakfast. Yeah, or a little starter with some scallops. Yum. I love luck. And then you go, well, that's pudding. Yeah, because it comes from boudan, right? Which is a French word.

So, like, literally pudding, I think, is more the shape of the thing, which is why over the years, a pudding cooked in some kind of sack. sack, intestine or bladder of a pig or something. Right, right. That shape was a pudding, and therefore various puddings, sweet and savory that were cooked in pudding bowls, were also pudding shaped. So pudding became, I think, a shape. So the etymology is from the shape of with which you are cooking a filling of something.

I think so. I've heard that the etymology had to do with not the shape, but the slurry that is put into a shape. That is put-in to the shing. That's the way it was explained to me. And I think we talked about this. We may have talked about us together with Max Miller from tasting history. And he, of course, knew he was like, well, you don't know about the great pudding flood of 1838. Of course I don't, Max.

But I've heard it has to do with the idea of, like, a slurry. Because if you look at, like, I don't know, like when you steam a pudding, like a Christmas pudding, I mean, it is kind of loose and runny, right? And the same way that if you're making Boudan or black pudding, you're so soft wet. And then co-aginets. So pudding is kind of anything that just kind of starts off wet and then is maybe given a shape by something like a pig's bladder. Are you looking at me for confirmation? I don't know. It's just looking at you to save me.

But I mean, it's literally so so iconic in the UK. I mean, pudding lane was where the Great Fire of London began. And that was literally, you know, it's, it goes back so far, but it is still evolving. Is there a difference between a Christmas pudding and a Christmas cake? Is there a difference? Yes. So a Christmas pudding is pudding shaped. Okay. So it's the shape.

Okay. But they are also different ingredients. One would be sort of steamed whereas a Christmas cake is generally baked. A pudding is normal. A pudding is almost always steamed. I think a Christmas pudding. Steamed or boiled. So it would be in its container.

Shape. And then like a. white pudding or a black pudding is boiled, or steamed. Okay. And steamed in a pudding bowl in a steamer. Now, a white pudding, so black pudding is pork's blood? White pudding, is that just pork fat? Yep.

With oats and spice and delicious. It is really delicious. Do you remember having that one? Many, many, many times. What a delight? There's something called a steak and kidney pudding, which I've never had. I've never heard of that before. Steak and kidney pudding?

So, again, I think it's pudding shapes. It's cooked in a pudding bowl, but it's made with suet pastry. Okay. Okay, I know all that to do it, yeah. So this is obviously a beef fat in flour bound together. It's quite soft, but you can mould it around the outside of the pudding. And then you fill it with things that need long, slow cook, usually possibly already stewed. So beef, beef and kidney, or steak and kidney, sometimes oyster.

So beef and oyster pie. And these go in, lid on top, and the whole thing gets steamed. And sometimes baked as well, that's a savory suet pudding. Interesting. The steak and kidney pie also exists. But that's in a pie tin and the crust is different? It could be a different pastry. But actually I think the difference being pies are baked,

whereas puddings are generally steamed or boiled. It's a dry cook as opposed to a violently wet cook for the pudding. Which is interesting because if you look at pudding is the sort of pudding and pie are like the nouns, like the large-scale descriptors, there's like dumplings that are like steamed versus fried, right? And that doesn't change the fact that they're dumblings. Even like, like, like, like, like, what is it, Jouza, right? Or like, what is it, Joutsa?

Okay. You know, just your, like, average dimsum dumpling. Right. You can get them either fried or steamed, but there's still dumplings. It's like a steak and kidney pie versus a steak and kidney pudding. They're pretty close to each other. In terms of fillings, and it is literally just what's outside. But I would hate to draw the line at saying all puddings are boiled or steamed.

Right. Because then you have Yorkshire pudding, which is a wet slurry of sorts that's bad. It's also kind of shaped. It's just three ingredients and it's so delicious and no roast beef dinner should be without one. I do agree with that. I agree. Bank more oncores when you switch to a Scotia Bank Bank banking package. Learn more at ScotiaBank.com slash banking packages.

Conditions apply. Scotia Bank. You're richer than you think. I had something that felt very American, and in fact, when I ate it in London, I think the entire line was Americans. It was called a Yorkshire burrito. I have seen this before on the internet, and it intrigues me thoroughly. Not a single Queen's accent in that line, but a lot of Americans holding iPhones, including me. Tell the people what was in it.

You can get several different kinds. All I made sure to ask for was an extra. Do they call it a parcel of gravy? What do they generally call A jug? A jug? Yeah, the jugs gravy gravy on the side But it was some sort of like

stewed and shredded beef There was a large Yorkshire pudding That they sort of flatten out To be roughly the shape of the turkey Which is a real shame Because the beauty of a Yorkshire pudding Is the way it rises And the crisp edges

But you can't do that if you need to actually Roll it So you lose some of the nuance Of a Yorkshire pudding by rolling it If you're eating a Yorkshire burrito You're not there for nuance How big? How big? How big?

But not as big as like a Chipotle burrito When I think of Yorkshire puddings, I always think of them in these really beautiful, like tins. Yeah, yeah, like the shape of our muck. Like muffin cases. Right. And the thought of someone making an XL one and then flattening it and then putting a bunch of shit in it. I don't know what else to say. There was a period of time.

It was the rise of the gastro pub in the UK. The smoking ban kicks in so suddenly pubs have to offer a bit more. And food improved, broadly speaking. And there were a lot of pubs and pub chains that were serving entire roast dinners or bangers and match. inside of a large Yorkshire pudding. The Yorkshire pudding filled the entire plate. I think that's the one that they now roll. Yum.

There you go. There's the Yorkshire Burrito. And it began in Yorkshire, in York, but now you'll see them in street food vendors all over. And I was in Camden Market, which I was not prepared for the crowd density of Camden Market. It's dope. I've heard crazy about it.

A lot of bootleg system of a down T-shirts from a little place there, covered in Yorkshire burrito stands. But the Yorkshire pudding, If it's that large, it kind of, it's more of almost like a Dutch baby. Yeah. I agree with you. I agree. Yeah, yeah.

That makes sense. But I don't know, man. It's just so nebulous. Yeah. It's like salad. Because it's also a time of day. It's also a course, right? It's like, you're certain.

And I think it's, it ascends class, right? The queen used to love pudding. Oh, interesting. But also, you know, the miners will stop and have pudding in their family meal, the working class. And it basically transcends the whole generation. And pudding is, have you still got room for pudding? When you finished your main course, have you still got room for pudding, would always be like a thing. And it's a time of the meal time, as well as the specific thing you're eating.

When you said, like, custard is a human right, I think, like, pudding is a human right. There is almost like an actual, like, class pro-labor element to that in a way, right? Certainly canteens, whether there be a school canteens or office canteens, government canteens, they would always, always have two courses. It would be the savory and then pudding. And pudding would often be a steamed sponge or a roly-poly or something that was suit-based, lashings of custard. Incredible.

As times move on, menus change, but that was kind of always the staple. Even the modern dessert, right? It's like, God, we've got to go back in history for this. But, like, post-French revolution, like, dessert comes from, like, service ruse, which was, like, in the kind of Louis XIV, the 14th royal court, where, like, deservier means to clear the table, and so it would give you, like, a sweet course. that kind of transformed into these like very ornate sort of like fruit displays or they would have a court cook who would make these insane sugar sculptures and dessert was considered this like very high class erudite thing but it like sort of started democratizing leading up to the French Revolution with more like flour refined flour and sugar available and so then like these democratic desserts became like very important symbol of the revolution of like everybody should have access to these sweets now this is what we fight for which is very much like a French thing. I feel like holding space for pudding is...

I think it's also the sentiment. Like, dessert is plated. Yeah. Pudding is a memory. It's like, it's like... What are you talking about, Ben? It takes you to a place that's like pudding was always a place of comfort,

whether that was around the family table or at Christmas with Christmas pudding. You have everyone around. Pudding is a moment, whereas dessert is something that's plated and delicious and refined. In school, in school, would they serve your pudding as well? Yeah. What was that about?

Tell me about your favorite school pudding. Jam rolling. Polly, steam puddings. I mean, like a crumble. So hot fruit with crumble and custard would be a pudding, although not technically a pudding, but it would be putting the course. I can see your confusion.

Yeah. You can have pudding for pudding, or you can have not pudding for pudding for pudding. You can have pudding for breakfast. But that's pork-based. Pudding is to the UK what salad is to the US. That's all this is. Because didn't you guys just have something called Snickers salad? Yeah, I am so sorry you didn't get.

You came in with your spoon. Did you see my big spoon? The whole crew had just descended on this point of it. I know, it's fine. I'll just make it myself later. But basically, like, salad is such a nebulous term because you have, like, strawberry pretzel salad from the south. You got snipper salad. And then you have something like a garden salad or a salad bar at Sizzler.

So it's the same exact thing. Pudding is salad. That's actually, I think it's a pretty reasonable. It's a catch-all. It's a catch-all. Yeah. I feel good about that. What would you say Link's American salad?

Also, do you use those, like, constructions, like the salad construction in the UK? Like, surely you have potato salad and pasta salad. Like, these are just heavy carbs bound with mayonnaise or we'll have a, like, egg salad sandwich, which is just hard-bored eggs mashed up with mayonnaise. That's not a salad, but, hey, it falls under the salad bracket. I think it might be, you salad something, right? You're saluting something. So you're taking it.

Let me explain. So you take, like, for example, chicken salad and a Greek salad. You're chopping up things relatively fine You're throwing it in a bowl With some sort of binder And then you're mixing it up in a bowl And you're feeding it to someone That's what constitutes a salad

And it has to come back to your phrase of sort of etymology in words Like salad comes from salt Salari salami You're right It's that seasoning of chopped up things Yes With a binder Anything you chop up

Sometimes the Snickers and the apples Can be seasoned with cool with And that sort of still fall It's very seasonal isn't it Was there mayonnaise in that at all? No, some people do add... Go ahead. Some people do add mayonnaise to Cool Whip-based salads.

But for me, the mayonnaise salads and the Cool Whip salads are different. I think diagrams should not overlap. Also, do you know what Cool Whip is? Do you guys have that? Honestly, I kind of glossed over that because I presumed that everyone at home knew what it was earlier. And I was just like, yeah, sure. I was just talking to someone at Cool Whip.

It was invented in, God, I think, like the 1950s. Very space-age kind of stuff where American food companies are trying to figure out how do we produce food as cheaply and readily available as possible. Right. So, like, what if instead of whipping cream, we could use, like, hydrogenated vegetable oil? It's up there when margarine was coming, you know. It's literally, like, butter is to margarine as whipped cream is to Cool Whip. And legally, they're not allowed to call it whipped cream, so they call it whipped topping.

And it kind of, I love Coolick, but it also definitely tastes like shaving cream. I don't like cool. It has that kind of consistency, where you're shaving in a little bit, yeah. It says on the package, do not mix, because it completely. completely deflaced and it turned into this glob-y, hydrogenated oil mess. So I don't really deal with Kulip that much anymore. But I'm glad that we have at least a little bit of a consensus of what salad is and what pudding is. But what do you call something like rice pudding whenever you like get it somewhere?

I know you probably don't eat a lot of rice pudding or tap you. No, no, I eat a lot of rice pudding. Do you really? Because all of these things that just goes back to a feeling and a vibe and a mood and a comfort blanket. It's the same reason why the term pudding can be. term of endearment. You might call your loved one a pudding. As you might do sweet cheeks or dumpling and they're kind of, they're a bit backhanded, but they're kind of, it's a term of endearment that you could call someone my pudding. I've never been called someone's pudding,

but I'm open and available to be called someone's pudding. Sweet cheeks, I'm trying to think other ones, like sweet cheeks. Like the idea of pudding and kind of like institutionalizing pudding as a time. Something for everyone is one of the things I wish American food culture had more of are these sort of institutions and like holding space for it and y'all do tea pretty seriously do you think those two were kind of related like do you hold space in your own life for tea

I'm more of a coffee kind of guy but I'm tea isn't a drink tea is a time tea is a time and a drink and depending where you're on the country it's a meal like you stop for tea which is actually dinner it's a confused land that we live in

but tea is so important Yeah, because my, so my grandma was South Africa. Right. She's a Lithuanian Jew whose family, like, escaped the pogroms in the Russian Empire and ended up in South Africa, and she was educated in very, like, Victorian schools. And so it's weird because I grew up with, you know, my grandma sort of, like, lionizing the monarchy and, like, making, like, making me tea, even though I was, like, greening, I don't like this. Because she had these very kind of, like, British tendencies, but that was always the thing.

It was, like, we're sitting down for tea, which means we're sitting down. for conversation. She's going to drink a cup of tea. I might be eating a chips a holy cookie or something, but that was still tea. To spill the tea is to gossip and even those phrases. And yet it's relatively recent. Before tea, it was coffee houses in London that were doing the rounds for like big thinkers and then hot chocolate when that first came across. And it was only quite later that afternoon tea became a thing and it became an occasion as well as a drink. Do you have pudding houses? More recently there are people rebranding it. So they're pudding stop.

It's an amazing dessert place where you just go for dessert, so you have to kind of, you go to a restaurant, you excuse yourself after the main course, get the check, and then you go to the pudding stop just for dessert. That's kind of cool. America needs a pudding stop. Are they taking franchise opportunities from Americans? That sounds incredible. Because there is something binding most British dessert puddings, most British sweet puddings, that I do really love that I think we miss. We were talking about it earlier. Check out our episode on Mythical Kitchen, by the way.

It's one of the most fun things we've ever done. But we had wet bread, and you initially made the claim that I do not like wet bread. We had like a Pueblo Slapper. I'm sorry? You read a Pueblo Slapper? That's our term of endearment in America. What is that? We were trying to fool him with fake regional American foods.

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we had a Pueblo Slapper, which is very real, but it's a whole burger doused in green chili. So everything's just soggy. And for me, like a French dip sandwich, well, like I guess. it and it tastes amazing. It's just a texture of soggy bread. You don't like it. Soggy bread, soggy scones. I don't mind like, I mean, you guys would call them biscuits, but like scones baked on, we don't, we won't go there. But like scones or cobbler baked on top

of a stew and there's a little bit of stodgy in the bottom, but most of it is nice and crisp and fluffy and light. I just don't like the soggy scone bread biscuit vibe. But then we brought up trifle, which is pudding. Which is the pudding, which is different. So trifle is pudding. It is... Or does it contain pudding? It's an option you can have for pudding. And it contains custard. Because pudding is what a vibe?

Pudding's a vibe. And trifle is... But my grandma used to make a trifle like cooking, but big trifle bowl. But it would just be some variation of like fruit, jam, custard, cake, all just sort of sitting and soaking together. Yeah. Yeah, I love that.

A lot of British sweet puddings are what I would just call slops. You know? They're quite stodgy, they're quite dense. I jam roly-poly. I'm made from suet pudding. It's, you know, it's fift and beef. Oh, my God. And I love that.

Like, these are literally my ideal desserts. What's my favorite dessert that we had recently together at a restaurant who was given to us for free? We just talked about it recently. I don't know. I don't remember anything. It's a Vietnamese restaurant. Oh, that Jaya.

Jaya. Have you ever had, like, these Vietnamese kind of, it's a Vietnamese pudding? It's pronounced like Jihad, but it's kind of C-H-E with a diacritical. But they will just make any sort of, like, sweet kind of stodgy pudding out of like taro or mung bean or sweet corn and it's just it's just dense and it's sweet it's the appetizer with sugar like pretty much yeah yeah that is what it is and i feel like that same just like dense sweetness exists in a lot of british puddings that we don't have and that frankly like a french pastry program is a bit too light for my taste but i mean i just feel like it's coming back

as well there is and it's been around for a long time but there are actually things called the pudding club and it's a group of people who meet once a month like the first Thursday of every month and they just have multiple courses of pudding. It's awesome. And it's to keep it alive because some of these desserts are quite old fashioned. Okay. Like the spotted dick. Classic. Yes. But it's a classic pudding. It's pudding shaped.

It's steamed or boiled steamed. But no one's making that anymore. So you kind of need these institutes, the pudding club, to keep them alive. Right, right. Because otherwise you guys turn into custard. That's a fair point. We're going to turn it into custard. What do you think the top British puddings are?

Like if you were to rank your favorites. I mean my favorites versus the ones that are probably most iconic it's definitely a crumble would be a good pudding but then the actual pudding themselves a spotted dick or a jam roly-poly they would be pretty classic and then you've got rice pudding hot or cold I'm having so much fun

I don't think I've ever said the word pudding so many times I feel like I'm learning so much as someone who's only been to the UK once I'm really really learning a lot about the dessert culture but also like why is beef suet utilize so much. Like, like, I know it might not be utilized now as much, but why was it so common? Why not just use butter or something else? It's hugely caloric, delicious, and readily available. It was a bipolar. It was back

when nose to tail cooking was a necessity as opposed to a trend. And I feel like it would be nice to go back to some of that, but it's using every part of the animal. So why not use the fat from around the internal organs of a cow? And it wouldn't make it taste any, like, particular way, right? No, it's fairly tasteless. Right. Unlike a tallow where if you mail that down and that's absolutely delicious and cook everything in tallow.

So it doesn't make your pudding taste beefy. Got it, got it. See, that was always one of my, like, anxieties. Whenever we would make, like, pudding for the show or something. I'm like, I don't want to use the beef suit. I'm going to use the, I think it's called a Torah or a Torah. I'm going to use the vegetable. Again, that's margarine, basically.

Yeah, I'm going to use the vegetable suit, which is just these little like pellets that just melt into the dessert. But also I'm saying that they call it vegetable. Sueet, you know what I mean? Because sew it is such a wildly specific, you know, visceral fat product. And like, we've done it vegetarian style, you know? Right, right, right, right. But then gelatin, like, all these, like, whether it's blemange or trifles or jellos, like, that's just pork gelatin. So, like, we like throwing meat and dairy at our desserts. Yeah. So the way you pronounced blomange made me think of something recently. It has nothing to do with pudding,

but it has to do with... Well, no, because I was thinking about this. How do you say, the Mexican dish that's like a tortilla with meat and you fold it? Angelo Well, no, it's the simpler one. Oh, a taco. Taco, right? Paco.

Everyone ends up Texan. Taco. But no, I was thinking about this recently because I didn't realize that British people pronounce croissant. That's croissant, generally. A croissant, yeah.

Quassant. And how do you pronounce it? How do you pronounce it? Crescent. Crescent. Is that bad? Yeah. We very heavily, like,

like Americanize it, just like croissant. Give me a croissant. And for us to say like croissant, you'd seem so posh, so pretentious. But we pick and choose, because we'll say croissant for sure. But then at the moment you say, I'm off to Le Paris this weekend, everyone thinks, you know, you're a bit of a wangler. Sure, sure, sure. So, like, that's the, where is the line of which words do you anglicize and which do not?

But question is, we say it the French way. But even just like the proximity to France from England versus, like, say, our proximity to Mexico. Because anytime a British influencer says taco, then everyone gets mad. Do you get mad? No, of course not. Because when we say taco, you probably hear an R in there. Yeah.

Tarko? We speak with erotic R. He don't. Okay. And so when we say pasta, pasta, that'd you spell pasta. Pasta. P-A-R-S-T-A. But pasta, you would say with an R in there. Oh, my God.

I feel like I'm getting a linguistics. But then we have a north-south divide on any word that. Bath and bath, like grass and grass. I would love to also ask you about cookies and biscuits. What's the deal with that, man? Because they got cookies now, too. That's the thing that trips me out. Well, yeah, like something like an Oreo.

Like whenever you have something like an Oreo in, like, the stores, what are those called, or just called Oreos? I think that's a cookie. And the reason it's a cookie is, I think it's an American thing that's come back. Whereas I see biscuits are very British. We have biscuit tins. We love the classic biscuit. Good for Dunkers.

But then you guys have the cookie. Okay. And we're happy to take your cookies and love those two. But if we give you biscuits, you mess it up and put it on like casserole. Oh, yeah. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me, let me read me. So a biscuit, you guys call a biscuit, we call a cookie. Yep.

And then what we call biscuits, you guys call scones. Basically, yeah. And what we call scones, what are those? Scones. I think it's still, but there's like a sweet scone. Yeah. Because you guys can make like a plain scone, right? For us a scone, it's always going to have some sort of like sugary glaze.

Inherently. We'll make cheese scones as well and herbie scones as well as sweet ones. We have those two. We have those two. We'd understand it. We have those two. We'd understand it. We have it, but I don't recognize it. So a chocolate chip biscuit.

Yep. It's not a chocolate chip cookie. And yet we're still not doing it correctly because a biscuit literally means twice cooked. Most of our biscuits we only cook once. Like a biscotti. Sure. Most of our biscuits, we only cook once. What are you showing us, Josh?

Should have made this. I don't know if you've had. this before. Biscuits and chocolate gravy? Oh. I mean, I'm not against it. It looks like pudding. This is American pudding. Biscuits and chocolate pudding. See, I even said it myself.

No, it's chocolate gravy. Chocolate gravy. Which is, we've made this from scratch and as I was making and I went, oh, it's really just pudding, huh? What do we learn today, gentlemen? Pudding has to be eaten with a spoon and it feels like comfort. And I think America should institutionalize

more pudding breaks. In every workplace in every municipality and every school. Putting breaks, Nicole and Iady for President in 2020. I'm not running. The pudding party. I am not running for president. Tim's new scrambled egg loaded croissant. Or is it croissant?

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A hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses only in theaters Friday. Get tickets now. All right, Nicole and Ben, 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 universe. It's time for a little segment we call. Opinions are like casseroles. Do you use the term casserole?

Yeah. What does it mean? Yeah. A little bit. What does it mean to you? A slow cook stew. A casserol. A cassero is lots of things in a pot that casserol.

The verb to cassero. To casserole, to pudding, to salad. From the French, casserole. Or just cassoulet. Very bien. Merci, monsieur. Alonzie, Meggie. Oh, my God.

Hi, guys. I love your podcast. Thanks. I don't know why. I'm calling because I have a question to see if what you guys think of cream of weeks, Cocoa Weeks, or just plain white rice with milk, sugar, and butter.

Wait, hold on. She said cream of wheat. And then what was the other thing? Coco wheat. What is cocoa wheat? Are you... Are you familiar with cream of wheat? No. So all of them are...

We have various different kinds of like... Farina. Farina. Okay, okay. Farina. Oh, it's just cocoa cream of wheat. Maltomil. Oh, okay. So this is literally just coarse ground... wheat that you mix with like water or milk. So you end up with the porridge? I mean, porridge is any grain.

Or a hasty pudding. Or a hasty pudding. Is that what hasty pudding is? Yeah, it's made in a haste, right? Yeah, something quick. Wait. I think the closest we probably have is something like Palento, which obviously is called Mays-based, but I don't think we have a wheat-based version.

Interesting. Yeah, so we have cream of wheat, but this is like a little old-fashioned. Like, I don't know a ton of people who would eat cream of wheat these days. I was raised on cream of wheat. It was actually the specific Persian one called Shireneshaste, which is just called wheat starch and my mom would make it and then she would sprinkle Nesquick on it or she would do honey. And let me tell you, if I were to eat that now, I would instantly go, I would have a ratatooie moment of going back to my childhood. It is absolutely delicious. Any sort of like creamy, soft, spoonable.

And that has to be warm, right? It has to be warm. If not, it just solidifies into, like, a brick. You've got a skin on the top, and, you know, what you do with the skin is a challenge. 10 out of 10. Just scrape and leave, or do you chew through it? I mash. I mash it in.

I just, if I get skin bits, I get skin bits, it's fine. I would love to eat that now, actually, like right now immediately. But then she went on to say rice with, like, milk and butter and sugar. That's just, like, rice pudding. Like, I'm on board with that. Arros con nach. Yeah, yeah. But also, like, like, grits.

You can just take any grain that you roughly. process and then mixed with like a milk or water in something sweet is like a delight. I just, I'm in on all of it. Me too. Loose grits, which are different from polenta because they're nxtomalized. The color's different in my head. Whenever I think of grits, I think of white. When I think of polenta, I think of yellow.

But that's not always the case. So grits are, I believe hominy grits, which are like the white southern grit, are treated with lye, which, or lime, lime, lime, like an alkali solution to break it down. And I love grits. I like sugar and butter and grits. So we do the same with oats So our porridge would just be classic oats And then Palenta we think of as a very Italian thing

And grits for sure Love that More gruel in 2025 More gruel Bring back gruel Up top Grul Give me a high five

Hello I have one of you I have shoulder issues High fiving for gruel Sure Yes I think I'm going to turn my rotating Make grue sexy

As for your sandwiches My name is Sam. I'm from Victoria, B.C. Canada. Bananas and mayonnaise. Oh, shut up. Oh, shut up. Toasted. No.

Try it. That sounded like a dare. A challenge. Ben, what say you? Bananas and mayonnaise. I'm trying to get my head around it and ask why. But actually, like, mayonnaise on bread before you toast it. Delicious.

Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. banana sandwiches we used to have as a kid which was a very odd thing banana and honey sandwiches but it was never toasted although occasionally put those in the toast machines

maybe a little bit of chocolate spread or honey and banana so yeah it's the mayonnaise that bothers me I don't know why this is a very southern thing my I dated a girl whose family is in high school family from Louisville, Louisville

Louisville so it's officially pronounced and her mom made me a banana crunchy peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich for the first time and I was like utterly blown away. Yeah.

Like the slight acid and salt from the mayonnaise with like the creamy crunchy of the peanut butter with the sweet cakey banana. Toasted I wouldn't do. I just, I love untoasted bread. I think I don't like toast as much as people. I think I just want to experience the bread. Oh. You know, but it is a delay.

And like when you ask why bananas were such a new thing in like the early 1900s that's so many the early recipes, people are like, we don't know what you're supposed to do with these. So what if we wrapped them in ham and baked them with holland-days? Yeah, yeah. People like, why not? Sure. Was that as a Maryland thing, right? Is it a Maryland thing? It might be... Ratched in bacon and grilled off, but...

Yeah. We made a banana and mayonnaise cake once. Did you really? How was it? It worked fine. It's like a cheek because it basically adding eggs and oil into a cake. It's got already done for you. That makes sense to me. It's a hack more than anything else. Adding mayonnaise to cake makes a lot of sense to me.

I actually, this morning, I had a Nutella, banana, and peanut butter toast, and it was delicious. I could never imagine putting bananas and mayonnaise on that toast. So I'm going to politely decline. Sorry, Bestie. It's just not my wheelhouse. It's just not where I'm at. It's not where I'm out in my life. Thank you for suggesting it.

I'm just not there. I think at my last meal, like my last meal, I might have a whole wheat sandwich with peanut butter, banana, and honey. That might be on there. It's one of my favorite foods in the world. But still no mayonnaise. Still no mayonnaise. No.

They don't knock it to you have tried it, but it's not one I'm going to be hastily. Hastily jumping to. Hi, Josh, Nicole. Nicole, Miles, I was on the baby. Thanks. Just want to share my latest food hack, and it is not the jalapinos, but the pickling juice

of Trader Joe's hot and spicy jalapinos. It's been working wonders for me in the kitchen. Use it for a little bit of acid, use it for a little bit of heat, a little bit of the sweet and the heat kind of mellow things out. I've done it and everything from tacos to soup. soups to Barbara Cohen, it's absolutely delicious.

Hope to hear your thoughts. Bye. Good thoughts. Yeah. Great thoughts. Pickle brine's a great ingredient. It's like using the beef suet. Use every part of the pickle.

If you went to, what's our fan, William Sonoma? We have no correlation to Williams and Sonoma. What do you mean? You did one of these. Like, we love Williams. No, like you seem like a William Sonoma person. I do? The demo, yeah.

I do? It's a bit fancy. Another compliment. Love it. If you went to William Sonoma, Yeah, I've just gotten so many gifts because people like, he likes food. Let's get him an $18 weird little thing of salt that is too crunchy to put on any of my food. Right, right, right.

But we love Alian Sonoma, sponsor us. But anyways, they'll sell, like, these nice glass bottles of, like, vinegar that have been infused with, like, a single chili and a single piece of garlic or something. You're like $15. Yeah. The jalapeno juice is just the same thing, but better. Yeah, you know? It's been well-season. It's good to go.

I would say that is the biggest difference between home cooks and chefs is. seasoning. When you say season something, home cooks will throw salt of it. And actually, we were talking about the seasoning triangle, and actually it's a lot more things than just that. But it's a combination of salt, sugar, and acid. And actually, those three things all exist in a pickle brine. So, brilliant. With a little tingle. It's true. You ever hear the Hannibal Burris joke about how sometimes he wants pickle flavor on a sandwich, but he doesn't have the whole pickle? So he dips his fingers in the juice and flicks it. Is that the joke?

And I never finger the pickle jar. That's not very funny when you say it. That's the one thing I hate. What? Fingering the pickle jar. Oh, Oh, I hitch. Your pickles, you went off.

Your pickles goes soft because of your finger. Yes, and then sometimes there's a weird white film and I don't like the white film around it. Use a fork.

Use a fork. Your flora and fauna gets in the pickle Brian completely ruins the pH. I've stopped. That's not a high five. Not the gruel, but I'll have a high five that one.

She like got on me about that, gave me the whole she feel like maybe a couple weeks ago. I didn't even tell you this. I was like, okay, Nicole. And then I was, went home, my jar of

Bubby's pickles, just a full white layer of fill on it. I told you, you think it's a joke? My bubbly's that I'm too many fingers. I finger every single night your fingers out of this. You think I'm just doing it for a power play. I'm literally trying to improve your life. I've officially stopped. Hi guys, hi Maggie, Maggie's my favorite.

My opinion is that meat and fruit are not paired together nearly enough. Yeah, you can Like a raisin in a chicken salad. And yeah, you can, you can do this and that. But I'm talking, I'm talking ground beef, ground beef and frozen blueberries. I'm asking my personal favorite.

Grilled chicken breast and overripe banana. Okay. Maybe down here, yeah. More meat and fruit, please and thank you. Eating like a bear. Put the meat back in mincemeat, you know. That was a good one for the good pudding. It's so right though

But I Maybe not on a grilled skewer grilled I always think of it slow cooks Like a nice tijin or like Persian food Love that meat sweet combo Pomegranate molasses Tamarind in things That's so good

I agree Please and thank you agreed I was 100% with it Because I agree with you I love that kind of like North African Middle Eastern And you even see it a lot in like dishes from kind of the middle ages

Across Europe Yeah Well it was such a luxury It was like when you've got it, put it in everything. Yeah, 100%. And, like, almond milk was in everything. But, uh, oh, what was I terrible? Oh, um, the grilled chicken with the overright banana, though.

That took a little bit of a turn. That's why I went down here. A little bit of a turn. The blueberries and ground big, yay! That's an interesting one. I've not tried that. The chicken and bananas. Yay.

Uh, but no, I guess maybe like a, like a fried plantain kind of situation. Yeah. Like Madurros. Yeah, good again. But yeah. The blueberries are a bit of a turn. There is, though. There's some steak restaurant in Florence that, like, makes a blueberry sauce for their Bisteka Furentina.

And so I don't know if that's a canonical thing. All of our roast meats are nicely accompanied. It's roast turkey we have, or chicken we have with cranberry sauce, roast pork with apple sauce. That's where the fruit meat, the roasted fruit meat combo does work. More fig jam with your meats. I mean, I love it. Just more figs full stop. Sure.

Sure. I agree. Figgy pudding. There's no figs in figgy pudding. Correct. Put the figs back at Vicky pudding. Put the meat back and mince me. We're all being juped.

Hey, this is Matt from Orlando, Florida, and my wife just told me yesterday that when you're eating a burrito, the proper way to do it is to cut it in half and eat both halves down to the butt and throw away the excess tortilla. What? That's wasteful. Wasteful Wasteful Wasteful No mammes Wee no mames

That sounds like that stems From a pasty A Cornish pasty Or the empanadas Where the crust Was deliberately Because you had mucky fingers Right

Maybe that's the same With a burrito You eat and get rid of the mucky ends But I kind of like the ends Wait, what's the deal With the Cornish pasty The way that it's folded and crimped The crust traditionally

It was for the miners Who would have incredibly dirty city whole written hands basically would eat the pasty and they it was almost like the bit you hold onto and then you would never eat the crust that would just go but it was the way you would hold onto a pasty yeah it's like the corn cob it's like you eat around it and you throw it away yeah um no i can assure you that burritos are not meant for that um and actually though one of the reasons you can know this is if you go to the progenitor of the burrito in the in the city of Juarez in Mexico they're actually served open, so they don't fully close them. That seems to be like the first burrito.

So there would be no sort of end to throw away because the fillings throughout. I find the best way to eat a burrito is you move to it. Don't bring the burrito to you, you go to the burrito. Yes. Especially if you can sort of stack it on the table and let it, and you can just bob for it. Hit the tongue for it. Vivid. You guys have never ripped like the brettie top of a burrito and spit it out like a cigar. Am I the only one? one who's done that? If it's a bad burrito? If it's like a fast food burrito where the first bite is like cold cheese and lettuce. That's what I'm saying. Sometimes you got it, you got a... The ratios are wrong. Yes, and you've got to do the pitoy.

Um, it's just me. Fuck to us. Spit out that burrito. Uh, I do think the single best bite of a burrito is the buddy end. All the, all the juices... Oh, we got back to soggy bread if we're not careful. We, no, oh, I am not careful. I am going soggy. I am sogging with a band in here. I love wet bread. It's almost like show long bow it should be like a soup dumpling where you can just right and do it and on that note fan thank you so much for joining it's a bit of good fun bed where can the people find you assorted food you can find it all over socials and youtube that's right if you want to be featured on opinions or at castorals give us a ring

and leave a quick message at 833 dog pod one we got new audio only episodes out every wednesday new videos out on sunday over at the mythical kitchen channel and if you like seen our faces, check out our YouTube show also here or there, depending on where you are. Where are you right now? Orlando? Could be. We did a fun episode with Ben over on Mythical Kitchen. Check it out. See you next time.