A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich - Why Do Cookbooks Still Exist? ft. Noah Galuten

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

Today, we're joined by Noah Galuten, a chef, author, and host of Don't Panic Pantry to discuss: why do cookbooks still exist? A signed copy of The Don't Panic Pantry Cookbook by Noah Galuten The Culinary Bro-Down Cookbook by Josh Scherer Bake Up! Kids Cookbook by Nicole Enayati Leave us a voicemail at (833) DOG-POD1 Check out the video version of this podcast: http://youtube.com/@ahotdogisasandwich 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. They say you don't buy the cow when you can get the milk for free, so why are people still buying cookbooks when Google exists? Please buy my cookbook though, we'll drop the link in the description. 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 we break down the world's biggest food debates, and today I am joined by Noah Gluten. Noah is, hold on, I got a bio here, a chef, a James Beard Award-nominated cookbook author,

and co-host of the popular daily livestream cooking show, Don't Panic Pantry. Is it livestreamed? It was. It's a YouTube show now. It's a YouTube show now. Are you familiar with YouTube? i've heard of youtube um i've heard of there's like you and then it's one of the most popular sites what's the second word after that dot com that's it um

but uh welcome what what was your james beard nomination for it was for uh on vegetables the cookbook i co-authored with jeremy fox Nice. Did you win? No. Who beat you? You think I would have had my bio say nominated if I won? I don't know, man. I'd like to put zero time All-American in my bio. Yeah, it's like top 11 bestseller. I'll take it, man. Anyways, thank you so much for coming on the show.

It's a pleasure. You have written a whole lot of cookbooks with a whole lot of chefs out here. And today we're asking you to re-examine your whole life and career because why are cookbooks not completely useless these days with allrecipes.com out there scraping at the SEO barrel? You know, I think there's a lot of stuff that exists in the world and some of them are better than others. And look, the internet version of it all exists and can be great for various things.

But I think that there is still the matter of curation. And also, I think there's still the value of having a physical object. Look at the way the streaming universe exists now. Westworld is wiped from the face of the earth. And no one has a way of watching it now because you heard about that, right? No way. Westworld is gone? They deleted it from their servers for tax purposes.

So literally, you can't watch Westworld anymore. Was that not a really popular show? I know they did that with Batgirl. But was Westworld not one of their hits? It did OK, I guess. But they scraped it for tax purposes. I think that's true. Anyone?

I got the thumbs up. So this is the gold standard argument for cookbooks. It's like everything on the internet can be erased. You need to have something physical you can hold. Yeah. Also, have you ever spilled a fry grease on an iPhone? It is not ideal. Actually, I have. But also, you know, I think about it too.

Like, you know, there's so many cookbooks in the world and there's so many amazing ones that already exist. But I kind of think that cookbooks are kind of like pornography. Like there's so much, but we still keep making it. And I think the reason is because people are looking for a human connection and they want someone to fall in love with in some form or another. And I think that, you know, like when, you know, Ina Garten or Lydia Bastianich put out a cookbook.

Are we talking about cookbooks or pornography on this one? Uh, I'm, I'm one of the two that's for certain, um, that, you know, people, you get a connection to someone, you want to know what they want to do. You want to sort of be let into their life. And I mean, you have your version of that, I'm sure too. And I think that that's kind of a very, very cool thing about this. And also, you know, the really good ones hopefully are really good and stand the test of time. And the fact that I get to like have my cookbook coming out that has my mom's recipes in it that I get to like give to my daughter.

Hopefully it also makes money because it's not just for my daughter and my mom. But yeah, I think that's part of the whole deal with it. Yeah. I think there's a lot of psychology involved in what you pay for is how much effort you're actually willing to put into it. Oh, like a sunk cost kind of a deal? A sunk cost thing. Like if you buy an expensive gym membership, you are more likely to actually go to the gym because then there's that sunk cost of, well, crap, I'm paying $160 a month now as opposed to 1999 or whatever at Planet Fitness. Now I'm actually going to go do that. I think for me, that's a huge part of why I buy cookbooks and why people buy cookbooks. Yeah. It's like, if I spend $30 on a hardcover cookbook, then I'm actually going to do it as

opposed to like, I'm going to Google a recipe for chicken teriyaki and then not actually make it, slough off, not actually follow it. So to me, I think that's part of it. Also, the Googling of it requires you to know what you wanted to make

in the first place. Yeah. And if you can flip through a cookbook, you can get ideas for things that you don't know what the hell you wanted to make. And that's, I think, another part of cookbooks,

being able to kind of sift through the library and go pull out like, you know, the new like walks of life cookbook and be able to just go like, oh, that's a really cool thing. I have half those things. I just need to grab some beef and I can do this stir fry. Yeah. Walks of life, man. They do. They do great work. I've been following them for a long time. Amazing. Okay. So tell me about your cookbook.

And they have a blog and they made a cookbook still. And guess what? It was a New York Times bestseller. Well, okay. So I grew up in what we called the blog to book pipeline. Like that was, this is how old I am. How old are you? I had something called a blog. This is a blog is a portmanteau of vlog and book, I believe. Well, you're also like, you're really like a leader in traditional old media like YouTube. Yeah, exactly. I mean, YouTube is becoming old media. That's where we're at.

But no, I started my blog, Culinary Bro Down, back in college. And there was legitimately an agent just reached out to me because he was like, hey, I read your foodie blog and I thought it was really good and I think this could become a book. So that was like the way that things happened back then, which to me is really interesting because I never understood the psychology of like, I'm putting this out here for free, but then you will also just buy a bigger hardcover version of it. And so it almost led me to have this somewhat cynical perspective, which I don't necessarily know if it's cynical or not, you tell me, but people just want to find a way to give people they like money, but they can't just send it to you. They need a thing. Yeah. And you put out a thing.

You say, hey, you like this thing. You want to give me money, but I can't just ask you for $30. And so we've made a token and you can now have it. It's all the same things from the blog. It's like literally my cookbook was a giant blog post, right? It could have been all written on the internets and it wasn't. But also aren't the cookbook versions, better versions of them that have been tested more thoroughly and you've spent more time and money toward them?

Or other people, maybe you didn't do that. Like, ish, that's like the idea, I suppose, right? Or at least people think that's the idea. Nicole, what do you think? We should address the fact that Noah today is filling in for Nicole. Nicole is at home sick. Noah, do your best Nicole impression. I just, you know, Josh, I just think you are doing a really bad job today.

Yeah, that's great. I need the emotional denigration, actually. That's what fuels me. But okay, so tell me about Don't Panic Pantry, because you just dropped your first solo dolo cookbook. Yes. So, you know, there's a long version and I'll do the shorter version.

But basically, I'd been in talks on doing this cookbook with Knopf pre-pandemic. And then the pandemic hit. Everything kind of got put on pause, including my amazing wife, who's a stand-up comedian, who was about to go on a big worldwide tour, had to pause her tour. So we're stuck at home like everybody else for

what we thought was going to be two weeks. And we decided to do a live stream cooking show just to kind of help people flatten the curve. Remember that? That was cool. Oh yeah. That was a slogan that we had for a long time. Encourage people to like limit trips to the

grocery store, you know, plan ahead, cook with what you have. And so it was kind of my way of helping people through that and, um, and connecting with our audience and all this amazing stuff. And, uh, we called it Don't Panic Pantry. We were going to call it Quarantine Cooking. Glad that didn't last.

I think Alton Brown called his version that. Well, he's not releasing a quarantine cooking book now, is he? Sure not. Sure not. And so it became this kind of incredible meeting place for everybody. And people said that it was this place of sense of community and all these things. But then honestly, it was also a thing that kept me from going completely, fully insane. And so we had a thing to do every night. It was, we did 250 episodes, it turned out.

And, uh, and we ended up doing like, like the zoom version of the today show, which, uh, was, was, was interesting. And it became this kind of very cool, amazing thing. And then, uh, over the course of course of that process, Knopf, my amazing publisher who I love, who also have produced most of my favorite cookbooks of all time. They go back to like Lydia Bastianich and Edna Lewis and they did Julia Child's cookbook. Anyway, and so they said, listen, we still want to do the book with you, but can we rebrand it around the show? Because it's just a great way to do it. And also these relationships, all these people and this back and forth with the fans really changed the cookbook that I wrote to really understand what people are looking for, how they get so overwhelmed and so terrified by food and eating. For a lot of people, a meal is an obstacle that happens three times a day. You have to overcome and, you know, food is so personal

and it's so specific. And so trying to really help people to find this kind of rational middle ground where it doesn't have to be like, you have to change your entire life in order to, uh, improve your life. And, you know, when people do that, you end up doing it for three weeks, you hire a trainer, you change your entire diet, and then you go back to being what you were before. And I think that, you know, that trying matters and better is enough. And that's kind of what I'm trying to promote with this book and this idea. Yeah. I mean, talking about the difference between a cookbook and say something like a blog or a YouTube show, there's, dang it, I hate that I'm going here. There's a reason cult leaders write manifestos, right?

There's a reason because it's a lot easier to put everything you believe into a written tome. This is a type of media that has existed since the beginning of time and will continue to because that's a powerful way to communicate ideas with people. And that's what I love about Don't Panic Pantry. This is a shameless plug portion,

but I really do, that you recognize that people are stressed out about not having enough time, feeling overwhelmed by the idea of cooking. There is analysis paralysis out there because there's so much crap on the internet telling you what to make or what not to make. There's fear around health, around environmental concerns. Yeah. And your whole philosophy of like, hey, trying is good. Because I think when people get this idea that if you just eat mozzarella balls and anchovies every day that you'll like suddenly be the healthiest person in the world. Pretty much. But I mean, there's it's all your whole book is based around these kind of like rational

principles that make your life easier and make your life better. And to have all of that in one book, in one tome, one manifesto, if you will, I think is a really great way to actually connect a message to people, especially when they have that sunk cost of buying the book. It's something they're actually going to digest, and I think it's really cool. It's probably the only manifesto that says, these aren't rules, they're just guidelines. Give it a shot. Try to do it. But if you need to eat a cheeseburger, go ahead. Yeah, your cult's not going to really take off, I don't think.

But the cookbook might, which is good. I mean, you know, when your subtitle for your book, it very reflects the way I think about everything. But the subtitle of the book is mostly vegetarian comfort food that happens to be pretty good for you. And, again, it's not about you have to be this way, you have to be that way. If you want to be vegetarian, be my guest, do it. But also that like we don't need to have this lifestyle of like eating terrifying amounts of factory produced meat that like a little bit of meat can go a long way in flavoring a dish. And that having balance in your diet is important. academics and scientists getting like metadata studies where you're studying not just one study, but a study of like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of studies to actually get real

information because, you know, one study is really hard to reproduce. But if you do this whole thing and the biggest takeaway from the entire book, if anyone gets anything from this interview, it's that we are not eating enough fiber. No one's eating enough fiber. And if you increase your fiber intake to the amount you're supposed to be eating, which is basically just double it essentially, is that it decreases what they called all-cause death by 30%. So if you want to die 30% less, just eat more fiber. And everyone's like obsessed with protein and they should be obsessed with fiber.

We're all getting enough protein. I feel attacked by the getting enough protein thing. But no, no. But that general idea that there are so many different ideas out there. And people are trying to – yeah, can you not tell? Sorry, I had to pause to do that. No, I mean I eat 200 grams of protein a day, which I believe doctors say like 40 is enough. But then there's some Instagram influencer who's huge and I know they are on steroids.

I just know it. Physically huge? Yeah, like both. I mean, they are popular because they're physically huge. They're physically huge because they're popular. It's a vicious cycle, really. They're telling me I got to eat 200 grams of protein a day. Noah, how do I solve my...

To be jacked and for the world to love me, which then allows me to love myself. Noah, that's what this is all about. Yeah, I guess there's two versions. There's the get jacked to love yourself and there's the try to fill the hole in your stomach with food. That's an emotional hole. Correct.

Just keep filling it. And that emotional hole, man, you can really shove a lot of Doritos in there. It just absorbs them like a pool filter. It just... Yeah, it's going great. Anyways. What are you talking about? Anyway, cookbooks are good.

Do people cook? Do people actually cook? Are you out there actually cooking? Because statistics say no. Well, that's always kind of the big question. People watch food shows a lot but i always say it's like not to i don't know why i keep referring to pornography on this show but uh it's there's like a phenomenon that i always sort of equate to like nuns watching porn yeah it's like you're not doing it but you're into it oh man i never that is a perfect analogy i, and I think literally porn consumption is going up, especially young people having sex is going down.

Literally the same thing is happening with food show consumption and people cooking. And the data actually supports this. Did ever, oh wait, sorry, this is a weird segue. No, please. Did ever tell you back when I think we were both maybe, or maybe pre you working at LA Weekly, I was, there was like the big, like a food porn was like a big phrase. Yeah. So I thought it'd be funny to try to write an article about porn food.

So I reached out to a, uh, like a producer, uh, named Mark Spiegler, uh, who, by the way, his email signature was quote patron of the tarts. Love it. Which is amazing. That's clever. And I remember I interviewed him trying to see like, you know, what's like the catering like on a porn site. And he talked, it sounded like he was talking through a sandwich, but he said, basically,

he goes, you know, back in the old days, you know, we used to have catering, but now the girls are lucky if we get them a pizza or something. So it didn't end up, I should have actually- Did you publish it? No, we didn't. I didn't get enough info for it, but I didn't want to go down that rabbit hole too far. One of my favorite pieces ever was in Lucky Peach. Speaking of written media here, it was in Lucky Peach. That's still going strong, right? Yeah, Lucky Peach.

You know, you can probably eBay some back catalogs on it. Don't look into what happened in the internal politics of it all. But there was somebody who went to just an orgy, just your classic garden variety, like middle class orgy. And they just wrote about the food that was there. And they had a whole buffet spread. People would go off into their different rooms, come out, and then they'd just, you know, be naked eating chicken wings from a buffet. That just sounds like smart planning.

That's smart planning. That's good. You just get to, you know, I'd read that cookbook. That's where maybe you want to go higher protein, lower fiber. That's fair enough. That's fair enough. You know, and probably don't do the spices for obvious reasons. I, you know, well, I've been there, uh, had accidents. Yeah. Yeah. Is this going as, as on the rails as you expected so far? Oh, this is the general podcast.

No, it talked to me about why aren't the youth cooking as much? Uh, no, but for real. Okay. So, so, so, so cookbook sales are going up. Yeah. Which is a wild thing. And the types of cookbooks that are, that are being sold and being made are actually changing a lot. The like coffee table, chefy restaurant book is not selling in the way that it was before. And now people want, they want real cookbooks that work. And they, you know, if you're, and I'm very lucky I get to be writing more cookbooks right now with other people. Some of them might even be in this room. No one even knows.

Who could tell? But, you know, they don't want the, the chefy at home cookbook that, you know, this idea of like how to make molecular gastronomy work at home. And, you know, and so a lot of times it's very hard to get these chefy chefs to actually write real home cooking recipes.

But when you find people who can really do it, it's an incredible thing. So they want food that people can really make at home. And that's really what I'm trying to do with my book. And that's what I kind of what my job is. A lot of times when I work with like big deal chefs, um, who, you know, are used to restaurant cooking is helping to kind of simplify stuff down so that, you know, like, how do you get away with using less mixing bowls, you know, stuff like that so that the person who doesn't have a dish pit that can throw stuff into can actually make real food at home on a weeknight and not have it like, you know, be their entire day. Yeah. Do you think that, so we've seen the trends,

they were still rising in terms of like cookbook sales in production before the pandemic, but then after the pandemic is when you really saw it skyrocket, especially there was some crazy stat, like bread baking cookbooks, sales were up 240% year over year because people were like, Oh God, cooking is actually a valuable skill, especially when stuff hits the fan and suddenly we need to know how to do stuff. There's another factor I think in it too, which is, you know, this is a kind of a weird, weird thing to think about,

but you look at like the way that the tech world has influenced like all these apps that we're using. So you look at like Postmates, Uber Eats, all this stuff, they're all, it's like VC money being spent so they can basically increase growth and not care about profits. Yeah. And now you're seeing it with Netflix, everybody else, all of a sudden they're going, hey, wait a second, we have to actually make money on this stuff. And so now the prices for your mediocre delivery that took an hour that had something missing is getting more expensive.

It's taking longer. It's less good. And you're sitting around going, wait a second, I could spend way less money, have my food faster and have it taste better if I learned how to cook it myself. And I think that's also what's happening on top of all this as well. Yeah. I think it's, it's really this incredible just supply and demand cyclical nature, right? Is for a while people were like, well, there aren't enough delivery options. We want cheap delivery options to be available. And then they were force fed to us through things like Postmates that artificially just decreased the price, hoping that you'd get hooked on it. And then suddenly you're paying $22 for a cold Chipotle bowl that's half filled because they're

filling so many freaking orders. And so then the demand for that just drops. And now people are realizing that, oh crap, I can just cook at home. And so I think we really are on this just cyclical pattern. Right. And like you said, with the chef cookbook, I got so many. If you are buying gifts for a foodie friend, do not just buy them random cookbooks and random cooking utensils that they'll never use. I have pulled pork shredders that look like Wolverine claws. Yeah. They make forks, man.

Like forks exist. Iks exist i didn't i didn't need those susan i'm basically opposed to any single use kitchen tool yeah unitaskers man is yeah the only exception is is i got one of those little hand garlic slicers yeah those are those are just fun also i cook with a lot of garlic so it works out same uh but the the the chef cookbook the it's like oh i know you've been to this restaurant. I'm going to buy you this cookbook. Yeah. And there are these just like $40 gigantic coffee table things. And if I were to put every Mike Voltaggio's Inc., Charles Pham's slanted door, like I have a Ludo Lefebvre's cookbook, all this stuff.

Or there's the crazier ones, the ones that are like the Favikin cookbook. Yeah, yeah. Like, so, you know, get a tree from my dad's backyard, light it on fire and then use the, it's a spruce that only grows in Fjalltjord. Like, oh,

let me travel up to Fjalltjord. Oh, lovely at the winter. Oh my God. But no, these, these cookbooks that are not accessible, they are the thing that I was talking about earlier,

where it's like a token of, I've heard of this person. I'd like to pay them money for a thing. Yeah. And then you get the thing and you don't actually use it. But now it seems like we're coming back around to where people want to know how to actually cook. Yeah.

And like, there's nothing makes me happier than like seeing cookbooks that are like dog-eared and have food stains in them. It's like accidental scratch and sniff that comes after the fact. Yeah, like I love that stuff. And I grew up loving cookbooks. So I, I have like a, a deep passion and affection for them.

And so, you know, that's why like genuinely when I like got to meet with Knopf, like the people who like made the cookbooks that were on my mom's shelf growing up and get to like work with them and make this book, it gets, it's really freaking cool. And like, those are the kinds of things that you have the tactile thing of it. And, you know, and like, you know, yes, there are really great blog posts out there and certain, the ones that are really great do amazing jobs, but like the amount of time and energy that it takes to make a really good cookbook is it's, it's like a, it's a,

like a two year commitment of your life that you spend a ton of energy on and really care a lot about. And, uh, it means a lot to me. And that's why when you find cookbooks that people don't care about, where they're kind of like, like there's like this celebrity chef who's kind of like writing the cookbook on the phone while trying to open a restaurant and shoot it, like a Food Network pilot, where you're just like,

because your agent told you you were supposed to, that drives me crazy. And that's kind of the same thing with restaurants and anything else. It's, these are these industries that are not the most lucrative businesses in the world. So if you get into them and you don't care, like, just that's sort of inexcusable to me. Yeah. What do you think about Kris Jenner's cookbook?

I haven't seen it. You haven't seen it? No. Oh, my God. She has a recipe for Nicole Brown Simpson's nachos in there. Oh, wow. Yeah. She put chicken on them.

Okay. She doesn't anymore. That checks out. Anyways, I was going to wow. Yeah. She put chicken on them. She doesn't anymore. That, that checks out. Anyways, I was going to ask, sorry, I had that invasive thought and I had to say it. Oh my God. I have a, there's a cookbook. It's very hard to find. I need to give you a copy of it. Cause I, I think I bought the last of them using Amazon. It's called the good, the bad, the cookbook. It was sent to me by a publicist years and years ago, and it is the most incredible food photography I've ever seen in my life. It's like – it looks like every photo is like a two-page spread of like a chicken salt and bokeh that got caught cheating with flash photography.

Wait, like is that – was it intentional? Do you think they had a – No, it was just somebody who thought that, oh, this is the best I can do. And it's, I mean, if you ever want to have a good time, uh, just have eight cocktails and sit with a friend and read this book and you will, uh, you'll have the best time. Um, my personal favorite is called, uh, 50 shades of chicken. Okay. Where it's based off of the popular EL James, uh, 50 shades series that introduced a lot

of, um, Midwestern housewives to BDSM. I consider it sort of the Guy Fieri of bondage. So it's like an animal husbandry sort of a book? Correctamundo, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it is literally just, they'll just show a lot of trussed up chickens and then have a bunch of recipes that do not work. I tested some of these recipes.

I wrote this joke of an article where I tested a recipe that said like, brush a half chicken with like heavy cream and mustard and then like bake it at 500 and i'm reading this and i'm just like that's good one doesn't taste good and then two this is going to burn immediately and then sure enough it burnt when it was still raw so god bless the novelty cookbooks out there but like you said there is a quality gap in people who are actually caring about writing these things people who have you know done it uh for a long time and care about it versus,

you know, all the, all the muck that just got published because it was a catchy title. Yeah. And, you know, and that's, the publishing world is constantly changing and it's, it's, it's a wild world out there. I mean, it's why, you know, I, I really try to do everything I can to push people to buy cookbooks from independent bookstores, you know, again, not getting into the whole like tech rant again, like, you know, Amazon, they are by far the biggest sellers of cookbooks, um, and or books, I guess, actually. Yeah, everything. And it, you know, and when you buy a book from Amazon, it, it helps the, uh, authors

the least, helps the publishers the least, uh, counts the least toward the New York Times bestseller list. And, you know, it's not to, I guess, I guess, I guess I'm going to just talk about Amazon and then they're going to bury my, do it. Jeffrey Bezos, come at us. No, but you know, what ends up happening is, you know, their business model is built around putting small businesses out of business. And, you know, that's why they create the Amazon basics versions of things that were popular. And so, you know, I think as much as possible, it's great to support, you know, here in LA, we've got now serving, which is an amazing little cookbook store that I'm doing a lot

of stuff without here. But there's, I did a independent bookstore campaign with 10 independent bookstores around the country. Le Crusade donated 10 Dutch ovens to do giveaways, all these bookstores. That's like $9 million worth of Dutch ovens. It's, yeah, it's an incredible thing. So I just, yeah, to me, it's, you know, you try to do the best you can in a, in a rapidly devolving hellscape. It's like, you know, uh, the world is falling apart and I'm like, you know,

composting collard green stems in the backyard and hoping it does something other than just give me that, that feeling of, uh, of joy to know that I'm putting slightly less things in a trash can. I'm a big fan of your Instagram series of you composting. You look like you're having a blast out there. I want to ask you about your, your favorite cookbooks of all time. Like what are the other cookbooks besides yours? Don't panic pantry by don't panic pantry. If you say it enough, it gets into the metadata of the episode, get it in there, become searchable. But what are your favorite cookbooks that have influenced the way that you write them? I mean, there's so many, uh, I mean, one of the ones that I think is like one of these old classics, I kind of have like a deep love for old cookbooks with no pictures in

them. Uh, Marian Cunningham's breakfast book is unbelievable. That's a deep gut. It's unbelievable. And it's like, you go through like, there's like a yeasted buckwheat pancake in that thing. And I was just like. Damn. Like sometimes you read a cookbook and you're like, do we even need to make any cookbooks ever again?

And the answer is yes. If they're not, uh, we've, we're pretty covered on like Italian and French food. Yeah. But like, uh, yeah, there's, but there's a lot of Italian and French food. Yeah. But like, uh, yeah, there's, but there's a lot of other cuisines that are finally getting their, their place in the, in the sun.

Um, but, uh, you know, uh, I mean, Marcella Hazan's, uh,

her classic cookbooks are made. That's where like the famous tomato butter sauce comes from that everyone flips out about. you just let the tomato sauce smell the onion and then you discard the onion. Yeah. Well,

you let it smell it for like 30 minutes. Yeah. And then you can eat the onion by itself and it's delicious. Uh, like a lot of those ones are classics. Um, Lydia Bosjanich has one that's called, uh, oh shoot. It's, it's whatever her regional Italian cookbook is where you get to like be like, oh, here's how to make like spaghetti with tomato applesauce from, uh, from Alto Adige. You're just like, cool. That's like, those kind of books are amazing. I mean, Edna Lewis's cookbooks were like so ahead of their time doing like real kind of

Southern soul cooking that was based around like actually like having to garden and having to grow things to have access to ingredients like that. Like that kind of stuff's incredible. Japanese cooking, a simple art from Shizuotsuji. It came out in like 1982, 1980, something like that. And it's like the first cookbook showing Americans how to make Japanese food. And it has like phrases on it, like,

this may sound barbaric, but in Japan, we eat a lot of raw fish. And it's like, oh buddy, wait till you find out what's coming. That's incredible. Yeah. And he's got like amazing diagrams of how to skewer stuff.

And like those recipes all slap. So there's just like that stuff. And then like, you know, recent stuff. I mean, the Walks of Life cookbook I was just talking about is incredible. I mean, there's so many great books coming out all the time. I mean, Deb Perlman does incredible stuff. Yeah, like all that Smitten Kitchen stuff. I just think, you know, people who are really getting after it and doing it right are making special things.

doing it right are making special things. Yeah. I think one thing that I think about a lot is the way that the blog world or on the internet, it's so much of it is about gaming algorithms and SEO. And if you think that the most talented people always rise to the top on the internet, it is absolutely a fallacy. I did not hit a triple. I landed on third base by working for a company that has a marketing machine. I'm proud of what I do, but amazing how many things you've cooked that, uh, that changed your life. Yeah. That were hacks that changed your life. Oh my God. Yeah. And, uh, as loud as you do it. Well, no, but here's the thing is every single successive video we put out changed my life more. So this will change your life the most each, but you know, I mean, you know what I mean? It's a, it's easy to oversell on the internet, the macaroni and cheese that allowed me to pay child support.

My child finally loved me because of this muffaletta. But with cookbooks, something that you actually have to invest time and energy in, I do think there's more of a chance of cream rising the top. I'm thinking about The Word of Mouth with Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, right? I mean, Samin Nosrat, people always knew her. But that mean, I mean, Samin Nosrat was always people always knew her. Yeah. But that book, I mean, it was very revolutionary for me just in the way of breaking down how to think about cooking, you know, and then, you know, rocketing to having your own Netflix show, stuff like that.

Those are the stories to me that, you know, say that cookbooks are actually worth more than some blog post that was maybe even outsourced to some SEO farmer who got paid $5 to write it. Yeah. Hey, $5, that's sometimes better than people are getting. Listen, that's fair enough. Take the gig. Yeah. I mean, I just – yeah.

I love them. I think that they are really kind of special and important. I think that they are really kind of special and important. And again, like there's something to being able to have something that you could actually have an access and hold onto and flip through and find. I mean, these cookbooks, you know, they've got like a hundred plus recipes in them and you've probably cooked six of them. And now you're going to go like Google, you know, game day nachos again, like go through and find like, you know, I can make spaghetti with tomato sauce every day of my life and have it be different slightly every time. And I've always been fascinated by it. And I just, that kind of stuff, you dig through these old cookbooks that you have. I guarantee you there's 10 to 20 amazing recipes you haven't even thought about yet, especially ones that don't have pictures.

When we write cookbooks, we intend on every recipe being as good as we can. Then later we decide what gets photographed. That means there's amazing recipes with no pictures that you're just flipping right past. And there's no picture. So you don't have to be intimidated by how it looks when it comes out because you don't know what it's supposed to look like.

So just make it and enjoy it. Yeah, I would implore people. I know that so much of, even in your cookbook and so much of modern cooking is focused on like time efficiency and money efficiency and stuff. I would implore people like take that effort, flip a cookbook to a random page, find a dish, one that maybe you've never even heard of, and cook your way through it and really think about it. To me, that's a beautiful way

to explore the world, to explore the views of somebody else. I think it's awesome. And I love that we are in this cookbook resurgence. And I love that we can be a part of it. And I love that maybe one day even Mythical will write a cookbook. Is that on the table? I don't think about it. All right, Noah, 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 segment we call Opinions Are Like Casseroles. universe it's time for a segment we call opinions are like casseroles no normally you would come in okay so we're gonna do a one two three opinions or oh was that yeah so we're gonna do a one two three a pit sorry one two three and then go yeah sorry it's gonna be a silent go okay one two three opinions are like casseroles. I wasn't feeling that one, but that's okay. No, you're ready to get into some voicemails. Let's do it.

Hi. My opinion is that every single sandwich, which is better made on a tortilla than any kind of bread. Don't know how that strikes you guys. But yeah, that's my opinion. What about a wet sandwich? What about a wet burrito man burritos mojados that was a huge part of my childhood are we calling those sandwiches what a burrito yeah no no i i feel strongly that burritos and tacos are not sandwiches yeah so so he's saying like a reuben sandwich right if? If you Swiss cheese, corned beef, Russian dressing, sauerkraut, he's saying would be better instead of on rye bread, tucked into some sort of burrito tortilla situation, maybe even griddled. And I don't know that I disagree with him.

This is sacrilege. I mean – so you're saying – so in that case, it's you're turning into a burrito and not making it a sandwich anymore. Correct. So you're saying he just doesn't like sandwiches. This man doesn't like sandwiches. And I think that's kind of beautiful. You know, he's dialed in his own tastes. Yeah.

I mean, I'm a big believer in doing whatever you like for yourself and making it your own. So if you prefer it, great. Be my guest. I will say that as somebody who grew up eating a lot. I don't want to eat an Italian sub in a tortilla. No, no, no, no. That's a wrap at that point, which is depressing. Yeah. Wraps are depressing because by calling it a wrap and not a burrito, you've admitted that you've deviated from the

original intention. And I don't like that. I was recently reading about the Dunkin' Donuts wake up breakfast wrap. And apparently the egg has 12 ingredients in it. Egg has three letters in it, but their egg has 12 ingredients in it. Egg has three letters in it, but their egg has 12 ingredients? Yeah. How much sodium sulfate can you pack in there? Go to Dunkin' to find out. This episode has been brought to you by Dunkin's new Wake Up Breakfast Wrap. I grew up eating a lot of PB&Js and tortillas.

I feel like it's more like a call to action, like, wake up, breakfast wrap. Wake up. PB&Js and tortillas do not work. I think this negates the theorem. The peanut BJ. The peanut BJ. The peanut BJ in a tortilla. You know, it feels good at first because you think it's, but then it just starts gushing

everywhere and it's not great. Yeah. Yeah. I think like anything else, it works for some things better than others. Next. Do you remember that MTV dating show? That was really sexy. Thank you.

Hi, Josh and Nicole. Oh, you got to call the hotline. I love your pod and I've listened since the beginning. next do you remember that mtv dating show that was really sexy thank you hi josh and nicole oh you gotta call the hotline i love your pod and i've listened since the beginning the reason i'm calling is because every time i see josh use metal on teflon my head explodes oh yeah yeah my old body cannot take this kind of stress she's correct nicole please keep josh in line nicole years of entertainment here's to many more bye i love somebody berating me and then telling me how much they love me yeah well because they care about you staying alive longer oh fair enough yeah i you know i mean how are your teflons getting scraped up or are they looking good still no so they're getting pretty scraped up and um

what we do is we we tend to buy pretty cheap pans and use them in the Mythical Kitchen. And part of that was because we recognize that most people aren't cooking on Le Creuset. They're not using stainless steel. So we wanted to use, you know, the cheap nonstick stuff that people at home generally cook on. And so we did that. But also, yeah, sometimes I just have a metal spatula and I don't want to like call for a stop down in the middle of a shoot. And I would also do this at home. I've also seen you finger whisk because you couldn't find the fork.

Yes, that's correct. And that's legit how I cook at home. All I can do now is offer people a window into my life. And if the wooden spoons are all in the dishwasher because Julia doesn't believe in hand-washing dishes, you know, thanks. Then, yeah, I'm going to use metal on Teflon and I'm going to deal with the consequences. Do I think it's good? No. So, yeah. So you agree it's not good.

I don't like the way that I am. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I could change. Yeah. It's like a cigarette smoker's rationale. It's like the doctor who smokes cigarettes. Like a chef who uses metal on Teflon, you know.

And I would not begrudge Dr. Kennedy for smoking cigarettes. That's his prerogative. Yeah. You know, my therapist is probably not that great at taking care of herself. Yeah. Almost all therapists I know are preternaturally worse than others at doing that. Sometimes calling them into question. Yeah. That being said, you are trying to teach people how to cook. Yeah. In theory, you know what I mean? What's the deal with metal on Teflon? Does it cause cancer though? That's the thing? Teflon's bad? Well, I guess it has to do with, I think, the coating underneath the top layers when you scrape below it. I think whatever is in there is what you're not supposed to be getting into you. So I think once you see scratch marks,

but I also think the technology is changing and it could be super like old information. You know, it's like how your mom still thinks that fat is worse than sugar. Yeah. Listen, I just – there's so much information out there, man. This is not like a call out to your mom specifically. I mean one's mom. No, no, no, man. My mom is long dead. But a thing I think about a lot is that so many people talk about if artificial sweeteners are giving you

cancer and killing you, if it's seed oils, if it's all this stuff and they're stressing. And meanwhile, the World Health Organization comes out and says like, if you eat processed red meat once a week, you're 10 times more likely to die of colon cancer. And everyone's like, ah, that can't be it. So let's go back to the aspartame. You know, like, I feel like we have a lot of this information out there that don't, that do really simple things. Like you talk about more fiber, less meat, and then people are worried about. Well, less and better is my kind of meat philosophy. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. As you know, it should be of a, of a high quality and it should be way too expensive and therefore you don't do it as much. And you start learning how to use

weirder cuts. And any amount of Maillard reaction significantly increases your risk of cancer. Like that's the other thing, man. Charred meat, that is the free radicals created from that. Like this stuff is peer reviewed to actually increase cancer risk. I'm not going to stop searing mistakes. Yes. You know what I mean?

Just eat some boiled beans and go to bed. It's funny how calling them boiled beans makes them sound a lot worse. Yeah, how else are you cooking a bean? Yeah. You just get a microwave them? I got simmered. I will try to stop using metal on Teflon. It's not going to work, but I'll try.

Yeah, so my opinion, Casserole, is that Food Wars, the anime, has a deeper level of respect and love for food than most cooking shows damn i cannot have you ever seen food wars the anime i've not i've not seen food wars the anime um but it sounds true i'm gonna be honest if you are assuming that the level that the bar for cooking shows having respect for food is high I think you're making the wrong assumption there. I also, I get like, I mean, you know, like, yes, there's some great food content out there. But like, I'm very opposed to this, like this deification of chefs through these like beauty glory shots of chefs doing all this stuff. And like Francis Malman saying that he's such a genius that he's allowed to cheat on his wife. Like, because what it does is it is it makes people think that cooking is for geniuses and not for people at home.

And I think that that is not the message we want to be giving people. Yeah. Yeah. I think- Also, his stuff's on Goldbelly, so. Yeah. You look at like the David Gelb stuff, right? He did a chef's table and then there was a lot of criticism about that deification of

chefs, right? Which also let them act with impunity. You tell somebody he's a god and then they think they can do whatever they want to people and not pay their workers and stuff like that. And it's obviously case by case. Like when people who I love get to get highlighted on a show like that, like Sarah Minnick in Portland, Oregon with Lovely 50-50. That's really exciting when someone like Sarah Minnick, who I think makes, I think, the best pizza in North America, in my opinion, that she gets to now have lines out the door every day because people are discovering her food. So in those cases, it's really, really cool. Yeah, and she has a deep love for food. And I think a lot of people who are featured on these shows do.

But have you seen the movie Burnt, Bradley Cooper, produced by Gordon Ramsay and Mario Batali? I did not. Oh, well, you know about it though have you seen the television show kitchen confidential starring bradley cooper based on the anthony bourdain memoir i've actually never seen it i think i think they're on youtube now they lasted briefly uh that's a whole rant i want to do i tried to do a write an oral history about when emerald had a sitcom on nbc and uh what i couldn't get enough people to talk about it yeah he had He had an, he had a sitcom on NBC. Oh my God. I, uh, how big he was back then. I wanted, I, I also had an oral history

that I pitched to eater and got it approved. And then everybody I talked to was like, Oh, we, we have an NDA from MTV that lasts for a lot of years. It was about MTV tried to do their version of top chef. It was called house of food. And after four episodes it got uh it got canceled and only was airing in new zealand because a male contestant threw a toaster at a female contestant and a tv critic was like i can't ethically write about this yeah point is a lot of food tv does not love food and the movie burnt bradley cooper it literally goes on this rant where he's this you know chef edgelord and he's like i don't want you to eat I don't want you to eat my food. I want you to eat my food and never want to eat again. And she's like, oh, God, this is the most embarrassing thing I've ever read.

Or what was the movie where Jon Favreau was like, how good of a chef do I have to be for Scarlett Johansson and Sofia Vergara to want to have sex with me? Yeah, that was the movie called Chef. And apparently it was good enough for both. I mean, that's how good of a chef I am. I love that movie. He makes sandwiches. I mean, that's how good of a chef I am. I love that. Look who's into me. He makes sandwiches. All right, one more.

Hello. My name is Charlie. Hi, Charlie. I am from North County, San Diego. Shout out, Josh. Hey, Oceanside. Hey, my opinion is, or one of the foods I eat, is I take some cottage cheese and I put some Cholula in it and then I mix it up

and I dip Cheez-Its in it like it's chips and dip. It's one of my favorite snacks. Thank you guys. Love the pod. Did he say he picks cottage cheese? I think he picks cottage cheese. Like in a field?

He dips his ladle into the cottage cheese bush. Cottage cheese, Cholula, Cheez-Its dipped in it. Sure. Go in it. Sure. Go for it. Remember when cottage cheese was like the go-to health food of the 80s? I grew up on it.

That was like my parents. Cottage cheese and a half a grapefruit, and you're like, you're all good to go. Something else I think about, too, along those lines is I ever had a friend who used to have cottage cheese with salsa. Oh, interesting. Because salsa is one of those foods that's really good for you, but almost never gets served with something good for you. Yeah, correct. Correct.

So like that guy, he was right there. Hot sauce. Great. Yeah. Cottage cheese, supposedly great. I don't know if that's true or not, but cottage cheese, supposedly healthy. Got a lot of protein. The cheeses, which are admittedly delicious.

You know, that's, that's that's your uh you got to dip a carrot in there or something how about a celery this to me is just um fancy restaurants have like the whipped ricotta served with their bread plate i mean that's all he's doing you know he's taking a farmer's cheese he's serving it with a lovely you know a toasty baked cracker got a lot of those myriad reactions in there a little bit of that lacto-fermented you know know, hot sauce to sort of cut through all that fat, that protein, those carbs. I think this is a really lovely dish. It's like my wife has a bit about how everything's farm-to-table. Like, where do you think it comes from?

Correct. What's the amount of time between farm and table for it to be called farm-to-table? Is it – does it have no stops between the way? It can't go to like a – Driver can't take a piss. It can't go to a processing plant and can't take a piss. It can't go to a processing plant and turn into a Cheez-It. There's a smart and final right by my house that just says farm produce. And I was just like, where – come on, man.

Where else is it coming from? In-N-Out though has like rules. It's like must be a 24-hour drive. Well, they also own their meat processing plants, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that's interesting. They're trying.

Once I was in a CVS and I saw that they had the sign for the aisles and they listed wine and then below it, they listed fine wine. And I was like, well, there you go. I feel like that was, you know, when you like start a paragraph and like you don't,

you just want to add another sentence to make it look bigger. I feel like that's what CVS did with that aisle. They're just like, wow, we got another slot open. Yeah, it reminds me of writing a cookbook sometimes. Sometimes you just got to get the words on the page, man. Noah, thank you so much for joining us, man. Such a pleasure.

Tell the people where they can find you. Well, there's the YouTube channel, Don't Panic Pantry, which has got a lot of great content on it. We're very excited about that show. And then, of course, buy the cookbook, Don't Panic Pantry cookbook, I think out now when this comes out. Holy smokes. And get it in there as fast as possible because the pre-sales and that first week of sales really matters a lot for everybody in the industry and all these things. And it's very helpful if you buy it. And I think it's very good.

I'm very proud of it. I also think it's very good. I'm very proud of it. I also think it's a very good cookbook. Everybody, if you pre-order Don't Panic Pantry, no, it'd just be an order now. It's an order now, it's out. Everybody, when you order Don't Panic Pantry, send Noah a copy of the screenshot and then he'll send you a personalized video

from him and his baby. Or just tag me and I'll repost it. Oh yeah, that too, that too. We'll see y'all next time.