Judge John Hodgman - Comfort Feuds With Kenji López-Alt & Deb Perelman

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

Fall is nearly here and it's time to clear the docket! This week, we are talking to beloved food writers and chefs Kenji López-Alt (Serious Eats, The Recipe) and Deb Perelman (Smitten Kitchen, The Recipe) about COMFORT FOODS! Is the "mac" in chili mac supposed to be plain noodles or mac and cheese? Is canned pumpkin as good as fresh pumpkin puree? If you make green bean casserole with fresh green beans, is it still a comfort food? What is the best way to soften hard ice cream? Rulings on all of these and much more!Please consider donating to Al Otro Lado. Al Otro Lado provides legal assistance and humanitarian aid to refugees, deportees, and other migrants trapped at the US-MX border. Donate at alotrolado.org/letsdosomething.We are on TikTok and YouTube! Follow us on both @judgejohnhodgmanpod! Follow us on Instagram @judgejohnhodgman! Judge John Hodgman is member-supported! Join at $5 a month at maximumfun.org/join!

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I am Bail of Jesse Thorne. And with me, as always, is Judge John Hodgman. We're about to clear this docket. That's right, Jesse. I am still here in my summer chambers at W.E.R.U. In Orland, Maine, WERU.org. Listen and donate.

If you wish, I'm here with program and operation director, K-pop Joel Mann. Hello, Joel. Hello, Judge. Now, Joel, I'm not using your family ancestral gavel today. I'm heartbroken. Well, too bad, because I'm going back to my old main makeshift gavel, a can of Stuart Sheldbeams, which I picked up at the Hannaford on the way in. I am using the can of Stewart Sheld Beans because I love them. This docket also is about food and not just food, but comfort food.

And these are a comfort to my soul. Love you, Stuart Shell Beans. I saw they were on the bottom. shelf of the store and they said, close out, Joel. I think they're getting done with these. Uh-oh. I'm going to stockpile them. And we are talking about comfort food today.

And we have two extremely special and beloved and wonderful guests to help us clear this docket. Jesse, why don't you introduce them? Our guests are two brilliant and beloved food writers, food thinkers, food cookers, Kenji Lopez Alt and Deb Pearlman. Kenji is the chief culinary advisor at Sirius Eats. He's also the best-selling author of the Food Lab, The Walk, and the children's book, Every Night is Pizza Night. Deb Perlman, of course, is the founder of the wildly popular and influential food blog, Smitten Kitchen. She's also the best-selling author of three Smitten Kitchen cookbooks.

Together, they host the podcast, The Recipe with Kenji and Deb. Kenji and Deb, welcome and welcome back to the court of Judge John Hodgman. thanks for having us thanks for being here kenji and deb first of all i also want to say thank you for the recipe with kenji and deb it is one of the very few podcasts that my wife who's a whole human being in our own right and i like to listen to together uh in particular when we are driving long distances say from and to main and uh we just love hearing about your takes on often comfort foods i mean classics and comfort foods but you've done chicken soup, you've done my favorite

bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. Popcorn, I learned from you two that there are distinct kinds of popcorn. I learned about mushroom popcorn which I'd never heard of in my life. What is mushroom popcorn? Mushroom popcorn is the popcorn that's kind of round

as opposed to snowflake popcorn, which kind of has jagged dishes. Typically mushroom popcorn is what you'd find if you're getting kettle corn because it holds up better to a coating or if you get the fancy popcorn that people, you know, buy for $14 a bag at Christmas time. That's made with mushroom popcorn. Whereas at the movie theater, that's the, that's the snowflake popcorn. If it doesn't come in a tin, the size of an oak tree stump, divided into three flavors,

cheese, caramel and butter, I don't want to, I don't want it. But, John, at Christmas this year, I was gifted by a business colleague, a distant business colleague, the kind that sends business gifts, a huge can of that tripartite popcorn. And no one in my family besides me wanted to eat it for whatever reason. I don't know. So I had to eat the entire thing. And by had to, I mean, did with relish. The sacrifices we make for our family.

Do you mix it up or do you keep it segregated? Oh, I was, I was living in an adventure life. I was doing all kind of stuff. I was bathing in it. Yeah, every witcher way. I was eating it every which way. Deb, tell us a little bit about the recipe, what's the philosophy of the show, what's the approach of the show? And have you and Kenji ever disagreed on anything?

Never. We disagree on lots of things. But we disagree in a friendly way and that I am fascinated that his opinion is so incorrect. I will hear him out on it. You take like a quintessential. dish or food, or a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich, for example. And then you just discuss it and break it down, right? Yeah, I think what we learned the first time we met a couple years ago was that we really

just can't shut up about our opinions on food. And we have so, we've both done so much cooking and so much tinkering with recipes over the years that we have so many opinions and they just spill out of our mouths in a way that, you know, is very natural to podcasting. So we've had a lot of fun with it. I think you're also uniquely suited to a comfort food episode because, you look, there are internet chefs whose specialty is taking a regular thing and making the most insanely decadent version of it by adding four sticks of butter or whatever.

But both of you are cooks who, in addition to creating fancy, complicated, unusual off the wall foods have spent a lot of time figuring out the best way to make a regular thing. Right. And well, what's what I find fun about the show is that Deb and I do have a very similar end goal, which is to help home cooks feel more empowered in the kitchen and feel like they know what they're doing a little bit better. And, you know, both of us have a similar approach to tackling recipes, which is that we find something that people love eating and then sort of break it down and think about it and tinker with it until we get what we think is. is a, you know, sort of optimal way to make it.

However, we wind up at very, very frequently, we wind up at very different end results. And I think it's really fun to sort of, you know, we pull, open up the hood and show people how we develop these recipes and why we made the choices that we made and how we could wind up as such different results with the same basic premise. What's an example of different, differing result that you came up with?

well let's see if we go to like our mac and cheese episode um yeah dev dev does it sort of um what did you call it it it's not adult mac and cheese but it's um i call it quick essential stovetop mine's a very like classic you make a quick little bechamel add some sharp cheese i use a lot of parmesan which is not traditional right and white cheddar um but you you go full science with yours my kids loved it by the way, there was... Yeah, so, yeah, so Deb's version is like almost like a... It almost ends up more, somewhere a little more similar to like a traditional Italian dish, you know, like an Alphredo or a Carbonaro, where there's this Parmesan flavor.

The cheese sauce is not like overly decadent, but it's very sharply flavored. Whereas mine is you, you know, you combine a ton of cheese. I think it's equal parts cheese and dried pasta, and it's much creamier and richer and sort of gooeyer. And so you just get these two really different results that are made in different ways, obviously, that it's not necessarily that one is better than the other, but it's just that they are very different. And depending on what kind of mac and cheese you like, you can kind of figure out how to take your own mac and cheese there based on the way that we've thought about it. Well, speaking of mac and cheese, we have a letter from a listener regarding that very subject. Indeed, we asked our listeners to submit their best and most controversial and most pressing comfort food-related disputes. Why don't we get into it, Jesse, with our first letter.

Mark in Olympia, Washington says, I believe chili mac is a blend of chili and macaroni and cheese. My wife says the mac in chili mac is supposed to be plain macaroni noodles. This makes no sense. Chili and cheese are good together. Who is right? All right, Kenji and Deb, before we get into the heart of this matter, let's break this down a little bit. Let's talk about chili for a second. I'm just a whole separate subject, but I want to know.

Does chili have Stewart's shelled beans in them or any beans at all or no beans? Deb, you go first. I mean, it depends on who you want to make angry. Authentic Texas chili concarne does not have been. beans in it. That does not mean that there are not many delicious chilies with beans in it. Some of my more adamant Texan friends will say that that's actually called a stew, but they also put beans in their chili, too. So, you know, their viewer is not hard and fast. Authentic is not supposed to have it. I think chili is delicious. And to be clear, you know, when you're talking about the

original, you know, all chili that we eat today originated from Texas chili concarne. But the very first chili concarne, you know, is made by, by cowboys as like a thing. out in the field, and it was made with dried beef and suet and chilies. No tomatoes, no beans. And so, you know, anybody now who says that, well, if you put beans in it, it's not real Texas chili, they're also probably making it not with dried beef and suet. So technically, they're not making real Texas chili either. So I think the whole argument is kind of moot. You put whatever you want in your chili. But it really depends on what your end goal is, you know, like if you're, if you're going to be putting it on a hot dog and you're making like a, you know, like a cony and

you're making like a Greek-style chili, then it's going to have like no beans, but it'll have cinnamon and maybe some cloves in there. But, you know, a lot of people don't like tomatoes in their chili, but people love throwing tomatoes at this podcast when you start talking about cinnamon and chili. But to be clear, the coney is a sort of open-faced, wet sandwich made of a hot dog topped with all this stuff. It's a Midwestern thing. And in Ohio, is it Cincinnati?

five-way chili, where they have the... Yeah, yeah, three-way and five-way chili. Right, and that's where they put it over spaghetti and they add cinnamon and stuff. And I didn't realize that was a Greek-American improvisation, I suppose. Oh, yes, yeah. And the Cincinnati chili, if you get it plain,

it's just no beans, but you can add beans on top. But in that case, the beans are kind of added as a scoop separately. So they're not cooked into the chili. Oh, Cincinnati. Added respect for a Texas. Yeah, I'm sure. You do have a on Serious Eats,

you posted a recipe for chili mac, which incorporates chili and macaroni and cheese. There are two ants. Right. Right. That's a mac and cheese plus chili dish in your version of it. Yes. And the reason that version has all that is because in the several weeks preceding that recipe, I was working on a chili recipe and on a mac and cheese recipe.

And so I had a lot of leftovers. But that's real cooking. I mean, you're not necessarily cooking. from, you're not going to be making chili from scratch and mac and cheese from scratch just to make chili mac and cheese. You're going to work with what you have around to make a new dish from it. I'm going to. And you know what I'm going to do just to amp it up?

Four sticks of butter on top. That's how I get my YouTube hits. It's going to be huge on TikTok. Well, Deb, there are a lot of different styles of mac and cheese, as you alluded to, right? There's the classic sort of craft dinner style yellow box macaroni and cheese style. Then there's more of a gold standard. casserole, sort of, like, my grandmother on my mom's side would make a mac and cheese with cheddar cheese and tomato.

Interesting. And it was very sort of like cake, I don't want to say cakey, but you would eat it in a loaf style, not in a gloop style. So we'd baked in a casserole dish and then you'd cut it into squares. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a lasagna. What do you think is the best, if it's mac and cheese, what's the best style of mac and cheese for chili mac?

would you say? Stovetop, I think. The gooey kind, because you want to be able to kind of mix everything together. And if it's already baked into a casserole, the noodles are almost like, you know, at that point they're almost like custard, you know, they don't have much, they don't have many distinct edges. If you try and mix chili into that, it ends up all breaking apart. Yeah, you'll have chunks.

Yeah, I think definitely, yeah, you want the looseness that comes from the stove top. And often, you know, baked mac and cheese is just some version of stove top with, you know, something baked on top like extra cheese or breadcrumb. When I'm about to... You can just stop right there. When I'm about to eat a bowl of a bowl of chili and mac and cheese at 2 a.m. in the morning, the word I'm looking for is looseness. That's what I'm on my mind.

All right. Well, then we've danced around this long enough. Mark says it has to be chili and mac and cheese. Kenji, you just copped to sometimes just mixing in plain noodles with chili. who is right, who is right, and who is wrong? I think technically she is right. Mark's wife is right. Wait, Mark's wife is saying chili and plain news.

Yeah, I think that's like sort of the definition of chili mac, where the mac is just macaroni, not macaroni. It's not chili mac and cheese. It's just chili mac. But I would say the majority of the time the dish will have cheese either added to it or, you know, when you're making it with leftover mac and cheese, the cheese will be built in. So I think she's technically right, but Mark is right in that more often it does have

cheese in it. Interesting. Deb, do you concur or disagree? I agree with Kenji on this one. Look, we agree sometimes. Mark's wife, who apparently has no name, is correct then, according to you. But is a person, a complete person. He's a whole human being in our own right.

A whole complete person. Kenji, it's difficult to share recipes. on a podcast, but you have a macaroni and cheese recipe that I think you could describe on a podcast and people could remember it from an audio form. Can you describe it? Yeah, so it's the easiest mac and cheese that I know how to make. So it's equal parts dried pasta, by way, it's equal parts, dried pasta, evaporated milk, and grated cheese of whatever kind you want. And essentially you cook the pasta in water, just enough water to cover it, and you cook it down until most of that water has evaporated and the pasta's cooked. Then you add your can of evaporated milk and you add your grated cheese and you stir it.

And that's about it. It's like a magic trick. I don't know why it works. I don't believe in science. Well, it's the starch from the noodles that gets really concentrated, you know, when you use so little water and let it reduce down. So it's almost like you're building like a roo, like a sauce basin there, just from the starch that comes off the noodles. And that's what helps the cheese. What Deb would call a QLB, a quick little bechamel.

Yeah. Yeah. So in any case, the judgment is that Mark's wife, who's a whole human being in her own right, is correct in saying that chili mac can be chili and plain macaroni noodles. If it were macaroni and cheese and chili, does that not a chili mac then? Or is that just another version of chili mac? That's still Chili Mac, I'd say. All right, I find in favor, I think we all find in favor of Mark's wife was a holy meaning of right.

I'm slamming the Stuart Shelton beans down in that ruling. We're going to take a quick break to hear from some partners. We'll be back with more comfort food cases with Kenji Lopez, Alt, and Deb Perlman in just a moment. Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I am Bail of Jesse Thorne. We are clearing the docket with our friends, Deb Prolman and Kenji Lopez-Alt. We got a couple cases about Thanksgiving-related matters.

Here's one from Brooke. I hate canned pumpkin in pumpkin pies. Wow. It tastes metallic to me. I think that fresh-roasted pumpkin is better. Quick question, Jesse. I'm sorry to interrupt. Does Brooke know that you don't include the can?

out of the can. I don't know. Just wondering. Okay, go on. She's eating it like animal from the Muppets. My best friend went to culinary school for baking, and he says canned pumpkins just as good as fresh-roasted pumpkin puree. Am I wrong? I'm pumped to hear your ruling.

Wow. Okay. Kenji and Deb, before we get into this, I was, it's, I was, um, not exactly today, years old. old, but relatively recent years old, when I learned that pumpkin pie, whether canned or fresh, is not always and sometimes not even usually made of Halloween pumpkin. Like, it's almost any kind of squash, right? At my house, it's made out of sliced apples. Pastry.

I think the pumpkins that we buy, like the, you know, leaf places and the apple picking, they're usually the least tasty pumpkins. They're grown for size. They're grown for carving. They're grown for shelf stability so you can ship them a month or two before to stores. They're not usually the most flavorful pumpkins. So for me, there isn't like a clear answer where all homemade pumpkin purees are better than all canned pumpkin purees. Because in many ways, the canned pumpkin puree is optimized from a different balance of different winter squashes and pumpkins to make it taste perfect every time.

And you don't really know when you grab a winter squash how good it's going to be. roasted up. But yes, the pumpkins are very stringy. As Kenji said, it would be like closer to an acorn squash in texture. But if you were going to use a spaghetti squash, more of a sugar pumpkin or kbocha or, you know, butternut squash, you could make a really nice canned pumpkin substitute. In fact, it might even taste better. Rook is originally from Knoxville, Tennessee, but they're currently living in Taiwan. And in their PS, they said for Thanksgiving last year, I had to use Taiwanese pumpkins, which added a really unique flavor. Which I think those are the equivalent,

those are the same as a kabocha squash. Cabocha squash, okay. Yeah, yeah, which in Japan it's called Cabocha, but they are sort of pumpkin shaped, but they are green on the, green and striped on the outside, but they do have like a sort of deep orange flesh. And they have a really nice sweetness

and a really dense texture that's not stringy at all. So those are great for pumpkins. The pumpkins that they use in canned pumpkin filling, so like Libby's, you know, the most popular brand, the one that you see in every supermarket, they use their own, they've developed their own strain of butternut squash called Dickensons,

which is more similar to a butternut squash. You know, years ago, I was working at Cooks Illustrated, and I had a colleague who was working on a pumpkin pie recipe, and one of his goals was to really optimize pumpkin flavor. And what he found worked was if you actually, and, you know, still using canned pumpkin because nobody wants to really roast their own squashes for pumpkin pie. But what he found is that if you mix equal parts canned pumpkin and canned sweet potato

or canned yams, that actually, when you don't tell the person that is sweet potato or yam in there, if you have them tasted side by side, they will say that the one that has the yams in it actually tastes more pumpkin-y, you know, for lack of a better term. But that that's one of the tricks that I use if I'm going to be using canned ingredients for my pumpkin pie. And I'll mix equal parts, pumpkin and canned yam. That is the, like, direct culinary version of that meme where the giant African-American arm and the giant white person's arm are clasps together, it's one-can pumpkin puree, one-can sweet potato puree, and then underneath it says Thanksgiving. Speaking of one can, I'm everyone's taste is different. I'm pretty strict when I make my pumpkin pie. I use only Stewart's shelled bean.

Which is a joke, of course. But in fact, Stuart Sheld Beans is a product from, it is distributed by One Pie Cannon Company in West Paris, Maine, who create the One Pie brand pumpkin filling, which is very popular here in New England. I'll tell you this. Listeners may have gathered that I am not a big pumpkin pie guy. I do like a bean pie. I prefer a bean pie to a sweet potato pie or a pumpkin pie. So, you know, patronize your local nation of Islam bakers. That's my jam.

Is it a sweet bean pie? It is a sweet bean pie. Yeah, it's, they're usually made by black Muslim bakeries. Interesting. Of various kinds. Like you'll see a nation of Islam guys selling them on the street corner or some places, their storefront bakeries that sell them. Yeah, they're really good.

Well, Jesse, if you like bean pies, you probably, probably would enjoy Stewart's shell bean guacamole. Reddy right here on the can, one can of Stewart's shell beans, two clothes garlic, olive oil, lime juice, chicken broth, alapeno chilis, mint cilantro, salt and freshly ground pepper to taste, put it in a food processor, zero guacamole. That's... I was like there's no avocado in there at all. This reminds me of a green pea guacamole gate at the New York Times.

Oh, I remember that. Well, I'm just trying to make this podcast popular. I actually do love this. You ever mess around in your New England roots, Kenji, with Stuart Sheld beans? Does it mean anything you? I'm not familiar with them, no. All right. Well, I'll stop at the Haniford on the way back and buy the last few cans.

They're getting rid of them. Please put them in the mail. They're very special to me. I'll talk more about that later. But let's get back into this. So we heard that Kenji likes a little yam and his pumpkin pie. Deb, do you have any pumpkin pie tips when you're making them? I do use canned.

and I find that it's very stable and very solid. I'm not in a huge pumpkin pie family, though, so it doesn't – people don't really get obsessive about the flavor. I would say if I was trying to optimize for flavor, I might – you know, if I knew I had a good Cabotia squash or a good butternut squash, I might mix the two together and roast them and then puree them. But it's always a little bit more of a roulette, so I feel like the canned stuff is pretty reliable. My family is more into pumpkin cheesecake, to be honest. Oh, well. And it's less particular that the pumpkin flavor is like absolutely perfect. The canned stuff is fine.

I don't go in for many desserts. As everyone knows, I don't have a sweet tooth. I have an alcohol muller. But I do enjoy cheesecake because it is, it is, first of all, it's a cake. I don't want to get any letters about this. And second of all, it's got, it's very savory. And the pumpkin cheesecake sounds delicious. I presume that I could find a recipe for that on Smitten Kitchen somewhere.

You sure can. It has a little bit of bourbon. Oh, here we go. molar and it's optional. And it has a ginger snap and pecan crust. So it's really nice. Well, you say there's a little bit of bourbon in it. I mean, do you hollow out the center and just fill it with bourbon? Make it in kind of a... I could. It would be a little bit, you know, maybe the kids would sleep well, so it's got that way. Yeah, yeah. You might not have as many, two fakes. Well, what's interesting to me a little bit about this case is that we have

Brooke on the one hand saying, oh, no, we should roast our own pumpkins. And then their friend who went to culinary school is just saying it doesn't matter. or just use canned stuff. What do you think is the right answer? Who's right? Who's wrong? I think if Brooke does not like canned pumpkin pie filling and every time she eats it, she tastes something metallic and it turns her off,

then she should make her own pumpkin pie and not go to anyone else's house over Thanksgiving or pick a different pie that time because most people are going to be making it with canned pumpkin. Yeah, Brooke should make her own pumpkin pie and eat it alone. Exactly. Or I always, I'm like, oh, you have a very particular pumpkin pie that you make better than anyone else. Congratulations, that's your new dish to bring to Thanksgiving forever. No, the best part of Thanksgiving is not sharing. I think the best part of Thanksgiving is National Pie for Breakfast Day.

It's a holiday I invented. And that's what you do the next morning when you eat it cold out of the fridge because probably by the time the pie came out, you were too full to eat anyway. But the next morning, it is elite. That sounds great. I mean, I guess it really does, like a lot of these things does come down to taste, I guess. Yeah. But, I mean, I think what we've learned is that your average pumpkin is not going to

to necessarily make a better pumpkin pie or even a good pumpkin pie compared to canned. And Brooke, if you want to, if you want to go through the love and labor of roasting your squashes, it's on you to pick out the right combination of flavors such that it tastes good and not bad, right? That sounds right to me. Also, it's interesting that the fact that Brooke's friend is a culinary school graduate, but it was also saying like, just take it easy. It's fine.

It reminded me that neither of you are, went to CIA or culinary school or anything, right? No, I did not. How did your passions for food and food writing and cooking emerge? I'm just really, really picky. All right. I really, I think that picky people are just meant to be cooks because you have very strong opinions on what things should be and when they're made badly, even if you keep them to yourself in, like, mixed company. Not including this. So that's really where it came from.

So getting in the kitchen meal to make things the way I wanted them to be or the way I thought they would taste better has given me two decades of content and counting. When you say mixed company, do you mean mixed between you and others? I mean that with you guys, I've already gone off on green peppers and several other things. But if I'm at your house and you're putting like green peppers and your hash browns or whatever, I'm like, this is so nice. Thank you. Yeah. Before we started recording, Deb had some very hot takes about soggy peppers. That's for sure.

They were doing a mic test, and I'm like, let me tell you what's wrong with home fries at diners. And Kenji had it. You've always taken a very sort of scientific approach to cooking and figuring out why things cook the way they do. Yeah. Well, I was in school for biology, and then I decided I didn't want to do biology. And cooking was just a summer job I took when I was switching. majors from biology to architecture because I didn't know what to do that summer, and I needed to make some money. So cooking, yeah, I got a job at a restaurant as a cook and realized I loved it,

and then it's just grown from there. Where were you cooking, if I may ask? My first, that summer job was at a restaurant called Fire and Ice in Harvard Square. It was a Mongolian grill. So I was, I started as a prep cook, but within a week, I was, I was promoted to night of the round grill, which is how I spent my summer. All right. We'll get you a chef's jacket that says, K-O-T-R-G on it, Night of the Round Grill. That's awesome. Why do we move on?

Speaking of beans, we've got another bean-related dispute, right, Jesse? Here's something from Lindsay in Baltimore, Maryland. Can I make green bean casserole any time of the year? My wife, Angie, says, it should be reserved only for Thanksgiving and Christmas. But what if I joshed it up with fresh green beans, heavy whipping cream, horridged mushrooms, and air-fried onions? Angie says, if I make it fancy, it's not comfort food anymore. It's just a stunt.

Who's right? So, Deb, Kenji, either one of you can take this one. Just describe for the listener who may not know what a traditional, traditional green bean casserole is all about. And we're talking about cans and cans and casseroles, right? Yeah, describe it for the listener who may not know or the bailiff who may be from San Francisco. A traditional green bean casserole, you know, it's a common Thanksgiving side dish, but essentially you take canned green beans, so very soft green beans.

You drain them and then you mix them into a can of cream of mushroom soup. And then you pile that all into a casserole dish and top it with. with a can of French's fried onions and you bake it. And I think it's actually quite delicious that way. And it's very, very easy to make. It's a side dish that's really easy to make if you're using everything from cans. I'm thinking about getting a couple of cans on my way home

when I get those shell beans for you guys. Hey, Joel, green bean casserole, yes or no? Yes, I even make it at Thanksgiving. And do you make it the way that Kenji just described? Pretty much, yeah. Can and a can and a can? Yep. All right, great.

Now, you both, though, have recipes. involving fresh green beans. Deb, you want to talk about that a little bit? I do make it the bougie way, although I do not air fry the onions. I fry, fry the onions. But you do fry them yourself. I do fry them myself.

So, you know, so much of comfort food comes down to nostalgia. And if your nostalgia is for the can, can, can, like that's exactly what you should make. But I don't have that nostalgia. I didn't really care for it growing up. Deb, Deb grew up in what they call an ingredient household. And Kenji grew up very heavily influenced by a love for fast food, which I think is awesome. So sometimes our North Star is, like, a green market in California, and his is like, I don't know, a McDonald's on Broadway.

And so we're going, we're starting from the same place, but we're going in different directions. Anyway, so I didn't have a lot of nostalgia for classic green bean casserole, but I had fun. But I actually love green beans. They're probably one of my favorite, like top three vegetables. despite being green. And so I love cooking the green beans, a little al dente, and then you make a sauce with some minced mushrooms, and then I fry the onions in larger strips, and they're just like a fluffy pile, and it's so good.

How do you fry your onions? I actually toss them with a little bit of flour, and they're kind of in strands. So you end up with this almost like tousled spaghetti-looking top of the onions, and there's nothing you could buy in a can that compares. However, that may not be what your nostalgia is. I feel strongly that when somebody is, you know, people travel for Thanksgiving. We come from far. We travel for days.

We travel on the worst days of the year to come home for a certain kind of meal. I feel like it should be made the way it means something to you. And if that's not the version that it is, you know, that's not the right one. Yeah, but there's another kind of comfort to consider to comfort food, which is the comfort of the person cooking it, which could mean convenience on the one hand. But on the other hand, those of us and all four of us really do enjoy cooking, like, there's pleasure and comfort in the process of exploring a recipe or making it in a different way, right? So, Kenji, what's your opinion? We have Lindsay trying to make these green beans with fresh beans, heavy whipping cream, forged mushrooms, air-fried onions. Is Lindsay's green bean casserole too juz to be comfort food?

I mean, I kind of agree with Deb on this one where, you know, I think part of the comfort of a traditional green bean casserole, if you grew up eating the canned kind, is that the green beans are not al dente, right? And that there's a certain particular flavor and texture to Campbell's canned cream and mushroom soup. And if it doesn't have that, then it's not going to be comforting to you, you know. So when you have, you know, I have an old recipe that has al dente green beans in it. It's very similar to Debs. I used fried shallots instead of fried onions. But if I was going to invite a bunch of people over to Thanksgiving dinner and they come expecting green bean casserole, I would, even if I was making it with fresh green beans, I would probably cook them until they were pastel dente, you know, until they're kind of olive green and very tender, you know, braised. And so that, because you want, like, with a casserole dish like that, I feel like when you take a bite of it, you want it to just kind of go down easy.

You want it to coach your mouth. You want to be able to eat it without teeth, you know? Right. so that everyone at the table at the table can enjoy it from baby, baby to grandpa. We finish it in the oven, and that's why I always start it kind of al dente. So by the time you're crisping it with the onions on top. It's not going to be. Yeah, you're trying to ask you on the secondary question that Lindsay asks.

Is green bean casserole a Christmas and Thanksgiving dish? Yes. But that doesn't mean you can't have it other times, I guess. Yeah, there are no rules. If you want to have it in January, if you want to have it on a hot summer day in July, you can do that. That's where the pole beans are in season anyway, and you can get them fresh at the market. Yeah, I would say you can serve green bean casserole anytime you want. I never have.

I've never made it not on Thanksgiving or Christmas unless I was testing a recipe, but you can if you want. No rules just right. A lot of people think that's the motto of Outback Steakhouse. It's actually the motto of Stewart's shelled beans, which I am bringing down in favor of Lindsay. Green bean casserole can be comforting at any time of the year, and it is fine if you want to use fresh ingredients. But be wary of your guest's expectations. If they're expecting can glop, they may be disappointed and they may be discomfited by your comfort food. But I think it's all fine in the pan.

Let's take a quick break. When we come back, more comfort food disputes with Kenji Lopez-Ault and Deb Pearlman. Judge Hodgman, we are taking a quick break from clearing the docket. Let's talk about what we have going on. So, Jesse, as you know, and you at home can see, I'm joining you penultimately this summer from my summertime chambers at WERU here in Orland, Maine, WERU. If you want to listen online, and you can also click on donate, because much like many public radio stations, even those not affiliated with NPR, as I've mentioned before,

they're losing a lot of funding under the current administration, and they need your help to bring you community news and support all year long more than ever. So w-eru.org, look, it's just a lot of fun to listen to. Also in local public affairs, Joel, did you see that Graham Platner is running for Senate? Yes, very excited. Yeah, Graham is an incredible person who I've known for the past couple of years, He is the current co-runner of a wonderful oyster farm up in Sorrento, Maine called Waukeg Neck Oysters. Boy, those oysters are good. And then out of the blue, this incredibly smart, articulate, lovely, funny guy that I've

gotten to know the past couple of years, text me saying, guess what? I'm running for Senate against Susan Collins. And boy, you've seen him all over your media. If you're someone who's interested in politics and also someone who doesn't like Susan Collins very much. I'm sure you've seen Graham Platner give some very, very powerful speeches about how our true enemy is the oligarchy, and I happen to agree with him. So I'm just letting you know. Graham for Senate is his website. Graham for Senate, his name is Graham Platner. You should probably take a look and see if he shares your values, and if he is, it's time to

get together and support the candidates that we like. I mean, Graham is a guy who had never, the highest office he ever held was a harbor master in Sullivan, Maine, but he knows, as I think we all do know in our bones, that if we're going to see change in this country that we love, we've got to get up and start doing stuff, organizing, volunteering, donating, if it's possible, even running for office. It's all within our reach. And I think Graham's campaign really embodies that in a way that is very inspiring to me, and maybe to you as well. So why don't you check him out? Now, in more mundane, uh, mundane, uh, uh, uh, post-apocalyptic news. There's a great movie called They Live by John Carpenter. It is a paranoid fantasy about how the oligarchy controls us all. Timely, maybe. Certainly was in the 80s. I don't know about now.

Why don't you decide I'm hosting a screening of They Live in my hometown. It is my hometown in Brooklyn, New York, down there at the Nighthawk Prospect Park tomorrow night, depending on when you're listening to this. I'm talking about September 18th at 7.15 p.m. I'll be up there introducing this wonderful, weird, funny, bizarre, and I think more timely than ever movie, They Live by John Carpenter, starring Keith David and Rowdy, Roddy Piper, among others.

It's an incredible movie. If you've never seen it, don't watch it until you can come join us at the Nighthawk tomorrow night. September 18th, 7.15 p.m. If you want tickets, I'll be there. hanging around, come see me and say hello, go to bit.ly slash obey Hodgman. That's bit. dot Lee, obey Hodgman. Obey Hodgman is one word, all capital letters. That's what's going on in my life, Jesse. What's happening with you? We have so many amazing new things in my vintage and antique store that put this on shop. Lots of ladies things. So, you know, look, the roots of the put this on shop are in my

menswear blog put this on, but we have grown to encompass lots of beautiful vintage and a designer and not that old women's clothing and lots of incredible jewelry. Plus, I'm just like, I'm in the process of clearing out some of my personal stashes. So there are some of like my favorite most specialist things going into the store. One of them is this ferry boat, this model of a ferry boat that was made by Danish prisoners that I brought home from Denmark. It is absolutely one of the things I love the most. It comes with its own ferry docking station, I guess.

Yeah. No harbor master. I just bought a set of books from the 40s about carrying for your canary. I think you're going to want those if you have a Canary or someone you know does. I have a big enamel sign for Flauchime shoes in their in their classic sort of shield logo that's probably from the 50s or 60s or something like that. Plus, I got, I recently got a bunch of goggles. Just have a lot of different goggles. No. I just bought a bunch of goggles. I don't know what to tell you about it. I just got into goggles buying for a second there. A lot of beautiful silver and mixed metal bracelets that are suitable for both men and women. Many of those come out of my own personal collection.

All this is online at put this on shop.com. That's put this on shop.com. Yeah, I would strongly encourage you to go check it out. I'm a big stick pin guy. I'm really a big supporter of putting a stick pin in your lapel. whether you're a fellow or a lady, and I have a lot of beautiful Victorian and Edwardian gold stick pins

that are in the shop right now. That's all online at put this on shop.com. And right around the corner from me is the 25th anniversary of my public radio show Bullseye, which I started as a college sophomore at UC Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California. We are going to have three 25th anniversary shows,

one at the pit in New York City, one at the Cumbua Jazz Center in Santa Cruz, California, and one here in Los Angeles at LAists' performance studio, the Crawford Family Forum in Pasadena. We haven't announced the guests yet, but let's just say, John, that our Santa Cruz show will be featuring an actor who is Santa Cruz's favorite son, as well as Santa Cruz's favorite stepbrother.

Okay, we'll be back with more in just a second on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. We're clearing the docket of some comfort feuds with our guests, Deb Pearlman and Kenji Lopez Alt. Kenji's cooking techniques, his baking techniques, specifically came up the other day on the show. Yeah, that's right.

I wanted to ask this question of Kenji. So on a recent bonus members-only mailbag episode that we do once a month for maximum fun members, we all, we were talking about chocolate chip cookies, which even I, a non-sweet-tooth person love because they're kind of the perfect cookie. Right. And they can be a little savory, too. And they can be a little savory as well, especially if you had some Stewart's shell beans and MSP.

I'll give that recipe later. What I wanted to talk about was that you and a number of others have recommended letting your cookie dough rest in the fridge at least overnight before cooking them. Right. And we were wondering why. Well, there's a number of reasons. So first of all, you can, well, it makes them taste better. So if you cook cookies, bake cookies side by side with freshly made dough. I mean, I don't know.

Sure. Freshly made dough versus dough that's been rested overnight. You find that the ones that have been rested overnight have. a more complex sort of caramel notes, a little sort of, yeah, the flavor, the flavor's just become a little bit more complex, a little bit more savory almost. But, you know, there's a few things that happen. So there's, you know, part of them are textual, so your flour is going to hydrate, which, so the starch in there will absorb the liquid better. Your sugar's going to dissolve more fully. So when it bakes, you get better surface caramelization and some kind of

crisper edges. And then also your, your fat's going to solidify hard. so that when your cookies bake, they don't spread quite as much. And so you get a better contrast between those kind of crispy edges and the chewier center. You know, you know, that's all I want in this life is for my fat to solidify harder. The other thing that happens is that there's enzymatic breakdown of the flour. And so when, when, you know, when cookies bake, there's a, there's caramelization going on and there's also the Mayard reaction, you know, the browning reaction. you know, the browning reaction that turns your toast brown and develops those complex flavors. When your flour is broken down enzymatically overnight, those reactions can take place a little bit

faster. And so you get just more complex flavor and better flavor development. So, yeah, virtually any cookie recipe, any chocolate chip cookie recipe you have and most other cookies as well, if you're used to just making it and baking it, if you've got the time, I would suggest letting it sit in the fridge overnight and it will improve almost any cookie dough you've got. Yeah, I've really found that that enzymatic breakdown step is so important in a chocolate chip cookie recipe. That's why I make my chocolate chip cookies with a little bit of oxyclean. Here's a case from Lucas in Orlando, Florida. My girlfriend likes her ice cream soft.

Dear Penthouse, she lets it sit out on the counter. before scooping. Sometimes she puts it in the microwave for 15 to 30 seconds. I think both of these methods ruin the ice cream. Please stop her from doing this. Also, Judge John Hodgman asked what our favorite ice cream flavors are. Mine is Neapolitan. Hers is cookie dough.

Well, obviously, for cookie dough, what you want to do is you want to leave it out overnight and eat it the next day for that enzymatic breakdown. Joel, I saw you nodding your head at that technique. Which one do you use? Well, the microwave thing, my wife, who is a real person in her own right. Yeah. Yeah. She does that in the microwave, and I don't think that's good.

You don't think it's good. Okay. The microwave is not the ideal way to do this, because it just makes the outside soupy and all the inside remains the same. Yeah, because a microwave only penetrates like a centimeter maybe from the outside and so you get. But the wide microwaves, Kenji, why do microwaves often heat things in the center? Like, you get that kind of zapped inside.

What kinds of things are you talking about? I'm thinking, like, sometimes when you're like, it heats the centers before the edges of some things that are really cold. I'm kind of think of a good example. I've never had that happen. I don't know. I'm thinking of some very inappropriate examples. I'm not a big ice cream from the freezer eater, but my husband loves it. And he also does the 10 seconds in the microwave because it's otherwise too hard.

to scoot. However, I am a huge fan of softserve, and so if that's what she's going for, I am all for it. I think that why are we chewing ice cream? Oh, hold on. It's really cold, and you're like chipping it from the freezer. As someone from New England, which has the chewiest ice cream in the world, I think. You know, the spots in Boston, you're like the original steves, and even now like Toscaninis or if you go out to like Northampton and get heralds, like the really dense custody ice creams that you put in your mouth, and they're not hard, but they have chew to them. That's my favorite kind of ice.

I like my ice cream, nice and chewy. And I don't know if you find that in Maine as well. Oh, yeah. I feel like a dense creaminess is nice, but not because it's so cold that you are more chewing it in chunks than you are. Chunky. I don't know. How do you eat soft serve?

I think soft serve is perfect A good soft serve Where did you grow up getting your soft serve ice cream, Deb? And what's your favorite soft serve combo or non-combo? I grew up going to Carvel. My taste of change, thank you. No, I still love Carvel. We're fans of Fudgy the aisle over here.

Yeah. Yes, I grew up with Carvel. I've been told that people don't really like Carvel. It's just nostalgia, but I disagree. It's perfect. But I would say a very good, like if you're in Italy, like Fior de Latte soft serve, which is like not even vanilla. It's just kind of cream. And they often add flavors to it is perfect.

But when you say soft serve in Italy, you're talking just like gelato, right? Which tends to be softer than regular, you know, than American ice cream. I also in college, I actually worked. I was in D.C., but I worked for a year or two at an ice cream shop that was a frozen custard shop. The guy was from New England. And he had a lot of nostalgia. So they actually just sold frozen custard. And it was a lot richer and it was really good.

And was it a little bit chewy? It was a little bit chewy. But like chewy because it was dense and cleanly and thick. And not because it was like frozen and you would to chip it off. So when I think of soft serve ice cream, we do have hard ice cream here in Maine. But if you're going to take away fried clam place or whatever, they're most likely to have soft serve. and in that case what's your preference

one of those pull-handled swirly soft serve what's your favorite flavor and do you do the twist you got to do the twist you combo the two flavors so if you have chocolate and vanilla do you get the

that's what we call a twist I would say my Carvel order was always chocolate vanilla but now I've really come to appreciate just plain vanilla but I don't mind a chocolate topping on it like hotline or a chocolate dip chocolate shell dip

magic shell. A little waxy, a little chocolatey. It's so good. John, when you take your family to Maine for the first time in the year, like when you guys go out at the end of June or whenever it is that you head out there, go to the clamshack, you turn to your family and say, let's twist again like we did last summer. I do. I go, I take them to Baggedoose lunch and I say those exact words.

That's some topical, shabby checker humor. Kenji, what's your favorite ice cream and how do you prep it on the counter or how do you get it ready to go um my favorite ice cream well can i give two answers so if i if i'm in cambridge it'll it'll be the burnt caramel from tuscanini's um which is a flavor i think they invented uh and if i'm buying it from like the supermarket it'll generally be anything with peanut butter in it so like a peanut butter swirl or i like um anything with like peanut butter cups in it you know um so yeah peanut peanut butter a little bit of chocolate jessie i'm sorry i stopped hearing kenji there for a minute what was he talking about was ice cream can you hear me i feel like no i now i can hear you kenji

okay yeah no i think it was when you started talking about peanut butter ice cream my brain decided to stop listening to you okay wow sorry that's just i mean as a fan of savor you would think i would love that idea but i'm sorry i i never even thought about peanut butter swirl and ice cream. Really? Yeah, John, I, I am a person who, as you know, can't eat chocolate. And so as a non-choclet eater who prefers a savorier ice cream to a fruity ice cream generally, I love peanut butter ice cream because it is like, you know, peanut butter and caramel

are the closest things I can get to an ice cream with chocolate and ice cream. And so whether it's a swirl of peanut butter or just straight up peanut butter ice cream, I love them. Yeah. Well, I stand corrected and I will give it a try. After all, as far as I'm concerned, the only candy bar is a Zagnut and the only, and the best Halloween treat is a Reese's peanut butter cup. So I ought to try it. That is definitely true, yes.

That is just. Yeah, thank you. I'm glad we were able to agree on that. Did we decide on the answer to this question? Oh, yeah. What's the best way? What's the best way to soften up your ice cream? Oh, I don't, I'm not really an ice cream softener.

I mean, I think the easy answer is that he serves himself and then she can, she can eat the ice cream when she wants. Family harmony. I actually, usually in recipes when I'm telling people, like if it's a recipe for an ice cream cake or an ice cream sandwich, and I know that the ice cream might be too hard to scoop easily from the freezer, I usually tell people to just put it in the fridge for 10 minutes, which has the same effect and a little bit less dramatic where you don't risk having any melty parts.

But I'm married to somebody who does the microwave for 10-second thing, and it doesn't bother me. Is it that the average home freezer is too cold for ice cream? No. Most home freezers don't go much below, don't go too far below freezing. You know, they're not like the negative 80-degree lab freezers. No, it's just, and it also varies from brand to brand, you know, depending on how much overrun there is, depending on what kind of sort of.

of stabilizers are in there. So I find, you know, like a real dense, minimal ingredient ice cream like, like a Hagen does, tends to be, yeah, that tends to be a little firmer in the freezer than something that has, you know, like Ben and Jerry's has like Carragina and a couple of other things that helped that emulsified and stabilize it. And that tends to be a little softer straight out of the freezer. So it could just vary from brand to brand also. But I don't think there's much, there's going to be too much of a difference in how cold your

freezer is that's going to seriously affect. the texture of ice cream. All right, based on that expertise and all of your opinions, I'm going to go and say, you like what you like in terms of the softness. The best way to soften it up is to set it in the refrigerator for a period of time, figure out, do a little science, do a little math, figure out what time brings you the consistency you like, but by, but for God or whatever's sake, keep it out of their microwave. So speaks the shelled beans can.

Hey, since our, unlike ours, your time is valuable. going to go to a lightning round, right, Jesse? Absolutely. Ball to Nerdist on the MaxFund subreddit says, my wife thinks ice cream is a summertime food and soup is a wintertime food. I want to eat soup and ice cream year round. Who's right? Year round for both of them. Ice cream, year round soup fall winter for me. Ice cream is a year round food. You know what it's also a year round food? Ice cream soup. Just stir it until it knows. That's what my three-year-old does that every time he wants me to make him ice cream soup. That's classic. Carol in Georgia asks, can a grilled cheese sandwich also be called a cheese toasty?

My spouse says my Midwestern family is weird because we say cheese toasty. Yes, you can call it a cheese toasty, but only if you're in Ireland. I think in the Midwest, you're not allowed to say that. Or in England, yeah. And if it's made in like one of those sandwich presses, yeah. Yeah, Deb, explain what those things are. Oh, I'm like, what this hand was. No, it'll be great on that.

Let's all do our imitation of a toasty maker. It just basically looks like a waffle iron, but inside it fits a piece of sandwich bread, too, actually, and it usually has a diagonal cut. So you can just go through your grilled cheese in there before you cook it, and it'll toast it up for you. But I don't think it's the same thing as pan-fried grilled cheese. No, because those typically don't involve that buttery crust that you want in a good grilled cheese. Yeah, exactly. But they're very efficient machines, and I feel like they're very household standard in the UK and Ireland, and I don't see them. they exist here, but it's not like something every house.

They were sold on TV for a while, like maybe in the early 90s. I remember it. The blue screen order online thing. A toasty and a grilled cheese are different things. A toasty is made in a toasty maker. And if you go to a pub in England where they are serving toasties, you could get one with cheese. You also might add, and this is true, beans. They do it, but that's a toasty, not a grilled cheese.

Let's do this one from Wendy, and then we'll wrap it up there. All right, my husband claims his comfort foods are iceberg lettuce, cottage cheese, and celery. Those aren't comfort foods, right? I don't know. It depends if you're on a diet in the 70s. Did he grow up at a spa in the 80s? At a club? This guy wears leg warmers everywhere.

I like to believe that he's chopping up the iceberg lettuce and mixing it up with cottage cheese and chopped celery and he's making a little salad. Oh, I was thinking the celery and the cottagees go together and then the iceberg is like a boat. That's also a beautiful way to do it. Wait, are they his comfort foods together? Because all three of those are foods that I really like. I just don't put them together. It's a little unclear. So you can consider it.

Iceberg is close. I mean, when we talk about comfort food, and goes back to Green Bay Castle, right? There's a little nostalgia element to it. What did we take comfort in growing up? What reminds us of a time that we thought was better, even though, We all know that time moves in one direction and it does not get better or worse. It just is all terrible. Comfort is on the tongue of the taster, I think.

I'll tell you, I had, speaking of the tongue of the taster, I had some cottage cheese on my tongue for the first time in a number of years. And I was going to say, it is God or whatever damn delicious. I like cottage cheese. Oh, I love cottage cheese. What's your number one recipe for cottage cheese that people wouldn't think to add cottage cheese to? Oh, using it in place of like a ricotta, if you're making like an American style. layered lasagna or something like that. Cottage cheese works great.

I think it comes up better than most store-bought ricotta does, which the store-bought ricotta generally is kind of grainy and gummy, whereas cottage cheese, whatever brand you get, it's always going to be kind of creamy and curdy and delicious. And delicious. Deb, you like all of these. Would you say that these are comfort foods yes or no? Final ruling.

No, but it's subjective. We have a split decision. The Stewart's shell beans shall make the final determination. If they're comforting to you, their comfort to all. Deb and Kenji, tell me about where our listeners can find your work. And to start with you, Deb. If people like you better than Kenji, what stuff should they get? They can go to my website, smittenkitchen.com.

That'll take you to everything you need. Fantastic. You got cookbooks. You got the podcast. Okay. What about you, Kenji? You can go to Kenji Lopezalt.com for my cookbooks. For my videos and recipes, I've transitioned over to Patreon so you can find Kenji Lopez Alt on Patreon or on YouTube or on Instagram or all your social media things. Well, Deb and Kenji, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. It was really nice to see you and meet you. And your podcast is the best. I also enjoy listening. to it. The recipe with Kenji and Deb is available wherever you get your podcasts, and Stewart's Shelled Beans are available for now at the Hanifords. Look, I'm telling you both, you get a can of this, you drain them, you mix them with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar and red onion. Maybe you put some, maybe you put some celery in there. It's a delicious

salad. That's my guacamole recipe. Thank you both so much. Really, what a pleasure. Thanks for having us on. Bye. Bye. The docket is now clear. That's it for another episode of the Judge John Hodgman podcast. Judge John Hodgman was created by Jesse Thorne and John Hodgman, our social media manager, Dan Telfer. This is Dan's last week on the program.

Thank you so much, Dan, for all your hard work. We wish you all the best in the future. The podcast is edited by A.J. McKin. Daniel Spear is our video producer. The show is produced by Jennifer Marmer. photos from the show are on our Instagram which is Judge John Hodgman or you can view them on the web on the

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It's the return of our friend and yours, Nick Offerman from Parks and Recreation and Devs and Civil War and everything you like and nothing that you hate. Do you have any disputes that you'd like Nick Offerman to weigh in on? Disputes about woodworking techniques. He's an avid woodworker and canoe builder. What about mustache grooming disputes?

What about questions and disputes about acting? When is it good acting? When is it bad acting? Anything to do with Chicago. He loves to talk about that toddling town, including the Chicago Cubs. Anything you like that you think Nick Offerman would like is something that we want to hear about. Or anything you ate. You think Nick Offerman will hate is something we want to hear about.

Send in your Offerman disputes to Maximumfund.org or email me directly at maximumfund.org. That's Hodgman, I should say, at maximum fund.org. Do you got great outdoors disputes? Do you have horny marriage disputes? There we go. Forgot about that part. Send them to us for our Nick Offerman episode at Maximumfund.org slash JJ. And indeed, send us any dispute you have, big or small.

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