Never Put Meatballs on Spaghetti, with Samin Nosrat

Every day we’re all doing a little bit of chemistry: when we bake potatoes, add a little salt to our pasta, or even bake a box cake. And award-winning chef Samin Nosrat just loves to nerd out over all this. She's the author of the best-selling book “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” and has a new book out called “Good Things.” Today, Samin joins us to talk all about the science and art of cooking. Plus — why you should NEVER put meatballs on spaghetti. Video available on Spotify. Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsSaminNosrat Samin’s Book: https://ciaosamin.com/shop/good-things In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Welcome to Science Chats with Samin Nosrat (01:27) Samin’s childhood in California (06:05) Samin’s obsession with boxed cake mix (14:29) Why salt, fat, acid and heat matter (17:17) The magic of salt (21:11) Why soy sauce and cheese can bring out big feelings (32:26) Why we bake with room-temperature eggs (34:32) Why tomatoes don’t belong in the fridge (37:00) The geopolitics of cinnamon (40:07) Why vanilla beans cost so much (42:15) The value of handmade food (47:10) Why you shouldn’t put meatballs on spaghetti This episode was produced by Wendy Zukerman, with help from Meryl Horn, Ekedi Fausther-Keeys, Michelle Dang, and Rose Rimler. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Video editing and sound design by Bobby Lord. Fact checking by Diane Kelly. Music written by Emma Munger, So Wylie, Peter Leonard, Bumi Hidaka and Bobby Lord. Thanks to Roland Campos, Skyline Studios and Humdinger Studios. Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Wendy Zukerman?

  I'm snorting, I'm snorting already. Already, we haven't even started. What's gonna happen?

• 0:18Wendy Zukerman?

  Hi, I'm Wendy Zukerman and you're listening to Science Versus. Today on the show, the wonderful chemistry and science of food. Yeah, because even if you've never set foot in a lab, you are doing a little bit of science every day when you add a little salt to your pasta or you cook your vegetables, or even if you make a Betty Crocker cake, you are doing some really cool science. And one award-winning chef who's thought a lot about all this is Samin Nosrat. She's the author of the bestselling book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. She has a new book out, it's called Good Things. And I've wanted to get Samin on the show for ages because she makes me think about

• 1:01Wendy Zukerman?

  cooking and the food that I shove in my mouth in this completely new and very nerdy way. And so that's what we're talking about today, the science of cooking, plus why you should never put meatballs on spaghetti. My interview with Samin Nosrat is coming up just after the break.

• 1:27Speaker 01

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• 2:49Speaker 01

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• 2:57Wendy Zukerman?

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• 3:40Wendy Zukerman?

  Welcome to the show, Samin. Thank you so much for coming in.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Thanks so much for having me.

• 3:45Wendy Zukerman?

  Growing up in San Diego, I've heard you say, and you write about it a little bit in the new book, that you never really felt like you belonged that much in San Diego. Can you tell us about it?

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, my family's from Iran, and my parents came to San Diego sometime in the mid 70s. In 1979, there was a religious revolution in Iran. So a lot of people sort of sensed that coming. And my parents, my father's side of the family was a practice of religion called the Baha'i faith, and they were persecuted. So they all fled and were religious asylees. And my mom... Like came after, followed my dad here. And so I was born here and this, and I was born here to a family who wasn't entirely like willingly, you know, in San Diego, like it was just right.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  There's the trauma of leaving your homeland behind. My, um, you know, we, there was, in ways I, I'm sure I can't imagine and probably many ways I witnessed, there was racism and sort of Islamophobia directed at us and to my parents. And I'm sure that they had a pretty clear sense of like not feeling very welcome or belonging here. And I also think because they didn't leave, especially my mom did not leave Iran thinking she'd be gone forever. My mom would say things like, you know, when you go, when you leave this house, like you're, you're stepping into America, but when you step over the threshold into the house, this

• 5:20Speaker 02

  is Iran and you're going to like behave like an Iranian child, right? And, um, I, my mom, it was so important for her to instill in us a relationship to the place that we were from. And one of the ways that she did that sort of most powerfully was through food. And so, and I have always loved to eat. So like, and the food is good, you know?

• 5:47Wendy Zukerman?

  And your mom's an amazing chef.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  And my mom's a great cook. Yeah. Um, and I remember there were things where like I would bring Persian food to school for lunch and people, you know, it was the classic like immigrant kid being like, ew, ew, what's that? The smell of the whatever in the lunchroom.

• 6:02Wendy Zukerman?

  And they would have been eating some disgusting peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Totally. And so, or like.

• 6:10Wendy Zukerman?

  Americans are gonna get mad at me saying that, but it's just.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Oh, you think it's, oh, yeah, I actually love PBJ too. But, um, I know it's a very American thing though. Like other, other cultures were like, what are you people doing, putting that stuff in your mouth? Um, but then, and what's funny is now, like, you know, 40 years later. Persian food and a lot of Middle Eastern Persian food, a lot of times it gets appropriated by non Iranian cooks into their, onto their restaurant menus, where it gets a sort of a glam, like a makeover. And, and on the one hand, I'm really happy for more and more people to have exposure to our foods. And in other ways, it makes me so mad. Like,

• 6:55Speaker 02

  it's like you want our food. You know what I mean? You want to eat the crispy rice. You, or there was a drink I used to have. It's like a summer drink called Sekanjabine, which is like a, it's kind of like maybe an early relative of a shrub. So it's like a vinegar and sugar syrup that's boiled down with mint. And you make this like really thick, very fragrant minty syrup. And it's so tangy and refreshing. It's kind of like the original Gatorade in a way. Like, right? It was just one of my favorite childhood things. And I remember having like a water bottle of it with a mint leaf in it when I was a kid. And some people, like little kids.

• 7:29Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, God.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  School were like, ew, gross. Like, what's in your water? You gross, like alien?

• 7:34Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  You know? And now, of course, like every like hipster bar has shrubs on their menu, you know? So there's just this way where I, I, it's like an extra pain, a level of pain where I'm like, this is yet another way in which like our humanity is not recognized. And you just like take from, you pick and choose what you want. And this is like historically been done against all, you know what I mean? Like, Americans love tacos but hate Mexicans. So like, it's just, it's, it's not, it's not unique to us, but it does hurt when, when I feel that.

• 8:12Wendy Zukerman?

  You talk about in the, in your new book, that as a kid, cake mixes became like a Betty Crocker cake, became kind of this simple.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  My obsession.

• 8:21Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, your obsession. What was it about the Betty Crocker cake? Or the, you know, those cake mixes?

• 8:28Speaker 02

  My mom, my mom was really, um,

• 8:32Speaker 02

  She was very committed to like an organic only, like low sugar, you know, like sort of a very hippie, like rules in the household for the children of like, we're only eating fresh fruits and vegetables. We shopped at the vegetable, at the like hippie co-op. And so it's not that we were never allowed dessert, but, but even when she went to get us the birthday cakes and things for occasions, special occasions, they came from like the finest European bakeries, right? And they were covered in chocolate shard, in chocolate shavings. And they were just this like dense chocolate cake. And there, I just never wanted to eat that. I wanted to eat what all the white kids had, like

• 9:14Speaker 02

  at the bake sales. I wanted to eat the fluffy, yellow choc-, you know, yellow cake with chocolate frosting, like it was soft. And I would have never been allowed to have that. That would have just, that was like, not okay. We never entered our home.

• 9:27Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  And so this is again, going back to the like outsider-ness. I think it became a symbol, like the, the yellow cake in a way became like this symbol of fitting in. And so, and there is something just extraordinary about cake mixes and their, the, the very light, like incredibly tender texture, which almost feels like it's like a space, like astronaut food or something, because it's, it's not, it's like, doesn't seem naturally achievable. And so I sort of became obsessed as a young cook and with like, there must be a way to achieve some sort of like lightness, because every cake I, you make a cake with

• 10:09Speaker 02

  butter and it's dense and heavy. You make, you know, you could use the same exact ingredients as what's in the, we think is in the yellow cake cake mix. You could follow the joy of cooking, Martha Stewart, anybody's like classic yellow cake recipe, and it would still come out quite dense. And I just wanted this lightness.

• 10:26Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah. How do the cake mixes do it? What?

• 10:28Speaker 02

  So the, well, my, this was a many year journey for me. And I didn't know the science of it. But over time, I learned that like butter is made of, you know, it's made of fat primarily, but also milk solids, which are like proteins and water. It's an emulsion. And so when you cream butter and you are like, you know, whipping sugar into it to make this like kind of light texture, that's the, you're aerating the butter and that's the main source of lightness in a cake. Butter is in this kind of emulsist. It's like a magical state of emulsion. That's why it's like, it can be on your counter and it's a solid, right?

• 11:08Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  It kind of has this incredible range of temperatures at which it stays in this solid emulsified state, which is why it's like that amazing thing when you like spread butter, cold butter on your warm toast and it's like, kind of like some of it melts, but some of it's just soft still when you bite into the soft butter.

• 11:27Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  And so you have that, and, and the thing about it is the melting point of butter, like chocolate, is very close to human, our, our body temperature. So it's so pleasing, the way it melts, it melts on the tongue in this really like amazing way, right?

• 11:44Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  That's like part, think of you eat a piece of chocolate and like part of the pleasure of it is it's just like melting on your tongue. And so, um, so butter is kind of this miracle ingredient, but also like you have to understand there's water in there. And when water and flour combine and start mixing, that's when gluten strands start forming. And gluten is a, is a, like a protein that is, leads to chewiness and toughness. It's what you, you want to develop gluten in something like a crusty loaf of bread so that when you cut into it or bite into it, you get that like sourdough chew. You know what I mean?

• 12:19Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  But that's not the thing you want in a cake. In a cake, you want it to like crumble and tend, dissolve tenderly on, or that's what I want is like tenderness on my tongue. And so you want to prevent gluten from forming, which is why they use lower protein, lower gluten flours, things like cake flour and pastry flour to make cake. And also when you have oil, um, if, and so fat is, inhibits gluten formation. It kind of coats flour and it makes, like, you can think of it almost like, um, it makes it slippery so it's the, the flour is not going to combine into long gluten strands because it's kind of like, um, lubricated by this outer layer of fat.

• 12:58Wendy Zukerman?

  Right.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  So then the thing that the way cake mix is made industrially, like at some point I kind of went and learned about that. And it's made in these, you can think of them like massive food processors, just like huge machines where they combine all the dry ingredients with shortening, which is a solid fat. It's a solid oil, right? And they, and they mix. And because it is solid, but it's soft at like these at regular room temperature, they can put shortening in there and coat the flour, you know, mix it without any, they're, they're pre, they're pre oiling your, your, the flour in the cake mix so that when you bring it home and you add your oil and your water,

• 13:43Speaker 02

  your less gluten will form, but it doesn't. And it's done for so long and on such an industrial level and so carefully that you can't see the fat, right? You don't see any of that. You can't, it just looks like flour and cocoa powder when you dump out a chocolate cake mix. But that's what's happened to it is like the flour has already been pre, pre coated with fat. And so there, I just was like, huh, I'll never be able to do that. I don't want to make a cake with shortening. That's not going to taste good. Like I want it to be with butter, but I don't know how to do this. And then at some point I stumbled into, um, which is so funny because maybe if I had been looking, well, like if I had been more method, I'm not, I'm not saying I'm like methodical in any of this. I am not a scientist.

• 14:26Wendy Zukerman?

  But this is where, are we at two decades in this journey right now?

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, which honestly, maybe if I had been more methodical, I could have solved this a lot sooner because literally there is a book. It is, it is like a, it is a legendary book called The Cake Bible. Like honestly, I could have just looked in the cake Bible.

• 14:42Wendy Zukerman?

  No, but come on, come on. You think like in Lord of the Rings, Frodo could have just looked at the map, you know? Got the journey.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Totally, totally. So, so like, um, Rose Levy Baronbaum is kind of this extraordinary, just well, like, like queen of cakes. And she wrote this book called The Cake Bible. So whereas when a typical yellow cake, a typical sort of homemade cake starts with room temperature butter that you're whipping sugar into, and that step is called creaming, reverse creaming sort of mimics what's done in the cake mix industry, right? Where you take your flour and your sugar, and if you're using cocoa powder, whatever your dry ingredients are, and then you take very soft, but not too soft, not so soft that it will separate into water and fat, butter, you take butter that is just at the

• 15:36Speaker 02

  exact right temperature, and you work it into the flour, very slowly, in your mixer or your food processor, in such a way that like by the time you've worked all the flour in, it actually just looks, or all, excuse me, by the time you've worked the butter in, the flour just looks like a dry ingredient. It's kind of amazing.

• 15:56Wendy Zukerman?

  Wow.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  It is this, but it's all about having the butter.

• 16:00Wendy Zukerman?

  You did it.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, Rose did it. And so, and it was one of those things where I was like, this was here all along, and I feel like such an idiot. And also, I felt like a genius, because the first time I made it, people came over and I was like, I did it, you guys, I made a homemade Betty Crocker. And people were like, I don't, and then they started eating it, they're like, oh my god, it really tastes like it. So it felt like that was truly a miracle that I thought. I would, I know, there were so many bad cakes on the way to that cake.

• 16:30Wendy Zukerman?

  In the middle. But you did it.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  I did it, yeah.

• 16:35Wendy Zukerman?

  Um, okay, so to continue on with your journey, a lot of people, including me, sort of first met you after you wrote the book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, which then became this Netflix documentary, which is amazing, the book, the documentary. For those who haven't come across it, what is the overriding thesis of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat?

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's basically that if you can sort of grasp why salt, fat, acid, and heat

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Are important elements and understand, you know, their function in the kitchen on flavor and on texture, and how to balance them and how to use them. That that they they will work as sort of the four points on the compass for you as a cook, no matter what you're cooking. And so whether or not you want to follow a recipe, paying attention to salt, fat, acid, and heat will enhance the way that you feel independent, are able to cook instinctively, understand what's going on underneath. The maybe steps one through six that are someone else lays out for you. So that in case you need to substitute something,

• 17:53Speaker 02

  you understand why that vinegar was there and why it would work or wouldn't work to replace it with lemon juice.

• 18:00Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  So with salt and fat and acid, those are all tangible. Fats come in many forms. There's oils and butters, there's animal fats. And same with acid comes in many forms. But heat is kind of this like ineffable, intangible thing. But as a young cook, I kind of realized that was how everyone around me that I was looking up to and learning from really oriented themselves in the kitchen on any given day. And they were not always consulting cookbooks and recipes. The things we were always tasting for were salt and fat and acid.

• 18:32Wendy Zukerman?

  I think about it every time I have avocado on toast because I'm like, Samin would be so proud of me. I'm toasting my bread, there's my hate. I've got my avocado and then my salt. And I get some of my basic.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, there you go. You did it all.

• 18:45Wendy Zukerman?

  Imagine, but I always think of you. And I'm like.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  I mean, I am so glad. And that's the thing I always say is like, this is actually a lot simpler than you think. It's some, it's just some jargon you have to like wrap your mind around. But we all naturally do this. I mean, all of these things are things are our palates have evolved to seek and to enjoy, right? And so like, if you are a person who goes, has ever been to a taqueria. And has garnished your own burrito or taco with sour cream and/or cheese and/or salsa, you know, or guacamole, like, and done it again and again until it tastes just right, then you're balancing the salt and the fat and the acid, right? Like, you're doing it already.

• 19:24Wendy Zukerman?

  And in Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, you talk about this story of working at Chez Panini, which you've mentioned, it's like this, for those who don't know, fancy restaurant in Berkeley, California, where you got your start. And having this moment where you realize that salt is not just the sidekick for pepper, but actually can, like, completely reshape a meal. If you strait and you actually wrote, um, sorry if it's awkward that I'm quoting you.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  No.

• 19:50Wendy Zukerman?

  You wrote, "If one lesson stays with you, uh, if one lesson from this book stays with you, let it be this: salt has a greater impact on flavor than any other ingredient."

• 20:00Speaker 02

  It really does, yeah.

• 20:01Wendy Zukerman?

  Would you know why that is?

• 20:03Speaker 02

  It does so many amazing things. You salt meat in advance, which is to say, like, a chicken that you're gonna roast tomorrow. I would salt it today to give the salt plenty of time to be absorbed and be distributed evenly throughout the meat. That means, like, tomorrow when I roast it and I take a bite, I won't have salty skin and bland meat. I'm gonna have an evenly perfectly seasoned chicken, right? The salt has penetrated and gone all the way through. But also, the salt will have, um, worked on some of the proteins and so, and ultimately leading to much more tender meat. It sort of disables some of the proteins, leading to more tender meat. And that is like a crazy function, is like, just by salting your meat in advance, you will have a more tender meat.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Salt also on, it has a kind of an ability, if you think about a tomato, like slicing a tomato and you salt your tomato slices and you wait a few minutes, and then you come back and you look and there's like, all this water has come out, right? There's like, the tomato's juicier all of a sudden. And you take a bite of that tomato and the one that has salt, even if it's just a little bit of salt, so little that you don't actually taste it to be saltier, your experience of eating that tomato is gonna be totally different. What the salt has done is by bringing out not only water, but aromatic molecules out of the cells that it started to break down. That means with every bite, your nose is going to breathe in so much more aroma.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  But the vast percentage of our experience of eating is smell, not taste, right? The vast experience. So the more access we have to aromatic molecules, the more profound our experience of eating is going to be, right? The more like perfumed and profound, right? So you are always after like, how do I get those aromatic molecules? It's the same as like, why people, you know, tear fresh basil into the thing at the last minute? It's because you just want that smell, right? You want that, you want that smell as close to your eating experience as possible, right? The fragrance is what makes it sort of alive.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  And so salt, a lot of times sort of goes into cells, breaks things down.

• 22:14Wendy Zukerman?

  I was even surprised that salt incorrectly when cooking beans can make them more vibrantly colored?

• 22:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. So like-

• 22:22Wendy Zukerman?

  How does that happen?

• 22:23Speaker 02

  So what's happening when you have a very salty pot of water and a vegetable in it is immediately osmosis is going to start to happen in the pot, but also inside the vegetable, inside the cells of the vegetable. So it's going to start absorbing, in an attempt to reach homeostasis, right? It's going to start absorbing salt from the pot into itself. So that, and that's what's going to flavor it. And that means it's like holding, right? It's, it's pulling in minerals, right? It's in a state of pulling in minerals and not letting them out. Whereas if you cook your vegetables in under-seasoned water, then in an attempt to reach homeostasis, the vegetables are going to leach their minerals into the water. And with their minerals, also the chlorophyll will get affected.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  They will be less vibrant and less, and less green.

• 23:11Wendy Zukerman?

  Amazing.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  It's just a wild, totally. It's a really wild and amazing. It's so incredible. Salt is so magical.

• 23:17Wendy Zukerman?

  So in, um, in the Netflix documentary version of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, you get to visit, as I guess for those who haven't seen it, I mean, visits the world and sees like all these places that kind of represent these elements. Um, and for salt, you visit the soy sauce factory. And, um, and I have heard you say that, and you could see it, you cry like a baby. I, I wouldn't have said cry like a baby, but I thought, well, since you, what was so emotional about that place?

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Well, for me, so much of it has to do, like that soy sauce in particular, I also got very emotional in the Parmesan, in the Parmesan factory. Um, but, and both of those foods are foods that have hundreds or even thousands of years of tradition being made the same way. There's so much knowledge. So the story of that soy sauce producer in particular is that it's one of the last remaining traditional soy sauce producers in Japan. And, um, what makes it so exquisite is that it's aged for upwards of two years. Whereas if you think of like Kikomon or other industrially produced soy sauces, they're aged around three months maximum.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  So that time is, you know, and in any food that you're producing, time is often the most expensive ingredient. In addition to the two years of, of aging the soy sauce, this soy sauce is aged in these special barrels, these like huge wooden barrels that, um, only one or two people are left in the world who know how to produce these barrels because they last close to a hundred years. But as the industry has, um, industrial, like become so much more industrial.

• 25:03Wendy Zukerman?

  Hmm.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  Um, the need for that knowledge and for those barrels has disappeared because Kikoman, just like an industrially produced soy sauce, is just aged in stainless steel casks, like in, in the place.

• 25:14Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  So the wood for the barrels is harder to find. The, the knowledge of producing the barrels is harder to find. And the barrels are part of the taste, right? There's microbes in that specific type of wood from that place that affect the way that that tastes. So it's almost like I knew in that moment I was like getting to taste an endangered food, right? An endangered species. And Parmesan is not endangered, thankfully. But like, again, there, you know, years of aging go into making a wheel of Parmesan. Hundreds of gallons of milk go into one wheel of Parmesan. So it's just, it's like this massive amount of work and, and like, uh, resources and time for one little bite.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  And that is what is so meaningful to me is like, I, I love those things. I love that in my whole life, I love things that feel like the magic is sort of hidden a little bit.

• 26:09Wendy Zukerman?

  How do you make Parmesan cheese? What are you doing with all that milk?

• 26:12Speaker 02

  What, what are they doing? Well, all cheese, all cheese, uh, this is one of those things that blows my, I love dairy so much. Like I, what's funny is my girlfriend's lactose intolerant and I'm like, oh God, I feel so bad. Like, like, but, um, you know, when I was a young cook, actually, uh, working at Chez Panisse at this amazing restaurant, one of the things that really sort of, um, took, blew me, blew me away was what, seeing these people, like these incredibly experienced cooks who literally knew how to make anything from scratch. And that sort of is, is a little bit of like what became my ethic, right? Like, how can I make this yellow cake from scratch? Right? And so, um, but one of the things that they didn't make from scratch, it already kind

• 26:56Speaker 02

  of surprised me that they made it. At all, but they didn't make it all the way from scratch was mozzarella cheese. So we would, we would pull fresh mozzarella, we would get the curd from the local producer and then pull it into mozzarella, into fresh, like balls that then we would slice and turn into like caprese salad or something else. And it is kind of this magic trick, it truly is like, it turns into this like rubbery texture and like, it's very fun to make. I was like, well, this is amazing, but why aren't we starting with milk? Right? Like, we should be able to make, we should be able to make our own curd. Get the cow. Yeah, I was like, this is the house of made from scratch. Let's make this from scratch. Yeah. So God bless them, like these, like, this is, this is like one of those things where I'm like, only at Shapen East.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  I decided to take this on as my project. And I was, you know, probably 20 years old. I had no, I was, maybe they sometimes let me cut an onion, like I had no culinary experience. I had no business doing this. This is also very early internet. This is like 99, 2000, you have to remember. Okay. So you couldn't, there was not like, there was not the internet where you could be like, how to make mozzarella curd from scratch? There was not that. Yes. So I had to look it up in books. I went to the UC Berkeley, like Food and Cookbook Science Library, like sort of looked this up in books. And I found out the basic steps. I called a few cheesemakers who were friends of the restaurant. They all were like, do not do that. They were like, they were like, and I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. It's so simple.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  It's just milk and rennet and a little acid. Like, of course I can totally do it. And they're like, no, literally because it's so simple, it's one of the hardest curds, one of the hardest cheeses to make, don't do it. Ooh. So basically, this is all to say, I spent like, an entire summer wasting like, tens of thousands of gallons of cheese, of milk, in an attempt to make mozzarella that like, never were, also because cheese, you have to have everything super sterile. Because it's, it's basically, the whole point is like, it's at bacteria growing temperatures. So you just have to make sure you're not growing the wrong bacteria. Right? Like, um, and so, and so you can make people really sick in cheesemaking. People can die. So you have to sterilize everything, which is like, do not trust a 20-year-old in a

• 29:08Speaker 02

  restaurant kitchen to be making cheese that you want to eat. Yeah. But one of the things that I learned was, oh my God, like, I would start with a gallon of milk and end up... With, I don't even know, eight ounces, maybe eight ounces of curd.

• 29:26Wendy Zukerman?

  Wow. So, um, after the success of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, I thought you would be living it up, Sumanen, living your best life. Um, but you write in your new book, it wasn't, it wasn't, it hasn't been exactly like that. How have you been?

• 29:45Speaker 02

  No. I mean, I'm okay. I'm okay now.

• 29:49Wendy Zukerman?

  That's good.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  But, um, yeah, it was, you know, I was 38 when the book came out and when the, and I was 37 when the book came out, 38 when the show came out. Um, and I'd spent most of my life till then, much of my life till then, being like quite sort of invisible in the world, right? Like just head down, doing my work, um, like sort of dying for acknowledgement for the hard work. And then I went from one extreme of like being very sort of underseen to then being like very overseen.

• 30:23Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  It's just that like it, it kind of knocked me off kilter in a lot of ways.

• 30:29Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  And I had to, I, I, I like sunk pretty deep in depression.

• 30:34Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah. You, you, you wrote that, um, like the sense of joy that you'd always found in cooking and eating no longer felt attainable.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. It was really, I, it was a very, um, you know, obviously during this time it was also, there was COVID.

• 30:50Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  There was like, um, like George Floyd murder and, but ultimately, and, and part of it had to do with my dad dying and like watching my dad.

• 30:59Wendy Zukerman?

  I'm sorry.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  A com- oh, thank you. I would just like watching this very complicated and kind of horrible person die, a very sad, prolonged.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Complicated death. And my dad was such a chaos agent and created so much pain for so many people. And his last months were really awful for a variety of reasons. But part of sort of the like takeaway was that like, he was alone. You know what I mean? Like, my brother and I were there with him as much as we could be. But like, there was, and we were just in this sea of chaos that he had created during this time. It was so horrible and uncomfortable for all of us, including him. And I was like, this is the worst way I could imagine for somebody to die. It's just so lonely and sad and pathetic.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  And I kind of had this moment of being like, you know, when I'm on my deathbed, I want to look back and know that I made a life that was full of beauty and joy and friendship and connection and deliciousness and puppy dogs and gardens and, you know, art. And so, once he died, I kind of was, I think this is pretty common, but I very much was sort of washed over with a sense of like, you only live once. You know what I mean? Like, the sort of preciousness of time really sort of was, like, I could see it so clearly in that state of like grief, was just like, oh, I've spent my whole life trying to be good and to do good and to win the affection of the people around me.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  And I've had this sort of voice in the back of my head being like, just put your head down, do good, do good, do good, like I'm investing in a good bank account so that one day I'll reach some sort of like balance from which I can withdraw and be happy. You know? And I was like, oh, there's no day, right? There's no, there's no there that you get to. Like, I have to, why am I making myself so miserable in the meantime? The meantime is all there is. Yeah. Like, and so, I, I, I think I sort of have just changed, as much as a person can change, my policy about that of like, oh, I have to, like, even if I'm on deadline. And I feel really bad about being behind, which is all the time.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Like, I still have to take a break and go have watermelon in the park with my friends. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, I still have to have a little bit of joy every day. And I still have, and a way that I can do that is this, like, simple act of cooking. And that if I sort of understand, if I sort of reorient my entire understanding of what's valuable in my, in my life, and that the ultimate, most valuable thing is my time, right? The only thing I can't make more of, the only thing I can't, you know, produce more of, is time. That's actually the most precious currency I have. And so, my act of spending time for you, or with you, or on you, is the most beautiful gift I can give you. And vice versa, right?

• 34:07Speaker 02

  You know, it's not like, oh, I'm just trying to make the world's best lasagna. It's like, I'm thinking about the person who asked me to make lasagna for their birthday while I make this, and I'm like, putting all of that energy into this thing that takes sometimes two days to make, right? Yeah. So that when you eat it, you feel like I spent two days of my precious time on you. Yeah. And happily, right?

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• 36:40Wendy Zukerman?

  In your book, in your new book, In Good Things, it's filled with obviously fabulous recipes and these sort of bigger tips about like just living a happier life, I think. But also a bunch of fun facts about, fun sciency facts about food.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:56Wendy Zukerman?

  You know, the excuse that I was like, I have to get some meat on the show. We better talk about science. But so can you tell me, one of the things you mentioned is that you need to bring eggs to room temperature before baking them. Why is that?

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Well, it's all, oh, that's such a good question. I love, it's just such a simple question. It's so good because it is in almost every baking recipe. Make sure your eggs are at room temperature.

• 37:23Wendy Zukerman?

  Right.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  And just like I was saying about butter having like very specific qualities at different temperatures, eggs do too. And also it's, it's not that. It's not even so much necessarily that an egg at room temperature will whip better than a cold egg, even though it will, like a room temperature egg white will hold air more readily than a cold one.

• 37:44Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  But often in baking, what you're doing is you're combining different ingredients, like with an egg into a cake batter, say, what you're doing is you have your soft butter that maybe you've creamed with your sugar or whatever, or reverse creamed or whatever. And then you're gonna add eggs into that. And often you do one egg at a time, let it mix in, add the next egg, or even sometimes more, like you even do it more gradually where you're just adding, you're dribbling the egg in. And that's because you are trying to keep an emulsion. You know, you're trying to have this cake batter or mixture, cookie dough or whatever, come together into a unified texture and a unified mixture. And if things are vastly different temperatures, they're gonna, they're not gonna come together

• 38:29Speaker 02

  as readily. Like, right? And if, if you're adding a cold thing into a warm thing, they're kind of gonna reject each other a little bit, right? You want everything to be similar temperature.

• 38:40Wendy Zukerman?

  Ah, on a sort of different note, but fridge related, you write that refrigeration destroys a tomato's delicate flavor.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  Yes, it is true. It does destroy the delicate tomato flavor. When I was a baby cook, somebody told me they, I feel like they had a fridge magnet that said like, I think it said that, like refrigeration, I think it, I think I was quoting the fridge magnet. But, but it's part, basically tomatoes are very delicate, and this goes back to those aromatic molecules. And the, and also a tomato, like many other things, is sensitive to temperature. What a fridge does to vegetables is it slows down the decay, essentially, right? Like a vegetable from the moment it's picked is dying, right? So, and so, and also a lot of things are happening chemically inside those vegetables.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Like, for example, a thing many of us have heard is with corn, sweet corn, for example, like it's the freshest the moment it's picked, or it's the sweetest the moment it's picked. And that's totally true. Like I, people I know who grew up in the Midwest where they grow a lot of corn, you know, the grandma would put on the pot of water to bring it to a boil before sending the kids out into the yard to pick the corn. Cause she's like, it has to go straight from the picking into the pot. And Grandma was right, because what you're doing when you pick a vegetable is like, the minute you pick it, its innate sugars start transforming into starches. So like if you've had starchy corn, you know, that's like, kind of like bleh, dry and starchy, that's probably because it's old, or it could be the variety, but if it's supposed to be

• 40:18Speaker 02

  like corn on the cob, it's the sweetest the moment's picked. That's why you want to eat the corn like the day you bring it home from the farmer's market, if you can. And so the same is true for a tomato. Tomatoes ripen slightly differently, but still, you want to pick them at the peak of their sugars. And putting them in the fridge, what it's going to do to a tomato's texture is it's going to start degrading the cells, and the cells will become, like, the texture of the tomato will start to become mealy.

• 40:46Wendy Zukerman?

  I can just see your face, you're so disgusted with what's happening.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's so gross.

• 40:50Wendy Zukerman?

  This poor tomato.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  And you'll lose a lot of those, and you'll lose a lot of those aromatic molecules, which are what makes a tomato have such sort of vibrant, fresh flavor. So I really, I don't put tomatoes in the fridge. I always leave them out at room temperature, yeah.

• 41:09Wendy Zukerman?

  You, you have spent a lot of time thinking about food systems and how we get food to, how all that food ends up in our supermarket.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  It's so interesting, sometimes you find out the craziest things, yeah.

• 41:20Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  So, like, on your plate, you can see sort of the effects of sociopolitical conflict, of like economic sanctions, of, and you can taste the changes that happen with these. So for example, cinnamon is, I think, a really great example. So until about, I would say, the mid 1900s, in this country, in the US, our predominant source, or our main source of cinnamon was Vietnam. And the cinnamon grown in Vietnam is sweet. Like, when you taste a piece of cinnamon bark, it tastes sweet on your tongue.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  It also is very high in the oils, like the cinnamon oils, that are kind of make it taste spicy. So if you've ever had, like, red hot gum, or red hot candies, or big red gum. Yes. Like, that taste of that very spicy sort of cinnamon, that is what I'm talking about, right? But if I told you to picture cinnamon, you wouldn't think of red hot gum. You would think of apple pie, or cinnamon apple cider donuts, or something. Yes. Which is a totally different kind of cinnamon. And that cinnamon comes, historically, from Mexico or India. But, and it has just a completely different sort of molecular makeup, and a different spice profile.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  It's much less spicy and more sort of soft, softly flavored. That's if you want to picture the difference between, like I said, apple pie and big red gum. Yeah. Right? Those things are both cinnamon, but totally different kinds of cinnamon. And so, until like mid 1900s, basically, everyone here, like, our experience of cinnamon was this Vietnamese, very sweet, very spicy cinnamon. And then, when the Vietnam War happened, and there were sanctions, the economic sanctions posed on all goods coming here from Vietnam, from like this, I think, late 60s until the late 90s, when Bill Clinton was president, there were, nothing from Vietnam could enter this country.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  So, so the, an entire, you know, generation and a half of people, their experience of cinnamon shifted into like Indian, Mexican, Chinese cinnamon. And so, like, that taste of that big red whatever. Yes. Felt, and I fall into that group, right? I was born in 79. Yes. And then, one day, like, in, I can't remember when it was, probably 2002, 2003, someone gave me a piece of Vietnamese cinnamon bark, like, I'd never had it before. And it's so good that I now only use Vietnamese cinnamon in my cooking. Like, I always look for it. And at this point, you can find it, like, I got, you can get it at Costco, you can get it at Whole Foods, you just look for, it's called Vietnamese or Saigon cinnamon. But it is this way where, you know, it tells this story, right?

• 44:09Speaker 02

  This, like, taste, and this simple ingredient tells this crazy, like, global story.

• 44:16Wendy Zukerman?

  And then, um, why are vanilla beans so expensive?

• 44:20Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Vanilla beans are so crazy. So, um, I, I, at one point, I was staying in the, like, uh, near the Palm Desert and I, somehow, somebody was like, you gotta go visit this orchid greenhouse. They're so amazing. There wasn't a lot for me to do in Palm Desert. So I was like, I'll go visit the orchid greenhouse. So I went to the orchid greenhouse and I saw the different types of orchids. I'm not like a major orchid nerd, but it was still pretty cool.

• 44:45Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, they're very sexy. They're very, I feel like I'm looking at porn, you know?

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Totally. It's amazing. And at the very end of the tour, they were like, I was like, oh, what's that thing? And there was this one sort of plant that was like this crazy vining, trailing plant. And they're like, oh, that's vanilla. And I was like, what? And they're like, vanilla bean? I was like, vanilla is an orchid? And they're like, yes. And so vanilla is an orchid plant, or vanilla is the seed pod from an orchid plant. And, um, it takes almost a year for a vanilla bean to mature on the plant. And in that year, when the, um, when the plant flowers, it's so finicky that, um, on a vanilla farm, a human has to go

• 45:30Speaker 02

  and hand pollinate each flower to ensure that, like, enough vanilla will be produced. Because there's, I think, something like a three-day window for that flower to be pollinated. So if they were left to the bees and nature, you know, probably you would get much, a much smaller yield of vanilla. So for one thing, like, that step already is so sort of-

• 45:50Wendy Zukerman?

  Wow, you got humans, literally.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  You got humans hand pollinating, but also in this very small time window, right? So you have to get that right. And then you have to wait however many months, I think, very, I think it's upward of eight months for the seed pod to ripen. And then they're picked and then there's a multi-step for basically fermentation process because when they're picked, it's not the pod, it's not the vanilla bean that we know. It's still not usable. So it has to go through a multi-step sort of drying and fermentation process to become the fragrant pod that we know. So when you understand that and then layer on to that, a whole other understanding that these places where vanilla is endemic are among the most vulnerable to climate disaster.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Like you start to learn, oh, right? Like, wow, this is an incredible treasure for humankind that actually is on the verge of extinction. And, you know, it can only grow in this very limited climate. And if we do not protect those climates, those people who live there, the plants, then we will lose this and we will likely lose vanilla, probably not in my lifetime, but probably in the next generation's lifetime. Like there, it will probably not. Vanilla, chocolate, coffee, like bananas, there are a lot of foods that we sort of don't think about that are not long for this world.

• 47:16Wendy Zukerman?

  When you, when you look at the food trends out there, you know, whether it's soy lent or robots serving us food.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 47:27Wendy Zukerman?

  Various diets, ketogenic, carnivore.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 47:32Wendy Zukerman?

  What terrifies you the most?

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. What terrifies you? I'm like anxious. All the things you just listed make me so anxious. Oh, God. I mean, I think what really, this isn't really a trend, but I think what, I'm going to turn the, sorry, I'm not going to answer your question. I'm going to turn it inside out.

• 47:49Wendy Zukerman?

  Play.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  I feel so protective of the people who grow, produce and make our food that we get to eat. They're such unglamorous, it's such unglamorous work. It's such low paying work in general, across cultures, across countries, across populations. And also it's this, right? Like food is this thing that gets valorized in TV shows like The Bear and Top Chef and whatever. But there, in this country in particular, there is such a flawed system.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  For for food production that serves really just a few large interests at the cost of the environment, at the cost of the people who produce the food. And so there is just this kind of way where we, as a population, have been trained to expect our food to be very cheap. And I say that understanding we're like on the brink of a recession and a lot of people face like sort of economic precarity in their lives. So I'm not necessarily out here saying everything should be more expensive, but I am saying

• 49:11Speaker 02

  like I I there it's kind of just built in that we expect that we should be able to go get a taco for this much, a burger for this much, you know, and it should be cheap. But when you sort of take a step back and think about it, you're like, how are the people, the many people who worked on producing this thing, to get it to us, making a living and, you know, paying for their basic needs? And I worked in kind of the fanciest restaurants, restaurant in America for a while and like, you know, I did not achieve financial stability in my own life until I had like a miracle situation and sold a book and had a Netflix show, right? Like I was existed in economic precarity as well. Totally.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  But like in this moment that we live in and this like late capitalism, like everything at the touch of a button available to us, everything's so digitized and separate and we're so removed from the process of making and like having anything made for us. I really believe like food and restaurants are kind of one of the last vestiges in our daily lives of having an experience of something be handmade for you, right? Like and having this like human to human, like somebody, I made this for you. That doesn't happen anymore, like with so many of the goods in our life, right? Like we're so far, you don't meet the person who made your shoes or your clothes or your headphones, right?

• 50:39Speaker 02

  But you are a room apart from the person who made you this plate of food. Sometimes they're handing it to you. And so it is kind of this like incredibly valuable and beautiful thing that we still have like a little bit of access to in our lives. And I'm just so sad that every force in our lives and in the world is sort of hell bent on eradicating even that from, from us and, and letting us appreciate it. And I don't know, there's no solution that I know, you know, I don't know that there's an answer. I'm not criticizing anyone for buying or eating any food. I just, it kind of breaks my heart. Yeah.

• 51:16Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  It's a real depressing note. Sorry.

• 51:19Wendy Zukerman?

  Well, we can't end there. We can't end there. How about we end, we end here. Um, why is spaghetti the very last place a meatball belongs?

• 51:30Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 51:31Wendy Zukerman?

  Direct quote.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  It's so funny. It really is.

• 51:39Wendy Zukerman?

  My editor was like, we, I had this in my question and she was like, you asked that question, Wendy.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  It's a very important, well, and I say that quoting the song on top of spaghetti all covered with cheese, right? Like, like, I'm just like, no, no. Have you ever had a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs? Have you ever had one?

• 52:00Wendy Zukerman?

  We, at our house, we actually do it with macaroni. It's macaroni.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, there we go. Because, so already you're making a better choice.

• 52:08Wendy Zukerman?

  My mom will be very happy. It's a grandma's recipe.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  Okay. Spaghetti is an insane choice of shape to eat with a meatball. For one thing, a meatball is like this huge thing. You have to sort of break it down. Spaghetti is this long, whatever. You're never going to get the right amount of meatball on the fork with the right amount of spaghetti. It's, it's, it's like, it's bad. So either like, I'm like, if you're going to do pasta, choose a different shape that's like more amenable. Where like the, the stabbing works for, you know what I mean?

• 52:36Wendy Zukerman?

  You're absolutely right.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  And, or, or like eat it on a bowl of polenta. Eat it with some grilled bread. Do something else with your time. Like, eat a meatball sandwich. But not on a spaghetti, please, for the life of me. Because also you're like, you're like, you have a whole bowl of spaghetti and then what? You have three meatballs on it? It just looks wrong. You're like, I don't know.

• 53:00Wendy Zukerman?

  All right. Lightning round. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um, all right.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  Hit me.

• 53:06Wendy Zukerman?

  Uh, lightning round of, of oddball questions.

• 53:13Wendy Zukerman?

  What is the most dangerous thing you've done for a book?

• 53:16Speaker 02

  Ooh, I don't know. Oh, my God. I feel the pressure of the lightning and I don't have an answer for you right now. I mean, I do all sorts of dangerous things that I would never recommend. And I mean, I've probably eaten, you know what I've probably done that's the most dangerous?

• 53:32Wendy Zukerman?

  Eaten the cheese that you tried to cook?

• 53:34Speaker 02

  So I've definitely had stuff where I'm like, is this salad dressing still a good three and a half months later?

• 53:41Speaker 02

  Try it. Why not? Like, I think I've definitely taken my life into my own hands, eating like potentially rotten food. But also, I'm still here, so it's fine.

• 53:48Wendy Zukerman?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:51Wendy Zukerman?

  All right, finish this sentence. Now that I know blank, I'll never look at my blank the same way again.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Oh, uh, I mean, I think now that I know how long it takes to make a vanilla bean, I'll never look at a vanilla bean the same way again. Yeah.

• 54:06Wendy Zukerman?

  Funnest object sitting in your house?

• 54:09Speaker 02

  Oh, oh, oh, oh. My friend gave me, my friend gave me the coolest thing. It's a set of like Russian style dolls, but instead of being Russian, like dolls, they're vegetables. So like, uh, it's like a broccoli and then a bok choy and then like, I can't remember what the, oh, an artichoke and then a cucumber and then a pea pod and then the peas.

• 54:35Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, that's so cute.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  It's so cool. It's like hand painted wood. It's so beautiful. Yeah.

• 54:42Wendy Zukerman?

  What a joy. Um, biggest mistake you've made while cooking?

• 54:46Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean, there are a million to choose from, but I mean, there was one time I, I don't know, does this count as a mistake? Well, yeah, it is a mistake. I was in a rush and I chose to, I like very consciously chose to use not the safest knife for cutting into a butternut squash because the knife, we, I, in the restaurant where I worked, I always had a two handled knife, which is the knife you use when you cut into a wheel of Parmesan or anything sort of unwieldy because that way you're seesawing your way into it instead of. Jamming a knife in that could slip out.

• 55:25Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, yes.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  And injure you. So our, for some reason, our large two-handled knife had gone missing for a few days, which is a very weird. And so I was too, and I had even made a mental note, like, get a new one of those before someone hurts themselves. But then I was in a rush and I just, instead of choosing the next safest knife, which would have been a very big one, I just grabbed the closest one, which was little. And I went into my butternut squash and I stabbed myself in the hand and I had to have surgery.

• 55:52Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, my God.

• 55:55Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, my God.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  I'm fine now. But, uh, yeah, it was very intense. I truly, yeah, it was very intense.

• 55:59Wendy Zukerman?

  Wow.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  That was a big mistake. That was a mistake.

• 56:01Wendy Zukerman?

  Is it true? Because I did a, um, I had to go to emergency for trying to cut a bagel with.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:08Wendy Zukerman?

  And.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  I've heard the bagel and the avocado are two of the most, um, I knew a hand surgeon and he said bagels and avocados were like the two of the most sort of common injuries.

• 56:17Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  That brought people to hand surgery.

• 56:19Wendy Zukerman?

  Thank you so much, Samina.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you.

• 56:22Wendy Zukerman?

  So lovely.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  You're so great.

• 56:23Wendy Zukerman?

  Yep, yeah.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 56:25Wendy Zukerman?

  It's, um, yeah. I really appreciate your time and your work and your new book. And it's really fabulous.

• 56:31Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you. I definitely was like, am I the science or am I the verses? Because I'm not a scientist.

• 56:40Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, thank you so much.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  Thank you. Nice talking to you, Wendy.

• 56:44Wendy Zukerman?

  Lovely to talk to you. That was the award-winning cook, Samina Nosrat. Her new book is called Good Things. I'm Wendy Zukerman. Back to you next time.

• 57:43Speaker 06

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