Bolognese

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1. 

   S1 · E32 · 13 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 14 min

   Osso Buco

   The same thing that ruins osso buco is the thing that makes it. The tough silverskin wrapped around a veal shank starts shrinking at about 140 degrees and cups the meat into a hockey puck. Cook it low, hold it long, and that same collagen melts into the gelatin that turns a cut the butcher couldn't give away into a special-occasion plate. This week we get into the two moves that keep the shank from cupping, why veal sends the whole dish white instead of red, and the trick that makes the texture better the day after you cook it. We land on gremolata as a non-negotiable, walk the low-and-slow…

2. 

   S1 · E31 · 6 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 28 min

   Lobster Rolls

   Lobster used to be fertilizer. Coastal tribes buried it in the fields, colonists let it wash up in piles two feet deep, and prisoners complained they were being fed bugs. In 1634, William Wood wrote that a heap of lobster shells by your door marked you as too poor to eat anything else. This week we follow that same animal to a fifty-dollar tray of cold lobster salad on a buttered, griddled bun, and figure out how the cockroach of the sea got its glow-up. We take opposite corners on the only debate that matters, Maine (cold, a little mayo, celery) against Connecticut (warm, drawn butter,…

3. 

   S1 · E30 · 30 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 7 min

   Chicken Teriyaki

   You might think teriyaki is a sauce, but it's a cooking technique. Teri means the shine, yaki means grilled, and the name describes what happens when you lacquer meat over fire, a move the Japanese have been making since the 1600s. The bottle didn't arrive until 1961. This week we trace it from an 1813 shrimp dish to the supermarket aisle, and make the case that the real version, four ingredients reduced in a pan, beats anything you can buy. We get into why almost everyone still reaches for the jar, and how a Japanese grill dish quietly became Seattle's default cheap lunch, outnumbering the…

4. 

   S1 · E29 · 23 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 22 min

   Ratatouille

   The most famous ratatouille in the world isn't a ratatouille. The dish that makes the critic weep in the Pixar film is a confit byaldi, thin sliced and fanned in a pan, designed by Thomas Keller off a recipe Michel Guérard published in 1976. What Provence actually makes is a stew, and this week we make the case that the stew is the better dish. We trace the word back to the Occitan, where it meant a coarse stew of odds and ends and wasn't a compliment, through to the 1930s when the version we recognize finally became canon. Then we get into the argument that decides the whole dish: cook…

5. 

   S1 · E28 · 16 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 30 min

   Baja Fish Tacos

   The Baja fish taco didn't come from a San Diego beach. It was born in the late 1950s at a black market in Ensenada, and the first ones were grilled shark. This week we trace it from that fish stall across the border to the college kid who turned it into a SoCal staple, then build the deep-fried version everyone pictures. Along the way we make the case that the corn tortilla matters as much as the fish, get into the 3,500-year-old process that makes a real one, and argue out the non-negotiables that separate a Baja taco from just fried fish in a shell. Beer in the batter is a given, so we…

6. 

   S1 · E26 · 2 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 46 min

   Burgers

   At least six towns claim they invented the hamburger — and the one the Library of Congress actually crowned still won't serve it on a bun or with ketchup. Which raises the real fight we spend the episode having: what even makes a burger a burger? Just in time for the Fourth of July, we trace it from the Hamburg steak to the smash era, then go round after round on the things that actually matter — the bun, the cheese, the sauce, and the doneness most people get wrong. There's the counterintuitive salt rule that decides whether you end up with a burger or a sausage, three ways to cook booze…

7. 

   S1 · E25 · 25 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 23 min

   Paella

   Paella isn't the rice — it's the pan. Or at least, that's where the name comes from. And in Valencia, where the dish was born, there's even a body that certifies which versions have earned the name and declares the rest "crimes against rice." Yet the seafood paella the whole world orders? The purists barely count it. We get into the authenticity war, the official ten-ingredient list, why a whole category gets written off as "rice with stuff," the one ingredient that starts fights, and how a field worker's lunch became a prince's dish. Plus the no-stir rule behind a crispy socarrat, and the…

8. 

   S1 · E24 · 18 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 12 min

   Steak au Poivre

   Five Paris chefs claimed to have invented Steak au Poivre in the early 20th-century. Four of them wrote letters of complaint to the same 1950 culinary magazine. The fifth had the best story. We dig into the origin fight, Julia Child's surprising position on the flambé, the chemistry behind why pre-ground pepper is inferior, and a red wine pairing that mirrors the pepper on a molecular level. For the glass, Americans in Paris — an Armagnac sipper built off the Vieux Carré, finished with a fresh crack of pepper over the top. For the full recipes and more, become a premium subscriber at…

9. 

   S1 · E23 · 11 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 13 min

   Beer Can Chicken

   Beer can chicken is the dish that defies its own science. The most credible American barbecue scientists tested it and concluded the beer in the can does almost nothing the cook thinks. Backyard chefs from Memorial Day to Labor Day have kept doing it anyway — and so will we. Today, we dig into the contested origins — including a 1993 Houston Chronicle article that puts the technique in former President George H.W. Bush's kitchen — the science that quietly buried it, the geometry that actually makes the bird crisp, and a thought experiment about a Mexican spirit at the right strength. We pair…

10. 

    S1 · E22 · 4 Jun 2026 · 59 min

    Clams Casino

    Clams Casino has a paperwork problem. A Rhode Island maître d' named Julius Keller claimed to invent the dish at the Narragansett Pier Casino in 1917 — but a January 1900 menu from the Central Park Casino in New York City, held in the New York Public Library, predates him by 17 years. And neither one was a gambling house. We dig into both origin claims, the Portuguese-American "stuffies" tradition in Rhode Island that may pre-date both, and how to take a working man's ingredient and dress it up — a three-way move on the pork, a strong opinion on breadcrumbs, and a rethink of which booze…