Shrimp and Grits

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1. 

   S1 · E40 · 8 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 9 min

   Clam Chowder

   New England claims Clam Chowder as its own, but the dish carries a distinctly French accent. Its name comes from the chaudière, the cooking pot Breton fishermen brought across the Atlantic. Centuries later, the man who set the modern standard made the same trip. We read the oldest printed recipe in full, a 1751 poem that calls for a bottle of red wine, and sit down to Melville's bowl on Nantucket. From there it's the long-running feud between New England and Manhattan, including the year a Maine lawmaker tried to outlaw tomatoes in chowder, plus the era when clam shells could cover Harvard…

2. 

   S1 · E39 · 1 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 38 min

   Pulled Pork

   The pork shoulder spent most of its life as a cheap, tough poverty cut. Then Pulled Pork went from Carolina pits to a London street-food trailer to menus across the city, and worldwide searches for it peaked in the spring of 2020. We trace how the humblest cut on the pig became a global craze, and what a pandemic had to do with it. We also get to the bottom of why the shoulder is sold as a butt, settle our non-negotiables for smoking one at home, and make the case for the sauce that really belongs on the table. It even finds its way into the glass. This week's cocktail is The Francis…

3. 

   S1 · E38 · 24 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 34 min

   Shepherd's Pie

   Online, the rule gets enforced like scripture: shepherds keep sheep, so Shepherd's Pie means lamb, and beef makes it a Cottage Pie. The oldest recipe usually cited for the dish asked for cold meat of any kind. For most of its life, nobody was checking what sat under the potatoes. We trace how a Monday-night leftover earned two names, meet the pharmacist who sold France on a crop it thought was pig feed, and ask why Americans eat so little lamb. The build settles which booze goes in the filling, where cheese belongs, and what keeps the mash from sinking. Real mint sauce gets a defense, and…

4. 

   S1 · E37 · 17 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 31 min

   Hot Dogs

   Americans eat about 20 billion hot dogs a year, roughly 70 per person, and close to 7 billion between Memorial Day and Labor Day alone. It is five centuries old and lives in our songs and our slang, yet it still loses top billing to the burger. From a $1.50 warehouse counter to $200 under gold leaf, no food is more American, or harder to pin down. We get into where it really came from and why the famous origin story is a myth, how to cook one so it snaps instead of splits, and the regional map that sets New York against Chicago. Plus the one debate we are never going to settle. We also…

5. 

   S1 · E36 · 10 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 6 min

   Chicken Caesar Salad

   Everyone assumes the Caesar is Roman, or at least Italian. Instead, it was invented in Tijuana on the Fourth of July, 1924, by an Italian immigrant who worked a border crossing from San Diego because Prohibition had left his side the only place you could still sell a drink. It began as tableside theater, improvised from what a holiday rush left in the kitchen. We get into whether the anchovy everyone argues about earns a place in ours, where we land on breast or thigh, and how a dish that began as luxury became the most shelf-stabilized salad around. Meanwhile, this week's cocktail is The…

6. 

   S1 · E35 · 29 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 11 min

   Bonus Episode: Mashed Potatoes

   This is a bonus episode that first went out to our premium subscribers in January. We're dropping it in the public feed today so you can hear what bonus episodes are like. They typically feature deep dives into a single technique, ingredient, or side dish, or historical deep dive. Mashed potatoes might be one of the simplest dishes to make, but getting them right? That's another story. We're breaking down where things go wrong (gluey textures, waterlogged spuds, the "point of no return") and how the pros avoid them. Along the way, we unpack Joël Robuchon's legendary 50% butter ratio, debate…

7. 

   S1 · E34 · 27 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 31 min

   Beef Wellington

   The hardest part of a Beef Wellington isn't the beef. It is getting a crisp pastry shell and a rare, rested center out of one hot oven, both finishing at the same moment, and one wrong move ruins the whole thing. We take the build apart so it finally stops being intimidating. We trace how a French classic wearing a British hero's name became the most obsessed-over showstopper on the internet, right up to the chef who turned it into a meme. Then we get into the one cut of beef that works, the pile of small techniques that make it feel harder than it is, and where we land on the mustard, the…

8. 

   S1 · E33 · 20 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 15 min

   Chicken Piccata

   Chicken Piccata puts the bird in its title, but the capers run the show. Pull out that hand-harvested flower bud, too precious to come in a normal-sized jar, and two professional chefs will tell you the dish stops being itself. So how did an ingredient you can barely fish out with a spoon, one that people swear once cost more than gold, become the thing a weeknight classic lives or dies on? This week we get into what a caper actually is and why it comes in six market sizes almost no one has heard of, the word everyone uses for this dish and no one can define, and how these little buds landed…

9. 

   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…

10. 

    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,…