In 2007, Maangchi was 50 years old, a single mother of adult kids, and was addicted to online gaming. Her son suggested she post a cooking video to YouTube. Today she has 4 million subscribers and has taught fans all over the world how to cook traditional Korean food. This week she tells us her story, and talks about cooking when you're in an "immigrant time warp." Plus we hear her take on a popular Korean dish that was renamed for the Oscar-winning film, Parasite. This episode originally aired ...
May 02, 2025•34 min
Hydrox cookies are known as a cheap knock-off of Oreos, to the point that Hydrox has become pop culture shorthand for “second best.” But did you know that Hydrox came first? And that these two cookies have a rivalry that goes back more than 100 years? This week Dan talks with Mackenzie Martin , a host of the KCUR Studios podcast A People’s History of Kansas City . Mackenzie tells Dan about a war that started in Kansas City – the sandwich cookie war, and reveals why Hydrox was banished to obscuri...
Apr 28, 2025•39 min
Actor and comedian Jason Mantzoukas is known for playing characters that are overzealous, exuberant, and more than a little wacky. But these characters are the exact opposite of how Jason felt growing up — like a “boy made of glass.” Jason has a life-threatening allergy to eggs, and that constant threat has forced him to live a life of vigilance. Dan and Jason talk about how that’s affected Jason’s comedy. They also get into New England roast beef sandwiches, food grievances — and to top it off,...
Apr 25, 2025•33 min
Public discussions about eating disorders tend to focus on women, and in the past, so have our episodes on the subject. But millions of men also struggle with some form of disordered eating, though they’re far less likely to be diagnosed or to seek treatment. Today we hear stories from three men—in three different stages of life—who have complicated relationships with food. The common thread? All three of them want to share their experiences so that other men who are struggling don’t feel so alo...
Apr 21, 2025•49 min
A neuroscientist calls in to debate the geometry of pizza, and food science guru Kenji Lopez-Alt explains how woodworking can help us make a better bagel and cream cheese. This episode originally aired on September 16, 2017 , and was produced by Dan Pashman, Anne Saini, and Shoshana Gold, with editing by Dan Charles. The Sporkful team now includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Giulia Leo, Kameel Stanley, and Jared O'Connell. This update was produced by Gianna Palmer. Publishing b...
Apr 18, 2025•25 min
Roy Choi is a legend in LA. He was one of the first chefs to start cooking out of a food truck, and one of the first to mashup different cuisines in the way that’s become so popular. His Kogi korean beef taco truck was a sensation in LA when he debuted it in 2008 -- it later inspired the movie “Chef,” starring Jon Favreau. Roy wrote a bestselling cookbook and memoir, LA Son , in 2013, and now he has a new cookbook, The Choi of Cooking . In some ways, it may seem like Roy’s success was preordaine...
Apr 14, 2025•42 min
Is there really a difference between cheap and expensive vodkas? In this collaboration with NPR's Planet Money, we go on a mission to learn how super premium vodka is made and marketed. Then we make our own, to see how it measures up. This episode originally aired on March 25, 2018, and was produced by Dan Pashman and Anne Saini. The Sporkful team now includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Giulia Leo, Kameel Stanley, and Jared O'Connell. This update was produced by Gianna Palmer....
Apr 11, 2025•30 min
Comedian Matteo Lane comes from a large Italian family, which gave him his passion for food and his sense of humor. A few years back he started posting cooking videos on social media, and now he’s published Your Pasta Sucks , a collection of recipes, stories, and jokes. The book includes a quiz to tell you if you have an Italian grandmother, as well as Matteo’s reflections on his first trip to Italy, where he found he felt more comfortable with his sexuality than in the US. Matteo talks with Dan...
Apr 07, 2025•34 min
Author and podcast host Malcolm Gladwell immigrated to Canada when he was young, the child of an English father and Jamaican mother. He’s always felt like an outsider. He hated maple syrup, in a town that hosts the largest one-day maple syrup festival in the world. That outsider’s perspective served him well as he became a cultural observer, and over the years, Malcolm’s trained his critical eye on food. He calls flavored seltzer “an abomination” and Earl Grey tea “a bridge too far.” He also tal...
Apr 04, 2025•39 min
Scott Wiener, founder of Scott’s Pizza Tours , has made a name for himself as one of the most knowledgeable and passionate pizza experts in America. (He has the Guinness Record for the world’s largest collection of pizza boxes -- nearly 2,000.) This week, Dan and his family join Scott on one of his famous Sunday tours, in which pizza pilgrims board a school bus not knowing what pizzerias Scott plans to take them to. On the tour, Dan gets to watch Scott in action: figuring out his route on the fl...
Mar 31, 2025•33 min
When Dan hit 40, he noticed his body wasn't feeling as good. So recently, he embarked on a journey to change his lifestyle. Today, you'll meet the three people who've inspired him. (This episode is a satire. Please enjoy it as such!) This episode originally aired on March 31, 2019, and was produced by Dan Pashman, Anne Saini, and Ngofeen Mputubwele. It was edited by Gianna Palmer and mixed by Jared O'Connell. The Sporkful team now includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Giulia Leo...
Mar 28, 2025•35 min
Indie musician Michelle Zauner (leader of the band Japanese Breakfast ) always had a complicated relationship with her mother, Chongmi. Michelle was born in Seoul and raised in Oregon, where she never felt like she was fully Korean or American. While it was sometimes hard for mother and daughter to understand each other, the thread that kept them together was their shared “Korean appetite,” as Michelle writes in her memoir, Crying in H Mart . Dan talks with Michelle about losing her mother to ca...
Mar 24, 2025•30 min
For two decades, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos has been one of the most popular snacks in America. In recent years its legend has grown, as word spread that they were invented by Richard Montañez, a Mexican-American janitor at Frito-Lay who went on to become a company executive. The story made Montañez something of a Latino icon, with two memoirs and a biopic based on his life. But when a journalist at the L.A. Times started looking into this feel-good story, he found a very different tale. This episode o...
Mar 21, 2025•32 min
Is wine actually better than beer when watching football? What would a Thanksgiving feast prepared with recipes from Tom Brady’s cookbook taste like? Do you really need to wash your vegetables? We’re tackling your food disputes and hot takes this week, with someone who’s seen plenty of tackling — Katie Nolan . Katie’s hosted shows on ESPN and Fox Sports, so she comes from a world full of rivalries and head to head conflict. Now she has a great new podcast about sports and culture called Casuals ...
Mar 17, 2025•35 min
What do a great bartender and a great priest have in common? We ask a Catholic priest who moonlights as a mixologist. Plus, Dan revisits a beloved pub from his past to find out what makes a great bar. This episode originally aired on March 6, 2016, and was produced by Dan Pashman and Anne Saini. The Sporkful team now includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Giulia Leo, Kameel Stanley, and Jared O'Connell. This update was produced by Gianna Palmer. Publishing by Shantel Holder. Ever...
Mar 14, 2025•29 min
Laurie Woolever is a food writer in New York, but she’s probably best known for two other jobs she’s held: an assistant to Mario Batali, and an assistant to and collaborator with Anthony Bourdain. Laurie was working with Bourdain when he took his own life in 2018. After his death, she published Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography . Now she’s telling her own story in a new memoir called Care and Feeding , in which she details her struggles with addiction, and explores how her desire to emulat...
Mar 10, 2025•46 min
81-year-old Patsy Grimaldi may be the last person making pizza today who trained under someone who trained at Lombardi's—the first pizzeria in American history. Dan sits down with Patsy and his wife Carol to discuss slice folding technique, the art and science of using a coal oven, what she taught him about pizza, and the scourge of pineapple pizza, along with several other trends Patsy deems "ridiculous." Carol explains that Patsy knows where in the coal oven to place the pizza based on the col...
Mar 07, 2025•29 min
Why is the bird flu outbreak that’s currently driving up egg prices different from past outbreaks? Are new tariffs about to make your groceries more expensive? And, perhaps most importantly, are Capri-Sun pouches about to disappear? We tackle these hard hitting questions, and a lot more, in this edition of the Salad Spinner, our rapid-fire roundtable discussion of the latest food news. We’re joined by two superstar journalists. Yasmin Tayag is a staff writer for The Atlantic and co-host of The A...
Mar 03, 2025•40 min
Mimi Sheraton has seen it all in her 92 years. In this Reheat of our spinoff podcast from 2018, Ask Mimi , the legendary food critic offers advice on food and life to live callers and celebrity guests. The Sporkful's Dan Pashman moderates. In this episode, humorist Mo Rocca joins Mimi and Dan live on stage to ask for help with an issue involving his mom. Mimi died in April 2023 at the age of 97; read her New York Times obituary here . This episode originally aired on February 12, 2018, and was p...
Feb 28, 2025•37 min
Monday through Saturday, Devin Pickard and his family run Papa KayJoe's BBQ in Centerville, Tennessee. But on Sundays, Devin trades the BBQ pit for the pulpit at Hope Church , the non-denominational congregation where he preaches. In many ways, food is a natural fit for a southern preacher, but there are other, less obvious ways Devin's two professions come together. Later in the episode, cookbook author Tammy Algood talks about Sunday dinner etiquette and competitive church potlucks. This episo...
Feb 24, 2025•30 min
We're reheating this episode in honor of Chef Charles Phan, owner of The Slanted Door, who recently died. In 2016, he showed us the right way to eat the Vietnamese noodle soup pho. Then we take a deep dive into the science of soup slurping with a researcher who studies the mechanics of eating. This episode originally aired on February 14, 2016, and was produced by Dan Pashman and Anne Saini. Engineering by Irene Trudel and Ellen Reinhardt. The Sporkful team now includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgens...
Feb 21, 2025•23 min
Edna Lewis was one of the first Black women to write a successful mainstream cookbook about the South. She talked about seasonality and farm-to-table cooking long before it got trendy, and she tied that approach to the way she grew up in Virginia. So why isn’t Edna Lewis better known? And who exactly was this person who changed the way Americans think about the food of the South? We discuss Edna’s life and legacy with food writer and podcast host Deb Freeman , who recently made the PBS documenta...
Feb 17, 2025•37 min
In the last 15 years, Nashville hot chicken has become a hot trend. But for decades before that, hot chicken was well known among Nashville’s Black community. For generations, you could only get it at the place where it was invented: Prince’s Hot Chicken . Now with attention from the likes of Beyoncé and Guy Fieri, Prince’s has gone from being a neighborhood institution to a Nashville landmark — and many imitators have come along. Dan travels to Nashville and speaks with André Prince Jeffries, w...
Feb 14, 2025•29 min
The South is known for fantastic gas station food, and on today’s show, Dan takes a road trip from Birmingham to Memphis to try some out for himself. He travels across Alabama and Mississippi, eating pimento cheese sandwiches, tacos, fried chicken on a stick, sushi, and a very specific regional pasta dish. He also talks with the people behind these eateries to hear how they’re adapting their menus in a changing South, and chats with photojournalist Kate Medley, who spent ten years documenting So...
Feb 10, 2025•40 min
Dan talks to Matt Reynolds, director and star of the new documentary comedy The Great Chicken Wing Hunt , about the search for perfection in love and Buffalo wings. This episode originally aired on January 26, 2014, and was produced by Dan Pashman and Anne Saini. The Sporkful team now includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Giulia Leo, Jared O'Connell, and Kameel Stanley. This update was produced by Gianna Palmer. Publishing by Shantel Holder. Every other Friday, we reach into our...
Feb 07, 2025•28 min
Dan is live on stage in Memphis with famed local restaurateur Karen Blockman Carrier! Karen grew up Orthodox Jewish in Memphis, and she wanted to be a painter. But after a chance meeting with a caterer in a smoke-filled bathroom stall in New York City, she decided to focus on food. Karen shares the twists and turns of her life, from a disastrous day working for Martha Stewart, to reinventing the Memphis dining scene with eclectic restaurants in an old Victorian home and a former hair salon, to a...
Feb 03, 2025•42 min
We're revisiting two "Call-In Smorgasbord" episodes from 2011, which were all about settling scores, issuing opinions, and learning about your kitchen innovations. In part one, we tackle a debate between an engaged couple, both philosophers, who want help answering the existential question: "Is it soup?" In part two, we take calls from a couple of students in Canada who are clearly ahead of the class. One caller has an important question about milk, and the other needs our consultation on a scho...
Jan 31, 2025•47 min
Why do some recipes just work while others are hit-or-miss? And is there a better way to write recipes overall? Last week we talked about how some recipes deceive you into thinking they’re easier than they are. This week we look at what makes a great recipe. Dan talks with Chandra Ram , who judged the prestigious IACP Awards, where she put recipes from popular cookbooks to the test. Then Dan talks with John Becker and Megan Scott, who revised and developed 2,400 recipes for the latest edition of...
Jan 27, 2025•34 min
What did dinosaur eggs taste like? In what shape would Jane Austen likely have had her dessert served to her? What does one of the world's leading paleontologists think of the paleo diet? How do you get maggots out of boiled sheep in the Gobi Dessert? How do you make ice cream on an uninhabited island in Madagascar in the summer? And how many ancient Aztecs would have had better teeth if they'd learned to eat corn by listening to The Sporkful? Dan gets answers to these questions and many more wh...
Jan 24, 2025•23 min
If you look at any list of best-selling cookbooks, certain words come up over and over again: quick, easy, fast, effortless. But is it actually possible to deliver deliciousness in no time? Or are these recipes too good to be true? This week, we talk with intrepid journalist Tom Scocca, who exposed the dirty secret about caramelized onions; recipe-writing legend Christopher Kimball; and food writer (and mom) Elizabeth Dunn, who’s sick of feeling bad when a recipe turns out to be harder than she ...
Jan 20, 2025•29 min
