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Why Tex-Mex is just as legit as Mexican food…José Ralat’s job at Texas Monthly magazine is so unique that when he got it last year, it made national news. One headline read: “The Job You Wish You Had: Taco Editor.” Yes, taco editor. And this fall the magazine is releasing its special Taco Issue, which only comes out once every five years. José has traveled more than 10,000 miles around the state eating tacos in preparation for it. In this week’s podcast, we tag along as he hits the road in search of the best that Texas has to offer. Plus he explains why Tex-Mex deserves more respect, and why America’s regional tacos are just as legit as Mexico’s. Buckle up! // Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

Listeners call in with food issues… The perimeter of a jelly donut is devoid of fruity goodness, while the epicenter is a blob of jelly mess, says listener Larry in New York. Dan thinks he has the solution. Barbara and Bruce clash over how to dissect a corn muffin. Can they find muffin peace in their marriage? Plus, Matt calls in to talk about pancake toppings, then realizes his issues run much deeper. It’s been a long week. Join us for a break!// Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

Is the ideal cookie chewy, crispy, or crunchy?... Earlier this year, “Salt Fat Acid Heat” author Samin Nosrat and “Song Exploder” podcast host Hrishikesh Hirway teamed up to create “Home Cooking,” a podcast where they answer listeners’ cooking questions, make lots of bad puns, and share their passion for cookies, among other foods. They join Dan this week and accept a challenge: How much time can the three of them spend analyzing the most minute details of cookies? Plus, Dan and Samin resolve their olive beef. This week is heavy enough — we’re going for pure escapism.// Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

And why some make the transition faster than others….Over the years on The Sporkful, Dan has explored an idea that’s changed the way he understands food in the U.S.: You can track an immigrant group’s assimilation in America by looking at whether their food is perceived as American, or foreign. Why is pizza accepted as American, while wonton soup is considered foreign — even though Chinese immigrants came to America in large numbers before Italian immigrants? This week we continue to explore this question with Professor Krishnendu Ray, who first explained this concept on our show, as well as chef and recipe developer Yewande Komolafe, and cookbook authors Madhur Jaffrey and Priya Krishna. Show Notes: Krishnendu Ray’s book The Ethnic Restaurateur Yewande Komolafe’s “10 Essential Nigerian Recipes” Sporkful Episode “Why Hibachi Is Complicated” (Stitcher Premium) Sporkful Episode “When Will Indian Food Be American?” (Stitcher Premium)// Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

Remember when bad office coffee was our biggest problem?... “The time has come for us to change the coffee brand that we offer and we want your input!” The email came from Myiesha Gordon in the HR Department. Like many others, Myiesha hated the office coffee. This week on The Sporkful, we follow her as she sets up a taste test, and an office-wide coffee election. We'll find out why office coffee is so important to people, plus we'll talk to a caffeine researcher about whether it makes us better at our jobs. Then a behavioral economist weighs in about whether coffee is something companies should be spending money on. // Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

To be a star, he couldn’t be himself… Before the James Beard Awards and the James Beard Foundation, there was the man himself. Beard was the first celebrity chef of the TV era, preaching home cooking and fresh, local food even as frozen TV dinners gained popularity. But he also had to navigate the complexities of being a closeted gay man in a time when the kitchen was considered a place for women. Food writer John Birdsall talks with Dan about his new biography, The Man Who Ate Too Much, which traces Beard’s life from his start at queer cocktail parties in 1930s New York, to his winks to the queer audience as he became more famous, to the eventual need to change his public persona into a professorial bachelor, too obsessed with food to have time for a wife. As we hear, even today, James Beard remains one of the most misunderstood people in the food world. // Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

And one woman’s quest to share his story... In 2016, Jack Daniel’s announced the company would make changes to its official history. They planned to honor Nathan “Nearest” Green, the formerly enslaved man who taught the real Jack Daniel to make whiskey. They didn’t realize, however, that this announcement would cause an uproar — or that it would inspire a woman named Fawn Weaver to set out on a quest to unearth the full story of Nearest Green. This week, we talk with Fawn about what drew her to this story and what she’s doing to honor Green’s legacy, with help from his great-great-granddaughter Victoria Eady Butler. // Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

A lot’s happened this year… After starting his own catering company and going to the Culinary Institute of America, Kwame Onwuachi enters the world of fine dining. Soon, investors want him to open his own restaurant. But when he does, things go wrong – fast. His comeback involves a secret restaurant, the show Black Mirror, and a white guy named Mufasa. (In honor of our 10th anniversary we’re re-releasing three all time favorite stories, as selected by listeners, each with a brand new update. This is Part 2 of our conversation with Kwame Onwuachi, and it includes the update at the end. Part 1 is in your feed right now.)// Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

In honor of our 10th anniversary we’re re-releasing three all time favorite stories, as selected by listeners, each with a brand new update. This story is in two parts. Part 2 is in your feed now, with a special update… In 2019, Kwame Onwuachi became one of the fastest rising star chefs in America, and his DC restaurant Kith and Kin was widely considered one of the best in the country. But he went through countless twists and turns to get there. His story is so wild that he wrote a memoir, Notes From A Young Black Chef, that's now being made into a movie starring Lakeith Stanfield. Kwame shares the first half of that story live on stage, in conversation with Dan, at the Miracle Theatre in Washington, DC.// Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

The next chapter... In honor of our 10th anniversary we’re re-releasing three all time favorite stories, as selected by listeners, each with a brand new update at the end. In this episode we follow one woman's attempt to recover from an eating disorder over the course of a year. We hear what it’s like to wake up each morning and have to fight a battle not only with food, but more importantly, with yourself. We also hear from her husband and explore her decision, early in recovery, to become a baker.// Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

Three years later... A famous sandwich shop in Aleppo, Syria, played a key role in changing Shadi Martini’s life forever. Today on The Sporkful we hear the rest of Shadi’s story, and conclude our quest to find out what happened to the shop during the civil war in Syria. (In honor of our 10th anniversary we’re re-releasing three all-time favorite stories, as selected by listeners, each with a brand new update. This is the conclusion of the first story.)// Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.  

A quest for a sandwich… In honor of our 10th anniversary we’re re-releasing three all time favorite stories, as selected by listeners, each with a brand new update. This first story is in two parts. The second part is in your feed now, with a special update at the end. Before Aleppo became an international symbol for the devastation of the Syrian civil war, it was Syria's food capital. Today, we go on a quest to find out what made a beloved sandwich shop there special, and whether the restaurant and its owners have survived the conflict. // Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

Anger, depression, and massive success… For David Chang, every restaurant he opens feels like life or death. That mentality is a major reason why he’s one of the biggest figures in the restaurant world today. He combines highbrow and lowbrow, mashing cuisines together to create dishes that aren’t fusions — they’re collisions. If you know him from TV, you probably think of him as an affable, goofy guy who loves to eat. But in this conversation and in his new memoir, Eat A Peach, he opens up about his decades-long struggles with anger and depression, his relationship with his father, and the role it’s all played in his success. Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

This was supposed to be the Queens Night Market’s big summer... When the open-air market debuted in 2015, the crowds were massive. Founder John Wang selected food vendors who represented more than 90 countries. And he had one rule for them: no item could cost more than $5. That way the market would be accessible to nearly everyone, and big businesses would stay away. In 2019 the market set a new record for attendance, and finally started to turn a small profit. In 2020 they planned to release a cookbook. Instead, because of coronavirus, the market never opened. This week, to understand some of what we’ve lost to the pandemic, we share a vivid reminder of what we had.  Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

This was supposed to be the Queens Night Market’s big summer... When the open-air market debuted in 2015, the crowds were massive. Founder John Wang selected food vendors who represented more than 90 countries. And he had one rule for them: no item could cost more than $5. That way the market would be accessible to nearly everyone, and big businesses would stay away. In 2019 the market set a new record for attendance, and finally started to turn a small profit. In 2020 they planned to release a cookbook. Instead, because of coronavirus, the market never opened. This week, to understand some of what we’ve lost to the pandemic, we share a vivid reminder of what we had.

And the science of rocky road’s success… Ketchup started as a far different product from what’s on the shelves today. A lot of its evolution can be traced to an early government agency and a group there called “The Poison Squad” that tested the safety of different chemicals — by eating them. We hear that story. Then a linguist explains why the name “rocky road” actually makes the ice cream taste better. This episode is a special collaboration with Science Diction, a new podcast from the folks at Science Friday about the science stories behind everyday words. Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

What you don’t know about the celebrity chef… Guy Fieri is a legend on Food Network, known for his shows Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and Guy's Grocery Games. But he was a successful restaurateur even before he got on TV. And his intense ambition was evident even earlier, when he ran a successful pretzel cart at age 10. Behind the spiky hair and flashy cars, Guy’s a person who feels like he’s always trying to keep up — and despite all his success, he’s always looking for more. Guy talks about how he built his restaurant empire, learning to enjoy his success, and the best business advice Sammy Hagar ever gave him. Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

And a debate about potato salad… Welcome to our summer cookout spectacular! We talk with renowned burger historian George Motz about the history of the hamburger, and about the wide range of regional burgers across the country, many of which are unknown outside their areas. Then we get an incredible burger recipe from Chef Jehangir Mehta, inspired by Indian street food, that’s made with 25% mushrooms. Finally, our old friend J. Kenji Lopez-Alt stops by for a debate that’s sure to spark conversation at your next socially-distanced outdoor gathering: Should potato salad be called a salad?   Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.  

When the spotlight goes away… In the wake of allegations about systemic racism at Bon Appétit, people of color there were hopeful things would change. Nearly two months later, are they changing? How are Bon Appétit and its parent company, Condé Nast, dealing with this turmoil — employees speaking out, a refusal to produce videos until negotiations are settled, and an internal investigation into pay equity? We spoke with six people at BA, all of whom asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, to find out. After the headline-grabbing scandal comes the time when people have to make real change. Those in power have to act. UPDATE: We published this episode Monday morning, August 3rd. On Thursday, three stars of the BA Test Kitchen— Priya Krishna, Rick Martinez, and Sohla El-Waylly—announced that they would no longer be participating in videos for Bon Appétit. Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

How the (part veggie) sausage gets made...Cara Nicoletti comes from a long line of butchers, but her grandfather didn’t want her to follow in his footsteps. It’s physical work, it requires long hours, the pay isn’t great, and the path is even tougher for women. Cara went against her grandfather’s wishes anyway and became a butcher — but she hasn’t followed a traditional path. She spent ten years developing a type of sausage that none of her ancestors could have imagined. When it came time to start selling them on her own, it took a woman entrepreneur to tell her, “You’re not thinking big enough.” Cara tells us about the challenges of getting her business off the ground, what makes her sausages special, and why she named the company after her grandfather. Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.