Show Notes
Dave, Jack, Nastassia, Quinn, Joe, and a caller turn “no-tangent Monday” into a focused run of kitchen opinions and practical technique. Jack recaps China trip eats and questions the culinary payoff of hot pot vs. the social vibe. The crew debates DIY dining (fondue, hot pot), ordering strategy, and server trust, with classic Luger/Rao’s anecdotes. Quinn’s Canadian Thanksgiving menu features turkey mole and sparks a deep dive on flour-tortilla mechanics (Sonoran/White vs. soft wheat; protein, hydration, chew).
A listener calls in with a home-martini problem: freezer gin, dilution on ice vs. stirred, chilling limits, and a batching tip (stir to proper dilution, bottle with air excluded, quick-freeze before service). Lab corner hits common pain points: rotovap foam control (vacuum “kill” venting, boil-over sensors, frit/Scotch-Brite in the vapor path, bump traps), water-core apples (why it happens, flavor/storage tradeoffs), stabilizing lacto hot sauces (xanthan ≈0.25%), and walnut-butter astringency from skins (use dairy applications to blunt tannins; next time, skin the nuts). Practical notes include how to pack Scotch bonnets for travel (dry, ventilated, non-refrigerated short-term is fine), freeze-dried berries in ice cream (account for sugar/solids), and a quick cameo of Dave’s Jäger spritz spec. Carbonated-dairy troubleshooting is queued for next week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Cooking Issues with Dave Arnold
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Author Brian Hoefling joins Dave and the crew to explore Dryads: Spirits of the Trees, his deep dive into distilled spirits made from tree sap and other tree-derived sugars. They get into Sri Lankan arrack, Filipino lambanog, maple spirits, wild fermentation, palm sugar, garum, Roman cooking, and the surprising range of things humans have figured out how to ferment and distill.
It’s an All-Tangent Tuesday as Dave and the crew debate the unwritten rules of restaurants: bringing your own crushed red pepper, sneaking food into movie theaters, why some places refuse perfectly reasonable off-menu requests, and whether chimichurri disqualifies steak frites from being steak frites.
Dave Arnold is joined by Nastassia and Jack for an old-school Cooking Issues episode covering the etiquette of dining alone, phone calls at restaurants, and what guests should—or absolutely should not—bring to a dinner party. The crew gets into garlic fermented in honey and food-safety concerns, the right way to cool and store leftovers, fresh versus dried yeast, and Dave’s plans for an elaborate Peruvian-style rotisserie. Plus: cocktail texture, LA’s chaotic hillside architecture, Majordomo, upcoming travels to Houston and Paris, and the only universally acceptable answer to “What can I bring?”: wine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Dave Arnold is back at Rockefeller Center with the crew, and Nastassia kicks things off with a beer can chicken experiment that went spectacularly wrong: green chicken, burning skin, emergency Popeyes, and a last-minute rescue by Daniel Patterson. Dave also reports back from Lima, with thoughts on Peruvian chicken, ceviche, pisco sours, ancient adobe cities, cocktail bars, and the city’s formidable traffic. Then it’s on to listener questions: getting Flavacol to stick to air-popped popcorn, the limits of long low-temperature brisket cooks, red versus white clam pizza, and more. Plus: undercooked eggplant, broken glass disasters, mushroom versus butterfly popcorn, New Haven clam pies, and the deep-fried-self art project that thankfully never happened. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.