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Cooking Issues with Dave Arnold
No Tangent Tuesday: Frozen Food and Wisdom Teeth
Dave chats with Nastassia, Quinn and Jack for a classic No Tangent Tuesday. From wisdom teeth and frozen vegetables to guanciale curing and the merits of multiple centrifuges, the crew bounces between home cooking habits and deep technical dives.
• Quick Dinners and Frozen Food Quality – Nastassia shares her weeknight meal of pre-seasoned Whole Foods chicken breast, frozen broccoli, and pre-cooked rice. Dave explores the merits of frozen vegetables and the shelf-stable rice market. Peas and corn are praised; frozen Brussels sprouts are dismissed. Dave discusses his chicken saltimbocca technique and the ups and downs of using essential oils in cooking.
• DIY Guanciale and Curing Techniques – Quinn details a home-cured guanciale project using sage essential oil. Dave critiques the use of essential oils due to limited flavor diffusion in fat and questions whether the result matches the flavor of fresh herbs. The discussion expands into dry vs. wet styles of guanciale, optimal moisture loss, and terminology (e.g., “unctuous”).
• Frozen Fruit and At-Home Pizza – The crew discusses best uses for frozen fruit and Quinn describes a weekend pizza session using a gas-fired Ooni oven and homemade guanciale.
• Why Dave Avoids Homemade Cocktails and Pizza – Dave explains why he no longer makes cocktails or pizza at home, preferring to enjoy professional results (e.g., Wiley Dufresne’s pizza spot). He still enjoys home cooking for non-work-related food, like chicken pot pie.
• Spinzall Centrifuge Sale – Dave announces a temporary price drop on the Spinzall 2.0 centrifuge due to warehouse clearance. He explains the advantages of multiple small centrifuges versus one large industrial model, citing reliability, flexibility, and clarification performance. He also clarifies the technical differences between various centrifuge types (swinging bucket vs. fixed angle).
• Cane vs. Beet Sugar – In response to a listener question, Dave breaks down the minor but real differences between cane and beet sugar, including pH levels, crystallization behavior, and potential impacts on jelling and caramelization. Taste tests suggest differences are detectable when dry but vanish in solution.
• Goat Cream and Centrifuge Separation – Dave explores whether a Spinzall can separate cream from goat milk. He notes goat milk has smaller fat globules that make it naturally homogenized and explains how traditional cream separators work using spinning disks. He suggests testing the top fat layer from Spinzall output for reconstitution into cream.
• Durum Wheat and Semolina – Mike C writes in about baking with coarsely ground semolina. Dave and Quinn explain distinctions between semolina and fine durum flour (semola rimacinata), touching on hydration needs and flour properties.
• Clarification on Nitrogen Use in Cocktails – Dave stresses clear terminology when discussing nitrogen (N₂) versus nitrous oxide (N₂O). He warns against confusion when referring to “nitro” cocktails, noting that nitrogen creates microfoam textures while nitrous is used for rapid infusion.
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Alex Stupak: Tacos, Technique and Beyond
01:00:41|Dave Arnold is joined in-studio by chef Alex Stupak to talk tacos (including the evolution of his “cheeseburger taco”), Substack-era dessert thinking, and why some techniques (and tastes) don’t hit the same a decade later. The crew detours into gumbo viscosity and the eternal question of whether s’mores should be toasted or fully incinerated. Along the way: freezing clams to open them, Manhattan clam chowder ethics, American cheese brand loyalty, film-forming gels, and what the modernist cooking wave looks like in hindsight—plus why “simple” food is dominating menus right now.No Tangent Tuesday: Unnecessary Flourish
01:01:19|Dave kicks off another anything-goes Tangent Tuesday with a stack of updates: upcoming guests Paul Carmichael and Dennis (with Momofuku/Kabo context) and a correction on the “German” drop-off that turns out to be Austrian—complete with scarlet runner beans and pumpkin seed oil for the canonical salad. From there it’s pure free-association cooking brain: the French galette des rois vs. other king-cake traditions, why grill marks are mostly a bad signal (and grill pans are worse), and Dave’s long-running dream of a bar “piñata service” that doesn’t involve handing drunk people a bat—now migrating toward a spring-loaded destruction machine. Quinn talks baguette iteration (including gelatin experiments), Dave dives deep on vintage Crisco lore and beta-carotene fry-color hacks, and the crew detours through oddball old cookbooks, “Japanese fruit cake” naming insanity, and a near-electrocution tale from rewiring a century-old Hamilton Beach mixer. The back half hits listener Q&A: milling/sifting guidance, lacto-ferment oxygen management, and circulator recommendations (with a pragmatic “watts + insulation matter more than marketing” take).Biscuits, Bouillon and Beyond
01:01:25|This week is a rapid-fire run of Cooking Issues staples: why most store carrots are trash (and why frozen veg is usually the correct move for pot pie), biscuit technique tweaks (including grating frozen butter), and a pie-crust method that splits the fat for a “medium” flake. From there it’s gear-and-systems nerdery: a Seattle Ultrasonics knife test, pro home-kitchen “hacks” (deli containers, tape/Sharpie, restaurant-supply pans, freezing bases), and a long, detailed breakdown of home carbonation—carbonators, cold plates vs. chillers, line materials, compensator taps, and why soda guns lose CO₂. The back half hits listener questions on Soxhlet extraction, nitro vs. nitrous, red-hot poker construction, oat-milk eggnog separation, and a precise carbonated French 75 base spec to close.No Tangent Tuesday: Full Boat
01:01:04|The crew checks in live from Rockefeller Center and quickly veers from Patreon housekeeping into Polymarket absurdities, restaurant closures, and the grim mechanics of auctioning off a closed kitchen. Jean details liquidating equipment (including a Rationale), while Dave unloads on bureaucracy, safety grounds left floating inside a brand-new Bosch oven, and the theoretical physics of jacking oven temps via PT1000 resistance sensors—plus reversible home steam-injection hacks that don’t involve drilling holes.Quinn talks risotto-style oats and fresh milling, and Dave breaks down grain texture, grinder damage myths, and why oats are mushy compared to rice. Listener questions round things out with astringency in drinks beyond tannins (bitters, resins, aromatics), blood-sausage preferences across styles, and how phosphoric acid can anchor a cola-like, carbonated amaro build.No Tangent Tuesday: Business Excuse
01:00:55|Cooking Issues opens the new year with Dave and Joe in-studio, plus Nastassia and Jack in LA and Quinn on Vancouver Island. Dave recaps a rough holiday detour: adopting a young cat that immediately got seriously sick, turning New Year’s into emergency vet care and force-feeding. Jack reports from a cross-country drive to clear out storage, including a stop at Richmond’s Gwar Bar, inspiring instant talk of a future show takeover. Dave also offers Patreon listeners first dibs on hauling away a free six-burner Wolf commercial gas range from the Lower East Side.The crew swaps holiday cooking notes (Quinn’s turkey biryani, a red wine pork stew), then veers into gear and technique: Dave experiments with Ray-Ban Meta glasses for POV kitchen content, discusses his new Bosch oven and stone/pizza setup logic, and takes a caller question on keeping orange oil in syrup—recommending gum arabic plus xanthan while explaining why “clear” emulsions are hard. Quick hits include a shout-out to Alba in LA, a party etiquette rant about grabbing a legend’s guitar, and Dave’s non-alcoholic bitterness hacks for diet soda (wormwood/gentian infusions).Rome: A Culinary History with Katie Parla
01:00:28|Katie Parla returns to talk about her new book Rome: A Culinary History Cookbook, including why she self-publishes, how she actually gets the writing done, and what it takes to shoot a full cookbook fast. Then it’s a deep Rome run: porchetta quality (and why most is mediocre), pajata, Roman pizza styles, and how “traditional” rules like guanciale-onlyand no cheese with seafood are more complicated than people claim. Plus: the practical cacio e pepe fix (cold-start paste), why bucatini is a problem, and a few Roman myths that don’t survive the paperwork.Kevin Jeung on Noma’s LA Pop-Up and New Ingredients
01:00:50|Kevin Jeung (Noma / Noma Projects) calls in from LA to talk about Noma’s upcoming Los Angeles pop-up and what it changes when you suddenly have citrus, avocados, and California seasonality on the table. Kevin walks through how the team is doing early-stage R&D—ingredient exploration, fermentation setup, and testing techniques for hard problems like cactus slime and variable produce.Dave detours into Denmark: Christmas market roast pork sandwiches, crackling technique, and what cut the Danes actually use (loin vs belly vs skin-on neck). They also get into Noma Projects curiosities like peach tree sap (rehydrated for a tendon-like chew), plus a few practical bar/kitchen notes: a clarified spec for the Brandy Savage cranberry cordial build, and a quick take on stabilizing acidic whipped cream (gel/fluid-gel approach vs citric acid straight into dairy). Closing beat: Kevin’s Turkey method for the Noma team—compound butter under the skin, and mayo outside for browning/crisping.All Tangent Tuesday: Just Say No to Food Mills
01:00:37|Tune in for an all-tangent episode that's all over the map. Dave reports on a Copenhagen-inspired Danish pork sandwich project (crispy skin, red cabbage, remoulade, cucumber salad) plus pretzel-style brioche buns. Then it’s rapid-fire listener Q&A: Fernet ice cream without wrecking the freeze (boil off alcohol), why venison oxidizes when sliced, brining curve calculators, popping sorghum, and a quick hit of Dave’s vegan foamer ratios—before the crew closes out with a full-on rant about food mills.Olive Oil, Saffron Gelato & The Great Ginkgo Takeover — w/ Nick Coleman & Ariel Johnson
01:00:26|Dave is back with a packed studio and longtime friend of the show Nick Coleman — olive oil educator, sensory expert, and musician behind HGH — fresh off a trip to Greece teaching at the International Olive Oil Network. They go deep on how to detect defects in olive oil by smell alone, why fruité noir works when done intentionally, olive fly maggots, pruning for quality fruit, and why every producing country swears theirs is the best.Noma scientist and author Ariel Johnson joins mid-show, jumping straight into flavor chemistry: why plum frozen yogurt tastes like strawberries, how to reverse-engineer hogo for non-alcoholic tiki drinks, sulfur compounds in durian, chlorophyll behavior in green herb oils, and more. Saffron custard gelato, carotenoids, pressure-cooking aromatics, British potatoes — nothing is safe.The crew also spirals into glorious tangents:• DIY Danish pork roast & the perfect crackling sandwich• Street food logic — what should be eaten on the move• The underrated beauty (and stink) of ginkgo trees• Why wrapping potatoes in foil ruins them• Delivery fries, baguette sandwiches, and sidewalk etiquette rage• VR garbage, museum exhibits, waiting for Godot w/ Keanu & Alex WinterPlus olive oil tasting in-studio, Patreon callers, and a preview of upcoming episodes — including Kevin from Noma returning soon.