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.

Then things get technical with grilled lobster, birthday steaks, blood cocktails, yeast percentages, and a deep dive into getting the perfect glossy mahogany crust on homemade pretzels. Plus, Dave lays out his dream outdoor kitchen—from a tandoor and raised hearth to a bread oven, deep fryer, and an outdoor Searzall setup—and previews an upcoming exploration of tree-sap spirits and fish sauce.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dave is joined by chef Fidel Caballero of Corima and Vato for a deep dive into Northern Mexican cooking, starting with an ingredient close to both their hearts: turkey butts. Fidel explains their place in the tortas of Chihuahua and Juárez, before getting into squab-butt tacos, asiento, molcajetes and metates, and why Northern Mexican food deserves more attention.

They go deep on flour tortillas: White Sonora wheat, boiling-water doughs, butter versus chicken fat, sourdough and lactic acid, hot presses, giant Sonoran sobaqueras cooked on an inverted wok, and why a proper Juárez burrito bears little resemblance to its enormous California cousin. Fidel also talks mole from scratch, Tokyo turnip cajeta, grilled fish collars, and the cooking behind Corima and Vato.

Plus, Jack attempts to break his daily cold-brew habit, Quinn reports back on tomato-water bread and amino-acid-enhanced tomato soup, and Dave weighs in on grinder maintenance, pre-gelatinized starch, tomato soup, vintage Japanese whisky, stand mixers, guacamole, and the enduring question: where the hell can you buy turkey butts in New York?

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Dave tackles a packed round of listener questions, starting with a surprisingly deep investigation into the canonical club sandwich.

Then, a listener trying to recreate the original marshmallow using marshmallow root sends Dave into the problem of building a vegan marshmallow.

Also on the docket: choosing an outdoor fryer and getting serious about homemade french fries, how cold Dave keeps carbonated cocktails at Bar Contra, using tomato water in bread dough, storing whole-wheat flour under vacuum, cooking for 12 people aboard a research vessel, and what to know before making turtle soup. Plus, Dave talks peak tomato season, debates whether “New American” still means anything, and checks in with Nastassia about the realities of feeding a touring crew.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Dave answers long-awaited cocktail questions, dives into techniques for building better drinks, and shares updates from recent industry events and ongoing Cooking Issues projects. The conversation also covers creative burger experiments, getting more out of a small kitchen, troubleshooting common cooking mistakes, and practical advice for working with cured meats, custards, and emulsions.

Along the way, the crew debates paper straws, swaps favorite food movies, and wanders through the usual mix of culinary science, restaurant stories, and spirited tangents.

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This week on Cooking Issues, Dave and the crew are joined by Alex Hawk, Manager of Culinary Innovation at Burger King, and Zach Young, Director of Culinary and Commercialization at Burger King, for a rare look inside the food science, logistics, and product development behind one of the largest restaurant systems in the world.

They get into what it actually takes to create food for millions of people: bakery supply chains, fresh bread logistics, Whopper improvements, tomato specs, lettuce formats, clean-label constraints, regional menu development, and the challenge of making recipes work across thousands of restaurants and multiple generations of equipment.

The conversation also covers home frying versus commercial frying, fryer oil, Popeyes chicken, Burger King’s relationship to Puerto Rico and the Whopper Jr., artificial sweeteners, frozen carbonated beverages, CVAP ovens, water fryers, potato freezers measured in hundreds of millions of pounds, and why even a seemingly simple menu change can become a massive operational question.

Plus: Diet Coke loyalty, green ketchup, edible Tide Pods that mercifully never happened, the original chicken sandwich, secret-menu chaos, and the realities of innovating inside a global fast-food system.

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This week on Cooking Issues, Dave and the crew are joined by chef Max Wittawat of Bangkok Supper Club for a deep dive into Thai cooking technique, restaurant life, and ingredient realities in New York.

Max talks through the logic behind Bangkok Supper Club’s kitchen-counter tasting menu, why some dishes translate better than others outside Thailand, and how he approaches Thai flavors with precision rather than nostalgia. The conversation gets into makrut lime sourcing, cilantro root versus cilantro stems, galangal, fresh versus frozen aromatics, limestone water for crispness and texture, Thai basil oil, culantro, betel leaves, toasted rice powder, coconut milk, and why mortar-and-pestle work still matters.

Plus: Dave gets into hardtack and ship’s biscuit, Sunken Harbor Club, crinkle-cut fries, fennel hatred, durian tolerance, mandoline injuries, and the eternal problem of expensive bread.

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