The Recipe with Kenji and Deb - Mailbag Part 2

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

We know you don’t want to burn your food in the kitchen (unless it’s a char/sear kinda situation), but you know what else you don’t want to burn? You, the cook. Deb and Kenji reveal their tips for avoiding cooking burnout, as well as how to mine your own sodium citrate at home. Did your eyes get whiplash reading this? Buckle up because your letters took us all over the map: biscuits for every purpose, what kind of pancakes Barbie would eat, how to cook like a boss for 1-2 people. 

Did you know that kids eat 1,095 meals every year? And if you include snacks, it's more like 4 trillion meals a year. Honestly, the responsibility kind of sucks sometimes, but we're here with some real help and camaraderie too. We're Stacey and Megan, hosts of Didn't I Just Feed You, a weekly podcast that gets real about what it takes to feed our families. Tune in to Didn't I Just Feed You for kitchen tricks, product recommendations, and tons of meal ideas, like how to turn nachos into a legit family dinner.

Listen to Didn't I Just Feed You wherever you get your podcasts. Can I tell you something that I don't want you to judge me for, but I think you're going to? I will never judge. I judge all the time. By far, my easiest go-to meal is my one tap order on the Domino's app. Nice. If that's your comfort food. It's like Friday, it's like, oh my god, I don't want to

cook for five people today. Click, done. You can do it while you're watching TV. Do it. But what if you just give yourself that rather than fighting it? Yeah. Yeah. that rather than fighting it. Yeah, yeah. From PRX's Radiotopia, this is the recipe with Kenji and Deb, where we help you discover your own perfect recipes. Kenji is the author of The Food Lab and The Walk and a columnist for the New York Times. And Deb is the creator of Smitten Kitchen. She's also the author of three bestselling cookbooks. We're both professional home cooks, which means that we can and will make the same dish

57 times in our quest for the perfect recipe. And on this show, we will share our techniques and ingredients so that you can figure out what works best for you. This week, we're talking about your letters. That's what's coming up on the recipe, so stay with us. your letters. My name is Majel Stein. I'm a Southern girl and can make a mean fried chicken, mashed potatoes, potato salad, anything you name it. You know what I can't make? I can't make really good biscuits. I would give anything to make killer biscuits.

If y'all have any words of wisdom, please share. Thanks. I gotta say, I feel a little weird. A Southern girl asking like a couple of people from the Northeast how to make biscuits. I honestly don't think I ever really understood what a good biscuit was. You know, I got a bunch of people from the Northeast, how to make biscuits. I honestly don't think I ever really understood what a good biscuit was. You know, I got a bunch of cousins in Tennessee,

but until I was maybe a teenager and went down to Tennessee and visited, and I was like, oh, this is different than the crispy things that you get like a McDonald's breakfast sandwich on, you know? Yes, a good biscuit is different from what McDonald's has. I'm glad we've established that's the baseline of this conversation.

Although I would say that the McDonald's biscuits serves a function, right? Like I feel like it's the right biscuit for the job. So a couple things when you're making biscuits. First of all, I think having the right flour is really key, especially if you want like a really nice light southern style biscuit. So you want like a really light, light flour.

So for me, White Lily, I think is the go-to brand. And if you live in the South, I'm sure you can get it. If you live outside the South, you might have to mail order it, or you might have to go to a specialty shop, but White Lily is a very low protein, very soft flour that makes incredibly light biscuits. So starting with the right flour is important.

If you don't have access to a low protein flour or a soft flour, you can cut your flour, like with a little bit of rice flour or a little bit of cornstarch, just regular all-purpose flour, you know, maybe 15, 10 or 15 percent and that'll help lighten it up a little bit. And then the remainder is making sure that you keep everything light and minimally needed, because the goal with a biscuit is that you want to sort of really get just the right level of gluten development so that they kind of hold together, but they don't get tough or rubbery, right?

You want it to be super light and almost fluffy. And so the key to that, it's just like making a fluffy pancake is that you want to sort of work the dough as little as possible. Once you get your fat worked in and you add your liquid, you work the dough as little as possible and try and really quickly get it into the right shape.

There's a lot of different styles of biscuits, so it's hard to give a one size fits all answer for this, but I think having the right flour and making sure that you work the dough as little as possible, those are generally good rules for it no matter what kind of biscuits you so it's hard to give a one size fits all answer for this, but I think having the right flour and making sure that you work the dough as little as possible, those are generally good rules for no matter what kind of biscuits you're going to do, whether it's drop biscuits or laminated biscuits or angel biscuits or whatever it is. I tend to agree with you on that because I tend to think there's the biscuit that I want that's like a little sturdier that I would put an egg sandwich on.

And then there's the biscuit I might want in a bread basket, which is a little fluffier. That's where I want the low protein flour, maybe a drop biscuit. So there's different kinds. And there's like somewhere in the middle for a breakfast biscuit that I'm gonna put butter and jam on. Also, there's a lot of argument and contention over the fat you put in.

Butter is popular, shortening is popular, lard is popular. Depending on where you grew up and who made your biscuits and how they made them is gonna have a lot to do with what you think the perfect biscuit is. And you and I being people who did not grow up eating biscuits, but have grown to like them as cooks. I did not have biscuits growing up. What's your like seminal biscuit moment

and what's the seminal biscuit moment of Deb Perlman's life? I would say of other people's recipes for biscuits, I would say one of my favorites is Clara Safitz's. I think it's an old Bon Appetit recipe and it's just such a solid one. I've sort of played with it over the years, but I really like it. But I also have in my last book I do,

it's not traditional, but I do a sour cream and cheddar one that I love so much. And that to me is just so good with eggs or more savory breakfast if you don't want something sweet. I have a cheddar scallion biscuit recipe in the food lab. You do it almost like a scallion pancake where the dough gets laminated and you kind of spread the cheese and scallions in between the laminated layers as

you roll it out. So it kind of builds in the layers. And mine has little dice bits of cheddar in it. So as it bakes they kind of puddle out and get you get those little frico puddles that I love. So that's the best. I like it when a biscuit has like a cheese biscuit has little gooey pockets of cheese in the middle. But then yeah, the little bits where the cheese was poking out the sides and they kind of melt down and then hit the sheet pan and brown up and get a little bit crispy. Yeah, and then you pick it up and it's like a whole, it's like lacy and amazing,

and then you totally pick it off and don't share. We should do a biscuit episode, by the way. But I'm like, could I do four biscuit recipes? Cause I feel like there's so many. Yeah, what's your like most made style of biscuit? I would say, I don't, I really use different ones or I sometimes make a drop biscuit. If it's a weeknight and I wanna make something

to go with soup or something like that, it's gonna be a drop biscuit. I like a really like nicely layered up one for breakfast sometimes. That's also usually a little sturdier and they go well with eggs, but I haven't made it as much, but what I would probably use the white lily flower

for the most often is those sort of angel drop biscuits. And those to me are so good. I don't make them very often because I don't usually have white lily flower. I know I can get it, but I'm not gonna buy a bag just to make biscuits because it's not central enough to the way I cook, but maybe it would be. I mail order bags of white lily self-rising flour.

That's the way, yeah, that's, yeah. Specifically to make biscuits. And the, by far the biscuit I flour. And specifically to make biscuits. And by far the biscuit I make the most often are cream biscuits. So it's a style of drop biscuit. Well, you can make it anyway. You can fold them and cut them or you could drop them. But essentially it's two ingredients.

You take self-rising flour, preferably white lily, something really soft and heavy cream, and then you just mix them. And that's it. I always thought that was a very classic James Beard thing. I feel like I have a version of that on my site, the cream biscuit.

Is it? Yeah, it could be. It's a horrible picture, don't look at it. It's really 2009. I don't even remember where I learned this one from. I don't know if it was his originally, but I know it was in James Beard, American Cookery, but it's like a classic and it's really just, I'm like, it really is just cream.

No, actually there's butter, there is whatever, but I feel like you can't go wrong with the soft rising flour and cream. It's not that sort of flaky layer of a buttery biscuit, you know, it is more sort of like a soft, like an angel biscuit style. You can get some layers by, you know, doing laminating, by rolling it out, doing some book folds and laminating a couple of times, but yeah,

it's definitely not one of those super flaky biscuits. One of the things I always liked in Claire Saffitz's recipe, and I think I used it in my cheddar one too, is instead of doing the book fold, for some reason this always feels quicker to me, you roll out the slab and then you quarter it and you stack it. And for some reason to me,

I feel like it's a little like it's usable to the edges more. You can do that once or twice and it's sort of like a lazier way to do it. You're getting an exponent more layers if you're cutting it, if you make it four instead of three every time you do it. No, that's, yeah, I don't know why we would do the folds. Why wouldn't you just cut it? Why are we? I know it's, that's what I'm like, I don't know if like that was her thing first.

That was the first place I read it. So I've always given her credit when I do this. It just seems so obvious when you hear them, like why doesn't everyone do that? Right. It's like, I've always sort of collected those things over the years though. I love, that's why I'm, that's why I'm always referencing other recipes because I love it when I pick up a little tidbit. It's not really about like the full biscuit recipe for me. It was just reading it that way. And I feel like it's almost impossible

when you're rolling out a dough to not do that once you know it. Because it's just, the ideally you would put it back in the fridge for 20 minutes or the freezer for five minutes just to get it a little more firmed up, but you can, it's just a really quick, lazy way to make extra layers and you could do it twice.

Yeah, that's great. And it's done. All right, Kenji, this is a good question for you. We got a couple of questions that involve sodium citrate, which is everybody's favorite nacho chemical. Hi, Kenji and Deb, my name is Emmanuel, I'm from Montreal, Canada, and I have a grilled cheese related question. So in Kenji and Deb, my name is Emmanuel, I'm from Montreal, Canada and I have a grilled cheese related question.

So in Kenji's recipe you talk about using American cheese in combination with other more flavorful cheeses for the gooeyness of the emulsifying salts. You also mentioned the way of making homemade American style cheese products by combining the cheese with sodium citrate and molding it. My question is, could you build a grilled cheese by sprinkling a with sodium citrate and molding it. My question is, could you build a grilled cheese by sprinkling a little sodium citrate in between each slice of the quote unquote real cheese as they're stacked up in the sandwich?

Or if you're using grated cheese, could you toss the shreds with sodium citrate before piling it on the sandwich? And do you think that would work as a substitute for the gooeyness of American cheese that melts together in the pan? Hi, my name is Brian. I love the macaroni and cheese episode. It's fantastic. My question is that you mentioned that the Kenji three ingredient stove top recipe can't really hold more robust cheeses like Deb's can.

Would a pinch of sodium citrate in Kenji's three ingredient stove top recipe allow for things like Parmesan or some of those cheese to work with that technique. Let me know. I'd love to try it Thanks so much. Love the podcast. The answer in both cases is yes. So sodium citrate is like a magic salt It's an emulsifying salt It's one of the ingredients that you would use to make something like American cheese And it's why those sort of American processed cheeses melt so smoothly it's a salt that basically prevents proteins from tightening up too much with each other and so everything stays a little bit more loose and flowy the fat doesn't get squeezed out and so rather than breaking out of sort of like a greasy bit and a tough rubbery bit your cheese is kind kind of nice and gooey, the texture of American cheese. Sodium citrate, you can buy it. There's a couple ways you can get it.

You can buy it online. It's very readily available. They'll send it to you. It's just a powder. It looks a little bit like salt, like very fine salt. And you can just use it as is, a little sprinkle of it. If not, Siri Seats recently published this, I think, a brilliant hack for how you can get sodium citrate at home.

Essentially, if you get alka-seltzer with no aspirin in it, alka-seltzer is, it gets its bubbles through a combination of baking soda and oh what is the other, what is the other chemical in it? Citric acid and baking soda. When you combine citric acid and baking soda with water, you end up with a solution of water, carbon dioxide and sodium citrate. And so just getting an alka-seltzer, a non-aspirin alka-seltzer, and dissolving it in water and then using that to make a cheese sauce

will give you a very smooth cheese sauce. It's really weird and brilliant, I think you'll find it on Serious Eats. Does it change the flavor? No. So, I mean, sodium citrate has a very slightly, sort of salty, slightly tart flavor to it, but not really. And certainly not in like any kind of undesirable way. If anything, it makes your cheese just like a but not really. Not, and certainly not in like any kind of undesirable way. If anything, it makes your cheese just like a slightly sharper tasting. So it's not a flavor that will sort of interfere with your cheese at all. And, and, and, and then the amounts that you use, you know, if you're using like half a teaspoon for a whole big batch of mac and cheese, you really don't taste it.

The other fun thing about sodium citrate is that it has the chemical formula nacho as well, N A C H O is its chemical formula. And it's the chemical formula, nacho as well, N-A-C-H-O is its chemical formula. And it's the main ingredient in nacho cheese sauce. Anyhow, yes, it'll work for your girl cheese, it'll work for your mac and cheese. I don't know, Deb, do you have any more thoughts on sodium citrate? I have very few thoughts on sodium citrate,

but I saw your video and I saw Cooks Illustrated on the Alka Seltzer and I am completely obsessed with this. I love it when you can just go to a random store and buy an ingredient and so I think I'm definitely going to try it because I generally I like cheese that melts and you're very limited in cheeses that melt well so if you could apply this and get a sharper or more interesting cheese to make a nice melty sauce I'm in. Yes just not non-aspirin Alka-Saltzer. Non-aspirin I mean like what's the worst thing that's going happen? Your headache goes away? We use the medicated mac and cheese, I guess.

People would be like, and it was just aspirin, that's the only medication you could put in there. People would be very disappointed. Hi, Kenji and me there. This is Emily from Los Angeles. I have a question for the pancake episode. Why does the first pancake always turn out wrong? Thanks. Really enjoyed your podcast. Bye. Do you experience this, Deb? I certainly experience this. Oh yeah. The first crepe, the first pancake, the first everything is like, I feel like it's hubris and also just because we're like, oh, yeah, I've got this. I've made a million pancakes in my life and then I'm not paying attention and the stove is too hot or too cold or whatever.

Or I just completely forget that when you're flipping a pancake, you're kind of balancing liquid on a disc there. So, but yeah, no, I think it's just like you forget. You like, you forget because you think you could never, it's not like riding a bike. You think you're gonna never forget how to make a pancake, but the first one's always rusty.

So that's okay. That's the cook's snack. That's how you can tell the batter came out right. Yeah, I mean, for me, I think there's two main reasons, for me at least, why my pancakes don't come out right first. The first one is temperature control, right? Which is that you're heating up like a, maybe a non-stick pan or a cast iron, carbon steel,

something like that, but you don't really get much indication of how hot it actually is, and pancakes are pretty sensitive to that, right? Like if it's too cool, they tend to stick, or sensitive to that right like if it's too cool they tend to stick or they come out blonde if it's too hot they char and also like when you're preheating your pan on a home burner you kind of get hot and cool spots right and so your pancakes might get a little dark your first pancake might get a little darker around the edges where it's hotter as opposed to the center I mean so that

first pancake to me is always sort of like the calibrating pancake right it's the one that tells me whether my pan is the right temperature or not. And sometimes you get really lucky and it is, but usually it's not. So it calibrates the pan. It also kind of evens out the temperature of the pan. Like if you think of like, if you think of your pan having hot and cool spots,

almost like you spilled heat onto it, you know? And so you have like heat piled up in certain areas and not a lot of it, a lot more of it in some areas and less of it in another area. And then you pour your pancake hot batter on there. It's kind of like a towel that's absorbing that heat, right? So it'll absorb a lot of it, a lot more of it in some areas and less of it in another area. And then you pour your pancake hot batter on there. It's kind of like a towel that's absorbing that heat, right? So it'll absorb a lot of heat from the hot areas

and less heat from the cooler areas. And so by the time that first pancake is done, your pan's gonna be a lot more even in temperature across the board. And so your second pancake's gonna come out better. The other thing is that depending on how you like your pancakes, whether you like them sort of like splotchy and lacy with sort of crispy edges,

or you like them more of that really nice even golden brown The way the fat is just distributed on the pan can have a different can make a difference as well So the first pancake you might have just added butter or maybe oil you rubbed it in there But there's gonna be little droplets of liquid butter or liquid oil on that pan So when you pour your pancake batter on there The spots where those droplets were will come out a little paler than the spots where your pancakes were in direct contact with the pan. And so your first pancake will be a little bit spotty and then by the time you get your second pancake you'll have absorbed some of the fat from the

surface of the pan. So your second pancake comes out sort of like a more even golden brown. I've always thought the lacy pattern pancake was the goal. I think it looks so pretty. I want to see it. It looks interesting. It looks it's a very it's a unique pancake stamp. You know, after we did our pancake episode and I spent, you know, like a week frying pancakes and like copious amounts of... Until our kids cut us off. I mean, I think I am. I think I do come down on that side as well. If you want to go through the effort to make a bunch of clarified butter and you are willing to fry your pancakes and like a little layer of clarified butter in your pan, you'll get like super crispy edges.

I just find it's a little bit more work and also I don't always feel like I want to eat like a butter soaked pancake every breakfast, every day. That was how I felt when I made those pancakes. No, but you can get it without clarified butter. I mean, without clarified, you mostly have the issue that the pan's going to get more brown and the butter is going to get more burnt as you go on. But I feel like to me, it's more about the pancake texture. Like I generally find that a looser pancake

is going to get a little more of that laciness. It's gonna do that spilling thing. Because the batter can kind of spread out at the edges and like frizzle out when you put it in. Exactly, exactly. You get those lacy edges. And I think I remember commenting when I made your pancakes, they had like a really nice lacy pattern to them,

which means that they look iconic. Okay. That's funny. Cause to me, like the iconic pancake is like the McDonald's pancake. It's like there to me, an iconic pancake is like a perfect golden brown disc that looks like a flying saucer. I had a deprived childhood, so I didn't have the, but you know, you know, we have stereotypical Barbie, we have like, you know, the stereotypical pancake and that has, I think, the lacy edges

and it should be like a medium golden brown. Yeah. More questions from the mailbag coming up next after this break. ["Dreams of a New World"] Welcome back to The Recipe with Deb and Kenji. Hi, this is Sarah Pagel. I am really interested on how to pare down our recipes.

So I'm a single lady and I'm an auntie, I'm a friend, but I am constantly finding great recipes for servings of six, servings of eight. I could get down to four, but I'm just curious, where can I get the recipe for one to two people? Because I don't like eating the same thing all week long, and my freezer is getting really full of my mason jars, because I use mason jars to freeze all of my leftovers. All right, thank you so much. Looking forward to hearing from you all.

Enjoy the show and the banter. I don't know if you have certain tricks that you use Kenji, but for me, I think a lot about, and I'm assuming that, because there's two ways to handle it. You can be somebody who's very good at the freezer. Like I have friends who are just like, they'll make a ziti,

they will cut it into individual portions, they will wrap them all, they will label them all. And they are never stuck eating ziti for a week, they would have it when they're in the mood for ziti. And they have the most organized freezer. That's not me. I assume somebody asked me pairing a recipe down is not interested in having a freezer

full of little packets with dates and reheating times on them. They just want to find a recipe that works. And I think that the fewer people I'm cooking for, the fewer ingredients I want to deal with. I don't know why it's just like this mental thing. So I'm looking a lot at something that's going to be like one protein in one vegetable or just two vegetable dish.

I just mentally don't want to be buying six things for one dish if it's for one person. But the other thing is I think a pan size is a lot. I tend to keep most of this math in my head, but just to keep in mind that if it's calling for a sheet pan, which we're usually talking about a half sheet pan, which is 13 by 18, if you wanna have that, you're looking at a nine by 13 or a quarter sheet pan.

If you wanna have that, we're looking at a, basically a toaster oven size tray and that's probably a great size for somebody who's single. So most of the large sheet pan recipes you might just want to quarter it and then make something that'll work great for you. Yeah, if you get like a quarter sheet pan and a 10-inch skillet are like I feel like a good one to two portion sizes to have around. I use the 12-inch skillet a lot, but the nine inch holds about half of what the 12 inch does. And I'm talking if you're using bottom surface area. So that's what I'm thinking where we're trying to get like

an equivalently sized frittata or pasta bake, you know, we're not trying to change the thickness. So it's good to know that I think a nine inch round is gonna hold about half of what a 12 inch round does. And a inch round is going to hold about half of what a 9 inch round does. So if you're seeing a lot of recipes for 9 or 12 inch skillets, get yourself a 6 inch skillet. I also do that with cake pans. I have a 6 inch cake pan, which is great for when I'm testing recipes since most cakes come in a 9 inch pan. But just keeping those things in mind. Sort of general rules for scaling recipes.

Most recipes are going to scale fine. Like as far as any recipe that's sort of measured properly and in preferably with both mass and volume measurements are going to scale pretty well. There's things you do have to be careful about. So pan temperatures and oven temperatures in particular, if you're cutting down a recipe and you're changing sort of the geometry of what you're going to be baking, you know, say it's a frittata or a cake or whatever it is, if you're changing the geometry of it, it's going to change the bake time.

So generally the smaller something gets, the higher the oven temperature you're going to want to use and the lower you're going to want to raise the oven temperature a little bit and lower the timing a little bit. So something like a big 12 inch frittata that might take 15 minutes to bake, you know, whatever, 375, I'm just making up numbers. But if it takes 15 minutes to bake at 375, a 9 inch frittata that's smaller, the heat's going to penetrate faster. It might only take, say, 10 minutes to bake at 425, something like that.

And generally, you know, a well written recipe is going to have visual cues to follow anyway. And so you won't have to rely precisely, you know, just on a timer. It's not going to say 15 minutes to bake. It's gonna say bake until it's set or a little wobbly in the center. That's a great tip though, because I've actually always told people to keep the temperature the same and just adjust the cooking time. But you know, the truth is yeah, you're not gonna get that 9-inch frittata brown at the same, you know, the same way. Exactly. If your 9-inch frittata is baking at 375 and it only takes 10 minutes to bake, it's not going to brown the same way that a 12-inch frittata that takes 15 minutes to

bake is going to brown. So you need to increase the oven temperature to sort of compensate for that a little bit. I also, with this especially with baking, which is when I think of it more specifically, but the temperature units, the cooking time units are not like ingredient units. Like when you have the recipe, it's not half the cooking time. It's usually going to be a little over half. Like when you're baking a six inch cake instead of a nine inch cake, even though it's half the

batter, it's going to probably be two thirds of the baking time. Yes. It's going to be closer to the original time than you think, but it's easy to check midway through and then just keep checking it. It's not going to be an exact science of how long it's going to take to cook when you have it. So better to check midway through and then just keep checking it. It's not going to be an exact science of how long it's going to take to cook when

you have it, so better to check in early. We also got this DM that I think is such a good question. And somebody said they'd like to hear how we re-engage with cooking and creating recipes when we go through an uninspiring chapter of life. I would say not even chapters. Sometimes it's just like a Monday for me, but I feel like this is a very common thing and it's probably the question that I get asked the most often because no I do not wake up every day excited to cook. I'm not like always in the mood to make new food

and it's sometimes a chore and how do we balance that so that we don't burn out? I mean this is your career and this is mine. I can't burn out on cooking. So do you have things that you do when you're in a period where you don't feel like cooking? I do, yeah. I mean, you know, I'm currently going through such a period and I have a new home and a new kitchen. What I find is most useful is kind of to,

and this is true whether it's cooking or writing, you know, if I'm having, if I'm feeling uninspired in either of those departments, just changing my environment and cleaning my environment I think really helps. So right now, you know, I'm setting up this new kitchen and I'm purposely not cooking much in it, but I'm taking the time to very deliberately set it up exactly how I want it. I'm finding myself actually in that process thinking, oh this is gonna be so cool, like when I'm cooking this I won't have

to walk over there, like I have my pantry set up exactly the way I want it. And so this process of like sort of, you know, moving and it doesn't have to be a brand new kitchen. Of course, you can just take everything out and reorganize your kitchen. But I think the process of sort of doing like a deep cleaning and a re-evaluation of your workspace can help you find that passion again. And I find the same thing when I'm, when I'm writing that if I purposely try and change my environment, you know, if I spend a day cleaning out my desk or cleaning out my office and making it really nice, or I decide, you know, I'm writing that if I purposely try and change my environment, you know, if I spend a day cleaning out my desk or cleaning out my office and making it really nice,

or I decide, you know, I'm going to go out and set up a new workspace like in on the deck or something, you know, but for me, it's a change of scenery that always helps cleaning and changing the scene helps me. Great advice. I like that. I feel like I kind of go in the opposite direction where because this is my career and my job and I want to be able to do it forever, I'm very protective of my cooking energy. And when every cell in my body is like, I do not want to cook today, I can't do this. Like it will be like, it will put me in a bad mood. Like I try to give myself that. Like I try to ride it out. I try to see if I can just not cook. And when I didn't say like,

we're gonna just get McDonald's. I just mean like, this is what frozen pot stickers are for. This is what frozen edamame is for. There's a lot of things that you can do that are not like heavy lifting. You know, maybe we make pasta or something like that, but there's a lot of things

that you can still make a solid dinner or have real food. And I do that for one day. And sometimes we do it for two days and sometimes we do it for three days. And my hope and it usually works is by the end of a few days, I am dying to make something real again. So the hope is that it'll come back to you if you do not push it. If I push it, I feel like I always risk that my burnout is going to be longer.

So I say if every cell in your body does not want to cook and you just can't bring yourself to do it, see how long you can, you know, while getting nutrients and not starving yourself or going broke to go to like fancy restaurants, see how long you can ride it out and let it come back to you by not pushing it. And because I always fear that if I don't allow it, I'm going to need a much longer break and that would be more dangerous. So I just feel like if you can't do it or if I bought groceries and I'm like, I just can't cook you just try to cook it another day like try to give it to yourself that grace. I also you know there's definitely things you can stock a freezer and pantry with it'll make everyone's got their things I am such a fan. This is like for breakfast but I also do everything even like avocado toast and I love the Trader Joe's frozen hash browns. They toast them beautifully. They're so crispy. Like, oh, now we have some scrambled eggs,

hash browns and a little kind of vegetables. Are they like patty style? Like what'd you get in general? They're patty style, but they cook up really nicely in a convection oven. They get really crunchy. They're easy. Like something like that, I can kind of build a meal around.

Definitely keep some pot stickers in the freezer. My kids hate tortellini, but I would definitely keep that in the freezer. Otherwise. They hate tortellini. How did I get these weirdos? Strange thing to hate. It's so weird.

Like they just don't, well. Maybe it's the way you're making it. Yeah, it's probably. And sometimes though, I just need to like actually scroll through recipes, you know, like use that feed and just sometimes like whatever jumps out at you. God, that sounds really good.

Sometimes it's just about tapping into what you're craving, such as something that nobody else makes right. Like you cannot order a good version of this and it's never made right. You're always a little unsatisfied with what you get from a restaurant or anywhere else. That could be your way back in. The part that makes it hard is like the noise,

the guff we give ourselves about not cooking. And I think if we can cut that part out, we can get back to the cooking we wanna do. So Deb, I think that's actually the end of our first season. Wow, our very first season of the recipe with Deb and Kenji. Yeah, with Deb and Kenji, yeah. You said it right. We had always said that if this was fun for us and it was fun for our listeners, recipe with Deb and Kenji. Yeah, with Deb and Kenji. Yeah.

We had always said that if this was fun for us and it was fun for our listeners, uh, that we would keep doing it. So I think we should keep doing it. What do you think? I hope you guys are having fun listening along, suffering along while we ramble about cooking. Yeah. We'll be back after a little bit of a summer break. And in the meantime, there's going to be all kinds of stuff coming out on our

social media account that's at Kenji and Deb on TikTok and Instagram, or you can go to therecipepodcast.com. So don't go far. We have a lot more coming and we'll be back real soon. The recipe is created and co-hosted by Deb Perlman and Jay Kenji Lopez-Alt. Our producers are Jocelyn Gonzalez, Perry Gregory, and Pedro Rafael Rosado of PRX Productions.

Edwin Ochoa is the project manager. The executive producer for Radiotopia is Audrey Mardovich. And Yuri Lasordo is director of network operations. Cher Delva, Apu Gotay, Emmanuel Johnson, and Mike Russo handle our social media. Thanks for listening. The recipe with Kenji and Deb is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent,

creator-owned, listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at radiotopia.fm.