305: Podding with Babish

0:00This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Resi is a digital platform that connects restaurants to restaurant lovers by elevating dining experiences, providing original industry content, and helping to fill some of the country's most exciting dining rooms. Because restaurants have always been more than just places to eat. The amazing world of restaurants is just a few taps away in the Resi app and at resi.com. so i usually call them everything cookies um pretzels chips uh every kind of you know chocolate butterscotch peanut butter caramel chips um different kinds of chocolate chopped chocolate chocolate chunks chocolate chips crunchy things salty things um dried fruit anything

0:51This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbarg.

1:18community, and what he's been cooking and eating around his hometown of New York City. It's so fun catching up with Andrew, and I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:35Andrew Ray, welcome to This is Taste. How are you doing? Good. How are you doing? It's great to see you. Thank you very much for having me. I'm sorry that that's a tongue twister with those two consonants next to each other. Yeah, I'm a Rod Bard, so it's challenging in life when you have these things going on. Yeah, no, I mean, I have a very hard time reading damn well anything, even to myself. I love what you do, Andrew. I mean it. I think I've been doing food media for a while, and this is the most exciting time. I think what's happening in short form and middle form video and the way people are learning to cook through their phones and major credit to you and many others in the world.

2:10I just love it. the the amount of creative expression with everybody having camera in their pocket is absolutely unbelievable there's incredible niche stuff like steve 1989 mre info where he just taste tests mres um there's this canadian guy that i love that just makes these very quiet relaxing videos and then there's a plethora of instruction and then spectacle people going out and making you know 10 000 burgers or or or seeing how different cooking is in different parts of the planet and it's it's pretty incredible yeah like so yummy boy i think you're referring to i love yummy boy laurent desjane joshua weissman and you i i just feel so and do we do bop of course tina choi gotta show her out but to me it's like i want to ask you i feel like you're democratizing foods more than ever before you're getting people to have these these use their phone to learn to actually cook or at least enjoy food.

3:03Do you feel like you're actually getting people to do what we've been trying to do in food media for the past 20 years, which is like understand and love food? Thank you. And I mean, it's really the vulnerability that comes with cooking media on YouTube and other socials. There's an honesty to it. There's a sort of raw personal honesty. That's something I've tried to do on my channel as much as possible, show my mistakes. When I spill something, I always show it because it's funny, but also because it makes it more relatable and it makes it seem more accomplishable for the person at home. So that's a pretty common thread throughout, maybe not social media, but especially through YouTube food creators is this vulnerability, this sort of naked honesty about what they're doing.

3:49Yeah. And it feels like it's less edited than a television show, but of course it's not. You're editing a lot and you're making it feel effortless right if anything is more editing than a television show because uh you know some of the shows that we make um uh that have all the outtakes in it that have all the spills and and bleeps and all this stuff there's there's a um there's an artistry to it my my editor brad works very hard to make the edit interact with my behavior on screen yeah So it's a labor of love, but, you know, we absolutely love doing it. What you do, too, which is kind of unlike some of the others I mentioned, is you actually bring many into your fold, and it's kind of the babish culinary universe.

4:34And I guess how do you recruit your members of the universe? What do you look for in folks that enter your world? I mean, we're looking for people who are, like I said, honest about the things that they're making. We want it to be very personal, very vulnerable, people who are knowledgeable, people who are fun, and people who love what they're doing. That's another common thread amongst YouTube creators. it's generally you started because you love this stuff so much that you had to make a show about it and you had to keep making it until it took off. So there's a whole lot of love in the food media coming out on YouTube.

5:15And so we're looking for people who are extensions of Babish as a brand, as a company, which is as entertaining as it is informative, as slick as it is self-effacing, and sweet and informative. Sweet and informative and funny and inviting at times too, which is great. I guess I want to ask you about your future plans in terms of the trajectory. Do you want to have your own television channel? I feel like it goes there if linear is part of your future. I mean, so I went to film school. I didn't go to culinary, so content creation. We used to call it filmmaking. has always been central to what I'm doing.

6:02In the more immediate future, I have a short film that I want to start working on. I've been making basics and binging my two flagship shows for seven years now, actually coming up on eight soon. And especially with the writer's strike and SAG after strike that are currently, at the time of this recording, still active, it's precluded me from being able to make the pop culture show, Binging. which, so that's a huge creative hobble. And I want to try something different. So I have this concept for a short about food appreciation and the sort of web of people and resources and trust that envelops the entire globe in something as simple as a ham sandwich.

6:46There's elements from all over the world that you're putting in every bite. And just a jambon bear or like just a typical ham and cheese. It's all over everything. Typical ham and cheese. I mean, think about, you know, even the most basest of deli ham has spices in it that were mined in God knows where. Like there's so much that goes into every little part of a seemingly simple day-to-day life with food but with everything. I want to try to make something that's a celebration of the incredible complexity of supposedly simple things. Yeah. Your videos are your content or your films. Let's call them films.

7:24Let's just go there. I feel like we should. I can call them content. Let's be proper. Let's be proper. No, respect it. But they really do have an edge to them. They have a real eye for visuals or cinematography moves in it. I guess, let me ask you, Andrew, what in your estimates makes a great cooking video and also one that pops on the algorithm? Oh, boy. Well, you're asking me at the wrong time in history. The algorithm is hurting these days. It's hurting us, at least. I can't speak to others. But straight up cooking instruction is not performing the way that it used to, which is one of the many things that's motivating us to make different kinds of content.

8:00I still want to make instructional cooking, but we have a lot of interesting concepts that are going to be exploring food history, different kinds of origin stories, different food experiences around the world. So we have a new show coming out where I'm going to basically give a directive to four correspondents in different places around the globe. Show me what you get for$100 at your grocery store. Show me where your favorite late night, you know, snack, street snack is. And we see these common experiences in very disparate places. And we see this sort of universal experience. But the unique, the uniqueness of everybody's.

8:43Are you shooting them with crews in each of these locations? Or are they like. It's going to be sort of self-produced on their part. We want to keep it, you know, simple and nimble, too, because we want to be able to skip all around the world. So we're working on that. That's in production right now, actually. I'm working on some longer concepts. I have the Bed and Babish coming out, which is a foodie vacation rental. I've been building it for the past, God, almost two years now in Narrowsburg, New York, which is up in the Catskills. and it's beside being a modern lovely cabin in the woods it's also going to be a place to go if you want to learn how to cook, explore your own cooking or try some new recipes.

9:30There are going to be a la carte options for the fridge to be full of groceries or some heat meals. So this is something that you're actually doing as like a tourism venture. Yeah, no this is my first hospitality play. That's hospitality I was thinking when you were talking through it, is this content? Is this your version of living in the Catskills? But this is actually, you can go rent this. Yeah. The rentals are not open just yet because we're still putting siding on the place. But it's going to be done by the end of the year, and we're going to be able to start taking reservations soon. It was all inspired by virtually every Airbnb I've ever stayed in.

10:07It might say chef's kitchen in the listing, but there's two dull knives that have gone through the dishwasher more times than any other thing in the kitchen. There's a cracked cutting board and there are two aluminum pots. And some crappy Pyrex probably. Yeah, if you're lucky. If you're lucky. And I wanted to create the antithesis of that. I'm lucky enough that I have a brand of cookware and of kitchenware of almost every aspect of food prep and service. and I'm going to be able to put fresh, sharp, ready, clean tools in this place so that people, no matter what your level of experience, are going to be able to go there and explore your culinary ideas.

10:48You get to see bears up in Narrowsburg too. Apparently, the nature cam on the property caught a bear literally the day before yesterday. And also, there's a lot of nesting eagles in the area because it's right on the Delaware River. Yeah, it's a beautiful part of the Catskills. It's great. So we'll link to it in the show notes if it's live by the time this goes live. I love that you're doing that. Let's talk about Basics with Babish, your new cookbook, which I love. As I said, it's really terrific the way you kind of control the narrative and it feels extremely you. There's no compromises. You have a really cool section that is called Do's and Don'ts, not the Vice magazine version, but your own version.

11:25And I want to go over a couple of them. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Let's go over that a bit. I guess that's something I've been guilty of a lot in the past, especially when you're starting out. but you might set your sights a little bit too high. And I think preparing simple, delicious things just as cleanly and as effectively as possible is much more impressive if you're hosting a dinner party or if you're making something for somebody that you have a crush on than, I don't know, a multi-course tasting menu or molecular gastronomy or any of that crazy stuff. So learn the basics. That's what the book is called.

12:06I like that. And follow recipes to the letter. If you're just starting out, let's remind our audience what you're saying there. So there's actually the following don't is don't follow recipes to the letter, which is confusing. But if you're just starting out, I do encourage people to follow every single step. Treat your ingredients list like a to-do list before you even get to the body of the recipe. So if it says half an onion finely minced, do that first. It says a tablespoon of this spice and a teaspoon of this spice. Measure all that out first. It's mise en place. One of the hardest things to learn about and to execute when you're starting out in the kitchen, I think, or maybe just because I'm disorganized.

12:48But so treating the ingredients list as a to-do list and then, yeah, following each and every direction, especially if it's a recipe you haven't tried before and you don't have a technical grasp of. And then the following don't is don't follow recipes to the letter. once you learn the basics. If you, once you understand how the food is going to behave in the recipe that you're going to make, that's when you can start playing jazz. And I think it's a great reminder that even the intermediate cook, you have to have your shit ready because once you fire, it's like go time. That anxiety we have once fire is integrated.

13:22My favorite recipe for mise en place is stir fry because there's, you know, 15, 20 elements, depending on what kind of stir fry you're making. and the entire dish is cooked within three minutes because of this insane high heat and things just getting added. You cannot prep anything while you are cooking stir fry. Everything has to be ready to go. Let's talk about the digital scale for a second. It's without question way easier to cook with a digital scale and you have a great piece of writing about it. Yet we don't write cookbooks with digital scales with volumetric measures. I'm sorry, with weight measures, we use volumetric and we just kind of reject them as American home cooks.

14:02Does this frustrate you? No, it took me a long time to get around to using a scale. I resisted it too. Respect the honesty. I'm into this. I was, you know, I'm an amateur. So I have the amateur experience, which is why I read this book. Yeah. And scales, first off, they're cheap now. You can get one for less than 10 bucks. This will last you forever and is perfectly accurate. Um, and it's, first off, you make in less dishes because you're not using all these measuring cups and, uh, things come out better. They come out more reliably, especially bread things that were, you know, the, the hydration ratio matters and the, uh, uh, you know, the gluten development, all every aspect of it matters.

14:48um so i uh tried to include weight measurements over volumetric whenever possible and necessary i think there's one recipe at the end the brownie recipe where i left it in cups because brownies are just kind of it's a cup recipe it's one of the first ones we do but but definitely back to like using weight it's just it's faster but also you really can mess up when using volumetric right yeah um so you know i can't remember by what ratio but measuring a cup of flour it can can vary wildly i think something in terms of you know 15 percent in either direction if i remember correctly yeah um and that you know especially in a bread that's going to completely nuke or a cookie or a cookie it's really really messes it up yeah so it's like i was saying more predictable results um replicable results yeah yeah totally yeah i like this section you you add to your head notes how i screwed this up and i feel this is an extremely fresh point of view uh for a cookbook writer to actually to talk about errors because it's supposed to be like the voice of god or voice of culinary god in the in your head when reading a recipe but no you messed stuff up why was that important for the same reason that we were talking about how youtube food media is different and it's that vulnerability it's that honesty that makes you as a viewer more likely to give it a try yourself and the one of my older videos pasta ilo leo must have been my third episode i think um i made a little mistake with the garlic cloves where i tried to do the shake to peel method but i did it in a in a you know tupperware so it wasn't rigid so that was like instagram 2008 or something yeah when that came out yeah no that was back when food hacks were food hacks.

16:32Um, and, uh, uh, I, I screwed it up and I poured a whiskey about it and I left it in because it was funny, but it, that recipe, not only cause it's simple, but because I, I showed that, you know, even in a recipe, this simple, it's still easy to make mistakes. And if you do, you know, have a whiskey about it, if that's your thing and, uh, and move on. And, um, I wanted this, this book to be an extension of that, but also acknowledging the fact that my entire culinary skillset is mistake derived. I didn't go to culinary school. I don't have any formal training. So anything that I've learned, I've learned from trying and failing and trying.

17:14Yeah. When people call you chef, what do you, what goes through your body? What feeling? I say thank you. And I say, I don't deserve that title. Yeah. It's, it's funny. Yeah. Cause I mean, I love that. That's why you connect with so many people because you're just, you know, you're, you're, you're very proficient and obviously know how to teach, but you're not a professional. Absolutely not. And, um, uh, I, I, I wanted to make the book a, a real life sort of tangible piece of that. And so I included how I screwed this up with every recipe because I wanted to help people avoid those pitfalls. But sometimes the pitfalls are just funny.

17:49They're not things that people would do. There's something that I would do because I'm dumb. And I just wanted people to feel more comfortable with making mistakes. It sucks to make mistakes, especially when you're hard on yourself, which I am. And to take some of the weight off your shoulders about that, it's encouraging when you're trying to learn something new. 100%. You wrote every word in this book, it seems, because your voice is so clear in the book. Thank you. Kendall Beach, my kitchen producer, did a great deal of recipe research and helped me fine tune the recipes and came up with a few of her own as well.

18:25And very grateful to her. But yeah, no, I read all the head notes and all that stuff. It's really fun. And really, it's a good read, which is hard for a cookbook. When you and Kendall and others are talking about pizza and you're talking about how you're going to approach pizza, there's many ways to do pizza. How do you think about pizza when writing a recipe? What style of a pizza are you going for? It's the reason that that pizza is on the cover of the book was that I saw this collocation of YouTube thumbnails back to back. My original pizza basics from like eight years ago or seven years ago and a more recent pizza dough episode.

19:02And the improvement was massive. And it was because I didn't know what I was doing at the time. I was using a Neapolitan dough because I thought this is a superior dough and cooking it in a 500 degree oven with some pizza stones and stuff not going to work. It dehydrates far too quickly unless you hit it with that incredibly high heat. So you end up with a big wafer, big cracker, and the cheese burns because it's spending too much time at too low heat. It just turns brown and wrinkly. So I saw this huge difference and I was like, wow, making mistakes has shown me a lot. Yeah, this is a great Your pizza journey is impressive.

19:39Well, thank you. And yeah, learning that Neapolitan dough is a very specific kind of dough. Now, I really like blender mac and cheese. I like what you're doing here. Let's explain that a bit. So Kendall had a fantastic idea to make an episode of Basics called Carbonara Anything. So we had recently learned from Luciano Monosilio, who's a celebrated Italian chef, who was part of the panel of Italian chefs that like ripped me a new one over my carbonara. And he taught me how to make a cacio e pepe using the blender. So you basically put your cheese in the blender, you pour in hot pasta cooking water, it emulsifies into a perfect unbreakable sauce.

20:21Brilliant. And then I started doing that with carbonara in my free time, just egg, uh, egg yolks in the Parmesan in the blender and slowly stream in the hot bacon fat. You got a foolproof carbonara. and uh so then i you know we thought let's apply this to mac and cheese how do we how do we make because mac and cheese is so deceivingly hard to make for such a simple thing you know either you're mixing orange powder with milk or you're trying to make a roux like tell tell somebody who just wants mac and cheese for a snack to make a roux yeah like yeah there's like the instant which is like one zone to go in but most people only eat that a necessity yeah exactly and and and uh And with the roux, like you then have to make a mornay, which is so easy to break and so easy to overheat and it turns grainy or not heat enough and the cheese doesn't melt.

21:10It's a nightmare. So we wanted to streamline and foolproof and just make this a 15-minute dish. That doesn't take four pots and pans. And so it's a one pot sort of with one pot, one blender. and you cook the pasta in milk, which makes this nice starchy milk that's perfect for emulsifying into a sauce, some egg yolks for stability, richness, and all this cheese. And you stream it in through the blender and you get this crazy creamy, like almost that sort of barbecue restaurant style mac and cheese where it's like really creamy and super smooth, not a hint of grain to be found. In fact, if you ever make a roux and a Mornay sauce and you get a grainy throat in the blender.

21:52Yeah, you'll fix it right away. I totally have done that before. And also you're talking about like the bricks that you get at like a great barbecue restaurant. Do you make it like the night before and then reheat it? Do you prefer that method? Oh, no, I'm thinking, I'm sorry. I'm thinking more of the stuff that comes in the. Oh, the tubs. Yeah, the tubs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really creamy. But I do love fridging, cubing and. Fridging, cubing. Eating the next day. Absolutely. Yeah. Is it worth making a scotch egg at home? I've never attempted this. If you have a place within driving distance to get a scotch egg, I'd say no.

22:24Thank you for being honest. I think that is probably a good answer. There's a bunch of recipes in this book that unless you specifically really want to make it, I wouldn't recommend. Tonkotsu ramen? Like, if you have a ramen shop that does a halfway decent job, it's a day and a half long process. It takes a million different ingredients. But is a scotch egg worth making at home? One thing you can pull off is the runny yolk, which most places won't do. um it's dastardly difficult but i think at least but uh uh it's doable and you have that control over it and also you do have control over what spices you're putting in the in the sausage mix like you have some opportunities to experiment there so the answer is yes ish it's like a brain uh you have a certain brain for for doing a scotch egg at home i feel a certain mentality then again most people probably don't at least most people in the states probably don't have a good scotch egg within anywhere within their zip code.

23:21Fair point. So that would be a good reason because I do recommend having a scotch egg before you die. Is there any recipe you won't tackle or any concept you won't tackle for a recipe? Oh, yeah. Reese is, not Reese is the peanut butter chocolate, but Reese, the character from Malcolm in the Middle, he makes Thanksgiving, he stuffs a turkey inside a monkfish. And I don't want to ruin a turkey and a monkfish in an afternoon. That sounds horrible. So I'm saving that for my last ever episode because it'll just ruin me. The turducken monk. Yeah, there's no way to say it. The termunkin. Yeah, termunkin.

23:52There you go. You got it. That's why you're you. You come up with the term. Anything else? Any other one that you just won't even touch? The beginning of Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, which is a fantastic movie that starts with one of the most mouthwatering cooking scenes in history. And everybody always asks me to do it. And my response is the same. This is somebody who's made it their entire life to be this proficient at making these insanely complex dishes, and I don't know how to do it. So you're going to have to wait a lifetime so I can catch up. Why is it okay to serve pink meatloaf? Well, I mean, especially if you're putting pork and veal in there, you wouldn't want it to come out straight gray.

24:39You'd want there to be some color and sort of rosiness to it. I don't want it to be pink as in medium rare. That's no good. But it also shouldn't be slate gray when you cut into it. That's the worst. I mean, gray meat in general, there's really no place for that in food. No, no. Just my school cafeteria in the late 90s. Yeah, definitely. I know that. Master cookie recipe. You created one and you've made choices with this recipe. So what makes your master cookie recipe work? Well, there's a couple little secret ingredients in there. brown butter, not big secrets. Yeah, brown butter, a tablespoon of very finely ground coffee, preferably hazelnut coffee is a game changer.

25:23Wow. A flavored coffee being used in a cookie. I love that. Hell yeah. That's smart. It makes them darker. It is. So it adds color. It is. God, how good does freshly ground hazelnut coffee smell? And then add that to a cookie. and then my other big thing is to put whatever I want in there. So everything, so I usually call them everything cookies, um, pretzels, chips, uh, every kind of, you know, chocolate, butterscotch, peanut butter, caramel chips, um, uh, different kinds of chocolate, chopped chocolate, uh, chocolate chunks, chocolate chips, um, uh, crunchy things, salty things, um, dried fruit, anything.

26:04Wow. I love that. Load it. Do some cherries in there. Oh yeah. Man, you're making me think about just riffing on ideas. And I love, I love that you can make a cookie, anything you want it to be. You really can. Um, it is, we usually just think of chocolate chip cookies as just that with or without nuts. But what it really is, is a great substrate, like, like pasta. Yeah. Like you, you know, it's, it's got unlimited capability to, to carry so many things so you might as well load it up i'm still thinking about the coffee andrew i'm like i'm thinking like glory jeans coffee being in the mall in like the 90s that's when you know hazelnut coffee hits yep right next to the sausage gift basket stand and that oh yeah and the fun factory or the place that's like the arcade yeah build a bear yeah build a bear we're riffing right here we're talking about 90s malls um before we get to our last section i want to hear about restaurants you're in brooklyn you travel a bit what are some restaurants this fall that are exciting you um i mostly have my stable of of uh go-tos near my house let's do it so one of my favorites is oxalis uh have you have you been oh they they i think they just got their michelin star yeah well deserved uh it's a very accessibly price tasting menu that uses a lot of like very creative um byproducts like they would they make their own cheese and butter and everything they take the whey and they cook it down to a caramelized state and put it on tomatoes stuff like that unbelievable um they also just opened their sister restaurant place de fets uh which is yeah also a great that place i've not made it over to place de fets but that was like last last year it's been big for those guys oh yeah um leland eating drinking house that place has taken off i'm very happy for them um and then uh manhattan is like my occasion place i only You know, when you move to a different borough, the other boroughs become states.

27:58And so if I'm coming into New York or sorry, into Manhattan for dinner, I'm going to someplace crazy. Yeah. I mean, the 70s in the 70s is like Manhattan is New York. You went that you revert to that way. Yeah. On This Is Taste, we ask guests about the discerning taste. So to close this interview, Andrew, here's a little rapid fire fast and furious taste check. Are you ready? I'm very bad at answering questions rapidly, but I'll try. Let's do it. The best breakfast. Best breakfast is a bodega bacon, egg and cheese. Ham, egg and cheese for me. Oh, ham. Yeah, right. And you're cool with the bread.

28:33Yeah, I mean, it depends on the bodega. I'm always held back by the bread. Oh, God. Now you got me. I'm sorry. I'm also remembering Republic in L.A. It makes the most unbelievable breakfast I've ever had in my life. It's just the two eggs any style. Roast potatoes and a little French press just for you. Just for you, Margie Mansky. What a genius. Yeah. that place the best dessert best dessert uh okay for me it's gonna be anything chocolate i usually just eat plain chocolate because i'm an insane person um but uh uh chocolate and peanut butter um so you know some sort of loaded up chocolate ice cream that's my thing the best post-workout meal frosty cold beer yeah you're crushing some weights and just you're just pounding yeah back when i used to ride a bike a lot that's the thing with cyclists that they always end long rides with a beer so now it's like a bad habit it's like i just had a great workout i actually have a beer it's carbohydrates undo what i just did yeah all right no sorry best best best post workout um whole wheat quesadilla you're getting some fiber in there you get some protein you get some vegetables and it's just satisfying and very quick and easy to make very easy your favorite american fast food chain oh what defines fast food good question up to you oh you make the rules interesting okay all right so major franchise how about that arby's someone was shading arby's online recently how there's like no one in the arby's and i was like our is arby's going out of business because i fucking love arby's too i hope not because i love those gelatinous loaves of beef that they shave off and fry up i don't care i love it in those curly fries and those horsy sauces oh yeah oh horsy sauce all day all day your favorite cookbook of all time basics with that i'm kidding um uh probably uh probably bread baker's apprentice reinhardt um yeah peter reinhardt legend learned so much from that book yeah it's a cool cover too yeah no it's like the she's holding the bread very affectionately but also just like there's an artistry to it i can't describe it yeah it's a lot of eve great book i love that book Your favorite recent new, maybe new, kind of new, sort of new cookbook discovery.