707: Behind the Scenes at America’s Test Kitchen with Dan Souza

25:00And I think the biggest part of our business that's growing the most is our app, which is, you know, basically the best place to cook from. 15 ,000 recipes. They're all tested the way that we just talked about. Everything's sort of at your fingertips. So I think we're doing what we need to in order to, like, keep moving forward, but we keep that really strong brand promise. And that's like a subscription and a revenue stream for the app? Yes. Yeah, it is. It is. And we're constantly updating. It's like, I think, a 4.9-star app now. and we've been working on the tech side and then also on the food side.

25:31Is that like meaningful revenue for you guys from the app? Definitely. Yeah. I'd love to see that. Yeah. Yeah. It's not just the New York Times cooking out there, guys. It's not. It's not. And no, it's a really, really strong app. We put a lot into the, we have this thing called cook mode where you actually can watch the test cook, like go through each step of the recipe, just like the way you'd like thumb through on Instagram. So it's like the most, the closest we can get to putting a test cook like in your house to teach you something. With like the time going on the right corner. So you're like actually in cook mode.

26:02Exactly. You're in it, in it and getting direct instruction. That's really cool. Yeah. All right. I wanted to ask you this question. I think it's something that I think about a lot. We have a lot of guests on the show who are kind of on both sides of the coin. And it's creator recipe content. You know, there's really been a boom, obviously. TikTok and Reels, there's newly anointed celebrities and personalities who are really recipe-centric. They're cooking things for their audience, dishes, maybe projects, lots of things. Some are great, some are not. It's not really the question. I want to know how do you think about these creators when it comes to the accuracy and the way that some of these recipes feel a little fast and loose, which is not really the tendency of ATK.

26:45I'm just going to say It must make you feel something like a sinking feeling inside, a little anxiety when you see, like, these creators with all this, you know, this platform with maybe bullshit recipes. Yeah. So it's funny because – so it doesn't make me feel that anxious. And I'll tell you why. One is that this has kind of existed forever. And it may not have been individual creators. We didn't have Instagram before. But the amount of free recipe content on the internet is just massive. And it like it dominates what we have in our in our archive. But there's a huge difference between a recipe, as you know, that's been like tested and put through the process and is truly foolproof.

27:27And the technique is smart and all that. Then everything that's out there. So we're never really ever going to win against like it's just free. If you just want free and you're the quality is questionable, totally, totally fine. The other thing is I actually am like a huge social video evangelist. I've learned so much from watching social video. and the fact that like in 45 seconds, like you can do all the brain rot you want on there too, but in 45 seconds, you could pick up like a new technique or a new ingredient or something you haven't seen before. And so we spend an inordinate amount of time distilling all of the testing that we do on a recipe down to 45 second reels for Instagram and for TikTok that really can teach you something that you can change the way you cook that night.

28:06So I think it's really, really wonderful. And I also think there are creators out there that are doing a fabulous job. And I've actually recruited six of them for what is the ATK residency. And so they've come on board and they spend time at ATK developing recipes with us. But they're really like high, high quality. They're book publishers. Nick Sharma is one, Aaron Goyaga, like these amazing people in the industry who share the ethos of ATK. Oh yeah, and like I would never call Nick a creator. Sure, sure, sure. No, I'm not saying that you're right. But I think you're right. Like, and I love the response.

28:37It's really smart. And I think I learned a lot as well from vertical video. And I also don't cook the same way as you and your colleagues. I kind of like that little improvisational if it comes off a little bit fast and loose with the measurements. I'm cool with that, especially for obviously for savory. I mean, when you're baking, let's not mess around. But you guys feel that social video is a great way to learn to cook. I really do. I mean, so, you know, if you read Cook's Illustrated magazine, it's a thousand word story. And we go super deep and might sit on the couch and enjoy that. But like when you're riding the subway, you might just be flipping through.

29:12And like that distillation of whatever we figured out there, we can still teach you over here of like an easier way to cook a steak. And I kind of love that. I think there's so much bad out there in that world. But like there's also good if you really look for it. Let's talk about home cooks. I want to know like when you're in your meetings with your staff, what are some of the big challenges right now facing home cooks? So I think there's one big overarching challenge for home cooks that home cooks didn't experience, let's say, 50, 60 years ago, is the appetite for the kinds of recipes and the scope and the diversity of recipes is very, very high.

29:49While the skill set is not in the same place it was. And this is for good reason, right? So we used to learn through sort of apprenticeship from a parent or a grandparent. And you would learn a sort of a canon of recipes that they would make. Maybe there's like 40 recipes. Maybe it's Italian because that's your lineage. And so you'd learn those 40 Italian recipes and then you'd make them your own and make them over and over again and sort of perfect them. Nowadays, we often don't get that apprenticeship coming up. So we're learning from cookbooks and all these different places, which is wonderful.

30:18But the skill, the hands-on skill set isn't quite there. But what you want to make is like I want to make incredible like miso ramen one night. And then I want to make a really good Thai curry. And then I want to know how to make like prime rib. So we want to do a lot more and we often have less. So we sort of approach that in a couple of ways. One, we do tons of instruction. So we have like an actual classes, like an ATK cooking classes, which is online, if you want to build those skills. But we build it into kind of every recipe too. You'll see the same technique used over 15 ,000 recipes so that you get that sort of repetitive learning there.

30:52And then we try to break down recipes and make them really approachable, even if they're not from, you know, the set of recipes that you sort of grew up understanding. So I think that's one. I think the other is just time, time, time. Yeah. It is. Everyone is hurried and racing through the day. And so we have this huge emphasis on what we call Dinner Tonight. It's like basically a franchise within ATK. And we do recipes that are, you know, 30 minutes max. And a lot of them are much shorter than that. Still with the same, like, testing and they're still foolproof. But the focus is on like, how do you get dinner on the table on like a Tuesday or Wednesday night and have it be amazing every time?

31:27Give me one. I mean, example, because I think people are tired and don't have all the ingredients and but want to cook, you know, don't want to hit seamless. You know, don't want to do frozen something. Give me one just off the top of your head, like one that's like very easy. There's one that I make probably not every but every other week, which is pasta at Jechi. So it's pasta and chickpeas. uses canned chickpeas in a small pasta shape like didolini. You build this, the only hard part, and I'm just like putting that in air quotes, is like just cooking out a really nice sofrito. So you got whatever vegetables, you got onion, you have tomato paste, some anchovy, whatever you like, cook that out.

32:04And then in goes your pasta with some water and that cooks, chickpeas go at the end, olive oil, and it's like, it's protein, it's really good carbs. So it's like fiber and protein. You can get a little bit of meat in there too if you want pancetta. It's wonderful that night, But like stews, it's great the next day as well. So it's things like that that are sort of one pot, one bowl approaches to cooking. Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think when you split the pasta in half and you add checkpiece to it, it's a great way to negotiate too much pasta. Yes. Because, I mean, I want to eat pasta every day.

32:36I mean, same. I'm pretty committed to this. I'm pretty committed to this. I mean, I've like had pasta the last three nights being at home. But, you know, our bodies sometimes. Sometimes want more than that. Want more than pasta. So like the idea of like splitting the base and having more chickpeas is really smart. I'm sure you could use white beans or other legumes, you know, that would fit into that kind of that dynamic. Let's move on to the cocktail book. You know, the idea of the cocktail book. You know, you're releasing one right now. So fascinating and so happy you're here because I think you've thought this through.

33:11How do you write a cocktail book in 2025 when it's obvious that people are drinking less? Well, so it's interesting. It's sort of our approach for food but applied to cocktails, which is why I think our book is really unique. We think like cooks in a way. And, you know, in the same way that like people might be eating less fried chicken than they were before, but when they eat it, they want it to be really, really good. That's sort of our approach to cocktails is like, yeah, cut it down. Cut it down to like, are you having one drink a week on Friday night, whatever it is. But like you can make that drink really incredible.

33:45It can be handmade. It can feel really special. And you don't have to go to a bar and spend because not everyone has crazy money right now either. So we approach it from that perspective. But we also realize that even at that point, there's people who just want zero proof. They don't want any alcohol. And so we built in over 50 recipes that are zero proof, which could be its own cookbook. I mean, you know, we make cookbooks with a lot of recipes. We add a ton of value there. So it's 400, it's over 400 recipes total. But 50 of those are non-alcoholic. And we spent just as much time developing those and really working on them.

34:18I love how the book really digs into the science of flavor. You know, I think you're thinking about how the fizz works in a spritz. Like what is the actual, that carbonation doing to the actual cocktail? and let me just ask you how do you get people to shift that attention from going out and having drinks at a bar to doing it more at home I think some people think it may be more difficult but also there's clearly when you think about the science of the cocktail when you're making your own you're really controlling all the elements and there's something really nice about that I agree I mean look like I'm a huge science geek so like I will enjoy it just for the science of it But what we really try to get across with science, and it's not like the scary capital S science from like high school.

35:04Modernist cuisine, science scariness. We really think of it more as the why behind what you're doing there. So if I demonstrate for you, like I take a martini and I shake one as like James Bond would do, and then I stir one, which is, you know, sort of the more craft version of doing it. You can taste them side by side and realize like the shaken one is like lighter and fluffier and much more diluted and less intense. the stirred one is going to be like almost rich and oily in this beautiful way. And so there's incredible science behind like just dilution and chilling there. But the end result is like, oh, I like this or I like that.

35:38The same thing with fizz, you know, understanding, you know, we just think about, okay, there's bubbles in a bottle, but there's a lot going on there. And adding bubbles to a drink does a number of things that when they're in, when carbon dioxide is in solution, it actually acts like an acid, carbonic acid on your tongue. So it adds acidity to your drink. and then when it comes out of solution and then comes to the surface and pops and explodes, it brings all these aroma compounds up so you're actually smelling your drink more. So we have these wonderful spreads in the book that go into the science of fizz, the science of shaking and if you just want to make a drink, you can just blow past those and make your drink but I think it's really great reading and it helps you appreciate the thing that's in your glass and if you're trying to drink less, I think that's really nice too where you're focused on the elements that are in there.

36:21I love that you talk about aroma because you forget about that But like when you're at a great bar, a big part of that experience is having, you know, either be a citrus, a blast of citrus, or as you said, the carbonation will, you know, will bring some of those base elements to the surface and you'll know what you're drinking. Yeah. And how do you think about when you're like going through your list of cocktails about like the full, not just what's in the glass and drinking it, but like the full, like it could be like the visual elements too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's so that I think this is where cocktails are really fun.

36:55First of all, it's very quick and easy to make a cocktail. Yeah. So there's sort of low once you have the stuff in your house is very low barrier to entry and you can play with the formula. You can be like, I try this, try that. So I really like that aspect of it. But it kind of hits on like everything humans are interested in and are good at. So there's like differences in like temperature. There's differences in color. I mean, some of the colors are incredible. There's aromas, there's taste. And there's sort of an art to garnishing drinks. So I feel like they're like little craft projects sort of on all on their own um but yeah in terms of aesthetics we have a section in the book on making clear ice so if you go to any nice bar and nice bar in in new york um and they put this like gorgeous clear cube in your in your drink it just looks cool it looks amazing you can see through it and so it's totally doable at home and it's not even that hard we have a couple different ways of doing it but you're basically putting um an ice cube tray with like a towel around it in a baking dish.

37:49So it's directionally freezing. All of the clear ice starts on top and all the impurities get pushed to the bottom. And you have these clear cubes that you'd be spending, you know,$25 for a drink to contain it right there. So fun stuff like that. But also we talk about how to like chill your glassware ahead of time so that it feels right in your hand. Anyway, there's a sort of, there's a huge movement around mindfulness and sort of like focus. And I'm not saying you have to drink to be mindful, but like there is, if you just pay attention to the elements, you're going to feel pride in that thing that you made.

38:21Um, and there is a sort of focus and concentration that makes the experience a lot nicer. Um, we're in the holiday zone and we're hosting a lot. Um, how do you think about hosting with cocktails, be a cocktail party or just like a dinner that has a nice cocktail service? Do you have like an idea of what you want to do to be the best host? Are you doing like a station with like batched? Are you doing one by one so everyone gets their own order? Like, how do you think about this? Yeah. So in my younger days, I tried to like be the bartender at parties, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, same. And it's like fun and you're doing it, but then like you're in your entire night and you're just making drinks, which isn't really the point of having the party.

39:00So I think batching is an amazing way to do it. We have some batch, we call them fridge door cocktails, but you can make it, pop in the fridge and you can either, you know, pour it over ice or shake it depending on the drink involved. But we also have a lot of punches in the book, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic. And I don't know about you, but when I go to a party and I see a punch bowl with like a gorgeous, like constructed ice ring in there, like it just feels special. And then you're just done. I mean, you refresh it maybe halfway through the night, but people go back to it. And I think that's a wonderful way to do it.

39:32So you're probably not putting Sprite in there. I'm just saying. You're probably not putting Sprite in there. But I think their punches are probably one of the less expensive drinks to sort of put out there. But, yeah, people just love them. And then you can have a couple of batched ones and then beer and wine. And I feel like it's easy. It doesn't have to be hard for a party. It's like communal as well. Yeah. So, like, you don't have, like, that, you know, crippling choice that you have to make between three drinks that you're offering. It's like everyone gets the same thing. Let's talk NA. Yeah.

40:01My biggest issue is sweetness. I think you probably have a similar opinion because, you know, your palate is solid. So I think like a lot of restaurants try to do NA, but they're just cloyingly sweet. Yeah, I agree. And how did you negotiate this big kind of challenge with NA cocktails? So we use obviously a lot of juices in some of these drinks here and looking for like unsweetened versions of things, especially like a sour cherry juice and pomegranate juice and things like that. that bring like really high acidity, often really good body, which can be lacking in zero proof drinks, but without a ton, a ton of sugar.

40:35And we're not adding a lot of simple syrup to these drinks. And then to balance out what sweetness is there, we have some nice strategies. We use a lot of brewed tea and you can use full strength tea that has caffeine, or if you don't want that, you can use decaffeinated teas. What you're really getting out of it is this depth, this maltiness, especially with the black teas, and astringency. Yep. So that like drying feeling on your tongue that you get from red wines and that you get from really strongly brewed teas. So we'll balance that out with that as well. And, you know, some strategies around that.

41:05I love it. I mean, that's giving body as well. Yeah, it is. I love tea because I think what we don't want is it to taste like Kool-Aid, which has no body at all. It's basically sugar water. So there's no real particles in there that are giving you that kind of that body that makes a cocktail feel like a cocktail. Yes. But thinking about tea is cool. Like, are you basically just like batching up some like non-caffeinated teas and adding that as like one of the components? You can do it that way. In some of the recipes, we have it combined with maybe some other spices. Yeah. So you make like sort of a tincture out of that.

41:37Yeah, yeah. And that's used in there as well. And then, you know, there's really good non-alcoholic aromatic bitters now too. Yeah. Which can be super grounding for a drink and give you that sort of bitter edge as well. Love that. What about the like the big bottles of those NA like substitutes? Yeah. I'm not going to say the brand. but I've had mixed results with them. Some are great, some are not. Yeah. Yeah, we find some of the Amaros and Aparitide, like a lot of those are quite good. Yes, for sure. And the NA beers and things like that. The actual mock gins and mock vodkas and stuff like that, we tested them.

42:13We test products in the same way that we do recipes, and we weren't really impressed across the board. It felt like too much, I don't know, they're trying really hard to copy something when at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is make a delicious drink. And it doesn't have to be a Manhattan. It can have a lot of the qualities of Manhattan. Like we have this drink called the Traverse City that has unsweetened sour cherry juice and aromatic bitters. And it's got the Lapsang Shusang tea in there. So it has a lot of those same like cherry, oaky, rich flavors, but we're not trying to mimic, you know, whiskey in that same way.

42:48I love that. Shout out to Northern Michigan too. Yeah, yeah. Nice call there. Yeah, I know. I love the name of the drink. I think it's great. It's a great drink. And, yeah, I think with these NA gins, it's like you can nail the botanicals, but you can't get the extrinsic body of alcohol. And it just tastes like flower water. And they're expensive, you know? They sure are. They're not maybe as expensive as booze, but you don't need them, and you can make great drinks with more kind of common ingredients than what you have. Thank you for doing it that way. Yeah. I appreciate that you weren't, like, married to, like, this one product, and it's in, like, half of your NA drinks.

43:18No. No, no, not at all. And I think across the board, we wanted to, you know, there's sort of a capsule of alcohols and things that you can buy that you can make like probably 90 % of the drinks in the book, you know. And then there's, you know, some fun extras if you want to go that way. Give me your typical day. And like when you're in Boston working, I know you're the boss guy, so you've got a lot of boss stuff to do. But when you're actually doing the editorial, what's like a day like for you? Yeah. So I'm very, very busy these days. I run basically all of our content teams. So everything we talked about from like TV to podcasts to magazines and cookbooks.

43:52So I'm meeting with the great people that run all of those different teams a lot and making like big decisions about what cookbook do we want to do next or, you know, what do we want to do for a new TV show? So that's really fun stuff. I'm in the kitchen when it comes to creating video content primarily, but I do get to like show up and go to a lot of tastings. Unfortunately, I'm not like developing recipes in the way that I used to. You have to give up some things as you sort of. I guess you want to move on. But I get to taste a ton of stuff. And there are so many recipes. We have a Slack channel that's just like, this is ready, this is ready, this is ready.

44:26And so you bounce up from your chair. You go in there and you're, you know, with 10 people, really smart food people, just like picking apart a dish and getting into it. And that's a part that like keeps me there and keeps me really engaged. It's got to be really exciting. Yeah. What's a recipe that the team has been really working on that you feel like you are seeing the Slack come back V2, V3, V4, V5? Yeah. So there's a great guy, Steve, who works primarily on Cook's Illustrated recipes. So like very deep dive, a lot of science. And he was working on a recipe for cacio pepe. One that like you can't mess up, you can't break, but without adding cream to the mix with just like the core ingredients.

45:05and he was playing around with it a ton and that's like fast too like it's ready, come and get it and he found some really cool stuff using the starchy pasta water like really concentrated to help get an emulsion that won't break Are we talking about double starchy water? Yeah A double stock basically? At least double, yeah so like instead of four quarts of water you're using like two or one and a half quarts of water for the same amount of pasta and it gets like super cloudy like milky almost And that additional starch will help sort of bridge the gap between the fat that you're introducing and all the water and makes that cheese melt really beautifully.

45:41That's like a great CPG idea. It's like double stock in cubes or double stock in the Tetra Pak. It's true. It's true, yeah. I'm thinking, sorry, potential founders out there, there's an idea for you. Well, it's so much fun having you on. From February 20th to March 7th, dive into Canada's biggest culinary festival, Montreal en Lumière, an exclusive partnership with the McCord Stewart Museum and its exhibition, On the Menu Montreal, a restaurant story. The 2026 festival invites food lovers on a flavorful journey through time. Montreal's top restaurateurs will reimagine 65 years of the city's iconic astronomy, crafting inventive, nostalgia-inspired dishes with a modern twist.

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48:23On this is a taste. We ask us about the discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, fast and furious taste check. Are you ready? I am ready. The best fruit. So I have two best fruits and I apologize. I know you just want one. So my more common, readily available fruit that I would die for is the peach. I think peaches are perfect when they're right and they're in season. The balance of meaty texture that I really love, super juiciness. It's just aromatic enough, and it's really high acidity. A lot of people don't think it has a high acidity, but that's why it tastes so balanced.

48:55Oh, no, definitely. Of course it has a great acidity. And it's just like acidity is on the forefront of biting into a great peach. Yeah. It's one of the first things you taste. So good. So good. So that's one of my faves or my top fruit. This one that I can't get very often, but when I do, I am incredibly excited is the mangosteen. Oh, yeah. Creamy. It's just an incredible fruit to me. So I just love it. It's like this little purple racquetball. You crack open and those perfect white cloves in there. And they are like, but they also have really good acidity, but sweet. But the aroma is just incredible.

49:26So yeah, whenever I see a mangosteen, I buy it. Worst vegetable. Worst vegetable. You know, this is an original, but I'm going to stand by it. I think it's zucchini. Yeah. I really, my mom, God bless her, she's a good cook and a great baker, but would cook zucchini into like basically mush. Yeah. And I have that still in my mind. And so, you know, a good like pasta al Norano is really nice, but I like, I would almost always want another vegetable. Oh, me too. There's no amount of pecorino that can save a bad watery zucchini. Yeah. For sure. And zucchini bread, like I'd rather have carrot, you know, or something like that.

49:59So I'm going to stick with it. What is your typical breakfast? My typical breakfast is usually pretty savory. I'll either do like savory oats or rice. And I do like a lot of smoked fish. So I'll do like smoked fish on rice or on savory oatmeal. I also just love cooking eggs. I thought about this the other day. I think I might like cooking eggs even more than I like eating them. Yeah. But I love the action of like preparing an egg and watching it like turn into something. It's like sort of the process of waking up. So I'll do an egg on top of those. Are we talking about like scrambled eggs that really, is your kink?

50:33It's my kink. I know I love it all. I love fried eggs. I love making omelets. I love scrambled eggs. I do like a wok scrambled egg that takes me like probably 20 seconds in the wok. And it's like these sheets of egg basically form. It's like so delicious. Are you cooking with any stock with that egg? Or is it just like a neutral oil? Neutral oil, salt. I had a pinch of MSG to my eggs. There's certain foods like potatoes and eggs, but I feel like they need a little MSG in there. So, but it's that. It's super, super simple. And I'll put it on, you know, whatever savory carb I have around. The hot wok.

51:06Egg is perfect. The best dessert. The best dessert is, I mean, this is an easy one. It's obviously ice cream. Yeah. Ice cream is incredible. And you can pair it with like a piece of pie sometimes. Yeah. And that's good too. But the texture is incredible. I just, I love ice cream. Great call. A restaurant you wish you could bring back from the dead. Oh, boy. There's a restaurant that's dying right now in Boston. I just found out this week. Even better, honestly. Yeah. Like, shout it out. Hit Resi. It's Fugaku. It's in Brookline, and it's been around for 27 years in the same family. And it is, like, the perfect level of Japanese restaurant.

51:48It's not just sushi. It's much broader than that. And they do, like, tons of amazing stuff flown in and fresh. but it's not the high end omakase that's like you can only go once a year. It's like a regular place. And my friend Kyla texted me about it and was like, now that you know this, you're going to be like crying on the podcast. I'm so sorry. Like everyone's going to tell that you're really sad. But anyway, I think I would love to save it. I'm not sure we'll be in time. It seems like it's happening very soon. I mean, let's save it. Hit that, smash that resi. Smash it. Get in there. Get in there.

52:20Bostonians, make it happen. Make it happen. Thank you. When you're craving fast food, where are you going? I mean, I don't know if this counts because it's like so elevated, but I love Shake Shack. Shake Shack is like my kind of perfect version of it all. But my girlfriend's gotten me into Taco Bell. It was never something I grew up with. But, I mean, she'll be like shocked that I'm saying this, but it's really good. Brother, I mean, you've come over. Yes. You're with family here. Yeah. I love Taco Bell. You do? Yes. Yeah. Forever. Yeah. And I mean, what's cool about Taco Bell, I'm sure you can appreciate how many menu items they can do from like kind of the same mise en place.

52:57It's true. That they've had for, you know, 20 years. They're just like rethinking the same mise en place. But it's also, yeah, but they're also like there's nothing wasted on the menu. Definitely not. Like everything's really good. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. I like that. Cool girlfriend. That's a keeper right there. She always wants to go. Your favorite city outside America to visit for food? Man, there's so many. I, so I finally got to go to San Sebastian this year over the summer. And it's one of those places that's so hyped up, especially in the food world. So I was a little bit like, is this going to be overhyped for me?

53:28But it wasn't. It was absolutely incredible. That sort of incredible focus on ingredients, nothing stuffy about anything. I had a great meal at Mucha, which is like right on the water there. And incredible. There's like, there's so much craft behind it, but like everything's really approachable and nice. Did you have some great beef? Um, I did actually. Yes. We went to a beautiful cider place and had this incredible ribeye that was like, yeah, really, really good. I love that, that, that Bosque beef. It's amazing. It is really incredible. Um, last one, your favorite sandwich. Uh, that's actually an easy one too.

54:02I think the BLT is a perfect sandwich. And for me, I like a BLT that is on white bread, often not even toasted. Yeah. I want that to be really soft. I need thin crispy bacon, um, a really thick slice of tomato. that's really well seasoned with salt and pepper, like a nice heirloom, and a few slices of iceberg lettuce. Yeah. And then mayonnaise. Mayonnaise. And like an obscene amount of mayonnaise. Homemade or are you going industrial? I love homemade mayonnaise. But I also love industrial mayonnaise. Whether it's Duke's or Hellman's. I probably wouldn't do Kewpie on it. It's maybe a little too savory, but like between Hellman's and Duke's, would love that.

54:38And I love the choice of not toasting. Yeah. I'm with you 100%. You are. Well, if it's white bread, let it live its life as bread, not toast. Squishy bread is so much better when it comes to that white bread. And you've got lettuce and bacon inside for the crisp. Totally. Everything can't be the crisp, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need the contrast. I like the contrast. We are aligned on the BLT. Yeah? We got to go get a BLT sometime. I love that. Dan Sousa, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Thanks for having me.

55:14This is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Abarbanal and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Episode portraits by Louise Zergon Pomeroy. Logo design by Ellie Skirzat and Ian Dingham. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste.