This episode is presented by Pepsi. A hot dog is a sandwich. That deserves a Pepsi. Nicole, what’s your favorite mixed breed? Labradoodles or multi poos? Neither. Mine’s sweet garleek. Huh? My vote is with her. This is A Hot Dog Is A Sandwich. Ketchup is a smoothie. Yeah, I put ice in my cereal, so what? That makes no sense. A hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. What? Welcome to our podcast, A Hot Dog Is A Sandwich, the show where we break down the world’s biggest food debates, I’m your host, Josh Ayer. And I’m your host, Nicole Enayati. And today we are joined by a very special guest. He’s the chef owner of Michelin starred Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York. He’s the author of the third plate Field Notes from the Future of Food, and he’s the co founder of Row 7 Seed Company, which is changing the face of vegetables as we know them. Chef Dan Barber, welcome to the show. Welcome. Thank you, team. Love to be here. I appreciate you. Um, despite the fact that Row 7 Seed Company was almost responsible for thwarting my relationship with the woman I’m about to marry. A quick anecdote for what happened. I have an antidote. What is it? Anecdote? You have the antidote to the neurotoxin that we’ve been pumping into this room. Uh, so, so, so. I was on my first date with my now fiance. This is almost five years ago to the day. And we are at a restaurant. It’s called Nightshade in Los Angeles. A beautiful moment in time. And the server comes by and he says, This crudo is served with a habanada pepper. It is a habanero that has been been bred to not have the capsaicin in it, and I, after meeting this woman from Hinge, the dating app, for five minutes said, excuse me, what farm is this pepper from? Because I had a sneaking suspicion it was row 7 because I had been reading about it at the time back in 2018, and my date almost got up and left when I asked what farm the pepper was from because of how pretentious I am. So despite that, Dan, we have survived. Oh, it sounds like a Portlandia skit. If I were her, I would’ve walked too. 100%. I should have walked out on myself. Um, but flashing forward five years from the habanada pepper showing up on a very fancy menu. Uh, now you walk through the rows of Whole Foods and you see Row 7 seed company. See the advertisements for them. You see sweet garleek right next to, you know, the broccolini in the produce section. And it’s really, really cool to see it come that far. Thank you. I mean, that’s a nice plug for the company. We went from a first date and now we’re committed to the supermarket aisle. I love it. Row 7 and my romantic life have gone hand in hand for a long time. Josh is learning the art of commitment and I think it’s going really great. Thank you so much. We have a little anecdote too. So, um, I was lucky enough to go to a dinner, um, that was, um, hosted by Row 7 at Osteria Mozza and I had some delicious dishes made with sweet garleek. Um, I had this burrata with sweet garleek oil with some frizzled garlic on top. Oh, wasn’t that great? Oh, I had so much fun. I was so lucky. I actually sat at your table, we chatted, we noshed, we talked about lighting Shabbat candles with our family. family was very cute. And it’s probably one of my favorite food media experiences I’ve had in 2024. So thank you for facilitating that. It was really, really fun. Thank you. I had a blast, but we’re so honored to have you here. Now. My question is, Dan, how do you invent a new vegetable? Cause I thought all the vegetables were already invented by God, but it seems like you and some other people just decided to invent some new ones. We are a strict creationist podcast. We did decide that. So I just want to know, I’m sure, I’m sure that it’s a very, very detailed process, but if you could give us like a few sentences, us and the listeners, a few sentences about how you go through the process of like creating something new. In the case of sweet garleek, it was, it wasn’t me. I want to take all the credit in the world for it. It wasn’t me. All right. It was a breeder by the name of Hans Bongers. He’s out of the Netherlands. And he is actually a very famous allium breeder. Like if you’re a, if you’re a breeder of allium, you know Hans Bongers. I thought you said alien breeder. And I’m like, what are you talking about? I thought Hans Bongers was a hard style DJ. Onion and leeks. Right. Right. Anyway, he had a dream. And his dream was to create the love child. of a leek and a garlic, something that doesn’t happen very easily. In fact, I don’t think it’s ever happened before. He felt like the cross to create the offspring was possible and he spent 10 years trying to get it. Wow. And he did it. He’s actually now retired, but the company said, this is very cool. It’s very delicious. But there’s no market for the love child of a garlic and a leek. And the president of the company called me and said, we don’t think there’s a large enough market for us to put any marketing dollars to, to get it out there. So if you want it, you can have it, which I found fascinating because of course there’s no market for the love child of the garlic and leek. There is no such thing as the love child of the garlic and leek. So you’re introducing something new and that’s a good example of what Row 7 does. You know, we’re, we’re about, we’re about the Ellis Island of like all these vegetables that no one wants to take because there isn’t a convenient or definable slot or skew as they say in the business. And we take it, we take them and we champion them and we nudge our way into the produce aisles as Josh just mentioned. So. That’s our ship. That’s our power, uh, Row 7. And to answer your question, though, I don’t, um, in the case of sweet garleek, I didn’t invent it, but in the case of, of a lot of vegetables, it’s a conversation with breeders. And that just that alone is like actually a very, Iconoclastic. Uh, it’s a very provocative conversation because chefs and breeders don’t talk to each other. People who like food and breeders don’t talk to each other, you know, chefs and people like food, talk to farmers at farmers markets, there’s a directive, but we don’t talk to breeders and breeders are the architects. of the food system, actually, they really do create the blueprint, uh, for how a farmer grows his or her vegetables. And so I came upon this idea just by luck, by a conversation with a breeder 15 years ago, that opened my eyes to the fact that, you know, this breeder’s not being tasked with selecting or creating vegetables with flavor because he’s talking to the wrong people. He’s talking to the industry. Right. And as you know, the industry. isn’t interested in flavor. They’re interested in yield and storability and shelf life. So that started a series of conversations with breeders around the world, uh, that led to all these vegetables seeing the light of day because they’re so delicious. Yeah. That’s one thing that I find really interesting is there is all the environmental and the economic, uh, and the accessibility arguments to why we need to grow better. better crops and whatnot, but you said something in the third plate, which a lot of it was sort of breaking down the promise of the farm to table movement and, you know, where the shortcomings might’ve been. And you said something interesting about appealing to hedonism, like appealing to flavor, no matter what side of the political aisle you are on. Something that tastes really good in your mouth is absolutely universal. Uh, how much of the emphasis was on just pure flavor and hedonism versus the, say, more environmental ethical side? Well, that, see, that’s the thing. There isn’t the versus. I stopped, I interrupted you at the versus. But it’s not, that’s what I learned. It’s not the versus. I always thought it was the versus, too. It’s like, either you have your hedonism over here or you have your high moral ideas over there. That’s a very Puritan look at the world, you know, uh, the truth is they’re one in the same thing. Show me a vegetable that has been grown from the right seed, in the right soil, with the right kind of farming attention and picked at the right moment. Uh, that isn’t stunningly delicious. I mean, it doesn’t. It doesn’t, there is no such thing, uh, so there are variations on that, but the truth is really delicious flavor comes from good seed and good soil, so I don’t, and it’s also good for you, so all these things sort of coalesce around the same idea, and that’s why hedonism I think is so powerful, because if you’re greedy for something that’s hedonistic in the, in the world of food, especially vegetables, you are chasing after the right, uh, things for our environment and for our health, and by the way, to throw in the bucket of goodness, uh, uh, democratic ideals too. I mean, you know, right now four companies control 65 percent of our seed supply and they have absolutely no motivation to select, breed, uh, and, and promote. Uh, vegetables or grains that, uh, are stunningly delicious or healthy for you because they don’t make money on the seed. They lose money. They make the money on the chemical intervention. So I would, I would say if you’re, if you’re growing a seed that’s, uh, uh, that’s grown in the right way with the right farmer, it means you’re, you’re growing it in a diverse landscape. If you’re growing a diverse landscape, you’re growing it regionally. You’re not shipping it from far away. You know, monocultures come from far away. Farms that grow 10,000 acres of carrots. That’s from far away. If you’re eating a local carrot from an organic farm, you’re probably eating a carrot from a diverse farm. And once you’re in diversity land, you’re probably in a better pay and equity for the farm workers. and a kind of social justice. It’s attached to that kind of farming system. Um, so it really is a virtuous carrot, this local organic carrot. It’s also just stunningly delicious. So I like to go back to that one because look, you know, uh, to be an army of virtue. It’s pretty boring compared to being, uh, you know, uh, uh, like boots on the ground hedonists. You know? I mean, it just, it just, it always wins the day. So I’m, I’m, I’m an evangelist for the pleasure principle. It’s funny because a lot of this does come down to how do we, how do we actually convince people to eat vegetables, eat more vegetables, right? And I think about the way that we grew up thinking about Brussels sprouts, right? The Brussels sprout is that the biggest PR victory of the last 30 years. 30 years of any vegetable. We grew up brussel sprouts were a punch line on Saturday morning cartoons because our gristler they were. Yeah. And then we went to restaurants and they were roasting them. There was a bacon jam and a cider reduction. And then now how many billions of views on TikToko do you see a pan roasted? You could say that. You could say that same thing about kale. Yep. You could say that. I mean, there’s a kale renaissance. Yeah, right. The calorie. I mean, you could say that tons of good kohlrabi. There’s so many crops. That you’re like, where did those come from? And part of the problem over the last 50 years is, yeah, we’ve become ingrained with this idea that vegetables are sort of a joke, you know, punchline, right? Because we, we haven’t been breeding vegetables to be delicious. We haven’t bred them to be center of the plate. We bred them to be sideshows. Uh, for protein, mostly, uh, and we’ve done that a great disservice to our health and our pleasure. Um, but also to the environmental health, uh, that, that for good farming can provide. I mean, right now, you know, farms are just, uh, you know, are, are part of the problem with our, with, with degrading environments where they could be part of the solution. But, you know, farms. Are responsible for 33 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Three, 33 to 35%. One third is agriculture, you know, I mean, that’s just, it’s more than trains, planes, and automobiles combined. You know, so what we eat is like critically important and the fact that we’re eating meat in general or more and more meat at the expense of vegetables has something to say about the fact that vegetables have been discarded for the side of the plate and and because they have been selected to be for the side of the plate where no one really cares, and that I want to change that we all want to change that but it has to start with seed, so, that’s why we started the company, Row 7. Yeah, it’s really interesting. So impassioned, I love it. Watching every single part of this, because I think so many people, they want a unilateral solution, right? How do we fix the world, right? Um, but it’s awesome hearing you talk about such a, like, 360 approach, and even down to, you know, The marketing you walk into Whole Foods and the badger flame beats immediately peek out to you because there’s cool packaging, there’s marketing dollars behind it packaging and then getting people to cook it actually, you know tastes really good. My question is though you are even from a flavor and hedonism perspective, right, there I think is a certain ceiling that a badger flame beets can hit that the like hyper palatable ultra processed foods, right, a badger flame beets can never be a Cool Ranch Dorito from a scientific flavor perspective, how do you sort of convince people that they could take the same pleasure from that, if that makes sense? How could they take the same pleasure from a work a day beet as they do from a Dorito? Yes. Yes. It’s a very silly question. It’s not a silly question. It might be the essential question, actually. Because, you know, we’re, we’re drunk on the Dorito, um, but as you know, you know, there’s a great book by Mark Shatzker, uh, who wrote about the Dorito effect, uh, which is fabulous because what it, what it uncovered is the chemical concoctions that are in those Doritos that really are about cravability, you know, and craving, uh, more and more where your body doesn’t know how to shut off or say that it’s full or satiated, uh, and it, and it It continually goes to gorge in the pursuit. It’s actually sort of a sad story. It’s like you’re pursuing nutrients and minerals that aren’t there. And when you eat a beet that’s filled with all the things I just said, actually, you know, you have a few bites of it and you feel very satiated and very happy. But look, I, I’m, I’m saying hedonism and delight and pleasure for good food. You know, you can’t just put sugar on top of everything and say that that’s hedonistic because at the end of the day, is it? I mean, it really, it isn’t, I mean, and it’s not like I don’t appreciate a good Dorito or a good, you know, processed food thing once in a while. I mean, that’s part of life. I’m not, it’s just that our diet has become so dependent on it and, uh, uh, at the expense of what, of true nutrition and true flavor. So I think, you know, that’s why chefs are the leaders of this company. You know, you just, I think you just, it’s not a gratuitous question. It’s at the center of it because who’s curating food for the future that the food culture is going to. going to prioritize is something they want to pay a little bit more for, or they want to take a little more time to actually cook. Like where’s that going to come from? You know, we don’t have our grandmothers around anymore doing that. And so, you know, I think chefs play a role in this actually, which is why the company was 200 chefs around the country who are advocating. Not only for pure pleasure and, and ingredients that make us look like better chefs, that’s, that’s at the heart of this, of course, we always, chefs always want to look like better chefs. But also, you know, every chef wants to get what they’re doing outside of the walls of their restaurant. You know, every chef, every chef wants to democratize, especially white tablecloth chefs, they want to democratize this and get into homes. You know, we look around, I mean, we feel like You know, you’d have to be really, really turned off, uh, to not see the health crisis that is upon us, uh, in America and, and food is at the heart of it. Uh, so, you know, start with seed and we have a chance at, uh, I think, uh, and I think people are coming around to the idea that we got to change this thing. We got to change this thing. And it’s nice that chefs are good ambassadors for the right thing. That would be my sense of it. Yeah, I, you know, initially when, you know, I, uh, was born in 1992, and so I kind of when I became 18 and really into food and had a fake ID to order a 15 cocktail at a restaurant, you know, the farm to table movement was, you know, and my first kind of reaction to it was like, well, these seem a bit like bourgeois, like bourgeois concerns, right? Like, the average American is never going to be able to benefit from this because these are all very fancy restaurants. But you were talking to a farmer, uh, in the third plate, and he said the phrase, if you are trying to solve a problem that can be fixed in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough. So obviously when you start from seed, this is going to take a while. Not years, not decades, maybe generations. But what have you seen shift that gives you hope in the last 20, 25 years? Hey, Josh, great question, man. You did your homework for this interview. Nice. You really read the book, man. Uh, the shift that I’m seeing is, um, this is gonna sound very straightforward to a, to a very good question. And I don’t mean it to be. It’s just the truth is that as much as I say, When things actually taste good, people are gonna line up and be all over it. Um, but then to actually do that thing and watch it happen is crazy. It’s really crazy. It’s like, I tasted that garlic the first time when he sent it to me. I was just like, this is going to be enormous. You know, I say that in a little bit of hyperbole because I’m so excited. Right. But then when it actually turns out to be enormous, this is great. And the beat, like the Badger Flame beet, you know, that was a beet. that was rejected, uh, by the entire industry. And the, the breeder, Irwin Goldman, an Orthodox Jew from Madison, Wisconsin, you know, he, why did he breed the badger flame beet? He bred it because his kids were embarrassed that he was a beet breeder, you know? So he was like, yeah, I’m going to create a beet. First of all, he was like, why do kids hate beets so much? Have you ever, have you ever got an answer to that one? I didn’t. He did. He discovered that kids are very sensitive to what’s called geosmin, which is a cluster of compounds that expresses like intense earthiness. You know, kids have like a, a, a dialed up, uh, radar for that and a rejection of it. In part because I think it’s dirt and kids are, you know, just hardwired to turn off of something that may not be good for them. So they’re particularly sensitive. I look at a lot of adults are sensitive beets too. But you, you, you tend to like that, that, that radar, uh, for Jasmine tends to recede as you get older. Anyway, he created a beet that his kids would love and his friends wouldn’t be, their friends wouldn’t be embarrassed to have a beet. And he turned into this like incredible beet. I think. Tastes like a cross between like a mango and a carrot and like the most like, like sweet, like light notes of like fruitiness in every bite. It’s just, it’s like extraordinary. So incredibly low in jasmine that you can, you slice and you eat it raw. That’s, have you ever eaten a beet raw? This thing is like, so, okay. So everyone said that he tried to, he tried to get it out into the marketplace and everyone said, well, that’ll never work because, uh, it was shaped like a yam and, and people said, you know, that’s not a beet cause a beet is a round bowl. And so I, I was like, Okay, this is going to be the first thing we launch with Row 7, which we did. And now it’s grown really coast to coast and it’s a favorite of chefs. Um, the reason I’m telling you the story is because the other day we did a pop up at a Katz’s Deli. I saw that. Very cool. And, and we created a, I worked on it for a year. We created beet pastrami, you know, because this beet is, it’s by the way, so sweet, but also it’s so rich. Also when you cook it, like we cooked it for like two days and smoked it and it turns into pastrami. So I made a pastrami sandwich out of beets, right. And we did it at Katz’s and I flew Irwin in cause I just, I wanted him there. Anyway, lines around by thousands of people for beet badger flame, beet pastrami. You know, and I was like, the NBC news was there, it was like so crazy. Yeah. And, um, you know, at that moment, it was like one of those things you’re saying, like, how do you see it in your lifetime? It’s like, I saw it. It was so moving to me. There’s levels of moving. First of all, everyone was lining up for a vegetable, a beet, right? Okay, so that’s moving. Uh, you know, and then you’ve got Orthodox Jew, uh, Erwin, you know, standing on the corner saying, You know, my, like, teary, saying, you know, my grandparents probably stood here a hundred years ago, holding a bag of beets, and here I am, introducing the world to the future of beets. It’s just, it’s all of it. It was like, I was like, wow, man, this, this is really satisfying. So there you go. So what you’re saying, so what you’re saying is when your kids bully you, it works. If you’re a, if you’re a, uh, an industrious Jew. Exactly. This kind of sounds like the plot to the new Adam Sandler straight to Netflix movie, you know, an Orthodox Jewish beet farmer whose kids are ashamed of him. Didn’t they literally make a movie about Seth Rogan, Seth Rogan being a pickle, who pickled himself. Yeah, same, same, but different. It’s in the same universe. at least. Um, yeah, talking about like flavor, actually, like, uh, influencing people. I remember the first time that I cooked with sweet garleek. I, it was a bunch of people who were not super, super into food. I’d already planned on doing a little cooking night. It was for my fiance’s friends and like teaching him how to cook a little taco night. And I was making like an esquite salad kind of situation. And we actually, uh, we’ve just been getting random care packages from Row 7. Yeah, thanks so much for that. That rules. And again, flavor appeals to people because I just got a bunch of sweet garleek and I was like, well, I can just throw these on the grill, little olive oil, salt, pepper, get them super crisped up like you would get scallions, like grilled scallions on the side or something. And then I just hacked them up. I turned the, uh, end of the leaves kind of into ash, hacked them up, tossed them in the esquites, and everybody was just like, what is the thing in this that is not the corn? And so now you have, you know, uh, 12, uh, west side dwelling people who just came to my house to drink wine, selling, you know, sweet garleek. So it is genuinely inspiring. That’s awesome, man. Yeah. Thank you. That’s awesome to hear. Yeah. Tell me how chefs kind of end up at this point. The end of this final because uh, we’ve talked about have you seen The Devil Wears Prada, Dan? Yes, I have. Nicole, you know the cerulean, Cerulean thing? It’s not blue. It’s not teal It’s not cerulean. Yeah that one Yeah, where she talks about how uh in a runway show with very very silly looking experimental clothing that eventually ends up in department stores six, seven years Later, what are examples that you’ve seen of that, of these kind of like, chef ambassadors taking an idea and distilling down to actually hitting blue collar people in a retail environment? Brother, Josh, this, first of all, I know this scene very well, not that I’m a movie buff, but I too have thought of that scene as like this trickle down idea that comes from up high, not the Republican trickle down, but the trickle down of culture that is so fascinating. Uh, and, and they nail it in the, in that scene. Uh, but the same thing happened to us. We started the company because 15 years ago, this squash breeder came to my restaurant and after dinner, he came back to the kitchen. And my awkwardness, I didn’t have anything to say to the guy, what do we say to a squash breeder? I was, you know, I was just like, you’re such a great squash breeder, why don’t you breed a butternut squash that tastes good? Why do we have to add, you know, butter and, and, and, and brown sugar and maple syrup, make that thing taste good. It’s good enough to serve at Thanksgiving. He got like super serious on me. He’s like, in all my years of breeding, no one has ever asked me to, to breed for flavor. Oh, wow. I know. I was like, Whoa, I, what the hell are you talking about? What did they ask you to breed for? Of course it’s all for, you know, yield and all that stuff. So. That started this adventure with him. Actually, he co founded the company with me and he was, he went off and run on, on trying to get out into the marketplace, a butternut squash actually tastes good. And today now I’m fast forward to 15 years. It’s in the interest of time. Uh, but after everyone said a shrunken butternut squash, which, which he presented to me, like not long after our conversation that I fell in love with, it was a prototype. Oh my God, it’s so delicious. I like, you know, sell your firstborn for another piece of that one. And everyone said, forget it. It’ll never work because, uh, this squash was this big and, you know, a butternut squash is that big, more for less. And, and the distributor guy was like, uh, we don’t have a skew for that size. I never forget it. We don’t have a skew. It’s in Walmart, Costco, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, it’s going coast to coast. It’s called the Honey Nut Squash. Uh, it’s in every major farmer’s market from here to LA, from Michigan to Texas. And that started in my kitchen 15 years ago, and I feel like, you know, that was, I was sort of watching that being like, man, if you talk to, you have the right conversation with a breeder, all you have to do is just advocate for flavor and you’re, you’re off and running. So that’s, that’s is what happened. I think it was using the example of Devil Wears Prada is like using restaurants as the fashion shows. And then people who have that experience in the restaurant want to repeat it at home. And that, that led to Whole Foods. And, and now you can get all these varieties and these genetics at eventually every Whole Foods in the country. Right now, West Coast, East Coast, but very soon Middle America and soon the Southeast. The social awkwardness of a chef and a squash breeder. Who knows, what if I hadn’t invited him in the kitchen? I would, we would not be sitting here right now. Yeah, and I think like you said earlier when you think that all vegetables sort of Ordained by God or the things that we grew up with are the things that already exist, you know, you think back to the Kiwi, right? Like sure we we recently an old food critic. I used to work with named Patrick Q He’s in his 60s talked to us about him Remembering the first time he saw a Kiwi in a grocery store and he’s like you all he’s like it was called a Chinese Gooseberry back then. No way. Yes, it was and then it was remarketed by I believe Mary Isabel Fox Fisher was her name, um, but the point is that the world is constantly changing, I think a lot more than we think because we are not getting a sense of deep time, uh, and a lot of it is changing, uh, thanks to the work of Dan and all of the incredible breeders and farmers and other chefs that you work with, and I think that’s really rad. I am craving a big slice of pizza and an ice cold Pepsi for lunch today. Nicole, what if I told you, you have the power to make that happen? I do? Yeah, and you know how I know that? Cause you’re real, real smart. That’s one of the reasons. The other reason is that I had the same dream. That you had, except this was a couple days ago, we basically live parallel lives, but I was craving an ice cold Pepsi and a big ol slice of pizza, and I was at the airport, and I was coming back to L. A., and so I, like, really needed some food to get me through that last leg of the journey, and I was on the plane, and I opened my pizza, and the flight attendant came by, and I got the free chips, and I got an ice cold Pepsi Zero Sugar, and I will never forget this beautiful moment. borderline spiritual experience of eating that spicy from the pepperoni, salty, chewy pizza going to the crispy chips and then resetting my palate with ice cold, refreshing Pepsi zero sugar, that perfect amount of acid to just cut through all that fat in your palate and then back to the chewy pizza, crispy chip, refreshing Pepsi, chewy pizza, crispy chip, refreshing Pepsi, and it made the flight so, so much better. My lunch was absolutely saved. I love story time with you, Josh. It’s my favorite. But moral of the story is, Pepsi makes your food taste better. Everybody knows that. So grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar for your next meal, as food deserves Pepsi. 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That’s so fabulous. Save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames. com to get 35 off Aura’s budget. Best selling Carver mat frames by using promo code hotdog at checkout. That’s A U R A frames dot com promo code hotdog. This deal is exclusive to listeners, so get yours now in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Nicole, you know what my favorite part of the holidays is? Lighting Shabbat candles! That’s top eight at least but I’d say it’s curling up on the couch. It’s getting cozy It’s drinking a nice warm mug of peppermint tea. I’m a peppermint tea guy. Sue me uh, but You know what, sometimes the sads, it starts creepin in, Nicole. You get the sads? I get the sads. I really do. No, I have been going to therapy for it. Uh, but a great way to get that little warm, cozy feeling in your mind is to see a therapist and talk to someone about it. Great. Because the holidays specifically can also be really hard for some. I know like people who have gone through certain family traumas. Yeah. You know, it always gets a little bit tougher this time of year, especially when you see other people celebrating like that. So I’ve always found it very helpful to talk to a professional about it. If you’re thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It’s entirely online designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Find comfort this December with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp. com slash hotdog today to get 10 percent off your first month. That’s BetterHelp, H E L P dot com slash hot dog. Hey Josh, when you think of the holiday season, don’t you think of gratitude and connection? Nah man, not at all. I think of being sedentary on the couch and eating a bunch of turkey till I feel sick. Uh, but hey, since you brought up gratitude and connection, I think a great way to connect with people is through a language like I grew up in Southern California. We grew up in Southern California and somehow I still don’t speak any Spanish and I took classes in high school and it didn’t really work for me and now I don’t speak any but it is my absolute goal. We’re pushing into next year but I’m gonna start right now of learning Spanish and I think there’s a great way to do that. That’s incredible and is that way Rosetta Stone by any chance? Gosh dang right it is. You get an amazing value with Rosetta Stone’s Deal, a lifetime membership with access to 25 languages. Languages like Dutch, Polish, French, and more. It’s an immersive program, so you really learn to speak your new language naturally. With access to Rosetta Stone through the app and your desktop, you can learn anytime, anywhere. So don’t put off learning that language. There’s no better time than right now to get started. For a short time, a Hot Dog is a Sandwich listeners can get a Rosetta Stone lifetime membership holiday special. This offer won’t last long. Visit rosettastone. com slash hot dog. That’s unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Redeem your holiday offer at rosettastone. com slash hotdog today for yourself or as a gift that keeps giving. Alright, Nicole and Dan, we’ve heard what you and I have to say, now it’s time to find out what other wacky ideas are rattling out there in the universe. It’s time for a little segment we call, Opinions are like casseroles. Alright Dan, so we have asked our listeners to give us their hottest takes about vegetables, and then we’re going to read them, and then you are going to react to their opinions. You ready for that? Yep, ready. Let’s do it. All right. At Pianta underscore Luca says, Eggplant is the best vegetable if cooked properly, and the worst vegetable if cooked poorly. I think any vegetable cooked poorly is the worst vegetable you can have. But eggplant’s pretty bad. Have you ever had undercooked Eggplant ranks up there, I would agree with her. As a, as one that you really, I, my, my whole rule with eggplant is like. You can overcook eggplant, but if you undercook it, you’re really in trouble. I agree. I agree with this 100%. An undercooked eggplant tastes like a sponge. It’s that sponginess, yeah. And then it’s like, when it gets oil logged, it’s just like the worst taste experience. Oh, I don’t know. Oil logged eggplant is kind of my game. But if it’s cooked right, you know what I mean? Like a soft oil logged, I mean We make that all the time. But like whenever you’re talking about like one that’s spongy in the middle, ugh. Oh, you go to like a shawarma restaurant and they just drop the slice of eggplant in the fryer and it is just browned and oxidized and soaked in oil, dusted in salt, and that is still good to me. It has its place, it has its place. But the first time I had a proper, like, it was a dry gujarati eggplant curry, opened up my entire world to eggplants. I love eggplants now. Okay, we got another one. This is from Mags. I love water chestnuts. Please recommend me other foods that have the texture of a water chestnut. Dan, what do you got for her? Water chestnut. I mean, what about a chestnut? Just an OG chestnut? I mean, I love chestnuts. I don’t know. Water chestnut. It’s not really my, I don’t, I’m not a aficionado of water chestnuts. I’ve had them before at like, Asian restaurants, but I don’t, I’m not that familiar with them. If I had a guess, I think what the same fruit. Oh, I didn’t have anything in mind. I was just saying. Oh you okay Yeah, oh, yeah jicama jicama jicama. You’re talking about cooked jicama. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s a good one kohlrabi jicama. Sure kohlrabi and jicama Yeah, those are my two like the wintry radish family But I think what they’re solving for is that we, I think we grew up with our parents making stir fries because it was kind of fun and adventurous. I always have water chestnuts in my cabinet. The canned bamboo shoots, the canned baby corn, the canned water chestnuts, it all goes, frozen vegetable medley in there. I think, yeah, we need a re up on what the stir fry vegetables are. Ok, Salt Pork says, onions are as good if not better than shallots and 20 percent of the price. Commonality doesn’t make them less awesome. Red onion done right is phenomenal. I mean who’s going to argue with that, I don’t know. Who, I mean sort of a straw man, when did I say that onions are no good? I didn’t even advocate for shallots and I like shallots, but I wasn’t sitting there saying how dare you choose onions over shallots. I think shallots are like fancy. They’re like, they’re like fancy. That’s the perception. They say shallots are red onions, red onions with a graduate degree. Oh, shallots went to Brown. They studied complete at Brown. Completely. Yeah. And I know what that means. Um, like for example, I made a curry. I made a Thai curry yesterday and I used shallot and garlic and ginger. Didn’t use any onion. Lot of Indian food doesn’t use onion a lot is for like kind of Ayurvedic reasons And so onions though the base of a lot of things don’t need to be the base of everything I I run through like six onions a week in my own kitchen. Yeah, I blend them into every marinade They use asafoetida instead. Sure do. I’m a fan Okay, where we go? Celery is this is from at which vulgar celery is goated. It’s crisp refreshing and combos Well with various toppings peanut butter ranch dressing anyone who hates it You should be sent to a re education camp. Dan, uh, the context on this is that I have been quoted as saying raw celery is the one food that I do not enjoy. So I think it’s a personal dig at me, but how do you feel about raw celery or cooked celery? Well, that’s a good question. And my sense of it is If raw celery is seasoned right and mixed with the right things, it can be pretty good. I think we use it wrong. I can like celery and chicken salad. I don’t like it. Me too. I don’t put celery in my stocks. Me too. Hold on, hold on, hold on, Dan. No celery in the stocks. What’s going on with this? Why not? I know that’s anathema to, you know, the French tradition, but I, I don’t, I don’t believe it adds the right kind of flavor. I really like the sweetness of carrots and onions. I don’t, I don’t like that celery flavor. Um, even in the background, I’m interested in breeding new varieties of celery because I think we bred celery down to like nothingness. So I actually think if we dig into it deeper, we could get something very delicious. Okay. Hear me out. Celly, celery and rhubarb. Call it cellbarb. There you go. The love child of celery and rhubarb. Yeah, I’ll take my cut later. If you called it, if you called it rhubellery, it would just sound like something you need a shot for. I got rhubellery now I have a rash. I love celery. I ate raw celery all the time. I put it, I put it in my salads a lot. Mm. Um, and the other day we made chicken wings and then I had a side of celery with a side of ranch and it was delicious. Crunching on raw celery is phenomenal. I agree with this. But also being Persian, Khoresht-e-karafs. Mm-hmm. Celery Stew. My mom makes it the best, better than anyone else. Sounds good. I love it, it’s like, mint and celery, and just cooked down with chicken or lamb and it’s just cooked until mush, it’s so delicious. There was a celery dish that changed my mind. Not raw celery, um, but it was, uh, there’s, there’s a lot of, The French dish, artichoke barragoule. I’ve never had that before. I’ve never heard of it. The best. Yeah. He made it with celery. And it was for a family meal. He was just messing around. And it was just like, it was incredible. And I understood it. The texture of it. It’s great. It soaks up flavors. I’m a fan. I literally, hold on, before we do this, I like make a menu every week for, for my husband and I. And today is lemon za’atar chicken with fennel and avocado celery salad, literally. Like, that’s literally on my menu today, so. Wait, can we, while we have Dan here, can we just have him judge our dinner tonight? What are you making? I just said it! Dan, you’re gonna tell us which, whose house you’re coming over to for dinner. Okay, lemon za’atar chicken with fennel avocado celery salad. Okay, okay, okay. Over here, so, uh, we’re, we’re doing, uh, uh, braised chicken quarters with shiitake mushroom, uh, dark soy, and mirin, and then what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna grate turnips and I’m gonna steam it with white rice. Okay. Turnips in the rice? And then, uh, a little blanched bok choy. Yeah, I’m gonna try it. I was gonna braise the turnips, but then I would braise the turnips. Listen, here’s the thing, we all compromise for the people that we love, and Julia doesn’t like to eat just so much rice because she’s dieting for the wedding, and so if I grate a vegetable into the rice, then I can give it to her to eat a bowl of grain. Are you cooking the grated turnip? And whose house are you coming over to? What’s that? Whose house are you coming over to for dinner tonight? Oh man, I’m cooking tonight, bro. He’s like none of you. Alright, good news, we’re going to Dan’s. Okay, one more? One more, Mikey? One more! Okay. Babyjo206 says, Lettuce does not belong on anything hot because it gets soggy. Oh, I don’t subscribe to that. It depends on what lettuce you’re talking about. But if you, if you, you know, I, right now I have a dish at the restaurant that we’re doing every night, uh, which is sauteing salad greens for our last course. Uh, I love to finish a meal with salad. I think it’s such a beautiful way, clean way to end the meal. So, uh, we have, it’s a type of romaine that we’re using, but if you, if you, if you cut off the green tips and you use the base of the romaine, it’s incredibly delicious. Yeah, mesclun salad, I wouldn’t cook. I agree with that writer there that, you know, you don’t want to get. Um, uh, weak, leafy greens warm because that doesn’t do any favors. But, um, for certain lettuces, it’s extraordinary to bring out some flavor with heat. I think a lot of people get locked into like what you should cook and what you shouldn’t cook, right? Well, you should leave raw or what you should cook. Play around with it, man. Hot lettuce, cooked lettuce is good. You know what I think this alludes to? This alludes to like a Burger King chicken sandwich. It’s the best. The grease from the chicken actually dresses the salad. I think this is, this is what they’re alluding to, is that like a sandwich you get from a fast food place and then that little like lettuce, you can, if you want to call it lettuce, and it all seams together and then you, and then you eat it and there’s no crunch. I think that’s the problem. But I think the lack of crunch kind of adds to the experience because you got your hot mayo, you got your chicken, you got your protein, you got The bun that’s a little soggy, and you got your lettuce that’s soggy. You know what I mean? It’s all about architecture, though, because if you, like, it’s architecture and then, like, um, structure. So, like, In N Out, right? It’s a, it’s an eighth pound patty, and it’s, it’s probably a quarter pound of thick iceberg lettuce that sits together, icebergs, stays crunchy. Burger gets cold. Shake Shack, on the other hand, quarter pound patty, single leaf of leaf lettuce. Yeah, that lettuce is getting destroyed. So it’s all about that. That’s all I have to say about that. Uh, me too. Oh my gosh. On that note, thank you for listening to A Hot Dog Is A Sandwich and Dan, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks guys. You guys are great. You were wonderful. I appreciate you, man. You got any last words, anything to plug? Plug. I’m just plugging Row 7. Eat your vegetables. That’s what we all gotta do. Eat more vegetables. If you want to be featured on opinions or like casseroles, give us a ring and leave a quick message at 833-DOG-POD1. For more Mythical Kitchen, check out our other videos. We launch new episodes every week. We’ll see y’all next time.