Why the heck is cold pizza so good? Well, Nicole, as a man of science, my hypothesis would be molecules. 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 Hotdog is a sandwich. The show where we break down the world’s biggest food debates. I’m your host Josh Scherer. And I’m your host Nicole and I heard you gulp really loud and it like shook me. Mm-hmm. I felt a little shookith. Why did you gulp so loud? Shook you all night long. Why you gulp? Well, because. I was in the middle of a sip of diet Dr. Pepper when you said you ready to go and then you launched into the intro. So I had a lot of diet Dr. Pepper, halfway down my throat hole, and then I had to gulp the rest of it down. I have an ice latte with almond milk in my glass. I saw you making that and I thought that was a really bold choice for podcast. But I will say you can’t hear the Diet Dr. Pepper fizzing into the microphone. No, you can’t. Shh. I’ll spitting it. Ew, Josh. Now you can hear it. Okay. Anyways. What does that have to do with anything? Nothing. Right now we’re talking about how much did Josh and Nicole know about molecules? Can I tell you something? Um, I’m in the insane clown posse world of how magnets work is how molecules work. How do they work? Wait, can you explain that reference? You dunno how I, in St. Cloud has a song where they’re like, Hey, magnets, how did those work? Is that from an ICP song? I didn’t even know that. That’s incredible though. And I feel the same way about Molecules, man. How did those work? Well, it actually does really come into play in our debate today. We are, I don’t believe the thesis that we started out with though. You don’t think that’s my problem? You don’t think cold pizza is good? I think cold pizza is about as good as any food cold straight outta the fridge, but there is zero times out of 100. Would I prefer my pizza cold than hot? Okay. Interesting. I think I’m in like a 25, 75 world because sometimes cold pizza hits so good, especially a morning after. Morning after WR ran. Is it like SEKS? No. Like throwing back A few Bruski politics. Oh, a couple brewski with the boys. We know how Nicole does. You go to the Bubs, you know, you watch some baseball. I get a Guinness. Get a, I’ve never had a Guinness before, actually. Funny enough, what? Yeah. You’ve never had a Guinness? Oh, I’ve never had a Guinness. He’s never had a Guinness. A proper point, but I’ve had lots of pints before. That’s really exciting. Yeah. Um. When’s the last time you had cold pizza? Can you pinpoint it, man? Maybe like three weeks ago. What was the situation? Paint me a picture. Um, so I decided, ’cause I’m, I’m kind of like in lazy bum territory. Like, I don’t like cooking as much as I used to. Mm-hmm. So, um, I got the cru, the stuffed Parmesan crust pizza, like I drove to like. Domino’s like you drove. Domino’s whole business model is based off of I know. Delivering the pizza to you. You drove to it. I know, but I drove to it for some reason. I’m like, huh, let me get outta the house a little bit. It was 9:00 PM or something, and I drove to the dom, the standalone dominoes. Mm-hmm. In West Hollywood, and I picked this up also. The most pungent pizza I’ve ever smelled in my life. Yeah, it is. I’ve never smelled a more pungent pizza. Ever And I’ve had like a lot of pizzas. Mm-hmm. So I drove and I had it, and then I had it, you know, nice and hot the day of. And then the morning of, I had a bite of it cold and I’m like, Hmm, this is delicious. And it was, and I really enjoyed it. I think if any pizza does succeed as being good cold, it is fast food pizza. ’cause it’s like a little bit thicker, a little bit breader. Um, the worst pizza cold possible is like a thin crust. Neapolitan. Oh, personal pizza. It just desiccates into nothingness. Well, I have a lot of experience with Neapolitan style pizzas just sloughing off. When they’re hot, which is actually really annoying as a, as a person that loves to go out and eat and dine. Whenever I pick up the slice and it just falls on my plate all over, the whole experience is kind of pointless. That does happen. I will say that is because Neapolitan pizza is meant to be eaten with a fork. Which people are you with? Is sacrilege. Shoot, no, dude. Shoot. No. Course you’re not. Don’t ever ask me that disrespectful question again. Am I eating it with the fork? No way, man. But it’s literally supposed to be served, uncut, eaten with a knife and fork. I’m sure people from Naples could be like, nah, that’s not how we do it anymore. But that is the original design, and it makes sense when you think about that style of pizza where, yeah, I get that they’re not even using a reduced tomato sauce. And when we talk about cold pizza versus hot pizza. Mm-hmm. Literally, the mo, the molecules of it all coming to play. I know everything’s made of molecules, but we are molecules. There’s a couple things we’re talking about here. We’re talking about. Kinetic energy. So, which is to say if you took that Neapolitan pizza, Uhhuh fresh, hot out of the oven, right. And you cut it into a slice and you try to pick it up and things slough off, that’s literally because the molecules inside of the sauce have an increased amount of kinetic energy when things are hot. Sure. I get that. They move fast. I understand that. But, and when it’s cold, it kind of seizes up. Seizes up, which is good. I mean, like whenever I think about a pizza, like I don’t always want it to like s. To like be, but it’s not always Neapolitan pizza that does that too. Sometimes whenever you go to like a crappy, like bowling alley or like whenever you’re out with your friends and you get like a pizza, that’s not like grandma’s style with that thick crust. Mm-hmm. A lot of the times, the toppings and the cheese and the sauce is falling off because they’re serving it so damn hot. Is this an intellectually honest debate? Nicole, what are, are you arguing in good faith right here? How, how much? Of a problem. Is it to you and your life and your Pete’s eating experience to have all of the toppings and cheese just fall off? Listen, it doesn’t happen occasionally. It grinds my gears. It honestly, it grinds my gears. It gets me, it gets me in a back. You know me. I can get, I can get pretty, uh, wishy-washy and emotionally flip. I don’t like it when my pizzas don’t cooperate with me. But you’re arguing that you would then take that, throw it in the fridge fully until it is ice cold and eat it just. To increase the structural integrity of that pizza. Opposing counsel, you are sitting here. I’m not a liar telling me, but what I am is a person that loves pizza and I can appreciate the best pizza is a pizza that you ate hot, but then you took home and you, you eat cold outta the fridge because you know what it tastes like. That’s interesting. So you’re sort of relying on your memory of the good hot pizza. But then I will say, and I think this is smart. You’re effectively getting two dishes, dude. Yeah. In one price tag there. I, yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say. I’m very resourceful. Yeah. That’s funny. So what I do is every time I order an ice cream sundae, I save half of it and I microwave it to just taste it as a Creon gloves just to remember what the sundae tasted like. Yeah. I love Creon. You, you and I both love melted ice cream, so I don’t think we’re the best arbiters for this conversation. I really do. I microwave my ice cream? Uh, no. With. With pizza. I do agree that some pizzas are better suited than others to being eaten cold, right? Like if we’re talking about scientific, what happens here? We talked about the idea of kinetic energy. Um. The sauce is going to congeal. Right. Which I like. I like my sauce congealed. Interesting. Well, we’re talking about fast food pizza, I think. I think we, I think for the sake of this conversation, we need to talk about fast food pizza. Are you temp checking the pizzas? I touched all the pizzas with my bare hands. I did wash them after I did bathroom. Josh, because I care about you so much, I decided to get you a pepperoni and mushroom because I feel like that’s, if you were to be any pizza, you’d be that. And because I can’t really eat like. Pepperoni right now. I got a pineapple jalapeno for myself. One. Thank you. Two. You’re welcome. Literally the last time I had pepperoni and mushroom pizza, it would’ve been a pizza. Pizza, like a kid’s birthday party when I was eight years old. Oh. And I ate it, and I like violently vomited it up. And I literally have not had this combination of things. Oh. Since then. Do you just wanna bite of my No, no, no. I’m happy to eat the pepperoni and mushroom. The reason why I wanted you to have the pepperoni is because I want you to taste cold meat on pizza. Yeah. And see how the fat exists in your mouth once it’s cold. That’s interesting. Because you know what they say fat is flavor. We’ll get to that later. Um, the funny thing about a lot of the meats on pizzas like pepperoni, uh, salami, I suppose that’s kind of it. Mm-hmm. But they are also good. Cold bacon. Bacon is good. Cold. Yeah. I eat cold bacon. I don’t eat cold bacon. I don’t really cold bacon either. But you, but it does exist. Can chicken. Chicken. Yeah. You love cold chicken out of a rotisserie chicken, fresh out the fridge. Uh, I don’t love cold chicken. I thought you love cold chicken. I eat a lot of cold rotisserie chicken. It doesn’t mean I love it. I take a lot of Advil. It doesn’t mean I love Advil. I’m eating the cold chicken for the medicine in it. You know the, the chicken has a medicine, the chicken has medicine called protein. Correct? Is that what you’re trying to say? You understand? Yes. Whatcha ta Whatcha on about some meals are medicine meals and that is when I eat protein and fibers vegetables to help move the protein through my, through my system. And then some meals is fun time meals. And that’s pizzas. Yeah. Let let D food be thy medicine. Who said that? A hundred percent. Uh, Play-Doh uh, AFUS. Aary Aus? No. Do you want let Food be their medicine? It was probably like, um, Galileo. Hippocrates. I’m gonna say Hippocrates. Hippocrates, yes. Boom. Joshua wins the trivia. I know. No, I didn’t know we were playing. Ask me more questions. No. Is that quick? Quick aside. I know I normally say on topic. Do you want another quick aside to the recent quick aside? So I was on the island of Samos in Greece, right? Yeah. You were. And we’re just like walking by like. It’s like in between a liquor store and a travel agency, and there’s just a vacant lot, but there’s a sign and it’s like, Hey, that’s the rock that, um, what’s it called? The pyres. Like that’s the rock that Pythagoras sat on when he thought about the triangles. And I was like, that’s pretty, that’s pretty neat, I guess. That’s so neat. Did you also, anyways, go grab a, let’s go grab a tall boy of Greek sw. Could you also sit on it? Nope. Fenced off. Oh, didn’t let me sit on the Pythagoras Rock. A protected landmark, if you will. It really was. It really was. Should we try these pizzas and then we can talk about what exactly the advantages, disadvantages, right. What scientifically is happening, I think. I think that would be really nice. Start with cold or hot. Start with hot, because most people eat hot pizza. As you can see, I’m sorry that your pizza is vomit. Pizza. This pizza wiggles. This has a nice wiggle, like when you do the optical illusion with a pen. This is Domino’s Pizza. Yeah, you can tell because of the pockmarked holes on the bottom. What are those dude? The holes at the bottom? No, it’s the grate. Oh, why come they’re there? It’s the great, I guess so. It’s weird. Most pizzas don’t just have like thousands of little holes in the bottom. Do you want me to call corporate a little bit? How does that pizza make you feel? Good. Fine. I like it mostly ’cause it’s warm. Yeah. No, but like the, the melts of the cheese to me. Mm-hmm. Might be the most violent difference between a cold pizza and hot pizza. I don’t want to have to bite through the solidness of cheese. To me, the cheese on a pizza should be melty. Okay. Should be soft. Okay. You know, since my toppings are a little bit polarizing, I would say pineapple and jalapeno. What’s polarizing about that? The jalapenos are pickled, so you definitely get that waft of vinegar. Mm-hmm. Which, which I taste and it’s probably the first thing I taste, and then it ends on that sweet poli note. And the cheese and tomato are kind of like carrier flavors. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So you have, you have some pretty, pretty strong toppings. Yeah. I will say there’s, there’s the element of aroma. Right. Equating to flavor. That’s big with hot pizza versus cold pizza. I agree. So aromas, if anybody has ever farted in a sauna, you will know that aromas and you have, don’t lie. Aromas carry much stronger did in the heat, the literally kinetic energy of those scent molecules travel. Travel faster. Right. And they also rise up. So when you’re eating a warm pizza, like you’re smelling the roast on the spices and the pepperoni, you’re smelling the vinegar. Yeah. Off the jalapenos because literally it’s evaporating. I had a higher clip. Then there’s the structural point of it. Nicole, what do you like Better? Warm bread or cold bread? Don’t lie. Don’t you dare lie. Don’t lie to suit your agenda. I like, I like room temperature, bread. I. Have you ever? Okay, fine. I like warm bread. Everyone likes warm bread. That’s why the olive garden gives it to you straight outta the oven. What does that have to do with this? Because what? Well, if I may ask a follow up, Nicole. What is uh, the outside rim of pizza? Mostly made from dough? Bread dough. Pizzas of bread. Dude, you eat bread. Warm bread tastes better warm when the bread. Goes into the fridge, but I, but the bread has stuff on it, can’t you see? Yeah. But the under can’t. You see, I, I also do like a packed deli sandwich, so I do get it, like I get that appeal of the cold pizza. But to me, there’s something about the crunch of that bread that gets super waxy when you put it in the fridge. Let’s try it. Let’s try it. Let’s try the cold pizza. It is full. No flop. Cold to the touch. Also, it’s so small and petite. Doctor. Good. Well, oh, that’s nice. I need you to eat my pizza. Okay. That is. Somehow so much more flavorful and better than I remember. I know. Oh wow. Why? I think it’s ’cause of the flavor. Well, the thing is, I bought this pizza at the same time. They’re from this, they are from the same pizza round. Right. How delicious is that pizza? Oh, that’s so good. It’s so good. Oh my God. Well, I, I think, I think it has to do with the flavors relaxing with each other. Mm. And chilling down with each other and kind of compacting with each other. Which is weird. Do we think that applies here? I don’t know, but our whole lives we’ve been told like heating it up makes the flavor more intense. Right. You mean reheating like the next day? No, I mean like warm foods. Oh, correct. Yeah. Yeah. Whenever you eat warm foods, the flavors are more pronounced like a ceviche. You season it. You season the ceviche to be eaten cold, so you season it as you would a cold food, but this pizza is seasoned as a warm food, but it tastes better cold. It tastes better. You can’t tell me that that pizza doesn’t taste better than the other pizza. The cold. Yeah. Why does it taste, not only does it taste better, it tastes more. It tastes more, but I thought the molecules, we’ve been learning, Josh, this is, this is why I literally wanted to sit here and have this conversation with you because all signs point to warm pizza being better. Right? But not whenever you put them side by fricking side, the cold pizza tastes infinitely better, more flavorful. You want more bites of it. It, and listen, it goes against, it’s contradictory to everything we’ve known about food. Which is why I really wanted to test this to see, to get down to the bottom of it. I have a new hypothesis. Yes, Pythagoras. Well this is my government name, my old hypothesis. Yes. Phy was just call me Gore. Um, my old hypothesis was about the molecules you see, whereas now I believe it is, uh, because of Ricky Raindrop. Oh, Ricky Raindrop. Tell the people about Ricky Raindrop. You love Ricky Raindrop. We all grew up in California. We all know Ricky Raindrop. For, for those of you who don’t know, wait. You grew up with Ricky Raindrop, correct? I just grew up with the water cycle. Did I hallucinate this? Mickey, can you Google? Ricky Raindrop? Ricky Raindrop. Do you think you made Ricky Raindrop to get away from the trouble sound? Do you think that Ricky Raindrop was my oldest friend? Ricky Raindrop was nice to me when my parents was mean. Ricky, the rambunctious raindrop. I didn’t realize he was rambunctious. It’s Orange County. See, it’s only Orange County. Get the hell outta here. Exactly. See, I was a Beverly Hills Unified School district girl. We did not have Ricky Raindrop. We didn’t need Ricky Raindrop. Please. Any listeners in Orange County. Tell me about your stories with Ricky Raindrop. He was an anthropomorphic, rambunctious, teenage raindrop who taught us all about the water cycle from, uh, condensation to precipitation, to percolation, to evaporation, uhhuh. Um, but no, this is evaporation at work, I believe. Oh, you so, so what you think is the hot pizza, the water molecules have lifted and gone into the ether, and what we have left with the cold pizza is concentrated flavor. Well, I think when you let pizza sit overnight to become cold, uhhuh, water evaporates adv, it gets drier. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, sure. Yeah. And so I think you saw that by the, by the lack of flop. Right? A hundred percent. And so I think. Even if it is a 10% evaporation rate per day here, I think you’re left with a 10% more flavorful pizza because there are fewer water molecules. Think about tomato sauce, right? I was just about sauce. The tomato sauce. Yeah. Yeah. You reduce it down. Mm-hmm. By 10%, right? That’s gonna make it 10% more flavorful sauce because the water’s evaporating out of it. You need to think about also the way that they’re making sauce here. They’re not warming sauce over like a flame. They’re probably taking canned. Tomato slop. I’m putting spices in it, right? Mm-hmm. They’re not heating up any sort of tomato sauce. They’re not making a sauce from scratch. It’s literally tomato paste water, sugar, and then like a packet of dust. That’s what I’m saying. And it tastes good the way that it’s because it’s seasoned cold, huh? Oh, do you understand what I’m saying? Yeah. If what I’m making makes sense. You’re telling me that like the sauce they are making is not. Say a Sunday Italian American brown where bones cooking in the tomatoes and No, you’re saying the sauce that they are making is meant to be eaten cold. It’s like a ceviche. They have flavored the pizza sauce like a person would make a ceviche interesting. In order to be eaten cold sometimes. I can’t believe the words that come outta my mouth. I’m like, you’re stupid. I’m gonna. I, I don’t know if I buy the, the evaporation necessarily. Like, explain to me why, because Josh, me, and you are our taste buds. Listen, we are like professional eaters at this point, right? So tell me why this pizza’s better Because I, uh, it is like, is so much better. Like, it’s like 30% better, isn’t it? It’s 30% better. I have, I’ll say 30% better. Okay. I’m 23 at at least. Um, new hypothesis. This is what I call sandwich theory. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. I mentioned that I think fast food pizza does very well with being, being cold and that temperature changed uhhuh especially versus a, I’d say a thin crust or an extra thick crust. Mm-hmm. I certainly don’t want Chicago deep dish, cold Detroit style. I don’t think I want cold either. I don’t want those pizzas cold. It’s kind of only fast food pizza. Yeah, sure. And I would say, because the sandwich theory, so we recently had a real life Italian on an episode of Blast Meals called Damian David. That’s right, you did. Um, he was a former, well he was still current lead singer of Mankin, but coming out with his own mm-hmm. Solo album. A really nice guy, rock star. And I asked him in classic bait to get a good social clip out of it. Would he rather only eat Fettuccine Alfredo for the rest of his life or Pizza Hut Pizza? Mm. Does he like Pizza Hut? And he said Pizza Hut Pizza 100%. Huh? He goes, here’s the thing, it’s not pizza. It’s a delicious sandwich. He said this. He said It’s delicious. Yeah. He’s like, it’s, he said, pizza Hut. Pizza’s a sandwich. Yeah. He is like, it’s just a thick thing of bread covered in melted cheese and deli meats. What’s not a sandwich about that? Because for him, pizza is, you know, Roman Pizza Alta or like Neapolitan Margarita. Fair. Fair. But you’re stacking, you can literally get a, A pizza HU Pizza with five different kinds of meat on it. Yeah. Stacked onto thick, fluffy bread with cheese and then just even the sauce is not a sauce. It’s like you said, it’s a paste. Right. This is a sandwich out of the deli case, which I love because I think sandwiches, when they sit, they tend to taste better. I would always, if I’m making a deli sandwich. I wrap that, I compress it. I let it sit in the fridge. Right. For as long as I can wait. Right, right, right. You know? Sure. Kinda like a sandwich edging situation. And then finally when it’s all kind of compressed and everything gets to know each other. Yeah. Then I eat it. I think that’s just what’s happening with God. The pizza. Pizza, I think you’re, its more like a sandwich. I think you’re right. I’m not gonna call this a sandwich because I’m not an edge Lord, but um, I do think the flavors have compacted together and hung out together and gotten so cold and now they’re coming up to room temp together. Mm. As one. I also think the sauce. Cooked into the bread a little bit and like stayed there. Yeah. And it kept, it kept sinking in and sinking in. So all of that delicious spice bag mix that’s in the sauce has probably gone, gone into the bread. The cheese has kind of sunk, the cheese has kind of melted with the sauce as well, and kind of made like this plasma new non-Newtonian fluid. Yeah, it’s, it’s a goo, I call it a goo, it’s a man of science. Yeah, I got a little pizza bread, cheese sauce. Go in there. And then the toppings like, how does the pepper, my, it’s no more separation. Nicole, if you look at the intersection, I believe that’s the mantle, the core and the crust. Yeah, the mantle. Mm-hmm. Why didn’t we have like an an anthropomorphic pizza thing of magma teaching us about the. You know, I, we didn’t need that. Josh Morty, Morty, the magma. We didn’t need it. You guys needed to be tricked into learning. That’s, we were just down to learn. Wait, can you look up World Industries? Wet Willy. Oh my God. This is also a big part of my childhood. I’ll explain in a second. Um, yes, there is a lot of science behind the fact. That when you let say a stew or a soup or any sort of casserole dish. So up and I see Wet Willie now from World Industries. It was Wet Willie and Flame Boy, also an anthropomorphic raindrop. What? Why did you need cartoons to like push you to do stuff? This wasn’t, well, every kid, you could sell ’em on cartoons, but this was my favorite skateboard brand. And Wet Willie. How old were you? Flame Boy would fight each other. They had guns. There was a devil. How old were you? It was good. Um, you know, like peak skating years were from like eight to 12. I suppose and I started like playing sports and then I also, it got quite, quite large and I was too big for my skateboards. Aw. I tried to Jeff use a scooter, like the handheld ones. I thought you meant like a rascal scooter, like to walk around in like Disneyland, you know. No, I was a no, but I did like break a skateboard deck from being a 260 pound team trying to ol leave four star. Oh. I had a uh, I had a razor, I had a Barbie razor scooter. Nice. You should have seen the way I would go. I would like CR, I would crouch and put my arms up like this mobbing and I would just. Roll and I was good at it too. Nicole Mobbing mother. I was really good at scooting with my Barbie razor scooter. So AEW is soup sitting overnight. What would be AEW is soup sitting overnight. Right. Okay. Okay. When you reheat that the next day, it’s going to taste better than when you freshly made it. Yes. At least it’s going to taste different. Yes. I would say better. I, I would say better too. There’s a couple theories why, one, um, I believe we heard Ariel Johnson talk about this. Sorry, I touched your hand. Um, don’t get your pregnancy hormones on me. I don’t know what works. Am I gonna get pregnant now? Because when you let something sit overnight. All of say there’s onions and beef in a stew, right? Right. The onions are gonna be flavored more like beef, and the beef is gonna be flavored more like onions simply because they’ve been the cell interacting. The cell walls, the cell walls science have down, they’re transferring aromatic properties or they’re physically transferring the glutamates in the beef. Right. There’s also the theory that when, say if, especially if there’s meat in there, um, if that has sat with salt on it over a while, the protein breaks down to glutamate, increasing the umami factor in it. Okay. Does any of that transfer into pizza? I don’t know. Like, are these ingredients, is the pepperoni really transferring more of its pepperoni essence into the cheese? I mean, I would assume so. Yeah. ’cause it’s not just sitting on there anymore, it’s now interacting with the other layers. Right? Yeah. It’s like you’ve made a, uh, like a field journal, print of a leaf inside of a book. It’s, it’s like mta, it, it, it exactly. Mta, it’s mta, it’s itself, it has. Self, it’s like self emulation, but self mta, self-mutilation, I think is a, an incredible way to protest. We’ve seen it throughout history, you know, Vietnam War and Buddhist monks. It’s truly Air Spring, air springing a lot of self-mutilation. Um, no, I, I uhhuh think that sometimes you can live in the mystery. Of why something is better than another thing. Right. It could be scientific, it could be purely cultural. It could be for the fact that I haven’t had a piece of cold pizza in like probably a decade. You’ve never had, you’re kidding me. Probably. I mean, probably not since it’s, I’m sure it’s been sooner than that, but really I will always, even if it’s just microwaving it for like 45 seconds to get it past room temperature, that’s typically what I do. But again, since I’ve become a lazy pregnant bum, sure. I’m not gonna. Do the 45 seconds of warm of warmth really like define me. No, I don’t think it should. It’s okay. I’ve truly gained a new appreciation for cold pizza here. I know. Isn’t that exciting? And part of it could be because of the novelty, but I think there is value in that idea of like, you already had the warm pizza. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna get it to 80%? As good when you reheat it, you know, no matter what you do, if you put it in air fryer, re pizza, put reheating pizza’s kind of a, a bore and a DR and a trudge in itself and sometimes ruins the integrity of the pizza. Yeah. You can also turn that into a new dish. You can put a little bit of Parmesan on it. You can air fry it and get it nice and crispy and that’s something new nacho, but so is just the cold pizza. This is fantastic. Embrace cold pizza. I’ve started to do that. You need to embrace it. What? What other foods do you believe are better? Cold straight outta the fridge. Fey. I have a list. Get the heck. Are you ready for my list of which foods are better hot or cold? Yes. Okay. Curry hot sushi. I microwave sushi to room temperature. That’s true. If there’s leftover sushi, I am putting it in the microwave for about seven seconds until it gets not to room temperature, but cellar temperature, lasagna. I do like taking bites of cold lasagna outta the fridge. I know you do. I put ranch on it. I know you do. Yum. Okay. Fruit. Now, some people have said they hate hot fruit. I love warm fruit more than cold fruit. Me and Julia have to buy double the amount of fruit because she, and she will only eat it if it’s out the fridge. I will only eat if it’s room tempt. I have sensitive teeth, but also it doesn’t ripen the fruit doesn’t ripen. Mm-hmm. You know, and sometimes she well-meaning will take like. An UNR peach and put it in the fridge and I won’t notice it there. And it’s been there for a week and then it’s all messed up ’cause the ripening process has been interrupted. Right. Hardboiled eggs. Oh, that’s cold. That’s dead cold. That’s an ice cold. Hard boiled egg. Oh, hot. Fresh cracked. Literally my hands burning from cracking it open. No, I love a cold egg. An ice cold egg is so good. Cheddar cheese. Age two years. Uh, gotta be room temp. Oh, I love a cold. Really love it. Cold. I can taste the crystals better. Oh yeah. The texture does get like, kind of fun and firm in two years. You gotta think about the two years. Oh, only two years. I just said two years. Oh, two years. Yeah. When you said years, I thought like it was gonna be more. Um, two. Yeah. I would rather eat a cold two year cheddar cheddar than an older cheddar. A brownie brownie room temp is the perfect temperature for brownie. Coffee. Oh. Uh uh. So I order hot coffee with two ice. You’re such awe. I’m like, yo, if you guys just like a, just like two ice cubes, put it in there. ’cause that way I can drink it really fast. Right, right, right. Because I love cold coffee on a hot day. Mm-hmm. I love hot coffee, but here’s the thing, I’m trying to drink it quick ’cause I gotta poop and I’m staying in a hotel and so I want to be able to drink that hot coffee because the steam in the hot coffee, it fills up your digestive system and pushes the poop out. Do I know if there’s science behind that? No. Do I feel it? Yes. And so that’s why I order my coffee two ice. I have two more for you. Bread pudding. Bread pudding, gently warm about like 89 degrees May the day before. Correct. Made the day before and steamed in a steamer basket like a bow. And finally, shrimp ice. Cold baby. Gimme that ice cold shrimp cocktail sitting on ice. I want it to snap. Spring always gets me in the mood for fresh starts cleaning out closets, planting something new, and this year I’m diving into a new language with Rosetta Stone. Uh, re you know what that was Nicole, that was you speaking. Excellent Spanish. That was me trying my best. But I think there’s something really exciting about the idea of traveling somewhere and actually speaking the language, ordering food, chatting with locals. It’s a totally different experience when you can truly connect, which is why I use Rosetta. Stone before going to Mexico recently, and I was able to talk about Oaxacan food with a wonderful chef that I met. That’s so awesome. Um, Rosetta Stone has been the trusted leader in language learning for over 30 years, and their immersive approach actually helps you absorb and retain a new language naturally, whether you’re on your desktop or learning on the go with the app. What I love most is the true accent speech recognition feature. It gives you real time feedback on your pronunciation, so you sound way, way more natural. Plus, there’s no translation crutch. It trains you to think and speak in your new language from the start. Grande, did you know that? Um, I was literally googling hi mate a few days ago trying to find out what a hi mate is. So thank you. And I learned that ’cause I was in Mexico. Uh, don’t wait. Unlock your language learning potential now. A hotdog is a sandwich. Listeners can grab Rosetta Stone’s lifetime membership for 50% off. That’s right. That’s unlimited access to 25 language courses for life. Visit rosetta stone.com/hotdog to get started and claim your 50% off today. Don’t miss out. Go to rosetta stone.com/hotdog and start learning today a. All right, now it’s time for a segment where Nicole and I put our food trivia knowledge to the test. Time for our very own trivia segment called Yummy in my Tummy. Got some trivia for you, robot, my guest. Three questions prepared. Nicole, you and I will wait until the question is complete and then we will answer if wrong. The other person will get a chance to guess and earn the point to hear that first question. Which singer? Songwriter of the hit song Thinking Out Loud is known for topping his pizza with ketchup and fries Here present. Who is Ed Sheeran? The correct answer is Ed Sheeran. Get that Catie. What? How does that song go when your legs don’t work like they used to? That’s what that song’s called, eh? Yeah. I saw him sing that live at Coachella. I think that might’ve been my first dance song. Really? Yeah. I think it was too, I was there. There was a lot of Drake. At your wedding. There was a lot of techno at your wedding. It was hard style. Oh, it was Dutch hardcore. Which pizza chain became the first company in history to deliver pizza to residents living in outer space? Dingling. I’m gonna say Pizza Hut. I’m gonna say Dominoes Roll. The correct answer is Pizza Hut. F Fing the Fing, the B. I’m doing it, damn it. Doing. What is the technical Neapolitan term for the outer edge of a pizza’s cru? I know. The correct answer is Cornes corn Cornes. It’s pronounced corn. Well, pleasure winning against you. Thank you so much. Well, I’m sad to have lost that, but you know what I’m happy to do, Nicole. What’s that? John? I’m happy to hear a little segment. We got called Opinions. I like casserole. Let’s do that first opinion. Hey, Josh. Hey Nicole. Uh, longtime caller, first time listener. Uh, I’ve got a question here. So I got me, I was thinking about two of my favorite foods breakfast items, Shaka and Chiqui. Lace. Mm-hmm. Ooh. And got me wondering. Do it. There’s not really many. Tomatoey, uh, breakfast items in America. Mm. In fact, people actually like to frown upon putting ketchup on your eggs. Yes. Why is that? That is interesting. Why do we do that? I don’t know. This is interesting. It does, it doesn’t make much sense. I I It can’s a little, little hypocritical. Yeah. I agree with whatever. Yeah. Uh, food is delicious. Don’t someone yum. Have a good day. You too, man. Thanks for listening for the first time. But, but in, but calling often, I, I love that idea. I wonder how they got the number. I love that idea of like, I’ve never heard this, but I have a lot of opinions. I love it about things. Um, I think what you said rings very true. I feel like a lot of other cultures, specifically like European, Mediterranean. Eat egg, E eat tomatoes during breakfast and somehow we don’t even on a full English, there’s roasted tomato. Right? Why are Americans pretty opposed to tomatoes and eggs? Or why did none of our like national breakfast dishes have them? Americans are weird. We’re so weird. Americans are weirdos. I thought you were gonna say, I wanna combine shaka and chilies and I said I’ll have fun, honey. I thought about it for a second and then I decided there’s no good way to combine chicka and chilies. Yeah, there is how combine ’em. But I’m saying, wait, what do you. Why? No, because the eggs like cook boiling in the shaka. A lot of people think you bake it, you don’t, you don’t bake shakshuka well, you could bake shaka, you could bake shakshuka. A lot of people do bake shakshuka. Um, but if you were to like cook those eggs perfectly in the shakshuka, how do you then incorporate the. Tortilla chips in the sauce, you would add the tortilla chips before you add the eggs. But then you have them sitting too long in the sauce and they get, they turn sa then they turn into migas. They turn into migas. Well, migas is scrambled. Scrambled eggs with the eggs. Yeah. Yeah. You can make it sh amiga. It would work. You just have to have a little bit of faith. That’s true. But yeah, I think that’s very astute. Um, even you look in like an Italian, it might be more Italian American, but eggs and purgatory is big. Yeah. You look at ba Balkan breakfast, you’ve seen that trend. Where they just eat, like they’re just eating tomatoes, man. Whole foods. Yeah. They’re eating whole foods. Go to a lot of places in the Middle East. You’re eating cucumber and tomato for breakfast. That makes a lot of sense to me. I’m a little bit mad about it. What are our breakfast dishes even in America? Yeah. What do we have? Cereal. Pancakes. It’s all, it’s all about savory. What about savory breakfast dishes and bacon hash browns, but that’s it. Like, we don’t condiment at all. You put hot sauce on it. Hot sauce. Some people put ketchup. You should put ketchup on your eggs. I think they’re delicious. Um, I agree with that. But also like salsa on eggs, I think it’s significantly better. I love salsa on my eggs even getting like, uh, like, uh, Voss or like Mexicana they’ll call it. Mm-hmm. Right. With. You know, a tomato, onion, jalapeno in it, right? You get like eggs, berge from India. It’s going to be like a curry based sort of scrambled egg. There’s so many delicious like tomatoey, spiced egg dishes in America. Eat more. We don’t want any of them. People eat, we want them, but they were just not in the zeitgeist. We gotta invent one like and put a marketing campaign behind it. You is finally the thing that’ll heal the divide in America. Hey, if you wanna go into business with me, man. I’m open. Yeah. Well, great opinion. Great astute observation. Agreed. Thanks for Don’t listen again though. Just keep it at the one. Listen. Yeah. And also, oh, don’t, yuck. Yums. Don’t y My yum de guus. Known as I think I’ve summoned a demon. Yeah. Guus known as I, I think that the 20% gratuity should be slowly phased out. Uhoh. I would love to know the history of why that became a thing, a rat, especially at like fancy restaurants. If you pay $200, you have to tip $40 for someone that came and asked how your food was and brought it to you. If we’re going off that shouldn’t the guy at Foot Locker that showed me my pair of shoes and asked how my day was get tipped also. Yeah. Yep. He should. That’s a good point. Um. Let’s get canceled. Let’s get canceled here. No, I think, listen, other than El like California, please tell me if I’m wrong. There’s, um, everywhere else it’s two servers make like two to $3 an hour. Is that, it’s not everywhere else, but there, yeah. There’s something called the tipped minimum wage right credit. Right. Where I believe the lowest state, I don’t know if this has been changed in the last couple years since I’ve checked, was like Delaware. The tip minimum was like $2 and 13 cents an hour. Yeah. However. You with tips, your wage had to be higher than the federal minimum. So it’s very complicated. Yeah. The origins of tipping, I haven’t done a full dive into this. The last time I read about it was a while ago. It, I believe, had something to do with Jim Crow. Oh. There’s a kind of strange, very like racialized history with white, tipping with why tipping exists in America. You’ll have to kind of do your own research on that. I don’t know anything about that. Um, but it’s one of those things where. The system is here and what restaurants could do is say your steak normally costs $40 on the menu. Mm-hmm. But you would be expected to tip 20% on that. Right. What they could do, and I think what all businesses should do mm-hmm. Is have tip inclusive pricing. So say. The economics of a $40 stake work for your restaurant in the margins, but not enough to pay your employees. That stake should cost $50. However, if the stake costs $50, people will order it, say 15% less. Mm. Mm-hmm. You know, but if they already have this hidden 20% cost on top of that $40 steak, right. People know they’re going to tip. But when you see $40 versus $50 on a menu mm-hmm. You’re less likely to order it. However, businesses should not be run on like weird trickery. Right. You know? And I agree. People should get paid a living wage. I also agree with you that the dude at Footlocker should get paid a living wage. And it’s very weird when people take up tipping in restaurants as like a heavy social justice issue and then ignore the fact it’s, yeah, that a massive amount of workers who are even in the hospitality business, like a Foot Locker. Aren’t getting tipped, and I know the heart is in the right place of pay people a living wage, but it’s very, very silly and I will never forget the moment when I realized it was all ridiculous when my Italian roommates asked me. Mm-hmm. Who do you tip in America? And I was like, oh, restaurants. There’s barbers and tattoo artists. And they go, you get the massage? Yeah, I think you tip a massage therapist. Yeah, you do that. And then one goes, what about clowns? And I go, I’ve never hired a clown. I don’t know. And he goes, you have a clown of the, he said, cl, what about the clune at a birthday party? Do you tip them? And I was like, I and you tip entertainers. And then I was like, no, surely the clown if you hire Oh. I’m sorry. Oh yeah, go ahead. If you hire an entertainer to come to a party, of course you tip ’em. How the [bleep] am I supposed to know that a clown is expecting a tip? What? How am I supposed to know that? The clown, they make the kids laugh, has not priced their, their rate. It doesn’t matter how they price their rates called. Respect. What do you mean respect? They take time. I don’t respect this. No, I respect the clown. I respect the clown. But I’m saying you doesn’t respect the clown. I assume that the clown’s pricing would be what they need to make their clown business work. I don’t know. Well, if you can tip and if you can give them an extra, you know, few bucks for making the kids giggle and we’ll make balloon animals. You should I, I know you should pay everyone what You would be willing to pay them. Nobody would be, you should, can I tell you something? Sad to get more money up. Shut up, you okay? I think tipping. I like tipping and I think it’s important to tip and I, it’s valuable. Same. Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m, I am, uh, in a privileged place where I grew up, um, financially secure, thank God, and I would love to reciprocate it to people, places, and things when and where I can, because that’s the way I was raised and I think that’s proper. And 20, I don’t go to restaurants all the time that have a 20% included gratuity. Sometimes I do, and you know, I pay it happily because. I, I don’t know. I it’s, but how much do you tip when it’s not included? 20%. Right? 18 to 20. 18 to 20. So I’m saying whether it’s included or not, like you’re still doing that. But if I get a coffee, if I get a coffee for $7, am I gonna tip an extra dollar? Depends on the vibe. Wow, you’re a real piece of crap. You’re out here spending all your money on clowns while not tipping your BAAs. I’ve never bought a clown. What about a phlebotomist? I’ve never rented? No. They make 30 nurses are underpaid. Phlebotomists make approximately $38,000 in a year. A year, I believe. Dip your damn tea. Wait, phlebotomists make how much? $38,000 a year? I think so. That’s like basically minimum wage in California now. No, how much does the phlebotomist make? Last time I checked you should be tipping your phlebotomist then. Now, the rules on who to tip and how much to tip are very silly and antiquated. And again, they all come from the good place of giving people a living wage. I said, I said 38, it’s 41. Also though the server who has sold me a $300 bottle of wine. That expects a 20% tip on that. You’re getting a hun you’re getting that kind of wine. Uh, the only time it’s been when I went with my brother and I got tricked, but then I ended up on the group Venmo and I just, I don’t wanna bring it up ’cause it’s fine. I’ve mm-hmm. He’s given me a lot in my life. But anyways, I was driving that night too. But anyways, I’m saying if. If you bought a $300 bottle of wine versus a $30 bottle of wine. Mm-hmm. The server didn’t do 10 times more work. No. They weren’t 10 times more affable. They’re not deserving of 10 times the wage because they brought a different wine bottle. Right. And I hope that restaurant has tip sharing. Well, I don’t know. I don’t know if someone is, I’m just telling you the psychology of it. If someone is spending $300 on a bottle of wine, I might touch their table a few more times. Sure. But, but even then, then we end up in a strange social stratification Yeah. Of which servers get paid more. And if you look at, there’s data on this servers who get hired at expensive restaurants mm-hmm. Tend to be like more, uh, conventionally attractive. They tend to be more educated. They tend to be, uh, of like, tend to be lighter skinned mm-hmm. Than people who are not. Mm-hmm. Therefore, we’re just like. Ending up back in the same place. Mm-hmm. Of all of the things that have always caused social injustice in America, just being reflected in our tipping culture. It’s very stupid. So what’s your, so what’s your consensus? Don’t tip, tip. No, you should tip because we live in a society, but also we should be working towards a society in which, uh, places can. Afford to pay their employees and without tip. Without tip, yeah. Tipping should not be, but tipping culture is such a big deal in America. I feel like if you don’t tip, it would actually be really rude and people would take that very well. Again, you have to tip, I like tipping. There’s a social order I like tipping. You wouldn’t, my friends make fun of me because I tip well, did you know that about me? No. You’re very brave. People hit me. I dare you to hit me at work. You’re so mad. Hit me. I’m gonna sue and then I’m gonna tip my lawyer. They used to be like, why do you tip? Give some to your paralegal. And I’m like, because people work hard in this country and you should give money if you have it. They’re like, okay. Yeah. A hundred percent rude. I do agree with that. Those people were mean to me. Um, yeah. Sorry to make it about me. I hope we answered your question. Hi guys, my name is Cal. Um, I’m from Michigan. I love you guys so much. Um, I just have two words for you guys. I love you too. Tickle dog. So I encountered this on the menu at a bowling alley in Michigan and we obviously had to order it love. Um, so it’s exactly what. Hot dog, except the bun is a sliced open pickle. Yum. It’s a hot dog in a pickle. Yum twist. Um, the sodium levels are a bit ridiculous, but dog and the acidic pickle. Was actually pretty awesome. It was kind of better than I expected. Um, I actually got some pickles and hot dogs so we can make them at home. Mm-hmm. Uh, but lemme know what you guys think. I kind of blew my mind that I had never seen this before. So, Uhhuh, sorry. It’s interesting. Interesting. Um, it just sounds like something I would find in a keto cookbook. And I lo, I mean, I love pickles so much. I eat a pickle a day. It keeps the not doctor what’s keeps, who does it keep away? Who does the pickle a day? Keep away the goem pickle a day keeps the go away. You know, he nice big old deli pickle. That’s what I, that’s all I got for you. If I don’t get canceled for my take on tipping, it’s gonna be a weird mob with upsetting politics coming about that one. What were you saying? It’s really not relevant anymore. You can continue what you were gonna say. Well, I guess my question is, would you rather have a hot dog if shoved inside of a pickle or pickle shoved inside of a hot dog? Clearly. The first thing you said, you think you’d rather have that? Well, because I feel like in, in this we are, we’re presupposing the notion of the hot dog being secondary to the pickle. The hot dog is now a flavoring agent to the pickle. I am used to having a pickle as the flavoring agent of a hot dog. Not to say that we can’t completely change paradigms here. I’m all for that. I’m no stickler. Oh, so you’re okay with changing the paradigm of that, but what about tipping culture, John? Oh, just completely upend it. Like, why are we doing, why is there a tip? Minimum wage nationally and not federally. And then you have these, these companies that do interstate commerce and there’s just wage theft lawsuits everywhere. And part of that is just people stealing wages. And then part of that is like, well, the laws are so weird, arcane and regional, then who could tell? Um, so there’s like a tip. Minimum wage for delivery drivers. What if you live on the border of two states, you’re driving from New York to New Jersey, are you entitled to one wage or not? So all I’m saying is I would rather hollow out a hot dog, Uhhuh. Corny. Seans shove that inside there. Like TicTacs. Like TicTacs and then, but then maybe put that back inside of a big pickle. Ooh. Is like pickle ception. Oh, this sounds terrible to me though. That sounds really bad. Oh my god. I don’t want that. That sounds so good. I don’t just cold, cold, hot dogs and pickles. I don’t know. Am I crazy? It felt cold. Who said it was cold? She didn’t say it was cold. Well, you’re saying it’s hot. Hot dog is probably hot, you’re saying. Oh, by God. Okay. This is a hot, hot dog shoved inside of a what? A cold pickle. It’s not shoved, sliced open. The hot dog is sliced open. I can’t with you affiliated hotdog. I can’t with you instead of the bread. Listen. 1, 2, 3. Eyes on me. I’m looking. The hot dog is inside of a pickle that’s been sliced open like a bun. Got it. Okay. When then what do you do with a hotdog? You shove it inside that sliced open pickle. It’s whatcha talking about Shove inside? You shove it? No, you do. That’s what the, the verb you do with hotdog? No, all. Oh, you gently place. Yeah. You gently. What do you mean? Yeah. You curate the hotdog into the pickle. When, wait, wait. Minute you say shove. I think, you know, you just, it’s like a suppository. Well, yeah, but I’m saying that’s better. You should suppository. No. Is that hotdog into the pickle? That’s the best way to get a hotdog inside of a pickle. We’ve done that before, but, but yeah. I don’t get a whole pickle inside a pork loin. Yeah, I, that was the wor that was so jarring. It was like, it was like the eye of so on. Looking back at me. Yeah, it’s pretty good. Um, yeah, you won that one. Um, you won that competition. Um, where do we go from here? Can we stop? We should stop. We should stop. We should drink water. We should sign off. We should let all you get back to your busy lives. Um, not listening, but calling very, very often. Yeah. Shoving hot dogs into pickles. Complaining about hundreds year olds institutions because you don’t want a tip of the Sizzler buffet. And I get it. I get it. The except doesn’t have 20% gratuity. No, it doesn’t. Do you don’t know about the fight that I got in with my ex about the question of how much to tip of a buffet? Oh my God. I would love to talk about this. Yeah, you wanna say it on, on the, on the horn here. Should I say it? Okay. Okay. So wait, wait. You wanna wait for the next episode? Okay. I’ll wait for the next episode you’re gonna wanna hear my, also, to be clear, I, my, my ex is really great, but I just, I had some fun story. It was, it was, it was. And on that note, and chips are like pizza. And on that note, thank you for listening to Hotdog is a Sandwich. We’ve got new audio only episodes every Wednesday and a video version here every Sunday on YouTube. Yay. YouTube. Happy 20 Anniversary. Year anniversary. Woo. Sometimes they’re. Just cold for years. You mean like if you wanna be featured in the podcast, call 1 8 3 3 dog pod one. That’s 1 8 3 3 dog Pod one, so we can hear your opinions. For more Mythical Kitchen, check out our other videos. We launch new episodes every week. You should watch Lost News. It’s pretty dumb. Fabulous. And we will see you next time. Bye.