#104: Turn Up The Heat: The Final Element of Good Cooking

It’s the final episode in our Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat breakdown. This week is all about Heat - the element of transformation. Whether you’re roasting, simmering, searing, or baking this chapter details the nuances of it all!

We explore how heat affects ingredients, including their flavor and texture, and how to gain confidence in applying heat for the best results. As with all the elements, the way to get the best result is to know what you're after. Do you want food that's crisp, tender, chewy, or soft? Heat is the key to developing any of those textures!

Plus, we answer a couple of Dinner Dilemmas!

Find Debbie's Cookbook here: https://mybook.link/book/1946694851

Thanks for coming along for the ride through Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. We're choosing another book to breakdown soon - be on the lookout for the announcement on Instagram!

Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review - we’re so glad you’re here!

Sign up for a free trial + get 20% off your first annual subscription: plantoeat.com/PTEPOD

Contact us: podcast@plantoeat.com

Connect with Plan to Eat online:
Instagram
Facebook
Pinterest

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Heat
===

[00:00:00] I'm Riley and I'm Roni. And this is the plan to eat podcast, where we have conversations about meal planning, food, and wellness. To help you answer the question what's for dinner. 

Roni: Hello and welcome back to the plan to eat podcast. Today riley and I are finishing up our book club Breakdown of Salt fat, acid Heat. We are on the heat section, which proved to be the longest part of the, we, we, she calls the first section of the book, 'cause the second section of the book is recipes and stuff.

But as far as the four elements of cooking going, she gives so much information about heat.

Riley: Why don't we start with your summary and then we can jump into the chapter.

Roni: Okay, beautiful heat is the final essential element of good cooking and the element of transformation. The goal with using heat is to apply the right level at the right rate, so the surface and interior at the [00:01:00] same time. As with all the elements, the way to get the best results is to know what results you're after.

Crisp, tender, soft, chewy. The primary decision is whether to cook. I can't read my writing. The primary decision is whether to cook food slowly over gentle heat or quickly over intense heat. This chapter teaches you the nuances of both.

Riley: Beautiful. Well done. This chapter starts out, like every chapter. I just think she's chosen the right careers for herself. Like I. I bet she's an, I, I would love to eat something that she has created, but she writes in such a way that you're like, you have found your calling. You are such a beautiful writer. You, every page that she talks about food, I'm drooling.

You know, Paige, I'm like, I need to make this or I wanna eat that. And so I, I just, I just, for anybody out there who hasn't read the book yet with [00:02:00] us, she's such a good writer and it blows me away every time I start the chapter because she starts it in such a thoughtful, visual way. Like you did read it and you're with her, you're on her journey in Italy, where or wherever.

She's talking about. You're with her in that experience and you can't even eat what she's eating. And yet somehow you're drooling over it. It's, it's amazing. It blows me away.

Roni: Yeah, she is a really great writer and I like, particularly in this section that she talks a lot about the different ways that she has screwed up. She says, don't be like, Samin, don't do this thing. Because I think that those little examples are super helpful. It has a great way to learn from somebody is to be like, well, I made this mistake.

Here's why it didn't work, and here's why you shouldn't make this mistake. But it's more than just her saying that she made the mistake because she tells like a whole story in the process. She talks like about what the food was. She [00:03:00] talks about the restaurant that she was at. Like, it's not just like a, okay, well I burnt the Brussels sprouts.

Don't do that. You know, there's just like this whole more, there's this whole evolved story that goes along with it.

Riley: You become her in the moment. The way she describes the choices that she makes, I'm thinking of one of her very specific examples of, of heat in this chapter. She talks about cooking zucchini and she's crams as much zucchini on one tray as she can because she's in a time crunch. Yeah. Everybody everywhere has been there and they're like, I just gotta get this thing done.

And they, you think you're making, I don't, you think you're making the right choice? And then you realize, and then she tells you why it wasn't the right choice. Because that item, that particular ingredient needs space on the pan so that it can actually brown where it's, when it's all together, so much water content, it's, it turned into soup is what she said.

But you become her. She, she just is such a relatable person in the, in the mistakes that she makes. And it makes you feel like, [00:04:00] well, if she can learn and if she can grow out of this because she's made me feel so much like we're connected, uh, then I can do it too.

Roni: Right and. Her be kind of being vulnerable in sharing the fact that she's a professional chef. She wrote a tome of a book on cooking, and yet she's made her own foibles and she is opening open, open enough, I guess, to share about it in the book and basically like publicly owned, like, yeah, I'm messed this up.

Riley: Yes. Yeah. I loved that. Um, it makes you feel like you wanna just be friends with her because she's a real person. And I think sometimes chefs get a bad rap of like not having like a relatability. And that's, this is not her at all. She's like such a real person who has made herself a normal person to everyone

Roni: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Riley: Um, the thing, this book is for everyone, right? Like she's written this book at the end of this chapter, she's like, okay, now you can do it. Go cook. You know, everything. And I love [00:05:00] that, but at the same time, I'm like, man, I'm gonna need this book in my kitchen to reference the things that I've learned be, or you know, what did she say about this?

What did she say about that? Like, as she holds my hand, I think I said that before on the podcast, on this show, talking about the book. Just that feels like she's holding your hand through learning. But yeah, at the, and she's taught you everything that you need to know about cooking at the end of the book.

And I dunno, she's just put herself on such a level playing field with you. Mm-hmm.

Roni: Yeah, I've really enjoyed it. It's been a great book to read.

Riley: One of the things that I thought was really, funny from the beginning of this chapter, she talks about the senses with heat. , and the, the, the six senses that she tells you are touch, smell, sound, taste, sight and common. Just in talking about how common sense and obeying sensory cues and not necessarily paying attention to what is air quotes, the right way of doing something, but looking at what you are actually doing and using your own common sense to say, this isn't cooking at the temperature that the recipe said to cook [00:06:00] it at.

I should increase the temperature. Or using your common sense to say, well, I know it's gonna be fried. I want it to be crispy, but what do I do to get it crispy? Instead of like, well, it's gonna be soft chicken nuggets after this is done. Well, nobody wants that. You want crispy fried chicken nuggets, right?

So how do you, what's, what's the end result? How do you work back from that and using your own common sense to get there? It again, it just makes cooking like a real thing you do and like not an unattainable task. Like you'll never be able to learn how to do something because you, you just need to know what you want and then use your common sense to get there.

Roni: Yeah, I thought that was a really good. Aspect of this entire chapter that, uh, because she also references how that applies to salt, fat and acid. And not just heat, but like this idea of like, what's your overall goal? Okay, now work backwards and, you know, you can essentially like map out a recipe without even needing the recipe.

If you have the, the basic know-how and some common sense you [00:07:00] can map out how to cook this thing so that it tastes the way that you're looking to taste it, that you're wanting to taste it. So you and I I know, have talked about the idea of working backwards in the realm of other things when we've talked about like goals or habits or even meal planning. Like, have your idea and then work backwards from it.

But I actually hadn't thought about doing that with food. Even though I think like when I cook a recipe, I am thinking like, okay, this is a casserole, this is kind of what it's gonna look like in the end. But I'm not necessarily thinking about layering those different things in a backwards motion of like, okay, so if I want it to look like this, do this, this, this, this, this.

I don't know. I just thought it was a really interesting way to think about cooking that I personally hadn't considered before.

Riley: I think with cooking in particular, it's actually a really, really beautiful way of looking at it because. You know, the trajectory that you're on, you know, okay, I'm making a lasagna. I want it to [00:08:00] taste this way in my mind. I know how I like lasagna to taste. I know what I like the texture to be.

And so like, you know, I, I think that it's helpful to know where you're heading. Um, which I think is actually, I think it's why you need to go eat really good food at restaurants or, , like, or think about food from your childhood that was really good to you. Okay. You might not be able to make it exactly like your great grandmama did, but what can you do to try to achieve the same flavor, like, you know, where you're heading?

I think it's a really helpful place to start when you're trying to cook something, anything, honestly. Yesterday I was with my niece and I was reviewing this and before we were gonna talk about it, and she was asking me about the chapter and I told her that she describes using heat. She uses, um, the example of making a grilled cheese, which is such a low level, like attainable thing to make.

I think my five-year-old can make a grilled cheese right now, right? But it's the idea of, okay, you want the [00:09:00] cheese to be melty. You want the outside to be brown, but you don't want it to be black and then the cheese not be melted. And so like, using like what you already know with something so simple, like a grilled cheese is such a really, is such a beautiful way of u of like learning how to use heat because she's like, you don't have to make, uh, so what's something really complicated to make?

Like what's that meat thing that's like, 

Roni: beef Wellington, or something. 

Riley: that's like something really complicated, right? Like so many layers, so many wraps, so many cooks, so many, you know, things you do to get to the end result. Okay, that sounds daunting, but if you, if you give someone the example of how do you like your grilled cheese to taste, how do we get there?

Um, such a teaching tool, like such an attainable teaching tool.

Roni: Mm-hmm. I think that you do this type of cooking frequently because you often tell me how you go to a restaurant, Ooh, I really loved this thing. I'm gonna try to recreate it at home. And so whether you realize you've been doing it or not, like this is clearly how you develop a [00:10:00] lot of your own recipes, is you're like, I loved that chimichuri that I had at that restaurant.

I'm gonna figure out how I can make it myself.

Riley: Well, I do think she's, I think Samin is my soul sister because she says later on about how much she hates, how much she never follows recipes and how they're just, they're just there, but she makes them how she wants

them, and that is how I tend to look like I put recipes on a meal plan just so I have the ingredients that I need.

But very rarely do I stick to the instruction part of that.

Roni: In general, I mean, I would say that I am, kind of a recipe follower much more so than I think you are. But I will say I had some, you know, creativity in my cooking previous to this book. This book has definitely opened up a lot of my personal creativity with cooking. But also, and she kind of talks about this a little bit later in the book when she talks about recipes not using recipes, is that.

When you're following a recipe, if you understand the basics of [00:11:00] cooking, you understand why a recipe author wrote the recipe the way that they wrote it. I think I mentioned this maybe when we talked about fat, or maybe it was acid. I remember we were, I was talking about like onions. Oh, it was acid and we were talking about onions and how if you cook onions with tomatoes, the onions won't cook because the acid and the tomato prevents 'em from cooking.

And so I mentioned like, oh, well now I understand why like the beginning of any recipe that starts with an onion says saute your onion, like all by itself. So I, it's, for me, it's just kind of opened up my eyes a little bit to be like, okay, recipe authors do kind of know what they're doing. And there like there is a point of following specific steps in a certain way.

Riley: Certain order. Right? Exactly. Yeah. Um, I think that, I think re recipes are really helpful. I, I'm not an anti-rape person, iri, I've written a lot of recipes for plan to eat. And when you're in the process of writing a recipe, that is something you have to think [00:12:00] through because it's not always common sense to the reader because you know exactly what the end result is going to be, right.

Because you made the recipe. But if someone's starting, if someone's following a new recipe, they are, they're a little, like, they're a little bit in the dark, right? They're not, they, they think the picture looks great, right? How many of us have saved a recipe on Instagram because you're like, wow, that looks so good, but you've never made it and you don't know how it tastes because you just saw it on a screen.

And so you do need, if you're, especially if you're trying something new, it's good to start, have a recipe as a starting point.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: I'm, I'm not anti recipe. I just very rarely follow them.

Roni: Yeah. It makes me think about that. I don't know if it's a challenge that's going around recently right now, but I remember it was popular, like. Six years ago or something that was like, have somebody write instructions for how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And then you have somebody else follow your instructions and you're supposed to [00:13:00] follow the instructions, like, literally.

And so if it says like, put your knife in the peanut butter, well then you put the knife inside the peanut butter. You know, it was like, but I think it was a, I feel like it was a thing, like a thing for kids to like teach kids the importance of like, being really clear communicators. But I just remember there were like really funny videos online of parents, not opening, like not opening up the bread bag 'cause nothing told them to open up the bread bag.

And so then they're like putting peanut butter and jelly on top of the, but the, the bread bag, it just 

Riley: Oh, 

Roni: is funny.

Riley: Oh, that's funny. Um, it would be very funny to not tell someone what they were making,

Roni: Ooh.

Riley: and just have them start with ingredients and then you tell them. Okay. Chop the onion, put it in a pan, you know, like kind of a given, not know where they're going. I think that would be very challenging.

Roni: It would be really interesting though, too, because everybody has a different idea of like, what does a diced onion look like? Or what does just a chopped [00:14:00] onion look like? Everybody's gonna have different sizes of what that means to them.

Riley: Or, or even think about pan choice like sa and onion, and that's gonna go into a casserole dish. Then I'm just gonna get like the smallest saute pan. Honestly, this is a true life, right? I'm just gonna get the smallest saute pan that I might use for something else later on in the cooking process. But I can just get the onion going.

But if I'm using it to make a soup, like I would use a stock pot to pay my onion and then add other ingredients to, but it'd be funny to see what the person, like, what the choice, like what choice did they make for this that's gonna get them in trouble later because they didn't, they making soup, you know?

Then they have to get another pan 

Roni: Yeah, this is a fun idea.

Riley: Hmm.

Roni: Uh, related to that. So one interesting thing that I learned in this chapter was she did talk about pans and how, I think she talks about it when she talks about, using heat with water, maybe. Yeah. And how steam affects the things that you're cooking. And so one thing that she said is that the [00:15:00] taller the sides of your pan are, so even if it's just a, um, so even if it's just a skillet. That has higher sides, right? Like some of 'em have like flat sides and then some of 'em bow out. So if you're using one that has higher sides, less steam is gonna escape from your food. And so less water is gonna escape from your food where it's gonna at least taste longer for the water to evaporate off of your food.

Whereas if you use a skillet that has the more like bowed outsides, it allows for more like even evaporation, which I thought was that, to me that was really enlightening because I have pretty like limited number of skillets in my kitchen. And so I have like my biggest one has higher straight sides and that's typically the one that I cook with because I'm like, well, I can fit the most food in here.

This is the most efficient way of doing it. And so it actually in the last week has kind of like changed. I've been a little more deliberate about like, okay, well if I can use the one that's a little more open and because I'm trying to like [00:16:00] get this chicken to be brown, that's the one that I should be using.

So. I feel like little tidbits like that are definitely the, the almost like the most important thing that I'm taking away from this. Just something that I was totally oblivious to before.

Riley: I was gonna say the exact same thing about the book as a whole. I have noticed myself just thinking of little things that I read in the book, like particularly I think recently has been acid things like, oh, I should add an acid to this. I don't have to because this was caramelized. So that like, because caramelization is an acid and so like, like I've noticed myself either adding acid where it's needed or realizing I don't actually have to add an acid to this because I did this and that was my acid step or whatever.

And I've really noticed that like this book is a tome and if you go buy this book at Barnes and Noble or wherever you buy your books. You're gonna be like, oh my goodness, this book is huge. But it is [00:17:00] like I, I've read it and I have like gleaned so many little things like you're talking about, that have, has really changed the way I've been cooking.

I mean, even just choosing the right acid for my cuisine type or choosing right fat for my cuisine type, or realizing the way the fat that I've chosen is gonna affect the food I'm making, like just little tiny things that are like, like just making marginal changes in the way that I cook. It's kind of been amazing and I feel like it's made me a better cook for sure.

Roni: yeah. I think so too. I actually meant to, to mention this, uh, on our last podcast episode 'cause it happened before that episode, a, I think I told you like a month or two ago, there was like a sale on. Pork shoulder roast at the grocery store. And it was buy one given free, but the shoulder roasts were ginormous.

So I literally cut each one of 'em in half. So I got four shoulder roasts for literally the price of one, which is amazing. But I made this really yummy, like pulled [00:18:00] pork that was like Korean flavor. It was the only recipe that I've ever actually followed the directions for how many cloves of garlic to use.

'cause it called for 10.

Riley: Oh, well I normally use 10,

Roni: I know exactly, so, but because of this book, like I took it outta the refrigerator like two days early, so that way I had time to thaw and I had time to sit with being salted for like an entire day before I actually cooked it. And it was ridiculously flavorful. I like pulled pork anyways because I feel like it's just like a juicy, flavorful meat.

But this was noticeably different. letting it have the time to be salted made a really big difference.

Riley: I mean that, and that relates to heat also because you let it get to temperature for two days, and that is, we're not quite there, but I think we can jump there for a minute. Talks just a lot about how think. Okay. Let's just talk about heat for a second with this in, in regards to this like. You turn your oven on to three 50 and like no oven in the history of the world has ever been exactly [00:19:00] at three 50.

And then it turns off when it three 50 and it goes down and it goes up. And, but having your food be room temperature when it goes into the oven is amazingly helpful because then it can actually start cooking instead of getting to getting, like having to dr like if it's cold, it has to, the temperature has to increase to then start cooking so your cook time is longer.

That's been something I've actually been a really trying to implement as well. Just like starting with room temperature meats and salted meats so that then when I go to heat them and cook them, or starting from a better place.

Roni: Yeah, I think that that's probably one of the most important things I would point out from this chapter is if you're somebody, if you're a household that eats meat, have the meat and get to room temperature before you cook it. She, I feel like she could have spent even more time on that in the book for how important I actually feel it is to the final product of the food to like have it be at room temperature.

Because she talks about how long it really, like if your food is [00:20:00] coming at, you know, 40 degrees out of the refrigerator and you're trying to heat it up to 400, that's a huge gap there, you know, but it's, if it's sitting at like 75, 'cause it's been sitting in your house, the gap is, much less. And there's this whole like molecular aspect of it that when it's colder, I think we talked about this last time too, the.

Molecules are much more like scrunched up and tight. And as they, as they warm, they kind of like loosen and uncoil. And that process is so much harder if you're like applying hot heat right now.

Riley: And then it makes for a better tasting meat, like, because it's the molecules put out to be more tender, which is something she talks about. We've hardly talked about the fact that this is, so, this book is so scientific, but she really does teach you what is happening with the molecules of the food you're cooking.

Um, so if you're really nerdy and like science like that, which I gleaned a lot from this in this chap from that in this book, you'll get a lot in that regard also.

Roni: And also, if [00:21:00] you don't think that, if you don't like science, you'll also be like amazed that you learned sciencey stuff because I feel like she sneaks it in

Riley: Like, this is the way I feel like it'd be helpful to learn science in school Sometimes. It's like, tell me how this applies to my long-term future, because I'm not gonna be a SI wasn't gonna be a scientist and I, um, wasn't gonna be a doctor. You know, like things like that. I think this is a way that it could be interesting to teach it in school to kids.

Just like, this is science and this is how this is happening. This is this, this, yeah. That was a really rambly sentence, but you got me. I've got a lot of those today. Sorry, everyone. On, on the topic of temperature, so water boils at what, two 12, right?

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: If you're at sea level, it boils. I think 2 0 3 ish at higher altitudes, and everyone at every higher altitude water's gonna boil at a lower temperature, [00:22:00] like the higher you go.

Okay. I am from a sea level, I'm from pretty close to sea level, and I moved, I live at about 7,500 feet elevation now, and I almost always undercook my boiled eggs because I'm used to cooking them at sea level. And because my water temperature is lower when it boils, I don't cook them at, they need to cook longer because the temperature of the water is lower.

And then maybe I just loved that in this chapter, this is exactly why for the first four or five years that I lived at this high altitude, I was undercook things because, oh, well, particularly boiled things because I, my, because water boils a lower temperature at a altitude.

Roni: Living in Colorado, there are a lot of cookbooks that are written by. People in the West who live at some sort of an altitude. And you know, there are specific cookbooks related to how you [00:23:00] adjust. And I think in particular for baking, it's very important. It's a very nuanced kind of a thing of like adjusting the temperature of the oven, keeping a cake in for X minutes longer or shorter or whatever.

It's definitely a, it's definitely a thing 'cause I think that the place that they say that it really starts to change is like right around 4,000 feet or something, right. Like that.

Riley: I'm not exactly sure, but it's pretty astounding how different it is to bake at high altitude. I don't think I, I think that it's pretty, it's actually hard to describe to people who don't live at a high altitude because I think they think that it's not true or something like that. Because like, well, why would a high altitude make a difference?

But when you realize, or like when you learn, like I just learned like that you boil water boils at a lower temperature. It like really does, the atmospheric pressure really does change quite a bit in the cooking 

Roni: Mm-hmm.

since we're talking

about water boiling at two 12, uh, there [00:24:00] is a section, just a short section here where she talks about, , having water and fat interact while you're cooking. And so while water boils and then vaporizes at two 12 Fahrenheit, fats can go way higher.

You know, like I think we've all heard of, like, you know, some fats have like a smoke point of like 500 degrees Fahrenheit. So it's like clearly fats can be heated to a lot higher temperature before they're ever gonna boil. And so she talks about how since water and fat don't mix foods that contain water, which is pretty much everything.

They, the, the fat in them won't dissolve until the water has evaporated off of the food. So this is why a lot of the times you have a recipe where it tells you to like pat your thing dry. You know, like pat your meat dry or you know, pat your, try and get your zucchini as dry as possible before you do this thing.

It's because like water and fat don't really mix very well because their heating temperatures are so vastly different.

Riley: And again, it's another [00:25:00] step in a recipe that you might skip. Once you realize why that's helpful, it changes the game. Right? Because like, think about the, how many times you cook something and you cooked it while it was still like wet or you didn't pat off the extra water.

And it, it does change the way it cooks for

Roni: Yeah. I think for this in particular, she was, she's mostly talking about the texture of the food, right? And so in order to get that crispy texture, you need it to not have water on the surface, so that way it's the fat that it is interacting with the food rather than the water that's interacting with the food, which is often just gonna cause sogginess instead of crispiness.

Riley: Yeah, French fries would be a good example of this. If you ever made homemade french fries, often recipes call for you to soak your p your cut potatoes, and then dry them fully before you fry them, and that gives it the crispy skin that you were looking for.

Roni: Mm-hmm.

Riley: One of the things that I found really interesting is how temperature can affect flavor. And it made me think of my [00:26:00] dad because he would always put cheese on the counter and let it get to room temperature before he would eat it, or he would just leave it out to like snack on. And my whole family gives him such a hard time, uh, because we're like, dude, put the cheese away. And he's like, no, it tastes better this way. My dad's cheese connoisseur. But this book gives him license to do this. Cheese straight from the fridge won't taste like much. Let cheese come to room temperature. As it warms its fat. Molecules relax, releasing entrapped flavor compounds. Once it's a room temp, tastes the cheese again, and you'll perceive new dimensions of flavor that weren't available before.

So, dad, here's permission to you to leave your cheese on the counter. I was wrong and you were right.

Roni: That's so fascinating and I think that, uh, she talks a lot about here, about room temperature food, and how room temperature food, in a lot of ways can actually be better than scorching hot food. She says that not only can scorching hot food like burn your mouth, [00:27:00] but excessive heat can impair your ability to enjoy the flavor of food.

Riley: I think that for some reason I feel very aware of food safety. Like I don't want my meat come to room temperature. What if we get a foodborne illness? Like, or even cheese. That's why we always, that's why we always gave my dad a hard time about it. 'cause we're like, dude, put the cheese away. It's gonna get gross.

You know? Or something's gonna be wrong with it. And so I think that there, I have to kind of battle within myself. Like, you're leaving it on the ta, you're leaving it at room temp to make it taste better. Not because like you, you aren't gonna get sick, most likely if you do it within this timeframe.

Roni: Right.

Riley: But I think that's why I have a hesitancy towards letting the room temperature.

Roni: Yeah. I think cheese is one of those interesting ones. I would like to ask a follow up question of like, do we let it go to room temperature, we eat part of the block of cheese, and then we put the rest of the cheese back in the refrigerator for later? [00:28:00] Or is that when you start to get into weird territories?

Like should we just be eating the whole block of cheese all at once?

Riley: Well, I think I know a lot of people in my world who would say yes.

Roni: Right.

Riley: I'm not sure, but it, it is interesting that that is, that is like a feeling that I have about room temperature things. But she's giving us permission that a lot of things taste better at room temp or not immediately out of the oven.

Roni: Yeah. 

Riley: She talks also about foods aromatic molecules and how cooking them will increase their, like the molecules volatility. And so then, like she refers to like chocolate chip cookies, like chocolate chip cookie dough doesn't smell like much, but once you've cooked them, it allows the molecules to be free and like permeate the room.

And like, just everyone can imagine the smell of chocolate chip cookies and the way that smells so much different than cookie dough does.

Roni: Yeah, it makes me think of [00:29:00] when you walk by an ice cream shop and they have fresh waffle cones and you smell the like delicious kind of like nutty smell of the fresh waffle cone. You're just like, oh my gosh. I could just gobble five of those up right now. That sounds so good.

Riley: Which is such a fascinating like marketing tactic, honestly, because ice cream doesn't smell like and because it's cold, right? Like this idea that it's cold so that its molecules can't permeate through the air, right? So that we smell it, but the waffle cone does, and that pairing of the warm waffle cone with the cold ice cream just makes a explosion of flavor.

Roni: Yeah, so a whole big section of the chapter on heat is, I feel like she goes into very specifics. So she talks about basically like our different mediums of cooking. She talks about water and fat and air and steam and all of the different things. So it's, I don't think that we're probably gonna go into the details and the nuances that she [00:30:00] talks about, because she literally applies each of these different things to different types of foods.

So she talks about water cooking meats, and then vegetables, and then starches, and it's a lot of information. If you are interested in the nuances, once again, I, we think that you should purchase this book. But something that I kind of mentioned in the summary that I wanna mention again here is that, she talks about once again, having the goal of cooking with heat and what's the goal?

Because for some, uh, some foods, the goal is to create tenderness. Create tenderness because the food is innately not tender. It's kind of tough. Whereas for others, it's preserving that tenderness. And so how do you use heat in different ways to achieve that goal? Foods that are already tender, like certain cuts of meat, eggs, delicate vegetables, those should be cooked as little as possible and most likely with like hotter heat because you just need kind of like a flash of heat rather than low, slow heat.

But [00:31:00] foods that start out tough or dry and need to be hydrated or just become more tender like grains and starches, tough meats, dense root vegetables, those benefit from longer slow, gentle cooking in order to like release the tenderness of them. I just really liked the way that she talked about this, and it feels very clear once she has laid this out.

Like, okay, yes, there's basically two ways, two main ways of applying heat. What's my goal? Let's make like our little Venn diagram or whatever you call those things. Um, is the goal to get tender, follow this path? Is the goal to preserve tender follow this path?

Riley: Yes. Uh, and that's so interesting as it relates to meal planning, I think because, and, and she does actually implement this in a later conversation about meal planning, but like, if you know that something needs to cook for 12 to 24 hours, that's something you're gonna have to start [00:32:00] days before, or like, especially if you're meat to come to room temperature and, and there's such a, a plan is required to accomplish this cooking. 

I'm thinking even for myself, there's a holiday coming up. I'm gonna cook a pot roast. My, my roasts are frozen, so my roast needs to come to room temperature. I need to salt it, and then I need to be prepared to cook it for about 12 hours. So, or maybe eight hours. So like all of that requires many days in advance of planning and I'm excited for that end product and I'm excited to do all the labor in re in that's involved in that because I love the way this roast turns out, but it just plays a role in like when I'm gonna cook that, like I'm gonna cook that on a busy weeknight.

Riley: Maybe if I put it in my crockpot and it fit, you know, if I can get all those other pieces done. But most of the time that's gonna be a weekend meal when I just have a little bit more space to like do all those things. And so I, I just think it's, I just love the way that heat [00:33:00] in what you were just talking about relates to meal planning because it affects how you're gonna plan your week if you don't need to have a lot of cooking time.

Let's have some easy, like yummy eggs and something for dinner because that's not gonna take a long time, but it's still gonna have a delicious end result. It's just a low, little bit like lower effort, but still a delicious.

Roni: Right. One thing that she does talk about related to that though, is she talks about kind of like the idle cooking time. So there is this aspect of this like low and slow cooking that yes it's cooking. Uh, she doesn't really talk about crockpots, but I would use a crockpot more than I would use like a Dutch oven for brazing.

So it's like, yeah, if you, there is potentially a lot more steps leading up to getting something into the crockpot, but then once it's in the crockpot, you're free to do whatever you want for the rest of the day.

Riley: Yes, very little babysitting.

Roni: Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

Riley: Uh, 

I have a couple of thoughts, but one of them, it'll relate to the next one, but I, I feel like one of the [00:34:00] things that I got out of this book as a whole is an appreciation for like, worldwide cooking methods, like moms in Iran are making their kids food just like I am. Different ingredients. Potentially different methods, but just the same, you know, like there's like a, I feel like one of the beautiful things about the way that she writes this book is that we are all cooking, everyone in the world is cooking with these same basic principles of salt, fat, acid, and heat.

And I really love that. Like it is just, one of the things that I really appreciate about this book is just the, we're all the same. Like, there's like a unity aspect of this book. Like we are literally all using these four basic principles to get to dinnertime. Um, so no matter where you are in the world, these principles apply and you wanna use the right ones for the [00:35:00] right cuisine so that it tastes right.

But just like, there's like a unification that I see of like. Like I said, moms in Iran are like making their kids food with the exact same principles that I am. And I like, I love that. Um, when she was talking about to going on a trip with her grandparents to like the mountains of Iran and they had this like oat porridge situation that had Turkey in it.

And I actually read the section out loud to my husband the other day because I actually do not like sweet oatmeal, but I like savory oatmeal. And I told him, I said, I said. Somebody else in the world eats savory oatmeal. I'm not the only weirdo because he it strange, but like culturally savory, oatmeal's not normal in the United States, at least as far as I know.

Nobody I know eats savory oatmeal. But I really like it. And I told my husband, I was like, look, in Iran, they do eat this. I'm like, so I, there are [00:36:00] people who eat this just like I do. Uh, and it just felt like it was another layer of like connectivity that I felt to like cultures of the world through reading this book.

Because I just didn't know. I didn't know that that's something that they ate there. And I learned through this book and I just love that.

Roni: I think that she does a really great job in this book talking about, clearly she has multiple, uh, charts that tell you about like different flavors of different places in the world and different fats at different places of the world and all that kind of stuff. And all of her stories.

She doesn't have stories that just take place in the United States or just take place in Iran. Like she has stories from all over the world and all of the different places that she's traveled and. I think that's a really nice realization of that, that I feel like you had of like, yeah, it doesn't really matter where you are in the world.

These are the four basic elements. And learning them enables you to, you know, create cuisines from anywhere or go somewhere else and recognize like, oh, they're [00:37:00] using salt this way, or they're using heat this way. And just have it be like the through line from one place to the next.

Riley: Mm-hmm. Totally.

Before we move on, I, I will say that I learned a lot about cooking vegetables in this chapter

Roni: Mm-hmm.

Riley: and to get in a rut with how I cook them and. I do the same things all the time. I roast them, I saute them, I grill them. Um, but I, I feel like I learned a lot of different methods for how to cook different vegetables in this chapter.

I won't go into a ton of specifics just because there's so many things, like I learned to blanch some vegetables before you go to cook them because it completely changes the way that they cook. Or it makes them cook faster once they've been blanched.

And I just feel like she just taught me a lot about cooking vegetables in this chapter, which I'm excited to implement into my cooking because I do get into big ruts with vegetables and I love vegetables. I just need to, I just need to branch out and cook them in some different ways and enjoy them a little bit [00:38:00] more.

Roni: I agree for myself as well, even just the, the recipe that I have tonight is a sheet pan meal that has potatoes and green beans on the same sheet pan. And I think the recipe just calls for you to like put the potatoes on and you roast the potatoes first and then take it out, put the green beans on, roast everything for a little bit longer.

But I'm like, why wouldn't I just boil the potatoes so that they're already soft and then put 'em on my sheet pan and then they'll cook at the same rate as the green beans. So that's what I'm trying tonight. We'll see how it goes.

Riley: And the only reason I think someone would say that is because then you're using more pots, you're gonna get to the, you're probably gonna get to a better result with those potatoes by making them soft first, because they're gonna be crispier once you've gotten to the end, which I prefer them that way.

So

Roni: That's my hope.

Riley: there is a, there's an el element of this book that makes you wanna do things the hard way because the food will be better. And like I said earlier, in meal planning, there are days and [00:39:00] times when you need the easy button and you need the easy route. But this book has just taught me so many things that I'm like, I actually wanna do this that a little bit more complicated way because it's got one extra step, two extra steps because ultimately I'm gonna taste so much better in the end, or the texture is gonna be better.

It's gonna be more like, like we talked about, the meat will be more tender. Um, it'll have better flavor 'cause you added salt so the osmosis of the salt could permeate the entire cut of meat. There's just so many little things like that that I've learned that I just wanna do them all.

Roni: All right, well let's wrap this book up so that we can get to a couple dinner dilemmas. Uh, so right at the end of this heat section, she talks about basically like what to cook before she goes into recipes and stuff. She talks kind of about like what to cook, how to create, a meal, more or less. 

One thing that I really liked that she said was that when she is deciding what to cook, she chooses something as her anchor. So whether that's a particular ingredient [00:40:00] or a cooking method or she said sometimes it's even a recipe that you've been really wanting to try. Or it's just like, I need to clean out the refrigerator.

What are the things that we have? And, you know, I think we all do this without even realizing that we're creating an anchor for the thing that we're cooking. Uh, when I, I just certainly don't think of it that way until I read this and then I realized like, oh yeah, that's, it's typically how I decide what recipes I'm gonna put on my meal plan.

I am like looking in my refrigerator or my freezer and looking at specific ingredients or what do we have leftover from last week? So I just, I liked that she, I like putting like a label on something. I like having the label of like, we found an anchor.

Riley: And we've talked about this with meal planning quite a bit before because there was, there's some, somebody went, Amy Lee, we interviewed her and she has the meal planning anchor. Yeah. Um, but just to piggyback off what you said, it's not, it's not just an ingredient, it's, it's, Hey, our week is busy. [00:41:00] That's our anchor.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: Maybe it's cuisine type. Maybe you're someone who meal plans and you say Tuesdays is tacos, Wednesdays is Italian, Thursdays is sandwiches, and you just Russian roulette. Okay, we need a sandwich for Thursday because that's what we eat on Thursdays. We need an Italian cuisine, you know, like, and that's beautiful.

It's totally fine. We have meal planning. It could be that you have an over an overabundance of produce in your house. I just, or it could be that you wanna cook everything in the oven that week 'cause it's snowing outside and you don't wanna use your grill. I, I loved that. And then once she said, once you've chosen your anchor, then you balance it.

So what does balancing look like? Um, she gives a great example of like, maybe you've got a bread, like a panzanella salad, which is like a salad that has chunks of toasty, crusty bread in it. Okay, well you're not gonna wanna pair that with something, like with heavy starches for the rest of the meal.

'cause you started with a starch. I, I love the way that she talked about this. Like, you're not gonna wanna have Alfredo and then chocolate pudding, like, 'cause there's too [00:42:00] many too much richness. You wanna make sure that you've got light flavors and acidic flavors and starches and carbohydrate, like all those different things to balance your meals.

Roni: She says the phrase, aim to strike a balance of cleanliness and depth, which I just really like that. I can't tell you the exact definition of cleanliness in this context, and at the same time, it totally makes sense to me.

Riley: I completely agree with you, and I'm trying to come up with like a thing to say to help people understand it if they don't. 

Roni: it's kind of like what we talked about with acid. It's like having that like punch of brightness or I, to me, the idea of having like a, well, there are things that are called pallet cleansers, right? Like people use like apertif or, uh, sorbet or whatever as like a pallet cleanser. And I think that this kind of goes along with that, where it's like you can create a meal where you don't need a pallet cleanser before you move on to the next thing because it doesn't, there's [00:43:00] not anything that makes you feel like, wow, that was like super intense or soup, like way too rich.

Like it, everything, like it's, everything just feels balanced and feels clean.

Riley: Yeah, I'm thinking of like a light soup, like a light, like a, like an not overly complicated soup to start your meal. Or like a really bright salad, like something like that helps start your meal. So then when you get to the main course and there's like more complicated or richer flavors, like you don't feel like you're heavy.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: And again, this is, even heaviness is a word. I guess richness would probably be better. But just using these kinds of words to define food is funny.

Roni: It's a little bit of a challenge.

Riley: Yeah, but it does make sense because your body almost recognizes it as clean or heavy or bright, you know, and, but you wouldn't necessarily use that word to describe a meal anyway.

Roni: So she says towards the end, she [00:44:00] said, if food doesn't, if your food doesn't taste right, first start with the lessons of salt, fat, and acid. Make sure you have those elements balanced. And if it's still not quite right, turn to the umami, which she talked about in, I think it was the salt chapter. She talked about, um, umami, and if it's still not quite right, go to texture, which texture is often the element of heat.

And, she talks about like, you don't wanna, so you don't want a meal to have a, what she calls a OneNote texture. Because you don't want everything to be crunchy or don't want everything to be smooth, you know? Um, she says, scientists have found that we all prefer to eat foods that engage our senses with contrast, including light and dark, sweet and salt, tea, crunchy and silky, hot and cold, and of course sweet and sour.

So that's part of this balancing act as well, is making sure that everything isn't just all the same when it hits your mouth.

Riley: Absolutely. And one last thing. She says, be present. [00:45:00] Stir taste and adjust.

Roni: We, I think we can both say that we highly recommend this book. If you haven't, read it yet. We both learned a ton from it. And just think that, yeah, I think both of us are gonna keep it on hand a lot to make sure that we're be continually becoming better cooks, right? Like there's an aspect of reading this book because it is so big and there's so much information where you're like, okay, that was a lot.

And it, I, you could get overwhelmed easily if you tried to implement everything. But I, what I'm try attempting to do is to just take away little bits of it and hopefully I'm gonna remember to keep referencing the book and like learning additional things. But even just from the read through this time, I feel like I've taken a lot of little things that are improving my skills already.

Riley: I couldn't agree more. I hope that we've [00:46:00] sold everyone on reading this book, because no matter where you are in your cooking journey, it applies to you. 

Roni: All right, so now we are gonna answer a few dinner dilemmas, and we are starting today with a question from Stacy. Stacy is interested in healthy dinners that her kids will actually eat, that don't take hours to prepare. She's willing to take shortcuts if, for example, buying pre-cut, pre-cut broccoli, or using pre-cooked chicken.

What you got for us on this one?

Riley: It, I'm, I'm struggling a little bit, mostly because I don't know what your kids will actually eat. 

Roni: True. 

Riley: I'm just trying to think where to start because this one is a bit tricky when I don't know what your kids will eat. The way that I handle this sometimes in my own house is, um, I make a healthy [00:47:00] dinner, and I introduce things to them like maybe they've never had bok choy.

Okay, well there's bok choy on your plate, and I have very low expectations of the actual consumption. Like, we try things, we don't always like them. We can move on. It's okay. My child had tofu the other night and she took ate some and she was like, well, I like it except it doesn't have any flavor. And I was like, okay.

Like you tried it, like thanks for the feed. You know, like you had, it had feed, you had feedback and. I was not emotionally like, invested in her, like liking it or not. And I know that's a silly example. It was miso soup for anyone wondering. It had tofu in it. And I actually think it did have flavor, but that's, you know, we disagree.

It's okay. Um, I guess, but just starting with like introduction of things and just letting them explore and trying to have a little bit less like emotional like connectedness to like, are they gonna like this? They better eat this, you know? And just like I, and I learned this from Katie Kimball, just like put it in [00:48:00] front of them, let them experience it and continuously do that and don't be afraid of them not eating it.

Don't be afraid of like let making them look at it. You know, like looking at it isn't like, is uh, them experiencing the food and then over time they'll become more comfortable with it. I think Katie said it takes like 18 interactions with the food sometimes before a kid will eat it. 

But you are, you're on a journey, you know, like it took a long time for my kids to like broccoli and I just can, and some of that is because it's hard for kids to eat broccoli, you know, like, but then I started cutting it up smaller and then they really liked it smaller. You know, there's like me making a few tweaks on my own in like, uh, you said you're not afraid to like, take some shortcuts buying precut broccoli.

Okay. That's a great example. But like, maybe cut it up more, um, because then maybe it'll be something kids will eat because it's tiny. Like, I don't know, like it's a tiny tree. That's what we say at our house. Like it's a little tiny tree. Look at this cute little tiny tree. Maybe try to season it with flavors that they like.

I've cooked, I've cooked [00:49:00] broccoli with like ranch seasoning on it before and, it can get a little salty, so be careful aware of that. But like, my kids like the flavor of ranch. Like, Hey, put it on some broccoli. Let's try that. I haven't eaten this in a really long time, but like my grandmother used to make like broccoli with like a cheese sauce on it.

A lot of kids like cheese, like, um, try to take the winds where you can get them, I guess is what I would say. That doesn't take an hour to prepare. I 

would say get an air fryer. 

Roni: That's good. I was gonna say why. Why don't you give us an example of just like one or two recipes that you would consider healthy, that your kids like to eat. Doesn't mean that they're gonna work for Stacy, but just just for like actual recipe inspiration.

Riley: Sure. Okay, so I make this like Asian, like stack up kind of situation. I do a lot of, uh, like build your own type meals at my house, which don't take a lot of time to prepare it, A lot of chopping sometimes. But the reason I do it is because then it's customizable for every member of my family.

Like my husband might like it to be super [00:50:00] spicy, so he's gonna add a lot of sriracha or something like that, or hot sauce to his, or let's say, um, I'm gonna go with this Asian stackup thing. So I make rice or coconut rice, um, and I cook shrimp to go on it. I'll chop a mango, I'll chop tomatoes. Sometimes pineapple if I don't have a mango.

And then usually some and just for saving time. Sometimes I get like an Asian salad kit at the grocery store. Comes with like an Asian dressing. I'll dress the salad and that goes onto the stack up. Um, it's usually got slaw and broccoli and cabbage, or sorry, cabbages. Slaw, carrots. Usually kind of things like that in like an Asian salad, sometimes cilantro.

And so like, basically what I'll do is I'll just like let every person build their own bowl and it allows you to let them say, okay, no, I don't want, 'cause I'll often do like chopped mushrooms and onions that I've sauteed and and, or edamame, just like as many vegetables as we can get in there, I'll try to add them.

But it allows me to say to my kid, okay, you don't think [00:51:00] you like this, but I'm gonna put a couple on your plate, or I'm gonna put a couple in your bowl and let's try it. But then everyone kinda gets to make the meal the way they want to eat it.

Roni: I think that's a great tip. 'cause you could do that with all sorts of different cuisines. We do, you know, taco bowls and stuff, so easy.

Riley: that's exactly what I was about to say, is you can do the exact same thing with tacos, uh, or with a taco bowl. Kind of like homemade chipotle basically. You know, like tonight we're having roasted potatoes, broccoli, grilled chicken, and I think slaw and like one of my daughters really likes like a cabbage slaw and the other one doesn't. And some of that is because it's a little difficult for a kid with less teeth to eat it. It's a lot of chewing.

But so sometimes what I'll do is I'll have an option, like you can either have the broccoli or you can have the flo, you can have both, but you can pick one or the other. So they are consuming a vegetable with their meal. I mean, obviously potatoes a vegetable, but almost every kid in the world likes potatoes.

So like, you can, you can pick one of those green vegetables and eat it. [00:52:00] And I, I, and like my husband and I will eat both of those things. So. It's not a ton of extra work, it's just giving kids some options, uh, and letting them have a little bit of choice on what they're willing to eat. And like I said, I do encourage them to try things.

But kids are, you know, like I said, it's hard for them to eat things. And sometimes, like the spice level can be hard, but like, I don't wanna sacrifice the fact that I like spicy food for like, the fact that my kids won't eat it. So there's another meal that I make with like, it's like homemade, like little, like buffalo wing things that I make, and I just won't put the buffalo sauce on the ones that I serve my kids.

So it's not any different work, it's just that they just don't get the sauce because it's too hot or something like that. I, I don't, I think I've kind of digressed from answering this lady's questions, but just feeding kids in general. Like last night my husband and I had hard shell tacos and. Hard shell.

Tacos are so hard to eat when you're a kid, 'cause your hands are small and they break and that's annoying. And so I gave my kids a choice. Do you want a quesadilla or a [00:53:00] burrito? And I made them that It's the exact same ingredients. It's just not the hard shell taco. And so just giving, like, knowing that I'm not serving them really anything different, it's just a different, like, like vehicle, food, vehicle.

But it's just a little bit easier for them to eat. Or like I said, I leave off the sauce. Um, or then like I do a lot of stackup things where they can pick and choose. Alright, this one is coming from kat recipes that can be frozen for use on days that I just can't make life work. It's always frozen pastas and enchiladas, but there have to be other countries that use their freezer.

Roni: That's, I really like that, that little, that's a funny little phrase. I like that a lot. I would argue that we've talked about this before, almost anything can be frozen. So potentially this is mostly an issue of just finding other recipes that are flavors that you enjoy and that your family enjoys.

Personally at my house, we eat, [00:54:00] uh, probably Asian flavored foods the most, because I really like Asian flavors. I know. A lot of, like growing up we ate a lot of more like Mexican food or like Southwest Tex-Mex kind of food, because that's what my mom really likes. So, I think, I think that in general, I, I actually think, like you mentioned, frozen pastas, the pasta is like the last thing that I think to freeze actually.

And maybe you're thinking like a pasta bake or a casserole or something, but, uh, I think that anything that almost anything that you can make can go in the freezer. What do you got re do you have any specifics? Ri I'm trying to think of some specifics. I,

Riley: Um, I'm, I'm thinking that, there's a lot of websites that have recipes for taking, for like moms who are about to have a baby. Um, so they can meal prep food prior to that. And so I used a lot of those websites to help get me some ideas. So it's just an idea for Kat to like search for that in particular, like what should I meal prep before I have my baby?[00:55:00] 

Because a lot of those are very bulk oriented so that you have food for like a month afterwards. Breakfast burritos freeze, super duper well, and you can make those in a huge quantity. At one time. It doesn't take that long. Indian food, like not the rice part of it. I would say make that fresh if you can.

And if you don't have time, get a, get the kind that is like five minute rice or get the kind that you microwave. Like a Trader Joe's has an awesome jasmine rice that's in the freezer section that you just microwave. But Indian food, so like curry, uh, butter, chicken, chicken, uh, what's another one?

Masala. Um, all of those free super duper well, um, and they taste really good when they're reheated. Like there's just no issues with that with me. Um, but I really like Indian food. I'm trying to think what else. What I did a lot of was I did like, like taco meat, I cooked it, I saw, I seasoned it, and then I froze it so that then it could be kind of utilized in a multi multitude of ways.

Like I was just telling the person [00:56:00] before, like a taco bowl, like Chipotle or, and you could even put all your vegetables into that meat and cook it all together so that it's kind of all in one package, just you're gonna serve it on a taco or on a burrito or, or on a tortilla or, um, on rice or potatoes or in an omelet.

So things like that. Breakfast casserole is actually freeze super well with the raw egg. You just pull it out and let it thaw and then you put it in the oven. So those are a few ideas, but looking at like meal preps particularly, I'm thinking I, because that's my experience, but like if you're about to have a baby, you go to these, there's all these websites with like, things you can bulk prepare, with very little like effort.

Once they're thawed out, just put 'em in the oven.

Roni: Related to your ground beef option, I was thinking of, roasts. So like you have that amazing Mississippi pot roast that you make, and then this, um, like Korean pulled pork. I think cooking things like that where it's like a big chunk of [00:57:00] meat that you're then, if you're a meat eater, that you're then able to, you could like pre-portion it so that way you're not pulling out all of the rest of the servings and reheating them.

You know, you just freeze it in a little bit of the liquid that was in the crockpot and it freezes super well. And then, like you said, that's like super versatile. You can use it in a bunch of different things. And like a Mississippi pot roast and a Korean pulled pork, those really already are expanding your options for the cuisine types that you could be having.

Like when I make the pulled pork, we usually have it in some type of like rice bowl situation, but I'll also just put it as the meat in a raw in ramen, so like it also can go into soup. So, yeah, I think that there's, I really like your idea of finding a website that caters specifically towards like meal prepping for a baby, because that is all about freezers, uh, or potentially finding a freezer meal club or starting a freezer meal club with some of your friends because your friends might eat a cuisine that's completely different and might have [00:58:00] recipes that you would've never thought of.

But you basically all batch cook a recipe and bring enough servings so that you can trade with everybody else. So everybody leaves with basically the same amount of food that they started with. It's just all different and varied.

Riley: Totally. I'm thinking about, like, I've said this on the show before, but I'll say it again, but like that pot roast like that turns into amazing sandwiches. Like, try not to limit yourself to the fact that I made a pot roast, therefore I've got to eat it as a pot roast, you know? Or I've made like, I. This pulled pork, I have to eat it as pulled pork. Like I'm thinking even the Korean pulled pork would be awesome on a baked potato,

Roni: Ooh, yeah.

Riley: which again, she's asking for things that she can, like, she doesn't have time. So like that can get a little tricky. 'cause we're, we're talking about things that, you know, you need to do a little bit of side hustle with, you know, like makes potatoes make some rice or something like that.

Um, but it can be really

Roni: can make in the microwave in like five minutes. So.

Riley: Um, meatballs I think would be another one with a lot of flavor variety. You could [00:59:00] make lamb meatballs, which would go great with some like Mediterranean cuisine, you know, that kind of flavor profile, dill, things like that. Turkey meatballs, Italian meatballs, American meatballs.

Roni: Okay, our good friend Debbie Brosnan, who has the Effortless Kitchen and her cookbook is called the Effort Effortless Kitchen Cookbook. She has a whole chapter dedicated to meatballs and it's, I think it's called like meatballs from around the world, so I'm pretty sure you can buy her book on Amazon.

It's not a very expensive cookbook, and she has like 30 different meatball recipes. So that's a great one.

Riley: And that can again be eaten in a variety of ways. 'cause you can put them on a sandwich, you can put them on pasta, you can put them, just eat them by themselves. You can put them with a side of eggs if that's what you got going on, you know?

Roni: All right. I think we're just gonna answer two today 'cause this podcast is going a little long already 'cause he was a long chapter for us. We are gonna pick a new book for our next book, Cub Breakdown soon. We haven't decided yet what book [01:00:00] we're gonna do, but we're also gonna take a little, break before we start breaking down the next book.

So you can just expect kind of meal planning focused episodes, next month. And we'll hopefully get to, a bigger chunk of your dinner dilemmas in those episodes. Since we're not gonna be breaking down a book, so. As always, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and we will talk to you again in two weeks.