The Sporkful

Bourbon's growing popularity is changing an industry with deep roots in Kentucky. We travel there to learn what that means for one of the oldest and one of the youngest bourbon masters.

This episode originally aired on January 14, 2019, and was produced by Dan Pashman and Anne Saini, edited by Gianna Palmer and Emma Morgenstern, and mixed by the Reverend John DeLore. The Sporkful team now includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andr...

A few weeks ago, Cracker Barrel announced it was changing its logo — removing the old man in overalls and the barrel, updating the font, and removing the words “Old Country Store.” Longtime Cracker Barrel fans went nuts, decrying the “sterile” look. Conservative commentators tied the change to a “DEI regime” and called the new logo “woke.” Even the president weighed in, and within a week Cracker Barrel abandoned the change. But it ...

This week, we’re ringing in fall tailgating season with a barbecue, featuring three different cuts of pork: ribs, pork chops, and bratwurst. The grillmaster in charge of it all is Jimmy Tchinnis, owner and executive chef at Swallow Kitchen and Cocktails and L’uccello Pizza and Italian Fare in Greenlawn, NY. Jimmy started out cooking in high-end restaurants in New York City before eventually realizing that he wanted to own smaller n...

This week’s show is a raucous Korean-style night out, all on a weekday afternoon. Dan heads to Orion Bar in Brooklyn to learn how to drink like a Korean with Irene Yoo and Peter Kim. Irene is the owner of Orion Bar and author of Soju Party, a book of drink and food recipes that’s also a guide to Korean drinking culture. She shows Dan some drinking games and explains the importance of never pouring your own drink. Then Peter Kim joi...

Best-selling author Samantha Irby specializes in wringing comedy out of her own personal tragedies. Among her favorite topics: poop (she’s got Crohn’s disease), depression (which she also has), and sex. Throughout her writing, food is a recurring character. You can often gauge where she's at in life by what she's eating at the time. This week she takes us from the Oatmeal Creme Pies that got her through a troubled childhood, to an ...

Antoni Porowski wasn’t the obvious choice to be the food expert on Queer Eye — he’s not a chef and he has no formal culinary training. When the show debuted in 2018, many people asked, “Can this guy actually cook?” Not the most reassuring reaction for Antoni, who already struggled with impostor syndrome. In the years since, he’s alternated between trying to prove his haters wrong, and trying to stop worrying about what others think...

What should you cook for breakfast the morning after? How can couples share power in the kitchen without driving each other crazy? We talk food and relationships with Dan Savage, who writes the sex advice column Savage Love and hosts the podcast Savage Lovecast.

This episode originally aired on February 4, 2019, and was produced by Dan Pashman, Anne Saini, Ngofeen Mputubwele, Gianna Palmer, and Jared O'Connell. The Sporkful team now...

Dan Pelosi and Negin Farsad join Dan to settle your food disputes! One couple can’t agree on when they should take the first bite of a meal: when the food is fresh and piping hot, or once they’re sitting down at the table? Another couple struggles over how to reheat leftovers to maximize flavor and minimize mess. Plus, our guests share their hottest food takes about the best recipe for cupcakes and a taboo ingredient in marinara.

Da...

Could listening to The Sporkful be the fertile soil out of which true love grows? We put out the call for Sporkful listeners looking for love, and hundreds of you responded. This week, we listen in on two blind Zoom dates that resulted from our extremely unscientific matchmaking. Is The Sporkful enough of a spark to ignite a grease fire of passion for two eaters? Or will these dates turn as cold as take-out fries?

Check out the new ...

An email from Sara Bir set us off on an adventure. She’s an author and recipe developer who’s obsessed with pawpaws, the largest fruit native to North America. “Pawpaws are tricky in the kitchen,” Sara wrote to us. “You can't buy them in stores. Occasionally they cause people to vomit. But pawpaws are truly beguiling, reminiscent of tropical fruit like mangoes and bananas.” With the help of her connections in the pawpaw dark web, S...

Casey Elsass is known as the “cookbook doula” because he’s helped birth nearly 20 cookbooks, as a ghostwriter or co-writer. Now, Casey has published his very first solo cookbook, What Can I Bring? Recipes To Help You Live Your Guest Life, about how to be the best guest at a dinner party. “If you're always on time, bring appetizers. If you're reliably late, bring drinks. If you're stopping by later, bring dessert,” says Casey. Casey...

For years, Dan has kept a Google Doc of ideas for ice cream flavors and ice cream sandwiches. But nobody asked him for it. Then, the folks at Heap’s Ice Cream in Brooklyn asked Dan to collaborate on the ice cream sandwich of his dreams. We get an inside look at the whole process with Heap’s cofounder Sarah Sanneh, from Dan’s pitch of fried plantain ice cream, to the invention of a new ice cream mix-in, to the surprising result of f...

There are a lot of desserts named after severe weather phenomena, but not all of them are created equal. We asked Tornado Alley's top meteorologist, Gary England, to help us rank some of these desserts, based on the severity of the weather they are named for. In addition to Gary England's dessert rankings, this episode includes a conversation Paul Breslin about how weather affects our tastes. Breslin is a professor with the Departm...

We’re back with our annual game show: Two Chefs And A Lie! But this year, things are a bit different. Dan isn’t playing — he’s the emcee! And our contestant is Rachelle Hampton, host of the podcast Normal Gossip. The game, however, remains the same: Rachelle talks with three guests. Two of them are real chefs, one is an impostor. Rachelle can ask each of them just five questions, then has to guess who the liar is. You can play alon...

Dan and WTF host Marc Maron have been arguing about eating for over a decade. This week they revisit old feuds and start news ones, sparring over temperature contrast in sandwiches, the merits of melon balls, and whether the high from sausage gravy is worth the food shame-induced crash.

This episode originally aired on November 30, 2014, and was produced by Dan Pashman and Anne Saini. The Sporkful team now includes Dan Pashman, Emma...

Some people say that when they eat pasta in the US it makes them feel like garbage, but when they eat it in Italy they feel great. Is that legit? What does the science say? Also, why is the food at many tony restaurants so mediocre? And should you stop eating bagged salad greens? We dig into these questions and more in this edition of the Salad Spinner, our rapid-fire roundtable discussion of the latest food news. Joining us for th...

Fifty years after the panic about "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" began, we explore how faulty science and perceptions of race and class contributed to the making of a food myth that persists today. And we tell you how to make the best Bloody Mary ever.

This episode originally aired on January 6, 2018, and was produced by Dan Pashman and Anne Saini, and edited by Margaret Kelly. The Sporkful team now includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgens...

Today, we have an update on one of our most popular Sporkful episodes ever, about a beloved sandwich shop in Aleppo, Syria, and an exiled aid worker named Shadi Martini. When the brutal regime of Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad fell last December, we got back in touch with Shadi. Earlier this year, after 12 years in exile, he returned to Aleppo, and visited his favorite sandwich shop. He tells us about the whole experience in this ...

When we left off, Shadi Martini was getting increasingly worried that his efforts to help those targeted by the Syrian regime would be discovered. A doctor who was known to treat protestors had been arrested and tortured. Shadi took it as a message – someone was telling him to stop. But he didn’t stop. Instead, he started doing a lot more.

This is part two in our series. If you didn’t listen to Part 1, please go back and listen to t...