The Sporkful

On Halloween night in 1974, an eight-year-old boy in the Houston suburbs got Pixy Stix laced with cyanide. He wasn’t the only one. So did four other kids who were trick-or-treating that night. It made poisoned candy an overnight terror to parents nationwide. In this episode from our friends at the food true crime podcast Outlaw’s Digest, we hear the story that inspired a fear of Halloween candy for decades to come. Alon...

This week we have a Reheat double-header. First up, from way down in the crevices of that deep freezer: a throwdown over proper buffet priorities, in which we also cover seat selection, line etiquette, and how far one should go to win the age-old battle against the Buffet Master. Next up: Should you send a dish back to the kitchen simply because you don't love it? Or should you just suck it up and eat it anyway? Sporkful listener L...

Is a wedge salad worth the effort of using a knife to eat it? Should you take home the unopened beer you brought to a dinner party? And does your produce really need to be washed? Dan’s taking your calls with Gail Simmons, Top Chef judge and author of the new book Guesting, and Ayesha Nurdjaja, restaurant chef and author of the new book Mediterranean All The Way.

The Sporkful production team includes Dan Pashman,...

“Literally all pasta shapes are wonderful except bucatini. Bucatini can go get effed.” Francis Lam’s strongly-worded tweet inspired Dan to organize a live event in 2018, where he, Francis (host of The Splendid Table), and Evan Kleiman (host of Good Food) could debate the merits of various pasta shapes. It was called “The Bucatini Dialogues” — and yes, it was the night when Dan first announced his...

The craft brewery used to be a place for self-proclaimed beer nerds to sample the hot new IPA. Now, young kids, toddlers, and even infants take up as much space as beer-drinking adults. So how did this happen? It’s a story of a fast-growing industry finally slowing down, and its core customer base growing up. Sporkful senior producer Andres O’Hara investigates how craft breweries became the go-to spot for parents, with ...

Yotam Ottolenghi is an Israeli-British chef famous for getting people to eat more vegetables. But now, he's making the case for sugar. On the heels of his 2017 dessert cookbook, Sweet, he discusses the personality differences between bakers and cooks. Plus, why he never orders the specials in restaurants and what happens when a perfectionist like him attempts to cook with his kids.

This episode originally aired on November 27, 2017,...

In 1973, Madhur Jaffrey penned An Invitation to Indian Cooking and introduced many Americans to Indian cuisine. More than 50 years later, Priya Krishna (author of Indian-ish and Priya’s Kitchen Adventures) argues that Indian food is just as American as any other immigrant cuisine. But among many non-South Asians in the US, Indian food still carries the perception that it’s “foreign.” Why? And what has to hap...

Should you eat fast food on vacation, or should every meal be at a special local place? Is soup bar food? Does ice belong in milk? Brittany Luse and Eric Eddings join Dan to answer your questions — and to settle some long-standing food disputes of their own. Brittany and Eric used to co-host the podcast For Colored Nerds, a show about Black culture. They’re also old friends, which means they argue about everything &mdas...

The fat acceptance movement has spent decades fighting weight stigma and calling for equal rights for fat people in all areas of life. As the movement moved online, the idea of body positivity emerged. While fat acceptance was about societal change, body positivity was more about self help -- loving yourself at any size. With the rise of social media, body positivity influencers gained success and sponsorships. But lately, fat acce...

Comedian Nicole Byer hosts the cooking competition show Nailed It! on Netflix. It’s family-friendly, but that doesn’t stop her from deploying her raunchy humor with her co-host, the chocolatier Jacques Torres, when the cameras are off. Nicole talks with Dan about the parallels between a restaurant kitchen and comedy club, and why she makes her own favorite cake for her late mom’s birthday. And you’ll definit...

If someone asked you to name the country that dominates American yogurt aisles, you would undoubtedly say Greece. Thick Greek yogurt makes up more than half of all US yogurt sales. But shaking its fist from the shadows is another country that’s even more obsessed with yogurt: Bulgaria. They have a museum of yogurt. One key bacteria found in all yogurt in the world was discovered in Bulgaria. And yet, the Greeks get all the at...

Dan goes on an adventure around Los Angeles, starting at the airport. Where is he going? He doesn't know. He doesn't have a plan. The one thing he does know is that he's going to attempt to travel through time to eat a piece of coconut cake from Patys Restaurant, which he should have eaten three years ago. With an Atlas Obscura article as his guide, what could go wrong?

This episode originally aired on July 16, 2018, and July 25, 20...

Thirty years into her career as a chef and cookbook author, Carla Lalli is releasing a book many people told her she shouldn’t write. It’s called Food Is A Feeling, and it’s a lot more personal than her others. It has plenty of great recipes, but at its core it’s a series of essays about her divorce, and how it changed her relationship with food. Carla talks with Dan about what she made the nig...

You know that friend of yours who rails against the evils of high fructose corn syrup? The one who’s obsessed with where every single morsel of their food comes from? Writer Michael Pollan — author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, Food Rules, and Cooked — may have made your friend like that. But as we hear in this conversation, Michael himself isn’t like that at all. This week, he opens up ...

Fernando Frías was a successful cafe and restaurant owner in Havana. But when Fidel Castro came to power, the government nationalized Fernando’s businesses and imprisoned him when he tried to leave the country. Eventually he got out, settling near Miami like so many other Cuban expats. Even though Fernando never went back to Cuba, he was always searching for pieces of his homeland in the Cuban-American community in Miami. Thi...

Negin Farsad loves to negotiate. And when it comes to negotiating, nothing is off-limits — even religious law. "I feel like Allah would be like, 'Get the pork chop but don't kill anybody,'" the Iranian-American Muslim comedian and host of Fake the Nation says. This week, Negin uses her lamb kebab to school us on campaign finance reform. (Can you tell she's a former policy advisor?)

This episode originally aired on Februar...

In New Jersey, the tomato is king. Almost a century ago, a scientist at Rutgers University developed a variety that became the tomato that lined grocery store shelves for decades. Now, Rutgers scientists are at it again — they’ve invented a new grape tomato called Scarlet Sunrise. Will it become the next hot item in the produce aisle? How do you even invent a new tomato? And why are new varieties of fruits and veggies b...

When Dan had to plan his mom’s big 80th birthday dinner, he knew just where to take the whole family: Myrtle Beach, SC. The group of ten celebrated at Hook and Barrel, a sustainable seafood and wine restaurant owned by restaurateur Heidi Vukov, who’s a legend in Myrtle Beach. She started out as a single mom who opened a small bakery, and 31 years later became the city’s first James Beard semifinalist. Dan also tak...

Can “functional” candy be delicious? Why are people ordering from a fake food delivery app? And should tomatoes be banned from sandwiches? We cover all of these questions and more in this week’s Salad Spinner, our rapid-fire roundtable discussion of the hottest food news of the moment. Joining us in the Spinner this week are Tanya Sichynsky, a New York Times editor and author of the forthcoming Veg Everything, and...