This week, we’ve got a super short episode for you because we just wanted to say thank you for hanging out with us the past few months while we tried this thing out, but last week’s mini review felt so much better to both of us and the response from y’all was stronger than expected too, BUT it didn’t work very well as a podcast. So we’re going to just switch over to weekly first looks instead. It’ll be on the same schedule. It’ll have a lot of the same stuff built into it, but we’re going to build on top of the reason people come to us in the first place — the reviews.

Today, we’re stepping into the kitchen to take a brand new cookbook, in this case, Umma by Sarah and Nam Soon Ahn, and rather than spending a full week with it, we’re essentially doing a speedrun: reading the whole book cover to cover and then picking a couple dishes to make for dinner. In fact we already did it yesterday, and we hope you enjoy it! *P.S. Sorry for the mispronunciations!* If you’ve cooked out of the book and want to share your take we have an Umma post started for you: https://cultflav.com/products/sarah-ahn-nam-soon-ahn-umma

Today, we’re just doing a grab bag of listener questions for the whole gosh dang thing, because frankly, that’s probably our favorite part of the whole show. And you might be asking “why? that’s not the format?” and the answer is… because it’s fun to try new things and we’re probably going to experiment for the next little bit here because we like *some* parts of the current format and some things we don’t. Our whole goal was to publish stuff weekly so we could be a little more reactive to what’s happening in realtime, rather than months later since our big full-length reviews take so long. We *generally* like the episodes we’re making and the response has been fantastic, but ultimately it’s actually slowing down our “main content” more than we’d like right now. So, for the next few weeks, we’re going to play around with the format and see where we end up — if you want to give feedback, we’ve got a couple threads about it over in the going-off channel on cultflav.com!

This week we’re talking about the latest in Misen’s long history of cookware kickstarter campaigns, what we do with all of our review units, and then wrapping it all up with a tier list of cookware marketing terms featuring Danny Henn from Heritage Steel.

This week, we’re debunking the very concept of flavor. That’s right: flavor is a myth and every time you eat, you’re being lied to. Then, we’re answering some questions about reproducing dishes from places you’ve traveled and nut alternatives. And finally, for our Absolutely Rank, we’re drafting our favorite regional cuisines.

This week we’re talking about how to make reasonable cookware purchases WITHOUT test data, we’ve got a listener question about our craziest kitchen stories, and we’re following up our cookbook red flags ranking from a couple weeks ago with our cookbook GREEN flags.

This week, we’re talking to our friend Mei Liao who runs one of our favorite channels, @daywithmei. She recently made a cross-country move and has started rebuilding her kitchen equipment collection as both an avid home cook AND a food content creator. Then Mei joins us in answering a listener question about wooden cutting boards, but let’s be honest, Bryn commandeers that question and barfs out a bunch of facts without answering it... (Sorry! Clearer answer below 👇 — Bryn) And then we round the episode out with an ice cream ranking in a booth at Mamahuhu in San Francisco. Mei was even kind enough to bring in some new flavor combinations that she’s testing out.

This week, while we fight through the final dregs of our illness, we’ve been prepping for our upcoming review of Sift by Nicola Lamb. When we’re prepping for a review, there are basically two parts that take the vast majority of the time: 1. reading the book, and 2. grocery shopping. We just finished our grocery shopping run and thought it’d be cool to share some tips on grocery shopping that we’ve picked up after reviewing 34 cookbooks. We’ve also got some listener questions about… food origins and when to get into sous vide cooking. And finally, for this week’s absolutely rank — inspired by our friends Jordan and Kendahl who make the Happy Wife, Happy Life podcast, we’re listing our top 10 red flags: cookbook edition.

It’s been a week of languishing on the couch and binging tv shows between naps and doses of cold medicine as we work through this mystery illness (bronchitis) we picked up. Frankly that’s all our brains have space for at the moment. So today we thought we’d talk about the food TV we’ve loved over the years and hopefully there are some recommendations or something in there for you along the way. We’ve also got some questions on planning menus — a thing we’re barely doing at the moment — and, for our absolutely rank, we’ve got a canonical ranking of food in video games with video game writer Chet Faliszek.

t’s Valentine’s Day at the time of recording! We’re celebrating it by going through all the Cookbooks that got away this season, then we’ve got some listener questions about bulk meal prep and recipe copyright infringement, and wrapping the episode up with a game where we name the top 10 sexiest foods. We’ve also chosen our second cookbook review of the year, and it’s going to be Nicola Lamb’s Sift — a pastry book — which is something that has long been requested. We’re just kicking off our stand mixer review and thought it’d be fun to try doing both at once — an idea we’ll surely regret in a few weeks’ time, but for now. It seems fun? But, because we’ve chosen our next topic, we now have to say goodbye to all the books we didn’t get to review in a timely manner (though, they may make a return later who knows). I wouldn’t say we’ve got strong opinions, but… these were the books that got us excited over the last few months. Enjoy the show!

This week we’ve got a super late followup to one of our most popular reviews, then we’re answering a few listener questions about knives, and wrapping the whole thing up by asking Eytan Zias of Steelport to rank specialty knives.

This week we’re talking to Justine Doiron about the ins and outs of publishing her new book "Justine Cooks"! Then she helps us answer some listener questions about vegan recipes and cooking while traveling, and wrapping it all up with a totally fun and not at all weird game where we ask Justine to rank her first 10 instagram recipes all the way back from 2020. NOTE: Hey! So you might notice that Bryn’s audio doesn’t sound great. Unfortunately we figured out what happened after recording, and fixed it the best we could, but are aware that it’s still not great. Sorry, for that, but hope you still enjoy the interview with Justine!

This week, we’re following up our wok review with a little conversation around tradition, nostalgia, and how useful that really is. Then we’ve got a couple questions about innovative methods and classic cookbooks, and we’re wrapping the whole thing up with a fun new game in this week’s absolutely rank. we’ve definitely practiced it and we definitely know it’ll work.

From social platforms to colored food additives, it’s been a week of bans with questionable value, so we asked our friendly neighborhood food scientist, hydroxide to join us to talk about what the red dye no. 3 ban is, why it happened, and what about it matters to you. What she didn’t know is that we’re also going to ask her to weigh in on a followup question about seed oils, and then ambush her with a list of items to ban or not in this week’s Absolutely Rank. I bet she’s got some strong opinions.

Welcome to Episode 3 of Going Off… Today, we’ve got a little meta conversation about the whole Geoffrey Lee vs Kat Ensign debacle and the cost of reviewing things on the internet, some questions about how to use some of our favorite ingredients, and our first guest spot with Ori and Chris from our favorite zine, Radicchio Salad.

It's An Award Show! The Flavies aren’t necessarily the best thing period by some objective measure — they’re just our faves from this year. Next year, we plan to get nominations from a bunch of our favorite food creators and then ask you to vote on them so they can be YOUR favs to make it a whole thing.

We've got strong feelings about algae cooking oil. We answer some listener questions about cooking oil, and we share our top 10 ingredients that we don't want to live without.

We're starting a podcast! This is the episode we need to get everything set up, but the first official episode will drop on Sunday, January 5th, 2025!