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Special Sauce with Ed Levine

Special Sauce with Ed Levine

Ed Levine

Serious Eats' podcast Special Sauce enables food lovers everywhere to eavesdrop on an intimate conversation about food and life between host and Serious Eats founder Ed Levine and his well-known/famous friends and acquaintances both in and out of the food culture.

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Top 10 Special Sauce with Ed Levine Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Special Sauce with Ed Levine episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Special Sauce with Ed Levine for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Special Sauce with Ed Levine episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Special Sauce with Ed Levine - Ann Kim 2: A Korean-American Chef's Story

Ann Kim 2: A Korean-American Chef's Story

Special Sauce with Ed Levine

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09/22/23 • 30 min

On this episode of Special Sauce Ann Kim talks about the evolution of her relationship with her Korean parents. You won't believe what happened when Ann invited her parents to her about to open first restaurant Pizzeria Lola.

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Special Sauce with Ed Levine - George Motz: Hamburger America

George Motz: Hamburger America

Special Sauce with Ed Levine

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12/15/23 • 28 min

Ths week on Special Sauce I catch up with my old running partner George Motz, America's first bona fide burger scholar. George has just opened his very own burger joint Hamburger America.

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Special Sauce with Ed Levine - Anajak Thai - Justin Pichetrungsi

Anajak Thai - Justin Pichetrungsi

Special Sauce with Ed Levine

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04/19/24 • 26 min

This week on Special Sauce we hang out with Justin Pichetrungsi, the James Beard Award-winning chef-owner of the justifiably heralded Anajak Thai in Los Angeles (Sherman Oaks to be exact). How and why he went from working in animation at Disney to taking over his family's restaurant makes for quite a story.

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Much has been written during the pandemic about the increased popularity of community supported agriculture, commonly referred to as CSA. On this week's Special Sauce, we had a far-reaching conversation with Maggie Cheney, one of the owners of Rock Steady Farm, which is part of a special kind of CSA.

Rock Steady describes itself as a women and queer owned cooperative farm, rooted in social justice, growing sustainable vegetables, flowers, and herbs for our upstate and NYC communities. As you will hear, Maggie and her partners have withstood the many challenges they have encountered during the pandemic with sheer determination, a lot of hard work, and the support, both financial and otherwise, of the communities they serve. But it has not been easy.

Rounding out the episode is another Ask Kenji segment. This time Kenji answers a Serious Eater's question about the whys and wherefores of salting vegetables like cucumbers and eggplant before cooking them. I don't want to give away too much of his answer, but I will tell you that water balloons are repeatedly mentioned.

So there you have it, our very first all-vegetable Special Sauce, and it's inspiring, surprising, and informative.

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The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats:

https://www.seriouseats.com/preview?record=454208

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Special Sauce with Ed Levine - George Motz: What Makes A Great Burger

George Motz: What Makes A Great Burger

Special Sauce with Ed Levine

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12/22/23 • 22 min

This week on Special Sauce we hear more about what makes a great burger with Hamburger America's George Motz

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Special Sauce with Ed Levine - Laura Tillman and Lalo Garcia

Laura Tillman and Lalo Garcia

Special Sauce with Ed Levine

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07/05/24 • 38 min

This episode of Special Sauce is particularly special. You'll hear the remarkable life story of celebrated Mexican chef Lalo Garcia as told by Lalo himself and his biographer Laura Tillman.

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This week's Special Sauce episode unintentionally turned into a carb fest. Although I knew I was having on a couple of the finest bakers in the land- Amy Scherber, the founder of Amy's Bread, and Melissa Weller, a baker and partner at High Street on Hudson- I had not anticipated that the other segments of the show would have a similarly starchy focus.

But let's start with the bread-bakers: Scherber founded Amy's Bread way back in 1992, and it was one of the first artisanal bread-baking businesses in New York City, established long before "artisanal" became such a ubiquitous marketing term. Weller, who used to be the head baker at Per Se and has overseen a number of well-regarded baking operations around New York, is now turning out some of the finest bagels in the city (and that's saying something). The two of them gave me some much-needed insight into what it was like to earn their chef stripes in all-male kitchens and, more importantly, what it takes to finally say, "Screw it!" and start your own business.

In the advice portions of the episode, Kenji fields a question from Serious Eater Melissa Staricha about the food processor he uses for his New York-style pizza dough, which sends him on a Kenji-like riff about enzymes and autolysis and how to make good pizza. And, finally, just in time for the holidays, Daniel Gritzer offers some advice for how to make mashed potatoes way ahead of time and "still have them shit the table as good as new."

Kenji on pizza dough, Amy Scherber and Melissa Weller on their paths to bread-and-pastry entrepreneurship, and Gritzer on making mashed potatoes in advance to ease your holiday cooking stress. As someone on a low-carb diet at the moment, I have to say this episode of Special Sauce is an exquisite and yet thoroughly enjoyable form of torture.


The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/preview?record=450340

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When I was mulling over what we could do on Special Sauce for Thanksgiving, I immediately thought about stress reduction. Making the big dinner can be stressful for any number of reasons, and while we design all our Thanksgiving offerings with an eye to making the holiday as hassle-free as possible, I decided to continue with that theme in this special edition of Ask Special Sauce. I invited Kenji and Stella on to answer as many questions from our community as we could, since they know a lot about a lot of Thanksgiving-related topics. The two of them delve into a myriad of tips and tricks, from figuring out what to do with leftovers and accommodating your guests' allergies and dietary restrictions, and they discuss the differences between stuffing and dressing. (Kenji even has an ingenious solution for people who would like to cook their stuffing in their bird without overcooking the meat.) We will also provide a full transcript of our conversation on our website, for those of you who'd prefer to read it, and have included highlights and links to the recipes mentioned in this episode below. There are so many people that I have to thank concerning Special Sauce. I'm thankful for everyone who makes the podcast a joy to create. Our producer, Marty Goldensohn, our associate producer, Marissa Chen, everyone here both at CDM Studios and the other Serious Eats' Special Sauce home, the Radio Foundation. And a big thank you especially to our listeners, whether you're new to the podcast or tune in weekly. Without you, there would be no Special Sauce. Happy Thanksgiving, Serious Eaters, from me and all of us here at Serious Eats!


3:23 Kenji addresses a question about make-ahead savory foods for the holidays.

Recipes: Warm Brussels Sprout Salad with Bacon and Hazelnut Vinaigrette, Make-Ahead Roasted Squash and Kale Salad

6:27 Stella’s tips for make-ahead desserts.

Recipes: Pumpkin Layer Cake, Pumpkin Pie, Cherry Pie

8:28 Kenji explains how to get the most out of kitchen space when planning your Thanksgiving menu.

Recipes: Mashed Potatoes, Mashed Sweet Potatoes

10:25 Debate: Should pies be reheated?

11:57 The team debates the differences between stuffing and dressing. Kenji is going to steal Stella’s dad’s idea for including brown butter in a stuffing recipe this year.

Recipes: Slow-Cooker Sage and Sausage Stuffing, View all stuffing recipes

18:51 Is it possible to make gluten-free pies or other desserts that are actually delicious?

Recipe:

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Special Sauce with Ed Levine - JJ Johnson on Embracing the Food of the African Diaspora [1/2]
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02/01/18 • 34 min

My guest this week on Special Sauce is chef and cookbook author Joseph "JJ" Johnson. When I say he gravitated to kitchen work at an early age, I mean really early. He started cooking with his grandmother when he was four: "I didn't really watch cartoons...I'd step on like a milk crate. She would give me a peeler, which was probably like a phony play peeler, like Fisher-Price, and I would peel vegetables or I would scoop things out." Five years later, when he was nine, he saw an ad on television that sealed the deal: "So I saw a commercial back then for [The] Culinary Institute of America, when they used to run commercials, and I just said one day...I'm going to go to that school." Now that's what I call a really, really early decision application.

After graduating from the CIA and doing a few stints in serious New York kitchens, JJ appeared on an episode of Rocco's Dinner Party, which led to an unlikely introduction to Alexander Smalls, the seminal African-American chef/restaurateur and Tony Award-winning opera singer (that's quite a combo, isn't it?). Smalls invited JJ on a trip to Ghana, and gave him an education on the food of the African diaspora, which was both foreign and familiar: "It also was a lightbulb moment for me because I grew up in the diaspora...So there was these things that would happen and I would say, I remember that flavor or I remember that scent. It really helped me develop who I was."

JJ would go on to open The Cecil with Smalls, and although it is now, sadly, closed, it was named America's best new restaurant by Esquire Magazine in 2014. Since then, J. J. and Smalls have co-authored the cookbook [Between Harlem and Heaven: Afro-Asian-American Cooking for Big Nights, Weeknights, and Every Day](http://aax-us-east.amazon-adsystem.com/x/c/QpNENDnRA9SaubQ3UkdwNtQAAAFhU0lVywEAAAFKAXZwfqU/https://www.amazon.com/Between-Harlem-Heaven-Afro-Asian-American-Weeknights/dp/1250108713/ref=asat?creativeASIN=1250108713&linkCode=w61&imprToken=ESaiLR1jgd7HE4OOK5t55w&slotNum=0&tag=serieats-20)_, and he's done a whole lot more, including cooking for Beyoncé. To find out just what those things are, you'll have to check out both this week's and next week's episodes of Special Sauce.

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Special Sauce with Ed Levine - JJ Goode on Hot Dogs Part 1

JJ Goode on Hot Dogs Part 1

Special Sauce with Ed Levine

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09/01/23 • 28 min

On this episode of Special Sauce we go deep into dogs, hot dogs that is, with JJ Goode, who wrote a guide to regional hot dogs styles for the NY Times. We also checked in with a few hot dog devotees and got their hot take on one of the world's most popular foods.

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FAQ

How many episodes does Special Sauce with Ed Levine have?

Special Sauce with Ed Levine currently has 382 episodes available.

What topics does Special Sauce with Ed Levine cover?

The podcast is about Podcasts, Arts and Food.

What is the most popular episode on Special Sauce with Ed Levine?

The episode title 'Special Sauce: A Restaurateur's Harrowing Yet Hopeful Covid-19 Story' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Special Sauce with Ed Levine?

The average episode length on Special Sauce with Ed Levine is 36 minutes.

How often are episodes of Special Sauce with Ed Levine released?

Episodes of Special Sauce with Ed Levine are typically released every 7 days.

When was the first episode of Special Sauce with Ed Levine?

The first episode of Special Sauce with Ed Levine was released on Oct 29, 2015.

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