Food

6 Podcasts to Feed Your Inner Gourmand


Starter episode: “Sourdough”

Combining deep research and lighthearted delivery, this five-year-old show takes a detailed look at our relationship with food through a scientific lens. The co-hosts, Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley, tackle a compellingly unpredictable range of subjects: one week you’ll find a discussion of the ways restaurant menus are designed to manipulate diners, the next an oral history of the avocado, and the next an examination into the minutiae of cannibalism. Ever wondered how many calories the average raw human male contains? “Gastropod” has got you covered.

Starter episode: “Ripe for Global Domination: The Story of the Avocado”

Produced by the cooking site Food52, “Burnt Toast” offers witty, thought-provoking stories about food in a bite-size package. Each episode runs less than 30 minutes, giving the host, Michael Harlan Turkell, and his colleagues just enough time to dip into a subject like the origins of the “slipping on a banana peel” gag, or revive one writer’s impassioned 1981 treatise on why spaghetti carbonara should replace turkey as the official Thanksgiving meal. Some episodes focus more on tips and tricks, with listeners weighing in on their favorite lazy recipes or kitchen hacks, while others bring in celebrity guests like the actor Kyle MacLachlan and the British chef Nigella Lawson to share their own cooking stories.

Starter episode: “What We Cook When We Don’t Feel Like Cooking”

The history of food is as long and varied as the history of society itself, so there’s unsurprisingly no shortage of podcasts on the subject, but the Heritage Radio Network’s long-running offering is a great place to start. The culinary historian Linda Pelaccio chronicles food’s history in a relaxed and conversational style, kicking off each episode with an engaging monologue on the subject du jour before enlisting an expert guest to delve further. The show casts a wide thematic net as it explores epochs of food history like Roman times (what was that society’s diet really like outside of banquets?); the Edwardian era (what would a meal at Downton Abbey actually entail?); and 19th century New York City (how did Delmonico’s, the oldest fine-dining restaurant in America, get its start?).

Starter episode: “Tasting Ancient Rome: Recreating Ancient Recipes and What Archaeology Tells Us”

Long before the dawn of podcasting, “The Splendid Table” was a cozy public radio institution, offering up cooking tips alongside intimate conversations about food’s role in everyday life. Now more than two decades old, the show has adapted its formula ever so slightly. The food journalist Francis Lam took over from the original host, Lynne Rossetto Kasper, in 2017, bringing in more human interest and socioeconomic food stories alongside practical advice on whipping up easy weeknight meals. Some of the show’s most rewarding episodes spotlight an individual chef, like René Redzepi of Noma, and give them space to talk through their food philosophy in an informal setting.

Starter episode: “Discovering Thanksgiving with Four American Chefs”



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