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The Joy of Cooking Podcast
Roy Choi: A Casual Culinary Chat About A Career In Cooking
00:59:05
Episode 33: John and Megan set the table with their co-host and friend, Shannon Larson, and their guest, Roy Choi, to discuss Joy of Cooking recipes and stories, kitchen victories and miseries, and, most importantly, what they're all cooking and eating. Join us at the table for a casual culinary chat about sauces.
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- [00:00]
A
Sam.
- [00:38]
B
Hello and welcome to the Joy of Cooking podcast. Each week we set the table for a discussion about recipes and stories from the authors of the Joy of Cooking. We talk kitchen victories and misadventures, and most importantly, what we are cooking and eating right now. We're glad you've joined us at the table today. This is Sarah Marshall, producer of the show, owner of Marshall's Hot Sauce, and I'm filling in for Shannon Larson today. I'm going to start out by apologizing to the two of you because this house is spicy. I'm getting ready for the PDX Hot Sauce Expo and I'm making tons of hot sauce downstairs in my kitchen. We may all cough a lot today because we are still saucing downstairs. We're making a lot of ghost chili sauce. Sorry.
- [01:21]
C
So far, so good for me. I'm Megan Scott, co Author of the 2019 edition of the Joy of Cooking. I'm a food editor by day and avoider of dish duty by night. And the only acceptable bread for tomato sandwiches is squishy white bread.
- [01:36]
D
I'm Jon Becker, 4th Generation Co author and steward of the Joy of Cooking, America's oldest family run cookbook. And my lunchtime Diet is roughly 3/4 leftovers right now. I feel like we've, we've just been had a backlog of wonderful dishes, some of which from the cookbook of our guest.
- [01:56]
C
Talk about that. We did that this week.
- [01:58]
D
Yeah, it was a spicy braised chicken.
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C
Like a Korean chicken with glass noodles and served over rice. And it has potatoes, which is like a triple carb situation, which I love so, so much. It's so good. Just pile the carbs on top of.
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B
The carbs, carb on carb.
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A
Love it.
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C
What have you been up to other than all your ghost pepper sauce, Sarah?
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B
Well, I mean, so much so, so, so, so much. Farmer's market season is like off the hook because everything's coming in. So we've got peppers, we've got peaches, we got tomatoes. So I'm kind of like exploding with everything happening, picking up hundreds of pounds of peaches because we make some barbecue sauce for our big peach farmer and then we make some hot sauce. So I'm doing this peach black currant habanero hot sauce and then a peach Thai chili barbecue sauce. That's all for Baird Farm. So that's been pretty fun. And then if there's any PE left over, we're grilling these peaches and putting barbecue sauce on it and then topping it with mint and pistachios. My kid is totally digging that.
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C
That sounds so good.
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B
Yeah.
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D
Nice.
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B
Yeah.
- [03:06]
C
Are you allowed to talk? You told me about a sauce that you're making for the. The hot Sauce Fest. That sounds really interesting, and I really want to try it, but can you talk about it?
- [03:15]
B
I sure can. So we are launching two sauces specifically for the hot Sauce Expo, and they're. They're going to sound so weird and wild, and they are. So we've. I fermented leek scapes from our G and leek and chive scapes from the garden. So I started this project, like, months and months ago, and then I made matcha, like matcha tea, but I made it with vinegar. So it's got those fermented scapes, the matcha, and then extra hot hatch chilies from Los Roast. There are pepper people here.
- [03:47]
D
Oh, the. The lumbres.
- [03:49]
B
Yes. Nice. And so it's really hot. It's kind of funky, and then it's got this earthy matcha. So that's one I did, and then the other one I did. I say is inspired by, like, a wild night in Chicago. So if people know what Malort is. I like pickled peppers and malort and PBR and it's scorpion peppers, so they're really hot. And then I use tart cherries to still bring in the Pacific Northwest.
- [04:14]
D
It's in keeping with the masochist vibes of Malort.
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B
Yeah, it's real weird. It's really weird, but it's really good and it's really hot and it's really fun, and I think people are going to dig it. So that's what I've been up to.
- [04:24]
C
That's really exciting. Every time I hear you describe your sauces, I'm like, whoa.
- [04:28]
B
Really?
- [04:28]
C
And then. But you taste it and it makes total sense. They all make sense.
- [04:32]
B
I just like to get weird and have fun and I mean, and make them taste good, you know, like, that's the key. But. But I like to do weird stuff that other. That other people wouldn't take time to do because I can. I can hang out here and do it.
- [04:42]
C
So. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. What about you, John? What do you want to talk about?
- [04:48]
D
So, you know, previous guest Holly shared with us a recipe for Singaporean chili crab. We were at coast briefly during our recording break, and so we made that, and then we ended up turning leftovers into a chili crab rigatoni, which was excellent.
- [05:06]
C
Good choices were made that week. Yeah, we've been on a little bit of a break in July, which has given us a chance to do a lot of canning. One of the things about living in Portland for long enough, if you know people that have, like, who, like, own their homes, they have. Everyone has fruit trees and fruit bushes and things. And so everyone is just offloading as much fruit as possible. So we have. We've done two different kinds of plum preserves. We did a Shiro plum preserve with lemon zest and then Santa Rosa plum preserve with nothing else because those plums are incredible. We did a bunch of cherry preserves. We've done apricot. We're making umeboshi right now because we know someone with an ume plum tree. And so we're just kind of overflowing with canned things right now.
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B
Rad.
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C
Yeah. So rad. I love summer.
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B
I know that I'll see those at canning clubs.
- [06:01]
C
You will stoked. Yeah, you'll get it. You'll get a jar, probably. We were on break for a month. We left everybody with a few recipes to make over the break, and we just wanted to talk through those really quickly. So the recipes that we asked folks to make were cold brewed tea, chocolate sorbet, cherry tomato cobbler, and kalbi. The most recent one that we made was the cherry tomato cobbler. And we used sungold tomatoes for that, which was so delicious because they're so sweet and they're so flavorful.
- [06:33]
D
And then we added a ton of cheddar to the drop biscuit mixture, the topping that goes on there. I will be doing that again. And our oven was occupied for some reason. And so we used like a tiny convection oven that we have out in the garage. And that made it nice and crispy.
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C
It got overly crispy, but that ended up being really good.
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D
Yeah, you would never intend to get something this crispy.
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C
It was great.
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D
Which is maybe a problem. Maybe we should.
- [06:58]
C
Yeah, we're not going hard enough.
- [06:59]
D
Exactly.
- [07:02]
C
But so what else do we do? We did the chocolate sorbet a few weeks ago. Delicious. It's, as we mentioned in the previous episode, it's really great because it doesn't have any dairy in it. So the flavor of the chocolate is super prominent. And you can also play with like different kinds of cocoa powders and different kinds of chocolate. And you can really taste the pure flavor of the chocolate in that sorbet. So it's really fun because it has an ice cream vibe, but it's very much not ice cream. It's just super, super chocolate. We didn't get around to making the cold brewed tea, but it's like the easiest recipe imaginable. So yeah, thanks for everybody who cooked along with us this summer. There's going to be more Joy Scouts recipes to come. We have a really fun one for today, but before we get into all that, I would really like to welcome our guest this week, Roy Choi to the table. Roy Choi was born in Seoul, Korea and raised in Los Angeles, California. He's known as one of the architects of the modern food truck movement through Kogi Barbecue by merging food and social media with community and honoring the street food culture that laid the path before him. He is the host of the civic minded Emmy award winning series Broken Bread and the co host of the Chef show with jon Favreau. In 2010, food and wine magazine named him best new chef. He was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2016. That's wild. And in 2017, his restaurant Local in Watts received the first ever LA Times Restaurant of the Year award winning. He resides in Los Angeles where he is a voice and advocate for street food culture, past, present and future and the co owner, co founder and chef of Kogi Barbecue, Chago Best Friend and the Chef Truck at Park MGM Las Vegas. His newest cookbook, the Choy of Flavor Packed Rule Breaking Recipes for a Delicious Life was published in April 2025. Welcome to the show. That is quite a bio.
- [08:55]
A
That's a mouthful. That's the new recipe for the Joy of. Wow. This is awesome. I love being here with you guys. Seeing you guys, I feel like. I feel like I want to be your friend.
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B
I know. We wish you were here in the room hanging with us.
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C
Yeah, we want to be your friend too.
- [09:12]
A
The angle of the camera makes me feel like I'm the fourth at this, at this bridge table.
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B
That's how we want it to be.
- [09:20]
A
Oh, this is really nice. I'm watching you guys talk in the beginning is like, I don't know. I just felt like I want to be a part of this. This is amazing.
- [09:29]
C
We wanted this podcast to feel like a bunch of friends just hanging out at a dinner table, sitting around after the food has been eaten and we're just kind of shooting the breeze and I feel like we do that. I feel that's what it feels like to me.
- [09:42]
A
It was really warm. It was like what I needed today. I don't know if it reminded me of the scene of like you remember in the movie, say anything. Like when John Cusack's character is watching Ione sky and her father talk and he's like, I never like that with anybody. And I never have conversations like that with anybody. And that's how I felt watching.
- [10:02]
C
That's awesome. Anyways, well, welcome. And I have to, like, get this out of the way because it's kind of funny and fun, but. So your cookbook, the Choy of Cooking. I love the title. And it's kind of funny because our publisher reached out to us when the book. Your book was coming out and was like, hey, we're thinking of sending a cease and desist about this book title. And I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like, we're having him on our podcast. It's fine. Don't do it.
- [10:32]
A
Well, well, let's. That's the elephant in the room. Let's get that out of the way. The title is a true homage. I just want you guys to know that. And when we came up with the title, the title was an 11th hour decision. There was a whole other title for the book, and everyone hated it, but they were too scared to tell me they hated it. Oh, no. So everyone, for like, months, from the publisher to my co authors to everyone, they were tiptoeing around, how do we tell Roy that this title sucks? And then I don't know what they did behind closed doors, but they finally got it together to where they came to me and they presented to me how bad the title was, and they said, we need a title. And then so they pressed me to come up with a new title. And then it was one of those situations where if I'm forced to do something, I can never come out with anything. And then so I was put in a corner. And then I was like, coming up with all these horrible names. And then finally when I got to the point where I said, screw it, like, screw them all. We're going with this title. And this name came out, it kind of like it encapsulated everything that the book was becoming, which was like, kind of like all the years of my cooking finally coming together into this one book. So this was. And then I got made fun of for my name, rhyming my whole life. And finally, this was a chance to, like, harness the power of my name. And it just. Everything came together. Like the first cookbook my mother brought home, because we're an immigrant family, so we never really cooked non Korean food. And every time my mom attempted to, she tried because she wanted to do something different for us. So the first thing she did was bring home this book and said, I'm gonna cook from this book every day. And we're like, no, mom, it's okay. You don't have to. Your food's just fine. And then, so the funny thing is, she can't read English. So she would open this book and start acting like she was reading the recipes. But it all ended up tasting like Korean food. Didn't matter if it was lasagna or chicken cacciatore or like chicken pozole or anything. It would all end up tasting like green food. But it was like her attempt to try. So there's a lot of memories of it. So anyways, the name meant so much to me and it was an homage and it was the first book I started cooking out of. So it just. There's so many places that this book, your book, met me in my life. I became a country club chef in my first management job. It was a job that no chef would, like, ever admit to, but it was like a small country club. All the recipes that the members. It was kind of an older country club and I had a wonderful two years there, but it was like older, like 60 and older. So a lot of the recipes that the members would bring me would be clip outs from the Joy of Cooking or Sunset Magazine. I didn't know if they were insulting me or just like helping me, but they kept saying, roy, why don't you try making the turkey this way or cooking the steak this way? And they would hand me the recipes. But again, that was another moment that your book entered my life. So I'm glad you didn't send the cease and desist. I asked the. I was so surprised because I was expecting the whole, like when we were writing the book to get a cease and desist. We never got it, so. And meeting you guys, I understand why. You guys are wonderful. If you were any less than who you are, maybe someone would have sent it.
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B
Can I ask what the Seki title was that got hacked?
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C
What was the title going to be?
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A
I don't even remember it now, but I will ask Clara if you could see if Natasha remembers what the original title was. We'll send it to you guys. I don't even remember it was that bad.
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D
That must have been challenging to get the guests at the. The country club, you know, giving you advice or, you know, handing you recipes.
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A
No, I mean, I was so young. It was a job I was, like, not prepared for yet. I was just a cook that got a, like a chef job. And so I was open to anything, to be honest. And it was a seasonal. It was like What I needed in my life at that time because I was a little bit cocky as a cook, because cooks are cocky. Like, it's a little bit of a competition sport as a young cook, you know, it's something that. It comes with the territory. Like a culinary school, you're competing. Then when you get to high functioning kitchens, you're kind of competing to get ahead in the brigade system. And you're always kind of showing off what you know. Like, if you know one gram of information more than the next cook, you're kind of showing off. And it's like. It's a bit of that and a little bit of the. I think the confidence and cockiness is what gets you through the brutalness of a service. It's kind of your fuel. It's a little bit like contact sports in a way. So I had a lot of that going. And I think for me, the way my career went, it was the perfect transition to end up in a seasonal country club at a very young stage in my career, my management career, Because I had a lot of time to reflect and get a little deeper on what I wanted to do with food. And it gave me a chance to actually go back and learn, like, foundational American cooking. Because a lot of the food that was on the daily menus of our dinners and our lunches, and I had to go back and really understand and learn how to make club sandwiches and pot roasts and lasagna and carve a turkey and make gravy pastas, pesto pastas, and, like, chicken salad and egg salad and doing brunches and pancakes. You know, just the whole canon of American fare that a lot of times we take for granted, you know, or it's been processed so much that we can just open a bag and make it.
- [16:31]
D
There's a pesto sauce that's in the choy of cocaine. Is that from that era of your career, or.
- [16:37]
A
It was influenced from that and it's been adapted and it's a hybrid. But the soul and the root of it is from that for sure. But I had a chance because it was seasonal. There were about three months where I was just alone in the kitchen. So it was really. And I'm not just pulling your leg. It was the joy of cooking and the Jacques Pepin technique. I would just go back and read all of those again, and the Betty Crocker cookbook. And I would just go back and Fanny Farmer. And I would just go back and read all of these. These old foundational cookbooks that helped me understand How I can, I don't know, like, honor this food, you know, And I was in my 20s, in my late 20s, but I. For some reason, I had the understanding that this food meant a lot to a lot of people, and especially the people in our country club. And I didn't want to just make some fancy version of it or modern version of it without understanding the foundation of it. So I think that transition in my life really laid a lot of bricks for who I would become later, because then I got into hotels, and then again, it led me into cooking that sometimes as a young chef, you don't appreciate. But if you're in that environment, if you can take a step back. And what I mean by this is like, cooking for a family that maybe had flight delays and arrived at midnight and the kitchen's closed or, you know, or they wake up early and then, you know, they have maybe newborns or babies or they're with their extended family. And you know how it is when you're with your grandparents and your uncles and cousins and stuff, and you're the host and you're trying to take care of everybody or whatever, and. Or, like, weddings or small functions. And just thinking about, like, this meal is very important to that person, even if it's just a bowl of cereal or a pancake or banquet chicken dinner, it's their wedding. And so just going back and understanding that that type of cooking or a Marsala sauce isn't just something that's passed on, that you replicate through, like a beef base and something you buy from Cisco, but you make it from scratch, you try to tune in and hone into, like, where the sauce came from, but also, you know, how it can translate to today. So that's kind of like the foundation of my cooking. And so a lot of that came from your book, I think, no matter.
- [18:59]
B
Who you are, even when you're a home cook, like, picking out what recipe you're going to make from a cookbook or you're a chef figuring out what you're going to make for your audience or for your country club diners, whoever it is, you always have to think about, like, who your audience is, who you're going to be cooking for. So, like, if you're picking out your recipe, it's like, am I cooking for my family who likes this certain thing? Am I cooking for these country club people? Who is it that's going to eat this and enjoy this? And, like, what am I going to pick out? And all those skills are important no matter what, or if you're like, if you're in your job writing recipe, if you guys are writing these Joy of Cooking recipes, you always have to think about, who is this for? Like, what am I gonna do? And every time I make anything, I'm like, am I gonna go wild or am I gonna go chill? Like, who's gonna be at the end of this food? And because I want them to love it, so I always have to think who's gonna be at the end of that experience. And chefs really have to do that.
- [19:54]
A
Yeah.
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D
Roy, I feel like you talk specifically about this in your book when you're tasting a recipe or trying to adjust the seasoning, how it's going to be received, but also when to ignore that tendency and to try to just go with what you think the best version of the dish is going to be.
- [20:12]
A
Yeah. And again, a lot of that is this book. It didn't start out this way. The funny thing is, this book started out as a diet book because I had never dieted in my life. I grew up in a. In a food family where they're just stuffing food in your mouth with their fingers as a baby, you know, like. And so there was never even the concept of dieting. I remember in high school, I told them that I was going to become a vegetarian. And this is not just my immediate family, my whole extended family, they had an intervention with me. You know, they, like, literally, like 30, 40 people sat me down and tried to understand if I was okay, because it was just, like, beyond it being comedy and funny, it was on a serious level. It was just. It breaks the matrix of their understanding of, like, life, and they couldn't understand why I was making these decisions. But through this whole thing, the book had. The cooking had become like the cookbook. It's just all the years of me understanding food, and, like, it became all of the information that I'd gathered through my life into finally what. What I felt was, like, the. Not the ending point, but I had reached, like, a certain level of knowledge where the cup was kind of brimming over, and I felt like I could share this stuff. And so that's how the book's written. A little bit of, like, you know, you can season it like this or pull back like this, just if you twist it this way. And I wanted to try to pare down the recipes to where they were very ergonomic in a sense, where they were functional to the cook. There wasn't a lot of flowery stuff in it. It was just down to, like. And then that you could pivot with it in any direction you wanted to. That they were almost like guidelines and like trail maps. But you could venture off, you know, you wouldn't ruin the recipe. The recipe had enough bandwidth and flexibility to where if you, if you added more chilies or less chilies or different chilies, it wouldn't change. It would like, it would still be the same recipe, but it would taste better or different. And that's what cooking is. You know, cooking is. It changes whether you're baking or making chili sauce like I heard you guys earlier, or you're making hot sauce or making jam. It's. It changes each time. And that's. I wanted this, this book to feel like that.
- [22:35]
C
I really like how you talk in the book about sort of intuitive cooking. So not just following the recipe but thinking, thinking about it as you're making it and adjusting as you go, knowing what you like and what your family likes. And I think a lot of home cooks get stuck in that recipe following phase where they, you know, kind of rely on the recipe and don't want to deviate away from it. What advice would you give to cooks who are looking to really like, learn how to cook without recipes or not rely so much on them?
- [23:07]
A
Yeah, and I think a lot of your recipes are written that way too. Obviously, you know, in the Joy of Cooking. Like the recipes are so short, you know, and that's the one big revelation I think if anyone opens your book and starts to really dig in to the Joy of Cooking is that, you know, there's no preamble, the recipes are get right to the point and the steps are very succinct. But, but the recipe is, it blossoms and it opens up. And I think that that's one step that's very important. And we tried to write our recipes that way too is you have to make it so that, that it gets to the point as soon as it needs to, first of all. And then that the words that you use serve the recipe so that you got to write the recipe so that if you have to write it in the way that thinking about people that aren't cooking. And this, that's kind of the soul of this book is if you're cooking already. And I think I wrote it in there somewhere in the introduction. But if you're cooking already, this book is great for you, but it's also written for someone who's not cooking at all. And I think it's very important to be a gateway to first get people in. And that's really important. But as far as, like someone understanding the intuitiveness of cooking, I think the best way to look at it is like, maybe if you're auditioning or practicing lines for a play or even like a show or an audition, or even singing on stage or anything like that. It's not really about memorization. You have to memorize, but you have to memorize in a different way. Not memorizing it line by line to where you're reading off a teleprompter. You have to absorb the whole speech. So you have to spend many, many times or hours memorizing that speech in different ways so that it becomes second nature to you. So when you get up there on stage that you're just. It's as if you're just speaking versus reading. And I think cooking is the same way. So the recipe shouldn't. When you cook, it shouldn't be the first time you're looking at it. That's the most important thing. It shouldn't maybe even be the third time. If you're gonna cook, let's say, the spicy Korean chicken dish that you guys were talking about, if you're gonna cook that tomorrow and you've never cooked it before, like, this should be that recipe should be maybe your bedtime reading. It should maybe be what you read, and it should be what you wake up to instead of the morning paper. And then it should be maybe what you read in the afternoon or after your coffee. And then let's say you're going to cook at three o' clock for. Because the braise takes two, three hours. And then you're going to serve it at seven. Like, you should have read that recipe maybe six, seven times by then and maybe sat with it without reading it and thinking about it. And then so that that recipe could almost be something you don't even have to look at anymore. And the only time you're really looking at it is like, oh, was that cups or grams? Or was that two or three? But that's the only time that you should be looking at the recipe. That's how professional cooks use recipes. That's how I think, you know, a lot of moms use recipes. That's how my mom used recipes. She was never really following a recipe. She maybe used the recipe again as like a reference point, but she was freestyling and playing jazz in between. And I think that's really important.
- [26:36]
C
I love recipes that are like that, where you can really tweak them a lot. Like, I'm not. I'm not as much into the recipe where the headnote says, now you have to follow this recipe exactly if you want the best version of this thing. And it's like. Well, I understand that for some things, like, I think, I don't know, like if you're making macaron or something where the recipe is really exact and you have to do that to get it right. But otherwise, I. I want to be like, let, like, let me go. Let me free. I want to do my own thing.
- [27:03]
A
Yeah, I think that would only apply in situations like baking or scientific cooking, maybe some molecular stuff, or if you're doing, you know, something very intricate from the Noma cookbook or something like that, and you're specifically your purpose is trying to recreate the dish, then maybe that. That is the case. But, yeah, most cooking, most recipes should allow for I. I think for that. That balance, for sure.
- [27:33]
B
And I think the more you cook and the more you cook dishes, the over and over, the better you get at that and the easier it is to just do it and you can just. It becomes. I always tell people this too. With canning, it becomes, like, more meditative, and it's like, it's more of a relaxation thing and less of stress. And I think that when you mention, like, home cooks and moms being able to do that, it becomes less stressful to cook at home. The more you do it and the more you dig it instead of thinking of it as something stressful.
- [28:04]
A
Yeah, that's all muscle memory, you know, and you have to build that muscle memory. But then the question is, what if you don't cook as much to build that muscle memory? Because in the modern world now, like, people aren't cooking as much as they should be, I think. And, you know, hopefully certain things can move it back to where we're cooking more, but we have to consider it's not because they don't want to cook, but just the traps of society don't allow us to cook as much. But we have to write recipes that pull people in. Even if this is the. They're only cooking once a quarter or twice a year, I think it's still important that you write recipes where you. If this is the only shot you have to convince someone that cooking is great. It has to feel fun for them too, you know, and it has. The recipe has to pull them in so that they feel a little bit in control. Because again, I think a lot if the recipe is too difficult and if the recipe is written just to prove from the recipe writer how. How much of a genius they Are. Then it becomes. Then it defeats the purpose of what we're trying to do, which is getting people to cook more.
- [29:09]
C
Yeah. I kind of think of it as a generous recipe. Like, a. Recipes should be generous, and they should invite people in and be clear in their language and not use a lot of, like, technical words that maybe aren't so clear. Yeah, I love thinking about it in the. The language of, like, generosity.
- [29:28]
B
I think I really changed how I wrote recipes. At first. I wanted to. I wanted to, like, teach people things they didn't know. So I was like, I want to teach people, like, stuff they would never do. And I would write these really complicated things because I was. I want them to, like, do this rad stuff. But then, like, nobody would do them. And so I. And then I was like, no, I got. I'm going about this all wrong. I got to write things that people are so easy for people, but come out really cool. But they're like five steps, five ingredients, and they do it, and then they're like, this is so rad. I'm going to do this every day. But it took me a long time to figure that out.
- [30:05]
C
Yeah.
- [30:05]
B
But now that's. That's my approach.
- [30:08]
A
I think there are two going back for this podcast. I was doing a little bit of research and going back through the book again, your book, and going through recipes, and I've landed on, like, the Korean section a little bit. And I think what you just said, there's a great example of that in, like, two of your recipes, the Korean green onion pancake and the chopcha. And it's about, like, really breaking down the barriers for people, because those. Those are two items that may be foreign to someone, but the way the recipes are written, it feels so approachable, and it's also culturally correct. Like, I loved how you guys separated each vegetable in the kiapche. That's, like, really important. In chapchae. People think it's stir fry, where you're just throwing everything in together. But the important thing about chapcha is that you cook each vegetable separately and then fold them together. Otherwise, it becomes a muted mess. But then the way the recipe is written is just written like an American recipe, and it just feels so approachable. But then chopcha is such a. Such a foreign dish for so many people.
- [31:10]
D
That means a lot. Thank you so much. Our friend Yojin definitely helped us develop those recipes. And thank you.
- [31:17]
C
Yeah.
- [31:18]
E
Oh, hello. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about an easy way to enhance your meals, Whether they are a Healthy vegan grain bowl or that late night snack we'll pretend didn't happen the next day. And that easy way is Marshall's haute sauce. For 15 years, chef and cookbook author Sarah Marshall has been hand making and bottling these delicious sauces. She works directly with local farmers and highlights the lovely flavors of fresh seasonal produce. They're gluten free, there are no additives, dyes, waxes or binders. And they have mouth watering combinations like serrano ginger, lemongrass or habanero carrot curry or even whiskey smoked ghost which was featured on Hot Ones. So head on over to marshallshot sauce.com that's Marshall's H-A-U-T-E-S-A-U C E.com and see all the available sauces and spice blends. Oh, that's right. Sarah's created spice packets by dehydrating and freeze drying actual produce so you can impart flavor to your food with more vegetables. But that's a story for another day. Find all of these delicious creations@marshallshot sauce.com and entertainment. Haute joy. That's one word, capital H A U T E capital J.J. o Y. One word at checkout for 20% off. That's haute joy at checkout for 20% off. And now back to the show.
- [32:39]
C
So at the beginning of the Choi of cooking, there's a page where you have your guiding lights written out. And something that jumped out at me right away was that, you know, you mentioned like love, kindness, generosity, fun, care, happiness in those guiding lights. They're just seemed to be so much love and so much joy in what you were saying. And your whole book is infused with that feeling of like fun and joy. Where does that come from? Because you also talk in the book about how like, as a younger cook, as a younger chef, you had a lot of like anger and it took some, a lot to overcome that. So how did you get to that place of joy and love and generosity from a place that wasn't so much?
- [33:21]
A
Yeah, I mean, you said it too. A recipe should be generous. I think it's just, you know, time I'm lucky enough to have got, you know, gotten through, you know, this physical time that we all as humans seem to have agreed upon that this linear time that we have on this planet, you go through life and this book, if we think of that linear time that we have, somehow it's ended up and we've agreed as a civilization and as a world that we have about 80, 90 years of life here that we understand and, you know, I had gone through about 50 of those years, and so a little more than half. You know, I. You question yourself as. As a person all throughout life. Like, do I know enough? Have I grown up enough? Do I deserve this? You know, all these, like, doubts and questions in your life, you never can confront them. You look in the mirror and you think about, like, have I done enough? Have I become the human that I want to become? Have I contributed to society? Have I. All these things that you ask yourself. And when I was starting writing this book, I realized that, at least at some part of it, I had done it. I had learned how to cook. I had gone through life. I had lost a lot along that process in friends, in situations in life, and ups and downs. I had gone through a lot of experimentation, trial and error. I had made food and recipes, and I had cooked for millions of people where it was. It proved itself to work and be true. And through all of that, I had developed some sort of philosophy of how this all comes together. And so I just finally had the courage in the book to be able to write those things down. Because a lot of those things in that Guiding Light list aren't things that you really lead with in life or social settings. Like, you're supposed to be cool, right? In life, I guess. Cool, little aloof and, like, you're supposed to, like, whatever. You know, you're supposed to be mysterious and all these things. You're not supposed to show emotion up front. You're not supposed to lead with all your cards open. You know, all these things were taught or we go through in life. But I felt like I had a chance here, that if this was like my dojo, I could share. Like, these are the principles, you know, I see it some. I see it in, like, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which is the most, like, physical, dominating, like, aggressive thing that can be. But the. The guiding lights of a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu are similar to the guiding lights of this. They're all about, like, balance and, and. And understanding and caring for someone's situation and, you know, diverting, revert, changing power and force and energy. And so I felt like these are things that I could lead with. I could say I could in this safe space. I could say these things are the things that allowed Kogi to happen, allowed the food truck movement, modern food truck movement to happen, allowed. That really paved the way for social media within food to evolve. And these are the things that allowed it to happen is being generous, being kind. Because those things that happened in 2008, 2009 with Kogi. They wouldn't have happened if we were strictly just a business. I think Kogi was a magical thing that happened because we were extremely generous and kind with our food. We kept our prices as low as we possibly could. The company itself became like a lost leader. We weren't. We didn't create the company to become profitable. The company evolved into something where it became a gateway for people to experience food. And then there are a lot of chefs who started eating Kogi in high school. I continue to hear the story. I just experienced the story recently with some chefs here in la, where they started eating kogi in high school when they were just knuckleheads and looking for. Trying to figure out what they were gonna do. And they didn't understand. They didn't even know about good food in their life or in the world. Just fast food and chips and Jolly Ranchers, you know, And. And Kogi opened up something within them, and it opened up a career or a world that they never even would have been exposed to. And then that led them to kitchens, and then now they're running some of the best kitchens in Los Angeles. But Kogi, those things just. That's just one example. But things like that would have never happened if Kogi was just a business. The elements of Kogi were being generous and making sure that people could afford this food, even if we had to lose a little bit. So that became, like, I think the foundations of the choice of cooking. The way that we wrote this book was I imagined, like, could this book be something like, if someone found it in the thrift store, like, 300 years from now, like, if they open this book, one, could the recipe still be delicious? That was really important. And then two is, like, if you read this, could, like, this still apply to anyone's life anywhere? And that's kind of how we wanted to write this book. It was a bit of a martial arts philosophy, you know, I think ultimately, I think it was, like, here is, like, my style. Whether it's monkey style or dragon style or whatever, like, this is my style. This is what we're about. This is what it does. And if it speaks to you in any way, I just want to show you and prove to you that it works. Works that if you're kind, if you're generous, if you're. If you have that generosity in your heart when you're cooking and then you follow this recipe, that the food will taste that much better, and here's proof that it will happen. And that's really the choice of cooking.
- [39:30]
D
That 300 year question of yours is. I mean, I feel like, you know, we never talk about it, like, 300 years, that's a pretty big time frame. We never think that far out, I guess. But I remember listening to, you know, Cat Kinsman's, you know, your conversation with Cat Kinsman, and you said, we're talking about your thought process. And like, how is this going to be read in 300 years? And it just really clicked with me because, you know, I mean, I feel like we have that we ask ourselves those questions a lot and it's, it's super difficult and usually gives rise to at least, at least, you know, a dozen other questions about any given recipe. But I was just kind of curious, like, when you're kind of going down that train of thought when you were putting the book together, like, what other kinds of questions did that kind of bring up for you?
- [40:17]
A
Yeah, I mean, it hasn't even been 300 years since Escoffier, which is crazy, right? And while those recipes, you know, are still very solid, but you still have to make adjustments to them in order for them to make sense now, you know, I just wanted to believe when we wrote the book that if it's delicious for us right now, why wouldn't it be delicious for someone 300 years from now? And I don't know if the food of, like the 18th century France, if it was just the lack of ingredients or the development of society, but the food, like, you can't just translate like early bicentennial recipes or French cooking from the 17th century. And it just, without changing a thing, and it still be absolutely, like, delicious. You have to make a few adjustments still, I think. But I wanted these recipes like, like when you make that spicy chicken stew, for example, like, that is bomb, you know, like, it's so good right now.
- [41:18]
D
Absolutely.
- [41:19]
A
We can look at each other and, and acknowledge, like, this is like, so good right now, 20, 25. And even going back, if we, if we go back 40 years to, like, when we were born, like, it, it would have still been good back then, but so, like, why wouldn't it still be good 300 years from now? So that was, like, really important in writing it. I think another thing that was really important in writing the book was again, looking at your guys's book, to be honest, like, could it stand the test of time? Not 300 years, but the recipes to me were like a, like a journal for life. This was literally. What's the best way I could put it? I Think the concept of the book was like, if I had trekked a thousand miles to meet you, and I was completely exhausted and I fell on your doorstep, and I was like, this is everything I know in life at this point. That was kind of like the way that I approached the book as a writer. It was like, not that this is everything to know, but, like, this is everything I know. And I may be the dumbest person on the planet or maybe somewhere in between, but I'm just telling you that this is everything I know. And I. I wrote it down, and here you go. And it was kind of like I was emptying my well of everything that had learned and put together and put it into this book. And that's why we referenced a little bit of Bruce Lee, Jeet kune do, in the beginning of the book, because for him, he did it at a very young age. You know, he figured out the cosmos and everything, how everything works together in his 20s. But for me, it took until my 50s to figure it out. And it was that knowledge and all the information and everything that I know, but it was also the mashup of everything, which was a lot like Jeet kune do as well. It was like the learning and the information was that, hey, it was all of these elements and the atmosphere and the different things in life, all I was able to put them together. You know, I was able to put them together like a LEGO set. And here it is. Here's a new kind of, like, architecture of how you could approach certain things. Aguachile, spicy chicken. It's Korean, but it's not Korean. It incorporates different types of chilies than Korean chilies. Or it's. It's an American. It's a tuna salad, but it's not really a tuna salad. It's a pibimbap, but it's not a pibimbap, because it's a tuna salad. And it's just all these different things. And that's kind of how Jeet kune do was. It was like, it's not karate, but it is karate. And so, yeah, that's kind of, like, worth this. That's how we approach this book.
- [43:56]
D
I read that in your introduction, and I didn't make the connection, but, yeah, it's a great description or a parallel between Jeet kune do and. And your kind of your approach to cooking and, you know, incorporating different styles. That's awesome.
- [44:10]
A
Yeah, it was a different style.
- [44:12]
B
I feel like I watch you two do that same thing as you live your life. You like you gather all this information from your family, from your friends, from, you watch people and you, you want to put all of the information into the Joy of Cooking. You want to put every recipe and everything you taste and experience into the next version. And you're always thinking about it, and you're always wanting it to be better. And you always, every single experience, experience that you have, you're thinking about the next version of the Joy of Cooking and what you're going to tell people and how you're going to make it better.
- [44:43]
D
I thought we were keeping that on the deal.
- [44:45]
B
No, I see you do it every time, every time I'm with you and you take a bite of something, you're like, next, next time, next time we're going to do this. And you, because you want to give everybody the best that you can and the best that you have. And I think that that's what Roy is saying, too, that he did with this book, like, everything you put out there.
- [45:03]
C
Well, and also the excitement and the joy of discovery, too. Like, oh, we ate this really awesome thing, and we want you to eat the awesome thing too. And you can totally make it. Like, that's how I feel a lot of the time is like, oh, my God, I got to figure out how to, like, tell people about this combination or, like, something. Yeah, I, I, I like that a lot.
- [45:21]
D
But the headspace that you're, that you were in when you were writing this book, I'm very envious. Like, you feel, it just sounds like you were super well grounded, you know, when you were writing this and, you know, really knew yourself and, you know.
- [45:34]
A
Yeah, it was a long time between books because I had wrote another book about 12 years before this, and that book did pretty good coming out of the Gates. It was a very prime time of my life. It was at the highest point of, like, all of the influence of what Kogi was doing and the new restaurants and like, my entry into media and things like this. So. But it was written at a time at a very powerful stage in my life. And then I thought that the next book would come right away, but it took 12 years. And I think those 12 years allowed this book to become grounded.
- [46:10]
C
So this week we are answering a question about how to turn a love of cooking into a career. Sarah, can you read the question for us?
- [46:18]
B
Yeah, this question was texted in. So the question is, I wanted to ask if, if any of you have any advice for someone who wants to have a career in cooking, perhaps becoming a sous chef, where should they start besides cooking? At home. Best wishes, Monty.
- [46:34]
C
I feel like this question is specifically for Roy.
- [46:39]
A
The great thing about our industry is that we're still like an old trade, almost medieval type of industry in all the good ways, in that it's still an industry where you don't need a resume, you don't need to apply online. You can just show up at the back door of a kitchen that you admire and find the chef. You know, it's not like there are layers between you and the person that's leading the captain of the ship, you know, and you can approach that person, you know, like if I tried to get to the top of a skyscraper, you know, to the CEO of a company, like, I'm sure there are so many gates that I have to hurdle to get there, and I may never get there. But in a kitchen, you can. You can find the chef and you can get to that chef without anyone stopping you. And so I would say that if you want to get into professional kitchens, the best way is to, in your town, or town that you're moving to or wherever you're at, find kitchen that you admire, go eat there, or if it's places that you've already eaten. And don't be afraid to go into, the best time to go is, like, early in the morning or like late morning, like 10am, 9, 10am, 11am sometimes, or like around 2pm, 3pm and then go knock on the back door, ask for the chef or the sous chef. And then all you have to do is say, I want to learn how to cook and I will do anything and I will work as hard as I can. You know, I can start right away. And it's like getting a job in high school. And so. And if you do that, I promise you any kitchen will, will take you in. They'll almost like, throw you an apron right there. If you're ready, they'll throw an apron right there. But that's the best way to get into it. There are other ways, but that I think it's still an industry that is still very tactile and very one on one. And I don't know how long that's going to last. So right now, while it's still here, it's the best way to get in.
- [48:42]
D
You went to Culinary Institute of America, correct?
- [48:46]
A
Yes.
- [48:47]
D
Do you think that that was like, that's still like a really good road to take as far as entering into the industry?
- [48:53]
A
Yeah. There always seems to be a dueling argument, schools of thought on which way to go, but there's really Only two ways to go. One is apprenticeship or work in kitchen. There are some that believe that that's the way to go. And then the other is culinary school. But I believe in culinary school, for me it comes down to what you can do for yourself or what you can afford or where you are in your life. For me, I needed it. I was a complete mess of a person when culinary school entered my life. So culinary school gave me the foundation and the structure that I needed and the learning that I needed. But there are some like that are cooking very early on that may not need culinary school. You know, like if you're working in kitchens from 14 or 15 and then pick up things and you know, nowadays, now in this new world with the way technology is like, there's so many people cooking, you know, from TikTok and all that stuff, that are learning so many things without ever working in a professional kitchen. So I think it's going to be so different in the next five, 10 years because some of these tick tock chefs are, they're cooking really, really advanced things. You know, I don't know where they're learning it all. And they must be practicing at home. Like all I was practicing was like peeling onions and shallots at home. You know, like they're practicing like really intricate things and then performing them, you know, in five minute clips or 90 second clips and sticking the landing on them. So it might be a whole different scenario in a few years.
- [50:30]
C
I would also say just read everything you can get your hands on about cooking and food and read memoirs by chefs, read everything you can, kind of educate yourself to some degree and then cook really broadly too, like get cookbooks, cook out of them, cook all kinds of different stuff and eat everything. Like go to restaurants, eat as much as you can and like absorb that information too well.
- [50:54]
B
And here in Portland, I mean, they call it staging. It's really like volunteering. But I still do it in my friends kitchens, my friends who own restaurants. But I will say, hey, do you need help? I'll come, I'll come volunteer, I'll come stage in your restaurant. I'll watch you. I learned so much from them. I learned all these techniques to use later in, you know, my hot sauce business or in my recipe writing. Because they just, they do all these things and I'm helping them, I'm serving, I'm, you know, prepping, I'm doing whatever, but I'm also watching what they're doing so that I can, because I'll see them do things and be like, Whoa. I would never think. Yeah, I would never know that. I would never see that written anywhere. I could never learn that except from by being in their kitchen. So that's another way. And that's a thing I would recommend for Monty to go do. Like, still keep your job. Maybe you don't have money to go to culinary school. Maybe you can't go work in that restaurant, but go just tell somebody that you'll come volunteer, you'll come stodge in their kitchen, and you'll learn so much.
- [51:47]
C
That's.
- [51:47]
B
That would be my recommendation.
- [51:48]
A
That's really important because there is a difference between professional cooking and cooking, like, for yourself or friends. And if that's something you want to become, like, if you want to run a restaurant or whatever, you have to, like, be exposed to that style of timing, cooking, and muscle memory. But nowadays, you could also, like, throw pop up, you know, or sell sandwiches on Instagram or whatever. And that can give you muscle memory, too. But you have to be able to cook in volume, which is different than home cooking.
- [52:22]
C
And on that note, we're going to announce this week's Joy Scouts recipe. So our recipe of the week. Since we're talking about restaurants, but also about cookbooks, we picked the skillet chocolate chip cookie on page 770. And the reason we chose that recipe is because it has kind of a funny story. So that recipe has. Well, the chocolate chip cookie recipe. Enjoy. Has been in the book since 31. Right? 1931 or 36.
- [52:47]
D
No, I feel like it was the 43 edition.
- [52:49]
C
You probably know better than me.
- [52:50]
B
Sure.
- [52:51]
C
It was a 40 only since 1943. So it's been in the book for a really long time. And it was actually, when it was put in the book, the headnote was kind of funny because chocolate chips were a fairly recent invention. And so the headnote said something about, you know, using this new kind of chocolate that's available just for chocolate chip cookies. But so it's been in there forever. There was a restaurant in Portland called Ned Ludd, and they rip, baby. I know, rip. It was great. But they cooked everything in wood, like a wood oven. And they had a skillet chocolate chip cookie on their menu, and it was fantastic. And they served it with, like, a little tumbler of milk that you would pour into the skillet, and it would get kind of. It was still, like, really hot, so it would get soft and, like that delicious, milky chocolate chip cookie flavor.
- [53:38]
D
Yeah. A nice, like, caramelized bottom and still kind of gooey on the top.
- [53:43]
C
But we found out, I think we read an article from, by that, like, interviewed the chef of that restaurant, and he said that his recipe was adapted from the Joy of Cooking's chocolate chip cookie recipe.
- [53:53]
B
So cool.
- [53:54]
C
So then we added a skillet chocolate chip cookie to the last edition of the book. That is just, it's just the chocolate chip cookie recipe, but made in a skillet. So we didn't really adapt it at all. But it's so good. We have friends who, like, have a pizza oven in their backyard that they built and they, when the coals are dying down, they'll put it in. They'll put the skillet chocolate chip cookie in there to bake as everybody's finishing their pizza, and then you have that as the dessert. So the recipe has kind of come full circle from, you know, joy of cooking to a restaurant, back to joy of cooking in a different format. So that recipe is on page 770. If you want to cook that. We would love to see your results. Please post them on Instagram and tag us at the Joy of Cooking. Or you can tag us. We're also on Blue Sky. The Joy of cooking on Blue sky, or is it Joy of Cooking?
- [54:43]
D
That's a really good question. I'm. I'm not sure what our handle is right off the top.
- [54:47]
C
Okay, well, just find us on. You can find us the logo. We have the same logo.
- [54:51]
B
Put it in the show notes.
- [54:52]
C
Perfect. If you have a topic, ingredient, or joy story to share, call our hotline at 503-395-8858. Leave us a message or send us a text. We would love to hear from you. And next week's topic comes from our caller.
- [55:06]
B
Oh, this one. They left a message.
- [55:09]
A
This is for the Joy of Cooking podcast. Hi, my name is Mackenzie and I was wondering if you can give us.
- [55:15]
C
Some more tips on writing.
- [55:17]
A
So writing tips, recipe writing tips, food writing tips, also just writing tips in general. That would be a great subject for a podcast. Thank you so much. Bye. Oh, I'm calling from Stuttgart, Germany.
- [55:31]
C
Nice. We will talk about writing, recipe writing and food writing next week. And we talked a little bit about recipe writing today, so that works out too.
- [55:40]
A
Done.
- [55:41]
C
Yeah, done. Exactly. What is everybody thinking about cooking this week? Sarah?
- [55:47]
B
We have a bunch of sun gold tomatoes growing in the backyard. So tonight Dirk's gonna make. He found a recipe for some orzo with sungold tomatoes. It's kind of like a spin on a caprese type thing. So that's what we got going on after this.
- [56:01]
D
Roy, are you cooking anything I wasn't.
- [56:03]
A
Thinking about, but I'm looking at your shirt. I'm thinking about cooking hummus.
- [56:07]
B
There you go.
- [56:08]
A
Yeah, I've got, my kid's been into shish kebabs lately, so yeah, chicken kebabs. So I think I'll cook some hummus and kebabs.
- [56:17]
D
Oh, nice.
- [56:19]
C
I, I do have a shirt on that says hummus. Hummus, Hummus, hummus, hummus. Five times.
- [56:25]
A
It worked.
- [56:25]
C
Yeah, it worked. I'm mostly thinking about this is just like the best time of year here for produce. Like the produce is kind of crazy right now. It's tomatoes and melons and peppers and peaches and plums and just all the delicious things that don't need to be cooked that don't need to be cooked at all. So a lot of tomato sandwiches. Just eating melons.
- [56:48]
D
We were going to make a few pizzas cuz we have some dough just waiting in the freezer. So we're going to th out some.
- [56:53]
C
Dough, maybe do a peach and corn and teo situation.
- [56:58]
A
Right?
- [56:59]
D
Yes. There's a wonderful pizza pizza place here called Lovelies 5050 and this is. Yeah.
- [57:06]
C
So good.
- [57:07]
D
So good. This time of year they're, they do a peach pizza that I think we're going to use that as inspiration.
- [57:13]
C
And Roy, before we wrap, where can listeners follow you?
- [57:17]
A
I'm Chef Roy Choi on all social media and I have restaurants in Vegas, I have best friend restaurant and the chef truck. And then in la, you can find the Kogi truck or you can find me walking the streets.
- [57:34]
C
Thanks for listening to the Joy of Cooking podcast. Before we go, show some love for your favorite podcast by subscribing to the show and leaving us a review. Follow us at joyofcooking.substack.com and on Instagram hejoyofcooking. Stay tuned for next week where we will tackle food writing. And don't forget to make this week's recipe the skillet chocolate chip cookie on page 770. Call in with questions, hopes, history, or where you find joy in the kitchen. Our number is 503-395-8858. That's 503-395-8858.
- [58:05]
B
And we couldn't do this without our fantastic team at Joy of Creation production house. Thanks to my brother Dave Druske, our production coordinator, Hayley Bowers, our audio engineer and today's producer, Dirk Marshall. And thanks for being our guest, Roy, it was great to have you on the show today.
- [58:19]
A
Thank you.
- [58:20]
B
If you love the stories we bring you each week. Please consider supporting us on Patreon. As an independent media company, your support is absolutely essential. It allows us to continue creating high quality professional episodes that amplify the voices of women, small business owners, writers, artists and creatives and keep their stories free from commercial pressure. By becoming a Patreon member, you're not just supporting us, you're investing in the future of independent Media. Please visit patreon.com thejoyofcreationproductionhouse to join our community today. Thank you for listening and supporting our podcast Dreams.