My Favorite Podcasts: Food Edition

I listen to a lot of podcasts. Podcasts about gaming, podcasts about tech, podcasts about bizarre happenings, morning shows, etc., and podcasts about FOOD. My love of watching people cook and talking about food goes way back, to my single-digit days, hanging out with my PopPop. He showed me how to make traditional meat sauce, or tomato gravy, we’d eat salty packets of ramen and watch PBS cooking shows where a drunken Italian man sang opera while simultaneously flambeing something. It was AWESOME.

When it was announced that Food Network would be launching in April of 1993, I was SO EXCITED. From the day it began its broadcast until now, I’ve been watching it through its ups and downs, although since so much of the lineup is now competition shows, I do watch less. In high school I worked at a dry cleaners, where I would fill the down time with Great Chefs of the World, Great Chefs of New Orleans, Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, Lidia Bastianich, Nick Stellino, Mary Ann Esposito, and my personal favorite, Martin Yan. These amazing and wonderful people, along with my PopPop, helped mold my love of food and cooking. So it’s no surprise that with the advent of the podcast, I sought and found podcasts about food. Here are my three favorites:

The Sporkful

Are you particular about food to the point where you’ll craft a well-executed argument over whether or not hot dogs should ever be dressed with ketchup? (Hint: I’m pro-ketchup.) Do phrases like “bite composition” and “filling to bread ratio” make you tingle with excitement? Then this is the food podcast for you! Dan Pashman mixes comedy, science and interviews to make a delightful mix of food lover’s quirks in easily digestible format. As the tagline says, it’s not for foodies, it’s for eaters!

 

America’s Test Kitchen

For serious home cooks! Christopher Kimball, Bridget Lancaster and crew guide you through recipes, tastings, equipment recipes and kitchen tips to help find foolproof recipes for home cooks. They even have a telephone number where you can call and ask your own culinary questions. A variety of segments include information on everything from perfect pie crust, to the best food processors, to which store bought butter tastes the best. I love the balance of Christopher Kimball’s occasionally smug opinions and Bridget Lancaster’s down to earth warmth. They play off each other perfectly.

 

Go Fork Yourself

I love Andrew Zimmern. His show Bizarre Foods on Travel Channel is one of my favorites, because of its knack for connecting with people who may seem to have nothing in common with us through mutual love of food.  Less structured than the other two podcasts on this list, Go Fork Yourself gets you an inside look at the restaurant industry via the eyes and experiences of a former restaurant chef and current tv personality. Andrew’s love of food is infectious, and his love of learning about other cultures even more so. His co-host and friend Molly Mogren and he have a wonderful rapport as they chit chat about this and that. Sadly, this podcast is currently on hiatus, but there’s a huge backlog to get through in the meantime! Warning: some language and adult themes.

 

BONUS – A podcast we can check out together!

A Taste of the Past

The tagline for this show is “a weekly journey through the history of food”. SOLD! I love learning about how certain commonplace foods came to be, and look forward to diving into this podcast.

What about you? Are there any food-related podcasts you can’t get enough of? Let me know in the comments!