Samin Nosrat’s Kitchen Favorites | Reviews by Wirecutter

SAMIN: I was very excited to come here, and I don’t know what exactly you’re going to ask me, but I have many favorite tools that I’m very particular about.

CAIRA: That was what was coming up.

ROSIE: You’re reading our minds.

SAMIN: And I have so many opinions.

CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Cyr Clisset.

CAIRA: I’m Caira Blackwell.

ROSIE: I’m Rosie Guerin. And you’re listening to The Wirecutter Show.

ROSIE: Our guest today, Samin Nosrat. I am so, so excited for people to hear this conversation.

CAIRA: Trying not to fangirl right now.

CHRISTINE: Oh, well, I think we should fangirl. She deserves it. She’s so awesome.

CAIRA: She’s so cool.

ROSIE: Y’all kept it together in the studio.

CAIRA: Thank you.

ROSIE: Props for that.

CAIRA: It was hard.

CHRISTINE: Samin is a cookbook author, she’s an accomplished chef. You might know her from her wildly popular cookbook. Salt Fat Acid Heat, which came out in 2017. And there was also a Netflix series based on the book, and it’s a total delight. If you haven’t watched it, you should go back and watch it. You can also find many of her recipes on New York Times Cooking where she’s a contributor.

CAIRA: Yeah, and she just came out with a new cookbook. It’s called Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love. And we thought it would be really fun to bring her on and talk about the book, talk about all of her favorite kitchen gear, and get her best tips on entertaining.

ROSIE: Samin is an absolute dream and I’m so, so excited for you to hear this conversation. We’ll be right back after a quick break.

CAIRA: Welcome back. With us now is Samin Nosrat. You may know her as the author of the James Beard Award-winning cookbook, Salt Fat Acid Heat, and the Netflix show with the same name. She also contributes to New York Times Cooking and the New York Times Magazine, and she just came out with a new cookbook, Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love.

CHRISTINE: Samin, welcome to the show.

SAMIN: Oh, thank you for being… Thank you for having me. I’m like, I’m verklempt.

CHRISTINE: We are so excited to have you here. We’re all fans. It’s been eight years since your last cookbook came out and it was a huge success, so was the Netflix series, which my husband and I devoured. So the old book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, it really delves into those four elements of cooking. It’s less of a cookbook with recipes and more of an exploration of technique. But this new cookbook, Good Things, it’s really different… It’s much more of a traditional cookbook. So can you tell us a little bit about what was the inspiration for the new book?

SAMIN: Pain and suffering.

CHRISTINE: Oh, no.

ROSIE: That’s where we’re starting. I love it.

SAMIN: It can only go up from here. I will say I did everything in my power to not write a book of recipes and including throwing many tantrums privately and semi publicly in front of my publisher and agent. And it felt disingenuous to me to follow a book that says essentially, “Here’s how to cook without recipes.” To follow that with a book of recipes. And also, I really struggled to condense and organize the idea that I originally had, which was another Salt Fat Acid Heat type of idea. This was going to teach you how professional cooks decide what to cook in any given scenario with the constraints of time, resources, ingredients or preferences.

But then as I set out to do that, I realized it would take me decades to collect and distill and organize all of that, and that felt so overwhelming. So my agent was like, “Why don’t you just write a book of recipes?” I was like, “Have you ever met me? I would never do that.” And then about a week later, I was standing in my kitchen making a salad and I was like, “Man, if only there was a way to share this with people.” And so a big part of the switch inside of myself to feel like I could do it and still stay true to myself was the fact that when I published Salt Fat Acid Heat, I had maybe published a dozen recipes in magazines and on blogs and things, but I was not a skilled recipe writer, partly because I’m sort of fundamentally anti-recipe.

CAIRA: Yeah, you don’t ever follow the recipe.

SAMIN: Exactly. And then I worked here, I worked at the New York Times and I had a column for four years. I contributed a ton to New York Times Cooking, and in a way, that was a real boot camp for me of recipe testing, like how to write a recipe and the value of a recipe and what’s a recipe for. So I became a lot more comfortable with that. And I also really learned, no matter how much I want you to feel free of cooking without a recipe, it’s kind of most people’s safety net. It’s a good starting point. It’s a very efficient way to convey a lot of important information, and so that’s often good enough to get you going. And if I just get you going, your curiosity can take you the rest of the way.

CAIRA: So Samin, I would just love for you to paint us a picture of what your kitchen looks like at home. What’s the setup? Are you a minimalist? Are you a maximalist when it comes to that?

SAMIN: Yeah, I’m unfortunately a maximalist living in a minimalist amount of space.

CAIRA: I felt that. Yeah, me too.

SAMIN: But also, I have my home kitchen and then I have a workspace kitchen that’s slightly bigger. It’s also quite small, so I do have to be pretty cutthroat about what I keep. I love my house, but it’s a tiny little house. It’s built on a footprint of smaller than a two-car garage, and the kitchen is, I don’t even know. It’s basically the size of a galley kitchen.

So when I moved in, I was like, “Well, there’s only one way to go, and that’s up the walls.” So I put in a pot rack up above, that’s where I hang all the pots and pans. And then, yeah, I have a lot of rails with hooks on them. And anything I can hang is hung. So the microplanes, the peelers, the measuring cups and measuring spoons. And then I had also what we call in restaurants a speed rack built, which is sort of like, imagine it’s a shelf for baking pans, so it’s a multi-shelf shelf for baking sheets, except because my kitchen is so small, I had to have it custom-built and it’s for half sheet baking pans. So I basically, now, if I need to pull out a hot pan out of the oven, I have somewhere to put it. And then this is also borrowed from restaurants. The top shelf, I have a baking sheet that’s stacked with parchment paper, so anytime I need to pull parchment, I just pull from my top one.

CHRISTINE: So you basically created your own restaurant.

SAMIN: A tiny mini restaurant, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

CAIRA: That’s really cool.

SAMIN: But I would say there was only one way to go, which was up.

ROSIE: What are you doing with your knives?

SAMIN: I have a little magnetic bar. Yeah.

CAIRA: I just imagine them hanging from the ceiling.

SAMIN: Yeah.

CAIRA: [inaudible].

SAMIN: I have a super… And I was really worried about the magnetic bars because some of them are not that strong. And the one I got, it might’ve been an old wirecutter.

CAIRA: Love to hear it.

CHRISTINE: We have some good recommendations for those.

SAMIN: It’s like a small family business, and it’s a walnut one. It has super strong, super strong magnets.

CHRISTINE: And you can’t see the magnets on the outside.

SAMIN: You can’t see the magnets.

CHRISTINE: I had that one for a while too. It’s really good.

CAIRA: That one scares me. I use it and my knives [inaudible 00:12:51].

SAMIN: Fly out of your hand. Yeah.

CAIRA: It’s so terrifying.

SAMIN: It is really. Yeah.

ROSIE: So then in this kitchen that you’ve so thoughtfully and economically designed, what are the non-negotiable kitchen tools?

SAMIN: For over close to 25 years, I’ve been cooking. So I have a lot of sort of things that my body wants to use. For example, I never want to use a peeler, like a classic style vegetable peeler because of how I have to hold it. I always want to use the Y shape because-

CHRISTINE: Like the Kuhn?

SAMIN: Like the Kuhn Rikon ones, yes. And also Material Kitchen makes one that has a replaceable blade that I really like. I like them because the way I can hold them is… My wrist doesn’t bend, whereas if I hold the classic style, I generally will bend my wrist. And in cooking is so much about physical efficiency. And especially with your wrist, with your shoulder, you want to create as few… I think of them as energy blocks as possible. So you want to always hold your knife, your spoon, your whisk, your peeler with a straight wrist.

Uh let’s see, Oh, my gosh, a microplane grater, a regular box grater. I need both of those. I have a big crock filled with many wooden spoons and spatulas and things, I’m really in the last few years, have become fully bought in on the GIR, G-I-R, they’re like the silicone spatulas.

CHRISTINE: Yes, they’re great. Yeah.

SAMIN: They also have a spoonula or a spoon thing that’s really awesome. I love my fish spatula, just like a classic fish.

CHRISTINE: A fish spatula plays a starring role in every episode we do about food.

ROSIE: That’s true.

CHRISTINE: Everybody mentions them.

SAMIN: To the point where once a week, I have dinner at my friend’s house, it’s like a central part of my life now, and there are certain things they didn’t have where I was like, “Yes, I got to buy you a fish spatula. Yes, I got to buy you the good pepper mill.” I was like, “I’m not sick of schlepping this back and forth. I need to make sure this exists here.” Oh, I have a great carbon steel pan that for the last, which I think is from Made In is a really good one. And that one has sort of just become my everyday pan that I heat everything in. Oh, and what I clean that and my cast irons with is the chain mail scrubber, but specifically the one from Field Company, because it’s a much finer mesh. I have two. I have one for my work kitchen, one for my house kitchen.

CHRISTINE: What’s your take on what normal people should have for knives?

SAMIN: I think normal people, most people, even abnormal people can be fine with a chef’s knife, a serrated knife, which is, I usually just call it a bread knife, but it’s also good for tomatoes and other delicate things, and a paring knife, I think. And I personally love a bird’s beak shape. It’s the curved shape blade of the paring knife. I feel like they’re really useful and you can be really agile with it and get into places. So if I only had three, I would have those three, and that’s enough for anyone. But ultimately, I think what’s way more important than how much you spend on your knife is keeping them sharpened. And I will say I discovered something. Oh, my God, you guys, I think I might just teach you something.

CAIRA: Yes, please do.

CHRISTINE: Yeah, please.

SAMIN: It is a nerd. It’s a nerd thing, and it’s expensive. So this is not for everyone.

CHRISTINE: This is for the Wirecutter listener, I think though.

SAMIN: I love this company called Tormek. They’re in Sweden, and they just introduced a new knife sharpener for home cooks, and it’s so awesome. I have been a shamefully unskilled self sharpener of knives, using like a whetstone. So hence, I just don’t sharpen them. And then I have to sort of save them up and take them to my local knife shop and have them sharpened, which is a whole thing. And then you have to drop them off and they’re like-

CHRISTINE: And it’s not guaranteed they’ll do a good job.

SAMIN: And then also, sometimes they’re like, “Well, we’re behind, so see you in six weeks.” And you’re like, “What am I supposed to do in the meantime?” And so having this at home has changed everything. It has the stone on a wheel, it has a guide for you for the angle, and it teaches you, it tells you, put this kind of knife at this angle, put this kind of knife at this angle. You cannot get it wrong. It has a little magnet to which all of the little metal shavings that come off of your knife stick. So it’s not messy. And it is so… And it’s so easy that people, anyone, I’m like, well, my girlfriend needed to sharpen knives, I was like, “You come over.” And she’s like, “You do it for me.” I was like, “No, no, you can do it.” And I showed her how to do it, and she did all her own knives.

CHRISTINE: Oh, wow.

CAIRA: Is it powered by-

SAMIN: Yeah, it’s electric. You plug it in and it goes, and it’s so fast and it’s life-changing. I never need to go to another knife sharpener again.

CHRISTINE: Well, that in itself would save you money over time.

SAMIN: I think, in the long term for sure. Yeah, totally.

CHRISTINE: I love that. This is a hot tip, and I’m going to go look for it immediately after this.

SAMIN: Yeah, check it out. Oh, I can’t wait for it to appear on Wirecutter.

CAIRA: Alright, we’re gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, we’ll hear when Samin thinks it worth investing in a single-use kitchen item, what condiments she’s always got stocked in her fridge, and her ideas for making entertaining simpler and more fun for everyone. We’ll be right back.

CAIRA: We’re back, with Samin Nosrat, recipe developer for New York Times Cooking and author of the new cookbook, Good Things.

CHRISTINE: In your book, you have this great section that kind of goes over kitchen equipment, and you’ve got it broken into the basics. And then you have a section that is on above and beyond stuff. So it’s stuff like a Japanese mandoline or a food mill or like a mortar and pestle. And I think some home cooks might look at that stuff and say, “That seems kind of fussy. Do I really need that?” When do you think it’s worth going into these more exciting, interesting tools?

SAMIN: Okay. I’m of two minds with gear. When it comes to cooking, my general philosophy is you don’t need a lot to cook well. I think you just need to know how to use it and take care of it. The gear’s not going to change whether or not you cook. You still have to do work. There’s labor involved. You still have to wash the stuff. But also, sometimes having a slightly nicer thing or having a tool that can perform a function that saves you time is going to make the entire experience much nicer or allow you to get a result that you couldn’t otherwise get. So to me, I don’t think everyone needs to start out with all the stuff at all.

If for example, you find yourself eating a lot of shaved salads, you want to eat a lot of salad, you’re like, “I’m going to change my salad game.”, then please do invest in a Japanese mandoline, which honestly costs $24, because it will just bring you so much more delight and variety and variability in your textures and your shapes and what you’re able to do. Most of that stuff, you could achieve with a knife, but it would take you a lot longer. Same thing with a food mill. The main reason I use a food mill is to get the fluffiest, airiest mashed potatoes.

CAIRA: What is a food mill, you guys?

SAMIN: Oh, a food mill kind of looks like a torture device.

CAIRA: Oh

SAMIN: Yeah. It’s sort of like a contraption that sits on top of a bowl or a pot and has a little crank, and then there’s a plate with perforated holes in it, so you could put any food through it, and then you crank it and the food goes through the holes. I might sometimes mill a tomato sauce or a gazpacho or something like that. But really, my favorite use for it, and I think the highest use is the mashed potatoes. It really makes the fluffiest, lumpy-free-est best mashed potatoes. But it is a whole tool for basically one to two dishes. Do you know like-

CHRISTINE: But if you like mashed potatoes, it might be worth it.

SAMIN: Oh, it’s true. Oh, wait. You guys, I forgot my all time number one most important, very favorite tool of all time.

CHRISTINE: Share, please.

SAMIN: The immersion blender.

CHRISTINE: Oh, yes.

ROSIE: You do talk about that book in the book.

CHRISTINE: Which one do you like?

SAMIN: The one I have now is the Vitamix one. Yeah. But before that, I had the Breville one, which I think you guys recommend.

CHRISTINE: Yeah, we recommended. That was one of my first guides at Wirecutter, and I had never used an immersion blender before and it really-

SAMIN: It’s changed my life.

CHRISTINE: It’s life-changing.

SAMIN: It’s changed my life.

CHRISTINE: Yeah.

CAIRA: Do you guys think that it’s worth it for people who are not even “home cooks”?

SAMIN: Everyone should have a immersion blender.

CAIRA: Okay, so it’s for everybody.

SAMIN: Yes. It doesn’t have to be the Vitamix one, which is expensive.

CHRISTINE: And the nice thing is also if you have a small kitchen and you don’t have room for a big blender.

SAMIN: Exactly.

CHRISTINE: And some of these immersion blenders also have attachments, so it’s almost like a mini food processor.

SAMIN: It could be your whisk or your food processor.

CHRISTINE: Yeah. So they’re pretty handy if you are limited on space or just you want something that’s really easy for a small kitchen

SAMIN: The other thing… I think you guys are a fan of this too, that I’ve really come around to is I did buy one of the little mini Cuisinarts.

ROSIE: I love my mini Cuisinart.

SAMIN: Oh, my God. It’s life-changing. So between that and the immersion blender, pretty much my needs are met in the home kitchen.

CAIRA: I’ve heard the things that you think that everybody should have. Now talk about some things that you think people think that they need, but they don’t actually need.

SAMIN: Oh, interesting. Okay. I just am very anti the garlic press.

CHRISTINE: Oh, this is where we’re going to have to split ways.

CAIRA: Talk about it. Why?

SAMIN: I feel like part of it is it was drilled into me from being a young cook that one should never abuse their garlic in that way. When you put garlic in a garlic press, what you get out is a whole bunch of unevenly sized chunks basically. So what are you going to do with that? If you’re going to put that in your vinaigrette, you’re going to have a whole bunch of chunky raw garlic. If you’re going to put that in your pan, some of it’s going to burn and some of it’s going to stay raw. But I have grown, I used to be like, “Under no circumstances must one smush a garlic clove.” And now I smush with the side of the knife, and usually, that pops off the skin too. But the garlic press, I don’t know. I even tried to buy some newfangled top of the line one recently. I was like, “I’m going to be a convert. I’m going to be a garlic press person.” And I kept it for two months and I put it on the street.

CHRISTINE: I totally respect that you are not into the garlic press. I have found it makes it so fast. You’re just like, “All right.”

SAMIN: No, I totally… That’s the other thing is I’m not here to shame anyone. If that’s part of your thing and it helps you get cooking, then by all means. But I’m trying to think of what do people have that… This is a hard question for me because I don’t ever want to shame people. So do I think everyone needs an air fryer? No, because also what is that? It’s just a convection oven. If you have a toaster oven that is a convection, that’s already an air fryer, it’s just called something else.

CAIRA: Me just having bought one.

SAMIN: Yeah. But also, I know that, for example, I had this wonderful assistant, Gary, who came to me from a totally different non-food background, and he was a very tentative cook, and the air fryer was revolutionary for him because it was this amazing bridge where all of a sudden, he felt… I saw him actually try to do stuff that he would’ve never done without the air fryer. So do I have room for one? Do I need one? No. Do I love convection as a tool? Yes. So I think knowing how to use it is great.

CAIRA: We want to talk to you about how you approach cooking for yourself and for other people, and something that I think a lot of people struggle with, which is just how cooking can get so monotonous.

SAMIN: Totally.

CAIRA: Night over night over night. I’m just like, “Oh, man, adulting is really just feeding yourself all the time.”

SAMIN: It really is.

CAIRA: So how do you keep cooking interesting for yourself, and do you have any tips and tricks to doctoring up meals that you cook all the time?

SAMIN: Yeah, I mean, I eat a lot of really simple plain food. I eat a lot of rice from the rice cooker with vegetable and/or tofu and/or egg. That’s a very simple, very common meal for me. Quesadillas, all that kind of stuff. What makes my life more interesting is the plentitude of condiments that I always have around.

CAIRA: Really?

SAMIN: And so a very common meal that I’ve been having, there is a frozen scallion pancake like Taiwanese style, which sometimes I buy at Trader Joe’s, other times I buy at my local Asian grocery, and I always have them in the fridge, and then I make scrambled eggs with a little soy sauce in them and sesame oil, I make a little egg taco and this is a great breakfast or dinner. And then the key is all the garnishing. So I always have herbs around and then comes the chili crisps.

CHRISTINE: Well, what’s your favorite chili crisp?

SAMIN: I now make one that I love and I’ll make a big batch once a year and sort of that’ll get me through the year.

CAIRA: How big is the batch?

SAMIN: It’s in the book. It’s a couple jar, couple big quart jars. And I also for that reason, love some salsa machas which are sort of a-

CHRISTINE: What’s that?

SAMIN: It’s a Mexican, sort of, if you will, chili crisp and it often has peanuts in it and chili. Yeah, it’s a chili oil. So the one in the book that I wrote is sitting right here.

SAMIN: Is I kind of was trying to make something that existed in a middle place and could go any direction. So I used Calabrian chilies, which are an Italian chili that has sort of a really nice medium spice. And I did put a little hint of Szechuan for the tingle, but it’s not too spicy and it’s mostly just crunchy. But I also added peanut because I wanted that. A lot of the Asian ones don’t have peanut, but I really love the peanut and that comes from salsa macha. 1.0 is learning the chili crisps. 2.0 is learning the sauce, salsa machas.

CHRISTINE: Oh, my gosh.

SAMIN: Yeah. There’s a company in Oakland called Kuali, K-U-A-L-I, and I really love their salsa macha.

CHRISTINE: You’ve got chili crisp. Are there any other condiments that you’re just like, “Always got to have this in my fridge or on the counter.”?

SAMIN: One that I have sort of, it’s become a really important ingredient for me that is funny because for 20 years, I didn’t use it very much, is preserved lemon paste. And it tastes so delicious and a little bit of funk, and a little umami. It’s kind of this amazing way to have lemon and salt around and add it to stuff with a little extra something. One time, I was like, “It’s really hot. I wish I had a lemon soda.” But I didn’t have lemon. So I put some in my fizzy water and I had all of a sudden this salty lemon drink.

CAIRA: Oh, wow.

CHRISTINE: Oh, I love that.

SAMIN: I wanted to make frozen yogurt. I was too lazy, so I added some of the lemon paste agave syrup into a thing of yogurt and I froze that. That was so good. So there’s just kind of like, it keeps revealing its uses and if you don’t feel so moved to make your own, you can absolutely buy preserved lemons and puree them. Beyond that, I think a thing that is maybe a little bit more accessible in every day is my cooking has changed so much from the simple act of making sure I always have homemade salad dressing in the fridge. I used to be very much of the like, “I’m just going to make it for tonight.” And partly because I just didn’t understand it’s still good tomorrow. I was so restaurant brainwashed of we make everything fresh every day. And a vinaigrette will keep fine for a week, two weeks, but as long as I have a dressing or two, I can always make salad.

But also, I can dress a side of roasted vegetables. I can use it as a marinade for vegetables or chicken or fish that I’m going to roast or grill. There’s kind of this way where you start looking at it and you’re like, “What is in that? Oh, those are the things I would use in this other circumstance as well.” So the same rice and cabbage and tofu that I was going to eat all of a sudden comes to vibrant life with an addition of some of this sesame dressing cilantro and toasted salted peanuts.

ROSIE: What about spices? Is there a spice that people tend to be intimidated by, but you’re like, you got this?

SAMIN: I mean, my favorite two spices, savory is cumin, sweet is cardamom. And I think cardamon is a little bit, maybe not intimidating, but outside of that sort of normal sort of sweet shelf for people. And I have to say, anything that you grind yourself will have so much more flavor, so much aroma. Everything about spice is aroma. And once it’s ground, it starts losing and seeping all of that aroma. So. It’s one thing if you have your local spice shop and you go there and they grind it before your very eyes and then you use it up in the next six months. It’s another thing if you buy it from a grocery store shelf in a glass jar, it was ground who knows when, and then it sits in your spice drawer for who knows how long. I will also say, please do me and yourself a favor and don’t keep your spices near your stove. Also, please don’t keep your olive oil near your stove.

ROSIE: Yeah, I wanna talk about olive oil for a second. We just did an episode all about olive oils. Oh, you did? Yes, we sure did. I gotta go listen to it. We all learned a ton, including how to identify rancidity, which was foul.

SAMIN: Which was foul. How was this described to you? We tasted it, but it was waxy. It was disgusting. I think of it like crayon or diaper.

ROSIE: What do you use at home? What do reach for?

SAMIN: My go-to olive oil comes from a California producer called Seka Hills, which I love for many reasons, including the quality and taste of the olive oil, the fact you can buy it in bulk in a like, it comes in kind of a wine in a box, bag in a bag situation. But also I love that it’s a project on a Native American reservation that is meant to sort of divert young people out of casinos and into this like other amazing skill. So I really, I love Seka hills, but truly that’s been my go- to oil for close to 10 years now. I also think that that California olive ranch that comes in the square bottle, specifically they have an oil that is 100% California. That one specifically I like. I also, think basically for me, the one I don’t, do you like it? I’m having my own mini olive oil episode inside of me. Yeah. I love it. Yeah, yeah. To me, the one piece of information to always look for on an olive oil label.

CAIRA: We know this one, you guys.

SAMIN: Oh, you got it?

CHRISTINE: It’s a quiz. Are you quizzing us?

SAMIN: Oh, no you tell me.

ROSIE: We’ll say it on three. One, two, three.

EVERYONE: Harvest date!

CAIRA: We studied that.

SAMIN: Good job, good job, Good job, good job,

CHRISTINE: In your book, I love this story you tell about you have this 10-year-old in your life who asked you to make fish tacos for their birthday, and you just went full bore and you’re working on it and you’re making this beautiful, perfect meal. And halfway through the party, the kid is sitting there and eating their taco and looking around and saying, “Where’s Samin?” The thing I love about this is it sounded like it was an epiphany moment for you of thinking about rethinking how you entertain and how you approach entertaining. So how are you approaching that these days and what’s your best recommendation for making entertaining an enjoyable thing for the host and for the people that are coming?

SAMIN: I think we all have to lower our standards. Another way of saying that is being kinder to ourselves and not expecting a home meal to ever be a restaurant meal. And I think that’s true when you’re cooking for yourself or when you’re cooking for other people. And for me, I always was like, I need to make sure everything’s perfect and no, I don’t want you to do anything. Let me take care of you by doing everything. But I would become like a Tasmanian devil in those situations where I’m never actually at the meal. And it’s coming from a good place because I want to take care of you, but ultimately, does anyone feel good? I don’t feel good because I’m stressed and they don’t feel good because they are picking up on my craziness.
So it’s been a real shift sort of fundamentally in my life to understand what entertaining, if you will, or cooking with and for people is for. And it’s about spending time together. And so if I’m not able to be present emotionally, mentally at this dinner, then what’s the point, right? I have to sort of figure out how to let go of my control tendencies, and some of that is just making less stuff, dividing and letting people contribute, which also helps them feel included. I have really relaxed a lot about what it is that makes a good meal, and it’s so much less about what’s on the table and so much more about who’s around it and how they feel.

CAIRA: Before we wrap, we always ask our guests one final question. What’s the last thing you bought that you’ve really loved?

SAMIN: Ooh.

CAIRA: Doesn’t have to be food related.

SAMIN: I know. Now I’m just thinking. I’m like, “Ooh.” This is the opposite. It’s the opposite of everything we’re talking about because it’s not economical and it’s not particularly practical, but I just bought myself a beautiful new coat from Rachel Comey. Yes, it’s a coral color, like a rusty coral colored kind of Rachel Comey shape of a chore coat.

ROSIE: I love it. Samin Nosrat, appreciate you. Thanks for coming on.

SAMIN: Thanks, you guys.

CHRISTINE: [inaudible]. This was really fun.

SAMIN: Really fun. Thank you.

CHRISTINE: Thank you.

CHRISTINE: Oh, man, that was so fun. Can we have her back soon?

CAIRA: Please.

CHRISTINE: That was great.

CAIRA: Pretty please? I feel like we could have talked to her for hours.

CHRISTINE: Samin once a month. She’s just a delight. What did you all take away from this?

ROSIE: Besides for the fact that she’s dreamy and so knowledgeable and such a fun person to talk food with, my big takeaway is that I’m saving my money for the Tormek Swedish knife sharpener she mentioned. I really am. I’m like, “I got to get a piggy bank for this because it’s about $400.” But the way that she described it makes me so excited.

CHRISTINE: To sharpen you knives?

ROSIE: To sharpen my knives.

CHRISTINE: Are you keeping your knives sharp right now?

ROSIE: No.

CAIRA: Do you have a nice knife set?

ROSIE: They’re dull.

CHRISTINE: So get new knives and then start sharpening them.

ROSIE: To be honest, I also could go for the Wirecutter pick, which is the Chef’sChoice 1520, which is about half the price. I think I would do very well with either, but I am coveting the Tormek.

CAIRA: I think. I mean, there’s just so much information there. There’s a lot of kitchen gear that I am in desperate need of, but honestly, I think I’m just going to go straight for her preserved lemon paste idea. I know that she has a recipe for it and I really want to try it with Yuzu and make her… It sounded like a delicious, refreshing Yuzu sparkling drink or a lemon sparkling drink.

CHRISTINE: Yeah. She used the lemon paste to make a sparkling drink, but I think you could do it with Yuzu. That would be totally delicious.

CAIRA: And you can use it for so many other things.

CHRISTINE: I love that. I’m also going to make one of Samin’s recipes for chili crisp, which is in the new book. That’s the chili crisp that has the peanuts in it, the Mexican style one. I’m excited to try that.

CAIRA: Innovative.

ROSIE: Innovative. We love that. Samin Nosrat’s new cookbook is called Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love. You can grab a copy at your local bookstore or wherever you like to buy books. We’ll link the products we discussed today in our show notes. And as ever, if you want to find out more, check out our website. See ya.

CAIRA: Bye.

ROSIE: The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by me, Rosie Guerin, and produced by Abigail Keel, engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pitman. Today’s episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop, and Diane Wong. Cliff Levy is Wirecutter’s deputy publisher and general manager. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter’s editor-in-chief.

CAIRA: I’m Caira Blackwell.

CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Cyr Clisset.

ROSIE: And I’m Rosie Guerin. Thank you for listening.

CHRISTINE: Okay, Samin, do you like that? I said that very abruptly.

SAMIN: I love it.

CHRISTINE: Sit up straight.

SAMIN: You sound just like my mom!