About this episode

Dave Arnold and Quinn discuss cooking without onions, dietary restrictions, and various food experiments.

It's a No Tangent Tuesday, which means everything is on topic — including Dave getting lost in Rockefeller Center for the hundredth time. Quinn is back from his antibiotic recovery, Jean just survived catering the Roots Picnic VIP section with a rented reefer truck (and a branch that won), and the California crew is dialing in from LA. Dave opens by explaining why his new miniature Ro-Tap machine — a 1917-standardized particle analysis sieve shaker running at exactly 150 BPM and 85 decibels — cannot, in good conscience, be operated in a Manhattan apartment. A caller brings the real problem of the week: his partner can't eat onions, and chili without onions is a crisis. Dave prescribes asafetida (AKA hing) and hints at fermented West African dawadawa as sulfur-forward workarounds. Quinn, recovering from his own dietary restrictions courtesy of a GERD diagnosis, has been running low-sodium experiments with glutamic acid powder — which leads to a full detour on salt, Tuscan bread, sweating bakers, and why the Civil War soldier's salt ration proves nothing. Bar food rankings break out organically: potato skins, mozzarella bricks, fried cheese curds, and the great belly clam vs. strip…

More episodes of Cooking Issues with Dave Arnold

• NTT: If Waffles Could Fight Pancakes · May 30, 2026 · 1h 0m
• Nick Wong · May 23, 2026 · 1h 2m
• Broth and Beyond with Marco Canora · May 19, 2026 · 1h 1m
• Let's Get Sauced: Tim McKirdy and Sother Teague · May 12, 2026 · 1h 1m
• George Motz's Hamburger America · April 14, 2026 · 1h 6m
• Belated Birthday Tangents · April 7, 2026 · 1h 1m

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Cooking Issues with Dave Arnold podcast page.