No Onions, No Problem

No Onions, No Problem

From Cooking Issues with Dave Arnold by Cooking Issues

June 6, 2026 · 1h 1m

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…

People in this episode

Host: Dave Arnold

Guest: Quinn

Topics covered

  • cooking
  • dietary restrictions
  • food experiments
  • bar food
  • gelato
  • culinary techniques

Keywords

  • onions
  • chili
  • asafetida
  • gelato
  • bar food
  • salt
  • catering

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Ro-Tap machine, asafetida, dawadawa, glutamic acid powder, pina colada gelato stabilizer, vanilla oleoresin gelato

Books & works: Razzmatazzarak

Places: Rockefeller Center

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