I Need Fast, No-Cook Lunch Ideas

Photograph by Elizabeth Coetzee, Food Styling by Sean Dooley, Prop Styling by Christina Allen

ON THIS WEEK’S episode of Dinner SOS, test kitchen director and host Chris Morocco is joined by test kitchen editor Jesse Szewczyk to help Karen, a busy graduate student dealing with the limits of a dormitory kitchen, on her quest to find no-cook lunch recipe solutions.

Karen is living in a dormitory where the kitchen is not only shared with the entire building, but the fire alarm is incredibly sensitive. As a result, she’s shied away from cooking and ends up eating the same simple dishes like stir-fries or tomatoes and eggs, using the same simple sauces over and over again. Her main challenge of the day? Lunch. She is looking for an easy way to prepare a lunch that is relatively hands-off, or if it’s hands-on, then it’s hands-on for 10 minutes max.

They offer her two strategies. First, leveraging her rice cooker. What can’t a determined, motivated individual with a rice cooker and a dream accomplish in their dorm room? Secondly, Chris suggests the tried and true formula of using things you can throw together in very little time that don’t take a lot of ingredients. Additionally, Jesse suggests she try Hana Asbrink’s One-Pot Salmon and Shiitake Rice, or his Rice Cooker Risotto.

Listen now to hear how Karen did on her easy-cook rice cooker adventure!

Chris Morocco: Hey listeners, it's Chris. Before we get to this week's episode, I have an exciting announcement. Our Back to Basics series starts next week. We'll be publishing an episode every day, Monday through Friday, that's meant to help you become an even more confident cook. So make sure you check your Dinner SOS feed starting Monday, February 24th, and join us for a deep dive into the basics of home cooking. Okay, onto the show.

Hey there, listeners, future callers, and cooking enthusiasts. Welcome to Dinner SOS, the show where we help you save dinner or whatever you're cooking. I'm Chris Morocco, Food Director of Bon Appétit and Epicurious. Our caller this week, Karen, is originally from Atlanta, but for the next couple of years she'll be living in Houston, where she's getting her MFA in poetry. Of course, graduate school comes with some new challenges. Classes, exams, teaching undergraduates, and in Karen's case, a dormitory kitchen with its own set of problems.

Karen: The fire alarm is super sensitive in the building, and multiple people have set off the fire alarm just by stir-frying on the electric stove, and the hood doesn't really work. This is why I'm trying to avoid using the electric stove.

CM: Sure, yeah.

K: Because I don't want to set off the fire alarm.

CM: See, cooking for herself was a big part of Karen's plan to stay on a budget this year. And back in Atlanta, Karen cooked all the time.

K: I had a wok, so I would do a lot of stir-fries, sort of homey Chinese dishes, like Mapo tofu, without the meat obviously, and then stir-fried cauliflower. I love tomatoes and eggs, that's my favorite dish ever, like comfort food.

CM: But the dorm kitchen situation has made cooking for herself, especially for lunch, a challenge.

K: It's been like two months and I've been making the same things.

CM: So, what have you been making?

K: I've just been boiling, whatever that can be boiled, mostly noodles and other produce I have. And then I drain it and sort of use the same sauces over and over again, which is just soy sauce, sesame oil, salt, MSG, and it sort of just tastes the same because I use the same sauces.

CM: Yeah, yeah, totally. Okay, I want to dig in on the kitchen space a little bit further just to understand what you have access to. So you have an electric stove, there's a refrigerator.

K: Yes.

CM: Sink.

K: Yep.

CM: Water kettle. What else?

K: I have a rice cooker myself.

CM: That you keep in your room?

K: Yes, and then I have a microwave in the kitchen.

CM: And do you have access to an oven?

K: No.

CM: No oven.

K: The whole building shares this kitchen. There's just stuff everywhere. I can't really store anything, so I can't meal prep because the fridge is shared also.

CM: Are you able to designate an area of the fridge or even just, is there a scenario in which you could sort of put a bag with your name on it in the fridge to keep a few things on hand?

K: I could probably keep two things, maybe, max.

CM: Whoa, okay.

K: Well, apart from the produce I already store in the fridge.

CM: Because nobody's going to steal the produce from you, but they might steal something more interesting.

K: Exactly.

CM: Oh my gosh. So, it sort of seems like you have access to a barely functional kitchen and whatever you choose to do kind of needs to be relatively self-contained.

K: Yes.

CM: And you have to be very conscious of how many ingredients and pantry staples, etc., are living in this communal environment. But are there any restrictions around what you can sort of have in your own dorm room? Vis-a-vis, like shelf stable pantry items?

K: No.

CM: And have you flexed on that just as one approach to just kind of having a little bit of a deeper pantry and larder of things to sort of draw on? Is it weird to you to have your oyster sauce next to your hairdryer?

K: Oh, no, I was going to say, I have ponzu right now.

CM: Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm talking about. Because I do wonder if there's the question of what you can get away with doing in that communal space, but then there's also the question of what can a determined, motivated individual with a rice cooker and a dream accomplish in their dorm room? Right?

K: Right, yeah.

CM: I mean, that's pretty interesting. Could you make rice cooker like tomato egg?

K: Oh my gosh. What?

CM: You know what I mean? I'm just saying.

K: That would be really the dream.

CM: What if? Right? Would you be so happy?

K: I would be so happy.

CM: Okay, but tell me a little bit about your dream outcome from this experiment. What's the vision of you in the future who has succeeded?

K: Okay. Future Karen will not have to worry about lunches. I was going to say almost never, but I don't know if we're that optimistic.

CM: That's all right, that's why they call it a dream.

K: Right.

CM: And when you say this dream vision of the future involves you not having to worry about lunches, in your words, what does that actually mean? Because you will have found what?

K: An easy way to prepare a lunch. It's pretty hands-off, or-

CM: Yeah, hands-off.

K: ... if it's hands-on, then maybe like 10 minutes, max.

CM: Okay, this is so fascinating. What an interesting problem to solve. I think sometimes life requires an off-label kind of solution, let's just say. And I think we can maybe find those solutions together.

K: Yeah, I'm excited.

CM: Jesse, have you ever lived in a dorm?

Jesse Szewczyk: Yes.

CM: What are the dorms like in the Culinary Institute of America? Is it like Lacanche ovens as far as the eye can see?

JS: No, there is one kitchen that everyone shares, but there's-

CM: Everyone?

JS: Yeah, but no one-

CM: Like everyone in the dorm-

JS: Yes.

CM: ... or everyone at the school?

JS: Everyone in the dorm shares it. They are like restaurant ranges, but there's no supplies or anything down there, so people didn't really use it because you have to bring everything down there.

CM: Senior Test Kitchen Editor, Jesse Szewczyk's dorm experience may have been a little different from Karen's, but he's still able to put himself into the minimalist cooking mindset. So I caught him up on Karen's desire for easy, healthy lunches that won't set off the fire alarm. And I explained her dorm kitchen resources, a microwave, an electric stove top, and a rice cooker. Now, the rice cooker intrigued me.

JS: Yeah, I use mine all the time.

CM: What do you use it for?

JS: If I'm just by myself, I often will put rice in it, but then I will put a protein and a vegetable just right in with it, and then-

CM: From the beginning?

JS: From the beginning, yeah. You just kind of have to pick the right proteins and vegetables. You can throw in a big piece of fish and you can throw in broccoli or you can throw in beans or chickpeas and it can all cook together in the same time, and it kind of works perfectly. I kind of just toss it all together with a finishing sesame oil or soy sauce at the end, or very minimal things. And it's very healthy, very quick.

CM: Cool. So I think, here's what I'm thinking. The two paths we have here with Karen are number one, offering some strategies for when it comes to no-cook lunches, right? The things that she can throw together in very little time that don't take a lot of ingredients, and how do you do that? The second path, I think is how she can be better leveraging the rice cooker, one-pot meal.

JS: Yeah, totally.

CM: Does it sound good for you to take the rice cooker?

JS: Yeah, I feel good. I do it all the time, so.

CM: Okay, and I'm just thinking about no-cook lunch strategies without being maybe overly prescriptive and how no-cook lunch can not feel like sacrifice.

JS: Sure.

CM: We are going to take a short break. When we get back, Jesse and I help Karen think expansively about her culinary possibilities, even without a fully functional kitchen.

Karen, how have things been?

K: Oh my gosh. I am back home for the holidays.

CM: Already?

K: Yes.

CM: Finals are done?

K: Yeah. Well, I don't really have finals, I just have essays, so I got to leave earlier than other people. So I've been home since Thanksgiving.

CM: Stop it. Well, Karen, I'm here with Jesse Szewczyk, who works with us in the test kitchen. How are you doing, Jesse?

JS: Hello. I'm good. Hi, Karen.

K: Hi, Jesse.

CM: So Jesse has also lived and cooked in a dorm kitchen, but-

K: Oh my gosh.

JS: Well, kind of.

CM: ... with a big caveat. Sorry, I was trying to give you an audible asterisk, because Jesse was in culinary school when he was living in said dorm.

JS: Yeah.

K: Oh, that's got to be very different.

CM: He's basically a cheater.

JS: Yeah, I'm trying. I did have a dorm though.

CM: There was a dorm.

JS: It was cement walls, cement floor.

CM: Oppressive architecture was present.

JS: It's chilly.

CM: Yes. So Karen, in terms of the conversation we had and where I brought Jesse in, we have a couple of different paths to explore with you today. Because when I listened to our conversation and sort of ran back through, okay, sort of peeling back the layers of the onion, in terms of you, who you are at school, and what you're looking for, and the resources you have at your disposal there. Keeping yourself fed and not just fed, it's not just a question of calories. I mean, it's like, how do you keep yourself satisfied? How do you keep yourself cared for?

JS: Happy, yeah.

CM: Happy, yeah.

K: Absolutely.

CM: Just those little things that add up. When you're having, I don't know, what's the worst-case scenario when you're in that concrete bunker of a dorm kitchen, Jesse, in terms of what you could be eating?

JS: Oh, like a-

CM: For you it's like paté?

JS: No, like an instant mac. You know, like the little cup?

CM: Instant mac.

JS: Yes.

K: Yes. I've had those.

CM: Yes. Wait, it's like the instant noodles cup of ramen of the mac and cheese world?

JS: Yes, exactly. Yes. I recalled that making an appearance.

CM: Okay. So Karen, what I'm going to do is I'm going to offer you up more like no-cook lunch strategies to get you a little bit outside of your current comfort zone. I don't know if it's going to help, but I just want to get the juices flowing because you're somebody who clearly appreciates food that has a lot of nuance to it, layers of flavor. I don't know that you're going to be happy just eating canned beans out of a can. Meanwhile, Jesse is going to help you leverage your rice cooker in particular, for things that aren't just rice. That was a little technique I used called foreshadowing. You may know about that.

K: I'm really excited about this rice cooker.

CM: Yeah. Okay, well, there you go. We may already have a winner. Jesse, I would love if you could take us away here. Can you start with some general best practices for off label rice cooker uses?

JS: I can. I will preface this saying that there's not a ton of published best practices about this. However, I reached out to, we have appliance expert on staff named Wilder. I had a whole convo about, what can I say and what he would approve of.

CM: This is news.

JS: Yes. So I talked to him yesterday. So we're calling this basically off-label uses of the rice cooker, but I do this, I don't know, twice a week, honestly for myself. And this is just cooking things other than rice in your rice cooker. So, be it throwing things into the rice mix or changing up the rice mix all together for different grain types.

So, a great kind of starting place is we have a recipe on the site from Hana, it's one pot salmon and shiitake rice, which is, you don't have to use the salmon and shiitake obviously, but this is a great kind of formula to look at to how to play with this. So, just if you do one scoop of grains of choice, you do two cups of liquid. And from what I've seen and what I do at home, honestly, this works out great at home. I've done lentils, I've done quinoa, I've done purple rice, brown rice, and I just mix them up to get to one cup. And this ratio is skewing on the higher side of water for some grains, but I think that it's like a safe ratio. You know what I mean? It's taking account the grains that need a little bit more liquid. This is what I do, it works great. I have approval to give this information.

CM: And you're cooking on the white rice setting?

JS: Yes, I always do. And then from there it gets a little wild. You can add things to this, proteins of choice, vegetables of choice. And because this is off label, it kind of like a trial-and-error, but I can share what I know to work really well. For veggies and protein, I throw them right on top of this water and rice mixture, and I let the whole thing cook at the same time.

CM: Wow.

JS: Yeah, and for carrots, any can of bean, any chickpeas, cabbage I've done, cauliflower, broccoli, all of these have worked really great. Hana uses mushrooms, like I said in hers. While there's one quote that I'm going to share word-for-word is, "As long as you're careful about not overfilling your rice cooker, I think off-label uses such as these can work out pretty well." So while there's one flag, it's overfilling it, which I have not experienced any issues, but I don't think I've gone into dangerous territory myself.

K: I have a question.

JS: Yeah.

CM: Absolutely.

K: So, okay, I'm a little skeptical because everything that you put on top, wouldn't did it come out really dry?

JS: I haven't experienced this, only because I think it's more of a steaming process.

CM: Yeah, and I think part of the not overfilling it might have to do with just making sure excess steam can pass through the vented top. But you are trapping and creating steam and I don't think the issue would be that anything dries out. It's more like you probably just have to be mindful of what is going to take really well to that cooking method.

K: I see, okay.

JS: Yeah, like things that take a really long time. Like a big, big chunk of potato, I don't think it would cook at the same amount of time, but if you have a small half dice, I think it totally would.

CM: Right.

JS: Yeah.

CM: Right. So I think Karen, part of why I think you are such a great candidate for this kind of off-label usage is because your pantry of ingredients, I think is a very powerful set of tools to incorporate finishing drizzles, sauces. Even just the fact that you are somebody who has soy sauce, chili crisp, those will be your friend here because you have to sort of treat this as a dish that has effectively been steamed, right? So you need a strong set of flavors to rely on to punch things up. But this can kind of deliver an all-in-one meal, excluding the fact that you probably want a little bit of extra sauce at the end.

K: Well, that changes things.

CM: Okay, glad we got you with that one. Jesse, are there other recipes that are kind of on this vein?

JS: Yes. I have a recipe, it's a rice cooker risotto, which sounds crazy, but basically kind of in the same realm, this recipe, you cook arborio rice with minced up shallots and some garlic and butter and vegetable stock, and you just cook it on the white rice setting. And then when it's done, you add actually more stock and grated cheese and lemon and butter, and it kind of mimics that same texture of risotto. And it's like a really beautiful base that you can then add whatever you want to.

CM: When I say I was skeptical, I mean, I was peering through a monocle at what Jesse was doing with this thing, okay? I had the Sherlock Holmes old magnifying glass and my deer stalker cap, kind of looking around because something seemed like it was about to smell pretty fishy. And you totally convinced me

JS: It's a double spread now in the magazine.

CM: Oh, I know. It's like a centerfold.

JS: Yeah. So I think this is another example, kind of like Hana's, where you can look at these ratios and these formulas and then tweak it however you want. I think you could change up the cheese or you could change up the additions. This one has peas in it, kind of very classic, but I think you could honestly add whatever bean or chickpeas or nothing at all, and just leave it as a really great base.

K: I've never made risotto before, so this would be really, really exciting for me.

CM: Yeah, I mean it's again, these are dorm room kind of battlefield conditions here. You know what I mean? We're not saying this is an entirely appropriate way to cook risotto, but in terms of kind of just the applied knowledge and what you should feel empowered to do, there's a lot that you could get going on here that could be so good.

K: Okay, I'm really excited about this one.

CM: Okay.

K: Thanks.

CM: This is great.

K: Nice.

CM: All right, so my recipe isn't even a recipe, but again, it's in the spirit of wanting you to feel empowered to find the solutions that work for you.

When I go downstairs on the days that I work from home, okay, and I look in the fridge, there's one guiding principle that sort of makes me start to actually create a lunch that I can feel proud of, as opposed to just something really sad that you eat because you're just trying to get back to whatever you were doing. Right? This is the formula for success. You need a creamy thing, you need a crunchy thing, you need a pickled thing, and you need a protein thing. Okay? And I know that's so general as to be utterly worthless, so let me go on.

A protein thing could be yogurt, hummus, beans, cooked lentils. But if you have any kind of leftovers, if you have tofu, even like a silken tofu, just anything that you can put a strong punchy dressing on to just give you something that's going to make you feel full, at least till 4:00 or 4:30, that for me is like a win. Crunchy things can be virtually anything that's crunchy, whether it is store-bought roasted nuts, cashews, this can be raw veg if you can keep them on hand. Cucumbers, tortilla chips. A creamy thing could be something like a canned bean that you dress up, but it could also be something like a swoosh of yogurt. Could also be something like a hummus. There's some overlap with your protein thing, but some ingredients will do double duty for you. Pickled thing, again, a vegetarian kimchi, it could be sour pickles or Israeli-style pickles or more like a Japanese-style pickle. Anything is fair game here, but something that has some punch and some lift to just make what you're eating feel a little bit more dynamic.

So, one thing that I did want to mention to you is there's a recipe that incorporates a lot of these things that I did years ago. And basically, it's a chickpea salad sandwich. So basically it's just treating chickpeas like canned tuna, and doing the mayo or yogurt thing with some hot sauce, olive oil, mashing them up, putting them on toast. So just giving yourself the grace to just keep a very small cohort of ingredients on hand to throw together in very short order, I think can do a lot for you here.

K: Yeah, I think I just maybe need to expand some of the things I always buy, because I just ended up buying the same groceries for months. And maybe I just need to expand that a little bit and try to incorporate something pickled and something creamy into my, I guess, daily essentials. So, yeah, I'm excited.

CM: Make yourself yourself try new things. And that aisle of the supermarket, that's like the store-bought sauces, the drizzles, oils, that's where a lot of the action is.

JS: Condiments are fun.

CM: Condiments are king.

So, we sent Karen off first to enjoy her winter break and then to come back to campus energized to take on the problem of lunch in the dorm. After another short break, we'll find out what she made and how it went.

Karen, how are you doing?

JS: Hello.

K: I'm doing well. I'm doing well.

CM: Yeah. How'd winter break go?

K: Really good. Did a lot of hiking. We went to a cabin in northern Georgia. Went inside a hot tub, yeah.

CM: Sounds fun. And so once you got back to Houston to school, is that when you kind of did your back at school cooking exercise?

K: Yes. Yeah, I wanted to wait until I was back in my school environment and really stressed out again and having no time whatsoever.

JS: A proper test.

K: Right, exactly.

CM: Well, and how are things going this semester?

K: Actually, really great. I love all of my classes. I haven't started getting terribly busy. Though basically starting tomorrow, I'm going to be slammed.

CM: Well, listen, Karen, why don't we get into it. Will you tell us what you made?

K: I made the risotto.

JS: Oh, nice.

CM: Yeah, okay. How did it go?

K: I think it went really well.

CM: Well in the sense of you managed not to set off that fire alarm, or well in the sense of-

K: Oh yeah, absolutely.

CM: Okay, all right, great. Well, that was my threshold for success.

K: Yeah. Pretty much day three when school started, day three the fire alarm went off and I was like, oh my gosh, here we go again.

JS: Oh, man.

CM: Oh my gosh.

K: But no fire alarms were set off from the risotto, so that was great.

CM: Fantastic. Walk me through the process for you.

K: Yeah, so I chose that recipe because I really wanted to try to make something else with the rice cooker that wasn't like steamed white rice. And I was curious about how it would turn out. First of all, I didn't have measuring cups.

CM: Always a great way to start.

JS: I'm bracing myself.

K: But I had measuring cups back home and I kind of just eyeballed a cup based on the measurements.

CM: You thought about measuring cups that were about 1,000 miles away, and then aced-

K: Well-

JS: But the house is related.

CM: Yeah.

K: Okay, I don't know why I have this knowledge in my brain, but we have these little rice bowls at home and I kind of know how much is a cup based on the rice bowls at home. So, I have a bowl that's kind of a cup.

CM: Got it.

JS: Sure.

K: So I kind of use that as a measurement.

CM: That checks out.

K: Yeah.

CM: And is that how you're normally making rice in your rice cooker?

K: Yes. Yeah, I just use that bowl.

CM: Okay. So, sorry. You've got your rice cooker, you have the bowl, which you used to measure your rice.

K: Yes.

CM: Where did things go from there?

K: And then I chopped everything, put everything together. I put everything together and then I pressed cook, but I was like, that took only 10 minutes of my time of active prepping ingredients.

JS: Sure.

K: So, that was amazing.

CM: And did you cook it in the dorm kitchen, or?

K: Mm-hmm.

CM: And were you there next to it, smelling the smells kind of deep into the process?

K: No.

CM: No. You just kind of left it alone?

K: I just left it. I was like, press cook, go back to my room, do more readings.

CM: Did you leave a sign on it explaining what was happening?

K: No, no. There's other rice cookers in the kitchen, so.

CM: What?

K: Yeah.

CM: Are they labeled with names?

K: No, people are really bold. They just leave all of their appliances down there.

JS: Oh, wow.

CM: Multiple rice cookers in one kitchen.

K: Yeah.

CM: Almost like cars parked in a mini parking lot.

K: Yes.

CM: Okay, so you pressed the button and you went away.

K: Yes.

CM: How are you feeling?

K: I know it takes about 20, 25 minutes to cook white rice, so I just did my readings and then went back down again. But the moment I went downstairs, I smelt it. It was way different from, I mean, obviously, but way different from white rice.

CM: So, talk to me about that. How was it different?

K: It was a little bit deep.

JS: It's also broth.

CM: The broth.

JS: It's cooked in broth too, yeah.

K: Yeah, yeah. Like rich.

CM: Like, there's a dish, there's an entire dish with a sort of slate of elements inside of it.

K: Yeah, not heavy, but you know if you eat this, you're going to be full.

CM: Sure, sure.

K: And then so I went down there, opened it, and then I poured in the frozen peas and other half stick of butter. There was so much butter in the recipe.

JS: There's a lot of butter in it, yep. And then there's cheese too, on top of that.

K: Yeah, and then I added the cheese and then I was stirring it. But I think this step was a really valuable lesson for me, because I had never thought about adding things after the rice cooker was done cooking and you could add things to it and stir it in. That was amazing to me.

JS: You could do greens, like spinach works really well this, yeah.

K: Yeah. I was like, oh my gosh, I could totally do this with white rice or whatever in the future.

CM: Okay, so you still haven't eaten it yet, so.

K: Oh, I have.

CM: You're in the kitchen. No, no, no, but I mean-

K: Oh, yeah, yeah. We're back in the scenario.

CM: ... we're taking you back to that moment. In the scenario, you're smelling that richer expression of rice. You're in the kitchen still. How did it taste?

K: After really getting into it and digging in, I was just like, this is so good and it only took me basically 15 minutes. And I was so full the entire day, pretty much.

JS: Wow. That's the butter.

CM: Because of all that butter.

JS: That's the butter.

K: I know.

CM: That's what I was thinking.

K: I had a nighttime class that day and I had leftovers from the recipe and I didn't eat until 9:00 PM, after lunch.

CM: Oh, fantastic.

K: And I wasn't hungry at all.

JS: Nice.

CM: Wow. So Karen, how are you feeling about the question of what you can accomplish in your dorm room?

K: I feel pretty good. I've been thinking about adding more ingredients just on top of the white rice I have. Yeah, or maybe even just experimenting with the, after it's done cooking and on the keep warm setting, I can stir extra things into the rice. I do think my next adventure is to figure out how to store fresh stuff better.

CM: Sure.

K: But that's a different conversation.

CM: Yeah. Well, I guess part of my challenge to you, Karen, would be, all that sort of the ease and intention that goes into making your at Atlanta stir fries, if you can bring some of that energy into that rice cooker environment. If you can be bothered to slice a couple carrots, throw some leafy greens in maybe at the end, incorporate some of the flavors, like some of the saucy elements that maybe you use to finish some of your stir fries. All of that could really work for you here. You know? So I wouldn't necessarily see them as sort of like a binary kind of scenario where there's at Atlanta stir fry you, and then there's Houston all business rice cooker you.

Wonderful. Karen, really happy for you. You pulled it off and you tried something new and hats off to you.

JS: Yeah, I'm honored you made my risotto.

K: I'm so happy I did.

CM: If you have a dinner emergency on your hands, write to us at DinnerSOS@bonappetit.com or leave us a voice message at (212) 286-SOS1. That's (212) 286- 7071. We'd love to feature your question on the show. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a rating and review on your podcast app of choice and hit that follow button so you never miss an episode. You can find the recipes mentioned on today's episode linked in our show notes and on the Epicurious app, brought to you by Condé Nast. Just search Epicurious in the app store and download today. And if you're not yet a subscriber, you can sign up today for a 30-day free trial in the app or Bonappetit.com.

Thanks for listening to Dinner SOS. I'm your host, Chris Morocco. My co-host this week is Jesse Szewczyk. Our Senior Producer is Michele O'Brien. Peyton Hayes is our Associate Producer. Cameron Foos is our Assistant Producer. Jake Lummus is our studio engineer. This episode was mixed by Amar Lal at Macro Sound. Jordan Bell is our Executive Producer. Chris Bannon is Condé Nast's Head of Global Audio.

Next week, George was trained as a chef, but he's got one frustrating bugaboo in the kitchen.

George: I cannot cook quinoa to save my life.

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit