Sauced

Hot Dogs

Americans eat about 20 billion hot dogs a year, roughly 70 per person, and close to 7 billion between Memorial Day and Labor Day alone. It is five centuries old and lives

Chicken Caesar Salad

Everyone assumes the Caesar is Roman, or at least Italian. Instead, it was invented in Tijuana on the Fourth of July, 1924, by an Italian immigrant who worked a border cr

Shrimp and Grits

For most of its life, Shrimp and Grits was a morning meal, the thing shrimpers ate at dawn while the season was running. Its old names say so plainly: "breakfast shrimp,"

Bonus Episode: Mashed Potatoes

This is a bonus episode that first went out to our premium subscribers in January. We're dropping it in the public feed today so you can hear what bonus episodes are like

Beef Wellington

The hardest part of a Beef Wellington isn't the beef. It is getting a crisp pastry shell and a rare, rested center out of one hot oven, both finishing at the same moment,

Chicken Piccata

Chicken Piccata puts the bird in its title, but the capers run the show. Pull out that hand-harvested flower bud, too precious to come in a normal-sized jar, and two prof

Osso Buco

The same thing that ruins osso buco is the thing that makes it. The tough silverskin wrapped around a veal shank starts shrinking at about 140 degrees and cups the meat i

Lobster Rolls

Lobster used to be fertilizer. Coastal tribes buried it in the fields, colonists let it wash up in piles two feet deep, and prisoners complained they were being fed bugs.

Chicken Teriyaki

You might think teriyaki is a sauce, but it's a cooking technique. Teri means the shine, yaki means grilled, and the name describes what happens when you lacquer meat ove

Ratatouille

The most famous ratatouille in the world isn't a ratatouille. The dish that makes the critic weep in the Pixar film is a confit byaldi, thin sliced and fanned in a pan, d

Baja Fish Tacos

The Baja fish taco didn't come from a San Diego beach. It was born in the late 1950s at a black market in Ensenada, and the first ones were grilled shark. This week we tr

Bolognese

Real Bolognese is a meat sauce that happens to contain a little tomato, not the tomato sauce with meat that most of us grew up on. That's only where the misconceptions st

Burgers

At least six towns claim they invented the hamburger — and the one the Library of Congress actually crowned still won't serve it on a bun or with ketchup. Which raises th

Paella

Paella isn't the rice — it's the pan. Or at least, that's where the name comes from. And in Valencia, where the dish was born, there's even a body that certifies which ve

Steak au Poivre

Five Paris chefs claimed to have invented Steak au Poivre in the early 20th-century. Four of them wrote letters of complaint to the same 1950 culinary magazine. The fifth

Beer Can Chicken

Beer can chicken is the dish that defies its own science. The most credible American barbecue scientists tested it and concluded the beer in the can does almost nothing t

Clams Casino

Clams Casino has a paperwork problem. A Rhode Island maître d' named Julius Keller claimed to invent the dish at the Narragansett Pier Casino in 1917 — but a January 1900

Tiramisu

Tiramisu's origin is contested. One claim puts it in a Treviso restaurant in 1972. Another places it in Friuli, more than a decade earlier. But zabaglione — the dish's di

BBQ Ribs

Nobody agrees on barbecue. Memphis wants a dry rub, the Carolinas want vinegar, Kansas City wants a thick sweet sauce, and Texas thinks the conversation should be about b

Jerk Chicken

Most cooking woods are fuel. For Jerk Chicken, pimento is the seasoning — it's the smoke, not just the marinade, that gives this dish its defining flavor. This week, we