SIO361: Seasoning Liberally, with Cecil!

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:17 Thomas: And welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 361. I'm Thomas Smith and got a bit of a treat for you. Today's episode is something a little more fun. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the Cognitive Dissonance podcast. In case you're not, they date back, I think they even predate me, actually. They were one of the reasons I am even a podcaster. Early, early, early early, they invited me on their show back in 2010 when I had no listeners.

And I went from no listeners to no listeners plus like three. And that was the a start. And so I've long been friends with Tom and Cecil. Of of course, you'll know from Dear Old Dads as well. Is also on Citation Needed, another show that's a big favorite of mine, but he also has a YouTube channel he started semi -recently during the pandemic called Season Liberally. So today's expert is an expert chef.

And I thought it would be super fun to have Cecil on, talk to him, get to know more about this, passion of his, where it comes from, all that stuff, and learn a few things about cooking, maybe some helpful beginner tips, pitfalls to avoid, learn a little bit more about it. Always, please, please consider supporting the show at patreon.com/seriouspod. It means so much to me.

0:01:37 Thomas: It's just get the feed with nothing but pure goodness and avoid those ads. And of course, bonus content. There will be definitely some patron only bonus this month as there was last month. Make sure you go back and listen to last month if you haven't. The political ads with Heath. That was so much fun. Please support the show. patreon.com/seriouspod. Sign on right now. Do it now. Right now. Okay. Thank you for doing it. I assume you paused. You did. It's great. Thanks for your pledge. Really appreciate it. And without further ado, let's get over to Cecil and learn how to season liberally.

0:02:10 Clip: What I say is true, anyone can cook, but only the fearless can be great.

0:02:17 Thomas: Hey, Cecil. How you doing, today?

0:02:18 Cecil: I'm okay, Thomas. How are you?

0:02:20 Thomas: I am doing amazing. I am so happy to have you. Thanks for doing this, and it's been too long since we've been podcasting together.

0:02:23 Cecil: Thanks for having me on. I I

0:02:27 Thomas: I don't like that.

0:02:27 Cecil: Know. It's been a while. It's a been a long time. I'm glad I'm here and I'm anxious to have you back on our show again.

0:02:34 Thomas: But. I love it because you know how people have all their parasocial relationships with us, I have that with you guys too because I listen to Citation Needed, I've binged the whole thing and then I listen to it every time and I feel like I'm still interacting with you even though we haven't, taught it's funny being on both sides of that because on one hand I'll have people message me really like, you know, intrusive, intimate things at any time of the day. They just think they can be in a a conversation with me about whatever, because I said it on a podcast, but I have that on the other side. However, I do refrain from like, you know, just going into like really in-depth life stuff at 3 a.m. with you. I try to refrain. I think I have, but it's funny being on both ends of it.

0:02:44 Cecil: Oh. Alright. Right. Yeah.

0:03:13 Cecil: You know. Yeah. No, I'm surprised you haven't sent us any corrections yet. So that's it.

0:03:18 Thomas: No, that's the worst. That's the worse. If anything, I have sent the odd appreciation for your pun. And I was going to say, having you on as an expert today, you could really give us the masterclass on puns. I am not even, here's the thing. Here's, this is a compliment. Ultimately, it's not even a backhanded compliment, but but, it's a weird compliment. I hate puns, man. I'm not into puns but you are so good at them that I will pretty much always laugh at your puns like they're that good. Like I, it' amazing the work you do over there. And And it's incredible.

0:03:50 Thomas: And of course, cognitive dissonance, the OG and all that.

0:03:45 Cecil: Yeah. Thank you. Thank You. Thank you. Yeah, yeah.

0:03:54 Thomas: But today I was going to maybe have you on as an expert on cooking because of your delightful channel on YouTube channel, Season Liberally. Excited to talk about it.

0:04:02 Cecil: Yeah! Yeah! Am excited to talk about it. You know, it's something that was sort of a a passion project that was created during the pandemic. Right. So like, um, at the beginning of the pandemic, I don't know, you were a sports guy and I'm kind of a sports guy and, and I lost some hobbies like right at the beginning of the pandemic. Right. So I'm sure you went through the same thing, right? You lost something that you were doing outside of the home.

0:04:10 Thomas: Yeah. Oh my God. Yes. I had to give up ice hockey for a year. I play ice hockey three times a week. I gave it up for a year. And the worst part is a lot of people didn't, because they didn't believe in COVID or they wanted to conveniently decide it was fine. And I was like, this is hockey is my favorite thing in the world. It's the thing that mentally keeps me together, you know, and it's my only exercise and all that. And I had to give it up for a fucking year. I felt a little bit, you know, like that's not the biggest sacrifice in the world, I think. I think some people maybe lost more during COVID than that, but like it was pretty significant

0:04:26 Cecil: Yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Right. Right. Maybe, maybe. Yeah.

0:04:57 Thomas: For me. So yeah, I know what you mean.

0:04:58 Cecil: It Certainly is. It certainly - so I fence, uh, I was fencing weekly, and so I had to give that up, and that's like a social thing, right, where you get out of the house. And I also game, um, you know, RPG game with a group of guys every other week. And so like there's this other other group of people that I would be, and then the fencing thing sometimes happens on the weekend, so like I'd be gone for you know, uh, Saturdays.

0:05:19 Thomas: But you got a built-in mask with that. I feel like that was ready.

0:05:20 Cecil: Many Saturday's. Yeah. I know, right? Yeah. All you gotta do is put a little piece on the front and you should be okay. But they did, they still didn't have any activities for almost a year. So I was, you know, like a lot of people sitting around the house, bouncing off the walls, thinking about something to do. And a bunch of people like right at the beginning of the pandemic, we're starting to make bread at home. They were just thinking, oh, I'm going to try to make bread. And there was a big thing.

0:05:23 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. The hell?

0:05:39 Thomas: That was going to be my first joke.

0:05:41 Cecil: It's like a weird, it was like a word.

0:05:42 Thomas: Yeah, it was like, we all did the sourdough starter, which we killed within hours, but your sourdough starter was the YouTube channel that's still going strong, which is impressive. You didn't just log into YouTube and it was a disgusting, rotten mess in YouTube, like it actually, you're

0:05:45 Cecil: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right. Exactly. I'm still feeding it. It smells like old grapes in a sock and you're like, what is happening in there? No, but, uh, but

0:06:05 Thomas: Like, I think I have to throw this out. You just fucking throw out your computer. It's gone.

0:06:10 Cecil: I wound up, I want to make it a, I have a, pretty good and pretty fail proof bread ref that I've been making for years. And so I made it for people on, on a Facebook book. And I just started posting on Facebook and I got a bunch of reactions of people saying, wow, you really did a great job explaining this. Thank you so much for doing it. And a bunch of people posted their bread afterwards and saying, look, I made this. Thank you. So much.

And, and I thought, you know, I had been watching cooking shows since I was a little boy and you know I have a long sort of background in cooking. I'm, I'm actually a trained, I went to culinary school and patisserie school. So I have, uh, a culinary degree and a patissery degree. So, I thought you know maybe I'll just put some of these videos together and And I started really sort of putting them out, not on a regular basis. I just think about them for a little bit and be like, oh, today I'm going to shoot. And I'd shoot it. And this was in my old condo

0:06:55 Cecil: When I was downtown. And it was a lot of fun to do. And it sort of morphed into this year. At the end of last year, I sort of quit. I sort of stopped doing it. Almost for a full year, I stopped doing it. And then I made a decision over, I get off for Christmas break. My work, I work my day job. I work at a university and we get off for a good sum of time between, you know, we automatically get off Christmas to New Year's and then we almost always have, you know, use it or lose it days that we have to use before the end of the year. So I had several of those and I basically took off like three weeks at the end of the year and just filmed every few days I would film something and then I just decided I would try it for a year to try to post a new video every day or every week for an entire year to see if there was any interest in the channel.

0:06:29 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, It's great. And you know, I just saw along those lines, I can't believe it's been this long because I just thought, I think it was not Onion, but like the Hard Times and one of those satire things that was like, "album that you still haven't listened to that you consider new turns 10 years old today." And I was like, that's literally it. Like I have bands where I'm like, yeah, this is the new album. It's like from fucking 2007.

0:08:10 Thomas: Like Jesus Christ. And that same way I was Like, Oh, finally, you know, I've been wanting to talk to you about this for a while. Let's talk to about your new channel. See, so it's like, it's fucking 10 years Old Man. It's

0:08:05 Cecil: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Exactly, Yeah, Yeah, It's Like it's A couple, it's a couple years old already, yeah, but it, but it's, but it was, it was sort of on hiatus for almost a whole year, um, because It, it's such, I will Say This This It's not just a lot of work. I had a kitchen that was in Chicago that I loved and was very easy to shoot in. I I had an island induction top that I was able to cook on and a space to prepare things off to the side. And I literally only just slide the camera over on a gimbal back and forth between the two shots. And so it was very easy to shoot sort of not above, but like on a diagonal, like right in front of it. And then I'd have like one far shot. So it's like a two shot. But in this new house that I'm in, I had to sort of rearrange and I had these two terrible lamps. They had these lamps that would hang down really low on the island and they just to shoot a shot around him

0:08:28 Thomas: Yeah, it's a lot of work, right,

0:09:13 Cecil: Is kind of a pain in the ass and so there was like a lot of work and then I finally was just like, I'll just hire an electrician to come in and I Did And They changed the lighting and it worked out just fine, but it was a lot of sort of agonizing over what to do because I'm used to that sort of that setup and it was, it's, it, it is, it's an immense amount of work to

0:09:19 Thomas: There you go, yeah, let's get into it, because this is something, you know, I've known you for a while, and I definitely didn't know this for a While, I didn't Know you had this training, and I want to ask you some questions, but I've never really heard more of your biography on this. Is this like your original train or is this something you pursued later life? How did this come up?

0:09:33 Cecil: Yeah, sure.

0:09:45 Cecil: So I had a, I went to college and got a philosophy degree. And as everyone knows, that's an absolutely useless degree. It's genuinely useless. And I got job as like an admin assistant out of college and really had nowhere I was going. And so I started thinking about, you I had worked previously in a kitchen. A cafeteria -style kitchen, but it basically fed about 1,900 people a day that would come through it. And so it was a very busy, very hectic kitchen that I worked in for about four years. And I worked my way up from delivering coffee type things to becoming the baker to eventually, you know, becoming like the sous chef. I sort of worked on, I did a lot of, I basically worked my way up before I quit and went to college. And then I thought, you Know, I really enjoyed cooking. My mom, when I was growing up was really an, just a great influence there. She actually was the baker who I took over for in that job. She's the one who got

0:10:13 Thomas: Wow. Oh, okay. So

0:10:48 Cecil: Me the job. And so, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, totally. But she was like, She taught me how to bake, and so I learned how to bake through her.

0:10:48 Thomas: You're Nepo baby. Okay. I got it. Yeah. She also had a podcast And then got you into that. It's the only way you got in, you know, you gotta know people you gotta know people

0:11:00 Cecil: Exactly. I never would have succeeded on my own merit. No, but in any case, I decided after I was in a dead -end job, I thought, you know, I could go to school and learn how to do this, and then maybe go start working in a restaurant industry, maybe even open my own business, and I thought about it, and so I started going to school, and I went to school at night, and I was working full -time during the day. And the school is very different. Going to culinary school is very different than going to like a regular, a different type of job because or a different kind of job. And I think that's a good point. I think it's a good point because culinary school is all practical. There's no, there's very little homework. So the classes are

0:11:02 Thomas: Mm -hmm, yeah oh that's

0:11:39 Cecil: Five hours long. So you start in the evening at like five and the class ends at 10 PM and you are, you are you, you do like two hours of lecture and then three hours of cooking and you go like four straight days a week. And so So it's very intense, and it also takes – basically it sucks your entire life away, which is good training as a chef because they have no lives, right? They all cook on the weekends and at night when everybody else is off work, and when they're off work it's during the day. Yeah, no, they get like a – they might get a Sunday afternoon occasionally

0:11:39 Thomas: What I need yeah yeah right well you get like Tuesdays yeah hmm

0:12:13 Cecil: Off, but for the most part people who cook for a living, they're cooking when other people are normally free and vice versa. They're free when other people are normally working. So it's a very lonely sort of life. But then, you know, this culinary school will get you, they'll get you in line for that because you're basically working, you know, the entire time, you know, these long hours, essentially these long hours because I'm going to school.

I'm working full-time and then going to school at night and I did that for a couple years and it just so happened that my career transitioned during those last, that last last year, technology started to emerge that I was good at and learned. And my job decided to promote me, my day job. And I was making more money than I would have as somebody who was working in a cooking industry. And so I just decided to stay with my current career and do this as a hobby. So I went to school for it, but it just so happened that my career trajectory took me a little higher than I would have been at, you know, a starting pay

0:12:56 Thomas: Right

0:13:16 Cecil: As a chef or something. So it was just luck. It was just look, but the training, the training was, I really enjoyed going to culinary school. I really enjoyed it. I learned quite a bit. Uh, and I always really did enjoy cooking. Like it's just always been a thing that I've always enjoyed, my mom, when I was very young. Um, she always cooked with us in the kitchen and, you know, we always had, you know, cooking TV shows on growing up. Justin Wilson was a big one, I don't know if you know who that is, he's a Cajun guy, used to say, "I guarantee" all the time. What about the Frugal Gourmet? Is another one, although that guy got a little handsy with some people later on. So did Mario Batali. A lot of dirtbag

0:13:16 Thomas: But you got all the training yeah yeah no

0:13:50 Cecil: Chefs out there, it turns out, but yeah

0:13:51 Thomas: I that seems like a dirtbag, that seemed like a position that would attract dirtbags, not gonna lie, I don't know why, I'm not, it's not accusing you, but like, anytime where you have, like, one angry man who gets to be in charge of a bunch of people, it just, you know what I mean, like it just doesn't,

0:13:57 Cecil: But well, thank you, I appreciate I appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It Doesn't work out. It doesn't work out. But I also, you enjoy, like, throughout my whole life, I've really enjoyed food. You know, food, there's a lot of people out there. And I know some of these people who are, they, they eat to sustain and that is it, that is the extent of their food. They don't care about what goes in. They just know they need X amount of calories. And it might as well, it could be that Soylent stuff. They, they don't care what goes in, right? For me, it's always been different. You know, like I always, I always had a taste for food. In fact, if allow me, I have a story when I was, when I Was very, very young.

0:14:21 Thomas: Mm -hmm. Oh

0:14:42 Cecil: Um, I was about nine or 10. had my first high end restaurant experience. I, my parents at this point were very, very down on their luck. It was Reagan and my dad lost his job. We lost our house and our car and everything. We're living in a small apartment in a, in a city. And we were living very meagerly at the time. And, uh, and I remember I used to make some extra money and you're going to laugh your ass off. I used make my extra money shoe shining. And so what I would do is I swear to you, I swear to you.

0:14:42 Thomas: Please Oh No What I Sure I Was gonna guess Like What are You collecting Bottle Caps Or

0:15:12 Cecil: I swear. Do you? So, so here we go. So, So when I was, I lived in this city that happened and a half and

0:15:12 Thomas: Some Shit, some 30s Uh, activity Why Don't You just Tell Me you Were a mouse or a rat that lived in a French lady's house and found a cookbook that should just Be

0:15:25 Cecil: I bought a cookbook and I, I hit on some guy's head and then, uh, the,

0:15:25 Thomas: Yeah Yeah Real Talk though, that's one of my favorite movies of all time, no, I'm joking, I fucking love Ratatouille, but anyway, okay, so this fake story I'll indulge

0:15:34 Cecil: I thought you're talking about Racka Cooney.

0:15:35 Thomas: Your fake story Of being a, yeah, yeah

0:15:37 Cecil: I, I thought I didn't realize you were talking about Ratatouille. I know it is Rack a Cooney so

0:15:37 Thomas: All Right We'll Indulge your fake shoe shine story where you're making two Bits a fucking day on shoe shining

0:15:44 Cecil: No, It's serious. It's serious, serious, seriously. Here we go. So, so there, there was a city, the city I lived in, I lived the downtown area and there was like six or seven bars all along the main strip there, right? So a friend of mine and I, we had one of those shoeshine boxes and then we scrounged up enough money to buy a few polishes and a brush and a couple of little, we had a couple old rags and we would walk into the bars and we'd look for the bikers and the guys who were wearing boots, because people are wearing gym shoes, you don't talk to them, but you talk to the people who are out and like in nice shoes and you walk up to him and say, would you like a shoe shine?

Now this is a long time ago, it was 50 cents a shine. And so I would say, which like shoe shine. And they said yes or no. And you know, very often guys would give you a full dollar. Like they would double it for a tip. Right. So we would shoe shine back and forth and a buddy of mine would do it a lot. And, um, and so he, I was telling him, I would saying, man, I really want to go to this restaurant. He's like, well, why don't we make some money shoe shining when we go there? And it was, a it was like sort of the first real high -end restaurant in this little city. And, and when I say high end, I mean like nowadays an entree would be like 25 dollars, right?

0:16:05 Thomas: Hmm I Know Right There You go Okay

0:17:00 Cecil: So it doesn't seem like that high end but It's a little higher, a little high, like I would say Olive Garden, but like locally owned with is what I would say, so something like that, right like

0:17:01 Thomas: So So Is It like An Olive Garden Or Okay You Know Well You're Talking To somebody, I don't even know this, but I didn't, like, go to a restaurant until adulthood. Like my, my idiot dad, I'm not even Joking, my dad, it was McDonald's every time, 100% of the time, yeah, 100 Of the Time, one

0:17:11 Cecil: Uh Really? So if you guys went out to eat, it was McDonald's.

0:17:27 Thomas: Million percent of the time, only We Didn't Get to

0:17:28 Cecil: Did you ever change your order up or did you have the same order every time?

0:17:30 Thomas: Oh I changed mine up a little bit, but like we didn't even get, get to experience different fast food. Like I, I didn't even get to enjoy.

0:17:37 Cecil: You couldn't even eat it. Could even a Burger King once in a while. Yeah.

0:17:39 Thomas: No, no. Like, I mean, here and there I would because of, you know, being with friends it's, you Know, for sports stuff or whatever. And like I did my grandma before she died in, I don't know, 96 or something took me to like a, I know Chinese restaurant. She lived in San Francisco. So I think we maybe went to a Chinese restaurant, but I had almost, almost no experience with it until. And it's funny.

0:17:44 Cecil: Wow. I see.

0:18:02 Thomas: The literally mean the Olive Garden. Like I'm not even talking about, it's another 10 years of life before I went to a real, like an actual, any sort of nice restaurant of any kind. But the only reason I got any experience going to even the Olive Garden or something like that was because of my high school girlfriend's parents would take me. That was the only reason they liked to, they liked or eat at those places. And to me, it was talking about fucking shoeshine money. Money, it was a miracle to me. I would see them and they would pay for me because I had no fucking money and my parents were cheap pieces of shit, so they would play for, they pay for mean I'd be like, is this okay, like, is this, I don't, this, that you're spending like $40 on, that's fucking insane, are you insane, like I thought I was gonna get in

0:18:04 Cecil: Sure. Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah sure. Uh, yeah that's

0:18:48 Thomas: Trouble every time, and then not until adulthood.

0:18:51 Cecil: So funny.

0:18:51 Thomas: So I came, came from that to like, in my, you know, mid-20s, I think I started feeling like, oh, okay, I want to go take Lydia to a nice restaurant because that's what humans do. And I started getting into that, and I really like, as you say, eating food for sustenance. I've, I love food, I just, my thing, I joked about the other, the other day on Dear Old Dads, and I'm sure you'll disagree, but my thing is, I love food and it's all a 10 out of 10. So like, it's it ranges, the joke I made was it ranges from a 10 out of 10 to an 11 out of 11, and 11 out of 10 is the Crunchwrap Supreme from Taco Bell, and then also, really nice restaurants can be a 10 out of 10. Like, that's, you know, like a couple Michelin stars, there's, yeah.

0:19:06 Cecil: Yeah. Oh God.

0:19:39 Cecil: You might be able to, maybe you'll get a 10.1, but you're never going to get crunch wrap. You're never gonna. Yeah, there's no three crunch wrap restaurants out there. Let me tell you.

0:19:39 Thomas: Yeah. You're never gonna Crunchwraps Supreme is the greatest greatest, there should be. God, that is the fucking, that's actually, I'm hijacking the interview and I just want to ask your professional opinion about the Crunchwrap Supreme.

0:19:57 Cecil: I've never had one. I have never eaten one. I have no idea.

0:19:58 Thomas: Oh my fucking, get out of here. So

0:20:00 Cecil: I don't know. Do me a favor.

0:20:01 Thomas: This idiot doesn't know food, everybody.

0:20:02 Cecil: Do you mean a favor? Do me a favor, send me what it looks like, right? Send me the ingredients of what it it looks like. And I'll make one on my channel.

0:20:06 Thomas: Oh, my fucking God. That that would be the greatest thing in the world.

0:20:11 Cecil: That's what I'll do. You send me what it looks like. Cause I've never had one. I'm not, and it's not that I'm shitting on it. Don't get me wrong. This is not snobbery. I, I will eat a taco bell. I'll eat it. White castle.

0:20:12 Thomas: Oh yes. Oh, it's so good. No, no. Yeah.

0:20:20 Cecil: I 'LL eat it at, um, what's that shitty restaurant down at the waffle house? I'll leave there. Like I'll eat, I'll lead anywhere, you know?

0:20:25 Thomas: Yeah, sure. There's a time and a place.

0:20:27 Cecil: Like I'm yeah, there's, there are certainly no, there is no snobbery here. I am not, I'm nuts. I've just never, I've, just, it's never occurred to me to eat it, you Know, like I've ever, I have never been like, Oh, I should eat one one of these.

0:20:27 Thomas: Yeah yeah. I appreciate that. I respect that. Yeah it's the greatest invention in food technology. It really, it really is. I actually, there was someone just recently wrote a whole article. I think it was in like New York fucking magazine or something. Um, I listened to it on the autumn app cause I can't fucking read. So I forget what what it was from, but they wrote it about like the lady who invented the crunch wrap. And she was like trying to get Taco Bell to do it forever. And then she finally did. And it was, it was like this sensation, like sold millions and millions. It's crazy. So that's, that's a great plan.

0:20:38 Cecil: Yeah. It's I Yeah, I will a hundred percent make it on

0:20:59 Thomas: I will do that.

0:20:59 Cecil: The channel. Yeah I will.

0:21:00 Thomas: I Will fucking, Oh my God. I We'll watch the hell out of that video.

0:21:00 Cecil: I will do it. I promise. I promised. So

0:21:04 Thomas: That, is incredible.

0:21:05 Cecil: So let me rewind. So, so there I am. So there I am with my friend.

0:21:07 Thomas: You know, sure. You don't want to go with Taco Bell more. No.

0:21:10 Cecil: I'm, we're going to shift gears and talk about, no, but I, there I, with my buddy and we're, you know, we're both like nine years old, nine or 10 and we save save up enough money to go to this restaurant. Now, when I say save up enough money, I mean we both had enough money to maybe each get an appetizer. That's kind of what we had. So we go in, and we are like little kids, right? So we're in our t -shirts and our shorts, and everybody in there is in a button -down shirt, and they're all looking nice, and we're just two little kids. And so this waiter comes over, and he's very nice to us. He tells us what's on the menu, tells us what the specials are that day. And we were both like, there's extra stuff that's not on the menu. Are you kidding me? That's amazing. And so we ordered the food and we kind of very carefully knew how much we had. And we, we ordered to food. And I remember telling my friend, like, we need to have a little extra because there's gotta be a tip. And,

0:21:10 Thomas: Okay. Okay, yeah. Okay Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Wow.

0:22:05 Cecil: So we were like, ordered, we, ordered what we had and then this is the best part. So when you shoe shine, you have to keep your money somewhere and we're little kids. And so, so my friend has it in a sock that is full of shoe, of shoeshine polish that is in his pocket.

0:22:06 Thomas: You're a sophisticated 10 year old.

0:22:22 Thomas: Oh my God.

0:22:23 Cecil: So he has a old sock that has knotted at the end. He pulls it out and he says, "Well, let me, I got to get this unknotted." And he, and I think he even handed the knotted sock to the waiter, who then undid the sock and poured the money out onto his head. And then then there was like maybe 75 extra cents that we gave to the waiter.

0:22:23 Thomas: No way.

0:22:33 Thomas: Oh boy. Oh, my God Cecil. Look, I don't want to offend you, but this strikes me as the kind of fake story a Republican would make up about their upbringing. Like just Just trying to use like fucking terms they've heard from other working class people. But they overshoot and accidentally tell an 1890s era story.

0:22:55 Cecil: No, I, I. I, did. I was a chimney sweep when I was 10.

0:23:07 Thomas: I mean, that's not much different. I want to know. I'm not sure what age I ever like the first age I wore a pair of shoes that technically could be shined. I would wonder what that would be. 30? I don't even know. Like you said, I would be the one in the tennis shoes.

0:23:10 Cecil: It really isn't. It really is it.

0:23:21 Cecil: You got to think though. The thing is though, there was, this was full of bikers and the bikers, they would all take us up on it.

0:23:22 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. So they like shiny boots, huh?

0:23:27 Cecil: Well, they would, they Would be wearing those big, those big sort of biking boots and you would and they would be like okay sure go ahead and shine it up and they were always like we actually we actually made pretty good money like you know you'd make for a little kid you'd make maybe five bucks in a day and it was like a lot of money so it was great you know um and yeah it was uh but it was it was so

0:23:27 Thomas: Shiny. I didn't know that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. That's fantastic. And was the, do you remember what you ordered and was it delicious or any, any other details?

0:23:49 Cecil: I I do remember that it was an appetizer but I do not remember what it was.

0:23:55 Thomas: Bloomin' Onion.

0:23:55 Cecil: It was very small uh and it like it was some something probably fried. I think maybe it was spanakopita, but I can't be sure. And so, but, I ordered it and I was, and I loved it. I was just, I was blown away by it. And from that moment on, like, I just ,I love the idea of eating out. I love the idea of going to these, you know, really nice restaurants. And in fact, my, my young life, whenever I had an opportunity to go to a fine dining establishment, and we're talking, you know,, when I was working and things like that, you you know, expense, but people would consider very expensive restaurants. That was something that was in the budget for me. That is something that I would choose to do. I would be like, yeah, that's in the, I will, I Will go to this restaurant that costs, you know?

0:24:32 Thomas: Yeah? Yeah. For sure.

0:24:39 Cecil: Easily as much as four or five times of going out to eat.

0:24:41 Thomas: I say that all the time too, which we all have our shit that we spend money on. Like it's one thing and you know, this fucking, especially for millennials, you know, like nobody can buy a house. Like nobody has any fucking money. We have to read an article about how we're killing industries. And what that means is no, we don't have any fucking money. Um, but all that said, we all have our things, our hobbies or whatever that we spend on.

0:24:45 Cecil: Yeah. I know, man. Yeah, yeah. Sure. Sure.

0:25:01 Thomas: And you don't Have to be some snob who only eats at a fucking Michelin restaurant every day. That's not how it works. You save up a little bit. My philosophy, even with like sports is go, you Know, half the times, but buy twice as good a tickets, you Now, because like Like I like going to the game and getting really good tickets, but you know, they're going to cost a little more. So just go fewer times, you know? Rather than whatever. Same thing with the restaurant thing. Save a little bit. You get to have a nice dining experience. If you're not into it, you'renot into it. But I, I just want to tell people coming from what I've come from, I'm not exaggerating any McDonald's eating. Like that's all I knew. I grew up in a tiny town knowing nothing full of Republicans. And I went from that to like eating some fucking weird, I's not going to lie, weird ass French French shit with you in New York or whatever that was.

0:25:05 Cecil: Right, right. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah,

0:25:47 Thomas: And that was a bit, that was a bit far for me. Yeah, it was good, but yeah,

0:25:47 Cecil: That place was magical. That place was magical. You had foie gras and and yeah, you did not like the foie grass. There was a pate. I think that you did Not like either.

0:25:52 Thomas: I didn't, I couldn't do the foie gras. Yeah. Well, French, so French cuisine, we could talk about it, but ever since I became vegetarian, that French cuisine is a little tough. Like I wish there was more I could eat, but no, but still, but like appreciating, I just really appreciate the effort and the knowledge and everything that goes into just making stuff that's really good and really intricate. And maybe that's a good lead in to finally get some tips for people, get some expertise for people. As much as I've really enjoyed your bullshit 1890s shoeshine stories. If you want to come up with any more of those to tell us, you know, just let me know when you think of the next one.

0:26:31 Thomas: And there was one I could never get my hands on. Yeah. So I would ask you stuff coming from, I imagine a lot of us, I'm, you Know, in the listenership, you have a a big podcast too. You hear from like, you know, the person who's amazing at everything you talk about and it's really cool, but most people listening, I'm sure something like me where you've cooked a little bit, but you're not an expert, you know, and you might want to know how to take things to the next level or how to do the most with what you got. So I want to ask You some questions kind of along those lines, like step, I guess.

0:26:32 Cecil: There? Yeah, yeah.

0:27:01 Thomas: Just to open it up and I'll ask you more questions. Like, what, what do you think are your number one through however many tips, one through N tips, for maybe that kind of person getting the most out of having a Little bit of skill, but you know, Most, they're not going to go to the culinary school that you went to, they're not going to, you know, wear a rat under their hat and be able to make all that stuff. For the average person, what do you think? Start us off.

0:26:54 Cecil: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Sure. Yeah.

0:27:23 Cecil: You, I think, really basically we're talking about somebody who's who's barely cooked or who's only cooked things that have come in a box, right? And and Again, I am not shitting on things that come in a box. I think, I think they're, they have their place. Uh, I think that there's very often even really experienced cooks may sometimes opt for a box out of necessity or speed or, uh, or just comfort food, you know, like they might just opt for something that, yeah, or, or a box mac and cheese or the, if they don't like that as the Velveeta one or whatever it is, you know, I feel box cakes. Some people like really like the box cakes and I think, you know, those things have their place. Uh, and, and I, and of course don't like, I don't, if anything about me, I want to try to not be a gatekeeper.

0:27:31 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:49 Thomas: Now, are you talking Hamburger Helper or Blue Apron? I don't know which kind of. Oh, gotcha.

0:28:10 Thomas: Mm

0:28:10 Cecil: Right. And I feel like there's a lot of gatekeeping in cooking where people will, you Know, try to close the door or gatekeep or in some ways, uh, put down other people for what they made. AndI think that that's just a bad attitude. I like food positivity. So I'm talking about people who really genuinely, you know, like maybe you've just start, you've never really cooked anything except for just following the directions on a box. So the first thing I'm going to tell you to do is learn food safety. It's really easy. Just go learn really quickly, uh, temperatures things need to be at before they're safe to eat. Um, if you're a vegetarian, it's a lot easier. Um, you just wash your vegetables, right? You know, like it's, it's, it's, it's easier. But you got to take them out and wash them.

0:28:10 Thomas: -hmm. Sure. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah, mm.

0:28:48 Thomas: Like the the pickles that are in the Big Mac, I have to take them out. Oh no, I'm making

0:28:53 Cecil: The, the other thing though, is I guess, you know, I always confuse vegetarians and vegans cause I'm not either.

0:28:53 Thomas: Food now. I'm actually making, okay.

0:29:00 Cecil: And, Uh, vegetarians can have cheese and eggs and things and eggs can also be dangerous. And yeah, so I, you know, learning food safety around those things is important too, too. And so, so my suggestion would be just, you know, there's plenty of videos out there that you could just watch really quickly to learn about it. But I would, I would take some time and learn about because getting yourself sick or getting your like a friend or someone else sick is bad. It's really bad. And food poisoning is, if you've ever had food poisoning, it's literally the worst feeling in the world. It is, your body is trying to expel every fluid that's ever come in you. And it's really genuinely the worst feeling.

0:29:00 Thomas: Yeah yes, no kidding.

0:29:34 Thomas: Yeah. So

0:29:36 Cecil: So you just want to try to avoid that if possible.

0:29:39 Thomas: To get too into that, I believe I haven't actually gotten this confirmed for sure, but I went a lot of my life without ever getting food poisoning. I didn't know what people were talking about. And then at a certain point, I started getting it constantly. And by constantly, I mean like, you know, multiple times a year, you know, like going from zero to like multiple. And I think it's because I'm on some stomach medication. I've always had a really bad stomach. And so I'm on some stomach medication that I would have to imagine. Maybe I just don't kill off as much stuff or something like maybe I just have less.

0:29:48 Cecil: Uh -huh Yeah Like Three or four times A year, yeah. Yeah, uh -uh Right Maybe Yeah

0:30:08 Thomas: And so, I just want to echo like for real, like once I started experiencing that, that food safety stuff is no joke, especially when you're cooking for other people. Like it would, there's nothing worse than a feeling that you might have gotten someone else sick, friend or family sick. So, great safety tip. And also, check out Cecil's 101 kind of on Season Liberally.

0:30:08 Cecil: Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah I Do Do a little bit

0:30:26 Thomas: A bit on that. It's Excellent. Um, but yeah, so okay, step one, don't kill the people we're cooking for.

0:30:26 Cecil: On that, yeah, yeah. Don't Kill your friends, that's number one. Okay, step one, it should be step one and everything. Don't killing your friends, step Two. Step two is kind of a two-parter. One is learn how to use salt properly, and two is, you know, in involved in that is, this also comes with the salt, is that most of cooking is pulling the water out of what you're cooking.

0:30:36 Thomas: Yeah. That's That's fair.

0:30:55 Thomas: Interesting.

0:30:55 Cecil: You're trying to remove the water from what you're looking at. You don't want to because what you are cooking is probably bland. And when you remove, now it's not everything, but most things, as you evaporate the water, the flavors concentrate and become more robust. And so most of the time you're going to try to remove the water. Now, one of the things that helps with that is salt. Salt not only flavors your food, but very often salt will weaken and remove the barriers, the cell walls to allow more moisture to come off. So if you're sweating onions or it's very popular in French cuisine where you sweat, they call it sweating. It's where you cook something in a little bit of oil. Very often, it's an aromatic set of vegetables. In French cuisine, it is called mirepoix. That is two parts onion to one part carrot and celery, and those are all chopped up. Then you would toss that in a bit of olive oil. Now, to make that sweat faster and to break those cell walls and remove some of that water, you would throw a little salt on there.

That sort of helps with the cooking process. So you're adding salt as you cook. Learning about salt layers is also really important because certain things you put in food have salt inside of them. So like if you were to put, if you're putting in Parmesan cheese, there's a salt content to that. That is going to change the final dish. So don't add too much salt early on and then add your Parmesan cheeses and be like, oh shit, it's too salty.

You've got to be be careful to salt through, but then also salt at the end. You're going to want to season at the end. I also tell people that you want to get a large crystal kosher salt to start out.

0:30:56 Thomas: Okay.

0:31:10 Thomas: I'm Sweating Onions over here Oh This is great. I love stuff like this. I love, so, like, not the bullshit, the girl with the umbrella, not Not her.

0:32:46 Cecil: And I'm going to tell you why. So iodized salt is fine and it works fine. But the difficulty with iodized salt is, is that it's hard to see on your food. So if I am like, if I have a, use diamond kosher salt. And when I take the diamond out of the salt cellar, it crushes very easily, but I can still see it when it hits the food. I can see how much I'm putting on. It's a lot harder to do with that very, very crystallized salt. Also that crystallized salt is a lot smaller. So a smaller volume, a smaller value of that might taste more salty. So you've got to be more careful with it. And also I, you know, when it comes to salt, taste your food, taste your salt, like actually Taste it because I have in my, in my cabinet downstairs in my pantry, I have a kosher salt that is easily two and a half times as salty as the diamond kosher salts for the

0:32:47 Thomas: Yeah Hmm Yeah. Oh Wow. Salt

0:33:45 Cecil: Same amount of salt. It ranges, it very much does. And so, and so understand how much salt, what it tastes like, how much salt you need to add, and you will be able to ballpark better using a large crystal like diamond. The Morton kosher salt is a little harder. You've got to be a little stronger to crush those crystals. That's why I'm a very weak, small, soft person. And so that's why, like, I like the diamond myself.

0:33:46 Thomas: Now With More salt, salt.

0:34:13 Thomas: That's fascinating. I didn't know when you're salting it like in stages, I've, I'll be honest, my biggest experience with cooking and I could be a topic for later, but is meal kits. And I actually have really liked meal kit that I don't actively have any sponsorship or anything like that. I have just liked meal kits for that reason. It kind of gets me to do different stuff that I would never have done. And they always have you kind of salt as you go. And I always thought that that was just a flavor thing, but it's interesting to know that that's more, it's also maybe in the early phases about getting the water out of there. That that's, that's really fascinating.

0:34:25 Cecil: Sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Up that process. It speeds up the evaporation of that water just a little bit, and it helps remove that water.

0:34:53 Thomas: It is incredible how much water is in stuff. Like if you, you know, you could get a truckload of spinach and then you cook it down to like one molecule of spinach.

0:34:56 Cecil: Yeah, yeah. And you get basically what is like $1 bill worth of spinach after that. It is the tiniest amount, but yeah, genuine. And when you think about it that way, right? Think about spinach and think about greens greens. And, uh, you know, especially, you know, when you're talking about celery and onions and those, there's a lot of water in those things and getting the water out of there concentrates the flavors and makes it taste better.

0:35:05 Thomas: Yeah. What the hell is that?

0:35:24 Thomas: Feel like restaurants just over-salt the shit out of stuff. Do you think that's true? Is that just me?

0:35:27 Cecil: It depends on the place. It really just depends onthe place, but yeah, restaurants, restaurants do season their food more than you would at home. They also probably finish things, uh with a lot of butter too. So there's probably a lot more butter in the food than you would eat at home too. Unless you're like a vegan or something, then they wouldn't cook the, with the butter.

0:35:40 Thomas: I'm fine with that. That I'm finally. Right, right, right.

0:35:47 Cecil: But for the most part, they're going to, they're going to finish almost every sauce has like three tablespoons of butter in it. Like, I mean, like, like and high in restaurants, they're finishing everything. It's called monter au beurre, which it means, which means to mount the butter and so they will throw butter in a pan and swirl it around. And that's what adds that extra flavor to the food that you're eating. And they will salt things probably more than you will at home. Depending on the place, it's rare that I'll go out and think something is salty.

0:36:15 Cecil: I don't think things are salty when I go out to eat. But if you don't use salt at all, really, or a lot at home, you may find that going out a properly seasoned something might taste salty to you.

0:36:15 Thomas: Oh, interesting.

0:36:28 Cecil: A lot of times people will ask me what set of knives should I get? I'm looking to get into cooking and really genuinely a is part learning how to cook. You know, you have to prepare the food and very often people will have terrible knives that they've sort of collected from, you know, their parents were going to throw away or whatever, and they just don't have a good set of knives. I will tell you, don't get a set of knifes.

0:36:23 Thomas: Hmm. Interesting. OK, Yeah, right?

0:36:45 Thomas: Right. Hmm.

0:36:51 Cecil: Take what you were going to spend on a set of knives and buy one good chef's knife. Knife should probably run you about, I would say, I mean, with inflation, maybe $120, right? But that chef's knife will last you probably your entire, if you take care of it, it'll last the entire time you're cooking. So your entire adult life, you will have it as long as you take care of it.

0:37:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:37:12 Cecil: And so you will never have to buy it again. Now, there are a couple of ancillary knives that are good to have If you're a meat person, a fillet or boning knife is really nice to have. If you are more of a vegetable person, a utility knife gets a smaller knife and it's just easier to use sometimes to cut or core things. I also like having a bread knife in the kitchen. A bread knife has a serrated knife and regular chef's knife or your utility knife won't do when it comes to that. But serrated knives are relatively inexpensive and you don't have to buy like a high end serrated life.

0:37:42 Thomas: Yeah, you're just cutting some fucking

0:37:44 Cecil: Knife.

0:37:44 Thomas: Bread.

0:37:44 Cecil: You can get a relatively cheap serrated knife and just throw it out in a couple years and get a new one. You don't have to get an expensive one. But if you did decide to get, say, three knives, you might spend $300, which is about what you'd spend on a knife set, and you could have three knives that you would then have for the rest of your life. And if you take care of them, they will last forever.

0:37:44 Thomas: Yeah yeah.

0:38:03 Thomas: When you say buy a good chef's knife, what should people look out for? What what defines a good nowadays? There's so much crap everywhere. I still think that's going to be maybe not necessarily self -explanatory. What do you think?

0:38:09 Cecil: Yeah. My suggestion would be look for websites that review knives that don't get paid for it. So the two that I would suggest offhand are Serious Eats and America's Test Kitchen. Those would be the two I would look for for reviews to see how well those knives, like their ratings on knives. And very often you could get a subscription to, now Serious Eat is free, but America's Test Kitchen, you might pay $10 for a digital subscription for a month or something. And then you could at least look at the articles that you want to look at based on their history and their archive and find what knives you want to get. I've had good luck with Shun, S-H-U-N, which is an Asian knife. You have to like the way an Asian knife cuts because an Asian knife is different than a European knife.

0:38:58 Thomas: Hmm.

0:38:59 Cecil: And so you'll have to know which one you prefer. So you might want to buy a couple of cheap ones to see which one you like better. Asian style blades are more flat. European blades rock easier. They're a little more curved. And so it just depends on what you like. I I personally like a European one, but I do like the Shun brand. I also like Wusthof is another brand that I like.

And also there's a couple of newer ones that are coming out on the market more recently. And then there's one that they use in kitchens that's a really hardy knife that is, it's not really a big, like it's like a no frills sort of knife. It's got a plastic handle instead of a wood handle. And that one's called Victorinox. And that's a brand that people use in kitchens very often.

If you're looking at knives outside, you want to make sure it has a full tang, what they call a full tang. That means that when you look at the top of the handle, the metal goes all the way to the back of the handle. You want to be able to see that metal. Very often, they will expose that metal to you to show you that it has full tang. It means it goes all way down. If it doesn't, that means that the handle is sort of clamped around the knife, and it can loosen and, and break eventually much more easily.

0:40:09 Cecil: So you want to have, yeah.

0:40:09 Thomas: Yeah, I had a knife that did that. I thought it was a good knife. It felt really bulky, which I associate with good, felt really hefty, and then the fucking

0:40:13 Cecil: Yep. Yep, you're just like, yeah, no, it's, it feels heavy. Sure. It feels heavy, but yeah.

0:40:18 Thomas: Yeah yeah exactly weight equals expensive, I think, but uh, but the handle fucked up, I must have bought in there, they maybe they tricked me on the the thing so good to look out for

0:40:21 Cecil: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, and that can happen. That can happen, I think. I think there's plenty of websites out there though, that will, and you know, the best part about Cook's Illustrated or America's Test Kitchen, they'll tell you what, like the best ones for your hand size. So like a female woman's hand might be smaller than mine and it might not feel as good to have a knife that is smaller in my hand, whereas it would be fine for say my wife to have one that is smaller. And so like they often do list, if you have a smaller hand, this might might be good, if you have larger hand, this one might be good. So those are good. It's a good way to figure out which knife might feel better in your hand. You don't get, you don't, you can't just go walk into to like Crate and Barrel and test run the knives most of the time. They're most of the time they're behind glass.

0:40:30 Thomas: Yeah you can't bring your own, vet like tomatoes, you know, or bring, bring some onions and yeah

0:41:13 Cecil: And so, yeah. And you're not going to cut anything with it. You're just gonna be able to hold it even if you can. So, um, so yeah, it's nice to have those kinds of reviews.

0:41:16 Thomas: Oh My god, while I'm on the topic of onions, can we, we talk about your, your onion, your main onion tip that I cannot believe I have never encountered until watching your videos, which is keeping the, the kind of the husk or whatever, the root end, that is that's one of those fucking things that you're like, why don't I already know this, why isn't, why this should be, you know, people trash on algebra in high school, I'm not going to do that, I like math, so you still should learn math, but you also should learn this one thing there should be be a class, one unit, hey, it's one tip, keep the fucking, once you, once you tell people what that is, if you can describe it, or maybe they just need to check out the videos but

0:41:33 Cecil: Oh yeah. Keep the skin on the back. Yeah.

0:41:49 Cecil: You should learn this. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I actually learned this years ago. Um, it's It's a popular tip that a lot of cooks have. And so I've seen it on many different cooking shows before. But basically what you do is you nip the top end of the onion off. And so the onion has two ends. It's shaped like a bulb. So it has the top and the bottom. There is a top is where the plant have been. And then the bottom is what they call the root end.

And you can tell because it looks like a root on the end. And so you cut the top off, peel away some of the skin, that papery skin, and when you peel it away, if you don't cut the root end, it essentially becomes a handle that you can lay your palm on and then it doesn't move.

The onion doesn't move as much, and you can keep your fingers bent and easily slice that onion without actually, you you can get very close to that root end without actually the onion moving around or, you know, rolling over or whatever, and it makes the onion more stable when you cut it.

0:42:50 Thomas: Because you always gotta dice, the almost every fucking recipe is like dice the onion dice the onions, everything and then I always forget that that's like a three-dimensional thing, I'm always like, oh yeah, I'll go crossways and long, and like, oh, there's another dimension, there's another space dimension and then you got the time dimension, you got to cut it in time as well, as four-dimensional onions, but it's always that third one that gets me where I'm like, oh yeah I can keep this all together and then just dice it all together.

0:43:00 Cecil: Dice it. Dice It. Yeah. Yeah. Three dimensions, it turns out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is it? The three onion

0:43:20 Thomas: And then it's the fucking third one, you're like, oh, it's all apart, and then I end up, then I'm just like, oh, now what, I'm going to do is just chop a bunch randomly. That's what, but I like you

0:43:20 Cecil: Problem yeah yeah exactly well yeah that's what, when you, when you're, when you're first learning, you're like, well, shit, this whole half of this onion isn't chopped because I can't get my hand near And So then you're just rocking the blade on it and mutilating it. And yeah

0:43:30 Thomas: Yeah the first telling you those first first two cuts were precise. I was like, I'm doing this even. And then that third one, I forget that fucking dimension. I'm like, all right, now I chop.

0:43:41 Cecil: Oh it's amazing yeah yeah nope Nope.

0:43:49 Thomas: And it's all just nonsense. So that is a fantastic tip. That is one of my favorite tips I've ever heard in cooking. I cannot believe I didn't already know that.

0:43:57 Cecil: One, another one is, you know, like a lot of people, when they take a look at a recipe, they will look at a recipe and say, I want to make this. The picture looks good. And then they, they don't read it all the way through. Um, you need to like, my suggestion is before you do anything, read the recipe, start to finish, like read your recipe, starts to finish. That includes all the ingredients. Look through your cupboard, make sure you have everything.

And then, you know, once you've read through the entire recipe, then start the mise en place, what they call mise en place. And mise en place in French means everything in its place is what it really means. And it's a preparatory suggestion, which means get all of your things prepped and ready to go before you start cooking. And Then it's also kind of a state of mind in a kitchen where where you're just sort of getting in your zone.

The mise en place extends past just what's in your bowls in front of you that you're going to toss together. It's more than that. But it's also really genuinely, more simply, it's getting everything ready before you start cooking. A lot of times people will watch chefs cook, especially if you watch someone who's been cooking for decades, someone like Jacques Pepin, who can, while he's cooking something, turn around and dice an onion and dice a carrot and then measure something out. And then he flips his thing and then he goes back and he, and he chiffonades some basil and he then

0:45:21 Cecil: He strains some tomatoes, et cetera, ettera.

0:45:20 Thomas: This is stressing me out just talking about it. I am so stressed already.

0:45:24 Cecil: All the whole time while stuff is happening.

0:45:24 Thomas: I m sweating. I re sweating onions over

0:45:26 Cecil: Yeah.

0:45:26 Thomas: Here.

0:45:27 Cecil: So while it's all happening, he's doing all that stuff. And don't get me wrong. I think many people can do that. But the problem is, is if you've never made something, you're probably going to be constantly referring to that recipe. So get everything ready ahead of time so that it's all in preparatory bowls. Everything's cut exactly how it needs to be. And then when you start your recipe, you can have your recipe next to you and be like, okay, I need to cook this for three to five minutes. And I'm going to do that. And then I'm going to do this next piece. And then I'm going to do this next piece. And then I'm going to do this next piece. But if you try to do it, like get your me's ready while you're cooking, unless you're somebody who's really good at organizational structure and multitasking, you might not do a good job at that.

0:45:38 Thomas: Yep, yep.

0:46:08 Thomas: For sure. And you have to have the experience to know how long the steps are going to take. So like, Like you'd have to know that's where the real expertise would come in is like, well, I know I have some time on this, whereas I might think like, oh, I've got some time on this. But but like actually, if I'm not constantly stirring it, it'll burn on the road, whatever. So that's great. The funny thing is, I always thought that was a gimmick for like cooking shows where they're like, oh, just to make it easier. So we're not watching all this fucking shit here.

0:46:11 Cecil: Sure. Yes. Yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:46:31 Thomas: We have all the ingredients like ready to go. I always thought that's what that was. But like, no, actually, that's just a good way to do it.

0:46:32 Cecil: Yeah, no. Well, you mentioned those food kits earlier. Those food kits are a great way to learn how to do this because very often, most of that stuff is already portioned. That stuff is already portion. Now, you may have to cut the zucchini, but you did get one zucchini. Then, then they will have a tiny bottle of vinegar that they send with you. And that vinegar is this, that is the size of the vinegar that you need. And then the oil, they will send the oil and that oil is the side of the oil that you want. And so they've, they've sort of half done your mise en place already. And so then you can just sort of cut the pieces in the, in the way that they suggest and then have it ready to go. And so they're already kickstarting your mise en place when they do one of those food kits, which is great. And I love those food kits. I think those are are wonderful. That's a great stepping stone to learn how to cook. It really is.

0:46:49 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, Good Me too, I'm glad you aren't Gonna tell me they suck Or something.

0:47:29 Cecil: Yeah, I love Those. I think that was an ingenious idea for someone to put those things together because it does ignite someone's ideas and their passion for cooking. It also makes people realize that you can do it, right? You know, like a lot of times people, they see something and they think it just looks too complicated, then they won't try it.

0:47:43 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:47:50 Cecil: But those meal kits really are a great bridge to show you that, that you can do it. You can cook, you can learn how to do this. And this is not that hard to do. It's, it's possible to sort of, you know, excel at this pretty easily.

0:48:04 Thomas: I, Say this is something where if you're like me and you have, um, pretty bad ADHD, it just stresses the fuck out of me because I, I Have a hard The hardest time with doing things like, okay, read the recipe ahead of time, my brain's like, no, can't do it, don't, fucking, don't. And then what I do, cooking for me is a real, I, cooking for, for me is like what bungee jumping is for people. Maybe like, I, I hate it, but I like it. Like I, like every time I'm like, all right, I got it. And I more often do the baking. Lydia tends to do the cooking. Cause I, it stresses me out so much, but you know, I do the bacon when the kids birthdays and holidays and all that stuff.

0:48:11 Cecil: Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

0:48:39 Thomas: And, and I hate, like, absolutely hate it. But I'm still every time. I'm Like, no, I have to do that for some reason I have do it. I don't know why I've decided I have too. And it's like putting myself through this trial of, can I get my my scrambled brain to like do things in sequence in a way, in a way that it has to be done. Go

0:48:47 Cecil: You know, I, I am getting comments, uh, from people on YouTube that are in the same headspace, Thomas, That will say, thank you for making this particular recipe because some some of your other stuff is way too complicated. I could never hope to do it because I have like ADHD or there's no way that I could contend with a recipe this large. And thank you for making something that's easy to make. And so I've tried to, on my channel, vary what I create because I recognize that, you know, while it may be something very simple for me, um, for instance, I made Mac and cheese, a very simple Mac and geez on my channel. One time I made a, uh, you know, I showed people how to make a grilled cheese. And so,

0:49:02 Thomas: Yeah. I remember

0:49:38 Cecil: You know you're making, you're making something simple, right? I'm showing you how to makes something simple. But at the same time, I'm show you my take on it, maybe my additions on it. But then also for the person who doesn't know how to a grilled, that's a really important video, right.

0:49:53 Thomas: That one. Yeah.

0:49:53 Cecil: You've never made one. Maybe you've never made a grilled before. You don't know to do it. That's okay. There's no shame in that, right, there's no shame in not knowing something. It's just, you you know, like you can learn. The thing is, is that I have to realize sometimes that I'm trying to teach people at all levels.

0:50:08 Thomas: Yeah.

0:50:08 Cecil: I'm not trying to teach People Who Are Already Chefs. I'M NOT TRYING TO TEACH PEOPLE WHO ARE MID -LEVEL. I'm trying to teach people who are at all levels. AND THAT'S, It's, it's tough for me to decide what to choose, but at the same time, it's also good if I do choose things that are in a range, because there are people out there who just don't, they might not have any experience whatsoever.

0:50:09 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. It's so tough. Yeah.

0:50:27 Thomas: It's, uh, it's for, that's one of the, just making online content. That's one of the most annoying things. That's like, you don't, you know, time in history, was it like, Hey, give us some sort of class or a breakdown of something. And just any random human on earth might see it. Like it was, it would be like, Oh, teach a class, go to whatever. Here's the level of people you're teaching. No, the internet is like, I want to explain certain things. And you will always get comments from both ends of the fucking bell curve.

0:50:27 Cecil: Yeah. Right. Yeah. I know. I know. Yeah. Man, yeah. Yes. Yes.

0:50:53 Thomas: It'll be someone who's like an expert. It's like, this is so fucking dumb. You idiot. This is so basic. And then the other person who's Like, I don't even understand the most basic thing of this. And it's hard to gauge like, all right, how many of what person is listening. So you have to just like, for me, I've had to try to swallow my pride a little because I think a lot of people, I don't know if you're like this, but a lot of people will bias toward the high end. They'll be like, well, I don't want to feel like a dummy in front of the experts. So they'll be like, I got to do, I gotta make it too complicated. I got to show off a little bit, but then that's honestly making kind of bad content for everybody else for probably a majority

0:50:53 Cecil: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It is

0:51:24 Thomas: Of people. So I try to err on the side. I don't always do it perfectly, but I try to err on the side of, of just like, all right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna eat it a little bit on the, okay, I'll have people being like, oh, this is so basic, why did you even, but like, all right, fuck it, I'll set my ego aside and realize there's a whole lot of silent people listening, or maybe not silent people listening who are like, oh, I didn't even know what Reddit was, like, I'm glad you explained all that stuff, like, for real, like, that was one of the examples, I was like, I guess I'll explain Reddit, because you just kind of forget once you get into something, whatever it is, you forget how many people literally have no experience with it.

0:51:25 Cecil: It is Yeah, yeah.

0:51:42 Cecil: Yeah. Sure. Sure. This Last week I, I premiered on my channel an egg dish that is very commonly done as a breakfast in Japan and in many Asian countries. It's hot rice. You crack an egg in it. You whip that egg along with the rice, and then you add a few additives, whatever you're fancy. In mine, I used some toasted sesame oil, some sesame seeds, seeds, a little bit of fried pork, and some soy sauce. And you toss that together. And you're essentially making, if you're familiar with the Italian concept of carbonara, which is where you're cooking, you're partially cooking an egg in something hot.

And in carbonara it would be noodles, in this it's rice. And it's a real simple dish. I literally didn't cook anything, right? I just took things that were, like the rice, I guess I cooked it in in the microwave, but you know, I'm not, I mean, there's no, this, this recipe requires very little skill, but at the same time, after posting it, people were like, I've never heard of this before. I didn't know this thing existed. And so like, yeah, there there's always this back and forth of, you know, while it might be very simple, it might be that they've never done it or never heard of it and they've tried it and maybe they can try it and enjoy it.

0:52:06 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:53:10 Thomas: You but I want to ask you about because they in the again, all our fucking my and Lydia's experience with cooking is basically meal kits. And it gives you a ton of experience. It's really cool. But they pretty much always have you use olive oil for everything. And I was just watching one of your videos and you talked about like the smoke point of oils. And I'm wondering, is that something that we should change? Should we should we start using a different oil? Why don't you explain kind of what I'm referencing there? And maybe I'll ask you for the tip afterwards, I suppose.

0:53:13 Cecil: Yeah, sure. Yeah. Sure. Sure. So oils, especially olive oils, something like extra virgin olive oil has particulate matter in it, right? So if you hold up extra virgin oil in a clear bottle, you'll see it's slightly green. And what's in it is pieces, very, very fine pieces of olive, right, so the very, very tiny particulates that come with the olive. And so when someone cooks that, if I put that over for high, high heat, it will, it will start to smoke. It'll probably start smoking much more than if I were to use something like a peanut oil or, um, or a canola oil or a grapeseed oil. Those have high smoke points, low particulate, and they won't, they won't like make your kitchen smoke up as much. If you pay attention to the, everything's going to smoke if you get it hot enough.

0:54:31 Thomas: Right, right.

0:54:32 Cecil: Right. So like, like it, it's not impossible that it's going to smoke, it's just that there's a bigger range and more leeway on on some of these other oils. Uh, I cook very often if I'm cooking in, you know, like, uh, something at home, I won't use olive oil, uh. Unless I'm cooking something that I think needs the olive oil. Very often if I am sauteing something, I'll just cook it with, uh you know with peanut oil. My peanut oil is my go -to. I almost always have peanut oil or grapeseed oil around.

0:54:32 Thomas: Sure. Yeah.

0:54:52 Thomas: We got to get us some peanut oil. Although, OK, I don't remember if people who are allergic to peanuts are also.

0:55:03 Cecil: Yeah, I wouldn't stay away from that if I, if you're allergic to it. But I cook in peanut oil all the time because my wife and I aren't.

0:55:05 Thomas: OK, yeah, I'm not. But Arlo is. So never mind. Probably. What's

0:55:09 Cecil: Yeah, my wife wife and I, grapeseed, graпeseed would be fine.

0:55:09 Thomas: The what's the next best one? That's not grapeseed. There we

0:55:12 Cecil: Grapeseed it'd be fine, but are high heat oils. They'll be fine to cook in, and you like, the thing is it's not dangerous. It's not bad if it gets some smoke. That's okay, and If you like the flavor of olive oil and you like The Flavor of Olive Oil after it has reached its smoke point, which is a little more, it's a different flavor, that's fine. You can certainly cook with it. I just choose not to myself. It also is, to be honest, it also kind of sucks to do when you're cooking for a show because it looks like you're burning everything. If I don't

0:55:12 Thomas: Go.

0:55:23 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah,

0:55:48 Cecil: Cook with something that has a higher smoke point, it looks Like I'm literally just smoke, like lighting my house on fire. And I'm like, well, that's, but if you have a big hood and whatever, you're fine.

0:55:54 Thomas: That happens happens to us often. And I bet that's what this is. Was kind of my question is like, I like the flavor of olive oil a lot, but you said something in the video that was like, yeah, but you can use that more kind of for finishing like later in the stages, often In these early stages when you're just, I don't know, is it sauteing something or whatever when you get the, yeah.

0:56:09 Cecil: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. If you're sauteing something in a pan, yeah.

0:56:17 Thomas: Do you, does the flavor really make a difference at that stage much? You know, if I do that in olive oil versus, oh

0:56:21 Cecil: It's not something something that, I mean, you got to have a really refined palate, I think, to taste it in that kind of stage. My choice to use olive oil is like in a vinaigrette, or if I'm going to finish something with a little bit of oil on top of it. If I'm going to put out bread or whatever, I like to have like nice olive oil that you can dip it into. Like those are the moments that I would use olive foil, right? I would use it so I could taste, I could experience the fullness of its flavor. Grape seed oil doesn't have flavor, right? So it's, you're not, I'm not adding anything to it. It's if you, if you taste, take take, uh, a finger full of grapeseed oil, you'd be like, well, it doesn't taste, it just has oily qualities and that's it.

0:56:33 Thomas: Yeah It's just to, to do the cooking part yeah, I

0:57:01 Cecil: That's it, it's just a lubricant. I mean, it doesn'T do anything, but, olive oil has flavor and so you want to experience that flavor as, as, fully as you can. You want to add it after things have cooked and after there's going to be a lot of heat because that flavor won't change. It will taste like the olive oil. It will change. If you bring it to smoke point, it will change, there's actually a really interesting video where a guy on YouTube, a really popular YouTuber, he cooks a little olive oil till it gets to smokepoint and he tastes it to see if it tastes rancid because that was the comments that many chefs used to make was that it tastes rancid or it tastes bad afterwards and and it's not the case. It doesn't, it changes its flavor, but it doesn't taste bad. It just tastes different. And so that's the thing you got to pay attention to. You have to be willing to have that different flavor at the end. It's not going to taste like raw olive oil.

0:57:02 Thomas: Love Interesting.

0:57:53 Thomas: I, that's a really good tip, and one I will actually utilize because that's why the, the kitchen gets so fucking smoky. It seemed, it Seemed unnecessarily, I was like, are you burning stuff? That's the constant thing.

0:58:00 Cecil: It gets a smoky. Yeah.

0:58:05 Thomas: Like, areyou burning something? She's like, no, I'm doing it fucking how we're supposed to do it. I can't believe we're going so long. So I want to there's definitely a couple of questions I want to make sure we squeeze in and God, there's so much more that I would love to have done. Maybe we'll follow up sometime. But yeah, something that took you a long time to master? Like cooking, whether it's a dish, a technique, what's Something that was just like, Oh, this is so fucking hard. I can't, you know, like, I, I wanna know.

0:58:05 Cecil: It'S the oil is yeah. Yeah, yep. Yeah sure. Yeah absolutely. Yeah Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I want another time. Well, yeah, it sounds good.

0:58:31 Cecil: So, you know, if we're talking about baking, one of the hardest things for me to master was what they call the cut-in method. And the cut in method is used for pie crusts, and it's used for biscuits, and basically what you're doing is you're taking butter and you're cutting it.

0:58:47 Thomas: Fuck. Yes. I've done this recently.

0:58:50 Cecil: You're cutting it into flour. And so the thing that I fuck up all the time is that I'm impatient, right? So So what you really should be doing is putting like, like you should cut in a little and then put it in the freezer for a minute or two to let it make it. So it doesn't, because if it starts to get a little oily, that means you've gone, you've gotten it too warm. And so, uh, so my pie doughs for a long time and same thing with my biscuits for a long time, they always had, they were always flat. They didn't look good.

0:58:50 Thomas: Oh, it's so hard.

0:59:20 Cecil: They were, sometimes they break. Um, they weren't certainly not to the level that I wanted them to be at. To master. In fact, in culinary school, they do these things called practicals where you have to cook a thing, right? So you're cooking a thing for, it's

0:59:03 Thomas: Okay. Yeah, man. That, that sounds really fun. I mean, I would be stressed the whole time, but it sounds really fun

0:59:35 Cecil: Stressful, but you'll have to like, in one of the days will be a test day. So you'll come in and you'll do a full written test in the regular class, and then you'll go straight to the kitchen and the chef will say, I want everybody to to make 12 biscuits uh two dozen shortbread cookies and you know and then name some other stuff right and so for the three hours that you're in there you have to plot your time you have to figure out what you're going to make and you have to do it and I knew there was a biscuit practical coming up and I my biscuits were terrible they kept on falling over they'd be either wouldn't rise how I would like and they wouldn't get layers and it was just awful and so I I made no shit.

I went in on my day off and you could just go in and cook at the school. You could just goes in and just practice. And I practiced all Saturday and a whole day that I wasn't supposed to be there. And I must've made 25 biscuits, I made a tray of biscuits just trying to learn how to do it. It just took that long. It seriously took that long. It was very difficult. Now, when you're talking about cooking,

1:00:31 Thomas: Hold on, let's get, get the ironclad tip there just to make sure nobody missed it, because it seems like, let me not have it wrong, the key is with some of those flaky crusts or whatever to keep the butter coldest yeah as long until you're baking it so you're saying maybe be patient, you know, do a little bit, pop it back in in the freezer, do a little bit more

1:00:41 Cecil: Gotta stay cool. It's gotta say cool. Everything's got to stay cold. Yeah. And it's not just that it's it's we take your stuff. Put You your butter in the freezer to start. Then when you come out, if you're doing it by hand, you want work quickly and then put it back in the fridge. My favorite way to do it nowadays is with a food processor because the food processor, I can do it in like seven pulses and nothing gets warm. And then I can just start adding my liquid. And, you know, another thing too is very often people will stir too much.

Biscuits and pie doughs really need to be just brought together. They shouldn't be spun. They should just come together. And then once they're together, you should wrap them up and put them in the fridge for a few minutes, however long that is, to make sure they're cold before you start rolling them out. Want to make sure everything is always staying cold. It helps if you have a big marble something in your your kitchen or a big granite, something to roll it out on that's chilled. That always helps. But yeah, you want to make sure it's cold.

That's the key. That is absolutely the key and be very light and gentle with it because it's a gentle, delicate pastry. You don't want to overmix it. If you overmixed it, it gets tough and it doesn't taste good. Also wanted to say too, that when I, when I was cooking and I still don't know that I've mastered it completely, completely, I've for years tried to master meatballs and it sounds like it sounds easy,

1:00:50 Thomas: Yeah oh

1:02:04 Cecil: But it's not. There's, there's a million, there'S a million recipes out there. I still haven't come across one that I am very, very enamored with. Um, but I'm, I'm still working on it. That's something I, that's something I don't know that I'll ever stop doing. I'm always making new meatball recipes. And I don't know that I have one that is, that is just, you know, that's a thing that I'm just like, Oh, this is my, this is my money recipe. I'm always trying new stuff.

1:02:04 Thomas: No it's not I I we've we've done a few, I think that, you know, because we do the fake meats, obviously, and uh they, I could not make a meatball, it was a meat, you know, particles, it was it's like a meat confetti, you know, just how do you keep it fucking together, yeah no, those are those are pink

1:02:32 Cecil: Yeah. Yeah. Well, eggs will help for sure with that. So, you know, yeah, you want to put eggs and breadcrumbs in there. Those are all very common additives. So eggs and breadcrumbs, that'll help to keep the thing together. But, you Know, the flavoring agents in there, sometimes people will put onions, sometimes people sweat garlic, sometimes People put basil, you know there's all kinds of different flavoring Agents that go in. I think I've sort of hammered out, you know, uh, ones that aren't Italian, but the Italian meatballs, I'm still, I'm still learning. I'm figuring it out.

1:02:43 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah yeah, alright, then believe this has to be the final question, but I think you're in that typical 80s sitcom situation, you got the big boss coming over for dinner, you know, and you gotta impress them, you also there's gonna be something weird like you have a fucking like an alien in your attic, I think there's gotta be something real weird cause it's an 80s sitcom something bizarre, but But let's pretend you are, you know, not a total idiot at cooking, but like, you know, you're pretty new to cooking, but you want to cook something that's really going to impress somebody. I'm curious if you have an option for us that something like maximize the ratio of, you know, coolness and impressiveness to how much skill it takes. Maybe something that seems like, oh, this, this seems really intricate and whatever, but actually it's super easy. I wonder if you could give people a tip for what they should look to cook.

1:03:20 Cecil: Yeah, sure. Right. Yeah absolutely. Yeah yeah sure yeah. Steamed hams. That's what you want to go with, steamed hams for your boss. No, uh no, seriously, one of the best things that you can cook is beef bourguignon and it's a braise, right? So, And this, of course, is if you're someone eats meat. If you're not, my suggestion would be some sort of casserole. Maybe a vegetarian lasagna would be something I would go with.

1:04:10 Thomas: Hmm.

1:04:11 Cecil: The reason why you want to do something with a braise is a braised is hard to overcook. So a there's a wide gulf where it is cooked and tender and will stay just basically tender for a while until it becomes overcooked. And so there's a lot of grace that you get with something like that. And it also doesn't require you to constantly be over it. You don't have to cook initially. You have to do something initially to get it all together. But once you put that lid on and it goes in the oven or it stays on the stove on a low heat, that thing cooks itself. And so you don't have to mess with it. And then you can just serve it. And so my suggestion is go for a braise, a pot roast, a beef bourguignon.

Those will be the things that I would suggest, um, you know, that would make something that, you know, even even if you wanted to cook like a pork shoulder, um, something that is a braise is good for a nice tough cut of meat that's going to cook over low wet heat or liquid heat for a long time. So you're talking three hours, it takes a while to make, but it doesn't require a lot of attention. And so you can make something like that, and they almost always taste amazing because, um,

1:04:32 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

1:05:26 Cecil: Because you the water out of that. That's what basically when you're putting it together, you're getting a lot of the water and then you're adding flavorful liquids. So you're basically just intensifying flavors for three hours. And it, what happens to, when meat cooks, it releases a collagen into the, into the sauce itself. So it thickens the sauce. And so that's what gives it that mouthfeel of, you know, again, you got to like meat to do that, but you know it's, you know.

1:05:51 Thomas: You Know that's that's the majority of people, no, no, no, worries. Yeah. That's awesome. I love that tip, and I also am interested, um, you know, maybe for me, like, it's fun finding the things that work with fake meat and the ones that don't, because I love, you know, there's a lot of recipes and stuff and dishes where, yeah, the meat is, you know, kind of critical, but it's also not like the main focal point of flavor, you know. And so, like, the fake meats are great for that.

1:05:51 Cecil: Yeah. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, sure. Sure. Yeah they are.

1:06:13 Thomas: I absolutely love fake meats. I don't know if you have any experience with them, but yeah, yeah,

1:06:16 Cecil: Oh, I love them. I, I think they're both great and they both have their uses. Like beyond for certain things. I like impossible for other things, but I think there are excellent choices and it's turned me into a, a quasi vegetarian because I will, I will very often just think, Oh, oh, I will make this tonight, but instead I'll just use this fake meat because it tastes just like regular meat and it's healthier. And I'll be like, I'll just make that instead. And so it's turning me more and more and more vegetarian, which I like. And I think that they're wonderful. Had burgers made with it. I've been cooking for a long time. I've made spaghetti made with it. I've ran the gamut with it and I've really enjoyed cooking with it because there are some stuff it just doesn't work for.

1:06:31 Thomas: Yeah, right. Yeah, sure.

1:07:01 Cecil: But other stuff is, I mean, the stuff that it does work for it, it's very, it's not, it's impossible to tell that it's not meat, but it tastes very good. Yep.

1:07:10 Thomas: Absolutely. And I always tell people, you for another time, but I always Tell people don't, if you are someone who's interested in maybe helping the environment and maybe animal welfare a little bit, but you're always like, I can't give up bacon or whatever. I always help people do what you're describing there. If you give up meat twice a week, that's two sevenths of a good, you know, like it doesn't don't humans have this thing where they have to be like, no, a hundred percent or nothing. I have to beat.

1:07:26 Cecil: Yep. That's Good, it's 100 %. Yeah.

1:07:33 Thomas: Sure.

1:07:33 Cecil: No, yeah.

1:07:33 Thomas: I have a pure, beautiful soul who doesn't harm it. It's like, No, if you gave up half your meat, if two people gave up, half their meat, that is the same as one person.

1:07:33 Cecil: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's It's good.

1:07:41 Thomas: You know what I mean? And so finding those opportunities where like, you're not really sacrificing much, but, uh, but you're still, you Know, maybe not eating animals for that one meal. I think that's super cool if people want to do that. So I appreciate that, that kind of that tip there. Um, this has been amazing. Cecil, so much fun. Uh, definitely check out the channel Season Liberally on YouTube and of course, cognitive dissonance citation needed. Um, but yeah, Season Liberally, check it out. It's a, it's a gem on YouTube. Uh... It's gotten quite a bit of attention though. So I hope you will continue doing it.

1:07:42 Cecil: Yeah. Yeah.

1:08:10 Cecil: I Will See. We'll see, it's been a lot Of work, but it's, it's a lot of fun.

1:08:10 Thomas: Um... Yeah, yeah. For sure. But, you know, we'll always have that even if you, you know, even if it comes to an end.

1:08:16 Cecil: Yeah, exactly. Right. It's always going to be there no matter what. So

1:08:17 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. It's not like food is going to change all that much. No, this has been a delight. Thanks so much, Cecil. Really appreciate the time.

1:08:20 Cecil: Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.