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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in SoHo. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. Quick programming note, the October Get Lit with all of the book club event is coming up. We have been reading the novel Yellowface, and now it's time to discuss. Tomorrow at 6:00 PM, I'll be at the New York Public Library, Stavros Niarchos Foundation branch in that beautiful rooftop room in conversation with author R. F. Kuang. We'll be joined by special music guests Mxmtoon.

Now the event is sold out. If you do have a ticket, I'd say get there early to make sure you get a good seat. Now, as I said, the event is sold out. The seats are first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30. If you weren't able to get a ticket or you can't come to the live event, never fear, you can stream the event online. Head to wnyc.org/getlit, to find out how. Now, to more of the show, let's talk cooking.

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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Let's get down to basics.

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Alison Stewart: Fans of the Babish Culinary Universe, the cooking YouTube channel with more than 10 million subscribers, will know that theme song is the opening for one of the channel's most beloved series, Basics with Babish. Basics with Babish videos are what they sound like. Babish, aka Andrew Ray, taking on go-to recipes, but he also includes mistakes he makes along the way, or changes in ingredients and techniques as he tries to perfect a basic carbonara or a well-cooked steak or BLT. The list goes on.

He doesn't have officially professional training. He's a regular home cook just like us. Well, maybe not like me, better than I am. Andrew Rea has a new cookbook out that shares the title of the series. Get out your tiny whisks, Basics with Babish: Recipes for Screwing Up, Trying Again, and Hitting It Out of the Park, is out now. Welcome to the studio, Andrew.

Andrew Rea: Thank you so much for having me, Alison.

Alison Stewart: When you started your channel Making Binging with Babish videos inspired by, I like you to call it, pop culture cooking universe. When did the idea come to branch out? What were your concerns? What did you have to ask yourself before you decided to branch out?

Andrew Rea: Well, like you said, it was a pop culture show, so I had a pop culture crutch. I would get people in the door by making foods from their fandom. I wasn't sure if people wanted to see me just cook or if they just wanted to see the prisons gravy from Goodfellas. I wanted to experiment and take the leap there. Luckily people took to it and it's become a successful series.

True to the title, it is basically a show about me making mistakes until I get it right. That's typically what happens. It started almost accidentally on the channel. Early on, I showed a mistake involving peeling garlic, and I thought it was funny, so I left it in. As it turns out, not only did it make the recipes feel more accessible to people watching who might not try to otherwise, it also was a learning opportunity to see where I went wrong and how to make it come out better next time.

Alison Stewart: Was this something you've always applied to your life, this idea where making mistakes is okay, or is that something you had to learn and mature into?

Andrew Rea: I'm still learning every minute of every day because as soon as I make a mistake, I don't know about the voice in your head, but it immediately attacks. It's like, "No, you're not good enough to do this. You shouldn't have tried this in the first place." Voice in your head's mean. At least mine is. I still definitely beat myself up when I make mistakes, but I'm getting better and better at looking back on them in retrospect as learning experiences and seeing what I can do better next time. My hope is that I will encourage readers to do that with this book, but I know it's hard, guys. I know it's like giving the advice like, "Just be yourself." "Thanks, I'll do that then."

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Well, it's interesting because people make mistakes and they get upset about them because they think someone's going to come down on them for them. It's not necessarily the mistake itself, some of it's the after-effect. That idea that you're giving people permission to be like, "I think we're not all perfect. We just do our best."

Andrew Rea: Yes. 99% of the time, the person who's going to come down on you is you. That's the hardest thing to unlearn. Especially, with a little bit of time maybe the day after you burnt or your bread didn't rise or whatever, you can start taking steps to be like, "Okay, what do I do next time instead of, 'I'm never baking again'?" which I've definitely told myself more than once. Maybe even in the past week, but you live and you learn. That's the motto of the book, I guess.

Alison Stewart: What's a basic in your universe-- in the Babish universe?

Andrew Rea: Oh. It's a tricky term because a lot of people equate basic with easy, and I don't necessarily. It's more foundational. Tomato sauce, first off, it is very basic. It's very simple. There's a lot of subtlety. It can yield many subtleties depending on how you treat it. It can be used in a million different ways. It also puts a lot of technique on display. You got to slice stuff, you got to dice stuff, you got to sauté, you got to braise, you got to finish. There's a lot of culinary technique on display in something as simple as a tomato sauce.

Alison Stewart: What's a common mistake people make with their tomato sauce?

Andrew Rea: Way too common is cooking it in reactive cookware. non-stick or cast iron. I know cast iron looks really great to make tomato sauce or whatever in, but acidity, particularly the acidity of tomatoes and particularly after cooking more than half an hour, which most tomato sauces are doing, it basically takes on this metallic flavor from the reactive cook where it's not going to hurt you, but it doesn't taste so good. Try to keep the tomato sauce to stainless steel.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Andrew Rea, founder of the Babish Culinary Universe YouTube channel. The new cookbook is inspired by the series Basics with Babish. How did you want to organize your cookbook?

Andrew Rea: Like I said, it starts foundationally. In the beginning, it's bread. It's one of the more essential human foods, one of the foods that we have the oldest relationship with. Not that I go too much into the philosophy there but more just that it's an excellent thing to be able to make yourself because it's so elemental and deceivingly simple. Then it moves on to eggs, and then into vegetables and sides and proteins. It is organized pretty traditionally in terms of cookbook.

I wouldn't say start at the beginning and finish at the end unless you're just reading it, but what is a little bit more sequential is the conversation that I have with the reader, with every recipe comes a troubleshooting segment section that's posed as a Q&A between me and the reader. There's actually, I wouldn't call it a storyline, but there's an arc that we experienced. In the beginning, we're just getting to know each other. In the middle, we get into a fight a little bit. Then by the end, we lovingly say goodbye. It's one of the many ways that I tried to bring a little bit of my personality and my presentation to the cookbook. It isn't just another straight reference that's sitting on your shelf.

Alison Stewart: There's always a paragraph that's next to the recipe that says, "How I screwed up," "I" meaning you.

Andrew Rea: Yes. With every recipe comes a description of how I've personally screwed it up. It's both to hopefully get a little chuckle but also to show you where I went wrong so maybe you can avoid those pitfalls and more importantly, to make it feel more accessible. That's the reason I show mistakes on my show is because the general reaction I've seen is if he can do it, I can do it. Yes, if I, meaning me, if I can do it, you most certainly can do it and you just might have to screw it up a couple of times like I have.

Alison Stewart: You have a list of do's and don'ts. Just so you can set yourself up for success doesn't mean you're going to achieve it and that's okay as we've established in your universe. One of your first is to make sure you have everything that you need. I'm never quite sure how to say this, mise en--

Andrew Rea: Mise en place.

Alison Stewart: Mise en place.

Andrew Rea: Yes. I do not speak French apart from those words. No, it's the deceivingly simple-sounding act of just prepping everything. The way I suggest to do that is to look at your ingredients list like a to-do list before you even touch the instructions. If it says half a small onion, finely chopped, get a half an onion, finely chop it. Before you turn on any ovens or burners, that's what's being done first.

Measure out things, chop, slice, whatever you got to do. Have everything set up in little bowls if you're fastidious and organized. If you're like me, there's just piles everywhere, and just have everything ready to go. The best exercise for that is probably stir fry because the whole dish cooks in three minutes, and so you have to have everything ready. You cannot do any prep while you're cooking or it's just going to get ruined.

Alison Stewart: It's go time.

Andrew Rea: It's go time. Fried rice is go time. Yes.

Alison Stewart: One of your don'ts is don't bite off more than you can chew in the kitchen. What is an example of that?

Andrew Rea: I guess a lot of the book is me speaking from personal experience. This has probably been my experience that if I'm doing a dinner party or something, I tend to want to over-impress or just cook well above my pay grade. I still definitely make that mistake. Following the recipe carefully and not trying to overextend yourself, maybe sticking with your core competencies if you're entertaining so you're not too stressed, and saving the experimentation for when you can-- it's not dinner that night and otherwise, you're going to have to place an emergency pizza order or something if it doesn't work out.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Andrew Rea. The name of the book is Basics with Babish: Recipes for Screwing Up, Trying Again, and Hitting It Out of the Park. If you think about one set of skills that someone, say, they want to take a cooking class, what would you suggest? Do you think it's knife skills? Is it a basic cooking class? What do you think would be really helpful for new cooks?

Andrew Rea: Oh, knife skills, absolutely. I wish there was a spice rack class.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's cool. Interesting.

Andrew Rea: That was a subject of great confusion for me when I was first starting out because you buy the multipack of spices when you get your first kitchen, or in my case, dorm room shared space, and there's 18 to 25 spices in there. You know all of them. There's basil, there's parsley, there's cumin, but what do you use them for exactly? They all taste good in their own right, but do I put cumin on my tortellini? Probably not unless you're doing something really funky.

Maybe that's less of a class and maybe more going through and just tasting each one, seeing what it actually tastes like just focusing on that so you get a knowledge base there. Knife skills, of course, are essential. The most important thing I can tell you is to make a claw with your hands and keep your fingers out of the way and to use a sharp knife. Sharp knife is a safe knife. That's the old saying.

Alison Stewart: There's a story in the book about one of the times you were fired, maybe your only restaurant job. It involved a knife accident.

Andrew Rea: Yes. I was at a little lunch cafe in Brooklyn. I doubt they remember me. If they do, it's because it's a story that they tell to their friends after a few drinks. Basically, I talked my way into this job with no experience as a line cook in this cafe. I went to my first day of work lunch rush and a sharp knife is a safe knife but it'll still get you. I definitely succumbed to that because I sunk the blade in my finger all the way down to my fingernail and anybody who's worked the line will tell you that unless you are unconscious, you're getting wrapped up and you're finishing your shift. There was just a mutual understanding between me and the owners. They didn't call me to see when I was coming in next and I didn't ask.

[laughter]

Andrew Rea: It's just kind of, "We'll just let pretend this didn't happen."

Alison Stewart: My guest is Andrew Rea. The name of the book is Basics with Babish: Recipes for Screwing Up, Trying Again, and Hitting It Out of the Park. We checked out your most viewed videos on Babish Culinary Universe channel for the basic series, and the two top-ranking recipes are carbonara and mac and cheese, 10 million views each. Could you take us through the approach on each of these recipes, and any thoughts on why those are your most viewed?

Andrew Rea: Well, carbonara, I can tell you why it's my most viewed. It's because it was made in direct response to another channel called Italia Squisita, which is an Italian cookery channel. It's a wonderful, beautiful resource. They started a series where they had steamed Italian chefs, let's call it critique, at the top carbonara video is online. They pulled up my carbonara from Master of None I had recreated. True to form, just like Aziz Ansari's character in the show, I had done a pretty bad job.

I was mashing things together, the pan was too, but it did come out good and I enjoyed it. I received a lot of flack from these very talented Italian chefs. I wanted to really get it right and show that I could make it properly the traditional way and some more modern or Americanized ways. That's why that one was so big. Then the second one was what? Mac and cheese?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Andrew Rea: Well, that one, mostly probably because of the thumbnail. It's this stretchy, gooey-looking thing. It's exactly what you imagined mac and cheese to be, but it rarely is. Since that episode has come out, the mac and cheese recipe has actually been massively simplified in this book. Not everything in this book is simple. Tonkotsu ramen takes a day and a half to make, but the mac and cheese is extremely simple because it's made with a blender. I don't know if you've ever made a cheese sauce before, but it's one of the least fun things to do when you're starting out because you got to make a roux. You got to add the cheese just at the right moment otherwise it's going to be grainy, and it's very difficult.

It's a nightmare if you're just starting now. With the blender mac and cheese, we're basically taking a restaurant cacio e pepe method where you put the cheese, and in our case, a couple of egg yolks in the blender, cook the pasta in milk, and then strain out that milk. Slowly pour the hot milk into the blender while it's running. It emulsifies everything together into the super creamy sauce, effortless. Then once you stir it with a little bit of extra cheese, it's so melty and stretchy. It's disgusting. It's awesome.

Alison Stewart: It's so disgusting it makes it awesome. Is there something that you do, and you know that you will stand by how you prepare something, that really goes against the grain of traditional cooks and traditionally trained chefs that they would turn their nose up at but you stand by?

Andrew Rea: I don't know if that exists because I won't stand by anything if there's a better way to do it.

Alison Stewart: Oh, Interesting. You're flexible.

Andrew Rea: When it comes to me being wrong, hell yes, I'm flexible. Sorry for using [unintelligible 00:15:57].

Alison Stewart: That's okay. That's on the okay list.

Andrew Rea: Okay, cool. No, I'm very quick to admit when I'm wrong, and I'm very quick to update what I'm doing if there's a better way to do it. That being said, there are some things that are objectively-- the right or wrong way to do things. I'm trying to think of one that I would really stand by. Even something-- most foodies would tell you, never cook a steak past 1:35. I wouldn't do that if I was serving it to myself, but if that's what you asked me to do, I would gleefully do it. That's how you like your steak. I'm not trying to change your preferences. Yes, I'm flexible in both my technique, and just, everybody's got their way. Everybody's got their best way to do things.

Alison Stewart: I wonder if that flexibility is also partly borne out of-- you can go on, make a video the next day, and change your mind as opposed to a cookbook. Now it's here forever. You're in a me-- that's okay, but you're in a medium where you can change.

Andrew Rea: One great thing about being a YouTuber is that you can be nimble and you be flexible and you can try new things. I even have a show called Botched by Babish where I go back and address things that people said I did wrong. When they say I did it wrong and enough people say I did it wrong, I believe them. Yes, in book form, a little bit harder for me to go back and fix mistakes. Luckily, the book is all about how I've made mistakes. If there's any mistakes in the book, it's covered by the premise.

Alison Stewart: It's on brand.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: We're on topic.

Andrew Rea: Yes.

Alison Stewart: How has the food media landscape changed since you started?

Andrew Rea: Oh, man, it's pretty crazy how fast all of media is changing, but food media has experienced some wild ups and downs. When I started, it was mostly instructional cooking. There were some little stunt food videos. Actually, early on, it was mostly stunt food. I think things are cyclical because when YouTube started out, the biggest food videos were-- I can't remember the name of it, but they would just basically mash 50 being mashed together into shape mac lasagna, and now for years it became instructional. Everybody wanted instructional videos.

Now we've come back to stunting spectacle. The biggest YouTube videos are all about cooking in the most extreme conditions, or with the most expensive ingredients, or trying eating at every-- one of my favorites that came out recently is this guy who ate at every Margaritaville in the country just to do it, basically, and just to have that experience. That's where food media is right now. It's ever-changing. It's changing faster and faster. That's just the nature of how YouTube and social platforms are working right now.

Alison Stewart: What's next in your universe-- in the Babish Universe?

Andrew Rea: Well, we have a hospitality concept coming soon, The Bed & Babish. It's a vacation rental in the Catskills aimed to foodies. Probably going to be the only Airbnb ever with a fully functional kitchen and sharp knives in the drawer. Also, some à la carte options to have like the fridge filled with groceries and recipe cards or just eat-and-eat meals if you want some easier. We have a whole bunch of new shows coming out. We have a brand of-- how do I say this? It's medicated. It's medication if you will. Can I say the--

Alison Stewart: Sure.

Andrew Rea: We have a cannabis brand coming up.

Alison Stewart: Sure.

Andrew Rea: It is a THC-infused sugar and kosher salt called Baked with Babish.

[laughter]

Andrew Rea: It's coming in the spring, and it's designed for precision dose edibles because nothing's worse in the world than eating a brownie, waiting an hour and a half, nothing happening, and being like, "I should eat four more," and then losing your mind. It's designed to prevent that from happening. I'm going to be working on a short film that should be coming out early next year, about just food appreciation and origins. We have a new podcast coming about food stories and lore. A whole bunch of stuff, so keep your eyes peeled.

Alison Stewart: The book is called Basics with Babish: Recipes for Screwing Up, Trying Again, and Hitting It Out of the Park. My guest has been Andrew Rea. Andrew, thank you for coming in.

Andrew Rea: Thank you so much for having me, Alison.

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