Avgolemono, Chicken and Rice, and Caesar Salad With Chris Bianco

March 23, 2026·45 min·4 clips

Dave Chang experiments with Greek avgolemono sauce while Chris Bianco unexpectedly shows up, derailing the plan.

Dave opens by saying the lab went sideways. He set out to talk through a Greek-style chicken soup, but Chris Bianco arrives and the room slips into banter, improvisation, and a little chaos. The chicken comes first. Dave has roasted a four-pound bird, salted it hard, pulled the meat, and started turning the bones into stock. Time is already pushing back, so the carcass and extra legs go into the pressure cooker. Twenty minutes will have to do. That becomes the spirit of the episode. The soup is less a recipe than an argument with the kitchen: what should happen, what is actually available, and what still tastes good. Dave and Chris drift through grandmothers, strangers, bouillon, MSG, and the shortcuts people use all the time but do not always admit. Dave brings up dashida, treating the Korean beef bouillon as both useful and a little sneaky. Then he gets to the pan. He loosens the browned bits from the chicken rack with water and sends them back into the soup, like finding flavor someone almost threw away. Chris is into it. The pleasure here is not tidy technique. It is watching a cook pull every usable thing back into the pot. Rice and shredded chicken hold it together. The final soup lands somewhere between Greek inspiration, roast chicken rescue, and whatever Dave can finish before time runs out. Chris takes it kindly. He likes the subtle, refreshing middle, even as he starts imagining crisp rice and other ways to push it. Dave is already thinking about the next version, which might go hot and sour. That fits the episode. A finished dish is not really the ending here. It is proof that the next attempt has somewhere to start.

As heard by us

A loose chicken-and-rice Lab Session where avgolemono turns into sauce, soup, Caesar idea, and a conversation about home cooking.

Dave Chang starts with roast chicken and lets the episode turn into a loose Lab Session around avgolemono, chicken and rice, and a Caesar-adjacent sauce.

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Why you'd press play

A Greek egg-lemon sauce morphs into Caesar dressing while Chris Bianco shows up and claims the chicken legs.

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