Braised Tofu, A5 Wagyu Steak, Aging, and Laughter with Joel McHale

April 2, 2026·1 hr 11 min·6 clips

Dave Chang serves comedian Joel McHale braised tofu and a $200 A5 Wagyu steak to test his cooking skills.

The setup is simple enough. The host wants to recreate a food memory for Joel McHale while pretending beef, chicken, and pork are off the table. Then tofu slides in from the side. The misdirect gives the whole conversation its shape: loose, practical, and ready to abandon the plan for the next joke. Stock becomes the status test. The host admits he is using chicken bouillon because scratch stock would be saved for some imaginary higher class of guest. McHale grabs that immediately. He starts pushing on who would earn the real thing, from Ken Jeong to Sean Penn to the Fat Boys. Nobody stays on track for long. Cooking talk bumps into celebrity ranking, old references, quick corrections, and the uncomfortable accounting of who is still alive. That is the fun of it. A pantry shortcut becomes a bit, then a phone-a-friend idea, then somehow finds its way back to the pot. The host keeps cutting himself down. He says the shortcut is more realistic anyway, since paste beats boxed chicken broth in his kitchen. McHale spots how clean everything looks and jokes that his version would involve fifteen extra dishes scattered around. The food still counts. The tofu and broth are not treated like a lesson, just the thing in front of them while the riffs keep moving. The ending softens. Steak arrives, photos happen, Minnesota waits, and McHale will not let the host close cleanly. By the final cleanup question, it feels less like a recipe and more like a tired, funny kitchen hang with good beef waiting at the end.

As heard by us

Joel McHale turns Dave Chang's tofu-and-steak session into a funny, sideways kitchen hangout.

Dave Chang brings Joel McHale to the counter for a loose cooking session that starts with braised tofu and keeps finding its way back to steak, shortcuts, and status jokes.

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Why you'd press play

You want a steak dinner disguised as a loose, joke-heavy kitchen hangout.

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