The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters · American Public Media

832: Back-to-School Cooking with Peter J. Kim and David Nayfeld

·50 min·4 clips

Peter Kim explains how instant ramen is a staple in Korean, Japanese, Mexican, and Nigerian food cultures.

Francis Lam opens with the plain truth that the season is busier and the cooking load is climbing. He gives the moment his own back-to-school, back-to-busy spin. The hour is built around helping people feed themselves and the small folks in their lives efficiently and well. Peter Kim comes first. Lam introduces him as the writer of The Instant Ramen Kitchen. He also points to Kim's unusual food background, including Infinite Table, the immersive dining experience that uses 360-degree video, storytelling, and food to transport guests around the world. Kim begins with the amount of liquid and what it does to a packet of ramen. Two cups make soup noodles. Half a cup or three quarters of a cup push the noodles toward something dry. In between, the bowl can land saucy or wet without becoming soup. That range becomes the heart of the conversation. Kim then moves to Borscht instant ramen. He says the combination seems unlikely at first, yet the noodles cooking in the liquid turn pink and beautiful. The seasoning sachet does much of the work, which lets him keep the ingredient list to bacon, beets, cabbage, tomato paste, sour cream, and dill. The dish evokes borscht even if it is not traditional borscht. It also stands on its own as a full bowl with ramen flavor and noodles already in place. Kim says he has made it for Ukrainian friends. They have grudgingly admitted that it is pretty delicious. Lam keeps the conversation tied to dinner reality by promising a later talk with David Neifeld, a chef in San Francisco who learned to feed his daughter as a single dad. The episode stays close to the challenge of getting supper done when life is already moving fast.

As heard by us

Instant ramen gets a sharper job description for busy weeknights.

The show turns the back-to-school, back-to-busy squeeze into a practical hour about cooking efficiently. Francis Lam opens with Peter Kim and The Instant Ramen Kitchen, then lets Kim map how three-minute noodles can become soup, a saucy bowl, or a dry plate for aglio e olio…

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Why you'd press play

You get ramen tricks for nights when the calendar starts winning.

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