Food stories from the working kitchen.
Dishing with Stephanie's Dish treats food as both craft and memory. Its conversations move from cookbook launches and recipe testing into grandmothers' recipe boxes, small-business pressure, Midwest cooking, and the real logistics behind getting food work into the world.
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Dishing with Stephanie's Dish is a warm, interview-driven food show about how people build a life around recipes. Its center of gravity is the working world of cookbooks: what makes a book feel personal, how recipes get tested, why photos matter, and how authors think about tours, printing, stores, and readers. The conversations are not especially glossy. That is part of the appeal. A guest talking about a grandmother's recipe cards can shift into printing choices, spiral binding, editors, and why a family cookbook needed to keep its own voice. Another conversation can start with a purple cookie-book cover and move toward Asian baking, Montreal childhood food memories, boba, ramen, dim sum, and the careful problem of turning pho flavors into a cookie without losing the point. The show likes process. It asks what actually happened, who helped, what went wrong, and how a recipe moved from private kitchen habit to public page. There is a strong family-recipe thread, with grandmothers, old dishes, recipe boxes, and inherited tastes serving as emotional anchors. There is also plenty of practical shop talk for people making food content: headnotes, photography, social posts, book signings, independent printers, and the awkward reality of describing yet another sugar cookie. The range is wider than cookbook interviews alone. Restaurant owner Tim Niver brings the show into the stress of hospitality work and the effect of immigration enforcement on restaurants and communities. Michael Kenney brings in food-adjacent travel planning, including a Turkey trip framed through curiosity and hesitation. Live cooking episodes bring the tone back to the kitchen, with Midwest cabin recipes, hot dish, and home-cook identity in the foreground. Dishing with Stephanie's Dish works because it treats food as a made thing and a remembered thing at the same time. It is for listeners who enjoy cookbooks, local food culture, family recipes, and the behind-the-scenes labor that makes a recipe feel alive.
Made for: Best for cookbook readers, home cooks, food writers, and curious eaters who like process as much as finished recipes. It also suits listeners interested in Midwest food culture, family cooking, and the business side of creative food work.
What sets it apart: The show stands apart by lingering on the practical middle of food work: testing recipes, choosing paper, signing books, scheduling tours, feeding customers, and keeping family memory intact. It feels less like a polished promo stop and more like a thoughtful conversation at the kitchen table.
I talk with Cookbook authors and Makers obsessed with food stephaniehansen.substack.com
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Stephanie Hansen connects cookbook craft, practical cooking and occasional nutrition conversations through detailed interviews with people whose work revolves around food.
Dishing with Stephanie's Dish follows Stephanie Hansen into the working lives behind food, particularly cookbook authors and the choices that turn recipes into usable books.
Cookbook talk arrives with flour on the counter and publishing receipts tucked in the drawer.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded visit with Sarah Peterson on lived-in food, cookbook visibility, and the practical work behind Dish and Tell.
Sarah Peterson's cookbook story grows naturally from a PR career built around shaping other people's stories into her own turn as the author of Dish and Tell: Recipes from the Heart.
A grounded restaurant conversation about paperwork, pressure, and a city's social health.
A conversation with restaurateur and Niver Niverland host Tim Niver frames restaurant work as a test of communal and emotional health at a strained moment for hospitality. The discussion moves from immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, St.
A pho cookie leads into a thoughtful conversation about baking, memory, and the work behind a third cookbook.
Dishing with Stephanie's Dish turns a cookbook chat into a warm, specific look at how baking can hold memory, place, and revision. The conversation moves from the purple cover of 108 Asian Cookies to the pho cookie, including the trial-and-error work that took it from too savory…
A family recipe box becomes a lovingly made cookbook, with self-publishing framed as preservation.
Food becomes a family archive in this conversation with Ashley Russell, whose cookbook What's Cooking Good Lookin' grows out of her grandmother's vintage recipe card box and the wish to hold onto family recipes after her death in summer 2024.
A practical cookbook conversation about gut-conscious food, repeat testing, and the challenge of writing one more headnote.
Emily Maxson's conversation with Stephanie lands where gut-conscious cooking meets the harder, less glamorous work of making a cookbook people can actually use.
A grounded conversation about satiety, restaurant meals, and planning without losing pleasure.
Satiety is framed as a practical planning problem, with Stephanie Meyer outlining a formula meant to help the women she coaches feel fuller and eat in a more balanced way while working toward health goals.
Cooking confidence comes through practical shortcuts, Sunday dinners, and recipes that keep the sink from taking over.
John Connell's Preppy Kitchen cookbook frames cooking as something less like a test and more like a task that can be made manageable. He links his background as a math and science teacher to a kitchen style built around preparation, clear steps, and a sense that dinner should…
Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway answer listener voicemails about pandemic-era pantry cooking.
Samuel Goldsmith interviews chefs and food writers, closing each chat with Quick Fire Questions.
Plain cooking lessons that make dinner less mysterious.
Kitchen answers, food stories, sharp curiosity.
Cookbook craft from the kitchen side.
Stephanie Meyer introduces her satiety formula: 30g protein, 40g carbs, 5g fiber, two colors of non-starchy plants, and 15g fat per meal.
John Kanell, author of the Preppy Kitchen cookbook, discusses his journey from math teacher to food blogger.
Stephanie talks with cookbook author Sarah Peterson about Dish and Tell Recipes from the Heart, a pink book built from vintage recipe cards, family stories, and photographs.
Dishing with Stephanie's Dish focuses on Tim Niver and the strain on Twin Cities restaurants as ICE activity expands across Minneapolis and St.
Kat Liu says she has to promote 108 Asian Cookies loudly because cookbook authors do not get visibility by default, even when the Wall Street Journal puts the book in a Holiday Gift Guide.
["Ashley Russell tells Stephanie how What's Cooking Good Lookin' grew from Wanda's recipe box into a spiral-bound cookbook built around family memory.", "Ashley says the project began after Wanda died in summer 2024, when the family wanted the recipes preserved and decoded from cursive notes like \"oleo\" and \"sweet milk.\"", "She explains why she self-published, chose tattoo-inspired illustrations, and worked with Brown Printing in Portland, Oregon instead of print-on-demand.", "Ashley says the first 300-copy run cost about $20 a book to print, sells for $38, and ended up closer to $50 a book once labor and food were counted."]
Stephanie interviews Michael Kenney from Defined Destinations about an upcoming group trip to Turkey, addressing common concerns and excitement about the destination.
Stephanie Hansen introduces herself and her new cookbook, The True North Cabin Cookbook Volume Two, during a live cooking session.
On 'Dishing with Stephanie's Dish,' host Stephanie talks with Minnesota cookbook author Emily Maxson about her second book, 'Emily's Real Food Every Day.' Maxson describes being misdiagnosed with appendicitis before doctors removed diseased sections of her intestine and diagnosed Crohn's disease, and how the specific carbohydrate diet reset her gut over 18 months.
Rebecca Blackwell and Stephanie Hansen discuss making a Juicy Lucy Cheeseburger Tater Tot Hot Dish, exploring the difference between hot dish and casserole.
Stephanie Meyer discusses her journey from food blogging to creating a sustainable approach to healthy eating without deprivation.
Stephanie Hansen hosts a live cooking session preparing dishes for a dinner party, including a fruit buckle cake, garlic scape pesto, roasted potatoes with feta yogurt, and a salad vinaigrette.
Tim Niver discusses the challenges of running a packaged food business in the competitive frozen pizza market in the Twin Cities.