In the Kitchen With Cook Smarts

In the Kitchen With Cook Smarts is a home-cooking show from Jess Dang, founder of the meal-planning service Cook Smarts, built around a steady aim: helping people become more confident and organized in their own kitchens. It moves between two modes. Some episodes are lessons, and the flavor-profile episode is a good example. There a bland soup becomes a problem with more than one answer: more salt, yes, but also a condiment that need not match the dish's cuisine. Soy sauce goes into nearly every marinade she makes, she explains, because it adds salty umami without making the food taste Asian. Miso, meanwhile, has taken over from a jarred bouillon paste as her shortcut for vegetarian soups. The other mode is conversation. Cook Smarts members come on to describe how dinner actually works in their homes. Lauren Davis talks through a delivered produce box alongside bigger grocery trips, while Dang notes how long sturdy produce like cabbage keeps. Gabrielle Smith explains what happens when a grocery order comes up short: a run to a less busy store, or a fallback such as lentil tacos or sweet potato quinoa chili. Dang's takeaway is worth borrowing: keep a short list of standby meals the whole family will eat, pandemic or not. Organization is close to a passion here. Sam Pregenzer, founder of a residential professional organization company, joins for a talk about kitchen organization, which Dang calls one of her favorite topics of all time. The show also looks inward at the business. Jackie Sun, whose episode title traces a route from pastry chef to Cook Smarts project manager, describes the lift she gets from organizing things in Asana. Sarah Byun, introduced as the Kitchen Happiness Cheerleader, recalls a hiring interview complicated by the time difference with Korea, and Dang notes that the role was filled through the Cook Smarts email list rather than job sites. Several episodes sit squarely in the 2020 shelter-in-place months: daycares reopening in Santa Clara County, a baby who stopped sleeping through the night, weekends recognizable only because the work calls stop. Dang lets that life run for a while before arriving at the announced topic. Her young children sometimes take over the welcome, once for a whole exchange about what a rerun is. The pace is unhurried and the tone mostly warm, with room for candor about exhaustion and a little play. For technique, '#33: Cook Without Recipes by Understanding Flavor Profiles' is the natural place to start; for the member-interview format, try '#30: Adapting During the Coronavirus: An Interview with Member Gabrielle Smith'. Sign-offs wish happy cooking from 'your kitchen cheerleader.'