Samin Nosrat And Hrishikesh Hirway Keep Us Company With The Home Cooking Podcast

While every podcast in the audiosphere struggles to adapt to a remote recording format and maintain its co-hosts' chemistry despite distance, technical difficulties, and creeping dread, Home Cooking has arrived on the scene as one of the best series of this new era in podcasting. Hosts Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway have a chemistry and temperaments tailor-made for reassuring an audience that this, too, shall pass—and you might as well celebrate everything delicious while you're waiting for that to happen.

The podcast debuted the last week of March, and so far the series has already covered the broad strokes of some quarantine cooking heavy hitters: beans, bread, and sardines. Each episode is a good mix of general discussion and direct instruction, so you can resurface after an hour with some good cooking knowledge under your belt (with plenty of infectious laughter peppered in along the way). The podcast is, as Nosrat described her upcoming cookbook What To Cook, "beautiful, educational, functional, smart, and most importantly, very, very fun!"

With many people shifting the sum total of both the workday and all forms of socializing and entertainment into their homes during shelter-in-place orders, there's been an uptick in screen time, to say the least. Podcasts are a great way to connect with great cooking resources if you're less than enthusiastic about the idea of scrolling through your phone with flour-covered hands to double check how long you should be kneading. Home Cooking has also established itself as a show that's conscious of its audience and how best to serve it: there's a resources page on the podcast's website with links to dozens of recipes, online spice shops, and bread tutorials, and listeners are encouraged to send voicemails with any questions, stories, or anxieties they wish to share. Assuming this podcast was already in the works prior to the pandemic—it was first announced on March 13—it has certainly become a prime example of how to produce content under quarantine, with grace and good humor that never minimizes why you might be taking on more projects in the kitchen.