Dinner SOS is the podcast where we answer your highly specific cooking conundrums. In every episode food director Chris Morocco and a rotating cast of cooking experts tackle a caller’s kitchen emergency and present two solutions. The caller will pick one, cook through it, and let us know if we successfully helped rescue dinner.
This week’s guest, Claire, is looking for a dynamic dinner party menu that won’t take her away from her guests. Chris and associate food editor Zaynab Issa each suggest dishes that will wow Claire’s guests without keeping her in the kitchen for the whole party.
To hear more, head to episode five of Dinner SOS. And if you have a dinner emergency of your own, reach out to Chris and the team at podcasts@bonappetit.com or by calling 212-286-SOS-1 (212-286-7071).
Subscribe to Dinner SOS here. You can also check out an excerpt of the podcast’s transcript below.
Chris Morocco: I’ll kick things off with my recipe selection: Dawn Perry’s Duck Confit With Spicy Pickled Raisins. I think this is a wonderful dish because there’s a tremendous make-ahead ability here. It’s a classic. So this has you just seasoning the duck and then basically putting it right into the oven. Especially if you season the duck a day in advance and then cook it off the day that you're gonna serve it, or even if you wanted to cook it a day before you planned to serve it and just kind of keep it stored in its own fat and reheat it, it's tremendous. You will literally have neighbors walking like zombies down like the hallway of your building or through the streets, trying to figure out what that smell is that's perfumed your entire block. And what I also love about this recipe is that duck confit is heavy. It's fatty. It's rich. It's salty. But there are these wonderful pickled raisins—golden raisins that have been steeped with white wine vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds, and some rosemary—and it just punches through that richness. Z, do you wanna talk about the dish that you're proposing?
Zaynab Issa: I actually ended up choosing a recipe I developed last spring. It's my Date-and-Soy-Braised Short Ribs. Picking your own recipe is the smartest because you know it the best, and so I'm more sure that I'll win this competition, especially considering the season that we're in. A braise is ideal. When it's cold outside and everyone's removing their massive puffer jackets and getting warm, all they want is to sit on a couch and have a bowl of braised beef and rice. Like Chris's, it has really great make-ahead potential. You could pretty much do the whole thing a few hours before everybody gets there and then leave it to braise while you go get ready, set the table, whatever. Come back, hike the heat up a little bit to get the braising liquid to a saucy place, and then put together the snap pea and mint salad. Or even doing it with cucumbers would be really nice.
CM: That’s a great dish. So there are dates in there for sweetness. Was there soy sauce in there?
ZI: Yeah. There's a pretty hefty amount of soy sauce in there, and a good amount of dates, and you get a really great sweet-salty balance. It's very comforting, and not flat or boring either.
CM: The dates kind of melt down.
ZI: Completely. You get a stickier, thick richness from the dates.
CM: Yeah.
ZI: It's really nice, inspired by Filipino adobo, which is insanely comforting. There's some vinegar in there, so you get really nice balance across the board. I think it's a crowd-pleaser.
CM: And I have to say, Claire, you know, this is a rare instance where I think, in terms of a side dish to serve with either one of these things, mashed potatoes would just work. Creamy mashed potatoes.
ZI: Yeah.
CM: I think this is the thing for you to remember with braising in general. With this style of cooking, time is doing the work for you. This is not flash in the pan, everything hinges on one pivotal moment. This is the most forgiving kind of food to cook, as long as you trust in the process and really think about the endpoints of the recipe. Like, there is a moment where something you’re braising isn’t tender, but it is like fully cooked. And that's part of trusting the process. Pushing through that point. You would encounter that whether it's the short rib or the duck, you know, where the protein has kind of seized up, firmed up, lost some moisture. And you just kind of have to keep going, and that's where it's important. Like, don't boil it hard. Keep the heat low.
ZI: Cook it slow.
CM: You know? Like lazy bubbles. Not super active. And just keep going, and when you bring things through to that stage of tenderness and doneness, it's a powerful moment.
ZI: That's why it's so impressive at the end. Because the meat has completely transformed. It’s a texture everyone loves, but it takes time to achieve. And so when people eat it, they’re always like, “Ah, this is amazing.”
CM: Yep. And doing it a day in advance is totally fair game. In either case, you can do the entire thing the day before.
Chris and Zaynab sent Claire the recipes for Duck Confit and Date-and-Soy-Braised Short Ribs, but the decision of which to cook was hers to make. Listen now to hear which crowd-ready main course she chose.