Cook Samin Nosrat (‘Salt Fat Acid Heat’) Returns with ‘Good Things’
Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Higher Ground
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 7 September 2025
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eight years ago, cook and writer Samin Nosrat created a kitchen staple with Salt Fat Acid Heat: a New York Times bestseller that later became a hit Netflix series. Nosrat returns with Good Things, a collection of personal recipes straight from her dining table.
We discuss the influences that shaped the book (8:30), the ephemerality (and pleasure) of produce (9:30), her complicated San Diego childhood growing up with Iranian parents (17:30), the high expectations placed before her (22:40), and how she eventually found her way to Chez Panisse in Berkeley (32:00).
On the back-half, Samin talks about her salad days working in restaurants (46:00), grand openings and closings (42:30), the origins of Salt Fat Acid Heat (47:00), what The Bear gets right about cooking (1:00:25), and how she thinks about time (1:03:00) and ritual (1:07:40).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Lemonada |
| 0:02.0 | Lemonada |
| 0:04.0 | This is Talk Easy. I'm Stan Forgo, so welcome to the show. |
| 0:25.4 | Today, Cook and writer Samin Nasrat. |
| 0:42.1 | In 2017, she published Salt, Fat, Acid Heat, a book that became a runaway New York |
| 0:47.7 | Times bestseller, earned the James Beard Award for Best General Cookbook, and ultimately |
| 0:53.3 | went on to inspire the Emmy-nominated Netflix |
| 0:56.3 | series of the same name. If you've seen the show, read the book, or even heard her podcast, |
| 1:02.2 | Home Cooking, what's immediately striking is Samin's enthusiasm. She relishes in sharing |
| 1:08.7 | what she loves and who she loves with their audience. |
| 1:12.9 | The baker who wakes up before dawn to make fresh bread. |
| 1:16.7 | The farmer who travels hours to bring produce to the market. |
| 1:20.1 | The chef who drives miles and miles and miles to source the highest quality produce for their meals. |
| 1:27.0 | These are the people and stories that make up |
| 1:29.8 | much of Samin's work. As for her story, she was raised in San Diego by Iranian immigrants and came of |
| 1:37.4 | age with an early appreciation for all things food, her mother, often driving more than 80 miles, in search of meals that |
| 1:46.4 | tasted like home. She then went to study English at UC Berkeley, where admittedly she spent |
| 1:52.6 | more time working in kitchens than studying in classrooms, first at Chez Panisse, busing tables, |
| 1:59.1 | later at other local restaurants in Berkeley, until about 2009. |
| 2:03.7 | We talk about each of those eras in today's conversation, and how they set the stage for both salt-fat, acid, heat, and her new book. |
| 2:13.0 | Good Things, which is out on September 16th, is a joyous collection of 125 recipes, filled with |
| 2:19.7 | rituals and memories and friends. It's more personal than clinical, though. It reads basically |
... |
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