(Photo Credit: J. Kenji López-Alt.)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Food + Science = Victory! (Rebroadcast).” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

A kitchen wizard and a nutrition detective talk about the perfect hamburger, getting the most out of garlic, and why you should use vodka in just about everything.

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post. And you’ll find credits for the music in the episode noted within the transcript.

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Hey there! Our last episode was about sugar — how much is too much? And if it’s really as bad for us as some people say, what should be done about it? This week: another episode about things that go in your mouth, this one from the archives. It’s called “Food + Science = Victory!” It too looks at the friction between eating for pleasure and eating for nutrition. That’s coming up in a sec. But first: a few weeks ago, we put out an episode about a fascinating new project called “Making Behavior Change Stick.” It’s run by two University of Pennsylvania researchers, Angela Duckworth and Katy Milkman, who’ve put together a dream team of colleagues from a variety of academic disciplines. They’re getting together next week in Philadelphia — and we’ll be there with our microphones, so that episode will show up in your feed not too long from now. While we’re in Philly, we’re also putting on a couple nights of our live show, Tell Me Something I Don’t Know, and that too will feature Duckworth, Milkman, and their crew. The live tapings are May 8th and 9th at the Trocadero in Philadelphia. If you want to come tell me something I don’t know — or if you just want to get tickets — visit TMSIDK.com. And then in June, we’re back in New York City for four tapings of Tell Me Something I Don’t Know, at Symphony Space. And now: “Food + Science = Victory!”

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Stephen J. DUBNER: What does it say, Kenji, that there are so many conventional wisdoms about something as basic as cooking food, which we’ve been doing for thousands of years, that are, if not wrong, at least misguided? Isn’t that strange?

Kenji LÓPEZ-ALT: It is strange but it’s precisely because we’ve been doing it for so long and because everybody does it. It’s an essential part of everyday life. It’s one of those things that rarely gets a second thought.

[MUSIC: Louis, “Rewind to Play” (from Louis)]

Today we’re going to give a lot of second thoughts — to what we eat and how we eat it.

LÓPEZ-ALT: My name is Kenji López-Alt. I’m the managing culinary director at seriouseats.com and I write about the science of food.

Uh-oh. “The science of food.” Doesn’t that sound kind of … unnatural?

LÓPEZ-ALT: People think of science as the opposite of tradition, or the opposite of natural. It’s not. Science is just a method, right? It’s a method of thinking about the world and it can be used for many different ends.

All right, then! I’m on board — how about you? Would you like to know whether the secret of New York pizza really is the water?

LÓPEZ-ALT: What we ended up finding was the water makes almost no difference compared to other variables in the dough.

Would you like to know how Freakonomics Radio listeners do things in the kitchen?

JANE: If we can pick it up with chopsticks, then that means it’s completely cooked on the inside.

And would you like to know the true nutritional value of one of America’s favorite vegetables?

Jo ROBINSON: Veterinarians don’t even recommend it as rabbit food.

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His full name is J. Kenji López-Alt. The J. is for James, his given first name. He’s always gone by Kenji but he didn’t want to totally lose the “James.” “Alt” is his last name; his father is of German descent. His mother is Japanese — that’s where the “Kenji” comes from. And the “López” is the last name of Kenji’s wife; she’s Colombian. When she and Kenji got married, they both became “López “hyphen” Alt.” So: J. Kenji López-Alt has just published a big, beautiful doorstop of a book.

LÓPEZ-ALT: It’s almost 1,000 pages, it’s pretty big.  

[MUSIC: Soundstacks, “Stay Stomping”]

It ’s called The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science. The first line: “I was never meant to be a food guy.”

LÓPEZ-ALT: I came from a family of scientists. My father is a microbiologist and my grandfather is an organic chemist. I had a very science- and math-heavy childhood. I was one of those kids that would wake up at 6:30 in the morning to go and watch Mr. Wizard on Nickelodeon. Still one of my favorite shows. Honestly, on a conceptual level, everything I learned about basic science all the way through college I learned from that show.

DUBNER: Really? You’re not joking?

LÓPEZ-ALT: I’m not joking.

DUBNER: You were way into science as a kid. Were you into food as a kid?

LÓPEZ-ALT: No. My family liked eating. But I was one of those kids who hated fish until I was in my early 20s. When I went to college, I had no idea how to cook.

DUBNER: What would be a typical family Sunday night meal?

LÓPEZ-ALT: My mom is Japanese. She moved to the U.S. when she was a teenager. She did all of the cooking at home, for the most part. My dad would occasionally cook a special meal, when he felt like cooking. He would cook Mexican or Chinese food, and those were always nice nights. But my mom cooked our daily food and it was always a mix between Japanese food and Betty Crocker 1970s staples.

A lot of the recipes in The Food Lab nod toward those 70s staples — but are improved upon, through science.

DUBNER: I’m about to make an assumption. Tell me if the assumption is right or totally wrong: as a kid, you were science-obsessed. You went to M.I.T. and at the beginning, studied biology. You come from a family of scientists. My assumption is that all of that got baked into you to some degree; this appreciation for, at least familiarity with, the scientific method. Then, when you fell in love with food and cooking, that you naturally parlayed the scientific method into the cooking method. Is that at all true, or not?

LÓPEZ-ALT: That’s remarkably accurate. I found, when I was working in restaurants, that I did have this natural curiosity about why things work.

He first found his way into the kitchen during college. It happened by accident and also — important life lesson here — by lying:

LÓPEZ-ALT: The summer after my sophomore year, I decided I wanted to take the rest of the summer off from any kind of academic work because I was getting burned out on biology. I decided to go get a job as a waiter. I walked around Boston trying to find a job as a waiter and nobody wanted to hire me and then, one of the restaurants I walked in to, they said they didn’t have any waiter positions available. But one of their prep cooks didn’t show up that morning and if I could hold the knife, then I could have a job as a cook. I lied and I said, “I know how to use a knife.” I don’t think I’d ever cut anything with a chef’s knife in my life before.

[MUSIC: Mokhov, “Water Magic” (from Revel Revivial)]

He was hooked.

LÓPEZ-ALT: From the moment I stepped into the kitchen, I was like, “This is the life for me.” This is great.

He did graduate from M.I.T. …

LÓPEZ-ALT: I switched majors to architecture. I finished with a degree in architecture, structural engineering.

But then he spent the next eight years working in a bunch of different Boston restaurants.

LÓPEZ-ALT: That first restaurant job was at one of those Mongolian grill type places. I was a knight of the round grill. I would do things like flip shrimp behind my back and stuff like that. From there to big chain restaurants, a Mexican place, a pizza place. Worked my way up the chain. I started working full-time. I could get a job at one of the nicest restaurants in town. Barbara Lynch was my first really great chef. I worked at her restaurant, No. 9 Park, B&G Oysters and a butcher shop doing charcuterie… Ken Oringer who also has a number of really good Boston restaurants, modern restaurant, Spanish place and a modern sashimi bar …

But as López-Alt writes in The Food Lab, “I discovered that in many cases — even in the best restaurants in the world — the methods that traditional cooking knowledge teaches us are not only outdated but occasionally flat-out wrong.” This was, of course, his science background talking.

LÓPEZ-ALT: Why are we cooking it this way? Would it be better to cook it this way? Why are we doing this? That’s something that is actually not very easy to work with when you’re in a restaurant, because it’s such a fast-paced environment you don’t really have time to ask those questions or investigate them or answer them. That was also one of the reasons why I felt this desire to get out of restaurants and go into writing because I thought it would give me more time to actually think about these things and answer these questions that have been building up for so many years.

His first writing job was at Cook’s Illustrated magazine.

LÓPEZ-ALT: They have a big kitchen in Brookline, Massachusetts. It has 30 ovens, 25 burners. It’s a big test kitchen. That was pretty much perfect for me because they sell magazines by asking questions and spending the money and the time to answer them.

First at Cook’s Illustrated and later at Serious Eats, López-Alt began to refine a methodology:

LÓPEZ-ALT: The first step is always research. I’ll go look to as many sources I can for the history of the dish, many different recipes to see how different people are making it.

Then he starts to reinvent a recipe, or at least rethink it.

LÓPEZ-ALT: I try [to] find areas where there might be problems for home cooks or areas where it can be improved in efficiency.

Often this means taking a step backward. Not thinking just in terms of ingredients and texture and flavor but scien