The #1 Thing You Can Do To Improve Every Meal You Make, According to Viral Food Star Joshua Weissman

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Joshua Weissman is known for going all out. The chef, New York Times bestselling author and digital personality has nearly 17 million followers across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, where he shares cheffy tips and tricks, breaks down and cooks a whole king crab and makes Chipotle burritos, Popeyes chicken sandwiches and McDonald's fries from scratch.

After writing one cookbook, he's back with another cooking tome with a hot take. And all you need to know is right in the title: Texture Over Taste.

According to Weissman, home cooks have gotten the message that flavor is important, but they don't realize that texture is right up there, too. It's one of the main things that chefs focus on when fine-tuning their dishes, and with Weissman's help (and recipes), you too can figure out what texture your dish is missing to take it up a notch.

We recently sat down with Weissman to talk about his book and all things texture. We touched on his core food memories, why potato chips are so easy to eat, the one thing he keeps on hand for jazzing up pretty much any dish—and a lot more. Read on for all the juicy details.

Q: Ok, let's start at the beginning. Do you remember the first thing you cooked?

I do actually. Well, I remember two things. My mom was the one who brought me into the kitchen and got me interested in cooking. And one thing that she made that enamored me was her chicken fried steak.

She's from Texas, so she makes a lot of Southern food, but the chicken fried steak in particular, felt so special. And I think the reason was it's one of her favorite things. And so it became one of my favorite things sort of through osmosis. I was like, well, if she thinks this is the best, then so do I.

She spent a lot of time focusing on each and every little step. It wasn't sort of like everything goes into a pan and it's done. And so that got me interested, which led to her allowing me to cook scrambled eggs. And that was what I started cooking regularly when I was about four.

But now that I think about it, chicken fried steak has a lot of texture. You got crunchy from the crust. You have chewy from the steak and then you have a creamy texture from the gravy. So it's kind of like this multilayered experience. If you wanted to look at it from a fine dining perspective, that's what it is. But ultimately it is chicken fried steak.

Q: So it seems like that might be a core texture memory for you and now you've written an entire book about the topic. Why did you decide to focus on texture?

For a long time, I've noticed that almost every cookbook focuses on one of two things. Either one, it's a subject or person-related thing, or it's flavor-related. That's it. There is no other concept out there really.

There are tons of books dedicated to flavor, many of which I love, by the way. Yes, they talk about texture, but really it's about balancing flavors and how to make things taste amazing. And what I love about these books is they go deep into this subject that is so viscerally important for cooks.

But the one thing that chefs do differently than home cooks is they look at the whole picture. And looking at the whole picture requires taking a step back and not just talking about how good it tastes, but also about the overall eating experience. And there are two things that contribute to a great eating experience. It's the flavor and it's the texture.

As a chef, you're creating stuff from scratch. You have to sort of build what's going to be on the plate. So you might make something that tastes great and it looks beautiful, but everybody goes and tastes it. All the chefs are tasting, they go, it has no texture. It's just all soupy, liquidy. There's no crunch, there's no chew—and that's how chefs make great dishes. They take a step back and they figure out the textures.

And so long story short, I was like, there it is, light bulb moment. I should write a book about the other half of the whole picture. And that's how this book came to be.

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Q: Home cooks have mostly gotten the message about flavor and tasting their food and adjusting for flavor. How do they do that for texture?

It's the same concept as whenever you're adding salt, fat, acid, heat. Just taste your food and add the texture that's missing. The beauty of texture is that it could kind of be whatever you want it to be. If you don't want it to have crunch, then don't add crunch. If you don't want it to have any other structure whatsoever, you just want it to be a broth, you can do that too.

There are fewer rules in texture, but texture is more noticeably effective. When you add a tiny little tinge of saffron to something, maybe some people notice it, maybe other people don't. But if you had a big honking potato into a soup, you're going to know that the experience has changed. And texture is certainly the most noticeable, but it's also the most freeform.

Q: Do you have a go-to textural ingredient that you reach for?

Yeah. Secret trick. Always keep crispy shallots on hand. You'll never be disappointed. You can buy them in tubs at Asian markets, but I usually fry my own. I keep a container full of them to add crunch to soups and salads and sandwiches and whatever.

To help keep them crispy I throw one of those little silica packets that you see sometimes at the bottom of chips to keep 'em crispy and they last for a couple of weeks.

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Q: This might be impossible to answer, but do you have a favorite texture?

Oh, by far. It's crunchy. I think crunchy is probably most people's favorite. It's one of the few textures that are out there that has addictive qualities to it. No one's going to sit down and watch a movie and eat mounds of pork belly. But they will eat a ton of chips, popcorn, pretzels or popcorn.

All of these foods just naturally create a dopamine rush for most people because of literally how loud they are. I mean, it is in your face texture, quite literally.

And what's funny is really loud flavors and really loud textures go really well together. A really crunchy chip is going to go really well with something that's really salty or tangy or sweet. And hence salt and vinegar chips, barbecue chips and stuff like Flamin' Hot Cheetos.

A lot of people wonder why crunchy chips or popcorn or whatever is so good, and it's actually an auditory experience, and it's the vibration that's happening in your mouth and vibrating throughout your head and your ears that makes it so fantastic.