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2 days ago
- Lifestyle
- New York Times
Life's Too Short for Bad Olive Oil
MICHAEL: ... HALT is the acronym for it, but heat, air, light, and time are the things that really degrade oil. ROSIE: Interesting. MICHAEL: So exposing it to the air, the light, and then the time obviously, the longer you wait, the more likely it's going to go rancid. So that's an easy way to remember like, "Oh, what should I be doing with this? How should I be storing this olive oil?" That's an easy way to remember it. CHRISTINE: Those just happen to be the same things that make us look old. Right? Heat, air, light, and time. MICHAEL: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I guess it applies to us, too. CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell. ROSIE: I'm Rosie Guerin and you're listening to The Wirecutter Show . Today, we're talking about olive oils. CHRISTINE: Yes. I love olive oil. CAIRA: I love olive oil, too. CHRISTINE: It's one of my favorite fats. ROSIE: Especially in the summer, especially on some really fresh veg. CHRISTINE: Oh, yeah. ROSIE: On a super-ripe tomato. CAIRA: Or when you make your own homemade salad dressing. Yeah, that's good. ROSIE: I recently heard this hot take by a food journalist who said, "If you're going to splurge on anything at the grocery store, it should be oil or vinegar." And I subscribe to that. I like being adventurous with taste-testing different olive oils. CHRISTINE: That's interesting. I've never thought about the thing that I would spend the most on. I think about that with a wardrobe, like always shoes. Got to get the good shoes. But, yeah, I could see that. Olive oil, butter- ROSIE: I have a couple of items that... Yeah, butter. CHRISTINE: Yeah. These things that are the fats that you cook with. CAIRA: Yeah, I like the idea, but honestly, I'm just going to splurge on the protein every single time. I'd rather spend my money there, but I get it. CHRISTINE: Well, given it is prime tomato season, olive oil is the thing that you want in the summertime. We thought this would be a great time to talk about our olive oil review with our writer, Michael Sullivan, who has been on the show before. He's awesome. He is just a wealth of knowledge. He is going to come on with us today and talk about olive oils, the ones we've tasted, the ones we recommend, but also he's going to give us a real schooling on how to shop for olive oil. So if you're out there in the grocery store deciding what you're going to buy, I think you'll be able to walk away from this episode with a lot of really actionable tips on how to get a great bottle. ROSIE: Yeah, and it turns out one of the ways to identify good olive oil is to taste it, and we're going to do a little bit of that as well. CHRISTINE: That's right. ROSIE: So we're going to take a quick break, when we're back, we'll chat with Michael. CAIRA: Welcome back. With us now is Michael Sullivan. He's a senior staff writer on our kitchen team, and he's reviewed a ton of kitchen gear for Wirecutter. And he joined us last October actually to talk about kitchen gear that will last a lifetime or close to it. So for our review of olive oils, Michael researched over 40 oils and tested over a dozen, and he used to work at an olive oil store. So cool. CHRISTINE: Michael, welcome back. MICHAEL: Thank you for having me. ROSIE: Who better, but you? CHRISTINE: Yeah, absolutely. I'm really excited to talk about this with you today. Michael, just to lay a picture a little bit of what our tastings look like in our test kitchen, we have something around 10 staff writers and editors at this point, and I'm always intrigued when you're doing a tasting. It's like this very serious thing that's going on in the test kitchen. I see a group of people sitting around a table, they're quiet, they've got notes in front of them, there's little bowls or whatever you guys are eating. I always like to go in and peek in when nobody's in there. I'm going to admit it. Then I'll go in and look in the fridge and see what you guys are testing, and it's a wall of butter or yogurt- MICHAEL: Or yogurt. Yeah. Yeah. CHRISTINE: ... or whatever. Yeah. And so it's really fun and you guys do a lot of work and we're going to talk a little bit about that. But we thought it would be fun to start this episode by you testing our olive oil knowledge just to get a baseline of what we know. MICHAEL: Great. Okay. Yeah. So I came up with some true or false questions for you. Okay, first one, true or false, olive oil doesn't get better with age. ROSIE: True. CAIRA: True. CHRISTINE: I think that's true. MICHAEL: True. Yeah. True or false, Italy is among the biggest importers of olive oil? ROSIE: True. CAIRA: True. CHRISTINE: True. MICHAEL: True. Yeah. CAIRA: Oh my gosh, we know so much. MICHAEL: Yeah, that one, I feel like that was a tricky one. Okay. True or false, it's fine to store your olive oil near the stove with a pour spout. CHRISTINE: I want to say true. MICHAEL: Oh, it's mixed. CHRISTINE: I'm going to say true. MICHAEL: Okay. It's false. Yeah. You don't want to keep it near a heat source, so you want to keep it away from heat and you want a nice tight sealing lid on it. You don't want to keep it open to the air. CAIRA: So you're saying that bottle that's sitting right by the stove is not a good idea- MICHAEL: Probably not the best way. CAIRA: ... I've been doing my whole life? CHRISTINE: It makes a lot of sense because you just reach for it. CAIRA: You use it for everything. MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Okay, and last one, it's best to store olive oil in the fridge. ROSIE: False. CAIRA: False? MICHAEL: False. Yeah. CHRISTINE: Okay. I didn't answer that one, but- MICHAEL: Oh, sorry. Sorry. CHRISTINE: ... I'm just thinking of all the people I know who store their olive oil in the fridge. CAIRA: I've never heard of that. CHRISTINE: It might be- MICHAEL: It's a common thing. CHRISTINE: ... a hippie US coast thing. CAIRA: But doesn't it get congealed like coconut oil? CHRISTINE: Yeah, it does. MICHAEL: Which is why, yeah- CAIRA: Got it. MICHAEL: ... you don't want to do that. CHRISTINE: On the money. ROSIE: Well, I'd like to say I think we have some things to learn. Let's get into it. MICHAEL: Okay. CAIRA: Yeah. So Michael, first of all, can you tell us how you test olive oils? MICHAEL: Typically, for any of our taste tests, we're looking at what's available in national chain grocery stores because we want people to easily find them. And then we also took a stance and only tested bottles with a harvest date. So that's really the only guarantee that you know how fresh your oil is, if it has the harvest date on it. CAIRA: Will all bottles have a harvest date on them? MICHAEL: They will not. CAIRA: Okay. MICHAEL: So that will really help you narrow down the selection. ROSIE: And by harvest date, we mean the date that the olives- MICHAEL: That it was crushed. Yeah. Yeah. CHRISTINE: Like wine. MICHAEL: Well, like wine, a little different- ROSIE: Wine sits- MICHAEL: Yeah, wine sits for a while. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For olives, so you want to get them crushed and bottled as soon as possible. Yeah. CHRISTINE: Got it, got it. CAIRA: Is the harvest date different from the best buy date? MICHAEL: Yes. So the best buy date is arbitrary. So the harvest date will tell you when exactly those olives were crushed. If it's just a best buy date, you have absolutely no idea when that oil was put in that bottle. Right? It could be old oil, it could be new oil, it could be a mix of both. So that really tells you how fresh the oil is, and that's really the only way to know. I mean, there's a lot of other things that we'll talk about today, but, yeah, that's a big one. CAIRA: Got it. MICHAEL: We didn't include any flavored oils. We really wanted to just do plain olive oil, and then we looked for oils that would have a range of flavors that you could use them for various cooking applications. CHRISTINE: And what is the actual testing process when you are all in that room in the kitchen and you're tasting things together? MICHAEL: Yeah. Olive oil's a funny one. I mean, I should mention that we're not trained professional olive oil tasters. These testers trained for years isolating specific defects in the oil, and that's how they're grading it for the sensory part of it. CAIRA: Olive oil connoisseurs, basically? CHRISTINE: Sommeliers? MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah. CHRISTINE: Olive oil sommeliers? MICHAEL: And so we're not that. So we're tasting just based on flavor and the nuances of that. But we did follow the California Olive Oil Council's guidelines for tasting. So we use these little blue cups that are tulip-shaped and they're dark-colored so that you don't see the color of the oil because that's not an indication of quality. So it masks the color so you're not influenced by that. ROSIE: These look like mini sifters. CHRISTINE: Yeah, can you- MICHAEL: I know. Yeah, they look like little brandy... Yeah. CAIRA: When you have a really fancy whiskey. ROSIE: Little brandy. CAIRA: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. MICHAEL: But the tulip shape helps to focus the aroma when you're smelling it. So we use these when we test, which is this is what professional tasters would also use. And then we concealed all the brands as we always do with our taste tests. And then we're evaluating the smell, the fruitiness, the bitterness, the pungency, how peppery that kick you get in the back of your throat when you swallow, good indication of how fresh the oil is. CHRISTINE: So are you just sipping the oil? You're not dipping bread into it or something? MICHAEL: [inaudible 00:08:21] slurping it. CHRISTINE: Slurping it? MICHAEL: Yeah, because you want to move it across your palate and the oil... We also do test it with bread after we- CAIRA: After you've slurped it? MICHAEL: After we've slurped it. Yeah. We always go back and taste the oils again with bread. ROSIE: So much to my wife's chagrin, I love spending a lot of time in the olive oil section at the grocery store. I'm never quite sure what I should look for on a bottle. So can you walk us through what you should look for when you're going to grab a bottle of olive oil? MICHAEL: Sure. Yeah. I mean, it is very overwhelming when you're standing in the store and you're like, "Oh, my God, all these bottles." One of the easiest things you can do right away is avoid clear glass bottles. The UV rays will degrade the oil, and that's through photo oxidation. So it's HALT is the acronym for it, but heat, air, light, and time are the things that really degrade oil. So exposing it to the air, the light, and then the time, obviously, the longer you wait, the more likely it's going to go rancid. That's an easy way to remember like, "Oh, what should I be doing with this? How should I be storing this olive oil?" That's an easy way to remember it. CHRISTINE: Those just happen to be the same things that make us look old. Right? Heat, air, light, and time. MICHAEL: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I guess it applies to us too. So a clear bottle, you just don't know how that was stored, you don't know where it was stored, how long it's been exposed to light. So it's just you risk it being already oxidated by the time you open it. So that's an easy one to avoid. ROSIE: A dark bottle. MICHAEL: So you want a tin or a dark green bottle, dark glass. And then I think most people know to look for extra virgin olive oil, but I don't know that everyone really knows what that means. Actually, that should have been a true or false question, but- CAIRA: I would've gotten that one wrong. ROSIE: Yeah, I'd say [inaudible 00:10:09] talk about it. MICHAEL: So what it means is that the oil has been lab and taste-tested, like I was saying, those professional tasters, and they're making sure that it's free of any defects, and also it can't have any excessive heat applied to it during the extraction and the use of any solvents or chemicals to extract that oil are prohibited. So it's the highest grade. This comes with some caveats, and I think if you bear with me for a minute, I can dig into this for a minute. ROSIE: Love it. MICHAEL: So there's no national or international agreed upon standard for olive oils. So the USDA has their own guidelines, but they're voluntary for producers, which means it's not mandatory. So an oil that's coming in from another country that's coming into the United States, at the border, there's no one randomly checking it to make sure that it is indeed what it says on the label. That grade is what it is. Right? California has its own laws- ROSIE: Shocking. MICHAEL: Yes. So the California department of agriculture, CDFA, they have some pretty strict laws. Actually, they're slightly stricter than the USDA. The acidity level has to be lower for the oils that are extra virgin. They're randomly tested by the CDFA. So the producer of olive oil is going to have a random person come and show up, and they're going to test the oil to make sure that is indeed what it says it is. But California only makes something like 5% of the oil in the US, the rest is all imported. So it's a huge amount of oil that's coming in from elsewhere. So while their guidelines are really strict, it's not that much oil. ROSIE: So this is for olive oil that's made in California? MICHAEL: Yes. And specifically for producers that make 5,000 gallons of oil or more. ROSIE: Wow. Okay. MICHAEL: Yeah. Then when we're talking about oils in Europe, they have the IOC, the International Olive Council, and they are an intergovernmental organization and setting the guidelines for all these different countries in Europe. And all of the European Union countries are part of the IOC, but they are not enforcing the laws for the olive oil. That's up to each of the countries that is a member of the IOC. Right? And that's for all of the oils that are sold in Europe. So they're taste-tested and they're lab-tested. But because the US is not a member of the IOC, there's not really an incentive to make sure that the best oils are coming our way. ROSIE: So they can export the dregs? CHRISTINE: Yeah, they're sending us their junk? MICHAEL: Yeah. I mean, in theory, no, they should not be. Right? But- ROSIE: But they could- MICHAEL: ... how do we know? ROSIE: ... and how would we know? Yeah. MICHAEL: Right. Now I should mention, the FDA has done random testing, they did... About 10 years ago, they were in the DC area and they grabbed a bunch of bottles of oil from grocery stores and had them lab-tested, and they found that adulteration was low, meaning the oils were not cut with seed oils or other types of oil. They did not do a taste test. So the oils could still be labeled extra virgin, but not be extra virgin, because let's say when it got shipped over here, it was way too hot and it's spoiled on the way, but it still says extra virgin on the label. But then you bring it home and you use it and it's no longer what it says it is. It's a purity versus quality issue. The reason that you do a lab test and a taste test is because the lab test is picking up the acidity level, and then the taste test is picking up all the things you couldn't pick up in a lab like any defects, "Oh, it smells like dirty gym clothes," or, "It's briny," or, "it smells like it's waxy." They're picking up all the flaws that you wouldn't be able to determine in a test. So they're done in tandem for that reason. CHRISTINE: If you see extra virgin olive oil on the shelf, what you're saying is that it likely has been processed in a certain way with low heat, it's been lab tested, but you may not know the quality of that oil on the shelf that you're seeing in the supermarket. Right? MICHAEL: Right. Which is why I think tasting it is so important. And what's frustrating about that, people are like, "Well, what's the actionable advice? What do you do?" Tasting the oil to make sure that it's not rancid, and if it is, then you can take it back to the retailer and be like, "This is rancid," and they'll give you a refund or a store credit, because you really shouldn't be paying all that money. I mean, olive oil's expensive. So- ROSIE: It's expensive. Yeah. MICHAEL: ... you shouldn't be paying all that money if it's not what it says it is on the label. CHRISTINE: What is rancid oil? How would you describe the flavor of rancid oil? MICHAEL: So most often, to me, it smells like a box of Crayola crayons. It will smell waxy. It'll have just a stale nut smell to it and flavor. It could also be slightly fermented. It might have a briny or sour quality to it sometimes. But I find it, for me anyway, it's more often when I worked in an olive oil store, it was more that it had that waxy quality. And old oil will also cling to your mouth. It'll stick to the walls of your mouth and it's gross. But a fresh oil is actually quite clean, which is surprising, I think. I think most people will be like, "You're drinking fat," but actually when you swallow it, it is a very refreshing, clean, doesn't have that same effect when you taste it. ROSIE: We'll see about that when we taste test. MICHAEL: Yeah. CAIRA: When you're looking at the harvest date, is there a time period that you would recommend? What's the window? MICHAEL: So generally, in the Northern Hemisphere, it's the fall and winter harvest, and then the Southern Hemisphere, it'll be spring and summer. So you're looking for the previous harvest date from whatever time you're in. So if we're in July of 2025 right now, you're going to be looking for October, November of 2024. CAIRA: Got it. MICHAEL: If it's an oil from the Northern Hemisphere. Yeah. CAIRA: And if it goes beyond that, maybe it's from two seasons ago, is that too far back? MICHAEL: You want to use it up within two years of the harvest date is a good rule of thumb. And then once you open it, you want to try to use it up within two to three months. So I know big families can buy those big three-liter tins and they can use it up in two to three months, and that's great, but if you can't do that, don't be buying these giant bottles if you can't use it up within- CAIRA: No. Really? ROSIE: Well, because remember, olive oil does not get better with age. CAIRA: Yeah. I guess that's true. But even if you buy in bulk and you don't open them, it's still not great- MICHAEL: Well, as long as you're in that two-year window. Yeah. Yeah. But generally, buy smaller if you can't use it up within that window once you open it. CHRISTINE: So here's the big question. How much does country of origin matter? I feel like there's so much debate like, "Italy is the best," "Greece is the best," "Spanish is the best." I mean, does it break down like that or does it really even matter? MICHAEL: I don't like to discriminate based on a region. I really encourage people to try just all kinds of olive oil from all over and see what they like. It's like wine in a lot of ways. It doesn't age like wine, but there are so many nuances and flavors and there's so many cultivars of olives that can be made and they are in certain regions versus others. And so to limit yourself to one region I think is doing yourself a disservice. I think it's really fun. And because it's such a pantry staple, you're using olive oil, or at least I am, all the time, that it's really easy to just buy whatever and try different stuff and see what you like. And eventually you'll figure out like, "Oh, I really like this type of oil. I like it really bold, and grassy, and peppery," or maybe you like it more like fruity and a little more mellow with a subtle pepperiness. So by tasting a bunch of them, you'll discover what you like. The important thing, country aside, you really want to look for on the label, it should say, "Product of," whatever the country is, because that means that the olive oil is from that country. Right? If it says, "Imported from," or, "Packed in," that just means that the oil was bottled there. Right? And so you know how, earlier, the true or false question, Italy is one of the biggest importers, that's because they're also exporting it, but it's bottled in Italy, but it'll say, "Imported from Italy." But if you look on the back of the... It should say where the olives are actually from. It's not bad that the olives are from this other place, but I think it's a little bit of marketing saying... Yeah. Yeah. ROSIE: Is there any benefit of trying to assure that you're getting something that's, quote-unquote, single origin where all of the olives are from one place? Or what's your feeling about blends? Because I've seen olive oil from Portugal plus Italy or something like that. MICHAEL: Yeah. So blends is... It's important I think to just define what we're talking about. So you could have a blend of two oils from two different estates, but you could also have a blend of oils from literally all over the world that are five or six different countries. Those are often cheaper. We're talking about some of the big grocery store brands do this. They're combining oils from all over the world. And you just don't know how long those oils were sitting, where, when... I mean, that's why the harvest date is so important, especially when you have all these oils from all over. CHRISTINE: Well, now I feel like I have been doing a lot of things wrong with my olive oil. But just to recap, by and large, people should be looking for extra virgin olive oil. If they want the most flavorful, the most complex oil, they want to be looking for that harvest date, and it should be within two years. You want to consume it within two years of harvest. MICHAEL: Right. CHRISTINE: You want it to be a clear oil in a dark bottle or in a can. MICHAEL: Right. CAIRA: We're going to take a quick break, and then when we're back, we're going to talk through how you should be storing your olive oil, and we're going to do a taste test, plus we'll get some of Michael's best secrets for finding a great olive oil out in the wild. Be right back. CAIRA: Welcome back. We're here with Michael Sullivan and we're talking all about olive oil. And we've covered a lot of the basics for what you should be looking for when you're shopping in the aisles, but now we want to know, Michael, what you think most people are doing wrong when it comes to storing their olive oil at home. MICHAEL: Yeah. I think the most common issue is storing the olive oil right next to the stove, just because that heat... When you think about like, "Oh, we... For extra virgin, you don't want excessive heat applied to it during production, right? So then to just put it right next to the stove defeats that whole purpose and they worked so hard ideally to- ROSIE: For those of you at home, Michael is making meaningful eye contact with Christine and Caira. MICHAEL: No, no, that was not a [inaudible 00:20:38]. CHRISTINE: I am guilty as charged. CAIRA: Yeah, I do do that. CHRISTINE: I keep mine in a clear bottle with a spout next to the stove. Yes. CAIRA: Fine. I'll change, I guess. MICHAEL: But also you want try to avoid decanting the oil in a clear glass bottle or some carafe- CAIRA: Even if it's pretty? MICHAEL: I know, and I have a beautiful one that I found at an estate sale, and I'm just like, "I guess I just look at you. I don't know what I do with you." But, yeah, like we were saying, dark glass or tin is best, ideally a tight sealing lid. Avoid pour spouts. I mean, restaurants will have them in open, but think about how quickly they're going through that oil. It's not an issue. And it's best to store it in a dark cupboard or pantry away from heat and light. CAIRA: So not directly above your stove. MICHAEL: Mm-hmm. CAIRA: Got it. MICHAEL: Yeah. Yeah. CAIRA: And what about plastic? I mean, even one of the bottles that we recommend... MICHAEL: Graza. Yeah. CAIRA: The Graza, I see it in grocery stores all the time. MICHAEL: And Bertolli too. Yeah. CAIRA: It looks really cute, honestly, but it's in a green plastic bottle. What's the deal with that? MICHAEL: Yeah. So the experts that I spoke to, they overwhelmingly... That it should not be put in plastic, and I think that they're pointing to the fact that some plastics are semi-permeable, so then there's the risk of oxygen getting in. So they really say to stick to glass and tin. I think it's hard because so many of the reasonably priced oils in the grocery store, some of them are in plastic, and so we included them in our lineup because we just felt like we needed to include some of these reasonably-priced oils. I think just using them up quickly is probably best advice. CHRISTINE: Can we spend a beat talking about why you're not supposed to refrigerate your olive oil? I grew up with a bottle of olive oil in the refrigerator, I don't like how it gets chunky, but I would assume that keeping it in the refrigerator would extend the life of the olive oil and keep it from the heat that could accelerate it going rancid. So why not keep it in the refrigerator? MICHAEL: For one thing, it's impractical because then, yeah, like you're saying, you have this congealed oil, so when you go to use it, you're like, "Okay, now I'm waiting for this to thaw and come back to being liquid again. And some people will run it under hot water, which... Probably not a good idea. Also, taking it in and out of the fridge can create condensation, which some experts were saying that that's also obviously bad for it. So you just want to keep it in a cupboard at room temperature. The fridge thing, don't bother. There was also some misinformation circulating many years ago that was like if you put your olive oil in the fridge and it congeals or it solidifies, that's an indication of quality, and it's... No, it's not an indication of quality because each oil will have a different density and they're going to solidify different temperatures. And only a lab test and a taste test can determine the quality of the oil. CAIRA: What's the most surprising thing that you found during your testing? MICHAEL: I think when we made the decision to only include oils that have a harvest date, I thought there would be fewer than there actually were at the grocery store. And some of the big brands like Bertolli is one of them that I was actually really surprised by. CHRISTINE: Which is one of our picks. Right? MICHAEL: Which is one of our picks. Yeah. CHRISTINE: I mean, that's surprising to me. We tasted all these fancier oils... What I would consider more expensive, fancier oils, but Bertolli did well against these other oils. Right? MICHAEL: Yeah, it did, which was surprising. But it has that bold, peppery, really grassy flavor to it, which was appealing. CHRISTINE: So I want to know, if someone is in a grocery store and they don't have access to the oils that we recommend in our guide, they want to buy a nice oil, what are some tips for finding something good? MICHAEL: If you're in a grocery store, like Whole Foods or somewhere, you often want to look not at eye level. So above and below is where a lot of higher priced oils will be, or any product really for that matter. You'll notice if you go to Walmart or wherever, all the white label products are all eye level. That's called the strike zone, and it's all strategically placed for the consumer. So same applies to olive oil. You often find at the bottom, some more interesting oils, not the major brands that are at all the chains. CHRISTINE: That's why my toddlers are always picking the oils on the bottom- MICHAEL: Yes, they have champagne taste. But, yeah, that's a good thing. You can also look online too if you don't have a specialty food store. A lot of specialty food stores, if you have one in your area, will have maybe a better selection. If you live in an area where you don't have access to stores like that, you could go online and just do a little bit of research. A producer that's very transparent online and shares their lab results, wow, that's a pretty... They're not hiding anything. Right? So I think that's a good indication of a quality producer. CHRISTINE: What's one of your favorite mail order brands? Give us the inside scoop! MICHAEL: So one of my favorites is Fat Gold, and they're actually based in California. They're moderately priced. It's just reliably good, and it's so flavorful and robust, and it's one of my faves. And we'll actually be trying some today, so- CHRISTINE: Ooh, I'm very excited. CAIRA: Fat Gold. CAIRA: Okay. Michael, you brought some oils for us to try. MICHAEL: Yes. ROSIE: Let's do it. Let's taste test. Unfortunately, the process is to swirl, sniff, slurp, and then swallow, which is just horrifying. ROSIE: So this is number one? MICHAEL: Yes. This is number one. So, okay. So first, hold it in your hand... And there's a little lid for these sometimes or you could just use your hand. You just want like to swirl it in your hand and just sort of like warm the oil a little bit, just makes it easier to smell. And then- ROSIE: This is quite a picture. We are holding these little tulip glasses and swirling them with our palms over the tops. CHRISTINE: Ooh, it smells delicious. ROSIE: And then you knock your [inaudible 00:26:39]. CHRISTINE: You don't like the smell? I love the smell. I feel like I'm in Italy. ROSIE: Grassy? MICHAEL: Mm-hmm. Very grassy. Yeah. Yeah. ROSIE: It's hay…it's… CHRISTINE: All right. MICHAEL: Yeah. So when you slurp it, you just slurp it and slurp it across your... Be noisy. I know, it's a weird sensation- CHRISTINE: It's so peppery. MICHAEL: Yeah. CHRISTINE: Oh, my God, that's so peppery. ROSIE: We're losing Caira. CAIRA: You guys, I don't think I can do this two more times. ROSIE: I really did not like the experience of it in my mouth, just drinking oil. MICHAEL: Yeah. ROSIE: But the after of it, the way that the flavor diffuses on the palate and it really kicks you in the back of the throat. That's so nice. CAIRA: Yeah. It is very peppery. MICHAEL: Yeah, it's really fruity. And this isn't even the most- ROSIE: I'm getting green apple. MICHAEL: Yeah, green apple, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. ROSIE: So that's number one. This is olive oil number two. CAIRA: We're swirling, we're warming. ROSIE: Let's get the nose in there. CAIRA: Oh, wow. Yeah. CAIRA: I like this one better. It's not as grassy, dirt smelling. ROSIE: Like fruits. Like light fruit. Maybe a little herby. MICHAEL: Yeah, definitely getting herbs on this. Yeah. ROSIE: So swirl, sniff, slurp, swallow. CHRISTINE: I'm slurping. CAIRA: I didn't hear you. CAIRA: Go on. CHRISTINE: That was the... Okay. Okay, this one- MICHAEL: But this one's very bitter. CHRISTINE: Yeah, it's a little bit more bitter- CAIRA: I can handle this one. CHRISTINE: This one isn't doing anything for me. MICHAEL: Oh, really? Maybe because you already hit your- CHRISTINE: Maybe because it already hit me- MICHAEL: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. CHRISTINE: I don't feel any sensation afterwards. MICHAEL: Oh, really? Slurp it across your tongue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ROSIE: Oh, my God. Because this is spicy on the tongue and in the back. MICHAEL: It's spicy. This is pepper spicy, like black pepper. ROSIE: Yeah. The other thing to say about this one is it's very thick. In terms of viscosity, it feels- MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah, it has a buttery quality to it. Yeah. CAIRA: But it's not clinging to my mouth- MICHAEL: No. CAIRA: ... feel like the last one was. MICHAEL: Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. ROSIE: Number one tasted more oily. MICHAEL: Yeah. Yeah. This has a buttery quality to it. Yeah. This is one of my favorites. CHRISTINE: This one is very mild to me. It tastes bitter and I feel a little bit of a burn. MICHAEL: Oh, interesting. Okay. CHRISTINE: But nothing like that first burn. That first burn was like, "Whoa- MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. CHRISTINE: Okay. This is number three. CAIRA: Okay. CHRISTINE: And- ROSIE: Cap it and warm it. CHRISTINE: ... we're swirling. We're warming, we're swirling. And I'm going to sniff. Whoa. That's almost like waxy to me. MICHAEL: Yeah. Remember what I was saying earlier? CHRISTINE: Is that a little essence of crayon? I think it's a red crayon. ROSIE: It's funky. MICHAEL: It really... Isn't it wild? It smells like wax and cardboard. Yeah. ROSIE: It smells old. Just like old. CAIRA: Is it safe to say this is the rancid one? ROSIE: I suspect so- MICHAEL: Yeah. ROSIE: Swirl, sniff, slurp and swallow, guys. Oh, it just coats your mouth. MICHAEL: I know. It's a different- ROSIE: I don't like that, Michael. MICHAEL: Different sensation. It's- ROSIE: I don't like it. CHRISTINE: It's like you just played an off note or something. It's like [inaudible 00:29:36]. MICHAEL: Yeah. It doesn't have that burn. It's flat, clings to your mouth. ROSIE: Michael, I don't like that at all. MICHAEL: That's been sitting in my window for a month with a loose lid on it in a clear glass jar. CHRISTINE: In preparation for this day? MICHAEL: In preparation for this day. CAIRA: I think this is what it would taste like if you just drank straight vegetable oil. MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah. It has that... It's lost all of its... Yeah. CHRISTINE: And the lingering flavor is just not pleasant. MICHAEL: Not pleasant. So number one was Fat Gold and it's their oil that's made from Arbequina olives, and the second one was also Fat Gold, but it is from Frantoio olives. And that was the bitter spicy one. I just got this shipment in, so I was like, "Oh, this will be fun." I think it's nice because some of the grocery store brands aren't going to have the type of olive, so I thought it would be interesting for you to try a specific type of olive cultivar. And then the last one was my little jar of gross oil- ROSIE: Clear jar. CHRISTINE: What are some of the... These are not picks. MICHAEL: No. Yeah. CHRISTINE: What are some of the picks that we have in our guide that you really love that you've been using since you did this guide? MICHAEL: Yes. Okay. So for one that's really fruity and buttery, that's really good with fish or a lighter salad dressing, maybe a salad dressing that has fruit in it. I really like the Bono Sicilia PGI Organic Sicilian olive oil. That one's really good. We all really like that one. It's not going to be as pungent and bold as some of the others. If you want something more bold, Bertolli is really... We tested the rich taste one. That's what they call it, the rich taste. So it's just the bold, peppery... There's a blend of a bunch of olives, but that's going to be the more grassy, bold one. But, yeah, those are the two extremes- CHRISTINE: Two ends of the spectrum. MICHAEL: Yeah. CHRISTINE: Okay. MICHAEL: And then also the Graza, that one's also going to be a little more bold and peppery. Yeah. CHRISTINE: Love it. CAIRA: Michael, what's the last thing you've recently bought that you've really loved? MICHAEL: So this is nerdy, but... So I do a lot of sewing, but I just bought these antique buttons. I'm laughing as I'm saying this. I sound like such a dork. But they're portraits of these very fabulous women. They're a 100 years old and they have little portraits, and one of the women is wearing a big jaunty hat. So anyway, I'm going to put them on a shirt that I'm going to make. CHRISTINE: I love it. CAIRA: Where did you find them? MICHAEL: The World Wide Web. ROSIE: WWW. MICHAEL: No, I got them on eBay. ROSIE: Michael, thanks so much for joining us. MICHAEL: Thank you so much. ROSIE: Another great episode with Michael Sullivan. CHRISTINE: I mean, when are we going to have him back again? He's so great. ROSIE: What an absolute delight. CAIRA: Yeah. He better not bring any more olive oil around me. ROSIE: Yeah. To be fair, we don't want to drink any more of his olive oil. CAIRA: No. CAIRA: Lovely man. ROSIE: Lovely man. CAIRA: Please don't ever make me do that, y'all. ROSIE: What are you all taking away from this episode? CHRISTINE: Well, I truly feel that I have now the olive oil walk of shame to do on this show where I need to admit that I've been keeping my olive oil in a clear bottle with a spout near the stove because it's super convenient and I guess I'm going to have to stop doing that when I get home- ROSIE: For shame. CHRISTINE: Yes, for shame. For shame. And I think because of the way I've been storing my oil, I will taste it when I get home to make sure it hasn't gone rancid. CAIRA: Wow. ROSIE: You're brave. CHRISTINE: Yeah. CAIRA: Yeah. I'm just going to assume that my olive oil is bad and I'm just going to buy a new one. No need to taste it. ROSIE: What are you going to get? CAIRA: I think I'm going to get the Bertolli because I've definitely seen that in every grocery store I've ever been to. So- ROSIE: Very accessible. CAIRA: ... I think I've decided that I'm not going to be an olive oil person. It's just I'm happy with whatever works and is cheap. ROSIE: I feel like this conversation validated the fact that I am an olive oil person and will continue to be. I'm taking away that extra virgin is king of the hill, that's what you look for, the designation you look for when you know you want to have something that is that real authentic olive taste. And then the other thing to look for on the bottle, harvest date. CHRISTINE: Yeah. ROSIE: Really trying to ensure that you see a harvest date and that it's within two years that you're consuming it from harvest date. CHRISTINE: And not to be confused with the best buy date. ROSIE: Not to be confused with the best buy date. CHRISTINE: And older is not better here. CHRISTINE: Older is not better. We're not aging like fine wine. CHRISTINE: No, no, no. ROSIE: If you want to find out more about Michael's reporting, you can check out our show notes and our website. That's it for us. Thanks so much for listening. CAIRA: Bye. CHRISTINE: Bye. The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel, engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pitman. Today's episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop, and Diane Wong. Wirecutter's deputy publisher is Cliff Levy. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter's editor-in-chief. I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell. ROSIE: And I'm Rosie Guerin. CHRISTINE: Thanks for listening. BLOOPER MICHAEL: Yeah. If you're not used to trying it, the reaction was just people choking in public in the store and you're like, "Oh, my gosh. Are you okay?"
New York Times
23-07-2025
- General
- New York Times
How to Get Rid of Ants and Roaches for Good
DOUG: Roaches love, and this is a phrase used in the pest control world, is cracks and crevices. So a roach is extremely happy if they have their feet on one surface and their back is against another surface. CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell. ROSIE: I'm Rosie Guerin and you're listening to The Wirecutter Show . ROSIE: All right, Caira and Christine, it's time for us to finish a task we started months ago. CHRISTINE: Ooh, what is it? ROSIE: Well, last fall you'll recall we did an episode about how to get rid of mice and rats. CAIRA: How could I forget? ROSIE: It was a real skin crawler. This spring we did one of course on combating mosquitoes and ticks. CAIRA: Yes. CHRISTINE: And everyone's favorite. ROSIE: Everyone's favorite. How to keep those off your clothes in person. Now the trifecta is completed because sadly we have to talk about roaches and ants. CAIRA: You don't really like this sequel. CHRISTINE: This is the worst. This is the worst of the trifecta, I think. ROSIE: Have y'all dealt with them? You both live in New York? CHRISTINE: I've had them, but not like roach infestations. I've never had that problem. CAIRA: I have. ROSIE: Sure, I sure have too. CAIRA: I have. ROSIE: This is my second apartment in New York many, many years ago, made a friend over who came out of our bathroom white as a ghost, and she was trembling said that she found a giant roach on the head of one of our toothbrushes. I thought we were never going to see her again. It was horrible. CHRISTINE: Well, okay, obviously a roach infestation is disgusting. ROSIE: Ants are pretty bad too. CHRISTINE: Ants are gross too. These are not fun problems to have, and sometimes the solution is pretty simple, just clean up. But sometimes the answer is not so simple. Sometimes it's pervasive, it's really hard to take care of. And so today we are going to call our favorite pest management expert, Wirecutter senior staff writer Doug Mahoney, who has also shared with us how to get rid of other creepy crawly things in your home. CAIRA: If you're a regular listener of the show, you probably already know Doug, and you might also remember that he lives on a hobby farm in New Hampshire where he has combated in his barn where he's contracted Lyme disease five times from ticks, and he's tested all kinds of bug repellents. Doug's going to fill us in on what works and when You should just call it quits and actually call a pro. Because if you're not careful, you can make an ant or roach infestation much worse. ROSIE: This poor guy has seen it all. CHRISTINE: He really has. We'll take a quick break and when we're back, we'll get into the first steps you should take. If you see ants or roaches in your home, we'll be right back. CAIRA: Welcome back. With us now is Doug Mahoney. He's Wirecutter's senior staff writer covering home improvement and pest management gear. In addition to writing our guides to ant and roach traps, Doug has written about mosquitoes, flies, bug zappers, wasp and hornet sprays and bug repellents, and also why essential oils are not good bug repellents. For our coverage, he's interviewed a lot of pest management experts, entomologists and other bug experts. CAIRA: Welcome, Doug. It's so good to have you back. DOUG: Hi, how is everybody? CHRISTINE: We are good. Doug, at this point, you're such a regular on the show. Could we just maybe install a podcast studio in your barn? I feel like you live on this farm in New Hampshire. What is the bug situation there? Do you have ants? Do you have roaches? Are roaches a thing in New England? DOUG: We have ants, sort of a seasonal summer ant thing. Just like a lot of people, we really don't deal with roaches. I don't have a ton of firsthand, thankfully, a ton of firsthand experience combating roaches, but flies are certainly an issue, especially if you have animals. CAIRA: I would take a million flies over one roach. CHRISTINE: Yeah, they're gross. CAIRA: So Doug, in our mice and rat episode, you quizzed us on our Rodent IQ and I think you've come prepared with another quiz. So you're going to test us today about our ant and roach IQ, right? DOUG: Yes. We'll see how you guys do. CAIRA: Okay. DOUG: So the first one, ants do not sleep like humans. Instead, they take a series of naps over the course of a day. So how many naps on average does an ant take in a day? A. 25, B. 50, C. 150, D. 250. ROSIE: God, 250 naps is my dream. That's actually my dream. CAIRA: What qualifies as a nap? Like three seconds. How do you take 250 naps in a day? ROSIE: My gut says 150. CHRISTINE: I was going to say that too. CAIRA: Yeah, I'm going to go with 150 also. DOUG: The correct answer: ants take 250 micro naps in a day, each lasting about a minute a piece. CAIRA: Oh my God. Wait, that's really cute. I don't know why. DOUG: Which adds up to about four to five hours of sleep each day. CHRISTINE: And is that just because they are literally working so hard, they have to take these little minute naps? DOUG: I don't know. I think that's just how they roll. They just go plugging along and shut down for just little bit. ROSIE: How many naps do you think I can fit into this episode? DOUG: Okay, so the second question. How long can a cockroach live without its head? A. One hour, B. one day, C. a couple days, D. A couple weeks. CAIRA: I think it's a couple weeks. CHRISTINE: Oh my god. Of options, I am praying it's number one because that is just frightening if it's any longer than, what did you say? An hour? DOUG: One hour. CAIRA: Is the first one? DOUG: One hour, one day, a couple days or a couple weeks. ROSIE: I think one day. CHRISTINE: I'm going to say an hour. I'm just praying. I want it to be an hour. DOUG: I'm sorry, Christine. It's a couple weeks. CHRISTINE: What? No, I was right the first time. ROSIE: I hate this so much. CHRISTINE: Wait, so what do you have to do to actually kill this thing? Is it a vampire? You have to spike it with a wood spike. DOUG: Just crush it. CAIRA: You have to kill the whole thing. CHRISTINE: Is crushing it completely with my foot going to kill it. DOUG: That'll probably do it. CAIRA: Okay. DOUG: That'll probably do it. CAIRA: All right. DOUG: Okay, so we all know about cockroaches surviving the Nuclear war. So true or false of insects, cockroaches are the most resistant to radiation. CAIRA: True. ROSIE: True. CHRISTINE: False. DOUG: False. MythBusters actually did a piece on this. They exposed cockroaches, fruit flies, and flour beetles to different levels of radiation, and it was the flour beetle that performed the best. After exposure to 100,000 rad, a unit of radiation measurement, which is about a hundred times what a human could survive, 10% of the flour beetles were still alive. CAIRA: Oh my God. CHRISTINE: And how many of the cockroaches were alive? DOUG: No cockroaches made it. CAIRA: Thank God. CHRISTINE: Voilà. ROSIE: Wow, Christine. CHRISTINE: I seem to know more about bugs than I want to. ROSIE: All right, so ants and roaches are clearly different. I would strongly argue roaches are the more disturbing problem. Do you treat these infestations in the same way, Doug? DOUG: You basically do. There's certainly behavioral differences between those two bugs, but as far as the products you use and how you use them, it's basically the same. CAIRA: Okay, break it down. DOUG: So basically there are four things you want to do. First, you want to observe and identify the bugs. You want to find out really what you're dealing with, where they're coming into your home, where they're spending their time. Then as with any pests in the house, whether it's mice, rats, roaches, ants, you want to really just clean up, seal up any food, especially pet food. When researchers raise cockroaches, they feed them dog food. CAIRA: Hate that. DOUG: Yeah, they're particularly attracted to that. And you want to clean up things like you want to make sure the counter is wiped down every night, the sink is cleaned out too. If you've found out where they're coming in your home, you want to seal up any entry points. And then as far as getting rid of the bugs that are in your house, you want to use a bait. CHRISTINE: Okay. So let's start with observing and identifying bugs. Is there any kind difference in how you approach that with ants versus cockroaches? DOUG: Not really. You want to just see really as far as ants, it's a pass fail test. You either have ants or you don't, unless you're seeing signs of carpenter ants, and that's going to be little bits of sawdust or small holes bored into the wood of your home. If you see that you should just immediately call a pest control operator. Basically, you're on the clock already. CHRISTINE: So just to reiterate what you just said. Basically, if you're seeing ants and you're seeing sawdust where you didn't create the sawdust, you probably have carpenter ants and that's when you should call an exterminator. Otherwise, you might want to try some DIY methods to get rid of the ants before calling a pest control expert. DOUG: Yeah, there's definitely different types of ants, but the differences between them aren't really going to affect much of the approach that you're going to take to get rid of them. ROSIE: And then for the difference between cockroaches, it doesn't matter what type of cockroach it is, you're going to deal with it in the same way. DOUG: Correct. CAIRA: Are there particular places that roaches versus ants like, dark versus light or wet versus dry, anything like that? DOUG: Definitely. So ants are going to tend to just go where the food is. The telltale sign of ants is ants. You're just going to see the little trail of ants. You'll see them walking in a row. It can be easier to find out how they're coming in. You just sort of trace their little trail back as far as you can, and then look around the foundation of your house. If they're coming from outside, they may just be in your walls too. Roaches on the other hand, roaches love, and this is a phrase used in the pest control world, is cracks and crevices. So, a roach is extremely happy if they have their feet on one surface and their back is against another surface. You want to look for them in tight little spots. So right between the stove and the cabinetry, a little nook like that, they love being around the refrigerator because the fridge actually provides a good water source too. There's condensation from the compressor unit or maybe the gasket on the fridge door isn't really tight, so there might be some condensation there. Cockroaches, they love cardboard too. They raise them in cardboard when they raise them in labs. ROSIE: Why is that? DOUG: Well, because it just provides so many of these little... ROSIE: Little crooks and nannies? DOUG: Little cracks and crevices, yeah. ROSIE: All right. So Doug, how many bugs in this case, maybe roaches indicates a problem if you see one, do you have an infestation? If you see one ant, does it mean you have more ants? What's the guidance there? DOUG: Yeah, I would say if you have one ant, if you see one ant, you should start thinking about doing something about it. Ants really don't operate on an individual basis, so you're not going to have just one, and roaches do not live in a colony the way ants do. But still, even if you have one roach, I think it's worth dealing with. CHRISTINE: This might be an old wives tale, but I have been told as a city dweller that if I see a really big cockroach, it's not as big of a problem as if I see a little tiny cockroach. CAIRA: I've also heard this. DOUG: Really? ROSIE: I've also heard this, but I knew even while I was being told, I knew it was a thing that they tell you so that you can sleep at night. CAIRA: Is it? ROSIE: I mean, Doug, is it? DOUG: I don't know, I haven't heard that. ROSIE: You've not heard that, so I think that's something that you would hear. CHRISTINE: Yeah, I've been told, I had a friend who had a really bad roach infestation in their apartment and they had all these tiny little roaches and it wasn't like big ones. It was just like a bunch of little ones. CAIRA: I've lived in a roach-infested apartment before and I can corroborate that. They're always the small ones. ROSIE: I have also lived in a roach-infested apartment, and they were small and they were medium and they were big. CAIRA: Well, lucky you. ROSIE: My poor brother, his old house, they were big and they were bigger and they were biggest and it was an infestation. And so I don't know if I buy that. I do, I like this idea of the individualist roach, the Ralph Waldo Emerson. CAIRA: So once you figured out how the bugs are getting in and what you're dealing with, then I'm guessing it's time to clean because that usually seems to be the right answer. This is also an important step in getting rid of rodents, but what's more important here? Are you cleaning out crumbs in your kitchen or putting food in airtight containers? What's the order of operations here? DOUG: I would recommend both. You want to give your kitchen a really good cleaning, and then at the same time, you want to make sure that your food is protected, especially roaches. If you keep a little honey jar on your counter, that's going to be highly targeted by ants. So I would find a new way to store that. CHRISTINE: To this cleaning point. Going back to my friend who lived in this roach-infested apartment, they kept things really clean and they could not get rid of this problem. After a while, they discovered that their landlord was keeping all of the yard trimmings in the basement, and it was just creating this area for all of these roaches to just chow down. So, keeping things clean in your entire home is key here right? DOUG: Yeah, and that's the difficulty with living in an apartment or a condo. You're only as good as the entire structure, really. ROSIE: Yeah. What do they eat or what do they like to eat? You mentioned dog food is what they feed them when they're growing them in a lab, but are they going to essentially eat anything and drink any water source they can find? DOUG: Yeah. Ants typically have more of a sugar diet. It actually... It can change over the course of a year, but during the summer typically have a sugar-based diet and they may switch to more a protein-based diet in the colder months. But roaches are more consistently a protein-based diet. CHRISTINE: They're little weight lifters. DOUG: They are. ROSIE: And then what about water? You mentioned the refrigerator. Is this also why you're finding roaches in and by a sink and in and by a shower tub and drain, that kind of thing? DOUG: Yeah. Roaches, they can go quite a while without eating. I think they can go weeks without eating, but they can only go a few days without drinking. So they're going to definitely focus in on a water source, which again, like I said, it's why refrigerators provide a good opportunity for them because they not only get those small cracks and crevices, but they typically can get water there too. CAIRA: But what about your sink? When you finish doing the dishes at the end of the night, are you supposed to wipe it down dry too? How do you keep them out of sources like that? DOUG: You could try and do that. I mean, you just really got to do the best you can. I mean, if that means squeegeeing down your sink, I guess you could give that a shot. CAIRA: Yikes. ROSIE: So the next step is to seal up holes. What is the best way to do that? DOUG: Well, the best way to do that, like I said, with ants, you can often find the trail of ants and you can trace it back maybe if you're lucky to where they're getting in the house. It's a matter of going around the outside of your house, looking at the condition of your foundation, usually where the framing, where the wood meets the foundation, there can be gaps there. Or if you have a field stone foundation like I do, that actually can be very, very difficult to patch up. But you want to just take some heavy duty caulk and just kind of fill the holes best you can. A good silicone caulk will be good, especially if it's on the outside of your house, that's going to provide more flexibility for the freeze and thaw expansion, contraction that your house goes through. ROSIE: So to recap what you're going to want to do here, and this goes for roaches, this goes for ants. Observe what the bugs are, identify them and identify where they're coming from. Find where they're coming into your home, where they're spending their time. At least you will know the source, and this can be much easier said than done, but that's going to be your first step. The second step, clean up. Clean, clean, clean. Food, put food away, airtight seal it, seal up your cracks that you can see. And finally what you're going to want to do is use a bait. We're going to get into that with Doug after a break, and we'll also ask about why people should avoid certain pest treatments. And if it's time to stop faffing about and call a pro, we will be right back. CAIRA: Welcome back, Doug. Before the break, we talked about the first steps in combating an ant or roach infestation, but now let's talk about bait traps, which is what you'd recommend for both ants and roaches, right? So what exactly is a bait trap and how does it work exactly? DOUG: So a bait, a bait is a mixture of food and a slow acting poison. And the theory behind it is that in the case of ants specifically, they'll collect the food and then they bring it back to the colony and they distribute it. So that ultimately kills all the other ants, and then eventually the queen. The models bait comes in a bunch of different forms, we prefer the ones that are, they're called bait stations, which is like a little box that the bait comes in. The one unusual part about baits is that if you start seeing more ants, it might be a good thing because that means that they found the bait station. The toxin is mixed with an extremely attractive food. So once they find it, they'll just usually start lining up to get at it. CAIRA: Oh, poor little guys. DOUG: And so roaches, like I said, they don't live in colonies, but they share the bait amongst themselves using other ways. What roaches will do is roaches might vomit and another roach will eat it. ROSIE: Poor little guys. CHRISTINE: If they weren't appealing enough to begin with. CAIRA: No, no. DOUG: Roaches, they may eat each other's feces. ROSIE: Poor little guys. DOUG: Or they may just die and be cannibalized by another roach. ROSIE: Poor little guys. CAIRA: It's like The Road out there in the roach world. CHRISTINE: Yeah, it is like The Road in roach world. CHRISTINE: So it sounds like, okay, ants and roaches, they live in different types of communities. Are the traps themselves the same or are they different because it sounds like they eat slightly different foods. DOUG: A bait station made for ants is not really going to attract roaches. So it's two different products, there's two different toxins and two different food sources. The general theory is the same, but the details are not. Ants go for a sweet diet, so the food that's mixed with that poison is sweet almost, but it seems like it's a honey or a maple syrup. It's a very liquidy, very, very sweet thing. And then the roach one, it's more of like a paste. It's more of like a protein-based. ROSIE: Like muscle milk. CHRISTINE: That's right. Muscle milk for those little weight lifters. What traps do you like? What bait stations do you like for ants and roaches? DOUG: We like the ones from Terro. Terro makes liquid ant baits, and they also make roach baits. Their liquid ant baits are notable. There is in all the product reviewing and testing I do, it is rare to find as much consensus as there is about how well the Terro ant baits work. When I was looking at all these ant baits, I set maybe five or six of them out when we had our own ant problem and all of the ants, they went right to Terro and they cleaned that one out. And all the other ones, all the other bait stations were right next to it. So, I'm not sure what they put in their little sugary mix, but whatever they do, it is highly, highly effective. We have a number of colleagues who have had really good experience with Terro ant baits too. CHRISTINE: Okay. So you've gotten a little bit into how you test these. Can you tell us more? You said you don't have cockroaches, so how are you testing those? DOUG: We test, when it comes to all sort of our ant and pest control, for the most part, we don't test for efficacy, we test for usability. So, we'll get the products in our hands and we'll use them as anyone would use them, see which ones in the case of bait stations, which ones are easier to monitor, which ones are easier to open, which ones are just generally easier to use, how many you get in a pack, that sort of thing. But it just does not make sense for us to do efficacy testing on this. There's just too many variables involved as far as what season it is for the ants, which ants you're trying to get rid of, which roaches you're trying to get rid of, what their specific diets are. So there is a huge body of literature already out there as far as the effectiveness of different toxins. We look at that and then we also speak with pest control operators, we speak with entomologists, we speak with people at extension offices and get their input as well. ROSIE: So again, are roaches and ants going into these little poison homes and that's how they're getting the bait and then taking it out and then coming back and doing the same thing over and over? DOUG: Yep, that's exactly it. ROSIE: Fun. DOUG: And in the case of ants, you'll just have a line of ants going across your kitchen right to the bait and then a line of ants right next to it going back to the colony. ROSIE: So then, where are you meant to put the traps, particularly if you don't, I mean obviously you put them where the source is, but if you don't know, how do you figure that out? DOUG: Well, you really want to put them sort of where you see the bugs. It's not going to make much sense to put them in the middle of your room. So along the baseboards would be good. Or on your counters if that's where you see ants. With roaches, you can put them around, like I said, around the refrigerator. You can put them in places where there are those cracks and crevices. ROSIE: You mentioned the countertop. Do these bait traps pose any risk to kids or any risks to pets? Should people be careful where they're placing them for those reasons? DOUG: Well, as with handling any kind of toxin, you definitely want to be aware with kids and pets. I will say the ant baits, their active ingredient is borax, which is commonly used as a laundry detergent. So that is about, it's about as benign as it gets, but it can spill out and you don't want your dog eating it up, you don't want your kids drinking it. It comes in different forms. We like the bait stations because it's a little more contained. Roach baits, they use a stronger active ingredient, but it's a thick paste and it doesn't easily fall out of the bait station. So that one is a little safer as far as if a kid goes over and just picks it up or if a dog knocks it over. CAIRA: From your reporting, Doug, I know that there are other types of pesticides that you could use like gels and powders, but when would you go for one of those? DOUG: Well, what we've been talking about are bait stations, and so that is when, like I said, the bait comes in a little compartment, but most manufacturers, they'll sell the same bait, the same mixture of the poison and the food, but they'll sell it in just a different format. So, you can often get them in a powder or in a gel, and that can work depending on the situation. So especially with cockroaches, the gel is sticky, so you could kind of smear some maybe on the side of a cabinet that's near your stove or it's just not a place where you want to put a bait station. You could do a little bit of the gel. The powder it comes in, you could just puff a few little bits of this powder underneath the refrigerator. We find that they're harder to use, they're harder to monitor, and they're a little tougher around kids and pets. So we prefer the bait stations. ROSIE: I remember when I had a roach infestation, I remember feeling like anything that has any kind of review, I want to get it and I want to pour it all over the apartment and I want to do everything at once. Is there any detriment to doing more things, reaching for more than one type of bait or type of solution at once? DOUG: No, not really. I mean, I think it's a fact that there's no one product that's always going to work all the time. And I think one of the things to keep in mind in approaching this is to always have the flexibility to switch to a different product, a different active ingredient. There are times when the bugs will have just an aversion to a bait for whatever reason, but that doesn't mean that they'll also be averse to one that comes from another company or one that uses a different active ingredient or has a different recipe. ROSIE: But by the same token, whatever you choose, you want to give it the time to work? DOUG: Yup. Maybe a week or two and see how it's going. The Terro bait station, one thing we like about them is that they're clear, so they're really easy to monitor. If they're working, you'll see some ants that drown themselves in there, so you should know if it's working, you'll be able to see. CHRISTINE: Okay, so we've talked about bait stations, we've talked about gels, we've talked about powders. There are other types of products you can treat ants and roaches with. What are some of those and why don't you advise using them? DOUG: Yeah, so there's the kill on contact sprays. Those are not going to do any good because you're just going to be killing the ants that are right in front of you. And that, as we know, is not going to affect the colony, and it's really not going to change the behavior of the ants. What's more is I've been told that you can, if you use those kill and contact sprays, that you can actually split the colony, and so then it'll make the infestation worse. There's also bug bombs, which are those foggers, which you set a bunch of them off in a room and then you vacate the room or you vacate your house. Those don't tend to work, they don't tend to get into the cracks and crevices where cockroaches live. And then there is even a story where somebody set a ton of them off and they use butane as part of the mixture in the aerosol can, and then I think it might been, there might've been a spark from the stove or from the fridge or something, but I believe the entire house blew up. CAIRA: Oh my God. CHRISTINE: Oh my gosh. CAIRA: I mean, they solved the infestation problem. ROSIE: That is dark. So, are those kill-on-contact sprays not good for roaches either? DOUG: It may not get all of the roaches. I think the bait, it's going to be a more passive way and have a better chance at getting all of the roaches. ROSIE: I'll tell you what, I was walking around the house with a holster and keeping raid in my pocket, and I was just like, because you see one of these in the daytime, and you're not going to be like, well, I guess I'll just take myself into another room and hope that the bait works overnight. You're screaming and then spraying this thing until it flips over on its back. So I don't know, I don't know what my question is. I'm clearly still haunted. DOUG: They can certainly be added to your arsenal, but I think that it would be in conjunction with a bait. ROSIE: Got it. CAIRA: So Doug, on TikTok, I sometimes see "non-toxic" ways people can deal with bug problems, like things like tea tree oil, vinegar, and I even saw something called Diatomaceous earth, which is like a white, chalky substance made from fossilized sea creatures. I don't know why I bought it but I did. It's supposed to be one of these natural remedies that keeps ants and roaches away. I want to know your thoughts on that. DOUG: Yeah, there are definitely, with essential oils, there's definitely a lot of essential oils that have bug repellent capabilities. The problem with essential oils is that their effectiveness does not last very long. Diatomaceous earth can be very effective. It's a very, very, very fine powder. It's often just a messy alternative to deal with. They have to actually walk through it and get it on their bodies for it to work, it's just a little trickier. I know anecdotally, there's a lot of people who swear by Diatomaceous earth, and I'm sure that it works to a certain degree, I believe it dries them out. But again, it is just a messier option where I think a bait is probably a little just easier to deal with. CHRISTINE: So if you are dealing with bugs, you want to do what we talked about in the first part of this episode. You want to identify, you want to clean, and then you want to seal up any holes, and then you want to turn to bait traps and you want to get different kinds for ants and roaches, bait traps are generally going to be the most effective. You can also use gels and powders that have some of the same insecticides in them. But Doug, you recommend avoiding instant kill aerosol sprays for ants because it can make the infestation worse if you split the colony. You might want to consider using them for roaches if you're looking for an extra little gung ho treatment there, you recommend avoiding these total release foggers, these bug bombs because they're not that effective and they can also be dangerous. And then also, you might try some of these natural treatments, but they're not going to be as effective as the traps. DOUG: Probably not. Baits are really the standard, especially with ants, I would say with cockroaches too. It's a very reliable, and it doesn't really get you in contact with the bugs. It's actually a fairly clean way to go about it. ROSIE: So you've done all of these things that Christine just mentioned. It's not working. When is it time to call an exterminator, Doug? DOUG: Well, that's sort of your call, your comfort level. If you want to keep trying something else, but you don't want to let it get even further and further out of hand. So, I would say once a couple baits are out, I'd monitor them for a couple weeks or however long you can handle it. Definitely don't be afraid to just call it quits and call it pest control operator. ROSIE: Doug, it's time you get in the hot seat. We're going to test you. DOUG: Really? ROSIE: We started this with you quizzing us. It's only fair we return the favor. So we're going to play a little round of, would you rather, oh boy. CAIRA: I'll start. I've been thinking about this. I've been thinking about how I want to test you. Would you rather eat chocolate covered roaches or chocolate covered ants? DOUG: Chocolate covered ants, they're smaller. ROSIE: Would you rather have roaches that could fly, or ants that could bite? DOUG: I would probably go flying. Biting ants sounds awful. CAIRA: Yikes. Okay. Would you rather have a roach infestation or a rat infestation? DOUG: Ooh. I would say, that's tricky, that's tricky. I have more experience with rats, so as gross as it is, I would probably rather have a rat infestation because I know... CHRISTINE: The enemy, you know. DOUG: I know the enemy. ROSIE: Okay. So before we wrap, Caira usually asks all of our guests one final question. What's the last thing you bought that you really loved, but because Doug is a regular and more than that, because Doug famously doesn't buy all that much of anything, we're going to spare him and just say, Doug, you're wonderful. Thank you for coming back, thank you for humoring us and haunting us. DOUG: Well, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. CHRISTINE: Well, that was thoroughly disgusting. Yuck. ROSIE: I'm kind of surprised we made it through. CHRISTINE: Yeah, I mean, but we're done. We're not going to do any more of these, we promise. CAIRA: Yeah. I'm going to just like all the other ones that we did that are this level of disgusting. I'm just going to blank it out, it's going in the vault, I'm never remembering any of this. ROSIE: I do feel like we bonded through some shared misery. CHRISTINE: Yeah, I know what to do the next time I see the little trail of ants in my apartment or the rogue cockroach. For me personally, I now know that if I see one cockroach, it's a problem. I always thought if there was just one rogue one, it had just wandered in. But now I know that they might be nesting around the pipes in my sink and behind my refrigerator and all that good stuff. CAIRA: You know what? I actually think ignorance is bliss, but if I do see another roach or just before that, I think I'm just going to get some bait traps for roaches and ants just to be safe, because I actually live in a ground floor apartment. I've been lucky so far, but I don't want to risk it. ROSIE: I hope you stay safe out there. My big thing, it's annoying, but it's clean. It's clean, clean, clean, clean, clean. Having said that, when I had the roach problem, and actually I had an ant problem too in a previous apartment, we cleaned and it didn't make a difference, and we had to call a professional. So, don't be a hero. CHRISTINE: That's right. ROSIE: If it's not working, call someone for help. CHRISTINE: That's right. Give it a week or two with your bait traps and then call the pros. ROSIE: If you want to find out more about Wirecutters coverage or if you want to check out Doug's reporting, head to our website. You can also have a look at our show notes. That's it for us. Sorry for creeping y'all out. See you. Thanks for listening. CHRISTINE: Bye. CAIRA: The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keele. Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pitman. Today's episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop, and Diane Wong. Wirecutters deputy publisher is Cliff Levy. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter's Editor in Chief. I'm Caira Blackwell. CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. ROSIE: And I'm Rosie Guerin. CAIRA: Thanks for listening.
New York Times
17-07-2025
- Lifestyle
- New York Times
Packable Beach and Picnic Recipes
CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell. ROSIE: I'm Rosie Guerin, and you're listening to The Wirecutter Show . CHRISTINE: This episode is called: 'Packable Beach and Picnic Recipes.' ROSIE: Hey there, this is Rosie. Earlier this week, we published an episode all about the gear you might want to consider to help you level up your beach experience. We talked about shades, chairs, coolers, and more. But we didn't talk about one super important thing: food! Everyone has their own ideas for what makes a great beach snack. Some ice-cold fruit from the cooler? A delectable lunch of salads and dips? Or maybe just a bag of chips? Well, no matter your style, our friends over at New York Times Cooking have some ideas of ways to elevate your beach-snacking game. And today, we're bringing you a conversation about just that with Tanya Sichynsky. Tanya is an editor at NYT Cooking who writes the weekly newsletter The Veggie, and she recently wrote a piece for The Times that included a bunch of great recipes for a beach day or picnic. CAIRA: Tanya, welcome to the show. TANYA: Hi, guys. Thanks so much for having me. CHRISTINE: We're glad to have you. ROSIE: Thanks for coming. Well, so obviously anyone can bring anything to a beach, a park, a picnic. We know that. What are your general rules, Tanya, for the kinds of recipes and foods you want to pack for a day at the beach, for a picnic? TANYA: Obviously, this is all incredibly subjective, but if you're asking me — which you are — I'm going to tell you, it's trying to avoid really soggy food. You don't want something that's going to get real wet in a cooler or in a tote bag. So nothing super mayonnaise-y with soft bread, like that … to me, it's ripe for sogging. You want stuff that's really, I'll say packable and stackable. Whether you're working with a cooler or a big tote bag, you want stuff that will kind of Tetris into your vessel of choice and not get crushed. So if you're talking potato chips, you actually shouldn't decant your potato chips into a Ziploc bag if you can help it, because all the air in the bag will protect it. That kind of stuff. I think part of it is 'cooler versus tote bag' will tell me what kind of recipes I want to pack. CHRISTINE: So, like, a tote bag, meaning you're not going to keep it cool. TANYA: Well, I'm so glad you asked. I know that we want to talk about no-cooler recipes, but I will implore anybody, if they plan on being outside for a really long time, a great hack is just a water bottle. Put it in the freezer the night before and put it in the bag, because by the time you get to where you're going, the water will be semi-thawed, mostly thawed. You will have insulated the bag in some way by just packing a bunch of stuff into it, and it will keep some element of your meal cool. So if you're going with a couple people, just throw three frozen water bottles in there, and you'll stay hydrated, and your food will stay semi-cool. CHRISTINE: Oh, I love that tip. And also, if someone's going to freeze a water bottle, remember to leave an inch — TANYA: Always. CHRISTINE: — at the top, right? TANYA: Always. CHRISTINE: That is not filled so that the water can expand in the freezer. TANYA: Yes, it's multi-use in some ways. CHRISTINE: There we go. CAIRA: And just throw it in the trash when you're done. TANYA: And just throw it in the trash. And also, a lot of beaches — ROSIE: Recycle. CAIRA: That's what I meant. ROSIE: What are you, nuts? CAIRA: Just don't throw it in the ocean. That was my point. TANYA: No, there, exactly. We're recycling it. And then, really, for me, it's just, like, 'What am I not going to turn my nose up at if it's been outside for two hours?' We are not — at least, I'm not right now — talking about 'Is it adhering to the FDA standards of not outside for more than 90 minutes?' Look, we've all eaten weird stuff off a picnic table that we know that has been there for more than a few hours, more than the window. But won't you feel a little bit icky about eating? So that kind of brings me to the mayonnaise of it all, which is pretty shelf-stable. I don't worry about it too much, but if I'm doing, say, a chickpea salad or a pasta salad, maybe I will cut the mayonnaise down significantly and use more tahini or something like that, something that is okay at room temperature. It's essentially a nut butter. It's a seed butter. So if you're going to lug a peanut butter and jelly, and you feel cool about that, you probably would feel good about tahini or something like that in a chickpea salad. CHRISTINE: I love that. I never think about swapping tahini for mayonnaise, but I should probably do that more often. TANYA: We have over at New York Times Cooking a lot of salad recipes that are, like, chickpea-based salads that have some sort of configuration of tahini, mayonnaise, yogurt, more or less of each. And, really, it's completely … most of those recipes are really amenable, so you can just modify them to your tastes. If you're not really a mayonnaise person, you can do half-and-half yogurt/tahini, that rules. If you don't like tahini or you're allergic to sesame, mayonnaise/yogurt. If you are vegan, maybe you're using a combination of vegan mayonnaise or tahini. I've made vegan mayonnaise before, it's actually quite easy. CHRISTINE: What is it? Just oil? CAIRA: What is it? Yeah. TANYA: You use aquafaba, which is all the stuff at the bottom of a can of chickpeas. Yeah. So let's say you're making a chickpea salad. You have regular mayonnaise that makes you feel icky. You don't want to use yogurt. You have tahini. And you obviously have the can of chickpeas, because you're putting it in the salad. You drain the aquafaba, which is the liquid at the bottom of the can. And with an immersion blender, which I'm sure there is a Wirecutter pick for. CHRISTINE: Oh, we do have a pick. TANYA: Oh yeah. It's just the juice and the chickpeas, white vinegar, salt, sugar, lemon juice, some dry mustard, and then a really neutral oil, so we used a sunflower oil. And I'm telling you, it was like doing a magic trick when we did it. It immediately emulsifies. It tastes like mayonnaise. CHRISTINE: And it sounds like the ingredients in vegan mayonnaise, at least that recipe, those are pretty shelf-stable. You could take those out for a day without them turning bad. TANYA: Absolutely. CHRISTINE: Right. TANYA: Absolutely. And, again, if you have a little bit of a — I'm holding up a water bottle, for the folks at home — an insurance policy of semi-frozen water bottles, it will be cool enough, even if you did want to use regular mayonnaise, which tons of people will take to the beach, and it's never an issue. CAIRA: I'm a salt-and-vinegar-chips girl for life. Is there a salty snack you like to take to the beach? TANYA: Okay. I'm a sucker for BjornQorn. CHRISTINE: Oh, you're telling me all of the things that my kids want to eat. You all should go out on a picnic together. TANYA: I'm taking the kids to the beach. ROSIE: What is BjornQorn? CAIRA: Yeah, what are those? ROSIE: And why do you like it? TANYA: Okay, BjornQorn is vegan, cheesy popped popcorn. Very, very minimal ingredients. So if you are trying to cut down on super ultra-processed foods, this is a, I think, great alternative to something like a white-cheddar popcorn, Smartfood. So BjornQorn is made with nutritional yeast; nutritional yeast is dried, edible yeast. It usually comes in flakes. So good. I will make, frankly, a version at home of a BjornQorn. We have a recipe also on Cooking that is a vegan cheesy popcorn, same kind of combination of flavors. But, yeah, so BjornQorn. Okay, I always have hot dogs — from the editor of The Veggie. ROSIE: You always have hot dogs. TANYA: From the editor of The Veggie. ROSIE: Can you say more about that? TANYA: Yeah. Hebrew National, all-beef hot dogs, live and die by them. I love a hot dog, and I am taking hot dogs to the beach. CHRISTINE: No. TANYA: Yes. Hear me out. Okay, I did this last summer. So I will split-top a hot dog, so, like, butterfly it. I'll griddle it in my little cast iron skillet or on a griddle-top pan. I'll make two hot dogs a person, and then I will put the hot dogs and the buns in little aluminum foil roll-ups. You don't want to crush them. So I'll put them at the top of the bag with everything. If you will eat a ballpark hot dog some guy has been toting around through the stands of MetLife — ROSIE: I mean, fair. TANYA: — you will eat a beach hot dog. CAIRA: But that's not the same. TANYA: No, it is the same. CAIRA: Because a ballpark hot dog is still hot. What are you eating? A cold hot dog on the beach? TANYA: No, it is a — CAIRA: You warm it up in the sun? TANYA: It is room temperature. Sometimes it's still warm. Here's the kicker, though: Because I brought my frozen water bottle in the bag, I am bringing a topping, and the topping is pico de gallo. CHRISTINE: Oh, this is … you're hitting my heart here. I think this sounds like a delicious beach meal. TANYA: This is the perfect beach meal, and you've got the crunchy, crisp freshness of tomatoes and jalapeños, onions. Maybe you want to throw some scallions in there, definitely cilantro on top of the hot dog. Because you've butterflied the hot dog, it holds the pico de gallo in the hot dog. It's not going to just roll off. ROSIE: She's beauty and she's grace. TANYA: I made us put a recipe for this on New York Times Cooking. It is just a hot dog with pico de gallo, and the two tricks are the butterflying of the hot dog … I also put mayonnaise on the bun when I griddle them, so I will griddle the buns too. So also this helps with … if you're worried about your hot dog getting crushed, the outside might get a little crushed, but the inside, if you grill it on a cast iron skillet or a grill top, the inside of the bun will be a little bit harder, and it will protect the dog. CAIRA: Oh, you protect those dogs. ROSIE: Protect the dog. CAIRA: Well, let's say someone's at the beach all day, and they're packing a lunch, but they don't have a cooler. It might get a little warm in here. So what are some lunch ideas that you'd recommend for that and just generally things that won't go bad in the sun? TANYA: So I'm saying hot dog. I'm also saying Andy Baraghani has this extra-green pasta salad that I am obsessed with. It is my lunch today. It's downstairs, not in the fridge, just sitting at my desk. CHRISTINE: What's in this? TANYA: So you're using some short-cut pasta, whether it's rigatoni or a fusilli, but when I say 'short-cut,' I mean short tubes. You don't want a long noodle here. Snap peas, English peas, are the vegetables that are in here. And then the sauce is really, really easy to make, and it's made mostly of greens, so raw spinach, baby spinach or arugula, or a blend of both. And then basil, similar to how you would make a pesto, this is kind of … the sauce is really kind of like a looser pesto. ROSIE: Tanya, I'm looking at your article on The Times about easy recipes to take outside this summer, and I see something called a ham and jam sandwich. Talk about it. TANYA: Oh, absolutely. Okay, ham and jam sandwich, very straightforward. Similar to a French-style ham and butter sandwich that has been beefed up by the addition of some sort of fruit preserve, which is just a nice combination of flavors. It's really, really simple. If you are going to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or, I don't know, a turkey and cheese sandwich, the ham and jam sandwich is just like its kind of sexy, dignified cousin. It just feels like a fancy thing to eat at the beach, when really it's just, like, ham and cherry jam and some butter and a nice baguette. ROSIE: Let's say people have taken our advice to heart, Kit's advice to heart, and gotten a great cooler. What recipes do you recommend if we're lugging a big old cooler to the beach? TANYA: Yeah, I think this is where you're going crazy with the pasta salads and the dips. Any sort of dairy-based dips, a yogurt-based dip. We've got this great fresh ranch dip from Naz Deravian, which is really just like zhuzhed-up yogurt. So smart, great use of pantry seasonings, fresh chives. Ali Slagle also has a dill-pickled tzatziki, which is really fun. I don't know, I feel like pickles are so summery. ROSIE: We are a big pickle family. TANYA: Yeah, you got to get on the dill-pickled tzatziki train. It's just garlic, Greek yogurt, olive oil, finely chopped dill, and then a ton of grated pickles. CAIRA: So I know we talked about the popcorn, which is always a good, healthy snack, but what are some other things that you love to bring to the beach that won't get soggy or crunched, but is also still healthy? TANYA: Okay. Fruit feels like a cop-out answer, but I love a frozen grape. CAIRA: Oh my God. TANYA: So a Tupperware of frozen grapes, a little Baggie of frozen grapes. I'm popping them in the freezer. If you put a little lime juice, citric acid — CAIRA: Citric acid is my go-to. TANYA: — that is a really great — CHRISTINE: Wait, you guys, stop. What is citric acid, and why are you putting it on your grapes? TANYA: Okay, citric acid is a powder that looks just like granulated sugar, but it is a powder version of the naturally occurring acid that exists in citrus fruits. So it is a fine dusting powder that you could cover grapes with. This is what brings pucker to a Sour Patch Kid. So imagine frozen grapes tossed with a little citric acid, maybe a little bit of sugar. ROSIE: Do you put sugar on yours too? TANYA: Yes. ROSIE: You just do sugar? TANYA: Yeah. Okay. CHRISTINE: Hardcore. TANYA: So that is, like … and, I mean, the grapes are already sweet, so they don't really need any extra sugar. But yeah, toss those in citric acid. By the time you get to the beach, the grapes probably won't be frozen grapes anymore. If you are packing them in a cooler with ice, they might stay frozen. But if you're using them as the cooling element by just tossing them into a tote bag, they'll thaw by then. But they'll still be delicious, and they will hold some of their shape because they'd been frozen for most of the time. But that's a really, really easy, simple, healthy snack. I mean, again, fruit, okay. You didn't bring me on here to tell you to eat fruit, but that's a fun — CAIRA: That's a fruit in a fun way. CHRISTINE: That is delicious. TANYA: That's fruit in a fun way. ROSIE: Tanya Sichynsky, you are a legend. Thank you so much for being on our show. TANYA: This was so fun. ROSIE: This was really fun. TANYA: This ruled. ROSIE: Have fun at the beach, everybody. TANYA: Thanks. ROSIE: If you want to try out any of the recipes Tanya talked about today, you can find them in our show notes, or on the New York Times Cooking website. And if you want more of Tanya's recommendations, you can subscribe to the weekly newsletter The Veggie . That's it for us. Thanks for listening. The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pitman. Today's episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop, and Diane Wong. Wirecutter's deputy publisher is Cliff Levy. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter's editor-in-chief. CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell. CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. ROSIE: And I'm Rosie Guerin. Thanks for listening.
New York Times
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Summer Taste Test Extravaganza!
ROSIE: If you haven't scraped the cookie with your teeth off your thumb and your finger — MARGUERITE: You haven't lived. ROSIE: Did you have … did summer even happen? MARGUERITE: Exactly. CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell. ROSIE: I'm Rosie Guerin, and you're listening to The Wirecutter Show . CAIRA: This episode is called: 'Summer Taste Test Extravaganza!' ROSIE: Hey, guys. CAIRA: Hey there. CHRISTINE: Hi. ROSIE: So today we're doing something a little different. We're headed on a field trip. CHRISTINE: I have been waiting for this moment. ROSIE: I know, I know. Today is the day. We're headed to Wirecutter's test kitchen to do some summer taste testing. CAIRA: I love my job. CHRISTINE: That's right. Wirecutter does some epic taste tests. We have really fun reviews to things like ramen and barbecue sauce and all sorts of stuff. And our team, not surprisingly, does crazy work on these reviews. They go out, and they look at everything that's out there, and they figure out what to taste, and it's really … it's pretty fun. And so, this episode, we're going to taste three summer-classic foods that they've reviewed. Summer staples, if you will. So we're going to try out ketchup, potato chips, and ice cream sandwiches. CAIRA: Fun! CHRISTINE: Sounds like a really weird meal, but we'll each be tasting one of these foods. CAIRA: Right, we played rock, paper, scissors to figure out who's doing what. So we're going to talk to some experts today on our kitchen team about how they actually whittled down from all these options to make their top picks, because there really are so many options. And then, the fun part, we're going to do some taste testing ourselves. Right now, we're going to take a quick break, and then first up is Christine with Antara Sinha, tasting ketchup. See you in a sec. CHRISTINE: Welcome back to the show. We are here in the test kitchen at Wirecutter with Antara Sinha, an associate writer on our kitchen team. And Antara, I'm really pumped to be here with you today. We are going to be talking ketchup, which is something that you know a lot about, because you wrote an entire guide to ketchup. Welcome to the show. ANTARA: Thank you. CHRISTINE: What did you do for this guide? How many ketchups did you taste, and what were you kind of looking for in the ketchups? ANTARA: Right. So there's actually a whole wide world of ketchup out there, more than we even expected in the research process. And so for this guide, we really decided to narrow it down to classic ketchup, nothing flavored or artisanal or local, and specifically to ketchups you can get at grocery stores around the country. So we narrowed it down to 13 ketchups. CHRISTINE: 13. That seems like a lot still. ANTARA: It was quite a bit. And I think the fun part of this guide is that we also had some kids taste, and they didn't taste 13, but they did taste kind of the big four supermarket ketchups. CHRISTINE: I was actually at that tasting. We had a Bring Your Kid to Work Day, and it was really fun, and I was peeking in at all these toddlers to teenagers tasting ketchup, and they were kind of tough, I think. They have an elevated palate, that little group of kids. ANTARA: An elevated palate, but also the best feedback. CHRISTINE: Yeah. ANTARA: Because I was seeing notes that was like, 'This kid didn't eat any ketchup but licked all the salt off the fries.' And that was a note that I got for whatever brand, but it was … yeah, it was fun to read through the notes for that. CHRISTINE: Okay, so I want to know: What makes a good ketchup? What were you looking for? ANTARA: Most of our taste tests really break down to the fundamentals, flavor and texture. And so for a ketchup, it really comes down to that balance of … we want it to be acidic, tart, sweet, punchy, a really pronounced tomato flavor, but not overly stewy or tinny or preserved. And I think we eat with our eyes first, so texture-wise, we wanted it to be smooth, homogenous, glossy. Not so pulpy, not so much of the water separating from the ketchup itself. We also really tested for how it clings to fries, so that's important. We did a little dip test. CHRISTINE: Yeah. Now, can you tell me: Is ketchup something that we as Americans are into? Are there people in other countries that really like ketchup? Is it an American condiment, basically? ANTARA: It's … ketchup, the way that we eat it in the US, is a very profoundly American product. For this guide, I interviewed professor Amy Bentley, who is a professor of food studies at NYU and is the de facto ketchup expert in the country. CHRISTINE: Does she have that on her bio? ANTARA: Not specifically, but we really got into it, because she really studied not just the history but also just kind of the political implications of ketchup, which I don't know if we have time to get into. CHRISTINE: Oh my gosh. Political. I'm all here. Let's hear about it. Yeah. ANTARA: She really, I don't want to flatten her work, but she did a lot of research about how during the Reagan administration, ketchup was being used as a tool in school lunches, as, like, ketchup should count as a vegetable — CHRISTINE: As a vegetable. I remember that. I was in school in the '80s, so I do remember this. ANTARA: Yes, exactly. But we got into the history, which is really fascinating, which is that ketchup just used to mean 'preserved fish product.' The origins are in China, and just by waves of colonization, through trade, it made its way to England, where it became kind of like 'any preserved product,' period. Tomatoes were introduced much later. CHRISTINE: What is the most surprising thing beyond that you learned? I mean, that feels like maybe the most surprising thing? ANTARA: I think the most surprising thing for me was, I was fascinated about how much we were all kind of indoctrinated by Heinz. My editor and I went into this really thinking we would find some sort of unsung condiment-aisle hero, and I think we all have pretty discerning palates, but despite the blind taste test, we all kind of zeroed in on Heinz as our favorite. CHRISTINE: Yeah. ANTARA: And the same thing with the kids too, where the taste test was for kids between 2 and 12, and they were using words like, 'This one tastes the most normal or the most regular.' And so I think Heinz ketchup has become sort of the way that Kleenex is tissue, the way that Tupperware is food storage. Heinz ketchup on our palate is ketchup, and everything else is a deviation from that. CHRISTINE: I feel like I am a 2-year-old. I am all about Heinz, so I'm excited to try these ketchups that we're about to try. I do have to ask you, though: What is your opinion of artisanal ketchups? Do you have a pro/con? ANTARA: I am pro with the caveat that I want to be warned that it's not Heinz ketchup. I went to a really lovely cocktail bar with some friends, and we got fries with ketchup, and I looked to my friends, I'm like, 'I think something's wrong with this ketchup.' And we found out after that it's, like, a barrel-aged whiskey ketchup. And I'm like, 'That makes sense with that context.' CHRISTINE: All right. So now we're going to taste ketchups. Antara, you have set out this beautiful plate of three different ketchups in front of me. I can see the back of the bottles, but I cannot actually see the front. ANTARA: All three of these are picks. One of these is our organic pick, and then we have one that we like just because it's a little bit different from our standard classic ketchup, and then we have a very classic ketchup. That's our top pick. CHRISTINE: Okay, great. I think I know which one is the Heinz just by the glossiness of it. ANTARA: Yes. CHRISTINE: That Heinz has this classic fake-food gloss to it because … I don't know, what is it? What's in it? ANTARA: They take their viscosity very seriously. They have a special tool to make sure that viscosity is homogeneous globally. CHRISTINE: And is that what makes it so glossy and shiny? ANTARA: Yeah, I think it's also just how they process the tomatoes. It's really finely made into this paste that … you will notice chunks and flecks of a whole tomato in some of the other picks that we have. But, yeah, I think just really working the tomato paste. CHRISTINE: Okay, all right. Great. So where should I start? ANTARA: Let's start with this one over here. CHRISTINE: All right, I am dipping some delicious crinkle fries that you just made in a toaster oven right behind me, which is awesome, into this ketchup. This one looks a little chunkier and a little, like, it's very deeply red. The color is very pretty. So I'm going to try it. ANTARA: Yeah. CHRISTINE: Oh, wow. It's good. It is very tomatoey, and it's got a very vinegary taste to it. I'm really tasting the vinegar. ANTARA: Some of the tasting notes we got for this one was that we're getting citrusy notes happening in there, as well. CHRISTINE: Yeah, I can see that. ANTARA: Yeah. CHRISTINE: Yeah, that one. I like that. I wouldn't be mad if I had that on a hamburger. ANTARA: Yeah, I think this is probably closest to maybe some sort of artisanal or homemade dupe — CHRISTINE: Yes. ANTARA: — from our picks. CHRISTINE: Yes, okay. All right. ANTARA: Let's try number two. CHRISTINE: Let's try number two. CHRISTINE: This one looks a little bit more like tomato paste to me. It's a little bit, like, a darker red and not as glossy-looking. All right, let's try it. That one is sweeter. ANTARA: We got a lot of notes, because some people said brown sugar, some people were getting even warm spices, some clove, some nutmeg, some cinnamon in this one. We really enjoyed this one just because it felt, like, not … I don't want to use the word 'elevated,' but something extra, beyond your standard classic ketchup. And some people said it would be great to make a barbecue sauce, if you want to baste over meatloaf. CHRISTINE: Yeah, yeah. All right, I like that. All right, I'm trying the glossiest. I think I know which one this is. It's very, very glossy, and it's the most sort of fire-engine red of all of them. I think this is your classic Heinz, I'm going to take a wild guess. It is definitely the least exciting of all three of these. ANTARA: The most standard. CHRISTINE: I'm a little bit surprised. I thought I would like this one the most. It's kind of a little bit more muted in all the flavors. The other two felt like they were really picking a lane much stronger, and this one feels like a little bit less everything, a little bit … I mean, the texture is great. It's really, really smooth, and I see why 2-year-olds like it. ANTARA: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so this is obviously Heinz. CHRISTINE: The third one is Heinz. ANTARA: The first one you tasted was Trader Joe's organic. CHRISTINE: Oh, wow. ANTARA: And the second one that you tasted was Whole Foods 365. ANTARA: We didn't specifically taste for different categories of sugars, but Trader Joe's is also our pick that uses cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup or corn syrup in general. So for folks who are looking for that, that's a great, tasty alternative. And then Heinz, it was just a winner all around. Kids loved it. We loved it. CHRISTINE: Kids love it. You're not going to go wrong. You wouldn't go wrong with any of these, I think. ANTARA: I think they're all great, but I'm kind of biased, since I wrote the guide. CHRISTINE: Going into this tasting, I really thought that I was going to pick Heinz. But I have to tell you that after tasting these three, I think I'm going with the Trader Joe's. I actually felt like that was a much more complex, interesting flavor than the Heinz, and the Whole Foods one was a little too sweet for me. I liked the very powerful tomato flavor of the Trader Joe's. So I think that's my pick. ANTARA: Yeah, that was definitely the most punchiest of our picks, for sure. CHRISTINE: Antara, thank you so much. ANTARA: Thanks for having me. This was so much fun. CHRISTINE: This was really fun. CHRISTINE: When we're back, we are going to have Caira on the show with another kitchen writer, Rachel Wharton, tasting chips. We'll be right back. CAIRA: Welcome back. We're here in the test kitchen, and I'm here with Rachel Wharton, who is a senior staff writer on the appliance team. Hi, Rachel. RACHEL: Hello, how are you? Thanks so much for having me. CAIRA: Of course. So Rachel basically tests all large appliances that have to do with food and cooking. I'm really excited to talk to you, because you actually have a master's degree in food studies, right? RACHEL: Yep, the academic study of food. CAIRA: So today, we are going to be talking about chips. Rachel, you wrote the guide on chips, and let me tell you — RACHEL: I've lived the guide on chips. CAIRA: You really did your homework, right? RACHEL: Yes. CAIRA: So can you tell me about the testing process and what you were looking for? RACHEL: Well, basically I had this workout routine where I moved giant boxes of chips every day for, like, six months. CAIRA: Nice. RACHEL: But I digress. So actually, I think step one, man, we all had it in our hearts that we were just, like, 'Oh, this little chip company from a potato part of the world is going to win.' So what we really wanted to do was our due diligence, to try to call in as many small brands as possible, the ones that anyone could order anywhere. So we spent a lot of time — there's a lot of potato parts of the country, and we tried to call a lot of them in. Step two was really tasting them, obviously. So we do it blind, put the chips in a bowl. We have people fill out their Wirecutter spreadsheets thinking about texture, color, the way they look, salt balance. But number one, the first thing we did was, we knocked out anything that had defects. CAIRA: Okay. RACHEL: So we talked a little bit up front about what a defect might be, which is a rancid oil, which … if you know what rancidity tastes like, you can call it out immediately. And if you don't, it kind of just makes your mouth feel weird, and there's kind of off, sometimes bright flavors. There's the taste of soil, if there's too many eyes or green pieces of the potato. So the first step was, we got rid of all the defects. And then, we tasted them again, blind again, and again people filled out what they thought about texture and salt flavor and balance, and roastiness and toastiness, and then we just talked through all those results to try to weed out any subjectivity, to see where it's salt preference as opposed to 'This is a little bit over-fried.' And then we whittled them down to our favorites. And amazingly, the two top picks, the kettle pick and the plain potato chip pick, were solid winners across the board, which … I love it when that happens. That always makes me feel like we're doing something right when everyone's like, 'This is the one.' CAIRA: Can you tell me a little bit about why you chose to test plain potato chips? RACHEL: Because you got to lay a foundation. You got to lay a base so that we can taste all those magical flavors later on. CAIRA: So this is the control, and hopefully you're going to branch it. RACHEL: I hope so. I mean, we tasted plain because it's very hard. The job of comparing flavors, I mean — do we just pick the best-flavor potato chip of all? That's a hard decision. And so it's easier to compare plain to plain to plain. But I'm really glad we did, because I definitely rediscovered the magic of the plain potato chip. CAIRA: And how many chips total did you test? RACHEL: Oh, I think 70. I think we ate 70, probably, like, 30 more came late. CAIRA: And then your final contenders, how many picks did you have in your guide? RACHEL: Good question. I think it was, like, seven. I actually don't remember, because it was so many. Because there's potato chips, fried and lard, and then there's, like, three runner-up kettles. We have a lot of options. CAIRA: Yeah. I want to learn: What is the most surprising thing that you found during this testing, without revealing anything about the picks that we might be tasting today? RACHEL: Well, I was surprised, I think … kettle chips, there are a lot of defects in kettle chips, which are fried in different ways than plain chips. The oil temperature changes, and they're often small-batch, and we found a lot of defects in that category, which kind of surprised me, because it's kind of like the beloved hot potato chip category right now. And we also found a ton of defects in international brands, which are always more expensive, and we thought that they would taste better because they were Spanish olive oil. We found there's a lot of defects there, and there's also a lot of defects in the smaller brands, which may be because they are meant to be eaten there, where they're made, and not to be shipped to a New York City kitchen and sit around on the floor in a box for two weeks before we taste them. So we were surprised that the things we thought would be the most beloved actually turned out to be the least good. CAIRA: Okay, my last question for you before we start tasting: What is your perfect setting for eating a potato chip? RACHEL: There are two favorites. One is actually on a road trip, and you find a local bag of potato chips, and you have it in the car, and it's open next to you while you're driving. CAIRA: That's good. RACHEL: And then, you give one or two to your dog in the backseat, because they have to enjoy it too. That's number one. And the second one is with a hoagie from Philadelphia, because Philadelphia makes the best sandwiches in the world. So chips with the sandwich, maybe in the sandwich, maybe it's crushed up on a hot dog. So those are my two faves. CAIRA: Oh, good choices. Okay, Rachel, so I see we've got three bowls, and we've got three bags, but each bag does not match with the bowl. So which one should I taste first? RACHEL: You should taste the one that's closest to you first. CAIRA: Okay. It just looks like a chip to me. I'm not really a chip expert, so I'll just taste it. RACHEL: Look at that, there's nice and whole — CAIRA: That's right. It's got a little — RACHEL: Thin, golden. CAIRA: Yeah. RACHEL: Not too greasy. Not too much sheen. CAIRA: Yeah, and it's got little bubbles in it. RACHEL: You should smell it. CAIRA: Smells like a potato. RACHEL: Excellent. That's an excellent sign. CAIRA: They're so cute. Look at those potatoes. It's definitely not kettle-fried, because it's still soft-ish and crispy. It doesn't have much salt to it. It's very — RACHEL: Perfectly balanced. Roasty, a little roasty, a little toasty, a little salty. CAIRA: Yeah, this is, like, a classic. RACHEL: Thin. CAIRA: I can imagine getting a bag of these at summer camp and not being mad at it. RACHEL: Yes. CAIRA: Which one should I try next? RACHEL: Try these right here. They're a little bit paler. CAIRA: Definitely thinner. RACHEL: You can see some brownie spots. CAIRA: Yeah, but these don't have the air bubbles like the first chip. RACHEL: Yeah. And there's maybe a little bit more sheen, right? You see a little transparency there? CAIRA: Yeah, you can look right through it, and it doesn't have much of a smell. This one actually isn't my favorite. RACHEL: Do you like that one better? CAIRA: No. This just tastes like potato, like a real potato, but a potato. RACHEL: Okay. Very simple. CAIRA: So this is the last one. I can tell that it's kettle-cooked. RACHEL: Yes. They're, like, wrinkly and roller coaster-y and dark brown, and all curled up on each other. CAIRA: Roller coaster. Yeah, this one's going to take me for a ride. Yeah. RACHEL: Amazing. CAIRA: Listen to that crunch. This one's … she is a ride. RACHEL: Yeah. CAIRA: It's a lot to get through. Definitely more oil-heavy, that fried taste. It's got a little bit more salt, a little bit more flavor. RACHEL: Yeah. Fully flavored chip, for sure. CAIRA: Yeah. I don't know which one I like the best. RACHEL: Really? Really? CAIRA: Yeah. Honestly, the kettle chip is just so different from these two. RACHEL: Yeah, that makes sense. The ones you like the most are our top pick. And, oh man, they're from Amazon Fresh. We tasted them blind. We didn't know who was going to win. CAIRA: Really? RACHEL: But yeah, our top pick's Amazon Fresh potato chips. They're obviously hiring the best potato chip maker in the country so that they can have thousands and millions of these chips shipped out everywhere, anywhere, all at once, and they taste really good. CAIRA: They're really good. RACHEL: We were all really surprised. CAIRA: So, what are these? RACHEL: Those are Clancy's, those are from Aldi. And these are the ones that … actually, our salt lovers on the panel really like these. They're a little bit saltier. I remember someone saying they have an oil flavor, like McDonald's in a good way, which is actually the highest praise in any tasting panel ever, typically. Those are really good too. CAIRA: Okay. RACHEL: And a little toastier. CAIRA: Yeah. RACHEL: And then, the last is our Deep River kettle chip pick, which everybody loved. And kettle chips, there was not a lot of love. So it was really nice to find one that everybody liked. CAIRA: I mean, I do like it. It's a good kettle chip. Thank you so much for being here, Rachel. RACHEL: Thank you so much for having me. CAIRA: Coming up next, Rosie's going to be in the kitchen with Marguerite Preston to talk about probably the most summery of all snacks, ice cream sandwiches. ROSIE: I'm here with Wirecutter's editorial director of home, Marguerite Preston. MARGUERITE: Hello. ROSIE: Hello, nice to see you. MARGUERITE: Nice to be here. ROSIE: Today, we're talking ice cream sandwiches. How did the idea to do a guide on ice cream sandwiches come about? MARGUERITE: So this was actually one of our really early taste tests. This was kind of deep in the pandemic. We were all a little sad. We wanted to do a fun summer set of things. And so, our writer Rachel Cericola pitched us on a taste test of ice cream sandwiches, and we couldn't say no. ROSIE: How did you decide what was going to be included in terms of … there's always a place where you need to start, because you can't test every single ice cream sandwich that's ever been made. So where did you figure out was the place to start? MARGUERITE: So we decided that the sort of obvious place to start was the really classic 'chocolate wafer, vanilla ice cream' ice cream sandwich. ROSIE: Quintessential. MARGUERITE: Yeah. It made it easier to do apples-to-apples comparison rather than, like, well, 'I like coffee ice cream' and 'I like mint chip.' And for the purposes of this, this was just the most straightforward way to do it. ROSIE: But you did test some non-dairy options in addition to the straight classic vanilla ice cream center? MARGUERITE: Yes, that's right. We thought it was important for people who don't want to eat dairy for whatever reason. So we did nine dairy ice cream sandwiches, and then we did three non-dairy. ROSIE: So what were the criteria that you guys were looking at? MARGUERITE: I mean, obviously there's the flavor. ROSIE: Sure. MARGUERITE: There's the flavor of the cookie, and there's the flavor of the ice cream, and for me it's like … the cookie is supposed to taste a little bit like chocolate. It's not a super … none of these are super chocolatey, but it shouldn't taste … some of them legit tasted just like a graham cracker or something, and that to me was not — ROSIE: Blasphemy. MARGUERITE: — not what what we were going for. ROSIE: Yeah, yeah. MARGUERITE: There's also the textural thing. A lot of ice cream sandwiches use kind of a more inexpensive ice cream. It has a lot of air turned into it, it's going to be kind of foamy on the tongue, maybe not taste like much of anything. The better ones, it tastes like vanilla ice cream. It's a nice thick, creamy texture. It has some real vanilla flavor in it. Yeah. And then the textural … there's this sort of textural experience of the whole ice cream sandwich. ROSIE: Oh, I am familiar. MARGUERITE: Yes. ROSIE: Tell me about that. What is it for you guys? MARGUERITE: The cookie's got to be soft. ROSIE: Yeah. MARGUERITE: It's got to have kind of melded with the ice cream a little bit. The nightmare as it all sticks to the wrapper, and you're scraping it off with your teeth. ROSIE: Yeah. You need some stickage. MARGUERITE: Yeah. ROSIE: To know that — MARGUERITE: It should stick to your fingers. ROSIE: Right, exactly. MARGUERITE: Yes. ROSIE: If you haven't scraped the cookie with your teeth off your thumb and your finger — MARGUERITE: You haven't lived. ROSIE: Did you have … did summer even happen? MARGUERITE: Exactly. ROSIE: Let's do this. MARGUERITE: Okay. ROSIE: Bring me the sandwiches. MARGUERITE: Oh, they're in this freezer. ROSIE: Okay. So if I have a Thanksgiving plate, I eat through the thing that I like the least first. MARGUERITE: First? ROSIE: So I'm going — MARGUERITE: You going to start with that? ROSIE: — for the non-dairy, or what I imagine is the non-dairy. Let's taste. Strong vanilla flavor, strong coconut flavor, which is suggesting to me that this is a non-dairy — MARGUERITE: You're right about that. ROSIE: — coconut alternative. Love. I can appreciate and really like this for what it is. But don't give me tofu and tell me that it tastes like chicken. I love tofu. It's not chicken. MARGUERITE: I feel exactly the same way. I like the coconut flavor. It is better than the flavor of soy ice cream. ROSIE: No, I will say, the consistency is nice. The ice cream tastes nice. I don't have any complaints. Okay, so let's go square. Let's go around the horn. MARGUERITE: Okay, square. ROSIE: Okay. Stickage test. Yeah. MARGUERITE: Stuck. Getting sticky. ROSIE: Right off the bat. This is full. This is pushing out the sides, which I kind of like. Oh, that's so good. I don't get a lot of the cookie, because there is a lot of ice cream here, it is jam-packed. I'm just so happy with the stickage, and I really like the taste of this ice cream. To me, this is like that fluffed-up thing that you're talking about. MARGUERITE: Yes, and you're right. I think in the guide, we described this as the cookie is basically a holder for a scoop of ice cream. The cookie doesn't give that much. It also doesn't taste that chocolatey to me. It tastes … this is a little graham cracker–y. ROSIE: There's nothing that's screaming chocolate. Round. Fine stickage. It's fine. MARGUERITE: But nothing special to you? ROSIE: No. MARGUERITE: No. ROSIE: And an aftertaste I don't care for. MARGUERITE: Oh, interesting. ROSIE: The ice cream's okay. MARGUERITE: It's a little more like Oreo to me. ROSIE: This is not it for me. MARGUERITE: Really. ROSIE: This isn't making me that happy. What do you like about this? MARGUERITE: If you let the ice cream melt a little bit, it's very smooth. I think it has a real vanilla flavor. Some of these, I think, are probably using vanillin, which is artificial vanilla, which is a vibe and kind of gets at that nostalgic ice cream sandwich thing. I get chocolate from this cookie. I get Oreo, which I like. ROSIE: Okay. So then, this to me is … what's better than this? It's gorgeous. MARGUERITE: Just a very satisfying shape and weight. ROSIE: Yeah. To me, this looks like a Nestle or a Hood or one of the … a Good Humor. MARGUERITE: If you look closely, you can see the ice cream, though, has this kind of nice ivory color. ROSIE: It does, yeah. MARGUERITE: They might've made this ice cream with a little bit of egg yolk. Does it taste like summer? ROSIE: This is it for me. MARGUERITE: It's the perfect ratio. ROSIE: It's just right. MARGUERITE: Yeah. MARGUERITE: It's solid cookie. ROSIE: It's solid. ROSIE: It's not as sweet as the second one. The square one was very, very sweet. I want to eat this whole thing. Okay. MARGUERITE: Do you want the reveal? ROSIE: Let's start here. What I'm eating? MARGUERITE: Whole Foods 365. ROSIE: Wow. MARGUERITE: This is our top pick. ROSIE: It is the top pick. MARGUERITE: I mean, these taste tests, they're all subjective. We have a handful of picks, but this was kind of, I think, yes, the unanimous favorite. Classic. ROSIE: The most 'what you might grab on an ice cream truck,' what we used to have as kids. MARGUERITE: I think it's a little elevated from what you might grab in the ice cream truck. The ice cream is a little better. ROSIE: Yeah, and the cookie was nice too. It was everything you want and nothing you don't. MARGUERITE: Exactly. ROSIE: What is the second pick here? MARGUERITE: So, our round one is Alden's Organic. ROSIE: Real organic vanilla? MARGUERITE: Yeah. ROSIE: It didn't lean far enough in one direction or another. It did everything fine. MARGUERITE: That's fair, I get that. For me, this would be the one I might buy for myself. ROSIE: Okay, so then what about the square one? What was that that we tasted? MARGUERITE: The square one was FatBoy. ROSIE: Thick and creamy since 1925. MARGUERITE: Yeah, it's, like, an old-school brand. See, this one is not for me, because it's too much ice cream for me. But I do think the flavor … flavor is good. Solid option, especially if you like ice cream. ROSIE: Cool. And then the first one, was I right? So Delicious. Vanilla bean, coconut milk. This, I thought, was actually very, very, very nice. I liked this a lot. MARGUERITE: Yeah, yeah. This was the best of the three non-dairy ones that we tried because of the coconut, I think it tastes most … but we also did the Tofutti Cuties. ROSIE: Okay. MARGUERITE: Classic for a reason. And then, Alden's makes a non-dairy version of this ice cream sandwich. ROSIE: Oh, what is the ice cream there? MARGUERITE: It's a mishmash. It's got some coconut, it's got some other stuff. ROSIE: Got it. MARGUERITE: I think we found that that one tasted the most kind of real vanilla-y to us. Like the dairy version, the non-dairy version was more expensive. ROSIE: Sure, sure, sure. MARGUERITE: You get the four in the box. ROSIE: There we go. I feel pretty heartened that the one I hoped would be the winner was the winner. Thanks, Marguerite. MARGUERITE: Thanks for having me. ROSIE: This was really fun. MARGUERITE: This was great. ROSIE: We're back in the studio. CHRISTINE: Yeah. ROSIE: We are wiser now. CHRISTINE: We are wiser. I know. ROSIE: And fuller. CHRISTINE: That's right. What did you all like? What were your favorites? CAIRA: Ooh, can I go first? CHRISTINE: Yes, please. CAIRA: So I've learned that I have a problem, and it's that I think I eat too much salt. CHRISTINE: Oh. CAIRA: So I tested potato chips, and all of them tasted good but not salty enough for me. CHRISTINE: Oh, interesting. Interesting. CAIRA: Yeah. I think I need to, I don't know, refine my palate. But I was really surprised to find that the Amazon chips were the best out of the bunch that I tasted. CHRISTINE: I just kind of don't want to hear that. CAIRA: Nobody wants to hear it, but it also isn't surprising. Who's making those chips for Amazon? Probably somebody pretty good. CHRISTINE: Yeah. ROSIE: Like Jean-Georges. CHRISTINE: You never know. ROSIE: Fair enough. Christine, how'd you do? CHRISTINE: I was surprised. Going in, I thought I was going to like Heinz, because that's the classic. I know the kids like it. I get kind of grouchy when I go to a restaurant, and there's artisanal ketchup. I just want the Heinz. But I actually, I liked the Trader Joe's, which was really surprising to me. ROSIE: I love the Trader Joe's ketchup. CHRISTINE: I have gotten that Trader Joe's ketchup and been like, 'Oh, we should have Heinz,' and gotten the Heinz. ROSIE: But you're more mature. CHRISTINE: Well, yeah, but it was just much more pronounced, the tomato flavor. It just tasted really good. And the Heinz was not bad, it just kind of tasted a little bit flat. There's a reason why it's a good sort of everyone-likes-it kind of a thing. CAIRA: Trader Joe's also does the organic thing, right? So it doesn't have the high-fructose whatever that Heinz does? CHRISTINE: I think that's probably right. I need to go back and look at the back of the bottle, but I could go back to my fridge and look, because I do have some in there. CAIRA: What about you, Rosie? ROSIE: I am a purist when it comes to ice cream sandwiches, so I actually liked what I thought I would like. However, I was surprised that it came from Whole Foods 365, they're sort of house brand. CAIRA: Another Amazon take. ROSIE: I know, I know. CHRISTINE: Well, and oftentimes these house brands do pretty well in our taste tests. You see Whole Foods pop up, you see Target pop up. ROSIE: Target. Yeah. CHRISTINE: Now we've got Amazon. They're doing something right, yeah. ROSIE: I'll tell you what, that tasted like the summer of yore. It was everything you wanted. The right consistency, the right distribution of ice cream to cookie. CHRISTINE: Was it the right size? ROSIE: It was the perfect size, fit right in your palm. CHRISTINE: Was it rectangle or … ? ROSIE: It was a rectangle. We don't mess around. You don't need to mess with a good thing. I will also say, I liked the So Delicious vegan. CAIRA: Yeah, the coconut cream ice cream? ROSIE: Who knew? CHRISTINE: Oh, I love those. ROSIE: They were really, really nice. CHRISTINE: Yeah. ROSIE: The consistency was nice. The cookie was nice. There was not quite enough ice cream in there pushing out to the sides, like I like. I like it robust. CAIRA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. CHRISTINE: Yes. ROSIE: But all in all, it was close. I really liked those. Shout out to the vegans. CHRISTINE: Yeah. The coconut, it wins. ROSIE: If you want to find out more about Wirecutter's coverage of these summer staples and so many other delicious items, check out the website and check out our video on YouTube, where you can see us sort of getting real scientific testing chips, ketchup, and ice cream sandwiches. CHRISTINE: It's a fun time. ROSIE: We went deep. That's it for us till next week. Thanks for listening. CHRISTINE: Bye. CAIRA: Bye. CHRISTINE: The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pitman. Today's episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop, and Diane Wong. Wirecutter's deputy publisher is Cliff Levy. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter's editor-in-chief. I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell. ROSIE: And I'm Rosie Guerin. CHRISTINE: Thanks for listening. ROSIE: That's it for us.
New York Times
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Can You Really Disappear Online?
CAIRA: But what is the most embarrassing thing that you have found about yourself on this project? MAX: Oh, easily 200 LiveJournal posts. That was, yeah, without question — CHRISTINE: And those are, like, diary entries, essentially? MAX: We're not talking about the content today. CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell. ROSIE: I'm Rosie Guerin, and you're listening to The Wirecutter Show . CAIRA: This episode is called: 'Can You Really Disappear Online?' CHRISTINE: Caira. CAIRA: Hi. CHRISTINE: It's just us today. CAIRA: I know. It feels so weird. CHRISTINE: Rosie is out again, so I thought this would be a great opportunity — there's a vast difference in age between you and me. CAIRA: Okay. CHRISTINE: And I'm going to ask you a very 'Gen Xer asks a Gen Zer a question,' okay? How much of your life is online? CAIRA: Oof. CHRISTINE: What's your footprint online? CAIRA: I am embarrassed to say that I've tried really hard to make sure a lot of me is online. I Google myself constantly to make sure that my efforts are not in vain. CHRISTINE: What is it? How many search-page results are actually about you? CAIRA: All of them. CHRISTINE: Okay, great. CAIRA: It helps that I have a really nice, unique name. But yeah, it's all me. CHRISTINE: I think that only two pages of Google are about me. I have a pretty small footprint. I've been a journalist for over 20 years, so there's a certain amount of my work that's online, but for the last maybe 10, 15 years, I've been pretty guarded online, and so I suspect — well, you know what, actually? I was really surprised recently. I Googled myself, and I was surprised by how much information was online. CAIRA: They get a lot of you. CHRISTINE: Yeah. It's creepy. There was information about my parents and about my sibling, and about old addresses, and that is creepy. CAIRA: Yeah. That part doesn't feel good. That's definitely not what I'm trying to do when I want to be online. I like the things that I want up there, but then, of course, there's always this part of the internet that gets more of you than you're willing to give. CHRISTINE: That's right. So it's not only creepy, there are real data-privacy and security issues related to all this information that any of us have online, especially if we've had a lot of social accounts, or we've just been living our life online. And that's why I was super interested when I learned that one of our colleagues, Max Eddy, who writes about data privacy and security for Wirecutter, he took on this really wild task for an article he just published about trying to erase himself from the internet. CAIRA: Wow. Big task. CHRISTINE: Yeah, this is a big task, especially for someone who is a journalist, but I think for probably any human being in 2025. CAIRA: Yeah, Max's amazing piece is actually part of a larger package for Wirecutter that just published. It covers all kinds of data-security issues, from tons of different journalists at Wirecutter, and some of the topics are about what to do if your data has been leaked or stolen, or what to do with a late loved one's online accounts, and how your smart devices might actually be watching you. So yeah. CHRISTINE: So creepy. CAIRA: A lot of good information. CHRISTINE: It's a lot of good information that I think is sometimes hard to find, and I'm so excited that Max is going to come on the show today. So after the break, we will talk with Max about the modern-day quest to erase himself from the internet, why he tried it, and why you might want to too. We'll be right back. CAIRA: Welcome back. Today we're talking with Max Eddy, who is Wirecutter's writer covering privacy, security, and software. He's written a lot about how to get the most out of your computers and your phones, and he's our in-house expert on how to protect yourself from online scams and surveillance. CHRISTINE: Welcome to the show, Max. MAX: Great to be back. CHRISTINE: It's great to have you here. Today we're going to talk about this gonzo project that you took on to disappear from the internet. What does that even mean? You are a journalist, you have a big footprint on the internet. How extreme did you get with this project? MAX: So as you just said, I publish online, and have done that for most of my working life, so unless this was a backdoor effort to fire me and not tell me, no, I didn't delete any of my stories, I didn't delete my bylines, and I did actually end up leaving a lot of stuff up there. Disappearing from the internet, the experts will tell you that that is a fantasy, you can't actually do that. So knowing that, I decided that, okay, if I can't disappear, then maybe I can get control and try to take control of as much of it as I could. CAIRA: Why would you even think to do this? What are the security implications for having your personal information, and your photos, and all your old embarrassing social media accounts, and other info about yourself on the internet? MAX: So why I did this is because it was an opportunity to apply a lot of different strategies and try them out. But why normal people who are not me would want to do this is that there's a lot of information out there about ourselves that we have shared knowingly on things like social media and other platforms, and that is out of your control once you've put it out there. So being able to take control of that information, I think a lot of people want to be able to do that. They want to be able to present themselves the way they want to be presented online. So you probably shouldn't set out to delete yourself from the internet, because it's just not going to happen. But if you try, you can definitely reduce the amount of stuff that's out there and control the stuff that is. CAIRA: Okay, that makes sense. I actually deleted my entire Facebook account because I saw that all the photos that I had on there, they were just making my skin crawl, so I just went ahead and got rid of that. But what is the most embarrassing thing that you have found about yourself on this project? MAX: Oh, easily 200 LiveJournal posts. That was, yeah, without question — CHRISTINE: And those are diary entries, essentially? MAX: We're not talking about the content today. MAX: Seriously, though, I completely forgot. I knew I'd signed up for that. I did not remember writing 200 posts. CAIRA: That's a lot. MAX: That one in particular was like being confronted with an old version of yourself and having to look at that distance between the two of you. So that is one of the disorienting things that does happen when you try to clean up nearly two decades of internet use … you're going to find a lot about yourself that you've forgotten about, and you will definitely notice that you're not the same person anymore. CHRISTINE: This is making me so nervous about what is on the internet about me that I haven't found. So we're going to get into all of the steps here that you took, Max, and from your piece, what I've gleaned is that you basically tackled this in three different places that you really focused your effort. Google was the first; you really attempted to remove yourself from Google search results. Number two was social media; you audited your online accounts, like Instagram, Facebook, and other accounts. And then you tackled the third place, public records, which … we will get into that a little bit later. So let's talk about that first bucket, the Google bucket. Why start with Google? How did you figure out what was online about yourself, and physically what did you do? Did you just do a vanity Google, essentially? MAX: I think a lot of people do go to Google first to see what's out there about them. I think that's a very understandable impulse. So I did start with Google because of that, because it's where most people are going to go first, and for reasons we'll get into, that is where you're going to encounter a lot of people who have your information for sale. So what I did was, I went onto Google, and I put in my name, and I looked around at what was there. I put in some variations of my name, I put in my name plus address, I put my name plus phone number. I would recommend, if you are curious about what's out there, start with those. Also toss in just your phone number, just your address, any email addresses or screen names that you've used. CHRISTINE: So you're basically being a detective of your own self. You're a PI looking up all the information you can find. MAX: I think that's a really good example, because that's the kind of person that's going to be doing this if they're trying to find out about you. But when you're searching for yourself on Google, you will be overwhelmed by the stuff that's on there. So while I think it's good to get the lay of the land, you're going to drive yourself nuts if you try to make a comprehensive list of every single place that you've been on there. One way that I found was to use my password manager. I've been using a password manager for a very long time. I found out I had 356 accounts in it. And using another service called Have I Been Pwned, which lists data breaches, you can enter your email address and see what accounts you have whose information has been released online. So using that, I was able to pare down that 356 to 27, and then going through manually, just looking at all the accounts that I had in my password manager, I found another 30 or so that I was like, 'There's going to be a lot of information in these sites.' So once I had that list, I could start with that. CHRISTINE: If you are not someone that is using a password manager currently, and you're listening to this and saying, 'Oh, maybe I should be using one,' if you were to sign up for an account for a password manager today, would that help you find all of those old accounts, or would it basically just be collecting all the accounts you're currently using? MAX: So when you sign up for a password manager, if you've never used one before, it can gather them as you log in to them. And if you're not using a password manager … I'm not going to shame people, but maybe do that. It's really one of the best things you can do to protect yourself online, to have unique complex passwords for every single site and service that you have an account with. CHRISTINE: Okay, so just to reiterate, though, it's not going to help you find those accounts you had five years ago or six years ago or 20 years ago. It will help you going forward. MAX: If you don't have that, then you are going to have to do some Googling. You're going to want to look at Have I Been Pwned. I found Have I Been Pwned to be really useful, not just for finding the accounts that had been breached but also accounts that I had completely forgotten about, like I have not scrambled a song in 20 years, and I didn't have it in my password manager, but it was in a data breach, my information was in that, and I was able to find that through Have I Been Pwned. CAIRA: Is … Have I Been Pwned, do you have to pay for that? MAX: It is free. CHRISTINE: Is that specifically a site that helps find data breaches? MAX: It helps you find your information in data breaches. So when you go to Have I Been Pwned, you enter your email address, and it's going to search through all of its millions of records of data breaches. And if your email address appears in that data breach, then it will pop up a little message below listing all of the data breaches where it has found that email address. I'm emphasizing this because that's not going to be a complete list. If it was a data breach that didn't have your email address, or if it was an account that didn't have your email address, then it's not going to show up there. So the tool is limited, but in terms of ways to check to see if your information has been exposed, this is by far the most comprehensive and easiest to use. When you see that your data has been exposed in a data breach, changing your password can be a good idea if your password was exposed, or if you're just concerned about it. It's usually, like, a good policy in general. But if your password wasn't exposed, then that's not really the issue. The issue is that there was personal information about you exposed. So for example, if you see that you were in a data breach, that means whoever has that breached information can now infer some things about you, that you have an account on this website. What they can do with that is try to log in as you; they can try to find your password from another data breach, if it wasn't in that one, and just try it and see if it works, because a lot of people recycle their passwords. So what you do next is going to depend on what information was exposed. We actually have a story about this as part of this larger package about what to do after a data breach, where we do walk you through what you should do when this happens. There's an argument to be made that all of your information is already out there, but you need to address every data breach separately. CHRISTINE: Okay, I'm writing that down on my arm, and I'm going to do that right — MAX: Should probably spell that, it's Have I Been Pwned, P-W-N-E-D, which is great to write out but terrible to say out loud. CAIRA: Such a millennial title. Okay, so removing yourself from Google search, how do you do that, and how successful can you be doing that? MAX: So Google actually offers a tool to help limit your appearance in Google search results called Results About You that shows you results that have your personal information in it. This tool is limited, and it's really important that people understand that there are certain criteria that have to be met before Google will suppress that search result. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is that that information is not going to be removed, it is only going to be suppressed. So the information is still out there — it just might not be appearing in search results, but that information is still out there, which is the second thing that I did. So the second thing I did was to address the sites that had my information. Most of those are data brokers, and they compile information about individuals, and then they sell that information to whoever wants it. So I went on to take care of that. CHRISTINE: Can you explain what a data broker is? They basically are vacuuming up all of your information and selling it? MAX: So yeah, data brokers gather personal information and then sell it. They're usually taking it from multiple sources, and in some cases they're connecting the dots that aren't connected. So for example, maybe they're able to get a name and a phone number over here and a name and an address over there. And now they've got a name, a phone number, and an address. And when you collate all that information together, you can assemble some pretty specific dossiers on individuals and names, addresses, phone numbers. Sometimes relations — like cousins, parents, that sort of thing — will be in these records that they have for sale. CAIRA: What are some companies that people might be able to recognize? Do you have any examples? MAX: A lot of these companies might object to being called data brokers. A lot of them refer to themselves as 'people search sites' or 'record search sites.' So there are companies out there who work to remove this information from data brokers, data-removal services, and some of the companies that they classify as data brokers would be Spokeo, That's Them, Alabama Court And again, these companies might object to that distinction, and I'm not going to make a judgment about that, but these are the sites that the data-removal services are operating with. CHRISTINE: So what do you do if you find that your information is on these data broker sites? What steps can you take to get the information off of those sites? MAX: So most of these data brokers are going to have some kind of mechanism to remove your information. You can request that they take those records down, and that process can be very tedious, and it also requires you to engage with them maybe more than you would be comfortable with. I did try to do this, and I got skeezed out really, really fast; I don't want to give them more of my information, they're already selling it. So you can do this on your own. What I did for this story was to sign up with data-removal services that do that for you. So they search these data broker sites for your information, and then they send the opt-out requests, and then they handle all of the follow-ups and everything that goes with that, so you never have to touch any of it. CAIRA: Oh, I actually used one of those, and I was so shocked at the things that it called from the internet. Like, my mom's address and phone number was attached to my information. MAX: That's actually one of the things I found fascinating about this experience, by the way. Like, the information sold by data brokers is freakishly accurate and long, and then it's not. I saw individuals that clearly were supposed to be me, my name, my age, and a couple other pieces of information, like … well, unless there's another Max Eddy out there with the same age as me, that's unlikely. But in different addresses or addresses near to where I used to live, but not there. And I think this is really interesting, because these companies are really selling themselves on the idea that you can find people, but I'm not sure how true that is. There is, yeah, a lot of accurate information there, and there's a lot of not-accurate information in there. CAIRA: Well, I'm happy for that, actually. CHRISTINE: How much does it cost to hire one of these or use one of these services, these data-removal services? Is it expensive? Because that service sounds like it's well worth some money to me versus going through and trying to do this DIY. MAX: So in our guide for data-removal services, one of the things I discovered is that the cost of a data-removal service is wide-ranging. On the low end, I found one for $20 a year, on the high end it was well over $300 a year. And the difference between them is very broad and complex. But yeah, I think you're going to end up spending probably about 100 bucks. CAIRA: And how successful have you found these services to be? MAX: I had to sign up for about a dozen of these in order to write our guide about them. And the problem with that is, I had a bunch of these data-removal services all removing my information at the same time, and that meant we weren't able to correlate who was doing what work. So we actually started a year-long experiment at Wirecutter, where we have a bunch of different writers sign up with different services, and we are tracking what results they see over time. So what the data-removal services say, and what certain specific data brokers say they have on these individuals. And that's what we're trying to figure out, is how effective they are compared to each other. I can say that, having signed up for a lot of them, there's a lot less information about me out there right now. So they do work. I interviewed some people at data-removal services, and they told me that sometimes data brokers will relist your information even after it's been taken down. CHRISTINE: Oof. It's like a Whac-A-Mole situation. MAX: Absolutely. And there are hundreds of these sites that are selling this information, and they sell to each other, so it's very complicated, and that's the downside of it. You sign up for this, and it does a great job, but you need to leave it there perpetually. CHRISTINE: This is really a service where it's probably best to subscribe and have it just working all year long to clean up your profile online? MAX: Yeah, so far that's what we think. One of the things we're going to be looking at is, do they actually do a lot more over time in this longer experiment that we're doing? CHRISTINE: So Max, just even this first step of approaching what information is about you on Google and how to suppress those results, or how to remove information from these data brokers … it sounds a little bit intense, and I think it might be intimidating for people. I want to hear just your very simplified version of what we just talked about. MAX: Sure. So I think everyone should take a look at Google's Results About You tool. Google is the most popular search engine, and seeing what's out there and using its own tool to suppress some of those results is a great first step. It costs nothing, it takes a few minutes to set up. You can then go and send data-removal requests to data brokers. You can do it yourself. I really want to stress, you can do this yourself for free. There's a lot of data-removal services that actually have free subscription options; they will tell you where the stuff is, but you have to do the opting out yourself. So you don't have to pay for these, but you will invest a lot of time and effort in that. And if that's not worth it to you, or if you would rather just have someone else do it, take a look at a data-removal service to do that for you. CHRISTINE: And you can go to our website for specific recommendations on those. MAX: Absolutely. CAIRA: Awesome. Okay, so we're going to take a quick break, and then when we're back, Max is going to cover the last two steps that he took, which is scrubbing himself from social media and then tackling public records. Plus, we'll cover some of the unexpectedly emotional parts of disappearing online. Be right back. CAIRA: Welcome back. Max, before the break, you told us about the first step that you took to remove yourself from the internet, which is figuring out how much of your information is online and definitely checking Google. So now let's talk about the last two buckets, which is social media and then public records. Social media itself is a beast. How hard was it to remove yourself from everywhere, like, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, all of that stuff? How'd you go about doing that? MAX: So the thing about social media is that it's actually not the only place where I found my information. I found that there are bio pages on Patreon and Kickstarter and other services like that. So if people are listening at home, take a look at these other sites that you're signed up for, and see what information you've shared with them and that they share publicly. It's really startling what's out there, and you can clean that up pretty simply. But with social media, that's a little more loaded. We interact a lot over social media, and it doesn't necessarily make sense to remove everything or entirely delete your account. And in my case, I actually chose not to delete my account in most cases. That said, deleting your account is easily the fastest and simplest way to do this. I chose not to do that, because I wanted to keep my accounts alive but inactive, and I was concerned primarily about impersonation. Maybe some of that's vanity — I am a Google-able person, and I didn't want someone else popping up on Twitter and pretending to be me — but this can affect anyone, really. A couple years ago, my aunt was on Facebook and discovered that someone else had created an account in her name and was going around to all the family members and asking for money. CHRISTINE: Oh my gosh. CAIRA: That happens so much on Facebook, I feel like I hear that all the time. MAX: But impersonation can happen to anyone, and if you don't have an account on that service anymore, it can be hard to prove that you are the real you. It is doable, but for me it was more valuable to maintain control of those accounts but just leave them empty. Most websites and online accounts are going to require you to enter information about yourself, and they won't let you create the account without that information. They won't let you save the information unless it's all in there. So you can't just delete your email address and then hit Save, and Twitter would be like, 'Yeah, that's fine. I don't know who you are. That's great.' So I created what the experts call synthetic data, which is basically just made-up information about myself. So imagine, if you will, a Twitter account or a social media account, there's a username, there's a photo, usually, and then all of that's tied back to, usually, an email address somewhere in the background that's probably not visible, but it is part of the account. So I tried to address all of those things. I found a bitmap generator to create random colorful images, just dots, and I replaced all of my user photos with that. I found a text generator and used that to create names and fill in information that required text. So there's a lot of 'lorem ipsum'–style names for me around there now. I wanted to get my name off, and my screen names off of them, as much as I could. And then I use an email-masking service, which lets you create unique email addresses for every site you want to sign up for. What it does is, it forwards any emails sent to that email address to your real email address, and you can respond to it the same way, and it'll appear to be coming from the masked email. And then if you want to get rid of it for any reason — if you're getting a lot of spam, if you just don't want it, you can't seem to get rid of that newsletter, it's there all the time — you can just delete the email address, and it forwards to nowhere. It's just gone. CAIRA: Oh, cool. CHRISTINE: So presumably with all these unique emails and passwords you're using, going back to the password manager, you're using the password manager to help you manage all of those, right? MAX: Absolutely. CHRISTINE: Because if I started a unique email for everything that I have, I would be in big trouble. CAIRA: Locked out. MAX: Yeah, 356 online accounts, and I worked on 55 of them for this. So yeah, I had generated 55 unique emails for this project. CHRISTINE: This seems like I should be giving a lot of people my masked email. MAX: So the downside of a lot of masked emails is that they are random text, and it's like, 'Oh, yeah, you can just hit me up at X123Q57@ CHRISTINE: It's like the old version of dating, and people being like, 'Can I get your number?' And you're like, 'Yeah.' CAIRA: It was six digits. MAX: So the idea here, though, is, when you're using these masked-email services, they're great for a lot of things, but what I really wanted to do was to break apart all the connections between my accounts. So remember earlier, when I talked about how data brokers get information from lots of different places and connect those dots together? I wanted to make that either impossible or so very, very difficult that they would not bother trying. So all of the pictures are different, you're not going to be able to put them together and say, like, 'Look, same user photos here and here, people recycle those a lot.' They won't see the same usernames. As often as I could, I tried to get rid of usernames, because most people recycle those, as well. And if you don't want to have a consistent internet presence, you want each of those to be different. And then email, while that's not usually visible to the outside, the companies who run those services can see that, and I wanted to make sure that you wouldn't be able to connect it via email, either. So every piece of it that should have been searchable, I tried to make unique. CAIRA: Do you suggest that everybody does all of this? MAX: No. CAIRA: Okay. MAX: No, but I think for the purposes of this project, it was like, 'Let's see if we can do this.' CAIRA: Yeah. MAX: 'How painful is it going to be?' And I think it's a useful framework. CAIRA: Okay. MAX: So let's say you're signing up for something that's low value to you personally. You just need to sign up for it for whatever reason. I don't know — CHRISTINE: To get a 20%-off coupon or something. MAX: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a perfect example. So you have to create an account somewhere where you don't actually want to have an account. Don't use the same username that you use everywhere. Use a masked email, and don't put a photo of yourself on it, use just any photo you can find or generate one randomly. And I think that this can be really useful on social platforms where your actual presence isn't required. If you're playing a video game or something, people don't need to know your name or see your face and your friends, you'll find them in some other way. So I think people can use these tools and then make decisions about how much of their information they want to share. How public do they want to be with this? On something like Facebook, where you are making a judgment about who the person is, you're probably going to want to use your name. I think they have policies about that still. And you're probably going to want to use a photo that people that you care about would recognize. But for other things, you don't need to do that. CAIRA: So how long did this take? MAX: The whole project was over the course of about three weeks or so. For those social media accounts alone, that was three or four days. It gets a little hazy for me towards the end, because working on Facebook was such an absolute nightmare for me that I frankly could not keep track of what was happening in my life. I went into a fugue state and emerged several days later. It does take a lot of time, and especially what I was trying to do — to remove my posts from these accounts but leave the accounts up — is very difficult to do. Most sites … pretty much every social media site I went to does not have an option to edit what posts are available. So I had to find other ways to do this. So in the case of LiveJournal I mentioned earlier, I had to go through and manually delete every single one of them. And for Twitter, I used a tool called Cyd, C-Y-D, it stands for Claw Back Your Data. And this will automatically delete your posts, your likes, your direct messages, and your retweets. There are other tools that will help you do this. I had a really good experience using Cyd on a personal Twitter account. It still takes a long time, though: For an account with 70,000 posts, it took about three and a half hours to get through. CAIRA: Oh, wow. MAX: Just the posts. CHRISTINE: Max, did it feel weird to remove images and personal journal entries, and all these deeply personal things that many of us share parts of ourselves on social media? I'm wondering: Watching you yourself disappear from these places, what did that feel like? MAX: It was awful. I can only say how it felt for me. I don't know what other people would experience, but at first it was really fun, because it was like, 'Oh, look at all this stuff, it's just flying by.' You see it for a second. It's like watching your life flash before your eyes. But then I took in, like, oh, every time something appears there, it's being deleted. So like, 'Oh, look, there's a picture of my wedding, and it's gone' and 'Oh, there's a picture of my pet rat, Johanna, gone.' And it starts to add up after a while. It starts to feel pretty bad. Whatever urges were there to share my life and connect with people like that … it hurt, that, a little bit. CAIRA: I had no problem deleting my Facebook account. MAX: And it's so different for everyone. I was agonizing over the tagged photos on Facebook. I'm talking to my spouse about that, and they're like, 'Oh, I deleted those years ago. Tags are stupid. What's your problem?' I don't know what my … I know what my problems are, but everyone's going to respond to it differently. And I do want to underline that sometimes it's painful, sometimes it's liberating. It's going to be a different experience, and I think that's also going to inform how you go about that. I would be lying if I said that the reason why I didn't delete all these accounts was because of privacy and control reasons. Some of it was just hard for me personally. CAIRA: Okay, Max. So let's talk about this last bucket. It's about tackling public records. And this does, I will admit, sound very boring, but it also does sound important. So what should people absolutely know about online public records that have their info? MAX: So removing public records is really difficult, because the existence of their record is usually required by law. For example, real estate purchases, voter registration, some court proceedings, stuff like that. And there's very rare exceptions for when that can be changed. So New York state, we have certain laws that say that if you are a survivor of domestic abuse, then you can have public records either redacted or removed. And that's true in other places, as well. But if you just don't want that information out there, you don't really have any means available to do that. And that's why it might be best to just see what's available in your state, and perhaps there's some options that are available for you. You will have to do some of that on your own. CHRISTINE: You cover some of that in your piece that just published. MAX: Yeah, you can read about my experiences doing that. CHRISTINE: Great. So Max, before we move on, I just want to make sure that these last two areas that we talked about, social media and public records, that we have the CliffsNotes for people at home if they're interested in doing this. So give us the very, very simplified version: For social media, what are the steps? MAX: For deleting your social media information, deleting the account is the fastest and easiest way to go about doing that. What I did, removing the data and then keeping the account alive, is much harder. So everyone's going to have to make a choice about that. And then when it comes to public records, just be aware that it's very difficult to get that information removed. Finding it can be an educational process for what's out there about you, and it's also an opportunity to engage with your community and find out what rules and laws are available for you. CAIRA: Before we wrap, we usually ask our guests one final question: What's the last thing you bought that you've really loved? MAX: The Kobo Libra Colour. It's an e-reader, and I'm a sucker for E Ink. CHRISTINE: So why do you like this better than a Kindle? MAX: I broke up with Amazon many, many years ago. CHRISTINE: Ooh, okay, good for you. CAIRA: Good for you. MAX: I like a lot of things about Kobo. The direct integration with my library is really nice. I can have that delivered directly there. I also just like how they look, I like how they work. CHRISTINE: Well, thank you so much, Max. I feel like I learned a ton this episode. CAIRA: Yeah. MAX: Thank you. Happy to be here. CHRISTINE: Caira, do you feel intimidated by this list of things that you need to go out and do now? CAIRA: Okay, I'm going to be honest. I haven't even done the things from the last data and security thing that we talked about, like getting a password manager. CHRISTINE: Well, you just have more things to add to your list, then. CAIRA: Yay. CHRISTINE: What was your biggest takeaway? CAIRA: One of the biggest things that I really learned is that a lot of the information that I was so proud to have about myself online, people are making money off of that. CHRISTINE: Yeah. CAIRA: So that's not great. Don't love it. And there's also just so much more information that I do not want on the internet. CHRISTINE: Right. CAIRA: So to that end, I think I'm going to try using Google's Results About You tool, because I do have Delete Me, and it should be culling some of that information that I don't want on the internet. But I don't want to rely just on that; I should be doing my own research, too. CHRISTINE: Yeah, I feel like when it comes to all this data-privacy and security stuff, I get a little intimidated, and just I freeze up, and I don't do anything. And so I think I really need to just pay attention. And I think the first thing I'm going to do is, I'm going to go to that site Have I Been Pwned, which is … what is that name? It's a ridiculous name. CAIRA: You wouldn't get it. CHRISTINE: I'm too old. But I am going to go to that site and see what data-privacy breaches my information has been involved with, to just get a lay of the land. CAIRA: I like it. CHRISTINE: So if listeners at home want to find out more about Wirecutter's coverage, or if you want to check out any of the products that we talked about or to read about Max's journey or any of these other data-privacy pieces that we had come out this week, go to or you can find some links in our show notes. That's it for us this week. Next week, Rosie will be back. Thank you so much for listening. Bye. CAIRA: Bye. CAIRA: The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pitman. Today's episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop, and Diane Wong. Wirecutter's deputy publisher is Cliff Levy. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter's editor-in-chief. I'm Caira Blackwell. CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. Thanks for listening. CAIRA: And you have to be my accountabilibuddy. CHRISTINE: Your accountability buddy? Yeah, I will totally — CAIRA: Accountabilibuddy, Christine. You got to make it one word.
