Watch David Letterman's Best Cooking Segments

One of the many things David Letterman does better than any other host is the cooking segment, which has long been a standby for many talk shows. Letterman brings to these moments a combination of impishness and curiosity, a Midwestern sense that food ought to be simply made, so why all the fuss? He’s most intent on messing with fussiness, which is why so many cooking spots on both Late Night and The Late Show ended up with him getting flour all over himself, and guzzling down everything from mustard to (fake) red wine.

Here are some of the best of such segments Letterman has ever done. Most people think of Martha Stewart when they think of cooking segments, but Letterman has had a wide range of chefs on, from Julia Child to Jamie Oliver. This session with Child is exceptional in part because things don’t work out the way Child wanted it to. The great chef had planned to make a hamburger, but the frying pan wouldn’t heat quickly enough, so she switched on the spot to a tartare topped with cheese heated by a blowtorch. Letterman does not like the idea of eating raw meat at all.

Letterman also did a terrific segment with his mother in 1996. She’d just published a cookbook (dutiful-son Letterman wrote an introduction to it) and was making the rounds promoting it. There are a lot of good mother-son moments here, in which the Midwestern reticence of both of them cracked into impatience. Letterman’s exasperated, “Mother, you’re driving me crazy!” is meant to be funny, but you definitely get the feeling that line was said more than once in earnest during Letterman’s boyhood. You can see the clip here.

The real re-discovery for me in putting together this collection was when I came across Bev Tanner, the riotously energetic, jabber-jawed cook. I love all the Tanner segments — it was hard to narrow it down to just one, but this one, in which Letterman makes her recite the names of her 14 children (!) once again, is pretty great. Tanner died in 2012; she lives on here, vibrantly.

Finally, Stewart. Stewart is more than a cook, of course, and lots of her appearances with Letterman involved decorating as much as it did cooking. She was on the show a lot, and was a (reasonably) good sport in enduring Letterman’s ribbing about her 2004 jail term. This clip is from a pre-jailbird era, combining a food segment with a spot of holiday decorating. 

We’re headed into the final week of new Late Show episodes. While I doubt Letterman will have time for one last cooking segment, one can hope, right?

The Late Show With David Letterman airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on CBS.