As an unapologetic craver of the glorious mineral that is sodium chloride, I firmly believe that anyone who’s serious about cooking needs an easily-accessible salt cellar. No other ingredient changes the way you perceive flavors like salt does; while it’s rarely the sole seasoning agent in a recipe, it’s the most…
It’s hard to get excited about steamed vegetables. When done poorly, they range from totally unremarkable to actively disgusting—but done right, they’re absolutely transcendent. As we head, at long last, into peak spring and summer produce season, I think this underrated technique deserves another look.
Baking beautiful bread requires the skillful manipulation of three big, messy variables: technique, equipment, and ingredients. Poor technique accounts for most subpar results, but a sudden change in kitchen conditions or ingredient availability can throw even a seasoned baker for a loop. If your bread has started…
For years, I politely declined to keep the pedestrian substance known as table salt in my pantry. Spurred by the belief that real chefs use kosher salt—and my desire to be one, too—I dutifully bought box after box of Morton, painstakingly double-checking recipes to ensure I added the “Morton amount” and not the…
Fat makes food taste good, but greasy food has a way of lingering in the air—and on the dishes—long after a meal has ended. If you’re sick of finding oil slicks on dishes you could have sworn were clean, you owe it to yourself to fill a spray bottle with vinegar and keep it near your kitchen sink.
My area of the country saw four nor’easters in the last six weeks, which means that local March produce has been less than inspiring. As a result, I’ve been leaning on lemons even harder than usual to brighten up my meals.
Matzo ball soup is a fixture on seder tables around the world, and every recipe is built around a preference for “sinkers” or “floaters.” Dense, chewy “sinkers” are the natural consequence of mixing matzo meal and water, which makes cloud-like matzo balls slightly harder to pull off.
I have extremely oily skin, which I choose to see as a plus: sure, I spent my twenties fighting stubborn nodulocystic acne, but maybe all that extra oil means I’ll age more slowly than my dry-skinned peers. Unfortunately, any anti-aging effects are probably negated by the grimacing I do when someone insists my skin is…
Homemade pizza nerds are a passionate bunch; for a timid novice, the sheer amount of conflicting information available on various pizza-enthusiast boards is anything but encouraging. I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to build a backyard brick oven or even buy a stone to make great pizza—in fact, you probably…
Dessert and cocktails both come after dinner, but combining them is a tricky business indeed. The best boozy desserts neatly split the difference between sugary treats and nightcaps; the worst are indistinguishable from mild physical assault. Sadly, the latter is far more common than the former—but it doesn’t have to…
In beauty—as in fashion, food, and politics—there’s no such thing as an original idea. Makeup is just an assortment of colored powders and waxes to smear on your face in a decorative manner; innovative formulations aside, that’s all it will ever be.
An extremely cool feature of depression is an overwhelming indifference to the concept of staying alive. Eating is a prerequisite for life, so it makes perverse sense that, for many people, it’s among the first victims of a depressive episode.
I hate dealing with pot lids when they’re hot and dripping with condensation; it makes them impossible to put down gracefully. My Instant Pot’s lid was by far the worst offender—but no more, my friends.
Friends and family ask me if they should get an Instant Pot all the time, and my answer is usually a big, fat shrug. If you’ve never had one before, an Instant Pot will change your life—but so will any other pressure cooker.
Life has taught me to expect very little from February, the worst month, but this one has been especially bad. It’s important to savor the bright spots as they crop up, even the tiny ones and, though this month is riddled with crises on the micro and macro scales, I finally got to eat kohlrabi pizza after weeks and…
Cheap beer gets a bad rap, but I’ve been choosing it over the fancy stuff more and more these days. Unlike heavy IPAs, generic lagers don’t compete with food or give me a hangover, and they’re an absolute joy to cook with.
Alison Roman’s salted butter chocolate chunk shortbread cookies are everywhere. Bon Appétit, Eater, Nylon, Smitten Kitchen, and The New York Times have covered them in glowing detail; The Cookies pop up on my Instagram discover feed literally every day. The best recipes are more than the sum of their parts, but the…
My fellow Americans, the annual Final Handegg is upon us. I’m a simple, soccer-loving girl from upstate New York, and as such, I have simple tastes: this Sunday, I would like to eat my weight in Buffalo wings, ruthlessly ogle some be-Spandexed butts, and—God willing—see Tom Brady cry big, fat tears of shame on…
If you read about cooking online, you’ve no doubt seen several listicles that tout the many uses of a single, humble chicken. At this point, you know what a chicken can do for you, so another overly-prescriptive, chicken-based meal plan seems unnecessary. My agenda here is very simple: the next time you buy a whole…
Vegetarian and vegan cooking should celebrate vegetables rather than forcing them into a meat-shaped box. I’ll take “oh damn, I didn’t know I liked eggplant” over “this is surprisingly tasty, but I’d rather eat real bacon” any day of the week.
