Ehhhh no not really. I don’t clarify with egg whites and it doesn’t hold like a consomme. A good stock should set up, but not fully gelatinize.

Deli soup containers, either 16 ounce or 8 ounce, depending on the size of your freezer.

I totally agree. My stock simmers just below boiling for 1-2 days. I use roasted carcasses, soak them first in water with a bit of cider vinegar. At the very end, it gets a bunch of parsley for about 10 minutes and then it cools a bit, gets strained through a fine cheesecloth lined sieve and sets up in the fridge for…

I almost always have homemade stock in the freezer. I get a rotisserie chicken almost every week (hey hey whole foods chicken wednesday) and when my freezer looks like a chicken graveyard, I toss it all in my mom’s 20 quart stock pot, along with a pound or two of chicken feet and whatever good stock veg I have around.

Not true. Good mise en place makes even the most complicated meals fast to prepare and clean up a lot easier.

Weighing in 18 months later...I totally disagree. I only have the attention and energy to do one or the other, which is one of the reasons why cooking for one is so hard. I have a standing agreement with friends that I will cook or clean but not both, and the friends always choose cleaning (cause I’m a bad bitch in…

I don’t get Jared Leto. He’s a terrible actor. You never forget that he’s “acting.” He doesn’t know how to inhabit a role. He’s the popular kid who joined drama club for the attention and never learned the craft.

The whitest white people I’ve ever encountered and I went to grad school in Minneapolis. It’s really unsettling to me, (a fellow Chicagoan) so I can only imagine what it was like for you.

And that’s how you apologize. It’s so simple, yet so few seem to do it.

I’m a salty white jewish woman and after a year here (moved from my liberal bubble in Chicago) I’ve come to accept that a lot of people here are a special kind of dumb. And since I have white skin, they expect me to agree with a lot of racist bullshit and get pretty flustered when I don’t. (And I got really…

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I change into travel slippers if I’m on a long flight, but it takes about 15 seconds. Seriously though, there’s enough stink on a plane, no one needs more.

Michael, I love your articles so much. I try really hard to be conscious and not be “that girl” when it comes to my POC friends, and every one of your articles helps me be a better human. You break it down with so much humor, real talk and what seems to be a genuine desire to help people not be assholes. (As well as…

Nope.

Seeing as you come from the sinker camp, I consider you an unreliable arbiter of taste.

Debatable. Duck fat is 100% delicious. But I’m going for a more traditional flavor, hence the schmaltz. :D

The other secrets are chicken fat and to never crowd the matzoh balls while they’re cooking. Make them in batches y’all.

Impossible. I love fish and I hate gefilte fish. I’ve had everything from canned, to homemade by fantastic cooks to high-end chefs’ and it’s all terrible. Carp is terrible and no one should ever eat it.

No. Ranch dressing is terrible. I can accept homemade, but otherwise it’s an abomination and should die in a firestorm and wiped from the face of the earth.

Fish oil makes a huge difference in how I feel, it definitely helps my anxiety and depression for me. However, I am also extremely sensitive and have fibromyalgia along with some autoimmune stuff. I’ve run out and forgotten to take them for a week or two, and I definitely feel the difference. But like everything,…