At it’s very most basic, a stew is bite-sized pieces of food cooked in a liquid, generally over low heat for an extended period. You can stew meat, poultry, fish, beans, vegetables, fruit—virtually anything—in broth, wine, beer, vinegar. Again, virtually anything. Stews are kitchen workhorses. You can make big batches […]
Chocolate shavings and curls are the simplest way to finish a show-stopping cake or other special occasion dessert. To create chocolate shavings and curls, you need a good-sized block of chocolate at room temperature. You can use dark chocolate, milk chocolate, or white chocolate for your curls. Look for larger […]
Clarified butter is a staple in professional kitchens. Made by melting butter to break the water and fat emulsion, you first skim away the milk solids and then the pure butterfat—the clarified butter itself. Unlike vegetable oils, which are 100% fat, butter is a mixture of water, milk solids, and […]
When making stuffed pasta, you may choose to add a small amount of oil to the dough to help it stick together better when sealed around a filling. Roll the pasta out to the thinnest setting on a pasta machine. While rolling and filling one portion of the dough, keep […]
Sugar is the defining ingredient of candy making. It provides sweetness, bulk, flavor, mouthfeel, and preservation to candies of every description. Without sugar, there simply would not be such a thing as candy. In chocolates, the sugar is already contained in the chocolate itself, and we may add little or […]
Low and slow cooking is an ideal way to turn tough cuts of meat into tender, succulent roasts, braises, and barbecue.
Sometimes the classic, tried-and-true way just doesn’t work for you. For me, I was always hung up on the perfect fried egg. Sunny-side-up, runny yolk with a little bit of texture, crisp underneath, and set–not runny–whites. I knew the tricks. After all, I did learn from the best at the […]
There is no greater joy than a dinner that is truly 15 minutes prep-to-table. Especially on a busy weeknight, but honestly, any night. Opening a jar of store-bought pasta sauce and boiling a pound of spaghetti is easy, but how about something a little more homemade in just as much […]
As the holidays draw close, we’re revisiting our knife skills to make sure we’re ready to take on the carrots, potatoes, and all of those fresh green herbs. Here are a few of our must-see videos to ready you for any Thanksgiving recipe! At the end, you’ll find a printable […]
Roasting tomatoes concentrates the bright sweetness of the ripe fruit. You can use roasted tomatoes in place of fresh tomatoes in nearly any recipe for added richness, or in recipes that call for canned “fire-roasted” tomatoes. Choose ripe, flavorful tomatoes for oven roasting. Plum tomatoes are a great choice since they […]
In the old days of wine and food pairing, the choice of a particular wine to accompany a particular dish was fairly predictable—white wine with fish, red wine with meat. The pairings were also Eurocentric, meaning that the marriage of food and wine was largely based on the classics. French […]
Piping is often functional: use a pastry bag to transfer the mousse to the serving bowls, place the glaze in a piping bag to cover the cake. Precision is nice, but not always necessary. But if you are interested in creating detailed cakes, homemade chocolate bonbons, cute cookies, or delicate […]