That, my friends, is a photo of Kenji López-Alt’s homemade McRib sandwich. The McDonald’s version is beloved but has been on and off the menu with maddening irregularity, so Kenji spent weeks/months creating a McRib recipe for the home cook.
The problem is that, while the McRib might be inspired by real barbecue, it’s ultimately a lie. Despite its corrugated appearance, it has little to do with actual ribs. (McDonald’s doesn’t even indicate that the product contains actual rib meat.) It’s not smoked, as one would expect of barbecue ribs. Indeed, it’s not even grilled — it’s cooked on a griddle. We can do better.
My goal? Take everything we love about the McRib sandwich and turn it up to 11, by starting from scratch with a few high-quality ingredients and a lot of good technique (including honest-to-goodness smoking). I wanted to maximize flavor and texture, unlocking the sandwich’s full potential and allowing it to evolve, Pokémon-style, into something so much better.
There are lots of ways to boil an egg. You can drop them in already boiling water. You can start them in cold water and bring to a boil. You can bake them in an oven at a low temperature. You can sous vide them for awhile. I’m sure you have your technique.
The easiest, fastest, and tastiest way I’ve found to make perfect hard boiled eggs is Kenji López-Alt’s Perfect Steamed Boiled Eggs Recipe. That’s right, you steam the eggs.
Fill a large pot with 1 inch of water. Place steamer insert inside, cover, and bring to a boil over high heat. Add eggs to steamer basket, cover, and continue cooking 6 minutes for soft boiled or 12 minute for hard.
Since that little bit of water boils much quicker than a full pot, you’re done much quicker. And peeling is easy too; I don’t even wait the 15 minutes or do it under running water, those shells come off super easy.
P.S. I’ve been cooking more recently, and I’m almost exclusively using recipes and techniques from Serious Eats and The Food Lab. (For instance, I made this Spanish tortilla a couple of weeks ago and it was amazing.) I’m sure I’ll branch out soon, but for now, *kisses fingers*.
Prison Ramen is a cookbook of instant ramen recipes from prison inmates and celebrities (Samuel L. Jackson wrote the foreword).
Instant ramen is a ubiquitous food, beloved by anyone looking for a cheap, tasty bite-including prisoners, who buy it at the commissary and use it as the building block for all sorts of meals. Think of this as a unique cookbook of ramen hacks. Here’s Ramen Goulash. Black Bean Ramen. Onion Tortilla Ramen Soup. The Jailhouse Hole Burrito. Orange Porkies — chili ramen plus white rice plus 1/2 bag of pork skins plus orange-flavored punch. Ramen Nuggets. Slash’s J-Walking Ramen (with scallions, Sriracha hot sauce, and minced pork).
Gordon Ramsay shows us how to chop an onion, cook rice, debone a fish, cook pasta, and sharpen a knife. We’ve been watching a lot of Gordon Ramsay videos at our house recently. My daughter’s class is studying how restaurants work1 — they’re operating a real restaurant in their classroom today — so she’s been really curious about food.
On a recent weekend when it was just the two of us, we watched Ramsay cook his soft-scrambled eggs (and then made them the next morning), which sent us down a rabbit hole of beef wellington, tacos, turkey, and donuts. If you’ve only ever seen him yelling at mediocre chefs and restaurant owners on TV, you should give his cooking videos a try…he’s a super engaging chef that gets you excited about food and cooking.
The kids’ school is big on social studies. As the students move through the grades, they first study the school, then their block, their neighborhood, Manhattan, Mannahatta (same location but adding the dimension of time), and eventually the country and wider world. Minna’s group is studying the neighborhood this year and to that end have visited several local businesses, including restaurants, to observe their role in the neighborhood dynamic.↩
Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs of Food52 are coming out with a new book called A New Way to Dinner.
A smart, inspiring cookbook of 100+ recipes from the founders of the powerhouse web site Food52 showing just how they — two busy working parents — actually plan, shop, and cook for delicious dinners (and breakfasts, lunches, and desserts) — all through the week. The secret? Cooking ahead.
I need this. I want to cook more, eat better, and not dine out so much, but I just haven’t been able to get it together. And I love the title…”dinner” cleverly works both as a noun and a verbed noun.
Ben Schott collects some instructions from the cookbooks of noted chefs that will likely never be attempted by the home chef (unless you’re thiswoman). Like this one from A New Napa Cuisine that calls for phytoplankton:
20 grams marine phytoplankton
100 grams water
4 matsutake mushrooms, peeled and left whole
Or this one from Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck Cookbook to make frankincense hydrosol:
50 grams golden frankincense tears
100 grams water
I’ve owned several cookbooks where one recipe on page 107 calls for the product of a recipe on page 53 which in turn calls for the output of a recipe on page 28. Rube Goldberg cooking. Living in NYC, it’s often easier, faster, cheaper, and tastier to walk to the restaurant in question and just order the damn thing. Or head to Shake Shack instead.
I love watching Gordon Ramsay make scrambled eggs. I first saw this video years ago and, possibly because I am an idiot, have yet to attempt these eggs at home. You and me, eggs, next weekend.
P.P.P.S. In Jiro Dreams of Sushi (now on Netflix!), an apprentice talks about making tamagoyaki (Japanese omelette) over 200 times before Jiro declared it good enough to serve in his restaurant.
Born in 1915, Clara Cannucciari survived the Great Depression and, when she was in her 90s and with the help of her grandson, made a YouTube series about meals and cooking techniques used in that era. Watch as Clara cooks a 3-course Poorman’s Feast, a relatively rare treat in those lean times.
In the ruins of Herculaneum, a Roman town destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, a carbonized loaf of bread was found. The British Museum had chef Giorgio Locatelli recreate the recipe as best he could.
Things start to get really interesting around 3:25, where Locatelli tries to recreate the unusual markings found on the bread…that hanging string around the edge is a little genius.
Published in 1961 with an introduction by Alice B Toklas, The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook features recipes and wisdom from dozens of writers and artists, including Harper Lee, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Pearl Buck, Upton Sinclair, John Keats, and Burl Ives. Lee shared her recipe for crackling cornbread:
First, catch your pig. Then ship it to the abattoir nearest you. Bake what they send back. Remove the solid fat and throw the rest away. Fry fat, drain off liquid grease, and combine the residue (called “cracklings”) with:
1 ½ cups water-ground white meal
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
1 cup milk
Bake in very hot oven until brown (about 15 minutes).
Result: one pan crackling bread serving 6. Total cost: about \$250, depending upon size of pig. Some historians say this recipe alone fell the Confederacy.
Let me begin by saying, ma chere, that Steak Tartare, alias Bitteck Tartare, also known as Steck Tartare, is in no way related to tartar sauce. The steak to which I refer originated with the Cossacks in Siberia, and it can be prepared on horseback, at swift gallop, if conditions make this a necessity.
Indications: Chop one half pound (per person) of the very best beef obtainable, and shape carefully with artistry into a bird’s nest. Place on porcelain plate of a solid color — ivory is the best setting — so that no pattern will disturb the distribution of ingredients. In hollow center of nest, permit two egg yolks to recline. Like a wreath surrounding the nest of chopped meat, arrange on border of plate in small, separate bouquets:
Chopped raw white onion
Bright green capers
Curled silvers of anchovy
Fresh parsley, chopped fine
Black olives minutely chopped in company with yellow celery leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
Each guest, with his plate before him, lifts his fork and blends the ingredients with the egg yolks and meat. In center of table: Russian pumpernickel bread, sweet butter, and bottles of vin rosé.
Not to be outdone, MoMA published their own artists’ cookbook in 1977, featuring contributions from Louise Bourgeois, Christo, Salvador Dali, Willem De Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol. Here’s Warhol’s recipe:
Andy Warhol doesn’t eat anything out of a can anymore. For years, when he cooked for himself, it was Heinz or Campbell’s tomato soup and a ham sandwich. He also lived on candy, chocolate, and “anything with red dye #2 in it.” Now, though he still loves junk food, McDonald’s hamburgers and French fries are something “you just dream for.”
The emphasis is on health, staying thin and eating “simple American food, nothing complicated, no salt or butter.” In fact, he says, “I like to go to bad restaurants, because then I don’t have to eat. Airplane food is the best food — it’s simple, they throw it away so quickly and it’s so bad you don’t have to eat it.”
Campbell’s Milk of Tomato Soup
A 10 3/4-ounce can Campbell’s condensed tomato soup
2 cans milk
In a saucepan bring soup and two cans milk to boil; stir. Serve.
Watson, IBM’s evolving attempt at building a computer capable of AI, was originally constructed to excel at Jeopardy. Which it did, handily beating Jeopardy mega-champ Ken Jennings. Watson has since moved on to cooking and has just come out with a new cookbook, Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson.
You don’t have to be a culinary genius to be a great cook. But when it comes to thinking outside the box, even the best chefs can be limited by their personal experiences, the tastes and flavor combinations they already know. That’s why IBM and the Institute of Culinary Education teamed up to develop a groundbreaking cognitive cooking technology that helps cooks everywhere discover and create delicious recipes, utilizing unusual ingredient combinations that man alone might never imagine.
In Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson, IBM’s unprecedented technology and ICE’s culinary experts present more than 65 original recipes exploding with irresistible new flavors. Together, they have carefully crafted, evaluated and perfected each of these dishes for “pleasantness” (superb taste), “surprise” (innovativeness) and a “synergy” of mouthwatering ingredients that will delight any food lover.
About a minute into The Katering Show, I already knew it was going to be my favorite cooking show of all time. In this episode, the toothsome twosome with the Beatlesesque names of McCartney and McLennan make risotto hot wet rice using a Thermomix.
So “what is a Thermomix?” I hear anyone under the age of 33 ask. It’s a blender, a microwave, an ice bucket, and a set of kitchen scales. It’s a gangbang of kitchen appliances that’s created a futuristic robot saucepan. It’s the kind of appliance that your rich mother-in-law gives you as a wedding gift because she doesn’t think you can cook. Or something that you buy yourself because you’ve always wanted to join a cult, but you don’t have the energy for the group sex.
“That’s why I’m really proud of what we did here,” he said over his cup of sake. “I’m proud of the big things, but I’m also proud of the little things we routinely did well. Do you know what made me most proud in the meal I served you? The Wagyu beef. It was perfectly cooked.”
“The advantage of sous vide,” someone said.
“But it wasn’t sous vide!” Dufresne said. “That’s the thing. It was cooked in a pan. And it had no gray on it! Do you know how hard that is? Do you know how much work that takes? Turning the beef every seven or eight seconds … And so that question you asked me before, about food and music — that’s my answer: a perfect piece of Wagyu beef cooked in a pan that comes out without any gray on it. It might not be ‘When the Levee Breaks,’ but it’s definitely ‘Achilles Last Stand.’”
Let’s start with the premise. Anybody who’s ever grilled in their backyard with an overbearing uncle can tell you that if there’s one rule about steaks that gets bandied about more than others, it’s to not play with your meat once it’s placed on the grill. That is, once steak hits heat, you should at most flip it just once, perhaps rotating it 90 degrees on each side in order to get yourself some nice cross-hatched grill marks.
The idea sort of makes sense at first glance: flipping it only once will give your steak plenty of chance to brown and char properly on each side. But the reality is that flipping a steak repeatedly during cooking — as often as every 30 seconds or so — will produce a crust that is just as good (provided you start with meat with a good, dry surface, as you always should), give you a more evenly cooked interior, and cook in about 30% less time to boot!
Although honestly, I eat and cook steak a lot less than I used to. Burgers too. A belly full of steak just doesn’t feel that good anymore, gastronomically, gastrointestinally, or environmentally. I’m trying to eat more vegetables and especially seafood. Actually, I’m not really trying…it’s just been working out that way. I still really like steak, but it’s almost become a special occasion food for me, which is probably the way it should from a sustainability standpoint. ↩
The Theory: Seasoning is a thin layer of oil that coats the inside of your skillet. Soap is designed to remove oil, therefore soap will damage your seasoning.
The Reality: Seasoning is actually not a thin layer of oil, it’s a thin layer of polymerized oil, a key distinction. In a properly seasoned cast iron pan, one that has been rubbed with oil and heated repeatedly, the oil has already broken down into a plastic-like substance that has bonded to the surface of the metal. This is what gives well-seasoned cast iron its non-stick properties, and as the material is no longer actually an oil, the surfactants in dish soap should not affect it. Go ahead and soap it up and scrub it out.
If you’re at all interested in cooking at home, you’ve likely got one of Yotam Ottolenghi’s cookbooks on your shelf: Jerusalem, Plenty, and Ottolenghi. I don’t cook much myself, but from everything I’ve heard from friends, this guy is a wizard with vegetables. Now Ottolenghi is out with a new cookbook: Plenty More.
Yotam Ottolenghi is one of the world’s most beloved culinary talents. In this follow-up to his bestselling Plenty, he continues to explore the diverse realm of vegetarian food with a wholly original approach. Organized by cooking method, more than 150 dazzling recipes emphasize spices, seasonality, and bold flavors. From inspired salads to hearty main dishes and luscious desserts, Plenty More is a must-have for vegetarians and omnivores alike. This visually stunning collection will change the way you cook and eat vegetables.
According to testing by the folks at America’s Test Kitchen, you should not be thawing out your frozen steaks before you cook them. Mind. Blown. Into. Tiny. Pieces. Sweep. Me. Up. Pls.
Conventional wisdom holds that frozen steaks should be thawed before cooking, but we wondered if steaks could be cooked straight from the freezer. Cook’s Illustrated Senior Editor Dan Souza explains our cooking experiments.
They also apparently more-or-less deep fry their steak? Is that a thing that we should be doing? (via digg)
Each layer is different kind of cake which is baked and then pressed into the batter of the next larger cake, covered, and rebaked. The largest of which you bake in halves in two glass mixing bowls.
Tom Scocca wonders why recipe writers don’t tell the truth about how long caramelizing onions really takes.
Onions do not caramelize in five or 10 minutes. They never have, they never will-yet recipe writers have never stopped pretending that they will. I went on Twitter and said so, rudely, using CAPS LOCK. A chorus of frustrated cooks responded in kind (“That’s on some bullshit. You want caramelized onions? Stir for 45 minutes”).
As long as I’ve been cooking, I’ve been reading various versions of this lie, over and over. Here’s Madhur Jaffrey, from her otherwise reliable Indian Cooking, explaining how to do the onions for rogan josh: “Stir and fry for about 5 minutes or until the onions turn a medium-brown colour.” The Boston Globe, on preparing pearl onions for coq au vin: “Add the onions and cook, stirring often, for 5 minutes or until golden.” The Washington Post, on potato-green bean soup: “Add the onion and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until golden brown.”
In On Food and Cooking, Harold McGee notes that there is a liquidy part of the egg white and a viscous one. If you let the liquidy part drain, before poaching, you will have a beautiful poached egg. (People tell you to put vinegar or lemon juice in poaching water — this does nothing in my experience.) The problem was, my perforated spoons were so shallow the egg always wanted to jump out. No longer. The deep bowl of The Badass Perf spoon easily contains even a jumbo egg, as well as heaps of beans, vegetables, and pasta.
Whether the mission is baking cookies or flipping pancakes, young Padawan cooks will love using our official Star Wars spatula featuring the fearsome Darth Vader.
Galactic Empire™ Cupcake Decorating Kit - “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the Jedi Kitchen Council devised a powerful new way to spread fun through the galaxy. Jedi Master pastry chefs created this extraordinary collection of tools…”
Sandwich Cutters with Vintage-Style Tin - “Transform your Jedi’s favorite sandwiches into high-energy fuel for lunches, snacks and parties with Millennium Falcon™ and Darth Vader’s TIE fighter™ sandwich cutters. Created by the Jedi Kitchen Council to celebrate the Rebel Alliance’s victory over the evil Empire, these cutters are fun and easy to use — just press and cut.” [The “Vintage-Style Tin” is actually, how you say, a metal lunchbox.]
Pancake Molds - “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a Jedi Kitchen Master used the Force to create three pancake molds in honor of his favorite galactic hero and villains: Yoda, Darth Vader and a stormtrooper. Use these molds to add whimsy and fun to your next pancake breakfast.” [The Vader pancake looks a lot like Hannibal Lector in his mask.]
What, no Jar-Jar Binks Home Preserves Kit? (thx, meg)
I love this video of a guy rolling out dough and tossing it several feet to another man over and over and over again…and even over a passing waiter. They’re making parathas, an Indian flatbread.
This blog post and accompanying videos show you how to preheat your frying pan to the precise temperature at which your food won’t stick. It involves waiting until a small splash of water in the pan forms a single mercury-like ball that floats (literally!) around the pan. Too hot and the water will disperse into smaller balls; too cold and it’ll just boil off instantly.
The water “hovering” over the stainless steel pan like mercury happens due to the phenomenon known as the Leidenfrost effect. You can read more about it on wikipedia, but the basic idea is this: at a certain temperature known as the Leidenfrost point (roughly around 320F for water, but varying with surface and pressure), when the water droplet hits the hot pan, the bottom part of the water vaporizes immediately on contact. The resulting gas actually suspends the water above it and creates a pocket of water vapor that slows further heat transfer between the pan and the water. Thus it evaporates more slowly than it would at lower temperatures. At the proper temperature, a similar effect happens with the food you place in the pan, preventing the food from sticking.
This is possibly the best kitchen tip I’ve ever heard. (thx, jim)
The big difficulty with sous vide cooking at home is keeping the cooking temperature constant. Traditionally that has meant expensive emersion circulators with built-in heaters, although the price is down to $450 for the Sous-Vide Supreme. If only you could find something that insulated the water so that it stayed at a uniform temperature while cooking…
Fill up your beer cooler with water just a couple degrees higher than the temperature you’d like to cook your food at (to account for temperature loss when you add cold food to it), seal your food in a plastic Ziplock bag, drop it in, and close your beer cooler until your food is cooked.
Oh, and it’ll work on camping trips as well (as long as you take your thermometer along).
With traditional cookery, when you are exposing your meat to temperatures much hotter than their final desired temperature (say, cooking a steak to 130°F in a 550°F skillet), timing is crucial. The center of your steak is getting hotter and hotter, and it’s your job as cook to take it off the flame at precisely the moment that it reaches the desired final temperature. Miss that precise moment, and dinner is ruined.
The beauty of sous-vide cooking is that since you are cooking your steak in a 130°F water bath to begin with, there is absolutely no chance your meat will ever get above that temperature. Guests are an hour late? No problem — leave the steaks in the water bath, and they’ll be exactly the same an hour later.
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