How To
If you look up lots of recipes online, and then add them to your favorites, sooner or later your favorites list can get a little unwieldy. The solution? Check out the social bookmarking site delicious.com. I recently started using delicious...
Poaching eggs is one of the easiest, quickest, and lowest calorie ways of preparing eggs, as there is no added fat. Poached eggs make great additions to salads, such as the French salad Lyonnaise, or sandwiches, or just served simply...
Lots of recipes (creamed corn, corn chowder, corn salad) require stripping the corn kernels away from the cob. In practice, it's a bit tricky as the corn cob can slip from its position, and the kernels can go flying all...
Please welcome author, pastry chef, and delightful raconteur David Lebovitz of DavidLebovitz.com who shares with us his way of making homemade ricotta cheese. If you haven't yet picked up David's latest book The Sweet Life in Paris you're missing out...
Years ago, my first job out of college was in Boston; I lived in the North End, above D'Amore's Italian restaurant on Salem Street, right across from a little fish market. This was a magical time, to be in one's...
Have you ever browned butter? It's an easy way to take a recipe that relies on butter up a notch in flavor. Just by cooking the butter a little past the melting point results in the milk solids in the...
Caramelizing onions, by slowly cooking them in a little olive oil until they are richly browned, is a wonderful way to pull flavor out of the simplest of ingredients. Onions are naturally sweet; and as caramel comes from the simple...
I can imagine, that if you didn't grow up eating artichokes and if you were encountering them for the first time, they might seem a little intimidating. How one cooks and eats an artichoke is not obvious from its appearance...
Mangos, delicious in smoothies, luscious in salsa, can be a slimy, slippery challenge to cut. The best way to go about it is to start first with a ripe, but still firm fruit. If the mango is too ripe, it...
Late October, early November is the season for pomegranates, pinkish red orbs filled with crunchy, juicy seeds, bursting with flavor. You can get them at most supermarkets, but if you live anywhere near where they are grown, it's best to...
I once observed the mother of a dear friend of mine meticulously peel an avocado whole, and then cut pieces off of it to use in a salad. I hate to say there is ever any "wrong" way to do...
Please welcome Garrett McCord of Vanilla Garlic as he shows us how to cut up a prickly pear. ~Elise Known to few, the fruit of the nopales cactus (cacti with beaver tail-like paddles), are actually quite edible. Called prickly pears...
A "rack" of lamb is a section of ribs, usually 7, sometimes 8 lamb chops in one piece. A classic way to prepare rack of lamb is with the bones "frenched" or exposed. These days you can usually find packaged...
Years ago, when I was in college, I was told by my Chinese doctor to make soup from scratch for my health (the reasons too long to go into now). In his words, "get beef bones and boil them". The...
Please welcome guest author pastry chef Shuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater who shares with us the (almost) lost art of making butterscotch. ~Elise When was the last time you tasted authentic butterscotch? Flavor, sauce, memory, aroma, era: butterscotch was an...
There are two basic ways to make chicken stock. One method uses the leftover bones from a chicken carcass and vegetables, and takes several hours of slow cooking. The second method uses chicken backs and wings, sautéing them first, and...
Nothing beats tortillas made from scratch. The packaged tortillas you get at big American markets don't even come close to a good, freshly made corn tortilla. My dear friend Martha's husband Arturo recently spent an afternoon with me, taking me...
When you have your own fruit trees (or access to someone else's) sometimes you can feel a bit buried in fruit, whatever happens to be dropping off the trees at that time. Summer becomes a mad dash of canning, jamming...
Here are two basic ways of making gravy from roast drippings, one using corn starch, the other using flour. In each case, you start with the roast drippings. You may have much more drippings than you need for the amount...
Please welcome guest author Hank Shaw of Hunter Angler Gardener Cook as he walks us through the steps of homemade sausage-making. (more photos) ~Elise Making sausage at home is one of those lost arts that really is not so difficult...
I love hard boiled eggs. For years I ate one every morning until my doctor told me that you shouldn't eat the same food every single day. So now I eat them only a couple of times a week. Sometimes...
Many Moroccan and Middle Eastern recipes call for preserved lemons, lemons that have been pickled in salt and their own juices. It's quite easy to do, though takes at least three weeks before the lemons are ready to use.
Years ago, on a little island off the coast of Marblehead, Massachusetts, a friend's aunt showed me how to eat a lobster, including the fine art of sucking the tender meat and juice out of the spindly legs. It was...
Recently my father announced that he missed chicken feet. (What?!) His mother, my grandmother who was born in 1899 and lived to the age of 97, used chicken feet when she made her stock and my dad could always tell...
Why make your own vanilla extract? Well let's see. It's easy to make. You'll never run out of vanilla again. It might even be economical, given that you'll never run out of it. It's fun to watch the extract change...
See the complete photoset here. Making a gingerbread house is no simple task (unless of course you get one of those pre-fab houses, in which case these notes will be of little help). These houses took several gatherings, one to...
A woven lattice pie crust can make a homemade pie look so pretty. As intimidating as it might look to the non-weavers among us, weaving a lattice pie crust top is actually quite easy to do. Watch out though, you...
The most essential thing I learned from taking a knife skills class with Chef Shuna Lydon, other than the obvious tip of keeping your knives sharp, was the importance of stabilizing whatever it is you are attempting to cut. This...
My friends Becca (Biloxi, Mississippi) and Carole ("Nawlins", Louisiana) are probably scratching their heads reading this ("What? You need to show people how to peel a shrimp?") But if you, like me, did not grow up on the Bayou or...
People either love horseradish or they hate it. One bite of pungent prepared horseradish is enough to clear out anyone's sinuses. Hotter than the popular Japanese version of wasabi, horseradish is easy to grow and easy to prepare. If you...
Please welcome guest author and cheese fiend Garrett McCord of Vanilla Garlic as he walks us through how to put together a fabulous cheese plate. ~Elise Whether served as an elegant appetizer, a palate cleansing course between courses, an impressive...
The only time you'll ever hear my mother complain about her electric range is when she wants to roast some Anaheim chiles. Of course you can put them in a broiler, but according to mom, it's just not the same...
Have you ever dreamt of cooking a Christmas goose, but were a bit intimidated by the prospect? When I wanted to learn how to roast a goose, without smoking up the kitchen, or overcooking the goose, I turned to the...
Who knew a 9-year old would find separating eggs so much fun? I taught my nephew how to separate eggs last week and every day he asked to separate more eggs. I think we went through a couple dozen, making...
Have you ever had trouble keeping fresh herbs fresh? Do your cilantro and parsley go wilty, limpy, or dry after a few days? Several years ago my mother taught me this super easy trick, which really works, and keeps fresh...
Sometimes you want to get right to the heart of the matter, in this case the heart of the glorious fresh artichokes that arrive each spring. Here’s how to trim an artichoke to get that heart, which you can use...
Hank Shaw spent a day this week with my father and me, showing us how to smoke ribs on my kettle grill. As worried as I was that the ribs were going to end up dry, they weren't, and they...
Is there nothing better than an ice-cold popsicle on a sweltering summer day? No need to wait for the icecream man's truck to make a pass through your neighborhood. It is easy to make your own popsicles. Do you make...
Late September and early October is Concord Grape season in California's central valley. Every time I walk under our grape arbor in this season, just the smell of those ripe grapes conjures up memories of childhood - wolfing down a...
Have you heard about the "canvolution" sweeping the country? Check out CanningAcrossAmerica.com for canning events and resources. ~Elise One of our favorite products is jarred marinated red bell peppers. They're convenient for recipes that call for roasted red peppers, and...
Everybody knows how to make lemonade, right? Squeeze some lemons, add sugar and water. But how to make lemonade so that it tastes right everytime? Here's a surefire method. Remember the starting proportions - 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup...
The big dilemma for those of us who like to cook but don't always have the time to do everything perfectly is whether to attempt to make our own pie crust or to buy a frozen store bought version. Most...
Making popcorn from scratch can be tricky. Not only do you want as many kernels as possible to pop, but you also want to keep the kernels from burning at the bottom of the pan. Until my mother showed me...
A Simply Recipes reader recently asked in the comments, "Where do I get bacon fat?" Great question, especially considering that we use bacon fat (also called bacon grease) around here in many of the recipes. I remember as a kid...
There are two basic methods to test for how done your meat is while you are cooking it - use a meat thermometer, or press on the meat with your finger tips. The problem with the meat thermometer approach is...
Please welcome guest author Michael Ruhlman as he demonstrates how to apply a basic ratio to making vinaigrettes. ~Elise First things first. I am a huge fan of Elise and am honored to be here on this blog. Elise, thank...
Did you know that many, if not most, blenders can be used with a standard mason jar, or wide-mouthed mason jar? This is a trick my mother taught me. Apparently 40 years ago or so, about the time this blender...
Ever take home a jalapeño chile pepper from the grocery store and have it either be so lacking in heat it may just as well be a bell pepper, or so hot a speck will create a raging inferno in...
Many baking recipes call for "softened" butter, or room temperature butter. The reason for using softened butter is that you want to beat the butter (also called "creaming the butter"), either with sugar or without, and it's very hard to...
