Who needs a flaky pie crust?
Milk Street's Christopher Kimball had a Reddit AMA session earlier this week. Kimball solicited questions on his favorite food holiday (Thanksgiving), asking Redditors to "get the conversation (argument) started!" He…
Cooking Tips
What's the best bread for stuffing?
With holiday dinners fast approaching, home cooks are preparing the menus for their family feasts. For many, this means a turkey and stuffing/dressing as a side dish. There are many decisions to be made regarding the…
Baking across borders
As an avid baker and cookbook aficionado, I frequently purchase the UK version of baking books because the covers are always better than the US edition (something I have written about before). This has led to me…
To fan, or not to fan - that is the question
If your oven has a convection setting, how often do you use it? If the answer is "never because I don't know when it is appropriate", recipe developer and cookbook author Irvin Lin can help you. He penned an article on…
Chemistry in the kitchen
If you love to cook, you are applying scientific concepts every time you make a meal - even if you hated science classes in school. I happened to love chemistry, which may explain why I geek out over the science of…
A new (old) way to fry food
A deep frying technique that has been used for centuries in Asia is gaining a new fan base in the West, and it uses a surprising ingredient: salt. Salt (or, more commonly, sand) frying "is a process with historical…
Is this really the best way to cook rice?
Cooking rice is something that intimidated me for years. I did not grow up eating rice very often and when we did have rice, it was often included in a dish and not cooked separately. So when I was a young cook timidly…
Herb pairing basics
Over 13,000 recipes in the EYB Library have "herbs of your choice" as an ingredient. When you see that in the ingredient list, do you have a set of herbs in mind or do you struggle to determine what herbs would be best?…
Pasta: the long and short of it
Fresh or dried? Bronze cut? Long, tubular, or flat and folded? With eggs or without? There are many questions to answer when choosing the kind of pasta to use in a particular dish. With hundreds of pasta shapes…
Splish-splash: What is the best method for washing your produce?
When you buy fresh produce, especially items that are loose in bins, you don't know what (or who) it has been in contact with, so you wash it before using. There are new products on the market that claim to be able to…
What type of cardamom to use when?
Do you remember the first time you tasted cardamom? Perhaps it occurred when you nibbled on Swedish meatballs or drank masala chai. Cardamom’s enchanting flavor has made a home for itself in cuisines across the globe.…
Tips on using mint in cocktails
Today was the Kentucky Derby, an event known as much for its hats and its signature cocktail - the mint julep - as for the thoroughbred horses racing around Churchill Downs. Since this event also heralds the return of…