Articles Index
How to Brown Onions
Whether you're cooking them slowly or quickly, a little knowledge about onion types and browning reactions is all you need for delicious, perfect onions every time.
Leftovers: Like Them or Not?
Tips on how to decide your leftover tolerance and ways to deal with different types of leftover food.
Reducing Recipes to Two Servings
How to reduce a recipe from 6 or more servings to two servings.
Shopping for Two: 5 Crucial Tips
Five tips to make shopping for two easier and more economical
Knowing Your Portion Size
Provides tips on determining what portion sizes to cook when learning to cook for two.
Essential Cookware: 6 Great Tools
These six pieces of kitchen equipment and cookware make cooking for two easier and more efficient, and they won't break the bank.
Ingredient: Sorrel
If you're planning a new herb garden or thinking about expanding the garden you have, I want to strongly recommend trying sorrel. You probably won't be able to find just the leaves for sale even at most farmers' markets – so grow it yourself.
Tips: Stocking Your Pantry
In general, stocking a pantry (and by pantry I mean your refrigerator and freezer as well) for two isn't much different from stocking a pantry for six, except in terms of quantities. Clearly if you like dried beans you should keep them around and if you like pasta it should be on your shelf. But when stocking a pantry for one or two you face some special issues.
Technique: Low-water Pasta
Most instructions for cooking pasta call for 4 - 6 quarts of water per pound of pasta. But you can get away with have that amount.
Review - A Spoonful of Promises
It took me three weeks to read A Spoonful of Promises. Not because I'm a slow reader or it's heavy going, quite the reverse. Instead I relished it, taking small sips each evening as I would fine cognac or bourbon. I didn't want to reach the end.
Ingredient: Beer
Beer's not only for drinking. Like wine it's a rich and savory addition to food. In fact, ancient Egyptian and Sumerian physicians considered cooking with beer a healthy practice. Learn more about beer and find a few good recipes.
Tip: Your First Kitchen
I probably don’t devote enough attention to novice cooks because it's been so long since I've been there. But I have enough young people in my classes to understand what you folks face and thought it was time to specifically help you out.
Asparagus
During it's all-too-short season, asparagus should be enjoyed as often as possible and using as many recipes as possible. This collection of asparagus recipes shows the vegetable off in all its glory.
Community Supported Agriculture
CSA is an initialism for Community Supported Agriculture. The noun is used to describe farms that offer subscriptions to their crops. They're a sort of co-op. You sign up in the spring, typically paying in advance for an entire summer's worth of fresh produce and then each week you receive a box of veggies.
Ingredient: Herb Mixtures
Although these mixtures can be found, pre-mixed, in the spice section in most supermarkets it's nice to be able to make your own in case you happen to run out or in case you want to make them using fresh herbs or because you want to tweak the herb balance.
Ingredient: Umami
About 100 years ago a Japanese food scientist named Kikunae Ikeda isolated a taste he named umami (literally "delicious-taste") and that we would call savory. Some 75 years later other researchers identified the taste buds associated with umami detecting and the sensory mechanism for taking it up. It's worth knowing about.
Using Your Freezer
When you're cooking for two the freezer is one of your greatest assets. Not only because sometimes you have to buy more of something than you need for a particular meal, but also because using your freezer is a great way of reducing the amount of cooking you have to do. This collection of tips will help you take the greatest advantage of your ice-box.
Father's Day 2008: Fried Chicken
I've been pondering my Father's Day menu. I always ask my parent's over for lunch on their parental and birth days and so what to fix this coming Sunday. I finally decided on fried chicken.
The Greatest Kitchen Danger
Heat - ovens, skillets, pots and pans - are the greatest danger to a cook. Most professionals have far more burn scars than knife scars. Here are a few tips to avoid cooking yourself.
Tip: Perfect Hard-boiled Eggs
My guess is that everyone who has ever hard-boiled an egg has at some point over-cooked them (resulting in that sulphurous green layer around the yolk) or under-cooked them and ended up with a soft center. It's actually easy to cook eggs perfectly every time, but it's not straightforward. So here's the trick.
Tip: Thermometers
You need kitchen thermometers because no single gadget can so improve your cooking as precise control of heat and cold.
7 Tips for a Perfect Steak
I seldom buy steak. Good steak is expensive and cheap steak isn't worth buying. So when I do buy steak I really want my money's worth and I've come up with some tips for a perfect steak. They aren't difficult to implement but these tips can make a big difference in your dining pleasure.
Cooking in Parchment
Cooking in parchment is a classic French technique; and doesn't actually involve genuine parchment (lambskin). The French name for the technique is en papillote and literally means cooking "in paper," specifically parchment paper.
Tip: How to Cook Dried Beans
There is a surprising amount of lore associated with cooking dried beans - or perhaps it's not so surprising. But most of what your mother told you was wrong or at best only partially right. Here's the down-low on delicious beans.
Review: The Encyclopedia of Sandwiches
The Encyclopedea of Sandwiches is a compendium of sandwich recipes. Although most are American favorites such as the patty melt and the Philly cheesesteak, it also includes many sandwiches of foreign origin. Most of the recipes are geared for two.