Our 12 Favorite Summer Beers for When We Need a Frosty One

Picture this: It’s late June, you’re lying on a towel at the park, packed sandwiches and chips in a bag, chilly beverages in a cooler, crime thrillers and the latest New Yorker in a backpack. The sun’s beating high above you, beads of sweat start to fo…

Picture this: It's late June, you're lying on a towel at the park, packed sandwiches and chips in a bag, chilly beverages in a cooler, crime thrillers and the latest New Yorker in a backpack. The sun's beating high above you, beads of sweat start to form on your temples, and your shoulders begin to lightly toast, feeling warm to the touch. You fish around in the cooler, make your selection, then take a swig and sigh with relief. It's the coldest, most refreshing beer you feel you've ever tasted, flooding your palate with a hoppy, malty, bubbly sensation that you can't help but respond to with an involuntary "ahh."

If this sounds like your ideal scenario, you're in good company. Below, the Food52 team is sharing its 12 favorite summer beers that are perfect for just this, and more. Try sipping them poolside, accompanied by the heady scent of smoke at backyard BBQs, and after the end of a workday to usher in a long summer evening. Most of these beers are available nationwide (some, even internationally!), but visit BeerMenus to double-check their distribution and availability near you.

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Soup Is the Perfect Summer Food (Seriously!). Here Are 23 Reasons Why.

The first few weeks of summer are glorious: full afternoons to spend outside at the park or in the pool, cold watermelon slices and tomato sandwiches and frosty beverages never far away; firefly-flecked twilight hours made for huddling around the campf…

The first few weeks of summer are glorious: full afternoons to spend outside at the park or in the pool, cold watermelon slices and tomato sandwiches and frosty beverages never far away; firefly-flecked twilight hours made for huddling around the campfire, anticipating all the season's possibilities (and s'mores); grand visions for the bike trips and road trips and adventures that will ensue; fond anticipation for all the ice-cream cones to be had before they melt, all the sunburns to gently nurse with aloe and cream.

But then July and August inevitably roll around, and the pleasant stickiness turns, well, unpleasant. In those dog days, hot, thick air seems to stand still no matter which direction the wind blows. Cooking—let alone mustering up an appetite!—is an energy-sapping, sweat-inducing chore. The siren song of crisp, cool autumn beckons. For all those days, there's soup.

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33 Tangy, Tasty Buttermilk Recipes (That Aren’t Just Sweets)

Growing up in a South Indian home, we had a big container of buttermilk in our fridge at all times. We’d mix it into fluffy white rice with spices and aachar, simmer it in a thick, coconut-and turmeric-inflected stew, or, more often than not, pour it i…

Growing up in a South Indian home, we had a big container of buttermilk in our fridge at all times. We'd mix it into fluffy white rice with spices and aachar, simmer it in a thick, coconut-and turmeric-inflected stew, or, more often than not, pour it into a glass and drink it straight, maybe with a pinch of salt and pungent asafetida.

See, in my family, buttermilk was traditionally always a digestive aid and a flavor booster. It never once went into a baked good; in fact, I didn't know you could use it for baking until I took a trip to Huntsville, Alabama for Space Camp in the eighth grade, and tasted my first buttermilk biscuit. I recall the biscuit being noticeably tangy, fluffy, and tender as heck, and I immediately had to know why. The answer, as it turns out, was under my nose (well, in our fridge back at home).

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42 Versatile Recipes to Celebrate Chickpeas Every Which Way

If you’re anything like me (read: a vegetarian; a lover of good food; a sorta impatient person), chickpeas are in heavy rotation in your cooking—especially now. As of this writing, a pound of the dried stuff and seven cans of cooked chickpeas are hangi…

If you're anything like me (read: a vegetarian; a lover of good food; a sorta impatient person), chickpeas are in heavy rotation in your cooking—especially now. As of this writing, a pound of the dried stuff and seven cans of cooked chickpeas are hanging out in my pantry, just waiting to be used. (The dried ones are calling for a long Sunday simmer as I putter around the house.)

You need no telling how flexible, satiating, and flat-out delicious chickpeas can be, so I won't tell you. I'll just show off 42 ways these little legumes strut their stuff, in crunchy-roasted snacks, slurpable stews, and sweets (yes!) alike.

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16 Vegan Slow-Cooker Recipes for Plant-Based Comfort

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again—our slow-cooker is one of our kitchen heroes, come winter, spring, or even summer. Many people break out this contraption for low-and-slow stews and stroganoffs, meaty chilis and chicken soups. But it’s equa…

We've said it before, and we'll say it again—our slow-cooker is one of our kitchen heroes, come winter, spring, or even summer. Many people break out this contraption for low-and-slow stews and stroganoffs, meaty chilis and chicken soups. But it's equally handy for all kinds of non-meaty things: beans, lentils, vegetable stocks, even applesauce, just to name a few.

Below, you'll find a bevy of vegan recipes to make in your slow-cooker. Just throw in your ingredients, turn on the machine, and go on with your day. You'll come back to a warm, comforting meal that's something akin to magic.

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31 Vegan Recipes You Can Prep Now & Enjoy All Week

Did you make a resolution to eat more plants this year? If you did, you’re certainly not alone: A whopping 43 percent of Americans who made resolutions are looking to incorporate healthful eating choices into their diets in 2020. More than 300,000 peop…

Did you make a resolution to eat more plants this year? If you did, you're certainly not alone: A whopping 43 percent of Americans who made resolutions are looking to incorporate healthful eating choices into their diets in 2020. More than 300,000 people worldwide have joined the Veganuary pledge for the month of January and beyond, committing to a fully vegan lifestyle for at least one month. Even self-professed meat lovers are dreaming up ways to pile their plates high with vegetables, beans, grains, and less meat. Add all this to the 5 percent of Americans of who self-identify as vegetarian, and 3 percent who self-identify as vegan, and you've got a lot of folks on the produce train.

Of course, the flip-side of setting big goals for ourselves is, well, sticking to them. Luckily, resolving to incorporate more plants into your cooking is pretty much the same as resolving to cook more at home in the first place: you'll just need to plan out the recipes you'd like to try; make a grocery run or two to stock up on everything you need; and meal prep to high heaven. Speaking of prep: Just like with non-vegan meals, you'll also want to consider larger-format, make-ahead, mix-and-matchable vegan staples, so you can cook once and eat well all week.

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Our 13 Favorite Cookbooks of 2019

When we’re looking for ideas on the perfect recipe to make for dinner tonight, or to comfort a loved one this weekend, or to impress guests at that gathering in a couple weeks, books always lead the way. Discovering new cookbooks always means discoveri…

When we're looking for ideas on the perfect recipe to make for dinner tonight, or to comfort a loved one this weekend, or to impress guests at that gathering in a couple weeks, books always lead the way. Discovering new cookbooks always means discovering new techniques, new flavor combinations we'd have never thought to put together, and new discourses for considering food. It also means awakening new cooking inspiration within ourselves.

2019 saw no shortage of cookbooks to discover, whether they changed the way we grocery shopped or made us look at our dinner mainstays a little differently. With so much greatness, how could we conceive of which ones were best?

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The 10 Most Legendary Cookbooks of the Last Decade

The Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks has a long and storied past. There are illustrious judges, controversial decisions and upsets, comment squabbles galore, and really solid books. If you’re with us for your very first Piglet (which starts next Tuesday,…

The Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks has a long and storied past. There are illustrious judges, controversial decisions and upsets, comment squabbles galore, and really solid books. If you're with us for your very first Piglet (which starts next Tuesday, on March 5—huzzah!), you can read all about how it works here.

But seriously...about those books. Each year, the title that takes home the prized Piglet trophy (yeah, there's actually a trophy) is the best of the best, the crème de la crème, the cookbook we couldn't live without. Collectively, they're the books we turn to time and again, the ones that have changed the way we cook and bake. They're the stuff of legends.

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Our 15 Best Cranberry Recipes—Sauces, Pies & So Much More

Look in any produce aisle of a grocery store this time of year, and you’ll see bags upon bags—mountains, even!—of bright red cranberries. Millions of pounds of the fruit, which is a member of the evergreen family, are harvested between the months of Se…

Look in any produce aisle of a grocery store this time of year, and you'll see bags upon bags—mountains, even!—of bright red cranberries. Millions of pounds of the fruit, which is a member of the evergreen family, are harvested between the months of September and November, through a fascinating wet harvesting technique (remember those old Ocean Spray commercials?).

While they're related to lingonberries, blueberries, and bilberries—cranberries are, as we all know, not quite like their juicy, berry cousins; they're intensely tart and not too sugary, allowing for them to take on all kinds of flavors.

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30 Yotam Ottolenghi Recipes Big On Flavor, Low on Effort

We’ll happily shout it from the rooftops: We’re the hugest fans of chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author Yotam Ottolenghi. His recipes are bright, fresh, seasonal, and full of flavor—with complex and multilayered combinations of herbs, spices, and um…

We'll happily shout it from the rooftops: We're the hugest fans of chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author Yotam Ottolenghi. His recipes are bright, fresh, seasonal, and full of flavor—with complex and multilayered combinations of herbs, spices, and umami-filled game-changers (black garlic and pomegranate molasses, you're our new best friends). But we also love Ottolenghi's food for its comforting, homemade appeal, which leans on quality ingredients and achievable techniques to make the recipes sing.

Here are 30 of his best recipes, all of which make cooking a boldly flavored meal a breeze.

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