46 Celebratory Recipes to Make for Rosh Hashanah This Year

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is a time to reflect on the past year—and look forward to the coming one.

The holiday’s celebratory meal can include favorites like yeasty challah, matzo ball soup, and apples dipped in honey. What do these things h…

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is a time to reflect on the past year—and look forward to the coming one.

The holiday's celebratory meal can include favorites like yeasty challah, matzo ball soup, and apples dipped in honey. What do these things have in common? Their friendly circular shape, which symbolizes the ongoing nature of time, the round-and-round-ness of the year. Similarly, sweet foods are favored for a sweet new year.

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Team Cilantro: These 21 Herby-Green Recipes Are for You

Once upon a time, in 2012, I returned home from my first year of college and got a summer job working at a fast food burrito chain. So began my education in the enormous passions of teams Pro-Cilantro and Anti-Cilantro.
They are equally ardent, an…

Once upon a time, in 2012, I returned home from my first year of college and got a summer job working at a fast food burrito chain. So began my education in the enormous passions of teams Pro-Cilantro and Anti-Cilantro.

They are equally ardent, and the herb is one of extremes: Some customers would ask for extra cilantro to be added to their burritos; some would immediately recoil at the sight of the leaves. It's either the world's best herb or...it tastes like feet.

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What to Plant If You’ve Never Grown Anything

Here’s the short answer: Herbs! Even if you’ve never planted anything, but dream of picking fresh produce from your kitchen window sill, a mini plot of herbs is a very good place to give gardening a whirl. It’s low-cost and low-risk: all you need are a…

Here's the short answer: Herbs! Even if you've never planted anything, but dream of picking fresh produce from your kitchen window sill, a mini plot of herbs is a very good place to give gardening a whirl. It's low-cost and low-risk: all you need are a couple of pots to grow in, a bag of soil, and a sunny window. (You already have the will.) Herbs also tend to be compact, quick-to-grow, and useful—which makes them a very good place to start. Plus, think about it: at the end of this, there could be (homegrown) mint-laced summery mojito with your name on it.

Photo by Ty Mecham

Here's what you'll need:

  • Figure out how many herbs you'd like to grow (our suggestion is to begin with 2-3), and get a pot for each. The thing to remember is size: Your pot should be at least two inches wider than the seedling you place in it. If you're starting with seeds, you'll want the pot to be at least six inches wider.
  • Dishes to sit under those pots—you'll want to avoid water stains running all down your sill.
  • A seed starting tray or old ice cube tray (more on that in a bit).
  • Soil and a small amount of pebbles or gravel.
  • Seeds or seedlings (which are baby plants, just a couple of inches tall).

Seeds vs. seedlings:

Seeds

  • Pros: They're extremely rewarding—you get to see the little guy grow from a tiny seed into something you can actually use for cooking. Starting with seeds also gives you a wider selection of herb varieties to grow, and it's less expensive, especially if you're growing many plants. The most common herbs to grow from seed are annual herbs such as basil and dill, however, you can totally get more adventurous with what you pick.
  • Cons: You'll need to be a little patient: It can take a few weeks for a seed to grow into a seedling and then to grow into a plant large enough to harvest.
  • What to try: Basil, mint, dill, and parsley. They'll all grow fairly quickly and easily from seeds, and need similar things—moist soil and lots of sun.

    Seedlings

  • Pros: You already have a plant to start picking from—and now you just have to keep it alive.
  • Cons: They can be more expensive, and you might have to buy multiples in larger trays to get the amount that you want.
  • What to try: You have a lot of freedom here: Herbs that are harder to start from seed or simply take longer to sprout and grow (like woody ones, such as rosemary and thyme) are especially good to buy as seedlings, because the hard work has already gone into sprouting them.
Photo by James Ransom

How to plant:

Many herbs reach high and wide, and naturally those will do best in the ground, but there are plenty that will do just as well in a pot, given the right conditions. First order of business? Fill the pots with a thin layer of gravel. Then:

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Treat Yourself Today With Melissa Clark’s Instagram-Famous Campari Cake

If you’ve been a home cook, even a dabbling one, in the last 15 or so years, you know Melissa Clark. Maybe you’ve come across her regular writing and recipes in The New York Times, or cooked from one of her more than 40 (!) cookbooks, which range in su…

If you’ve been a home cook, even a dabbling one, in the last 15 or so years, you know Melissa Clark. Maybe you've come across her regular writing and recipes in The New York Times, or cooked from one of her more than 40 (!) cookbooks, which range in subject from braising and weeknight cooking to the Instant Pot and bread machines.

Her latest, recently released on Mar. 10, is Dinner in French. It's a book that seems to hit, bullseye-style, Clark’s expertise: balancing the ease of weeknight recipes with somewhat more ambitious techniques and ingredients. It's the perfect home-cook's book.

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How to Help Your Favorite Cookbook Authors (& Bookstores!) Right Now

Now more than ever, home is where many of us are seeking refuge and solace in light of the novel coronavirus. This is a tough time, but we’re here for you—whether it’s a new pantry recipe or a useful tip for your kitchen, here are some ideas to make th…

Now more than ever, home is where many of us are seeking refuge and solace in light of the novel coronavirus. This is a tough time, but we’re here for you—whether it’s a new pantry recipe or a useful tip for your kitchen, here are some ideas to make things run a little more smoothly for you and your loved ones.


Coverage of spring cooking usually looks pretty different than it does this year: At a time when food media should be beginning to sing songs of radishes, peas, asparagus, and ramps, the focus this year is mostly on storage produce, pantry staples, and all-consuming kitchen projects. Coverage of spring cookbooks looks pretty different, too—but that doesn’t mean the books have stopped!

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12 Chef-Taught Online Classes to Help You Cook, Draw, Write & More

The past few days have felt both fast and slow as our brains negotiate a tug of war between the fog of overwhelm and the call to work (if we’re lucky) from home. I know I’m not alone in having passed hours on social media looking for news as much as di…

The past few days have felt both fast and slow as our brains negotiate a tug of war between the fog of overwhelm and the call to work (if we’re lucky) from home. I know I’m not alone in having passed hours on social media looking for news as much as diversion—as much as someone to talk to, to be in conversation with.

But there have been undeniable bright spots in this spooky milieu.

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How to Get Turmeric Stains Out of Anything

Home is the place we feel the most like ourselves—where we kick off our shoes, share our meals, and make memories. We’re taking our love for all things home and brining it to Instagram. Follow along at Home52 and make yourselves—well, you know.

So y…

Home is the place we feel the most like ourselves—where we kick off our shoes, share our meals, and make memories. We're taking our love for all things home and brining it to Instagram. Follow along at Home52 and make yourselves—well, you know.


So you made a batch of turmeric tea to chase away a cold and poured the golden mixture into a favorite, pale-colored mug. Or you served turmeric soup in a white bowl, or wiped up a slick of curry with a light dish towel, or peeled fresh turmeric for a smoothie. And now your linens, your dishes, your countertop, and your hands all match your recipe: gold. Fresh or dried and ground, turmeric will stain just about anything, and quickly and stubbornly, but take a deep breath—it's going to be okay.

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How to Make Cheesecake—No Recipe Required

At one end of the dessert spectrum is the cleansing, frosty sorbet—sharp and refreshing and crisp. At the other is the cheesecake, which, like a velvet turtleneck, is cushy and luxurious and really only appealing once the temperature drops below 60 deg…

At one end of the dessert spectrum is the cleansing, frosty sorbet—sharp and refreshing and crisp. At the other is the cheesecake, which, like a velvet turtleneck, is cushy and luxurious and really only appealing once the temperature drops below 60 degrees.

Cheesecakes are beloved and legendary and I have to be honest: While wooed by my love of dairy products, I tend to find cheesecakes exhausting. Not making them—that part is fun—but eating them. It’s a heavy end to what’s often, come the cooler months, a heavy meal, and the cake itself is regularly too sweet and served in wedges so large they seem to float on the dinner table like cruise ships.

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How to Make Snappy Sauerkraut at Home (You Can Do It!)

Perhaps you have heard that the more we eat fermented foods—delicious things that are probiotic, like pickles, miso, yogurt, kombucha, sourdough, kimchi, and sauerkraut) the happier our guts tend to be. Perhaps you have also heard of the microbiome—the…

Perhaps you have heard that the more we eat fermented foods—delicious things that are probiotic, like pickles, miso, yogurt, kombucha, sourdough, kimchi, and sauerkraut) the happier our guts tend to be. Perhaps you have also heard of the microbiome—the lush community of microbial flora and fauna of our bodies, which, among other things, seem to keep us healthy. If you and I have chatted about fermented foods before, you know that I am totally fascinated by the microbiome, by these good bacteria that animate us. (Aside: If I haven’t talked your ear off about it yet, check out this video from NPR. You will be astonished and fascinated and probably giddy. Then again, it could just be your microbiome talking.)

But I’m a cook, not a scientist, and I’m certainly not here to make any health claims. What I am here to say is that sauerkraut is delicious, colorful, and basically a blinking neon light in the often beige and heavy landscape of winter foods. There’s a reason kraut (and its cousins, kimchi and the deli pickle) are served with those buttery, starchy winter staples. And there’s a reason so many cultural foodways have some kraut variant, if not at their centers then certainly off to the side, to be heaped crunchily, tangily on top of whatever is at the center. It is also extremely easy to make. In fact, after a half-hour or so of active cooking, sauerkraut basically makes itself.

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15 Ways to Make Magic with Your Food Processor

If you, as a child or as an adult, read Calvin and Hobbes, you’ll remember Calvin’s transmogrifier. Ostensibly, the transmogrifier was a cardboard box—but we know that it was magic, capable of transforming one thing into another thing almost inst…

If you, as a child or as an adult, read Calvin and Hobbes, you'll remember Calvin's transmogrifier. Ostensibly, the transmogrifier was a cardboard box—but we know that it was magic, capable of transforming one thing into another thing almost instantaneously (though only Calvin and Hobbes could see its effects).

If there were a culinary equivalent of the transmogrifier, it would be the food processor. Greens zip into pesto! Bananas become ice cream! Nuts and beans become butters and dips! Magic visible to all!

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