New & Now – FoodWatcher

Pam Hodgson is Paving the Way for Wisconsin’s Women in Cheese

We’ve teamed up with Wisconsin Cheese for an interview mini-series called Meet the Cheesemakers, featuring a sampling of the state’s finest makers and their award-winning creations.

I’ve been surrounded by women with a knack for cooking for as long …

We've teamed up with Wisconsin Cheese for an interview mini-series called Meet the Cheesemakers, featuring a sampling of the state’s finest makers and their award-winning creations.

I’ve been surrounded by women with a knack for cooking for as long as I can remember. My mom is a chef and caterer, and while her mother wasn’t exactly a gourmand (she loved a canned vegetable moment), Granbobbie made some really amazing dishes in her time, including her famous potato salad. On my dad’s side, I have an aunt who’s been responsible for the Thanksgiving sweet potatoes since before I was born—to be clear, they’re about 50 percent sweet potato, and the rest of the recipe is essentially butter and sugar. I’m told my dad’s mom, my Bestemama, could make a mean batch of lefse that she served with butter and jam. These women shaped me and my sister, and today we carry on their love for cooking in our own homes.

Meet the Fourth-Generation Wisconsin Cheesemaker Churning Out Over 90 Types of Specialty Cheese

We’ve teamed up with Wisconsin Cheese for an interview mini-series called Meet the Cheesemakers, featuring a sampling of the state’s finest makers and their award-winning creations.

As a kid, I associated Wisconsin with the Green Bay Packers and not…

We've teamed up with Wisconsin Cheese for an interview mini-series called Meet the Cheesemakers, featuring a sampling of the state’s finest makers and their award-winning creations.

As a kid, I associated Wisconsin with the Green Bay Packers and not much else, thanks to my mom's best friend Jamie, a Wisconsin native and a die-hard fan. Decades later, Jamie still loves the Packers, but I now know that there's much more to Wisconsin than just football: The state's dairy and cheesemaking industry happens to be one of the finest in the world (yes, world!). Makers like Sid Cook of Carr Valley Cheese have been shaping the region's cheesy story for over a century—in fact, Carr Valley's been in business since 1902. I sat down with Sid at their Mauston factory and retail store to learn more about their impressive lineup of cheeses, his journey to cheesemaking, and what the future holds for the Carr Valley crew.

A Pocket Wine Dictionary to Sound Like a Pro in No Time

This article is a part of Wine Week—seven days celebrating all things wine—presented in partnership by our friends at Bread & Butter Wines.

To be an educated wine consumer means you have to speak a bit of a different language. Wine terms can be …

This article is a part of Wine Week—seven days celebrating all things wine—presented in partnership by our friends at Bread & Butter Wines.

To be an educated wine consumer means you have to speak a bit of a different language. Wine terms can be hard to understand, counterintuitive, and difficult to pair with what you experience when tasting wine. Ultimately, this can leave you feeling like simply ordering the second-most expensive glass on the list. That’s why we put together this no nonsense pocket wine dictionary—so you can feel confident when ordering at a bar or choosing a bottle at your local wine shop.

Food52’s Summer Kickoff Sale Is Up to 25% Off Sitewide—Shop Our Top 20 Picks

Memorial Day is rapidly approaching and we’re prepared to celebrate. Here at Food52, we’re all dreaming up how we’ll be spending the holiday—perhaps soaking up some sun on the beach, enjoying a picnic in the park, or bringing out the grill for the firs…

Memorial Day is rapidly approaching and we're prepared to celebrate. Here at Food52, we're all dreaming up how we'll be spending the holiday—perhaps soaking up some sun on the beach, enjoying a picnic in the park, or bringing out the grill for the first backyard barbecue of 2023. We're also thinking about our Summer Kickoff Event.

What's the Summer Kickoff Event, you ask? Fantastic question. This our ultimate summer Shop sale. Use the code SUMMER to get 20 percent off orders under $200, or 25 percent off orders over $200. It's the perfect time to scoop up those grilling tools, beach towels, or cookware sets you've been eyeing. Read on for 20 of our favorite on-sale items.

The Food52er Serving Up Our Community’s Favorite Weeknight Recipes

The best part about Food52 is our community. Take a peek at the lively debates in our articles’ comments sections, or check out the thousands (upon thousands) of recipes our community members have contributed, and you’ll see what we mean. Occasionally, one of these community recipes will become unexpectedly popular, generating the same kind of interest and buzz as the recipes from our Test Kitchen. This, of course, always catches our attention.

Anna Chwistek is a community member whose recipes have done just that. In total, she’s published 91 (!) recipes on our site, and while they all look delicious (her photography and food styling is top-notch), there are, of course, a few standouts. Her Creamy Tortellini Soup With Sausage, which incorporates store-bought tortellini and Italian sausage to maximize flavor and texture with minimal effort, boasts 23 five-star ratings and 17 glowing reviews. There’s also her Eggplant Halloumi Stir-Fry, complete with noodles and a deeply savory sauce. Honestly, there are so many others worth highlighting (think: Spicy Tomato Beans With ‘Njuda, Bloody Mary Pasta, and Fried Feta With Sesame & Spicy Honey, just to name a few) that we couldn’t possibly list them all.

The Best Oysters You Can Buy Are Probably Online

A few weeks ago, I shucked 50 oysters. It wasn’t in a restaurant kitchen—in the past, this would’ve been an hour’s work on any Thursday—or part of recipe testing in the Food52 office, but at my friend Nick’s apartment. And unlike all the other oysters I’ve shucked, these weren’t purchased from a fish market or restaurant distributor—they were bought online and shipped directly to his Brooklyn apartment. They were also absolutely delicious.

The day prior, the oysters I shucked—plus the other 50 that Nick ordered and opened himself—sat along the bottom of the Long Island Sound, roughly 50 miles away from his apartment. As someone who loves oysters, but is naturally skeptical of ordering shellfish online, I was curious: How the hell did these get here, and how are they so perfect?

A Sneak Peek of What Our New Community Editor Is Cooking Up

After running a community-focused site for over a decade (RIP Brooklyn Based), it’s taken me some time to find a role where I really feel at home—until now. I’m beyond thrilled to be Food52’s first Community Editor, and I hope to be meeting as many of …

One of the things I love about Food52 is how dynamic it is; there are so many nooks and crannies of our community to dig into. Our recipes, of course, are brilliant and vast, and grow daily not just from our regular contributors and Residents, but also from members who contribute recipes to our site. I know I’m not the only one who appreciates our videos: Just take a look at the comments on Lucas Sin’s tutorials (“I can't believe I get to watch these videos for free!”) or Erin McDowell’s master classes on all things baking (“I have been on a mission to make a good crust for years and you've helped crack the code.”) And our Instagram and TikTok are some of the most delightful rabbit holes to fall into, in part because of the hilarious comments you post. (The thread on the April Fool’s “Cooked Water” post is priceless: “For those asking if store bought is okay—trust me, it tastes a lot better when you make it from scratch.”)

The Sparkling Jewish History of Dr. Brown’s Soda

When June Hersh, author of the recent book Iconic New York City Jewish Food, walks into a Jewish deli, her “biggest decision is not rye bread with seeds or without seeds or Russian dressing or mustard,” she says. “[My] biggest decision is Cream Soda or…

When June Hersh, author of the recent book Iconic New York City Jewish Food, walks into a Jewish deli, her “biggest decision is not rye bread with seeds or without seeds or Russian dressing or mustard,” she says. “[My] biggest decision is Cream Soda or Black Cherry.”

That she doesn’t need to specify the brand is a testament to the enduring staying power of one in particular: Dr. Brown’s, the kosher soda whose celery “Cel-Ray” flavor was nicknamed “Jewish champagne” by columnist Walter Winchell in the 1930s. Today, Dr. Brown’s sells five flavors—the aforementioned Black Cherry, Cream Soda, and Cel-Ray, as well as the less commonly sold Root Beer and Ginger Ale—mostly alongside cured meat sandwiches and knishes at Jewish delis. Each can or bottle is adorned with a black-and-white sketch of a New York City landmark: the Central Park Carousel, the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge.

Meet Our New Community Editor!

A few months ago, I let you know that we were looking for our first Community Editor, and today I’m thrilled to introduce you to Nicole Davis, who started this week!

Nicole has been an editor at The New York Times and Departures, and is a longtime com…

A few months ago, I let you know that we were looking for our first Community Editor, and today I’m thrilled to introduce you to Nicole Davis, who started this week!

Nicole has been an editor at The New York Times and Departures, and is a longtime community leader—she co-founded Brooklyn Based, which began as a newsletter in 2007 and grew into a thriving organization that hosted sold-out events from wedding fairs and food crawls to cocktail clubs and tasting events featuring local restaurants. They even did kitchen swaps, where people exchanged cookware with each other. Nicole once received a peculiar device that looked like a skyscraper mashed up with a guillotine—designed for halving cherry tomatoes. Just what every kitchen needs!

Cheesemaker Andy Hatch Is Dreaming Up New American Classics in Wisconsin

We’ve teamed up with Wisconsin Cheese for an interview mini-series called Meet the Cheesemakers, featuring a sampling of the state’s finest makers and their award-winning creations.

The world of cheese is made up of many colorful characters. There a…

We've teamed up with Wisconsin Cheese for an interview mini-series called Meet the Cheesemakers, featuring a sampling of the state’s finest makers and their award-winning creations.

The world of cheese is made up of many colorful characters. There are the knowledgeable mongers who'll help you pick out your new favorite wedge while regaling you with more facts about the cheese in question than you knew existed. There are the cheese cave-dwelling affineurs whose precision and detail-oriented nature produces perfectly aged cheeses of all shapes and sizes. There are the dairy farmers, who are stewards of the land, masters of terrain, and typically have a herd in tow. There are the cheesemakers, who tend to be equal parts artist and scientist, harnessing the power of milk and cultures to craft each wheel. And then, there are the unicorns like Uplands Cheese who do it all—they milk the cows, make the cheese, age it on site, and ship directly to consumers. Farmstead operations like theirs are few and far between, even in America's Dairyland (aka Wisconsin). I sat down with Andy Hatch of Uplands Cheese to chat about what it's like to be a Wisconsin cheesemaker, their artisan cheeses, and camaraderie in the dairy community.