New & Now – FoodWatcher

We Tried Cooking With Beef Tallow—Here’s What We Thought

We’ve teamed up with South Chicago Packing to spotlight their new Wagyu Beef Tallow Spray, the ultimate ingredient for BBQ’ing, grilling, searing, sautéeing, and more.

Here at Food52, we’re a community full of cooks, and we cook A LOT. With that exp…

We’ve teamed up with South Chicago Packing to spotlight their new Wagyu Beef Tallow Spray, the ultimate ingredient for BBQ’ing, grilling, searing, sautéeing, and more.

Here at Food52, we’re a community full of cooks, and we cook A LOT. With that experience comes some techniques—and preferred products—that are now second nature to us, like preheating a pan with our favorite cooking oil before dropping in an ingredient. The satisfaction of that sizzle is music to our ears—it means good things to come.

Chestnut Brown Is Everywhere & Other Design Finds From Our Founder

Welcome to the latest edition of Food52 Founder Amanda Hesser’s weekly newsletter, Hey there, it’s Amanda, packed with food, travel, and shopping tips, Food52 doings, and other matters that catch her eye. Get inspired—sign up here for her emails.

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Welcome to the latest edition of Food52 Founder Amanda Hesser’s weekly newsletter, Hey there, it’s Amanda, packed with food, travel, and shopping tips, Food52 doings, and other matters that catch her eye. Get inspired—sign up here for her emails.

I’m writing to you from a high-speed train zipping from Paris to Antwerp. Why can’t we get trains right in America? I would love nothing more than to take a high-speed train across the country.

Our New Cooking Series for Novices Is Here

Food52’s CEO Erika Ayers Badan is skilled at many things—and we’re not just saying that because she’s our boss!—but she doesn’t pretend to be a whiz in the kitchen. So in our brand-new video series, Erika Learns, she calls upon her favorite food-focuse…

Food52’s CEO Erika Ayers Badan is skilled at many things—and we’re not just saying that because she’s our boss!—but she doesn’t pretend to be a whiz in the kitchen. So in our brand-new video series, Erika Learns, she calls upon her favorite food-focused friends for some helpful guidance.

In the very first episode, Erika invites Emmy-winning talk show host Tamron Hall and Emmy- and James Beard-winning chef and culinary producer Lish Steiling to walk her through a dish from their new cookbook, A Confident Cook: Recipes for Joyous, No-Pressure, Fun in the Kitchen.

Founder Files: Olive Oil Cake, Sweater Weather & Creamy Curry Udon

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I’m in Morocco on a sourcing trip for our Shop with Jojo, Food52’s GM—lots more to come on this in my next newsletter. In the meantime, my big news is that last week a friend asked if I could bake the Maialino Olive Oil Cake with her 14-year-old son, Axel.

Founder Files: Korean Zucchini Salad, the Cretzel & a Q&A With Erika

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Martha outside a restaurant bathroom in Akron, Ohio. Photo by Amanda Hesser

The cretzel, from Wooster, Ohio, is … not yet sweeping America. Photo by Amanda Hesser

Tad and I just got back from dropping off our twin son and daughter at college in Ohio. If anyone has food or coffee recommendations close to I-80 in Pennsylvania, please email me at amanda@food52.com. If I don’t hear from one of you, it’s going to be a long, desperate four years. The egg sandwich pictured below was one of the “meals” we had on the road.

Every Cookbook Our Baking Club Has Baked Through

Months after we launched our Food52 Cookbook Club as a Facebook Group in 2017, our club moderator Linsey Sowa realized our pastry, pie, cake, bread, and cookie-loving members wanted a place to go deep on baking. So we began a dedicated Food52 Baking Cl…

Together, we’ve cooked through nearly 100 cookbooks together. To make the titles easy to find for our new and current members—over 32,000 and counting!—we're listing them here for easy access and inspo.

Every Book Our Cookbook Club Has Cooked Through

Since the Food52 Cookbook Club launched as a Facebook Group in 2017, we’ve cooked through nearly 100 cookbooks together. To make the titles easy to find for our new and current members—nearly 40,000 and counting!—we’re listing them here for easy access…

Since the Food52 Cookbook Club launched as a Facebook Group in 2017, we've cooked through nearly 100 cookbooks together. To make the titles easy to find for our new and current members—nearly 40,000 and counting!—we're listing them here for easy access and inspo.

The way our members cook together across continents and time zones is simple: We post pics and reviews of the recipes we make from one of our chosen books. This could mean our "Book of the Month," our annual "Bonus Book," or any past cookbook we've covered for a Throwback Thursday or Throwback Month (August and February) post. Even if you can't get your hands on your own copy, we make sure you can still cook along with us, by excerpting recipes from our chosen cookbooks and only selecting titles that you can also download to a device.

Founder Files: Portland Food, LA Shopping & an Avocado Toast Replacement

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I’m just back from the West Coast, where I spent some time with the Schoolhouse team in Portland, then headed to Ojai and LA in California. Along the way, I did the very hard work of sourcing shopping and food tips for you.

Use These Tomato Care Tips for the Best Homegrown Tomatoes

Have you ever bought a tomato plant at your local nursery, only to have it go into a tailspin as the summer heat cranks up? Maybe the leaves start to yellow, or look dried out and develop spots. So many things can go awry if you aren’t familiar with pruning and feeding your plant—but how and when should you step in with shears and fertilizer? While tomato growing may seem like a cakewalk when you’ve purchased a starter plant, the summer produce staple can be tricky to maintain until you master a few best practices.

So, to learn how to grow the best tomato plants at home, I visited Brooklyn Grange, New York City’s largest network of rooftop farms. Visible from my desk, Brooklyn Grange’s farm in the Brooklyn Navy Yard is the envy of our office, and seeing it in person momentarily made me consider changing professions in favor of being one with the plants (as if I could handle the unrelenting sun!).

Founder Files: Olive Oil Whipped Cream, a Timeless Salad Bowl & ‘Napoleon Dynamite’

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I can’t let tomato season pass without promoting my favorite tomato recipe: Brown Butter Tomatoes. They taste like lobster, can’t explain why!