Everyday Cooking – FoodWatcher

Melina Hammer’s New Book Is Perfect for Every Season

Buttermilk panna cotta with roasted rhubarb. Duck eggs with crispy brown rice. Lamb skewers with labneh, ramp salt, and buttery potatoes. The hardest part about reading Melina Hammer's new book, A Year at Catbird Cottage, is picking what to make first. Driven by the seasons and inspired by her cozy home in New York’s Hudson Valley, the recipes jump off the page, grab my hand, and ask me to follow them to the farmers market, the backyard, the bustling kitchen. And I'm very happy to let them lead the way. Today, Melina is sharing one of her favorite recipes, aka your new favorite way to serve salmon. —Emma Laperruque

The garlic shoots in my garden have grown tall. And with their long leaves, curly scapes emerge. Meanwhile, wild salmon fishing season has just begun in the bracing waters of the Pacific Northwest. Nelly and Michael Hand, who run Drifters Fish in Cordova, Alaska, sustainably harvest wild salmon throughout the season, and each year I have been a lucky recipient of their sockeye and coho varieties.

My Favorite Kitchen Shears Came From the Trauma Bay

There aren’t many ways in which my kitchen tools overlap with surgical instruments. I don’t use tiny scalpels or tweezers—I’m just never cooking or preparing anything that requires that level of precision—but there is one accessory that’s found in both an operating room and my utensil drawer: my favorite kitchen shears, which aren’t from the restaurant supply store, but rather from the trauma bay.

How did I get my hands on these implements? Through a friend who is doing her plastic surgery residency at UPenn. While I was cooking dinner, she was examining my perfectly good, run-of-the-mill kitchen scissors. “You know,” she said. “You should really get some trauma shears.” Though I hope to mostly avoid trauma in my kitchen, she explained why I might be interested: They’re shears meant to cut the clothing off patients who arrive in the trauma bay, which means they’re both strong and super sharp. They’re designed to be ergonomic, and have a tab on the end of the blade that prevents you from cutting yourself when you use them. They’re meant to be easily sterilized in the autoclave, so the dishwasher is no problem. Many of them have a carabiner in the handle to clip to your scrubs (or in my case, apron). They come in a bunch of colors and, crucially, are very, very inexpensive.

Our Garlickiest Garlic Recipes

We’re doing what garlic enthusiasts do best: sharing our favorite garlic recipes to make today and every day. There are versatile recipes like garlic confit and garlic stock that you can apply in so many ways, plus one-off recipes to complete your garl…

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Slow-roasted garlic is like candy—candy that you’ll want to serve on a charcuterie board with cheese, jam, crostini, and so much salami.

What to Do with an Overload of Radishes

I think by now we all know the formula: Radishes + salt = appetizer elegance. Radishes + butter + baguette = snack time nirvana. Radishes + rustic farm table + screen-printed textiles = a food photographer's dream.

But what if you're on your 100th radish bunch of the summer and these peppery gems need to play a greater role? More than something to tide us over between meals, more than just a garnish? What if a bundle of radishes on its own must be tonight’s vegetable?

CSA subscribers, prolific gardeners, and enthusiastic market-goers alike know this issue all too well. Sure, radishes and butter and salt are made for each other, but come mid-summer, even the most striking ombre roots begin to lose their luster.

Happy Birthday, Ina—These 6 Tips Have Saved Our Cooking

It’s Ina Garten’s birthday! Although we celebrate her every day by cooking her famous Outrageous Brownies, Vanilla Brioche Pudding (not a bad option for a birthday dessert, I might add), Tomato Tart, and a Skillet-Roasted Lemon Chicken, today is special. Ina appeared by our side in our home kitchens nearly twenty years ago when her show, Barefoot Contessa, premiered on Food Network. With it, she introduced her easy-going style, effortless flair for entertaining, and unfussy approach to cooking and baking.

Yes, everything Ina does is practically perfect. But her signature catchphrase, “how easy is that?,” which later became the title of one of her 12 (soon to be 13) bestselling cookbooks, made it seem like anyone could easily make a three-course dinner of warm goat cheese in phyllo, classic beef stew, and coffee granita—and why would you not?

11 Pandemic Food Trends We Are So Over

After nearly two years of living through the highs and lows of the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve learned how to adjust our lifestyles to keep each other healthy. While we desperately longed for the days of “normal,” we also learned how to make do with the present. In the kitchen, this meant relying on lots of basic pantry staples and recipes that would be able to feed a larger-than-normal household.

And as we reflect on another year of pandemic life, there are some things—like well-worn recipes—that we have had enough of, plain and simple. This isn’t goodbye to banana bread, overnight oats, or sourdough starter; it’s just “see you in a few years, when we’ve had time to experiment with new things that don’t remind us of March 2020.” If you too are so over seeing (and making!) recipes for feta pasta and pancake cereal, here’s what to make instead:

Amanda Hesser Changed the Way We Cook

I was somewhat of a late bloomer in media. I didn’t know I wanted to work in magazines until my sophomore year of college, and even then, I was hesitant. The idea of being a food writer intrigued me, but I didn’t really understand what that meant or how to get there; I knew it wasn’t the same thing as being a restaurant critic, nor was it someone who developed recipes (at least not entirely). It wasn’t until I read Amanda Hesser’s Cooking for Mr. Latte that I found a new type of food writing that appealed to me. It was warm and funny. Food was a thread in the book, but so was friendship and romance. It was also the first time I was reading recipes that sounded like they had been written by an actual person, not a robot. Amanda Hesser taught me that food and writing are at their best when they’re not perfect—when you acknowledge that mistakes are as much a part of cooking as they are life. You loosen your apron ties, maybe accidentally drop a pie crust on the floor, get messy over and over again, and have fun with it—that’s the best kind of relationship a home cook (or writer) can have with their craft.

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There are hundreds of anecdotes like mine about the influence that Hesser has had on home cooks. “Amanda has a way of making notoriously fussy things, well, unfussy—like when she admits to taking the lazy route and not peeling the peaches for her beloved peach tart,” says Maurine Hainsworth, a copywriter for Food52. Hainsworth not only religiously follows Hesser’s guidance when baking her peach tart; she also follows her quick and easy method for poaching an egg, a technique that never seems quick or easy. That is, until Hesser demonstrated how to do it.

Wait, So Does Cooking Actually Kill Salmonella?

Here at Food52, I have covered pop culture phenomena like Ted Lasso and The Great British Bake Off. I have shared tips for food and produce storage, written dozens of delicious recipe roundups, and professed my love to Stanley Tucci. But I’ve also writ…

Here at Food52, I have covered pop culture phenomena like Ted Lasso and The Great British Bake Off. I have shared tips for food and produce storage, written dozens of delicious recipe roundups, and professed my love to Stanley Tucci. But I’ve also written about lots and lots of recalls due to salmonella, E.coli, and listeria outbreaks. And that’s because it seems like every week, something new is being recalled. I’ve researched why there are so many salmonella outbreaks in products such as hummus, raw onions, and carrots, but there’s still one question that remains: Does cooking kill salmonella?

“The short answer is yes, cooking will kill salmonella, but it has to be the right type of cooking,” says Trevor Craig, corporate director of technical consulting for Microbac Laboratories. This doesn’t mean that if you knowingly have chicken breasts that have been recalled you should cook with them anyway. You should discard them immediately or return them to the place of purchase. But lots of food may contain trace amounts of salmonella or other foodborne pathogens—no recall needed. In order to ensure that you kill off any and all bacteria before consuming meat, poultry, or even vegetables, you need to cook it thoroughly.

3 Easy-Peasy Ways to Cook Green Beans

It can be really easy to screw up cooking green beans. If you look away for just a minute, delicate beans can go from crisp-tender to over-cooked and mushy, and there’s no turning back. Plus when they’re at their peak, green beans have a vibrant green color and lovely spring flavor that shines when they’re barely cooked. Before your beans lose their brightness and a staple side dish is ruined, learn how to cook green beans three ways—boiling, steaming, and sautéing.

54 of Our Favorite Thanksgiving Vegetable Side Dishes

33 Green Bean Recipes That Go Beyond Casserole

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How to Prep Green Beans

No matter how you cook them, it’s important to properly prep them. This means thoroughly washing and scrubbing them and then trimming the ends of any scraggly bits using kitchen shears or a paring knife. Haricots verts (aka French green beans) often come pre-trimmed, but be sure to give them a once-over to avoid eating any undesirable scraps. Discard or compost any beans that have brown or mushy spots and move forward with the rest.

What to Cook (When You Don’t Know What to Cook)

Do you ever open the fridge and just stare at it for a while, wondering what to cook? Us too. Sometimes, cooking funks arrive without warning—and they don’t care whether you have a pantry full of groceries, or are having friends over in two hours, or a…

Do you ever open the fridge and just stare at it for a while, wondering what to cook? Us too. Sometimes, cooking funks arrive without warning—and they don't care whether you have a pantry full of groceries, or are having friends over in two hours, or are hungry literally right now. But look, you’ve still gotta eat, and a handful of cereal absolutely won't do.

Sure, takeout is always an option, but we consulted a few Food52 editors and contributors to find out what they cook when faced with what-to-cook situations, like a rapidly ripening farmers' market haul or a desperate craving for comfort food. Because maybe you’re in a rut, aren't feeling your best, or are simply in need of some kitchen-inspiration...and just want to be told what to cook. (We get it.)

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1. Garlic Confit

Signed Copy: A New Way to Dinner, by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs $35

Five Two Silicone Oven Mitts & Pot Holders $30–$139

The Essential New York Times Cookbook Kitchen Helpers Bundle $55–$160

54 of Our Favorite Thanksgiving Vegetable Side Dishes

33 Green Bean Recipes That Go Beyond Casserole

Global Classic Knife Collection $45–$600 $45–$600

Fresh Vegetable Storage Bags $40–$66

Modern Compact Colander $29 $24

How to Prep Green Beans