I always keep some variety of dumpling in my freezer for convenience, but frozen homemade pierogi are a special treat.
— Claire Saffitz
Heaven is a bowl of creamed herring and onions. Ditto whitefish salad. But the real object of my desire for all things gilled is gefilte fish.
Replacing white flour with whole wheat generally makes baked goods denser, drier, and more crumbly because the germ and bran in whole wheat absorbs more water.
Because deep-frying requires a high volume of oil, it's okay to reuse the oil a couple of times for economy's sake. When the color or smell of the oil starts to change, it's time to discard.
The first time I ever deep-fried something, I was terrified. I was making yeasted jelly donuts, and I was so nervous that I fried them, unblinking, with a pounding heart and sweaty palms.
Always bake in the center of the oven. A pan placed too close to the bottom of the oven will receive more heat radiating from the oven floor, baking it faster from the bottom. The reverse is true of something baked on the top rack. Always bake in the center for the most even baking and browning all around.
If you bake all the time, just leave your butter on the counter so it's always ready.
Sometimes there is dogma in baking and sometimes there is not - you just have to know when to break the rules and when to follow them.
If you are the kind of person who makes homemade chicken stock on the regular and keeps it frozen in various sized containers for all your cooking needs, I truly commend you. Quality homemade stock will invariably add great depth of flavor and body to a recipe. But it's a luxury, not a necessity - it gilds the lily, as they say.
The main problems with cooked ground turkey are, one, it doesn't taste like much, and, two, it's dry.
Cassoulet requires a few ingredients you won't find in the typical supermarket.
If you think about it, composed salads are like nachos (I'll explain). When you're eating a plate of nachos, it's always a bummer when you get to those naked, topping-less chips on the bottom of the pile. It's the same with salads. No one wants to find a naked leaf on the end of their fork.
Pate a choux is a mixture of simple ingredients - flour, water, milk, eggs - but the proper technique is essential. Unlike other doughs, the pastry is pre-cooked on the stovetop before being enriched with eggs, piped, and baked.
You must pre-bake the bottom crust of a custard pie, but this is a tricky step in the pie-making process. Without the presence of filling the crust can slump down into the plate as it bakes, necessitating pie weights to help keep its shape. Then, once you remove the weights to blind bake the crust, the bottom puffs.
Poached quince are so tender, aromatic, and rosy that you'd hardly believe the raw fruit is white, fibrous, and hard as a rock.
Caramelized white chocolate is a mind-blowingly simple and delicious technique that will silence all the alleged white-chocolate haters out there.
Like turning potatoes or making a bearnaise sauce by hand, forming a cornet - essentially a DIY pastry bag - from parchment paper feels like one of those things culinary students do once or twice and then never again.
Pierogies are textbook comfort food.
If anything betrays my Ashkenazi Jewish heritage - besides the Casper-the-friendly-ghost-like skin tone - it's my love of fishy fish.
Generally, if you're a baker who's still learning the ropes, substitutions can be risky. It's always best to make a recipe the first time as written, and only after that initial success should you make substitutions.
Deep-frying properly requires you to keep the oil at a precise temperature range depending on the food. If you're frying in more than an inch of oil you really should invest in a deep-fat thermometer so you can monitor the temperature and know when to adjust the heat.
Even though they have long shelf lives, chemical leaveners will lose potency over time. If the only box of baking soda you have around is the one that's been absorbing odors in your fridge for the last few years, it's probably a good idea to get a new box just for baking.
Only bake one type of thing at a time. Even when it seems like you're killing two birds with one stone, baking multiple recipes at the same time in one oven presents a tricky balancing act.
For baked goods where lightness is a prized attribute - almost all cakes, some cookies - it's important to start with room-temperature butter.
Gluten - the elastic strands that give bread its chewy texture - forms when certain proteins in flour interact with water, which is desirable in bread, but not tender cake.
Canned chickpeas have terrific range, which is why I make sure I always have at least a can or two lying around at home. They puree easily into a smooth and creamy hummus or crisp into crunchy little nuggets as a component of a sheet tray dinner.
Usually, turkey burger recipes result in something so lifeless and tasteless that drowning one in ketchup (that most perfect and delicious of condiments) doesn't help much. Part of the problem is calling this food a 'burger' at all, because it's never going to satisfy the way juicy, salty, medium-rare beef will.
I have made cassoulet more times than is advisable - first in culinary school, once with a friend for a dinner party, and at least half a dozen times in the BA Test Kitchen.
Depending on when vegetables are picked, they might take different lengths of time to cook.
If soggy, baked choux can be re-crisped in a hot oven for several minutes.
Whipped ganache is a great gateway icing if you're working your way slowly into the vast world of egg-based buttercreams. It's just a few ingredients and far superior in flavor to the basic butter/sugar/milk frosting.
Quince may resemble pears and apples, but unlike their fruit brethren, raw quince are inedibly tannic and sour. This means you do have to cook them, but the transformation is dramatic, and well worth your efforts.
Holiday eating is a study in paradox. You're surrounded by food, but you're so busy shopping and cooking that you don't have time to eat. Then, when your blood sugar dips to the point of derangement, you make a desperate lunge for the closest foodstuff - and the next thing you know, you've eaten an entire box of regifted peppermint bark.
Why crown your own rack of pork when a butcher could do it for you? To start, it's way easier to brine two individual racks than a giant round crown (and yes, you definitely want to brine the meat).
I don't discriminate when it comes to dumplings. Give me a generous plate of pretty much anything wrapped in a starchy, doughy casing and I will dive in with pleasure. But one star in the dumpling universe shines brighter than the others: the humble pierogi.
Only advanced bakers should endeavor to adapt non-vegan recipes to be vegan, or gluten-full recipes to be gluten-free. There are all sorts of tips and tricks when it comes to subbing vegan ingredients for eggs and dairy, but it's tricky to say the least.
People are always asking me baking questions - from strangers DMing me on Instagram, to friends I don't otherwise talk to anymore texting me, to my own mother and sister calling me on the phone demanding answers.
Always deep fry in a nonreactive, heavy pot with high sides, like an enameled Dutch oven. A heavy pot ensures even heating which means more even cooking.
Always use liquid measuring cups to measure liquid and dry measuring cups to measure dry. Especially when measuring flour, accuracy is important, so using only dry measuring cups - or better yet, weighing on a scale - is key.
Butter that is too warm won't aerate properly when beaten with sugar, leading to a decidedly un-fluffy result.
When the urge to bake strikes, it strikes hard and fast. You want to get in the kitchen and start breaking eggs right away, so it can be real buzzkill to find out that the recipe you're using calls for room-temperature butter.
Hearty soups with relatively long cook times like minestrone, for example, are chock-full of aromatics and flavor-lending ingredients like bacon, onions, and garlic. These infuse the water with their flavor and produce a clean-tasting broth all on their own.
Canned chickpeas are my tried-and-true pantry fallback for those days where I get home late with no game plan and no energy to cook. More than just about any other canned bean, they retain their shape and texture really well.
Turkey burgers receive a fair amount of disparagement, and it's not unfounded.
Plating your salad with groupings of ingredients may seem fussy but in fact it's the opposite. All the prepped ingredients go directly onto the platter, so no need to dirty a separate mixing bowl for tossing. Another reason we like this plating strategy? It allows the picky eaters out there to choose only the parts they like best.
When I'm desperate for spring produce but nothing has hit the farmstand yet, frozen green peas are a godsend.
The problem with traditional pie weights is you never have enough and they're expensive. Common substitutes like dried beans just aren't heavy enough to do the job. Our genius solution? Small steel balls that fit inside ball bearings and that can be purchased at any hardware store.
No stuffing is complete without chopped onion and celery - they're the building blocks. If you want to deepen the flavor, consider adding leeks, sage, and/or hardy greens.
Press-in crusts are a supposedly easy alternative to the rolled kind, but achieving an even, compacted layer all over isn't a no-brainer.
All cold brew coffee is more or less made the same way - by long-steeping coarse coffee grounds in unheated water - but it's not all created equal.
