Patel

At a taco stand, you grab a trio of tacos wrapped up in paper. Satisfied? No idea what’s for dinner. That’s not really the problem here. It’s the hidden variables that can turn a snack into a meal full of calories. Six-hundred calories for a plain grilled-chicken-on-corn-tortilla taco. Add some crema and/or swap out corn … Read more

Sometimes you make a latte that’s too syrupy and end up pouring it out. Sometimes you discover you’re only a few milliliters away from running out of syrup and then you freak out. If you care about coffee, then yes: this has happened to you and the margin between good coffee and bad coffee are … Read more

It’s 3 hours before your party starts, and the beer won’t be served from a cold enough cooler. Theory says it should go for at least 5-7 hours, but its hot out there, and this thing foamed up like crazy; you’ve got a half barrel keg but you’re never sure how many serving it’ll yield. … Read more

So here’s your situation: You’ve got a cooler full of cans, you’ve got a big hunk of ice keeping them cold, and you want to know, without tipping out the trickle of melt water, how many beers you’re holding. Enter physics, and goodbye intuition. The force acting on your scale isn’t just the weight of … Read more

When making spaghetti and meatballs from scratch, the kitchen counter quickly turn into chaos. There’s a pot of simmering sauce. Pasta water splatters everywhere. There’s a bowl of raw meat waiting to be shaped into ball. In all that action, there’s a crucial question that gets overlooked. How many calories are on your plate? Why … Read more

When tracking macros, you get antsy for something besides boiled vegetables, but you also want it to taste like something. This is where lemons come in. Squeeze a wedge into some water, and it tastes bright and doesn’t cause a sugar crash. But there’s more to it than a squeeze. It is more than just … Read more

Is it a small oven? Is it an oven you can cook things quickly in? No. An air fryer is a convection oven with an incredibly strong fan. That means you’re dealing with all three: heat, moisture, and airflow in a tiny amount of space. Unlike your primary range, which require less attention, an air … Read more

There’s nothing worse then being at your wit’s end with an unbrined turkey on your hands. You’ve got all the necesary ingredients; you’ve even got the bird. What do you do? The usual wisdom found online leave you confused. “A cup.” “A handful.” “Some salt.” This is no help. Volume is relative. A cup of … Read more

Most of us treat chicken broth like flavoring agent rather than a food. It’s the stuff that goes on top of noodles, or reduced down into gravy. And then, because you’re adding veggies and noodles too, you figure it must be fine. This works when you’re making a meal quickly. But when you want to … Read more

It’s easy to see buying a quarter of a cow as some sort of party trick, suddenly you have all this meat to last your neighborhood a month. It fills your freezer quickly, but where the real benefit come in is thinking about burgers. Burgers is a useful equalizer because they transform odd-shaped pieces, trim, … Read more