Patel

Unlike carrots, which will cook in a flash, artichokes is a vegetable that requires patience: Rush them and the heart turns out stringy and chewy. It takes time to make sure that the tightly packed leaves allow the steam to get through without overcooking the outside layer to mush. Steaming’s tricky: You can’t eyeball it. … Read more

On Tuesday you froze a batch because the baby liked it. Fast forward to Friday, and there’s a bag of milk that you’re looking at that looks a bit separated. Your instinct tells you no, right? But the truth is it all depends on what you’ve done with that milk since Tuesday night. That’s why … Read more

When you bake cookies, you measure out ingredient carefully: the flour and sugar, then stir everything together until dough is formed. You slide that dough onto a tray and pop it into oven. But as the dough bakes, some of moisture evaporates unpredictably, causing it to spread out like water. To understand what’s happening… To … Read more

Most of us eat green grapes without thinking about what they do to our diet. After all, it’s just a “healthy” snack, right? But here’s the thing: One cup has almost one-hundred ten calories in it. Seems reasonable, right? Not so fast. That number accumulate fast because we think of this food as our personal … Read more

Space matters, as does surface area. How do you get crisp versus soggy spuds? A hot oven (set it to five hundred) doesn’t matter if the cubes is touching; then it’s steaming, not roasting. With the calculator above, there is no need to guess: focus on the cooking while it’s adjusting for con and yield … Read more

There you are, pulling a thick ribeye off the grill with the kind of confidence borne by reading food blogs. It’s just right, perfectly seared, hitting precisely one-hundred and thirty degrees in the middle. Reaching for the knife, about to cut into the rare pink interior, a voice from your past scream out: STOP! Let … Read more

So what do you do? You grab the included coffee scoop and throw in a couple of scoops hoping it comes out alright. Most likely, it’s somewhere between watery dissapointment and bitter sludge. You feel as if you’re playing a guessing game; there’s no benchmark to follow. But here’s the thing: Coffee grinds aren’t uniform … Read more

Thanksgiving cooking is very different when deep frying. Yes, the heat transfers even quicker than in roasting, but it’s also less forgiving. A little bit more oil or moisture and all of a sudden, youve got a Hazard Zone in your kitchen. That’s where a good estimate before lighting that burner becomes necessary. Otherwise, you … Read more

A slow cooker makes an easy dinner, right? Unfortunately, if you’re not prepared, you’ll end up with rubbery, dry results. “Put the chicken in,” you say. “Press Start.” Walk away and do something else. Let it cook on its own, like magic. Well, no, there’s no magic here. There’s also only one thing happening: heat … Read more

The sound of meat meeting the grate. Satisfying until it becomes the sound of burning charcoal. Why? Because you’ve forgotten how thick it is. That’s where most folks go wrong. You treat every cut of steak as though it were the same thing. You use exact same timer for your two inch tomahawk ribeye as … Read more