Unit Conversion

Comfort food meets practical kitchen math in the form of cornmeal mash. Whether it’s a loose bowlful to be ladled or a slab to slice are up to you; mostly, it depends based off your choice of dry meal and its reaction with hot liquid like water, milk, or stock. Too little meal, and you’ve … Read more

Lasagna is one of those dishes where the parmesan can be quietly critical; too little and the lasagne turns out flat and lifeless; too much and the salt sneaks up on you halfway across the plate. This isn’t just about your baking dish size, either; how much you need varies with that, too. It’s an … Read more

With pearl couscous, the bigger sort. How you get your water is less obvious; unlike its small Moroccan cousin, these little pearls require constant hydration but not too much evaporation on top (otherwise they turn into glue). A measured rest after heat turns them out, rewarding patience in other ways. It all depends on the … Read more

Lasagna has always seemed easy: get the mozz right, and it’s done. This happens until someone cuts into a slice and it separate, or you bite through a large layer of rubbery cheese. Typically that boils down to two things: How many layers is there? And how much cheese did you expect the pan would … Read more

There’s a hush-hush secret in the pond-ownership world about barley straw. You throw a few bales in the water and hope something happens. It depends more on acres of surface area than the gallons beneath it. Your thinking begins at the point where sunlight hits: acres caught in its rays, which determine how much straw … Read more

The quantity of coconut milk are everything in a curry. If it’s too little, the dish will taste harsh. Dominated by spices but also thin. If there’s too much, the richness overpowers the rest of flavor, masking them altogether. The difference is seen in how liquid reacts to the paste, vegetables, protein, and heat in … Read more

We think making sour cream onion dip is simple… Until it doesn’t turn out just right, or you can barely fit everything into that tiny bowl. By the time your first guest walks through the door, there’s something wrong with the dip, it taste too much like raw onion or maybe it’s too salty. Whether … Read more

Frying chicken for a crowd presents an odd problem. The question that trips people up isn’t the seasoning or the oil temperature. Nor even an oil-temperature problem: those are easy. What’s tricky is knowing how much buttermilk to add. Add too little and meat gets dry. Add too much and you’re wasting it. The liquid … Read more

Cracks in the center of a cheesecake can mean that you didn’t get the cream cheese just right. Recipes typically gives you the exact quantity needed for whatever pan size they’re written for. But what if you want to adjust it? What about using the pan that you already have? Or maybe you want to … Read more

Macaroni and cheese will be richer and creamier with cream than most home chef imagine. Milk keeps dish light and clean. The cream give it body, which sits heavily on tongue after each bite. It’s the cream that allow the sauce to cling to the macaroni’s every turn and nook and cranny. Use too little … Read more