How To Cook Like Your Grandmother
A Guide to Cooking with Real Food the Way Your Grandma Used to
With apologies to Samuel Clemens, the difference between a hot dog and a chili dog is like the difference between a lightning-bug and the lightning. A hot dog is something you eat because you're hungry. A chili dog is a meal. But, just like most canned foods, the chili you get in a can isn't worth the time it takes to toss it in the microwave. (Oh, umm ... don't actually toss the can in the microwave. That's not what I meant. That would be bad.) … [Read more...]
There are plenty of formulas people use to try to figure out how long to bake a potato. Pretty much everyone agrees that traditional baking makes for the lightest, fluffiest results, but no one knows how long to go. This simple trick makes it easy to get the perfect spud every time. … [Read more...]
If you already have a vegetable peeler and you know how to use it, you can go ahead and click "Back" on your browser now. You won't see anything exciting here. (Seriously. Sometimes a cucumber is just a cucumber.) … [Read more...]
If you're making onion rings, you really have to have rings. It's kind of in the name. For almost anything else it's better to have all the pieces be just about the same size and shape, and the way onions are built that's just not going to happen with rings. (Unless you mince them and mechanically extrude them to make perfect little uniform rings like certain fast "food" places do.) I covered how to dice an onion a while back. That's great for recipes where you'll be cooking the onion, or for … [Read more...]
I've tried lots of different marinades for my ribs, thinking I would get some great flavor into the meat before even cooking it. But with ribs it's all about the sauce. So now I go with a simple preparation to get the tenderest meat, and then finish with a good sauce either under the broiler or on the grill. For this batch I'm using the apple cider sweet onion sauce from yesterday's post. I've heard from a friend that I re-discovered North Carolina BBQ sauce. I went looking and I can't find … [Read more...]
