Guides

I learned almost everything about cooking at the feet of my mom, who’s an excellent cook. She made homemade breakfasts and homemade dinners for our family, and as my sisters and I got older, she let us help. These dishes are not just any old dishes mom taught me – they’re some of my favorites of her specialities, which I’ve posted on the blog over the  years.

1. Rich Chocolate Cake

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Saturday is Cinco de Mayo! While I can’t vouch for the authenticity of any of these dishes–I actually can’t vouch for the authenticity of the Cinco de Mayo celebration itself–if you’re celebrating this weekend, you’ll want to check out some of the Mexican/Tex-Mex/California Mex dishes below.

1. Fish Tacos

2. Creamy Chorizo-Chicken Casserole

3. Huevos Rancheros

4. Fresh Corn Salsa

5. Guacamole

6. Pulled Pork Quesadillas

7. Lentil Chili

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The Passover seder features some of the best of Jewish cooking–of all cooking. Who couldn’t eat brisket and potatoes for eight nights straight? That’s a question easy to ask just before Passover, but it’s hard to answer a few nights in. For those who are spending next week without leavening and are feeling a little desperate, I’ve combed our site to find BGSK’s best Passover-friendly meals that don’t resemble seder food.

**Great Passover-Friendly Meals**

Savory

1. Alex’s Roasted Chicken. Brisket is the seder mainstay, but a good roast chicken with potatoes is a welcome replacement as…

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We started our Great Minds Eat Alike series in order to mix up the usual BGSK offerings with interviews and submissions by cooks and eaters whose mentality towards cooking and eating meshes with ours. Today, on the second day of spring, we are incredibly excited to bring you a great guide about a dirty duty: getting your kitchen, from spice cabinet to pantry, clean. When you call it “spring cleaning,” it just sounds so fresh and bright, and, well, appealing. Especially because it comes  from a fellow quarter-life blogger, Carrie Murphy.

Carrie is a poet who blogs about healthy,…

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For quick weeknight dinners like today’s fried rice, my wok proves every bit of its $10 worth (I got it at a yard sale). It takes a hodgepodge of vegetables, protein, and starch, and turns them into a unified stir fry: shrimp and bok choy, pork and string bean, tofu and peppers, or rice and veggies (aka fried rice). You’ll need some oil to be sure your stir fries don’t stick, but overall they’re low in fat and as healthful as you want them to be. Since stir fries lend themselves to variation and improvisation,…

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A lot of small kitchen real estate is inhabited by low-tech but useful occupants. You know, like cans of tomatoes, jars of cumin, loads of clean dish towels, and frying pans. Then there are the obvious, and big, high-tech components: a fridge, an oven, a microwave. That doesn’t leave all that much counter and cabinet space (if any) for the small but imperative elements of electric equipment: the small appliances. But it’s enough for us to cover all the basics!

Here are the technical ingredients you’ll find in my kitchen, the workhorses that magic my pantry essentials into delicious,…

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I love a good salad, but I haven’t always: a forkful of greens used to give me the chills! In my youth, I discovered that if each bite of salad were paired with a bite of something with a less leafy texture, it was much easier for me not just to get my salad down but to enjoy it. That non-leafy addition? Cheese, avocado, crunchy raw vegetables, rich roasted vegetables, croutons, or even plain grilled chicken.

Even now, I prefer a salad with toppings to one that’s just greens. And these are some of my favorite salad toppers: choose…

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One of the foodie new year’s resolutions I suggested for 2012 was that we all make more pancakes. Pancakes was really just a stand-in for any slightly involved, completely delicious breakfast treat. And I didn’t suggest it so we’d all enter 2013 all chubby from eating coffee cake instead of yogurt every morning (I have a wedding dress to wear in late 2012–remember?). On weekends, I like to make pancakes for Alex or cake and baked eggs for friends I’ve invited for brunch. It’s fun to spend longer in the kitchen than the time it takes to…

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Italian cuisine plays a lot of roles in our kitchens. It’s easy. It’s cheap. It’s comforting. And despite being all of the above, it’s also romantic.

Proof? The best way I can think to celebrate Valentine’s Day is with Alex and a few of my best friends over brick-oven pizza at a downtown NYC Italian restaurant. Comforting, easy, and full of love.

But pasta is the Italian staple we come back to the most. We’d venture to guess that you do, too. And as such, it can sometimes get old. Pasta with tomato sauce is a classic and our favorite,…

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There’s a reason why we dedicate an entire chapter to dips in our book: they’re fun, they’re filling, and they’re easy to make in Super Bowl-sized proportions. As the countdown begins to the big Sunday, we highly recommend factoring a few dips into your menu. While size does matter on game day, Mexican and Southwestern flavors also seem to score extra points. So we’ve selected our cheesiest, heartiest dips for the football lovers at your table. Make them in advance, and don’t be shy about your quantities–commercial breaks are no time for replenishing!

**Recipes**

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