What is summer cooking, to you? For me, it means keeping things as simple as possible. In the summertime, I want meals that come together in one big pot, easy to cook and easy to reheat later. I want meals that taste like the garden, fragrant with herbs and bright flavors. I want hands-off meals, so I can retire to the back porch with a cucumber gimlet while my supper cooks.

Well, this braised chicken dish fits all those requirements beautifully. More

On one end of the spectrum of Chinese cuisine, we have the crisp, fresh, quickly-cooked stir-fries with which we’re all familiar. On the other end, we have red cooking. This method of braising in soy sauce and rock sugar produces deeply savory dishes with a rich mahogany hue - a feast for the eyes as well as the mouth. More

Slow-cooked braises can be vegetarian and omnivorian, complex or simple, spicy hot or comfortably mellow. Whatever the recipe, braises fill our homes with mouthwatering aromas and give us something warm to look forward to on cold evenings. Here are all our best and most favorite braising recipes! More

Doufeu, noun – A cooking vessel with a concave lid to be filled with ice and promote condensation. French for "gentle heat." More

Struggling to use up those tomatoes and eggplants? Try a one-pot braised dish like Tomato-y Romano Beans with Baby Eggplant. We've also got a recipe for those "squishy" tomatoes. Plus, was Julia Child actually a fan of modern kitchen shortcuts? More

Just because it's spring doesn't mean we have to stop braising. Italian-Style Braised Spinach with Shallots and Garlic sounds pretty perfect right now. That, plus lots of Passover recipes in this week's roundup. More

We're almost through our first full week of Meat/Un-Meat Month, feeling unified yet? Here's one cooking method we can all use: braising.

Two years ago we held a braising challenge, and it became a rather spirited contest with great prizes and amazing entries. It's all archived on the site and a wonderful source of inspiration for what to cook tonight, or tomorrow night. Meat eaters, how about braising some nice, inexpensive chuck, brisket or round beef? Vegetarians, there are practically vegetables from A to Z that you can braise. More

Is it just us, or have braised short ribs been popping up all over the place lately? Some of us have been cooking them at home for years, but now its starting to feel like we can hardly turn around without bumping into another recipe for the "most tender, succulent, awesome short ribs ever." What's more, they all sound so good... More

A friend came over one day last week with a frozen pork shank from Flying Pigs Farm and dropped it on the butcher block with a thud.

"What do I do with this?" she asked, "it's been in the freezer for months." I had never cooked a pork shank before but knew it was definitely the kind of cut that begged for a braise. More

What are you cooking on New Year's Day?

My mom always serves pork. Somewhere along the way, she picked up this idea that if you eat chicken on the first day of January "you'll scratch and scratch all year." We're not a superstitious family, but we think it is a fun tradition to play along with.

We found the Lee Brother's recipe for Hoppin' John -- "the pre-eminent rice and pea dish of the Western world, a nutritional marvel, the culinary touchstone of the African diaspora and a hangover remedy without equal" -- in the New York Times a few years ago and added that to my New Year's Day recipe collection. More