The Kitchn Archive: Mar 2016

I’ve been taking a new approach to the way I make salads — or rather, the way I dress them. Instead of garnishing my salads with soft chunks of tangy goat cheese or crumbled feta, I’ve been using them as a base for the easiest, free-form creamy dressing. Depending on how you look at it, I’m still sort of using cheese as a garnish on my salad — it’s just taking on an entirely new form.

The harried 6 p.m dash to the grocery store without a clue of what’ll end up on the dinner table can be a thing of the past — that is, if you lock down the fine art of meal planning. We asked Danielle Walker, the blogger behind Against All Grain, to share the strategies she implements to prepare for a week’s worth of healthy food for her family.

When I get a new pressure cooker, I pressure-cook water in it. I do this with every pressure cooker — even if it’s the same model, size, or brand. That’s because this “hot water test” not only reveals how the pressure cooker works and how much water does not evaporate, but it can also spot any issues or defects with the cooker.

Planning your family’s meals for the week ahead takes discipline, creativity, and culinary know-how, but feeding the appetites and fueling the energy of an entire gold-medal-vying professional sports team? That’s next-level meal-prep wizardry. So when Allen Tran, head chef and dietician for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, volunteered to share how he keeps his athletes ready to hit the slopes, we furiously took notes.

Natural release and rapid release are two common methods used to depressurize a pressure cooker once active cooking is complete. While some recipes indicate which method to use, many don’t, and the method you choose can have a big impact on the food inside. Here’s what you need to know. In short, pressure cookers use steam pressure that builds up inside the closed pot to cook food.

Q: My new mixer “jumps “off the counter and it slips out of lock when I’m kneading dough. Any suggestions on what I can do to prevent that? Sent by Jane Editor: When a stand mixer is working with a particularly sturdy dough, that can cause it to inch forward on the counter as it works to combat the density and weight of the mixture. Luckily there are a few things you can do to mitigate the excessive movement. First try setting the mixer up on a non-skid surface.

Today is National Crunchy Taco Day! (Yes, that’s a thing.) What better way to celebrate than with a big batch of spicy chicken tacos? Becky Hardin, the blogger behind The Cookie Rookie, has an ingenious way of making a big batch all at once. Bake them all together in a 9×13-inch baking dish!

Our choice of cooking fats that we employ in the kitchen seem to be constantly growing and evolving. Gone are the days when our choices were just butter or a bottle marked “vegetable oil.” Even all-purpose olive oil (extra-virgin or otherwise) is receiving some tough competition. Inspired by traditions from all over the world, we’re now experimenting with cooking fats like ghee, niter kibbeh, and coconut oil.

Q: I was wondering about frying chicken. I use a resealable bag to put my flour in, along with my spices, and then I shake my chicken pieces in it. There seems to be a lot of flour left after I am through shaking; is this same flour OK to use in my chicken gravy? It just seems to be a waste to throw it out. I’ve been doing this for most of my life and I have always wondered if it would be OK. I always forgot to ask my mother and grandmother, and now they are both gone.

High-powered blenders like the Vitamix or Blendtec are powerful tools in the kitchen. They can do everything from making silky-smooth soup to blending the ultimate morning smoothie to churning out homemade nut butter. As incredible as these machines are, they come with one slightly annoying quality: They are extra loud. With such a powerful motor, these types of blenders blend at a much higher volume than traditional ones, which can come as a bit of a surprise the first time you use one.

If you love the way a plain pat of butter transforms everything it touches, it’s high time to bring compound butter into your life. Mixed with ingredients like herbs, spices, spreads, fruit, and jam, compound butter is a deliciously wonderful way to bring rich flavor to your plate. Used on everything from a simple piece of toast to roast chicken, it takes just minutes to whip together, but leaves lasting results.

Ah, the single malt — that holy grail of whiskey. So many of us are so drawn to its position as the ne plus ultra of liquor, and yet do we really know what it means? Why is it better, if it is better, than a blended whiskey or whisky? (You lose the “e” in Scotland.) Well, for a start, some blended whiskeys taste like paraffin.

Every so often I come across a recipe that calls for just one too many ingredients that I don’t have on hand. In such instances, the options are either to hit pause until those ingredients are secured, or make use of a clever substitution. Such clever substitutions are hard to come by, but recently a friend of mine shared what he uses when he needs to capture the vibrating flutter of Sichuan peppers when none are on hand.