Jess Thomson

Meet the meat substitute with all the flavor.

For kids and grown-ups alike.

It turns out there are a few key differences.

Impossible, Beyond, jackfruit, seitan... which freshly popular meat substitute points the way to plant-based nirvana for you? Take our quiz, try a recipe, and eat less meat in 2020!

This meat alternative was developed to be a complete replacement for ground beef. Here's what you need to know.

Here's everything you need to know about cooking with this staple meat substitute.

Beyond Meat is a super-approachable product for anyone who already knows how to cook with meat.

Want a potluck that feels more like a meal? Issue a theme for guests to follow.

We know most kids seem to love sugary foods. What we often don’t know is how to decide how much sugar is too much, whether we should use sugar as a reward, or when we should let our kids indulge in the sugar-laced treats we say are off-limits. Parenting is not an exact science; there’s usually no firm right or wrong answer for child-rearing questions when it comes to food. And sometimes choosing what’s best for your family is a matter of shopping around for ideas.

I’m pretty sure kids have hated vegetables since the beginning of time. One of these days anthropologists will unearth new cave paintings depicting families eating dinner together, and there, between the fire and the spear, will be a pictograph of a kid refusing to try his spinach. That’s the kid mine descended from, at least. I really try not to hate the moms who say, “Oh, vegetables? I just stick anything I can into Sally’s sandwich, and she eats it.

Here’s how “mom life” is supposed to work: You get home from long days of (fill in the blank: work, school, play, travel, life), open the fridge, and find an abundance of fruits and vegetables for a perfect nutritious meal. (You’re doing such a good job of planning ahead these days!) The kids play quietly while things come together in about 30 minutes, and someone else takes over the dishes while you have a few minutes to relax before the bedtime routine begins.

How each parent defines a “better lunch” is different. For some, it might mean more healthful food choices (or even just a little weekly variety); for others, it might simply mean something that doesn’t come back home at 3 p.m. Whether you’re looking to get calories in, expand your kids’ palates, or make lunch-making less boring for yourself, there’s always room for new ideas.

For most of us, there is a time for really relishing an afternoon in the kitchen. When it’s rainy, we might settle in for an afternoon of pasta-making bliss, or throw open all the windows while jam bubbles away on the stove. Then again, sometimes we want to do other things, like take full advantage of lovely weather with a long hike, or sit in one place reading for hours at a stretch.

Ann Mah, a D.C.-based writer and author of the novel The Lost Vintage, tends to move around a lot because of her husband’s job as a diplomat. They spent four years in Paris, and bought a small apartment there to have as a home base —which means that now she spends each summer there with her 4-year-old daughter. She also happens to be a friend of Kitchn (and you should check her work out here).

Michelle DiBenedetto-Capobianco’s life sounds awfully romantic. During the school year she lives in Port Washington, New York, and each summer she packs up her husband and three sons — ages 9, 10, and 12 — and moves to a tiny town in the mountains of Italy for the summer, where she runs a cooking school and tour company. The village, called Salle, where her father grew up, feels frozen in time. “There are no stores in Salle,” says Michelle.

A year ago, Julia Schipper moved with her husband and two kids (ages 2 and 4) from Washington, D.C., to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. While she and her husband have lived all over the world, being in Tanzania has brought new challenges and new joys. Food is more expensive there, but people also take more time to eat (goodbye, desk lunch). “Here it’s important to share your meal with others,” she says. “But having options is the biggest thing I miss.

And especially for summer vacations.

Because vacation should not make you feel stressed!

In December 2017, Tiffany Tahiri moved with her two girls to Casablanca (her husband stayed in the United States), which is on the coast of Morocco in northern Africa. They have lived here on and off for 10 years now. We spoke with Tiffany about how her eating life is different in Casablanca with her two girls. First, Tiffany notes that one huge difference about living in Morocco is the way people treat food — eating is a more enjoyed and enjoyable experience there.

Aiko Tokunaga is a mom of two living in Tokyo, Japan. She’s spent a lot of time living in the United States, both for school and after, but has only cooked for kids in Japan. Her experience involves something many of us don’t think about on a daily basis: food safety.

This month we’re looking at the way our mothers fed us. We interviewed five women about how their body image was formed or affected by their own mother, and how their approach to food has (or hasn’t) changed over the years. If you’ve been reading food blogs for some time now, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with Molly Wizenberg, writer behind the award-winning site Orangette and co-owner of the Seattle-based restaurant Delancey.

Holidays are defined by their foods. When someone says they’re roasting a turkey, you’ll think instantly of Thanksgiving. Similarly, candy follows Halloween, and chocolate goes with Valentine’s Day. For those of us who were born into the traditions of Jewish holidays, knowing when we eat fried potato latkes and when we eat apples with honey and when we eat matzo comes just as naturally.

While many Korean ingredients can only be found in large Asian grocery stores, their popularity is making them increasingly easier to find in the Asian food aisles of more mainstream markets. But oh, what to get? You can always decide by using a recipe as your guide, but if you want to strike out on your own, here are five ingredients to experiment with that you’ll want to add to your shopping list permanently.

Every Wednesday morning at 6:15, my son and I pile into the Subaru for the slog north in Seattle traffic to his weekly vision therapy appointment. It’s fun for no one, but it’s something we have to do. Which is why around 6:23 on Wednesdays, when we’ve stopped sweating from the rush out the door, we reliably pull into our local Starbucks drive-thru and I order him a sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich and a boxed chocolate milk.

From a pragmatic standpoint, it makes zero sense to purchase kitchen equipment in Europe if you live in the United States. If you’re buying more than a few linens, it’s either heavy to haul or expensive to check in the belly of an airplane. I know from experience that people stare at you if you walk through security with a fine mesh strainer. Depending on the exchange rate, it can be expensive. And, well, don’t you already have silverware?

Rachel Yang, the James Beard Award-nominated chef behind Seattle’s Joule, Revel, and Trove restaurants, and Portland, Oregon’s Revelry, is a force. Her food— undeniably Korean at its roots, unabashedly creative in practice — combines noodles, dumplings, barbecue, and hot pots with flavors from all over the globe.

When you hear “pancakes for dinner,” you probably don’t think of bindaettuck, the traditional Korean mung bean pancakes. But while they may require ingredients you haven’t used before, they’re just as quick and easy to make. At Revel in Seattle, chef Rachel Yang offers ever-changing twists on tradition, from sweet corn pancakes (crusted with corn flakes, natch) in the summer to everything bagel-spiced pancakes with whitefish in the winter.

When Seattle chef duo Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi debated what angle to take on their third restaurant, Trove, they couldn’t ignore what their customers wanted: Korean barbecue. Per usual, though, they didn’t want to make it strictly traditional — which is how Trove became known as the Korean-ish place where you take friends to grill lemongrass-smothered tri-tip, tamarind-tinged duck breast, or za’atar-crusted pork belly on a Korean-style tabletop grill.

Funky, spicy, and just what you need when dinner is starting to feel boring.

We all know green vegetables are good for you. Sometimes, though, it feels like the preparation process can take forever — especially at the end of a long day. We often skip greens altogether, which means dinners are less nutritious or, more importantly, less delicious. Chef, restaurateur, and mom Alex Guarnaschelli, author of The Home Cook: Recipes to Know By Heart, is big on greens. At home, they love green beans, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, Swiss chard, and kale.

Jill O’Connor, the well-known baking genius behind the cookbook Cake, I Love You, isn’t immune to the age-old problem of leaning cake layers. You’ve been there: You decide to make a cake for a friend’s birthday, spend way too much time finding the best recipe, bake the cake itself perfectly, and botch the whole thing when your not-so-perfect slicing and re-stacking technique leaves the cake looking like the leaning tower of Pisa. By celebration time, you hate your cake.

The refrigerator crisper drawer was undoubtedly invented with good intentions, but we all know what happens: You buy a few herbs for one recipe on Saturday, shove them back into the drawer, forget to use the rest of them Sunday, and remember them on Wednesday, only to discover a matted mass of dead herbs underneath a two-pound bag of carrots. You magically extract a tablespoon out of what’s left, and the rest of the herb bunch goes to waste.

The holidays are about partying — but whether you're honoring a recovering friend or just providing options, having smart mocktails up your sleeves is the way of a good hostess.

Because sometimes you want all the flavor but none of the hangover.

After a battle with alcohol addiction, my friend Lauren struggled with how to socialize without booze. For her, parties always meant having a glass of wine or a cocktail in her hand at all times, so when she emerged from rehab, she simply avoided seeing her friends. Soon, though, she learned how to ask politely for non-alcoholic drinks, often bringing them herself so she knew she’d have safe options. When Lauren started entertaining again, a mock mojito was her go-to drink as a hostess.

Hot cider is an unbeatable winter classic for a reason: It’s wonderfully sweet and tart at the same time. It’s easy enough to make by shuttling a favorite old mug to the microwave, but if you stew it in a big pot on the stove with cinnamon and make sure guests know they can refill their mug anytime, the entire house feels warm and celebratory.