If a love for food and art can coexist in equal amounts, Japanese chef Itsuo Kobayashi has nailed them both in his copious hand-painted expressions of his meals for over three decades. Kobyashi painstakingly replicated…
This definitive guide to cold brew coffee explores everything you need to make it at home, including gear recommendations and a step-by-step recipe provided by a leading expert.
Cold-brewed coffee is made of the same stuff as its hot counterpart — water and ground coffee beans — and in much the same way. Brewing coffee comes down to the shifting and dynamic between seven elements; coffee-to-water ratio, water quality, coffee beans, grind setting, agitation, time and temperature. Only the last two are changed significantly when making cold brew coffee.
But the final product is radically different, and not in a mustachioed, wishy-washy sort of way. It’s richer, thicker and more intense than any other brew method out there. Most recipes and how-tos would have you (rightly) dilute the final product in loo of drinking what amounts to a coffee concentrate, especially when it is at its best — the summer.
“It’s probably the easiest brew method to perfect,” says former Verve shop manager and present coffee educator at Partners Cofee, Edward O’Hickey. “When you’re making a cup of hot coffee, the temperature of the water acts as a catalyst for extraction — pulling and dissolving solids from the grinds and into the cup — so extraction occurs faster.”
Where your typical home brewer will take five to 10 minutes, cold brew takes, at a bare minimum, 12 hours.
With cold brew, the entire process is slowed way, way down. Where your typical home brewer will take five to 10 minutes, cold brew takes, at a bare minimum, 12 hours.
Due to its relatively recent induction into the greater coffee zeitgeist, O’Hickey says there’s still plenty of misconceptions about what cold brew is and isn’t. He says there’s no real evidence to support the notion that it carries more caffeine, and that there isn’t any more or less coffee matter in a cup of cold brew than there is a cup of regular old hot coffee. And, perhaps most useful to our interests, it’s not even slightly difficult to make.
“There’s not really any techniques to master or super fine points to hit,” O’Hickey says, “it’s a matter of time and measurement, mostly.”
And thank goodness for that. Neither willpower nor dawn wake-up times can defeat the misery of the sticky heat that’s coming for us (and for some, has already arrived). Yet the morning cup of coffee needn’t be sacrificed. The smell, the caffeine, the taste — it’s liquid comfort, and it’s necessary. Before we get into the nitty-gritty, however, here’s the gear you need to make it rightly.
Writing about cold brew coffee for a publication with a keen focus on products is a bit ironic. Cold brew is the least gear-intensive method of brewing coffee out there. All you need: grinder, scale, beans, a container and a means to separate grinds from brewed coffee. None of that is particularly pricey, and if you’ve already invested in a coffee kit, there’s a good chance you already have some components covered.
If you want good coffee, you should already own a coffee grinder. And we’re talking about a burr grinder, which grinds coffee more precisely than blade grinders, which is more apt for grinding spices. Baratza is the leading brand in coffee grinders, which is why it’s our pick for best coffee grinder, thanks to its reliability, longevity and modularity. Oh, and the unrivaled customer service is like having a barista on speed dial.
You could probably make cold brew in your bathtub. But we’d recommend an actual cold brew system like the OXO Brew Cold Brew Coffee Maker. The system evenly distributes water over coffee grounds, creates a clean batch of concentrate and is easy to clean.
A scale will ensure you’re measuring out the perfect amount of water and coffee. The process of making cold brew, and coffee in general, is one of the most scientific things you can do in the kitchen. Don’t ruin a batch of cold brew because you decided to eyeball the ratios. This Hario scale is also great for making pour-over coffee thanks to its built-in timer.
Cold brew is lauded for its low acidity, making it a great option for those with stomach sensitivity. Reach for coffees that are already low in acidity, with heavier notes like cocoa, molasses and dates. Luckily Trade makes it easy to narrow down its over 400 coffees to the handful that’ll suit your exact needs.
The grind should be on the coarse side, about the size of breadcrumbs. “There’s not really a need to grind super fine with cold brewed coffee,” O’Hickey says, “the longer brew time means you’re getting everything out of the beans, and a larger grind makes later steps easier.”
O’Hickey says the vessel doesn’t really matter (“You could seriously make cold brew in a bucket if you want”), but to make sure the container is large enough to hold the brew without much trouble. This recipe was meant to be made in a large French press, but doesn’t have to be.
The brew can steep in the fridge or on the counter — wherever it’s not going to be knocked over. What happens in steeping is a protracted version of hot coffee’s brewing process, just without temperature as a catalyst for extracting coffee material from the grinds.
This is where the coarser grind helps you out. Because the brew time is so long there’s no loss in the extracting of coffee matter from the grinds, thus a coarser grind is simply easier to strain without too much sediment finding its way to the final product. If you’re making this recipe in a french press, push the plunger down and perform the same extra filtering step (“Unless you want a gritty, silty cold brew,” O’Hickey says).
If you’ve ever tried cold brew and found it alarming dense or too strong, it was likely not diluted before serving. “Cold brewing is usually more viscous and a bit heavier than hot coffee — cafés typically cold brew with this in mind and dilute the concentrated cold brew with water to make it more drinkable,” O’Hickey says. “When I make it at home I typically go with 1-part water, 1-part concentrate but there isn’t a best way.” Serve with ice.
According to O’Hickey, the primary differences between a cup of cold brew and a cup of iced or hot coffee is a distinctly less acidic taste. “Coffee brews in a stratified manner,” O’Hickey says. “The first components that come out are acids, then the sweeter components, then the bitter material. You need all three to balance one another out to make a properly extracted coffee. With the longer extraction time cold brewing brings, you’re more likely to get this balance right, there’s a much larger margin for error.” Cold brewing simply enables you to brew coffee sans the difficulty of brewing through a pour over or other hot brewing mechanisms.
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A Briq of Charcoal
If Murphy’s law were to apply to one thing only, it’d be charcoal grilling. Whether it be lighting the coals or getting the grill to the right temperature (and keeping it there), it’s often a difficult beast to tackle for novice grilles. The minds behind Spark, a new grill that offers charcoal grilling with the precision of an oven, wants to change that.
The Spark Grill makes use of patented blocks of wood and charcoal the brand calls “Briqs.” Spark Briqs are essentially large, compressed discs of charcoal. They load into a slot on the front of the grill, which ignites them electrically. The grill’s temperature is managed by an internal system and controlled by a nob that allows for temperatures from 200 to 905 degrees. This system is new to the charcoal grill space, a category dominated by grilling purists. If it’s as effective as it claims, it may be a stepping stone for grillers who would’ve gone with gas. Because of the novelty of the product, buyers will be locked into consistent Briq purchases through Spark, harkening to wood pellet grill companies insisting on their owners using grill-specific pellets. Users can also download an app that will keep track of the grill’s temperature and give alerts for when food is cooked.
The Spark Grill will go for $799, and you can sign up for the waitlist now.
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There is perhaps no single product in kitchendom more underrated and undercut than the Dutch oven. Now treated as décor as much as it is cookware, they sit atop ranges, about as used a lighthouse in 2020 — that is if a person even owns one. If not, it’s because someone thought they didn’t need one, or their Instant Pot could do the job, or some other patently incorrect excuse.
Frying, browning, braising, and stewing — name another piece of cookware that doesn’t just do those things, but excels at them. The best have high price tags (you don’t have to start with the best), but that doesn’t mean they’re for the landed gentry — the Dutch oven is the master of the one-pot, very-few-ingredients, minimal-cleanup meal. An investment in a Dutch oven, if made wisely, is one that will pay for itself for the duration of your days on earth. Here are 25 recipes that show off its versatility (and yes, they do look good on top of your stove).
The gold standard home bolognese recipe ripped from the pages of Marcella Hazan’s cookbooks. There are no shortcuts here, but it’ll be worth it.
Dried beans > canned beans. They taste better, aren’t covered in preservatives and salt and they aren’t hopelessly mushy. Soak them overnight, bring them to a boil before lunch and let them simmer until just before dinner. Put the lid on so water doesn’t boil out too quickly.
Stew the curry sauce for a few hours longer than the recipe calls if you feel like it (before you add the coconut, though). It’ll develop new and bigger flavors. Plus, a Dutch oven makes it a one pot meal.
When making this risotto in a Dutch oven, be sure to use a wooden or silicone spoon/stirrer. Metal utensils will scratch the enameling, which can result in ruining of a very expensive kitchen tool.
There are many ways to make pozole, a Mexican stew based around hominy, peppers and meat. This one utilizes guajilo peppers (which makes it pozole rojo), but you could very well make it with green chiles and tomatillos for a totally different vibe. Cook the blended sofrito for as long as you like (lid on) — it’ll only get richer and deeper in flavor.
This is the quintessential, easy-as-hell weeknight meal, all cooked in a Dutch oven and most of which you already have in your food stocks. If you thought Beef Bourguignon was all a Dutch oven was good for, you were wrong.
Born of need and scarcity, chicken and dumplings is the humblest in the pantheon of Southern food (yes, moreso than even fried chicken). It was made in times when meat wasn’t so easy to come by, but, if done right, would never disappoint. It is a dish that is purely about the enriching of basic, cheap food, and for that there is no better vessel than the Dutch oven.
Courtesy of the recipe and kitchen gear testers at America’s Test Kitchen, a classic (but not-well-enough-known) French dish that isn’t overly-indulgent or pompous. It’s a pork stew that is sort of a French take on throw-everything-in-a-pot-and-let-it-rip recipes.
Traditionally served as a first course in its native Portugal, caldo verde is a silky soup of potatoes, sausage and a smattering of spices and greens. The Dutch oven’s ability to release a low, but steady stream of moisture thickens the mixture into a velvety, rich, comfort food. It is a humble dish that’s easy to make, but still delicious and obscure enough to impress friends and family.
Steam. Steam is the engine by which clams are best prepared. Steam is also something the Dutch oven is uniquely qualified to create and cook with. This is a classic recipe that, apart from the clams and maybe anchovies, you probably have everything to make already.
A Southeastern side courtesy of the biggest magazine in the Southeast, Hoppin’ John is essentially a practice in lifting fatty meat, peas and rice into something much, much more. Remember to fluff the rice.
Another example of French cuisine being far more than stuffy, heavy chef food. Fricassee is basically an in-between of sautéeing and stewing chicken and vegetables. In other words, it won’t take as long as a stew, but it will carry more and richer flavors than a straight sautée.
It’s doubtful there’s a more classic Dutch oven recipe than braised short ribs. It flexes the best aspects of the Dutch oven — searing, reducing liquids over time and superior heat retention — and the final dish is about as impressive as home cooking gets. Just don’t skimp on the wine.
A very Midwestern soup that’s the equivalent of throwing a bunch of things that are good in a pot and turning up the heat. Aside from the namesake beer and cheese, there are not a whole lot of mandatory ingredients in a beer-cheese soup — this one includes broccoli so you don’t feel as bad for indulging.
Yes, bread. Once again, a food that requires a mixture of moisture, heat and dryness to allow it to rise, cook through and develop a gorgeous crust is a food that is suited perfectly for the Dutch oven. Pro tip: throw wax paper down for easier removal.
Use this as a foundation for a thousand pastas to come. Simply brown a protein with garlic and a decent veggie, throw dry pasta and your preferred liquid in, bring to a simmer until the pasta is cooked through. This is the beginning of mastering the one pot meal.
This is a dish with a fancy name. It also tastes and looks fancy, but it isn’t all that troubling to make. More or less, you’re adding more and more ingredients to your Dutch oven and taking it in and out of the oven. Pay close attention to how quickly the wine is reducing; if you let it get too low your food will begin to burn.
Not to belabor the point, but you can cook anything in a Dutch oven and it will come out juicier than you could’ve prepared it otherwise. A whole bird and a smattering of veggies with a bit of salt is all that’s needed for a supremely moist protein with minimal effort or babysitting. Make a gravy out of the jus and throw the chicken on a roasting rack and into a broiling oven to crisp the skin if you want to go the extra mile.
This is how you make pulled pork when it’s raining. Serious Eats notes, rightly, that the Dutch oven is perfect for developing the crucial mix of wetness and bark that slow cookers and instant pots fail completely at. The key is, again, the release of some moisture, but not all.
Don’t let anyone fool you – crumbles and cobblers are the lazy man’s pies and custards, and there’s not a damn thing wrong with that. Quite literally just cook a filling of fruit, sugar and whatever tertiary ingredients you fancy, throw some biscuits or dumplings over the top and bake with the lid on for a bit. If you don’t put ice cream on top afterward it hardly even counts.
It’s Greek and, yet again, it’s simply a matter of throwing things in the Dutch oven and letting them cook for a couple hours. The combination of low and consistent heat breaks down the collagen in the goat and converts it into gelatin, which makes for meat that doesn’t require a knife to cut through.
In the words of Garden & Gun editors, “…this is fried chicken in its most fundamental form.” If you thought the Dutch oven was only good for low-and-slow cooking, you were wrong (bonus points if you fry in bacon fat).
To those forlorn souls who’ve yet to find themselves in front of a cup of Brunswick stew, I’m sorry. This version adds in chicken to make what’s traditionally a side the main attraction. The result is a more fulfilling Brunswick stew that retains all of its weirdness.
One of the signs that cold weather has arrived, the beef stew is best prepared in a Dutch oven. Find the cheapest meat and cut the veggies as large as possible so they don’t break into too small of pieces. Also, do not skip the flour, even though you’ll want to.
This recipe for chili is camp-centric, but it doesn’t have to be. All the reasons you cook with a Dutch oven play a part in making a richer chili experience. As noted in the recipe, you can sub out the meat listed for any fatty meat full of connective tissue — it will all be broken down by serving time.
George Howell wasn’t sure how to make iced coffee work for his esteemed chain of coffee roasters and cafés. The way he sees it, iced coffee is vastly better than cold brew (and he’s not alone), but making it is a pain — you either have to pour hot coffee over ice and dilute the coffee with melting water, or wait for a blast chiller to bring a batch of hot coffee down to 40 or so degrees (which could take 45 minutes to an hour).
Then Howell found the Coldwave.
The $40 pitcher, readily available on Amazon, comes with a plastic insert fitted with an array of white tubes filled with water. Freeze the insert (takes about 8 to 10 hours, usually), pour fresh hot coffee into the pitcher and drop the insert into the coffee. A minute and a half later, you have iced coffee.
Despite Howell’s misgivings, you can use this device just as easily for cold brew. Most cold brew recipes explicitly insist on keeping the mixture at room temperature while brewing so as to not hinder extraction. This means cold brew is room temperature upon finishing the half-day brew cycle. If you don’t like pouring it over ice and creating an inexact dilution, you can chill it in a Coldwave before diluting.
Howell explains that the consumer Coldwave isn’t an elegant fix to his cafés’ commercial problem, and it certainly isn’t the end-all, be-all solution; after one, 16-ounce chill — about three good-sized cups — the insert must be rinsed off and re-frozen. But he thinks it’s just fine for iced coffee at home.
“It’s the best gadget for this I’ve found so far,” Howell says. “It’s dead simple and … it does the job faster and cleaner than anything else I’ve used recently.”
For home brewing during the warmer months, it still isn’t as easy as batch-brewing cold brew and keeping it in the fridge for a week. But it does allow you to brew your regular pot of hot coffee and chill it without adding much to your morning routine.
“This levels the playing field for iced coffee,” Howell says.
As “social distancing” becomes more and more important to stave off the spread of coronavirus, those of us who have the luxury are going to need to do more working from home. That means less time commuting, but likely way more distractions. To give yourself the best chance of being productive, you need to create an organized home workstation. Wondering what you might need? From laptop stands to docking stations, cord management solutions to wireless keyboards, we’ve rounded up the essential gear that will help keep you going.
Additional contribution from Will Price.
Plugable UD-3900: This is one of the best and most reasonable priced Thunderbolt 3 docking stations. It can power up to two 4K monitors, or one 5K monitor, while simultaneously charging your laptop. (Note: If you want one that works seamlessly with a USB-C laptop, opt for the Plugable USB-C Dock.)
Logitech MX Keys: This is an excellent keyboard with a number pad, function keys and alphanumeric keys. It’s $30 cheaper than Apple’s full-sized wireless keyboard, plus the MX Keys has backlit keys.
Logitech MX Master 3: This is one of the most well-reviewed mice you can buy, plus it’s the perfect partner to Logitech’s MX Keys keyboard. It’s comfortable to hold and precise to work, plus it has a bunch of multi-functional capabilities to help you be more productive.
Twelve South Curve: If you don’t want to invest in an external monitor, a laptop stand might be the next best thing (along with a wireless keyboard and mouse). It elevates your laptop, which will help relieve stress on your back and neck. Plus, it allows for more airflow and will help prevent your laptop from overheating.
LG UltraFine 4K Display: Yes, it’s expensive, but this is a great external monitor for anybody with a MacBook or a USB-C laptop. It’s bright and beautiful, and has been trusted by Apple since 2016. (Although this 2019 model shares the same name as the 2016 LG UltraFine 4K, it’s actually slightly larger, previous model, 23.7-inches versus 21.5-inches.)
NordVPN: Not everyone’s work involves state secrets, but confidential information like employee agreements, credit card accounts and money transfers are commonplace. VPNs protect the data entering and leaving your computer from criminal access (or corporate data flubs), and NordVPN, with 900 servers in almost 200 countries, is about as secure as they come.
Bose Headphones 700: Not only are Bose’s newest flagships probably the best noise-canceling you can buy, but they are by far-and-away the best headphones for taking calls. Bose engineered the heck out of them so that the call clarity is as good for you (the person wearing the headphones) as the person on the other end of the line.
Jarvis Bamboo Standing Desk: This has been regarding as one of the best standing desks for years. It’s well designed, highly adjustable and highly customizable. And you can lower it so that it’s the same height as any other sitting desk, too.
Rein Saddle Leather Desk Blotter: The surface of your desk is likely not conducive to a mouse. A bespoke, genuine leather mouse pad can fix that.
Mophie Powerstation AC: This portable power bank has a huge 19,000mAh capacity. It also has a USB-C PD input and output, meaning that it’s powerful enough to charge any new USB-C laptop, such as a MacBook Pro, and it also able to quickly charge after it’s depleted.
Nomad Base Station Apple Watch Edition: Wireless charging is the future — and it’s here right now. This wireless charging pad is unique because it can simultaneously charge all three of your Apple devices: iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods.
Master & Dynamic Headphone Stand: A headphone stand just declutters your headphones from your workspace. That might seem like a little thing, but it can actually help improve organization and increase productivity.
Cable Zipper from The Container Store: In any longterm “work from home” office, cable management is key. You don’t want to constantly be reaching under your desk looking for a charging cable. That’s where this Cable Zipper comes in. (The Container Store has a variety of other cable management solutions as well.)
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Open Spaces
Death to the junk drawer. Death to the stacks of dusty books under the bed. Death to the pile of chargers accumulating under the sofa. That’s the message broadcasted by Open Spaces, a new brand selling storage bins in various sizes, wire baskets, drawer dividers, shelf risers and other tidying up gear.
“Our goal is to give order to your spaces and things for a variety of needs—whether you’re looking to organize, decorate, reduce or showcase items that are most meaningful to you,” the company press release reads.
The brand says the products are designed to be long-lasting and seamlessly blend into your surroundings. They’re also made with no single-use plastics and, whenever possible, post-consumer, post-industrial and recyclable materials.
Following the launch of beginner cookware brand Equal Parts in fall 2019, Open Spaces is the second brand to appear under the Pattern Brands umbrella, a “family of brands designed to help you enjoy daily life.” Starting at $36, Open Spaces products are available now.
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Welcome to Window Shopping, a weekly exercise in lusting over new home products we want in our apartments right the hell now.
I will admit that buying miniature boxes of cereal on the internet for roughly $2.50 a serving isn’t normal, nor do I think it’s the best use of funds when during uncertain times. This admission won’t stop me from craving an infinite supply of Magic Spoon’s beefy, low-sugar cereal. At 12g of protein per mini box, I get to lunchtime comfortably full and feeling better than having eaten a box of Frosted Flakes (no disrespect to Frosted Flakes).
Gantri’s futuristic lamps and lighting fixtures are all 3D-printed on demand from corn polyactic acid (a kind of thermoplastic). This collection of table lights, sconces and floor lamps was co-designed by Ammunition, the design firm behind products from Polaroid, Ember, Beats by Dr. Dre, Kohler, Adobe and more. They look like something a stoned Dieter Rams would make (the Gio Floor Light, especially), and that’s sick.
You may not be excited about the prospect of sturdy, stackable, space-saving glassware, and that’s fine. But if you’re a grown adult serving drinks in plastic cups you collected at sporting events, these are worth considering.
The Phalaenopsis orchid is the orchid for people who have read about the difficulty of growing an orchid, become afraid and opted not to invest. This means it isn’t as sensitive to your failings as most orchids. It blooms once a year for three months. Still, I’d read The Sill’s recommended care guide before buying. It’s by no means a set-and-forget plant.
Floyd’s birch bed frames are nice, modern upgrades to the unsightly (but affordable!) metal cages used to prop up mattresses. Now, you can order one made of a chocolatey brown walnut wood.
Hay does an exception job at softening the harder edges of high furniture design and translating that into something original and reasonably priced. The new Mags sofa is a poofy, cozy design that covers a sturdy frame in foam wrapped in down. It is as comfortable as it looks.
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Instant Recipes
Instant Pot users rejoice. Instant Brand, the company behind the world’s favorite all-in-one cooking tool, partnered with Drop, a smart kitchen software tool, to release a new Instant Pot recipe app.
The app, which replaces the old Instant Pot app, features over 1,000 recipes for the various Instant Brand products including the Instant Vortex Fryer, the Instant Ace Blender and, naturally, the Instant Pot. Users can scour the app for new recipes that will be tailored to their needs. Recipes can be resized to adjust for larger or small portions, alternate ingredients are suggested depending on what you have on hand and shopping lists can be generated based on selected dishes.
However, the new app does not include the Drop feature that lets users control their device from the app. The Instant Pot app is available now on Android and iOS devices.
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A Skillet Nerd’s Skillet
All Butter Pat Industries hand-cast-iron skillets are produced in small batches, take a lot of time to make and are apparently the choice pan of famed Southern chef, Sean Brock. They’re smooth as hell, light enough to toss veggies in, sport pour spots that are actually useful and are among our favorite cast iron out there. But they’re also far more expensive than your average pan.
Right Now, Butter Pat’s wicked cast-iron skillets are deeply discounted. The standard 10-inch “Heather” skillet, which usually runs just under $200, is $98. The mega-sized “Lilli” skillet that’s usually $395 is $195. The catch, if it is one, is that these products are all “restaurant use” grade, which means they may have minor blemishes or irregularities that don’t affect cooking performance. What’s more, Butter Pat has committed to donating all profits to World Central Kitchen, an emergency food relief non-profit started by chef José Andres.
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Cast-iron skillets suffer from an image problem. Because they are so adept at one thing — like, say, cooking steak — the creativity and vision to do other things are clouded.
Admittedly, this guide, which spans the best things to cook in your new (or old) cast-iron skillet, does include steak but not to the exclusion of all else. You’ll also find pies (maybe too many pies), Dutch babies, cornbread, tortillas and fancy-sounding French desserts.
Like with any recipe, approach these as starting points, not scripture. Don’t like apple pies? Use pears. Think the ingredients on the pizza recipe are subpar? Cool, just don’t use them. Go wild, just know the cast-iron skillet hanging in your kitchen excels at far more than searing meat.
Penned by the great J. Kenji López-Alt himself, this recipe is authoritative, concise and helpful. If you want even more details, check out the connected guide, and absolutely do not skip the comments section, where the author drops insight morsels in reply to dozens of reader questions.
There are only three things one needs to know about cooking bacon in a cast-iron skillet: start in a cold pan (the meat will seize and become needlessly tough otherwise), know when to pull it and understand that it’s good for the cookware itself. Bacon is often the food recommended to christen a new skillet because of its high-fat content and ability to get a good foundation of seasoning built up.
Use the recommended Anson Mills for a heightened cornbread if you want, but the real magic of this recipe from Garden & Gun’s cookbook is the first two steps. Preheat the oven, put your fat-covered skillet in and only when the skillet is ripping hot do you dollop the batter in. This is the path to a crunchy crust and a fluffy, magnificent interior. Throw some butter on top when it’s done and you will have become an honorary Southerner.
Literally blend up all five ingredients (which you almost certainly have in your pantry and fridge right now) and throw the mixture in a skillet to bake. It’s a fluffy, simple treat for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner (if you’re into that). Bonus points for cooking some fresh fruit down in wine or simple syrup and slathering on the top.
If there’s anywhere in the US that cast-iron cookware didn’t go out of style in the middle of the 20th century, it’s probably the South. And if the South is to be called great at anything, it’s turning cheap ingredients into worthy food, and that’s exactly what this recipe is all about. Making redeye gravy amounts to shallow frying pork (you could easily do this with bacon instead of country ham), dumping extra-bitter black coffee into a skillet full of the fat, tossing a bit of sugar in and thinning it out with water. The result is bold, rich, slightly sweet and unbelievably satisfying.
This person’s mom knows what’s up. Fried eggs are perfectly doable in a cast-iron skillet, and if you head to Youtube and search some variation of “fried egg cast iron” you’ll find a mountain of videos from the cast iron community showing off their pans. Why? Developing the level of seasoning to cleanly fry and flip an egg is something of a mark of pride for the cast iron enthused, which makes this a recipe best reserved for the brave or the experienced.
Baking doesn’t get as much airplay as well-seared meats (it doesn’t photograph as well), but it might be the cast-iron skillet’s greatest strength. Cookie cake is taken from a crumbly grocery store buy for a toddler’s birthday to a crispy, fatty, melty treat yourself dessert.
Again, the secret to absurdly even and crispy crusts in the preheating of the pan before the application of the to-be crisped (pizza dough, in this case). This recipe is more of a guide than anything, meaning beyond the basic technique and timings of the dish, you get to pick the ingredients (hot tip: pancetta is an incredible pizza topper).
Here’s a hot take for you: Shepherd’s pie is one of the Mount Rushmore recipes of fall cooking. That is to say, it belongs right up there with the greats — beef stew, chili, chicken pot pie and so on. The benefits of making it in a skillet as opposed to some chintzy Pyrex nonsense is fairly clear — the heat from the base of the skillet will be such that the base of your pie will caramelize and form another mini crust of fats and sugars from the filling.
I don’t trust people who don’t like cobbler. It’s basically a pie shortcut where you get to skip all the fuss of getting the perfect bottom and top in favor of throwing a bunch of delicious things together and baking them for half an hour. The even, consistent heating of the skillet does wonders on the crust, too.
You may start noticing a theme here — cast-iron skillets are the kings of breakfast. If you make yourself or your loved ones hashbrowns in a non-stick skillet you are doing a disservice to both the potatoes wasted and your loved ones — they’ll get crispier in cast iron and cook through just as easily. Just make sure to squeeze out as much water as you can before throwing them in.
You thought we were done with pies? Chicken pot pie is a fall and cast-iron skillet staple. You could make your own crust, but store-bought puff pastry works plenty well for a weekday meal.
Preheat the skillet while you’re prepping the bird. Once its ready to go, place the seasoned and oiled chicken in the hot skillet and slide into the oven. This recipe doesn’t mention it, but turning the chicken once with about a third of the cook time remaining isn’t a bad idea. This gives you crispy skin on two sides, and more bird to render fat from for a gravy later.
Though you’ll see it battered and deep-fried more often, okra can be just as good in its natural state. The key to this dish, as is the key to any dish that aims to char veggies without overcooking them, is to put them in the skillet only after it’s smoking hot. As noted in the recipe, toss the veggie combo in oil before dropping in the pan — this method creates more even maillard reactions and prevents splashing and flare ups.
While a comal is the classic vehicle to homemade tortilla ascendence, none of us have one of those. A big skillet serves the same purpose with a bit less square-footage to work with. Remember to avoid using metal kitchen tools to flip if at all possible (we recommend using GIR’s excellent silicone flipper or your fingers, as there’s very little oil splash associated with tortilla making)
Cast-iron skillet recipes aren’t always elegant or light — this one is both. From a now defunct Savannah, Georgia restaurant comes an easy-to-follow whole roasted fish recipe that shows off all the best parts of cast-iron cooking.
The only thing better than serving macaroni and cheese on the table still in its piping hot skillet is serving four of them, each in its own mini skillet. Here’s to a crustier, more caramelized, better presenting and generally superior mac and cheese.
The art of grilled cheese is understanding the role of the chosen cooking surface, and few are as adept at quick crustiness and fat displacement than the cast-iron skillet. This is a dish to avoid getting the skillet too hot, as the butter can easily go up in smoke.
Before replicating this recipe, watch Cook’s Illustrated’s brief master class on the basics of cast iron pie prep. Then, go forth and prepare a cinnamon-ridden, buttery, sweet and altogether wonderful apple pie.
Imagine flan, then imagine a French person making it. That’s clautoutis (sometimes spelled “clafouti”). And while that alone should be enticing enough, the real strength is its status as a pre-prepared, post-brunch desert. This is to say, after serving guests or family with whatever combination of green, protein, potato and what have you, you hit them with a delicate custard that’s just as good the next day.
Many Southern classics are linked directly with the region’s affiliation with cast-iron cookware. Chicken fried steak epitomizes this, and stands in for the hundreds and thousands of other foods you could fry in a cast-iron skillet. The pan holds its temperature when food is dropped into the oil than stainless still will, and frying ensures a solid layer of seasoning.
No cooking vehicle is better suited to charring vegetables than cast iron. This recipe, which calls to toss chopped brussels in a skillet and let them rip in the oven, makes brussels people who don’t like brussels will eat.
Anything that can’t be cooked long but needs a crust should be cooked in cast iron. These thin burgers are terrible and dry when overcooked, but drop the patties in a smoking hot pan and they’ll develop a nice brown exterior quick enough so you don’t overcook the inside.
Could you, nay, should you make pancakes in cast iron if you have non-stick available? No, probably not. But pancakes are the graduated version of the egg test mentioned earlier — a fragile food that requires a near-perfect seasoning layer to execute with screwing up.
Curveball. Cast-iron skillets are just as adept at crisping up steaks, chops and burgeres as they are tofu, which is perhaps more in need of a crisp than traditional meat protein.
The Best Cast-Iron Skillets You Can Buy in 2018
This definitive guide explores everything you need to know about cast-iron cookware, including the best skillets for every type of cook. Read the Story
These days, there’s little excuse for a desk that’s out of sorts. Your mindset is as much a product of your setting as it is how much sleep you get or how much work you do in a day. Keep a work area with things strewn about and you’re more likely to be strewn about yourself.
If it doesn’t need to be in arm’s reach, it shouldn’t be. The best gear for the desk space provides everything a place to go, and clears as much additional desk space as it can. These 11 pieces of gear strive to do both of these things, and keep things looking good at the same time.
If you don’t think you need a keyboard cleaner, you need only look down at your keyboard. Grease, dust, dirt and grime build up quickly. Swipe this $6 pen around the edges and crannies of your electronics and be done with that. If you want to go all in, get Oxo’s screen cleaner, too.
Cables jumbled and strewn about is among the quickest tells of a messy person. This $10 box is the first step to saving yourself from that visual headache. Buy yourself some zip ties to deal with the extra cord slack and shove it all in this thing for the simplest solution to this very 21st century issue.
It’s a bit odd that desks are almost universally made with slip-prone materials, but this is the cheapest fix. The all-vinyl Alvin mat is functional if you need it to be, but otherwise works great as a way to keep your desk load out in place. There’s also the added benefit of appearing to be organized — fake it ’till you make it still applies.
Not everything on your desk needs to be on the white to black scale, and stacks of notebooks, tax forms, loose documents and the like are not attractive on a desk. This gilded file and notebook sorter is clean, but isn’t muted.
Merino wool felt coasters that are nice looking and work. Get them for coffee mugs and at-home happy hours.
Strictly speaking, you don’t need a desk plant. But if you’re going to be sitting at a desk for days on end, a little green can’t hurt. The Queen Pothos is a resilient, beautiful plant and this one comes potted and in soil. Water every one or two weeks.
Massimo Vignelli’s work in the world of graphic design has made him a living legend, and his big-numbered calendar is part of the reason why (it’s got a spot in the Museum of Modern Art). A designer of brand identify, Vignelli carved his intensely geometric, modern aesthetic into IBM, New York City’s subway system (which is still in use), American Airlines, Bloomingdale’s and more.
The best tools are the ones you’ll want to use, and Grovemade’s compact, murdered-out measuring tools fit that bill perfectly. They’re small, thin and milled from a single piece of metal for peak mathematic nerdery.
The makers of some of the best audio equipment in the world are probably a decent resource on gear that keeps those products out of harm’s way. Resting your headhones on your desk, in your bag or virtually anywhere else is asking to have them dropped, stepped on or crushed. This stand is made of machined steel, has rubber foot pads and is extra-heavy in the base for stability.
Native Union’s stylish and compact dual charging dock is for Apple natives only, but it fits the mold of space-saving and nice to look at so well it can’t be ignored.
Alright, so it doesn’t go on your desk, but it goes on your phone which goes on your desk, so there. Actions is an app by Moleskine that simplifies your daily to-dos in a way that few apps do — simply.
Roundly recommended by the likes of Wirecutter and Engadget for its sturdiness and its looks, the Jarvis monitor arm clamps on to the side of your desk and comes in various colors. And, best of all, you’re clearing out more sweet, sweet desk real estate.
A desk organizer made by someone who was sick of ugly, oddly cumbersome desk organizers. The first set has six mini ceramic organizers neatly fitted to either a maple or walnut board, and the second level adds on a cupholder and a headphone stand because, you know, why not.
This take on the classic architect lamp is from London-based Daylight Company, and it is as industrious as it looks. Exposed springs and balances and a desk-clamping lock clears up more space on your desk. The $10 coverage plan that ensures replacement from power surge isn’t too shabby either.
You don’t have to go whole hog and get Humanscale’s desk raiser, but, for the sake of your joints, getting a desk raiser is a good idea.
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Philips Sonicare electric toothbrushes are some of the best personal oral hygiene products money can buy. Problem is, they run from just under $100 to over $200. Now you can cop one with subscriptions starting at $6 a month, which includes replacement brush heads mailed to you every three months. The question is whether or not you’re the type of person willing to pay for a toothbrush (granted, a grail toothbrush) in monthly installments.
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The desk in the home workspace should be invested in the same way a bedroom should be invested in — if you’re giving the work from home life a go, you’ll be in that workspace for as many hours as you will your bed. A number of factors are considered when choosing what sort of desk you’ll build a home workspace around — square footage, need for storage, durability and looks — and the mountain of options out there hold an answer for virtually any living situation. The trouble is finding that answer. We explore the best in as many varieties as we can in our guide to the best desks you can find online in 2020.
If you need a desk and you need it now, Wayfair is the site to shop. Its wares aren’t heirlooms and they’re not very original, but they’re extraordinarily cheap and ship quickly. The Colburn will do in a pinch.
Lustrous, fairly lightweight powder-coated steel, this desk may not scream C-suite executive, but room for a computer that’s not boxed in and plenty of table space to get shit done, it’s apparent why this blacked-out L desk is one of the best-selling on Amazon. Oh, and it’s incredibly, stupidly cheap.
Ikea’s consistent blend of no-fuss designs are, in general, anti-statement pieces. That’s not a knock against them — like this desk, not everything needs to pull your eye when entering a room. This one is much easier to assemble than most of Ikea’s stuff, and it has two wide drawers to limit clutter on the desktop.
Target stocks furniture of all styles and stripes under a single creed: make it affordable and ship it quickly. This desk is a frugal way to bring industrial vibes to your home office space. Target runs promotions on its site regularly, so bookmark the page for discounts.
Urban Outfitters is a surprisingly reliable destination for affordable, interesting home furniture. Its specialty is the kind of Boho-inspired pieces you see around its brick-and-mortar stores, a category the glass-topped Ashford Desk certainly fits into.
Wirecutter called it “Sturdier, better looking, and covered with a longer warranty than many desks costing more than $1,500.” Fully’s lineup of office products is practical, forward-thinking and centered entirely around products that adapt to your setting and mood. Its Jarvis desk lifts up or down with ease, and packs an impressive 350-pound weight capacity. This is a desk that understands you want the option of standing while working, but not be required to do so.
It’s a rare thing for any solid white oak furniture to be affordable, but this desk manages it while striking a classic look as well. Akron Street’s Reader desk sets up a bit like a larger version of the old schoolhouse desks your grandparents used in grade school. At under 40 inches in width and for an oddly affordable $395, it’s compact, sturdy and cheap enough to be your work HQ for more than a few moves.
This is a big, wide desk that comes in flurry of color options and reeks minimalism. Floyd’s wares are sturdy — the desk is birchwood, linoleum and cold-rolled steel. They also delivery lightning fast (same-day in some cities), come with a 10-year warranty and assemble in minutes and without the need for tools. Push this desk up against a wall and get to work.
Blu Dot is about as fairly priced as you’ll find original, modern designs that are made well. Its best-selling Stash Desk comes in a variety of veneer finishes and with sturdy, solid ash legs.
A blend of the architect and drawing desks (they’re pretty close anyway) and an upright piano, the Drommen by CB2 is storage-forward and sturdy as can be. Its V-legs, extra-wide desktop space (58 inches), three drawers and three cubbies are all made out of a hardwearing, sustainable acacia wood. Throw a bright-colored task lamp on it and some sketch pads and you’re halfway to being a sketch artist.
Room & Board is the Mike Rowe of furniture companies. Its products are hardwearing, timeless and undeniably American. The Parsons Desk is a simple design made by hand in Minnesota. It’s an investment desk that doesn’t cost a fortune.
Cable clutter is a quietly maddening visual. Bluelounge’s StudioDesk has what amounts to a trapdoor for up to four devices built into the center of the desk, obscuring unsightly wires and cords and making you seem more put together. It comes in two sizes and with some pretty stellar birchwood detailing.
Wall desks are the compromise between folks with small living spaces, but high demand for storage. West Elm’s narrow mid-century wall desk is only 38 inches wide, but features a seat-level drawer a standing height cabinet with space inside and to stack stuff on top. The side-to-side-sliding cabinet doors and the and light-colored wood look is clean and simple mid-century. Pair it with its matching bookshelf and you’ve got an ideal mini-office.
This is a lot of desk for well under $1,000. Article’s Taiga Smoke desk sports a solid oak body, heavy iron legs, two drawers and a decent-sized cabinet. The internet-only brand has no storefront and isn’t taking up real estate in stuffy department stores, so the prices you’re getting are far closer to the true value of the product.
This spread-leg desk is the product of Good Design and Design Plus Award-winning furniture designer from Iran, Nazanin Kamali. Beyond an open cubby and large drawer, it’s characterized by its blend of mid-century shape, connical legs and compact size.
Tech meets tradition. Artifox’s Desk 02 (which also comes in walnut and a lighter oak) is made black with ink and given a sattin finish. The desk features a cable management system, a headphone hook and a clever felt cable grip keeps cords in place. The desk arrives in separate parts and can be assembled in short order.
Moooi is an eclectic design studio, but its wood desk doesn’t stray too far for the ordinary. It combines Shaker influence, high-end technology and premium materials into a desk that looks usual, but stands out.
Recommending the Airia desk by Ayako Takase and Cutter Hutton is a bit of a cliché now, but it’s impossible to ignore. Rounded edges, loads of clever storage (cork-lined drawers, people), a solid walnut desktop frame, powder-coated aluminum legs and an absolutely timeless design (though designed less than a decade ago) make for the ultimate home workspace. Oh, and it won a Good Design Award the year it was released.
Discussing the best hot sauces is a good way to start an argument. Even pro chefs catch flak for their hot sauce takes. When we wanted to know what hot sauces our readers reach for, we turned to Instagram. After rifling through your heated responses, we narrowed down GP readership’s favorite everyday hot sauces. You didn’t disappoint.
An overwhelmingly large number of readers were appalled that pro chefs picked Valentina over Cholula. The Mexican restaurant staple utilizes arbol and pequin peppers, combined with a signature blend of spices. Find this bottle everywhere from taco trucks to college dorm rooms. The signature blend is where it’s at, but chipotle and sweet habanero varieties are worth a dash.
We explicitly mentioned that sriracha was not chosen by our pro chefs as their choice for an everyday hot sauce. Readers came out of the woodwork to defend the ubiquitous Thai-inspired chili sauce. Huy Fong has become the predominant brand in manufacturing sriracha — the company uses fresh, red jalapeños and doesn’t add artificial flavors or colors.
Yellowbird designed a mild sauce to be put on anything and everything. Its jalapeño variety is the brand’s mildest hot sauce, which adds a burst of flavor with just a hint of pain. The hot sauce is slow cooked, which allows the fruits and vegetables in the sauce to meld, creating a bolder, more vibrant flavor.
The label isn’t the only bold thing about Dirty Dick’s hot sauce. The made-in-Vermont concoction combines the smoky, floral heat habanero with the sweetness of tropical fruits such as mango and pineapple. Don’t let the initial sweetness fool you, because once this hits your tongue you’re in for a ride.
Secret Aardvark’s Habanero Hot Sauce is a cross between Caribbean and Tex-Mex flavors — think jerk chicken enchiladas. The blend of habanero peppers and roasted tomato creates a versatile sauce that’s smoky, sweet, savory and tangy. As the product description says, “be careful if you only get one bottle.”
Sweet and spicy meet in this perfectly blended bottle of hot sauce from Hank Sauce. Hot sauce should be hot enough to jolt the senses, but not hot enough to dull the other flavors of the sauce. With this hot sauce, you’ll get the sweet flavor of the honey, the pungency of the garlic and the creaminess of the butter. Try slathering your chicken wings with it.
Like the habanero pepper, scotch bonnets provide a sweetness that quickly gives way to intense heat. Common in the Caribbean, the scotch bonnet pairs well with the spiciness of ginger and the acidity of lime juice. This blend may be on the milder end of the hot sauce spectrum, but the flavors are off the charts.
Chef Tyler Akin is a Delaware boy at heart. While his culinary career led him to Philadelphia, where Akin is the chef-owner of Res Ipsa and Stock, the chef is making his way back to his native Wilmington. This spring, Akin will be helming the kitchen at Le Cavalier at the Green Room located in the Hotel du Pont, a Wilmington institution.
The chef grew up eating at the Green Room for special occasions, and he aims to preserve some of the establishment’s signature dishes, while reconceptualizing the restaurant into a French brasserie. The influence of the Green Room can be found in the chef’s choice of footwear, an emerald pair of Vans, and his experience throughout the years can be found in his other tools of the trade.
“These sneakers are a collaboration between Hedley & Bennett (their aprons are also really great) and Vans. They have treated canvas, which helps repel kitchen spills, increased grip and traction and padded collars, which is helpful when you’re on your feet for a full shift. I picked the emerald color as a nod to our new project, Le Cavalier at the Green Room. The Green Room was an institution in Delaware for over 100 years, so it’s meaningful to be able to give a visual nod to it every day.”
“I love photography, both inside and outside of the kitchen. This model works well under what can sometimes be harsher kitchen lighting and is incredibly helpful when menu planning and visualizing plating for new dishes.”
“I listen to everything, but really, I’m a rap nerd. Pusha T: best rapper alive, no question. This speaker works well for pumping up our back-of-house team but gives you enough control that the dining room doesn’t need to be exposed to our jam session.”
“Hands down my favorite kitchen tool. I use it for portioning dough, shaping pasta, moving knife work into storage containers. At our Southeast Asian restaurants, Stock, we do a ton of knife work — our menu is very veg-forward, so we’re constantly using this tool to move ingredients from our cutting boards into containers without bruising them. This model is really slip-resistant, which is a plus in a fast-paced kitchen.”
Instant Pots can cook anything. But what are they truly great at? The answer, most of the time, is anything that usually takes a while but that you’d rather not take a while to make. Here are 25 of the absolute best things to cook when you get an Instant Pot or any other multicooker.
Watch more of This Week In Gear video reviews.
Pot roast holds a place in the pantheon on Instant Pot miracles. Using rather poor quality meat (by the general standard that which we judge meats), the hallowed pot roast is traditionally cooked for a long time and left to turn spindly fat fibers into wonderful, gelatinous, melt in your mouth fat. The Instant Pot does this, and takes a fraction of the time to do it. It’s magic.
There are thousands of recipes for rice scattered across the internet. Instead of starting with those, start with a recipe straight from the source. This recipe on the Instant Pot website highlights one very important truth about the machine — it does not allow much at all in the form of evaporation. This means water-rice ratios when making rice are virtually always one-to-one, no matter how much you’re making.
What do you gain from making beans in a multicooker instead of any other method? You get to skip the “soak beans overnight” step. This means you can start with dry beans and have them ready to eat in an hour, and anybody whose made beans made fresh instead of out of a can knows there is no real comparison between the two.
Barbacoa-style beef is great for the exact same reasons pot roast is great — the turning of otherwise undesirable protein into something stellar. Though this recipe calls for beef, you can substitute it out for your preferred protein.
Get the mixture started in a saucepan, divide it into individual ramekins and pressurize. The result is flan that is both faster and less prone to overcooking and drying out, a common problem in oven flan recipes.
You’ll need to scroll passed a rather long intro to get to it, but this recipe underscores what makes pressure cooking, and the Instant Pot, great. Throw a bunch of powerful ingredients in the cooking chamber, allow the temperature and pressure buildup to force the flavors to meddle, then throw in some noodles and meat at the very in for another few minutes. It will be the fastest and simplest ramen you’ve made.
Not it does not mash the potatoes for you, but it does get them mash-ready in ten minutes or less. This option is far quicker than boiling, and far better for the potato than trying some crafty microwave trick.
Oh, yes. One of the best cozy meals of all time is made in an Instant Pot — start to finish — in 20 minutes or less. It allows the cooking and tenderizing of chicken thighs, veggies and noodles very quickly. Hot tip: keep the bones in the mix for a richer, more flavorful bowl.
Cooking fish in an Instant Pot does not seem as natural as pot roast or heaping bowls of rice, but it ought to. Salmon filets cook through in all of 5 minutes on the steam setting (use the steam rack to keep it off the base of the pot).
Perhaps the strangest thing about making yogurt in an Instant Pot is that you’ll need some yogurt to make it in the first place (either yogurt or a packet of live cultures to whisk in). Yogurt is one of the few recipes in an Instant Pot that doesn’t receive a drastic decrease in cook and prep time, so plan accordingly.
All told, this Dutch oven classic typically takes anywhere from three to five hours to come together. In an Instant Pot that number is more like half an hour (prep included). The most notable difference being the amount of liquid that will cook off in a Dutch oven versus the Instant Pot. To combat this (if you think it’s an issue) is to use slightly less liquid than you would normally with this dish.
Notice the singular “pancake.” The single, giant pancake is something of a cult Instant Pot recipe, and it’s not exactly practical. The giant pancake takes longer (much longer) than making your typical weekend pancake on a non-stick pan. But does your weekend pancake routine create an inches-thick Godzilla pancake? It doesn’t.
Whether you’re on a protein-dense diet or making cobb salads, boiling eggs is a practice perhaps better served in an Instant Pot than anywhere else. Because the pot cooks with pressure instead of a single heat source, the eggs cook from all directions, meaning no more pockets of undercooked boiled egg. Also, the boiling eggs rest of the steam rack, meaning the chance of them cracking during cooking is slim to none. It also only takes five minutes to hard boil.
This is not a traditional Indian butter chicken recipe. It is, however, close enough, given its 15-minute combined prep- and cook-time. Lots of curries and saucey dishes such as this are ideal Instant Pot fodder, as the lack of varied texture in the dish isn’t a glaring issue (texture uniformity can be solved with peanuts, chopped scallions, etc.).
Chili is an Instant Pot staple, as are most dishes where intense flavors are usually held back by long cook times. It’s doubly good because while the pressure cooking of the Instant Pot does abbreviate the cook-time, chili is also a dish that isn’t big on texture in the first place, meaning there’s not much missed from a stock pot made chili and an Instant Pot made chili.
This is more a matter of ease and time saved than anything else. The Instant Pot isn’t going to do anything incredible to homemade chicken stock, it’s just going to make it faster.
As classic as a steak in a skillet and burgers on a grill, ribs in the Instant Pot is one of the crowning recipes of the multicooker boom. And it isn’t without reason — racks of ribs brought to falling of the bone in under a half hour (finished off on broil in the oven) is close enough to traditional barbeque-smoked ribs to satisfy most cravings.
This is very likely the simplest mac and cheese recipe possible. It comes down to putting water, noodles and salt in a pot, letting it run for four or five minutes, then stirring in the remaining ingredients. I don’t know what else to say — it’ll take you a grand total of half an hour, start to finish, and requires no babysitting.
The Instant Pot’s ability to obliterate and deepen the flavor of dishes in no time is probably its greatest strength, and that’s exactly why this 20-minute peach cobbler is great. You can flip peaches for another fruit if you wish (I don’t know why you would) and top with vanilla ice cream.
What you lose in texture from oven to Instant Pot you make up for in time and tenderness. Before you embark on making a whole bird in your Instant Pot, ensure the bird isn’t too big (this is when the larger sized Instant Pots are nice).
Pulled pork made on a smoker or grill (or braised on the stove or in the oven) takes hours upon hours to effectively gelatinize the fat and allow the pork to easily tear apart. In an Instant Pot, it takes a little over an hour. Put your pile of pork ribbons on a sandwich, in tacos or douse them in vinegar sauce and eat them alone.
Instant Pot’s steady temperature regulation means your cheesecake is less likely to fall apart or come out the wrong texture. You could sub oreos for other toppings, but we’d judge you.
Corned beef is a drag to make. This is another example of the Instant Pot giving you the help that a standard stovetop can’t.
Pozole is a Mexican stew with loads of meaty, peppery flavor. It can take hours to cook properly on the stove, but an Instant Pot is able to shorten that to just north of an hour. Try making it with a chicken base, too.
All making a red sauce in the Instant Pot instead of a regular pot will do is speed up the process. You don’t have to use the recipe within the link below — use your own — but you could save yourself a couple hours by using the Instant Pot.
In quality, snootiness and overall variety, specialty glassware has risen hand-in-hand with the craft beer industry. Where once there were few options beyond beer steins and pint glasses, drinkers will find a wealth of options. From cheap restaurant glasses to Zalto’s beer-toting perfection, these are the best beer glasses you can buy right now.
The Teku glass is beer’s equivalent of the Zalto Universal wine glass. This is to say, it’s the benchmark by which every other glass is measured. Its wide base and narrow, thin-lipped top act to flush beer smells to the nose, and running against most other stemware, the glass is thick and won’t chip or break easily.
If Teku glasses are the Zaltos of the beer world, Zalto’s own glass is something else altogether. Its blown by hand using the same lead-free glass as its other stemware, yet manages to be crack- and chip-resistant. The classic deep tulip shape is ideal for pilsners and their ilk.
Meant for the endless varieties of Belgian beer, these wide and short glasses allow room for the drinker to swirl, agitate and sniff what it is they’re about the throw back. This specific glass is significantly thicker and sturdier than most Belgian-style glasses — if you want something with more finesse look toward Bormiolo Rocco’s brandy glass.
Lead-free, lightweight, thin and especially adept at flushing heavy hop notes to the nose, the IPA glass is an aggressive departure from what folks expect from a beer glass. Though it’s questionable whether the peculiar honey wand-shaped base aerates your beer as some avid fans say, it’s still a pretty excellent glass.
The Willi Becher is a shift away from the classic conical pint glass into something more elegant — a pint glass with a heavier base and slightly tapered silhouette. It’s ideal for pilsners and lagers, and it has managed to worm its way into many a taproom in the U.S.
Apart from looking good, the best part of Bormioli’s excellent glasses is that they’re not just for beer. Long popular with bars and restaurants for their toughness and low cost, the Bodega glass is starting to pop up in even the most orthodox of beer joints.
Do you need Riedel’s higher-end, gorgeous stemmed glasses to drink pilsners and lagers? You don’t. But if a hushed Bauhaus-inspired flex and supreme beer clarity matter to you, they’re worth a look.
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Brisket Heaven
Aaron Franklin, master barbecue pitmaster and owner of Franklin Barbecue, has designed and released his own smoker.
The pit is an offset smoker (the firebox, where the fuel burns, is attached to the hip of the grill) made of 600-plus pounds of steel. It’s available in natural steel and powder-coated steel and the cooking space is large enough for three briskets. Like any decent smoker, it’s designed for high circulation, temperature control and moisture retention (there’s a dedicated slot for a water pan). When available, the grill will ship to customers in one large crate.
Starting at $2,950, Franklin Barbecue Pits aren’t available for purchase yet, but you can get on the waitlist.
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Every list of the Best BBQ in the country includes Austin’s Franklin’s Barbecue because, to this day, it’s some of the best barbecue we’ve ever tasted. If you’ve had Franklin’s brisket, you know we’re not…
