I Can’t Get Over the Dreamy Peel-and-Stick Pink Backsplash in This Kitchen

Nadia Chaudhry

Neapolitan cookies, Taiwanese popcorn chicken, and a chicken soup recipe to cure your crummies

It’s week trazillion-and-fourteen of pandemic cooking, and you’ve hit a rut. Nay, a trench. You’ve done all the things one can do to a bean, and while the digital cook-o-sphere is loaded with ideas, there are just too many of them. You scroll a few blogs, flip through some cookbooks, and give up. Beany Thursday strikes again.

We’ve been there. We are there. But help is here. To sort through the noise of TikTok tortilla wraps and feta pastas, Eater has compiled a handful of the recipes — from blogs, magazines, publications, and cookbooks — that put the pep back in our pans this week and that we hope will do the same for you. These are the dishes that Eater editors from across the country actually made recently, and we’re passing along any firsthand tips, hacks, or dietary substitutions that, hey, worked for us. Here, then, are this week’s must-try recipes from Eater’s very-much-average but highly enthusiastic home cooks.

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April 30, 2021

Neapolitan Cookies

Sarah Kieffer, 100 Cookies/The Vanilla Bean Blog

I felt the need last week to make a slightly more involved cookie than the usual sugar or chocolate chip, so I turned to Sarah Kieffer’s 100 Cookies (my new go-to bake book) for inspiration. The Neapolitan cookie looked fun and pretty; plus, I’m a fan of trying to use up ingredients that I have at home already: My dad sent a package of freeze-dried strawberries a while back, and I always seem to have arguably too much cacao powder in my pantry. My less-than-stellar food processor left larger chunks of strawberries, a happy accident that left deliciously gummy pieces and added a nice texture to the cookies. I added more food dye than the recipe called for, too, because I wanted a brighter cookie. I had fun figuring out how to mold the three colored doughs together. The final cookies were tasty and a good challenge — I liked attempting to take a huge bite of all three flavors at the same time — and were a hit with friends and my vaccination volunteering teams. — Nadia Chaudhry, Eater Austin editor

Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken with Fried Basil

Sue Li, NYT Cooking

They say the path to hell is paved with good intentions to make recipes you’ve seen online — and by they, I’m not so subtly referring to my unnecessarily judgmental bookmarked recipes folder. To end my purgatory, I made Sue Li’s delightfully nuanced, anise-and-cinnamon-fragrant Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken with Fried Basil. The marinating and frying processes drew primarily on pantry staples (soy sauce, salt, sugar, tapioca flour, and Chinese five-spice powder), and they were so simple that even my frying-wary sister coaxed shatteringly crisp, golden nuggets and glassy shards of basil from the oil, which we paired with simple offerings of rice and lemon-spiked asparagus. While the pictures may not do it justice, referring to this clip from Lil Nas X’s ‘Montero’ playing in reverse is an accurate depiction of what it feels like to make this recipe. — Jesse Sparks, Eater cities editor

Picadillo

Rick Martinez, Bon Appétit

“Every family has their own version of picadillo,” reads the headnote on this Bon Appetit recipe. Sure enough, my household has made this picadillo — with several tweaks — a weeknight staple. I’ll be honest: I rarely cook, so it’s my partner, Daniel, doing the work here. His adaptations: Start with the onion, not the beef, and add oregano, basil, and thyme — “my herb trifecta,” in his words — to the spice mix, along with paprika for color. Double the amount of garlic (“always double garlic”), and simmer a guajillo chile and bay leaf in with the mix. Last but not least, he swaps in Beyond Meat for the beef, which tastes just as good and suits both our dietary restrictions. Hey, every family has their version. — Ellie Krupnick, Eater director of editorial operations

Ellen Fort

Smoked Brisket

Danielle Bennett, Traeger Grills

Last weekend was particularly nice, so naturally I spontaneously purchased an enormous brisket from Black Hawk Farms, a Kentucky-based farm selling American Wagyu, at the farmers market. It had been a while since I fed a group of friends, so it felt right: We’ve all been vaccinated, and the weather demanded outdoor activities, such as throwing slabs of meat onto grills. I followed the direction and recipe of Danielle “Diva Q” Bennett, a chef ambassador for Traeger Grills; she has a great video on how to properly trim a brisket, which is invaluable. I followed this recipe, more or less, with the addition of Diva Q’s suggestion to spritz the brisket with apple juice every hour (you can steal the juice from your kids’ stash, like I did; it does not have to be fresh-pressed). After hours and hours of gentle smoking on the Traeger, and a cozy aluminum foil wrapping for the last couple hours of cooking, the meat came out glistening and jiggly, just like the barbecue gods intended. My friends approved, and a small chunk of leftover brisket became nachos over the weekend. — Ellen Fort, Eater San Francisco interim editor

Conveyor Belt Chicken

Samin Nosrat, Salt Fat Acid Heat

Chicken thighs are one of those ingredients everyone insists is “foolproof,” but it wasn’t until I tried Samin Nosrat’s Conveyor Belt Chicken from Salt Fat Acid Heat that it actually felt that way. The recipe is so named because “a friend told her that it’s so good you’ll want a conveyor belt to get that chicken into your mouth as quickly as possible” and is less a recipe than an endlessly adaptable technique. The boned thighs are cooked low, pressed down by a cast iron pan or heavy can of tomatoes (whatever you use, wrap it in foil first), resulting in the perfectly crispy skin and juicy meat you’re going for. We topped them with an easy herb salsa (blitz whatever fresh herbs you have with shallots and olive oil) and served them with some roasted sweet potatoes we needed to cook. I can’t exaggerate how easy this was. — Jaya Saxena, Eater staff writer

Roasted Chicken Matzo Ball Soup

Jake Cohen, Jew-Ish (excerpted by the Pioneer Woman)

I’m thrilled to report that my husband and I are slated to get our second vaccine dose within a week of each other, but I (like most of us) have heard varying reports about the next-day crummies. I decided to plan ahead and make a pot of my ol’ faithful cure-all, matzo ball soup, to stock in the freezer in case either of us need it. Seeing as I currently have no actual Jewish mothers present who would be insulted if I didn’t use their generations-old recipe (note: I’m 90 percent certain it’s the one from the box of the matzo meal), I decided to switch things up and try a version from one of my new favorite cookbooks, Jew-Ish: A Cookbook: Reinvented Recipes from a Modern Mensch, by the glorious and hilarious Jake Cohen. His recipe doesn’t stray too far from my tried-and-true, but it does roast the vegetables before making the stock, which resulted in a richer, darker elixir that I fully expect to take care of anything Pfizer or Moderna throws at us. — Lesley Suter, Eater travel editor

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April 23, 2021

Missy Fredrick

Sourdough English Muffins

King Arthur Baking

Prakas’ Rib-Eye

Kris Yenbamroong, Food & Wine

Green Rice with Tomatoes, Eggs, and Almonds

David Tamarkin, Epicurious

Overnight Chia Pudding

Solid Starts

Butter Mochi

Sheldon Simeon, Cook Real Hawaiʻi

Zoe’s Devil’s Food Cake

Zoe François, Zoe Bakes

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April 16, 2021

Stefania Orrù

Chocolate Thumbprints

• Martha Stewart

Farro Salad with Leeks, Chickpeas, and Currants

• Melissa Clark, NYT Cooking

Blueberry Crumb Cake

• Maida Heatter, Happiness Is Baking: Cakes, Pies, Tarts, Muffins, Brownies, Cookies: Favorite Desserts from the Queen of Cake

Lamb Chops with Red Lentils

• Nik Sharma, Sunset

Simple Quiche with Sweet Potato Crust

• Chris Morocco, Bon Appétit

Whole Roasted Gochujang Cauliflower with Smashed Roasted Butter Beans

• Hetty McKinnon, To Asia, With Love

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April 9, 2021

Rebecca Flint Marx

Buckwheat Banana Bread

• Roxana Jullapat, Mother Grains

Kuku Sabzi

• Samin Nosrat, NYT Cooking

Air Fryer Cracklin’ Chicken

• Nom Nom Paleo

Spiced Coconut Chicken Rice

• Shayma Owaise Saadat, Bon Appétit

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April 2, 2021

Missy Frederick

8-Inch Flour Tortillas

• Cooks Country

Maeun Dwaeji Galbijjim (Slow Cooker Pork Ribs)

• Hyosun, Korean Bapsang

Cheddar-Walnut Gougères

• Dorie Greenspan, NYT Cooking

Llubav’s Green Spaghetti

• Julia Turshen, Simply Julia

Roast Chicken with Apricots and Olives

• Susan Spungen, NYT Cooking

Orange-Cardamom Olive Oil Cake

• Carolina Gelen, Food 52

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For the complete list of everything Eater editors have enjoyed cooking so far this year (pizza babka! air-fryer ube cheesecake! spiced coconut chicken and rice!), head to the archive.

Source : food