[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Weekly meal planner: Tex Mex family favourites Good Food[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Recipe: Boxty pancakes and bacon for St Brigid's Day BBC[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Silky and hearty: Hetty Lui McKinnon’s recipe for vegan mapo tofu with eggplant The GuardianWe’ve all been there: Desperately squeezing a lemon over a bowl in hopes that we’ll get anything out of it, even a drop. It's not exactly a fun time. We can all agree that the pre-squeezed stuff in the lemon-shaped bottle isn’t great—and is it even real juice? But it’s easy to get so fed up with dry citrus that we might actually consider buying it.
There are lots of hacks for juicing citrus floating around the internet. Microwave your lemons before juicing. Roll them against the countertop. Cut them top to bottom instead of around the equator. And my personal favorite: buy a citrus squeezer. But none of these tricks will coax juice from a lemon or lime that doesn’t have much juice to begin with. The best way to get more juice out of your citrus is to choose the correct fruit from the supermarket.
When we think of lemons, most of us picture the gorgeous, bright yellow ones with a thick, textured peel. These lemons may look great on Instagram, but they contain the least amount of juice. The best lemons for juicing are actually the ugliest. They are pale yellow in color with smooth, thin skin. They should feel slightly soft and—surprise—a bit juicy when you pick them up.
The same rule applies for limes: Pale green, thin-skinned limes will yield much more juice than their darker, bumpy-skinned siblings. And if you find one with balding brown patches on it, even better.
So, how do you make sure you’re getting the right kind of lemons when you go to the store? Well, start by actually going to the store. Grocery-delivery services are convenient, but there’s no way to ensure that whoever is packing your order will give you that imperfectly perfect citrus for juicing. (And if you’re thinking about putting it in the “notes” or “special request section,” forget about it.)
When you’re in the store, skip the prepackaged bags. You can’t possibly judge anything when it’s sealed inside those nets. Instead, handpick your citrus, one by one, from the bulk produce bin. Pick them up and run your fingertips over their skin. Give them a light squeeze to assess their juicy potential, then choose the best candidates.
When you get home, store your lemons in a dry zip-top bag in the fridge. They’ll keep much longer there than in that pretty bowl on your counter. Besides, if you bought the right ones, they’re not exactly beautiful specimens anyway, are they?
Assistant Food Editor
Taylor Ann Spencer is the assistant food editor at Delish, where she develops recipes, creates recipe videos, and styles food. With a background in writing and theater as well as professional cooking, she enjoys sharing her love for global flavors and all things baking through informational posts, hosted videos, and just plain everyday conversations. When she's not cooking, she's brainstorming her next culinary mash-up. Mac 'n' cheese chili rellenos, anyone?
A dash of gin and a smattering of fried sage make these sautéed chicken breasts more than the usual weeknight dinner.
When Amy Thielen was a child, she was a gabber: someone who needed to verbalize the thoughts out of her head before they overwhelmed her. To “pour the foam off,” as she put it. While her mother cooked at the stovetop, the young Thielen sat on a yellow vinyl-padded swivel stool at the kitchen island, twirling and talking her mother’s ear off about seventh grade. This proximity to the “action” of cooking, a sort of learning by absorption, would form the foundation of Thielen’s culinary education as she moved through her life later as a restaurant line cook and cookbook author. Details like how to cut the mushrooms and when to flip the chicken, and what to do with the fond that collects on the bottom of the pan (make a sauce, of course). “It was like I could be watching Food Network,” she said to me over the phone, “but it was live.”
Years later, Thielen would surmise that attention to such details was the key to what I consider her best chicken breast recipe to date, from her forthcoming cookbook, “Company.” Here’s the idea: If you treat something as humble as a chicken dinner with the care you would, say, a butter-basted rib-eye or a miso-glazed cod fillet, then the end result will be restaurant-quality. The best cooking requires attention — to your guests, to your food, to yourself and your movements. “Be prepared to stand stoveside and watch the bottom of the pan with predatory focus,” she advises in the recipe’s headnote, “because if you let yourself be called away, the precious browned foundation will burn and the whole sauce will be thrown.”
The dish is a culmination of all the minute details that make something good great.
Though she fondly recalls her mother cooking in sturdy Club Aluminum pans, these days she recommends using stainless steel, something “semistick.” That’s how you get what Thielen’s grandmother used to call pan schmutz (and what Thielen calls, in her first cookbook, “The New Midwestern Table,” pan smut, “that delicious stuck-on crud, the pure flavor shellacked to the bottom of the pan”). This simple feat of magic is the basis of many a stew, sauce and chicken supper.
Most pan sauces rely on stock or wine for deglazing, but this one has a twist. “If someone were to stand over a pan of sautéing chicken holding an ice-cold martini and happen to slosh it into the pan, you would have this sauce,” Thielen writes. The gin idea came from her time cooking on the line at the French restaurant Bouley, which closed in 2017. But that version used duck, and the broth was a concentrate that took forever to make. (Thielen’s chicken is a little more streamlined, though still detailed.) The dish is, as she learned in restaurant kitchens like Bouley, a culmination of all the minute details that make something good great.
As with any recipe, this golden, crispy-skinned chicken — complete with killer pan sauce — could be considered more of a general technique than a strict formula, one you can adapt to your own kitchen. But there’s one caveat: The breast should still have its skin. In most supermarkets in the United States, chicken breasts are sold either boneless and skinless or bone-in and skin-on. Boneless works, but “if there’s no skin, there’s no recipe,” she told me. That’s because the chicken cooks almost entirely on the skin side, relying on the insulation, and fat, to keep the meat moist, not to mention that you end up with the most crackly crust. To achieve this, Thielen advises carving the meat off the rib cage of a bone-in breast, or do as she does in the remote woods of northern Minnesota, where she lives with her family: Remove the breasts from a whole bird yourself. If we want nice things, sometimes we have to work for them a bit.
When I made this chicken for the first time, for my boyfriend and me, he sat at the kitchen island talking to me while I cooked. I’m a terrible multitasker, but I can listen. Like a good true-crime podcast on a long road trip, his chitchat helps me maintain my focus, and when I don’t have a third or fourth hand to dry the sage leaves before I fry them in the butter or to pound the breasts into an even thickness, I know I can turn to him. Every cook needs a gabber, someone to keep you company in the kitchen, but even better and more useful are their taste buds. When he took a bite, he said, “This is the best chicken I’ve ever had.” I agreed. The perfectly cooked white meat with the savory, juniper-pierced jus, in between chomps of crispy sage leaves, is full of delights and surprises you can achieve only by paying close attention.
This is, for me, the chicken dinner of chicken dinners, comforting and familiar but fancy enough to cook for company, or for Valentine’s Day. Even better if your date is sitting at the kitchen island gabbing.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(999x0:1001x2)/pimento-cheese-012423-6659828c2d1341659ac3d84be41aaa51.jpg)
Alon Shaya's 25-minute pimiento cheese dip makes for the "perfect party snack for watching sports games or getting the night started," says the chef-owner at Saba in New Orleans and Safta in Denver.
To pair with it, Shaya uses ghee, or clarified butter, to turn up the flavor of a simple cracker. "Ghee can be cooked for longer and at a higher temperature than butter so it will impart the same rich flavor without scorching. Using it to fry the saltines is easy to do and transports a common pantry item into a real showstopper," he says.
"The final dish should have a kick of spice from the pimento peppers, tang from the hot sauce and vinegar and a creamy, spreadable texture," adds Shaya. "A rich, buttery saltine that helps to balance the flavors."
8 oz. aged sharp white Cheddar cheese, grated (about 2 cups)
8 oz. aged sharp yellow Cheddar cheese, grated (about 2 cups)
½ cup mayonnaise
½ cup thinly sliced scallions (from 6 scallions)
1 (4-oz.) jar pimientos, drained and chopped
2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
2 Tbsp. hot sauce
1 tsp. kosher salt
½ tsp. freshly ground black pepper
½ cup ghee (clarified butter)
1 (4-oz.) sleeve saltine crackers (about 36 crackers)
1. Stir together Cheddar cheeses, mayonnaise, scallions, pimientos, apple cider vinegar, hot sauce, salt and pepper in a large mixing bowl until fully combined.
2. Melt ghee in a large skillet over medium heat until shimmering. Working in batches, add saltines to skillet in a single layer. Fry until crisp and golden, about 30 seconds per side. Transfer crackers to a paper-towel-lined plate to drain. Repeat with remaining crackers, adding additional ghee to skillet as needed. Serve crackers with pimiento cheese. (Pimiento cheese can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.)
Serves: 12
Active time: 25 minutes
Total time: 25 minutes
A dash of gin and a smattering of fried sage make these sautéed chicken breasts more than the usual weeknight dinner.
When Amy Thielen was a child, she was a gabber: someone who needed to verbalize the thoughts out of her head before they overwhelmed her. To “pour the foam off,” as she put it. While her mother cooked at the stovetop, the young Thielen sat on a yellow vinyl-padded swivel stool at the kitchen island, twirling and talking her mother’s ear off about seventh grade. This proximity to the “action” of cooking, a sort of learning by absorption, would form the foundation of Thielen’s culinary education as she moved through her life later as a restaurant line cook and cookbook author. Details like how to cut the mushrooms and when to flip the chicken, and what to do with the fond that collects on the bottom of the pan (make a sauce, of course). “It was like I could be watching Food Network,” she said to me over the phone, “but it was live.”
Years later, Thielen would surmise that attention to such details was the key to what I consider her best chicken breast recipe to date, from her forthcoming cookbook, “Company.” Here’s the idea: If you treat something as humble as a chicken dinner with the care you would, say, a butter-basted rib-eye or a miso-glazed cod fillet, then the end result will be restaurant-quality. The best cooking requires attention — to your guests, to your food, to yourself and your movements. “Be prepared to stand stoveside and watch the bottom of the pan with predatory focus,” she advises in the recipe’s headnote, “because if you let yourself be called away, the precious browned foundation will burn and the whole sauce will be thrown.”
The dish is a culmination of all the minute details that make something good great.
Though she fondly recalls her mother cooking in sturdy Club Aluminum pans, these days she recommends using stainless steel, something “semistick.” That’s how you get what Thielen’s grandmother used to call pan schmutz (and what Thielen calls, in her first cookbook, “The New Midwestern Table,” pan smut, “that delicious stuck-on crud, the pure flavor shellacked to the bottom of the pan”). This simple feat of magic is the basis of many a stew, sauce and chicken supper.
Most pan sauces rely on stock or wine for deglazing, but this one has a twist. “If someone were to stand over a pan of sautéing chicken holding an ice-cold martini and happen to slosh it into the pan, you would have this sauce,” Thielen writes. The gin idea came from her time cooking on the line at the French restaurant Bouley, which closed in 2017. But that version used duck, and the broth was a concentrate that took forever to make. (Thielen’s chicken is a little more streamlined, though still detailed.) The dish is, as she learned in restaurant kitchens like Bouley, a culmination of all the minute details that make something good great.
As with any recipe, this golden, crispy-skinned chicken — complete with killer pan sauce — could be considered more of a general technique than a strict formula, one you can adapt to your own kitchen. But there’s one caveat: The breast should still have its skin. In most supermarkets in the United States, chicken breasts are sold either boneless and skinless or bone-in and skin-on. Boneless works, but “if there’s no skin, there’s no recipe,” she told me. That’s because the chicken cooks almost entirely on the skin side, relying on the insulation, and fat, to keep the meat moist, not to mention that you end up with the most crackly crust. To achieve this, Thielen advises carving the meat off the rib cage of a bone-in breast, or do as she does in the remote woods of northern Minnesota, where she lives with her family: Remove the breasts from a whole bird yourself. If we want nice things, sometimes we have to work for them a bit.
When I made this chicken for the first time, for my boyfriend and me, he sat at the kitchen island talking to me while I cooked. I’m a terrible multitasker, but I can listen. Like a good true-crime podcast on a long road trip, his chitchat helps me maintain my focus, and when I don’t have a third or fourth hand to dry the sage leaves before I fry them in the butter or to pound the breasts into an even thickness, I know I can turn to him. Every cook needs a gabber, someone to keep you company in the kitchen, but even better and more useful are their taste buds. When he took a bite, he said, “This is the best chicken I’ve ever had.” I agreed. The perfectly cooked white meat with the savory, juniper-pierced jus, in between chomps of crispy sage leaves, is full of delights and surprises you can achieve only by paying close attention.
This is, for me, the chicken dinner of chicken dinners, comforting and familiar but fancy enough to cook for company, or for Valentine’s Day. Even better if your date is sitting at the kitchen island gabbing.
