To roast a side of salmon that was silky throughout and evenly browned across its surface, we salted it for an hour, which helped the flesh retain moisture and protein (which would otherwise seep out unattractively during roasting). Placing it on a greased aluminum foil sling ensured that it was easy to transfer to a serving platter. For cooking, we set the salmon on a wire rack set in a rimmed baking sheet to encourage air circulation around the fillet. Evenly brushing the salmon's surface with honey encouraged rapid browning. We found that a three-step cooking process gave us the best results. First, we preheated the oven to 250 degrees to warm the entire oven, which ensured that cooking happened quickly and evenly. Second, we broiled the fillet until it just began to brown. Third, we again turned the oven heat to 250 degrees to allow the fillet to gently cook through.
Moules frites are easily one of my favorite things to order at a seafood restaurant. If you eat a dish like this outdoors in the summertime, ideally with your feet in the sand or resting gently on the grass, you will remember it forever. Don’t be afraid to work with mussels—they take a little while to clean, but they cook in minutes and are very inexpensive.
In hindsight, stuffing a meatball with a tot seems like an obvious idea, but I couldn’t find any evidence of it being done before! After testing the merits of precooking the tots to add an extra dimension of brown flavor and crispness, my tasters unanimously agreed that the uncooked tots worked better. This is because browning the tots essentially seals them inside a crust, keeping them separate from the meat surrounding them. But when you wrap the thawed tots in meat, they really become one with the meatballs and the delicious pork flavor permeates the tots.
Why have a burger with some tots on the side when you can just build a burger with tots as the bun! These mini tot sliders are first and foremost insanely cute. Believe it or not, they are actually pretty easy to make, too. But most important—they are extremely delicious. If you serve your friends these sliders when they come over for the big game, they will lose their minds!
Pot stickers, known as jiaozi in China, are a kind of meat or vegetable-filled dumpling, commonly eaten across Asia.
A good dip is hard to resist.
A blend of nutritional yeast, cardamom, smoked paprika, and turmeric at the ready go a long way toward keeping your snack life spicy.
Be prepared to fry the potatoes twice: once to cook them so they fluff inside and again to get them crispy on the outside. When I use an electric fryer, I always follow the manufacturer's instructions. To make good fries in a pot on the stove, a deep-fat thermometer is essential. It ensures that the oil is at the proper temperature for deep-frying and lets you check that the oil isn't overheating, a potentially dangerous situation. A mandoline is a very useful slicing tool for cutting the potatoes (and other vegetables) quickly and to a uniform size. Both the deep-fat thermometer (also called a candy thermometer) and the mandoline are available at most cookware stores. The third essential is a pot that is large and tall enough to contain the oil without overflowing when the potatoes are slipped in.
Pile them high, as much as you like, and to your heart's content.
An update on the onion dip you know and love.