J. Kenji López-Alt

Join us for the grand finale of the Moab Music Festival! Grab your life jacket and follow along as we cook our way down the Colorado River—literally. It was the most intense beauty and serenity punctuated by moments of exhilaration, exaltation, and occasional panic. It was slowly understanding that

Hey folks! A few years ago, as I was wrapping up work on my book, The Wok, I started thinking more about MSG and ways to get folks to use it more effectively in the kitchen. Today, I’m proud to introduce BADOP! It’s a blend of kosher salt and MSG designed to make all of your food taste better, using

Introducing BADOP! My new salt + MSG seasoning blend is available now. Now celebrate with a spicy michelada! A classic michelada is a savory Mexican beer cocktail that combines lime juice, hot sauce, and savory seasonings with light lager and is served over ice in a glass rimmed with seasoned salt.

Welcome to the one-stop shop for the food nerds in your life. Over the past few months, the team here at JKLA World HQ has been working on a special new project: a merchandise shop! You can explore the shop now at shop.kenjilopezalt.com. What Can You Expect? We wanted this space to be the one-stop s

Sweet, savory, and textural balance come together in this simple kabocha squash meal (also known as Kabocha no Nimono). Kabocha squash simmered in dashi, mirin, and soy sauce is one of my son Wombat’s favorite foods, so I make this quite regularly. There are two thing that make it particularly easy.

The Frienjis are turning one! We’re already looking forward to our next year with the best community of food nerds on the internet—we hope you join us for it. Dear Frienjis, This Sunday, October 18, marks one year since we launched this online community of Frienjis, and I’ve been trying to figure ou

Chicken thighs cooked on a simple stew of beans, spinach, and veg while managing to stay both crisp and tender using my new Our Place x Kenji Titanium Braiser Pro. My favorite part of restaurant work was always family meal; the shared meal the entire staff of a restaurant shares before service to ta

This blueprint recipe for do-it-yourself soup jars is perfect for back-to-school season and the chilly autumn months. Just add water! Today’s recipe is a true blueprint in the sense that I won’t be providing any specific ingredients whatsoever. After watching the video and reading the article, I hop

Ramen hacks have been known to take the internet by storm—for good reason. Here are some quick tips to upgrading those instant noodle packets you have lying around. Way back in 2011, I posted an article on Serious Eats that went about as viral as things could go in those early days of Web 2.0. It wa

Deeply browned mushrooms, rigatoni, and a loose, glossy cream sauce finished with pecorino, herbs, and lemon. I came across some beautiful chanterelles at Uwajimaya while filming our Japanese Pantry Guide the other day, and while I normally make this pasta dish with much less expensive mushrooms, I

Don’t have a hearth or a pizza oven but love the blistery crunch of flatbreads and pizzas? Time to fire up the grill! Use the recipe or blueprint technique below to achieve the perfect grilled flatbread. I’ve written about grilled pizza a number of times over the years (see my very old Serious Eats

Hi everyone, I wanted to take a quick moment to correct something I said in my latest knife-sharpening video. In that video, I repeated a very common explanation of the difference between sharpening and honing: Sharpening on a whetstone removes metal, while honing on a honing rod merely realigns a r

Follow along as we walk you through every aisle in a Japanese grocery store for a complete guide on stocking your pantry. This extended cut is exclusive for Patreon! Hi Frienjis, Community & Content Manager Erin here with our very last episode of the Kenji Eats Japan series! Earlier this year, our t

I walked down every aisle at my local Japanese grocery store to help prepare the ultimate guide for stocking a Japanese pantry. You can watch the extended cut of that video right here on Patreon or dive into the written guide below. PRODUCE Daikon Radish — 大根 (daikon) — Essential Daikon is a large w

A simple shoyu-dashi dressing, a mix of soy sauce and Japanese broth (powdered dashi works fine), makes an excellent seasoning for all kinds of summer vegetables or greens. Take this tomato salad I made a few weeks ago while visiting my sister in Bozeman. A trip to the farmers market turned up some

A dull knife is both frustrating and dangerous in the kitchen. Follow these steps—along with the visual instruction in the video above—to learn everything you need to know about honing and sharpening knives. Correction! After publishing this article, a number of folks pointed out that research exist

In pursuit of the perfect kitchen knife, we traveled to Tsubame-Sanjō, a world-famous metalworking region in Japan, with the help of some friends. Hi Frienjis, It’s Erin, Community & Content Manager here with a special episode of Kenji Eats Japan. So far in this series, we’ve brought you along to ba

Konbini are the cornerstones (quite literally) of quick, convenient food and drink throughout Japan. Kenji put the big three—7-Eleven, FamilyMart, and Lawson—to the test! Hi Frienjis, It’s Erin, Content & Community Manager here on Patreon with another episode of Kenji Eats Japan. This time, it’s a b

A skillet cake with jammy plums, buttery caramel, and a cornbread base that works just as well from scratch as it does from a box. Hi folks. I've got a problem that perhaps some of you can empathize with: Too many plums. I know, I know. But server, my steak is too juicy and my lobster is just too bu

Bento boxes and bullet trains go hand in hand in more ways than one. Follow along as we enjoy a taste test and trace the history of these iconic symbols of Japan. Content & Community Manager Erin here to introduce this episode of Kenji Eats Japan: Bento Boxes on a Bullet Train. Join Kenji and Akari