J. Kenji López-Alt

The beauty of lentil soup isn’t in how it looks (because let’s be honest, it’s unapologetically ugly) but in how effortlessly it teaches you the fundamentals of building flavor. Remember that old Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin writes a comic with a character named Barney whose father is a thinly

I'm not entirely sure why my old chef Ken Oringer put "Mexican Street Corn" on the menu at his Boston area Spanish restaurant Toro, seeing as the dish is neither a tapa nor Spanish, but it was there on the menu, and it was delicious. It also happened to be one of the restaurant’s top sellers (probab

Coleslaw, when it’s done right, is crisp, creamy, and refreshing—the cool, crunchy foil to smoky ribs or a juicy pulled pork sandwich. But you know how this story usually goes: you taste it in the kitchen and it’s perfect—bright, tangy, crunchy, balanced. Then ten minutes later, just as everyone’s d

As a line cook, I loved making family meal–the daily meal that would feed the other cooks and front of house staff would eat together before service. Restaurant work is all about consistency and repetition whereas family meal is all about making something delicious out of whatever odds and ends you

If you're new to fried rice, I suggest reading The Rules for Fried Rice first! This recipe was a product of a fridge full of various odds and ends, as fried rice recipes often are. It first appeared in my book, The Wok (you can get signed, personalized copies at BookLarder.com), but since then, I’ve

My friend and colleague Dan Souza demonstrated this technique for cutting broccoli on his Instagram account a while back and I've been using it ever since. The way I used to cut broccoli, I'd run my knife through the whole stalk. It worked fine for separating florets, but I'd inevitable leave behind

Broccoli cheese soup is not something I grew up with, but it's something I've grown to love. My favorite versions are intensely cheesy, but I wanted to create a version that actually celebrated broccoli, without sacrificing that creamy, cheesy goodness. Here's how I did it: Layering Broccoli Flavor:

Miso soup, one of the world's simplest soups made with nothing but dashi stock, miso paste, and garnishes, is comfort food to me, especially when it has bits of silken tofu, seaweed, and scallions floating in it. It's a meal I ate countless times at my grandmother's table, and one I still crave whet

This recipe is adapted from my book The Wok: Recipes and Techniques. You can get personalized copies shipped anywhere in the world from Book Larder. Fanqie chao dan, or tomato and scrambled eggs, is a dish that is both humble and beloved across China. It’s similar to, say, toast in America—while eve

This recipe is adapted from my book, The Wok (you can get signed and personalized copies here.) I wasn't always a fan of egg drop soup. My only experience was from those all-day lunch special steam tables, where it morphed into a thick, neon-yellow mess with rubbery egg bits, the occasional raw mush

Splitting fruits and vegetables is always divisive (see what I did there?), but splitting peppers can be especially so. The goal when prepping a bell pepper is to remove the seeds and internal ribs and pith, which have a papery texture and not a lot of flavor. Some folks like to use a method my frie

Dicing an onion is perhaps the culinary task performed more than any other. It's the first step to countless recipes and something that every cook in every restaurant in the world has done hundreds or thousands of times. But have you ever wondered if there's a truly best way to dice an onion? I did!

As a kid, one of my favorite snacks was cucumber sticks with a bit of salt for dipping. Now, with two kids who love cucumbers in nearly all their forms, they are the vegetables I buy, cut, and eat most often. Whether raw or marinated in salads, stuck into snack boxes, served alongside fried rice or

I grew up in an apartment in Morningside heights on the 10th floor of a high rise. My Japanese grandparents (we called them Kachan and Jita) lived directly below us in apartment 9J. On weekends, my mom would occasionally bring us downstairs to sleep over at my grandmother's place on a large, thick f

Depending on how you cut them, scallions can be used as a chunky vegetable in a stir fry or on the grill, or they can be used as a garnish for any number of dishes. But slicing a scallion properly is more than just for looks. The way you slice a scallion and the sharpness of your knife can have just

I've been playing around a lot recently with the idea of roasting or frying things in heavy cream. Heavy cream is essentially all the same constituent parts as regular butter, just in different ratios. For a given amount of butterfat, cream has a much higher ratio of water and milk solids (proteins

The basics of this recipe are from Serious Eats. You can find that recipe here: https://www.seriouseats.com/easy-vegetable-fried-rice-recipe The basics of this recipe are from Serious Eats. You can find that recipe here: https://www.seriouseats.com/easy-vegetable-fried-rice-recipe The main differenc