What to Cook

How to carve a turkey This task becomes easier if you let your turkey stand for about 20 minutes before carving. This will also give you a juicier end product, since the standing time lets the juices reabsorb into the meat. Put your turkey on a cutting board, and use a meat fork (a large fork with two tines) and a sharp carving knife to do the job. Place the turkey breast-side up, and pull the leg away from the body until the thigh bone pops out. Then cut through the joint. Slice along the breast bone to remove the breast meat, and then cut off the wings. Separate the thigh from the drumstick and slice pieces from the bone. 

The Bears return to NFC North division play this week with a matchup against the Minnesota Vikings at Soldier Field on Monday Night Football. The Bears (5-4) have lost three in a row, while the Vikings (3-5) have won two straight. Here are three things to know about the Minnesota Vikings: Dalvin Cook, Dalvin Cook and more Dalvin Cook Ever heard of this guy? Word on the street is he’s pretty good. Cook overtook Tennessee’s Derrick Henry as the NFL’s leading rusher this week, so for the second consecutive week, the Bears will face the NFL’s top rusher. Cook’s last two games were unreal. In Week 8 vs. Green Bay, he found the end zone four times. Cook rushed 30 times for 163 yards and three touchdowns, while catching two passes for 63 yards and a touchdown. In Week 9 against Detroit, Cook totaled 206 yards and two touchdowns on 22 carries for a ghastly 9.36 yards per carry average. He caught another two passes for 46 yards because why not? Again: Unreal. Cook currently has four ...

If we’d talked this time a year ago, I would have told you with giddy enthusiasm why I always, every year, without fail, make not one but two kinds of potato dishes on Thanksgiving (one mashed, one roasted). I would have explained, in excruciating detail, why I choose certain varieties of potatoes (the particular starch levels of these potatoes, the importance of these levels to their final textures), and how I treasure the chaotic vibes of a big holiday that I wasn’t brought up with, but adopted as an immigrant when I moved to the United States. This year, a day or two in the kitchen for a feast that disappears in minutes is unimaginable. I don’t think I’m supposed to admit this here in the Food section, but when I think about cooking, I’m filled with dread. People all over the country are exhausted by the losses of the pandemic, police violence and continuing protests against it, and the tensions of the election. Even nerdy cooks who found pleasure in freezing sheets of pie dou...

Successes are easy. Let’s talk about the failures. For her second cookbook, co-written with Deanna Segrave-Daly, Serena Ball had an unusual idea. She was developing a recipe for Beef and Quinoa Koftas — Middle-Eastern meatballs — and she thought she could add nutritional value and moisture by mixing in some chopped prunes. The idea makes sense on paper. But when she sent the recipe to a tester, the answer came back a big, fat NO. The tester said she doesn’t like prunes. They’re weird, she said. So the prunes came out of the recipe. The book was released last week. It is called “Easy Everyday Mediterranean Diet Cookbook,” and the title exactly describes the authors’ focus. Easy Everyday Mediterranean Diet Cookbook Credit: Courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt “We wanted people to understand that you can definitely do the Mediterranean diet — buy foods in regular grocery stores, have a pantry list that is budget-friendly and have a way to cook that is quick,” said Ball, a ...

Hi, and welcome to Five Weeknight Dishes. Emily is off so I’m stepping in for her today. The New York Times announced this week that we won’t be returning to our Times Square offices any sooner than July 6, 2021. I am happy that our company is prioritizing our safety, but also sad because I won’t get to see my beloved NYT Cooking colleagues in the flesh for many more months. (They are truly the best, most fun people. Vaughn Vreeland is just one delightful example.) But do you know what else it means? Three more seasons of cooking three meals a day for my family. (Cue Beethoven’s Fifth.) I foresee a lot of pasta with jarred sauce and sheet-pan meals in our future, and there is no shame in that. But I’m going to do my best to cook something a little different each week — like one of the new-to-me recipes below — to keep things lively. [ Sign up here to receive the Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter in your inbox every Friday.] Here are five dishes for the week: Image Credit.....

If you ever doubted whether cooking can help you teach your children about science, math, history and more, here’s an exercise for you: Set a nice, shiny red apple on the table. And then ask them: Where did apples originally come from? Why do they turn brown? How do they eat apples in India, or Latvia, or Ecuador? How many apples could fit in Lake Superior? Has anyone ever written a poem about an apple? Are there machines that pick apples, and how do they work? How do the farmers make money? Why are some apples better for baking than others? Could we make (and eat) a bunch of pies to figure out the answer? I first fell in love with food when I realized how many things it could teach me. Food is a basic function of animal life, without which, well, we die. It’s the great equalizer and connects to nearly every discipline if you remember how to ask questions like a child does. That’s why I make it the center of so many of the lessons I teach as I’m homeschooling my children. [How to ma...

Like many folks this year, I have been cooking a lot. Though I’ve always loved food and have had a deep and abiding interest for the art of cooking, I’ve definitely pushed myself to learn how to do a lot of things from scratch in the kitchen this year. From cooking a decent CTM to a respectable pie, I have hit a lot of my personal milestones over the past few months. One of the unforeseen consequences of my culinarily driven efforts to stay sane during quarantine this year has been a foray into testing out purpose driven kitchen devices. Though not quite single use (and actually pretty versatile in their own way) devices like the Ooni pizza oven and the Otto Grill have found their way into my ad-hoc outdoor kitchen and I have had a pretty enjoyable time pushing and prodding on them while simultaneously upping my own cooking game. Which leads me to this review of the Otto Wilde Grill . What is it? It’s a 16x17x11” self-contained propane broiler that features two top mounted bur...

When cooking for my family at home, I rarely use recipes. Instead, I’ll pull from a collection of what I refer to as culinary building blocks. And I’m not talking about a mental library of recipes and techniques (though those can help). I’m talking about actual, physical things. Open my fridge, and you’ll find a shocking number of plastic deli containers and Mason jars. Homemade and store-bought sauces, dressings, condiments, pickles, chile oils, sauce bases, concentrated stocks, curry pastes — anything that can add a quick, easy boost of flavor to my meals — take up a good 40 percent of my shelf space. Most restaurant walk-in refrigerators are similar. Fresh produce and raw meat might make up half the real estate, while the other half might be devoted to these building blocks. They’re an essential step in operational efficiency. There’s a reason restaurants are able to serve dishes that taste like they took all day to prepare between the time you placed your order and the time yo...