I’ve had tacos with halibut, snapper, and even salmon. I’ve enjoyed tacos with deep-fried fish and tacos with grilled fish. I’ve sampled tacos with tongue-tingling tingling mayo and tacos with tangy fruit salsa. I’ve had tacos at fancy San Francisco restaurants with white tablecloths and tacos from open air taquerias overlooking the Pacific Ocean. But there really is only one kind of fish taco that I routinely make myself at home: these easy pan-seared fish tacos with citrusy mayo and a simple cabbage slaw....

When it comes to stir-fry, it’s all about the prep. The dish itself cooks up so quickly that you need everything prepped and ready to go before you start adding the elements to the hot pan. A couple elements of the recipe to note. We are blanching the asparagus in boiling water a couple minutes. This will ensure that the asparagus will be cooked in the short stir-frying time. Flank steak is a lean cut of meat, which can be tough and chewy if it isn’t cut properly (across the grain of the meat) for this dish....

What Is German Potato Salad? For German potato salad, sliced potatoes are tossed with bacon, sautéed onions, fresh herbs, and a mustardy white wine dressing. It’s a nice change-up from the classic mayonnaise-based version, and you can serve it warm or chilled. How to Make the Best Potato Salad I follow a couple rules to ensure an excellent potato salad. First, I make sure to use waxy potatoes, the smaller the better....

Ginger garlic paste is an extremely popular condiment. Many South Asian households make it fresh, then store it in the fridge for daily cooking. How to Make Ginger Garlic Paste from Scratch While you can purchase ginger garlic paste, it’s easy to make it yourself. My great-grandmother used to grind her ginger and garlic into a paste by hand using a flat stone and a stone rolling pin! Commonly found in: South Asian cooking These days, many home cooks elect to use a small electric blender or wet spice grinder....

Those slices become golden and caramelized around the edges, while turning tender and juicy underneath. Every bite is subtly sweet and perfect. I also make this with a crust that is paleo-friendly and gluten-free so that everyone at your table can enjoy a slice. Trust me, this crust is just as buttery and crisp as traditional pie crust. Since the paleo diet consists of whole foods and avoids grains and refined sugar, you can imagine that a paleo tart crust can be a challenge....

This mouth-puckering pick-me-up is a straightforward mix of just gin (or vodka) and grapefruit juice served on the rocks, like a sour Screwdriver. Simple and versatile–it is well-worth learning the ins-and-outs of. This recipe has the addition of bitters and simple syrup, but you can strip that all away and have a 2-ingreident cocktail with just grapefruit juice and your spirit of choice. What’s in a Greyhound Cocktail? The Classic Greyhound requires no more than gin or vodka, and fresh-as-you-can-get-it grapefruit juice....

So, when I opened David Lebovitz’s book, The Perfect Scoop and found a recipe for coffee ice cream, the ice cream maker bowl immediately went into the freezer. If you make your own coffee ice cream, you can make it with decaffeinated beans! No late night jitters. Safe for kids. David has provided helpful advice for me on practically every ice cream recipe on this site, which have all turned out great, so it’s no wonder that his new book’s recipes are spot on....

What’s in Italian Seasoning? The ingredient list can vary, but almost all Italian seasoning blends contain dried oregano, basil, rosemary, and thyme. Many also include marjoram and/or sage, as our’s does. Store-bought seasoning will sometimes include garlic powder, red pepper flakes, and/or salt. This blend sticks to dried herbs, but you can customize it and add other spices to make it your own. How to Choose and Store Spices To make the best-tasting blend, it’s important to use quality, fresh dried spices....

It’s a versatile condiment that can be used in so many ways—for dipping, drizzling, saucing, marinating, and much more! How to Make Zhoug For this recipe, I use jalapeños, but you can use any spicy green chili like bird’s eye chili. They are very fiery so I would recommend using 1 or 2 only. Zhoug is traditionally made by toasting spices, roasting the garlic, and then combining them with coarsely chopped herbs and chilis....

Skirt steak can be simply seasoned or marinated for extra gusto – it’s often used to make fajitas. It’s best cooked in high heat for a short time, to deliver juicy slices of meat quickly to the dinner table. What Is Skirt Steak? Skirt steak is a thin, long cut with visible grain. It comes from the short plate or diaphragm area of the steer, just under the rib section....

Until my mother showed me her way of making stovetop popcorn, I usually took the easy way out and used (gasp!) microwave popcorn. My mother’s method of making popcorn not only pops almost every kernel, it also prevents the kernels from burning. She first learned this technique decades ago from the back of a popcorn box. Her approach allows the popcorn kernels to come to an even temperature before popping, which results in much fewer un-popped kernels (usually none) and fewer burnt kernels (again, usually none)....

This, straight from the mouth of my nine-year old nephew, who, since mint-chocolate-chip is his favorite ice cream flavor, has probably had more mint chocolate chip ice cream in the last year than any of us have had in the last twenty. Needless to say, hearing such a declaration when you’ve gone the extra effort to make ice cream from scratch is rather gratifying, don’t you think? Why Use Fresh Mint We have a couple of mint patches growing in our yard, though I never thought to use the mint we grow for ice cream until now....

Chewy rice cakes, in many forms both sweet and savory, are popular in several Asian cuisines. The sticky rice cake dessert, Nian Gao, is not the same as the chewy rice cake ovalettes, also called Nian Gao, that are stir-fried in Shanghai cuisine. (Confused yet?) My baked Nian Gao is dense and chewy, similar to the texture of a soft gummy bear. The enjoyable bouncy chew is one of its big draws....

There’s only one problem: I am usually fighting a hard brick of sugar, and that adds about 10 minutes to my projected cooking time, not to mention a boatful of aggravation. But one day I found a brown sugar keeper that solved all those problems. How to Soften Brown Sugar: Other Ways Before I had a designated brown sugar keeper, I tried the trick of adding apple slices to my brown sugar and enclosing it in a plastic bag....

The problems: The roll never tears cleanly.I always over- or under-estimate the amount needed to cover a sheet pan.The roll wants to win at all costs. You want the paper to lie flat on the pan? Good luck with that.The trace-and-cut method for cake pans leaves scraps that aren’t sized for anything useful, so I have to throw them away.Speaking of which, it’s just a hassle to measure and cut parchment paper!...

This Oreo Cheesecake starts with an Oreo crust filled with a baked cheesecake filling mixed with crushed Oreos. After cooling, the top of the cake is coated with smooth white chocolate ganache and decorated with whipped cream and even more Oreos. It’s indulgent, nostalgic, and unmistakably cookies and cream. How to Bake a Cheesecake in a Water Bath A water bath is the secret to making a luxurious, velvety cheesecake....

And once you know how to make them, you will never have an excuse to not cook sweet potatoes again. Those kids who won’t eat their veggies? Ha! They’ll eat so many of these fries, their skin will turn yellow from beta carotene. Munch. Yum. Munch. Yum. I’m still eating them in my mind. I brought these over for my father to try. I think he only got to eat one or two because he was also eating the rest of his dinner, the dinner I abandoned in favor of these....

It makes a dramatic Christmas dessert or breakfast treat. Its Milanese origins date back to the Renaissance, when, it is said, wheat was so scarce and precious it was made only at Christmas. These days, scores of beautifully wrapped versions of this tall, round cake appear pretty much everywhere in December in Italian and even ordinary grocery stores. Those versions vary in quality; many of them are rather cloying with artificial flavors....

These nutty cookies have a cake-like interior, but they are bordered with a crisp, buttery edge that keeps you going back for more. I have to restrain myself when eating them because they’re that tasty. I believe the perfect cookie must have those crisp, lightly browned edges, but they better not be flat and sad. Instead, I want a plump, thick interior that has some chew to it. These cookies exceed those requirements and are both freezer and make-ahead friendly....