James Kenji Lopez-Alt

For the Best Salsa Verde, Char, Char, and Char Some More

There's a wide range of salsas which I could comfortably see myself settling down and going steady with, but this charred salsa verde is my first and longest-lasting love when it comes to things I can dip my chips in, if you know what I mean. Smoky, spicy, sweet, and bright, its complexity is belied by its short ingredients list: nothing but chiles, tomatillos, onion, and cilantro (and salt if you want to be that guy in the comments who always says "isn't salt an ingredient?").

If you h...

Want Perfect French Omelettes? Start With Water

I've been writing about French omelettes for many years now. In fact, the last time I wrote about French omelettes, I wrote about how much I've written about French omelettes. But the last time I covered the subject, it was with a quick and dirty video which introduced what I think is actually the most us...

How to Make Buttery Fried Eggs

You can find this technique and a few others in my Youtube video Four Ways to Fry Eggs.

These are eggs the way my grandmother used to make them. Tender, bareley-set whites, yolks that are thoroughly liquid, and a buttery emulsified sauce enrobing all of it.

Buttery Fried Eggs

Every recipe I publish here is personally tested, tasted, and approved.

What I like about this recipe:<...

I couldn't try every variety of Reese's if I wanted to (and I want to).

WTF, Reese's. You're getting out of hand.

A couple days ago I was recording the upcoming Super Bowl snacks episode of my friend Ed Levine's podcast Special Sauce and as we usually do, we got off on a tangent. This time it was about the wild proliferation of Reese's products. According to 2025-01-29 14:00:15 +0000 UTC View Post

Matcha Toast with Soft Boiled Eggs is a Singapore-Inspired Sweet and Savory Breakfast 

This recipe is a riff on Singaporean kaya toast with soft eggs using store-bought matcha jam in place of the traditional coconut jam (along with a dab of chili crisp).

The other day, while in the bread and toppings section of Uwajimaya picking up a loaf of shokupan (Japanese milk bread), I spotted a jar of 2025-01-27 14:00:16 +0000 UTC View Post

The Mathematically Best Way to Cut an Onion

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! So I went on a quest for the perfect onion-dicing technique; the method that produces the most even dice with the fewest number of knife strokes.

Here's what I found:

Why You Should "Fry" Your Eggs in Cream

You can find this technique and a few others in my Youtube video Four Ways to Fry Eggs.

We all love the smell of browned butter, right? That nutty, savory aroma you get when you heat butter until the milk solids in it start to turn golden?

What if I told you that you can brown heavy cream in the same exact way. N...

Knife Skills: How to Shop for, Store, and Chop Shallots

Before I'd actually tasted shallots, I was always told that they are sweeter and more mild than a regular onion. I don't actually find this to be the case. To my palate they have amore pungent, garlicky aroma than a typical onion. However, we typically use them in small quantities. Think: an accent to a vinaigrette, tossed with roasted vegetables, sautéed with garlic for a pan sauce, or as the base for a risotto.

Like onions and garlic, controlling their pungency is a key part of their...

What's the Best Bread for French Toast?

What's the best bread for French toast? To be honest, this is not the most relevant question. At least in my home, French toast is made with whatever kind of bread we have on hand, whether it's sliced bread from the suparmarket, some leftover baguette from last night's cheeseboard, the stale pannettone someone is bound to gift me each year (panettone makes excellent French toast), or the end of loaf of croissant bread from 2024-12-20 19:36:19 +0000 UTC View Post

Dear Alcohol, we need to talk.

I have not been quiet about my sobriety journey, but I have also never explicitly talked about it.

Today, I’m going to.

I’d like to share with you a letter I wrote as the final assignment for the first phase of an outpatient recovery program I’m completing with Lakeside-Milam Recovery Centers, at their East Lake location. The letter is a breakup letter to alcohol. It’s something everyone who goes through th...

Origami Egg Sandwiches

This is a fun way to make egg sandwiches for one. It's a technique that's inspired by Anda Toast, the Indian egg toast you find in the streets of Calcutta.

I've never been to Calcutta, but if you are to believe everything you see on the internet (and why wouldn't you), anda toast made by cooking a thin omelet of eggs seasoned with onions, cilantro, and chiles in a sizzling hot skillet until the bottom is set but the top is still runny. A couple slices of soft bread are added to the top...

How to Cut Cucumbers like a Badass

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 Peking duck, smashed Sichuan-style, or even 2024-12-06 08:36:25 +0000 UTC View Post

Better-Than-McDonald's Breakfast Sandwiches (And More Work, Too!) | Kenji's Cooking Show

Quick! Place the following four things in chronological order

• The founding of Nintendo

• The invention of the modern breakfast sandwich

• The discovery of Pluto

• The Michael Jackson album Thriller

Would it surprise you to find out that the breakfast sandwich, invented in 1972, is the second most recent of these four things?

OK, this is not quite true. The idea of a sandwich consisting of eggs and meat on...

Eggs Benedict for a Crowd

One of my earliest cooking jobs was at a fine dining restaurant in Boston near the State House. Once a week or so, the restaurant would open early to serve breakfast to politicians and bigwigs who'd rent it out for their fundraisers or meetings. As the new guy, it was my job to get there early to make breakfast.

This meant lots and lots of poached eggs and hollandaise.

Back then, I made Eggs Benedict—the classic brunch dish of poached eggs on top of a toasted English muffin wit...

All my Favorite Thanksgiving Recipes

I realize it’s the day before Thanksgiving, but if you, like me, are a last-minute planner and still have not decided on which recipes you’re going to be following this year, here’s a guide for you.

I’ve been testing and writing recipes for nearly two decades now, and as any recipe writer will tell you, that means a heckuva lot of turkeys, mashed potatoes, stuffings, cranberry sauces, pies, and sides.

When I used to work for print magazines, it meant that every year we had...

The Food Lab's Foolproof Poached Eggs, Revisited

This is an updated version of the recipe I published in my first book, The Food Lab. I’ve updated the technique to ensure that the eggs don’t stick to the strainer, as well as the temperature and specific instructions for the size of the pan and how much water to use.

The Secrets to Success:

• Use fresh eggs (ch...

  2024-11-25 08:51:24 +0000 UTC View Post

Stay Home for the Hollandaise: The Food Lab's Foolproof Hollandaise, Revisited

This recipe is an updated version of this one that I published on Serious Eats in 2013. I've updated the temperature of the butter (it does not need to be measured as suggested in earlier versions of the recipe), and some of the language about how to incorporate it to make the recipe more foolproof. 

The Secrets to Success

• A hand...

  2024-11-25 08:08:57 +0000 UTC View Post

Revisiting my Classic Sage and Sausage Stuffing from The Food Lab

"What are your thoughts on stuffing?," I asked my friend in a text message the other day.

"I live for the solid blob of sticky bready buttery stuff," she said.

This is the correct answer.

When it comes to the holiday table, stuffing is hands-down my favorite part. How could you not enjoy the equivalent of a half loaf of bread soaked in a half stick butter, flavored with sage, sausage, and stock, all compressed into a forkable bite?

(And that's just the part that's in t...

Egg and Rice Breakfast Bowls, Two Ways

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 futon that was rolled out on the living room floor. In the morning, we'd drink mugicha (roasted barley tea) or Calpis&nbs...