What’s in a cookie? At its most basic, a cookie is the perfect balance of fat, sugar, eggs, and flour. Drop cookies are easy to mix and bake and the formulas are incredibly versatile. In this class, you’ll go from cookie rookie to cookie rockstar. We’ll teach you the rules of baking and how to break them to dial in your perfect crispy, crunchy, soft, chewy, or gooey cookie. Each cookie recipe also includes fun and creative ways to “upgrade” your next batch with unique additions and flavorful enhancements. On your mark. Get set. Let’s bake some cookies!

American Drop Cookies Class

Macarons—those delectably light mini-meringues of French descent—involve a series of sophisticated techniques that can take time and practice to perfect. You often see them only at the finest bakeries—the colorful confections all lined up in a row—because they’re notoriously finicky, even for pastry chefs. But learning to make macarons is remarkably simple when you can see how it’s done, with step-by-step instructions. This class is designed to help you succeed in mastering the macaron. You’ll learn each part of the process with entertaining and informative high-definition videos, succinct step-by-step instructions, and background information on the science of macarons. We also provide recipes for various flavors and colors, so you can apply the skills you’ve acquired to making macarons again and again. ChefSteps founder Grant Crilly, who instructs this class, learned how to make macarons the hard way: he spent hundreds of hours reading cookbooks, trying and failing, his garbage can littered with colorful cookie shells night after night. He finally succeeded after attending a class in Paris with macaron expert Pierre Hermé, mastering the different techniques by taking visual cues from learning in a hands-on, guided workshop. Grant developed this class with his own experience in mind.

French Macarons

Take a look around you. Where are you reading this? What time of day is it? Are you alone in your kitchen, or stuffed on a crowded commuter train, dreaming of what you’ll make for dinner? Point is—you’re going to want to remember this moment. Because this is the moment you began a journey that will fundamentally change the way you cook. This is the moment you discovered sous vide. You’ve no doubt heard of sous vide, a cooking method in which food is cooked at a consistent temperature in a water bath, often first wrapped in plastic and, afterward, quickly seared on the stove or grill. And maybe you associate it with high-end restaurants, high-concept food, and high-priced equipment originally designed for a chemistry lab. But as home cooks around the world have begun to discover, this remarkable technique—which yields perfectly cooked food, predictably, with very little oversight—is no longer the exclusive domain of bold-named chefs and mega-rich mega-geeks. And while cooks who regularly use sous vide often opt to invest in equipment such as immersion circulators and SousVide Supreme baths, in the last few years, a number of affordable models have emerged for home use. But forget the gadgets for a minute. For this class, you’ll need a pot, a stove, a digital thermometer, some plastic bags, and an open mind. Yup, with nothing more than those basic tools, you’ll cook the best steak you’ve ever eaten, fork-tender salmon with a bright pea purée, and a juicy pork chop accompanied by an addictive romesco sauce. Once you’ve worked through the recipes, we believe you’ll be the latest convert to a cooking style that will revolutionize the way we cook food. We’ll also outline the basics on best practices for food safety and offer a list of books to consult as you continue down the road to sous vide mastery. Remember this moment. It’s the moment you took the first step toward becoming the kickass cook you always knew you could be.

Sous Vide: Getting Started

There comes a moment in every meat lover’s life when it’s time to push the barbecue skills to the next level. Maybe you’ve mastered your smoker but you’re looking for a way to save time without sacrificing flavor or texture. Maybe you’ve only just invested in a smoker and need inspiration for how to work with it. Or maybe you’re a total barbecue beginner—a wide-eyed neophyte who has only dreamed of unwrapping a rack of ribs and pondering the possibilities. Wherever you are, you’re about to go further. Because here at ChefSteps, we are unabashedly obsessed with all things barbecue—and stoked to share what we know. Our founders scoured the country to study regional styles, bringing the best tips, techniques, recipes, and religious experiences back to ChefSteps. And don’t think you need a smoker to get going. Our Apartment Ribs—an excellent starter technique—offer an opportunity to cook up a smoky rack in even the tiniest of urban kitchenettes. How do we do it? The same way we do everything—by understanding the science behind the smoke. Get started by exploring the 20+ recipes we’ve assembled here. From meats, to sauces, to sides, to sodas, they’ll take your backyard parties to a whole other level. And for the meat nerds among us, get ready to go deeper: We provide detailed directions for controlling your smoker. We’ll show you how to select the best wood for the job. We’ll debunk common myths and offer clever tricks for barbecue success. (Hint: Ice is involved in one of them.) We’ll advocate combining sous vide cooking with smoking and describe how it can save you hours of time while yielding consistently killer results. (Heretical? Definitely. Try it, however, and we’re convinced you’ll become a convert.) We’ll tell you what to read, where to eat, and how to learn even more—all to add to an ever-growing legion of bonafide barbecue freaks with a serious passion for smoked meat. As always, feel free to ask questions in the discussion section. As you may have noticed, it doesn’t take much to get us talking barbecue.

Barbecue

Microgreens have recently emerged as some of the best-loved garnishes in fine dining—and it’s easy to see why. Tiny as they are, these young plants pack remarkably intense flavors, vibrant colors, and interesting textures. Bursting with nutrients, they also get high marks from the health food community. Only problem is that microgreens are hella pricey; you’re lucky if you can find them for $30 a pound. Our solution: grow your own! Cultivating these wee plants requires some care and maintenance, sure, but it’s also super fun. Once your bed is buzzing along, you’ll have a ready source of good-for-you greens that you can use to make elegant salads and hors d’oeuvres toppers; brightly beautiful purées, soups, and smoothies; and so much more. Plus, there’s something distinctly satisfying about growing gorgeous food that will turn an ordinary plate into something pro-worthy. In this project, we walk you through the steps of successful microgreen growing and offer recipes (savory ice cream, anyone?) that make the most of these lovely little plants. No garden? Not an issue—it’s easy to cultivate them indoors, and you can do so year round. Because really, what could perk up the cold winter months better than a pretty crop of cute little plantlets? Nothing, that’s what. So let’s stop talking and start planting. It’s time to grow microgreens.

Microgreens

Make the classic Canadian snack at home. We’ll show you how to prepare perfectly crispy fries, squeaky cheese curds, and delicious gravy, all from scratch. Serve classic Old-School Poutine, or try our modernist “new-school” version—printable recipes included.

Poutine

Remember your first truly sharp knife? That bad boy cut clean and clear through tomatoes and onions and salmon and steak, shaming its dull drawermates. With a good knife, once-mundane tasks become suddenly pleasurable and satisfying. You can chop and slice for hours, comfortable and cramp-free like the kitchen ninja you were born to be. But if you want that knife to continue working at peak performance, you have to show it some love. That means cleaning it properly, storing it properly, honing it regularly, and sharpening it to maintain the blade. In this class, you’ll find all the information you need to learn to hone and sharpen like a pro. Which pro? How about blade sage Daniel O’Malley, owner of the epic knife emporium the Epicurean Edge in Kirkland, Washington, and a foremost expert on selecting and maintaining the world’s best chopping-and-slicing tools. Through video demos and clever tips and tricks, O’Malley walks us through the theory and technique of sharpening knives using Japanese waterstones—the badass little blocks that master bladesmiths have used for hundreds of years. Yes, you can always outsource your sharpening, but where’s the fun in that? We wager that once you’ve tried blade shaping on your own, you’ll fall in love with this ancient, relaxing ritual, as well the sense of satisfaction that comes with caring for your own steel. Knives are, without a doubt, our most important tools in the kitchen. If you want them to last a lifetime, you need to treat them right. We’re here to show you how.

Knife Sharpening

It’s that time of year again: The shop windows are filled with sweaters and corduroys. The checkout line is stocked with Scotch tape. “Back to School” posters herald the beginning of a new season. So what’s an adult to do when the kids spend all day Sunday gluing pipe cleaners to a Little House on the Prairie diorama due Monday? Don’t worry—we’ve got a big-kid project for you. This is Salmon 104 °F, the dish that launched ChefSteps in 2012, developed by cofounders Chris, Grant, and Ryan to teach culinary students and faculty a series of techniques that would take their cooking skills to the next level. (ChefSteps trivia: Chris and Grant once instructed the faculty at Rhode Island–based culinary school Johnson & Wales; they launched ChefSteps.com as part of a plan to develop free-to-learn curricula for non-culinary students who wanted to tackle new skills.) Salmon 104 °F remains one of our favorite projects for teaching new skills and honing culinary expertise. By making the four simple recipes herein, you’ll cover a culinary curriculum that spans everything from pickling to vacuum compression, brining to sous vide, and blanching to thickening with hydrocolloids. We’ve assembled four component recipes into a ChefSteps Project—a weekend enterprise that will help you learn new things while preparing a beautiful, restaurant-quality dish for family and friends. Each component can be made days in advance and refrigerated so that you have a simple, yet impressive, plate that’s easy to put together at a moment’s notice. And for those of you who skipped art class, never fear: we’ve got tons of artsy plating ideas to get those creative juices flowing. So sharpen your knives, don a cute new apron, and get a killer playlist in order—it’s time to go back to school. No pipe cleaners required.

Salmon 104 F

Everyone has a favorite burger, and this juicy, cheesy masterpiece is ours. To our minds, a burger should be something you can wrap your mouth around, with distinct components and clean, unmuddled flavors. This made-from-scratch, French-inspired American sandwich fits the bill. Inspired by the French dip, the Au Jus Burger is about as elaborate as a ChefSteps burger gets. But it’s also awesome, and it’s totally replicable at home—provided you’ve got time. We start five days ahead, preparing, then resting, our Brioche Burger Buns for optimal texture. Then we subject some swiss cheese to our Melty Cheese Slices technique—giving it all the creaminess of a Kraft Single while maintaining the flavor of the European fromage. On game day, we sear the patties, then drop them in a sous vide bath, leaving us free to prep the other ingredients while the burgers cook. Then, when the time is just right and our guests are gathered round the picnic table with napkins tied dutifully around their necks (this burger is messy, after all), we finish the job with caramelized onions and a horseradish-spiked version of our mayo, drizzle Beef Demi-Glace all over the burger, and serve it piping hot. “All that work for a burger?” you might ask. We enjoy every minute of it. You can always simplify matters by using store-bought brioche buns and cheese (or making our buns just two days in advance—they’ll still be spectacular). But at the end of the day, what excites us about this project is that it’s a beautiful, restaurant-style dish you can re-create at home, with magically delicious results. Plus—what can we say?—we’re willing to bend over backward for a kickass burger. Are you?

Au Jus Burger

You know that legendary George Mallory quote about why he climbed Mount Everest? “Because it’s there,” he said. Well, here at ChefSteps, that’s how we feel about candy-making. When we’re standing in the grocery store checkout line, staring at a brightly packaged bundle of Starburst or gummy bears, it’s in our nature to want to reproduce these textural wonders at home. Manipulating textures, after all, is what chefs do. You may think these classic sweets are impossible to create at home, but trust us: they’re not. Yes, you’ve got to be patient. You’ve got to be precise. And if it’s Starburst-style chews you’re after, you’ve got to be pretty ripped as well. (Ever seen someone “pull” saltwater taffy? Yeah, we’re going to be doing a lot of that.) The more delicately limbed among you may opt to start with our juicy Pâte de Fruit or the classic Haribo gummy bear recipe, reproduced here. Black licorice lovers—don’t be shy, we dig it too—wait until you try our toothsome version, laced with anise essential oil. Not into the anise-flavored stuff? We’ve got the formula for other flavors too. Backing it all up: a primer on the basic science of confections, so you can bone up on the ingredients that determine each candy’s unique texture. Sure it takes a little focus, but hey—it’s not rocket science. It’s not extreme mountaineering either. It’s candy-making. And it’s one of the more satisfying things you’re likely to achieve without risking frostbite. NOTE: The recipes in this class require a digital thermometer.

Chewy Candy

Oh, hey there, cooking enthusiasts. Now that you’ve learned the basics of sous vide cooking—and served your friends and family fork-tender salmon and the most delicious steak, like, ever—you’re ready to move on to the next level. In this class, we show you everything you need to harness the predictive power of sous vide, preparing seafood dishes that rival the stuff at fancy restaurants, transforming cheap cuts of meat into savory showstoppers, and whipping up fancy, foolproof desserts for a crowd. Those of you who love food science, fear not: we’re sharing plenty of illuminating theory along the way—plus simple tips and tricks you’ll use every time you enter the kitchen. So tie on an apron and get ready to crush it at your next dinner party, or just next Wednesday. It’s time to go beyond the basics. So, what do you get? You get 28 original recipes. Subscribe to this class, and you’ll also get free updates featuring recipes and techniques developed exclusively for this class by the ChefSteps kitchen development team. From highly addictive Kung Pao Ribs to life-changing Crème Brûlée, you’ll never run out of ways to impress your friends and family. Everything you need to turn cheap, tough meat cuts into tender steaks with flavor that far exceeds pricey stuff like prime rib. Six original fishes dishes—from a low-key weeknight curry to the best fish sticks you’ve ever tasted—plus the science behind brining and curing seafood for leveled-up texture and appearance. A primer on cooking in canning jars: Make no-fuss, silky crème brûlée, flan, yogurt, and chicken liver pâté. Whether you’re serving two or twenty, this essential technique is totally foolproof. Quick tips on how to prep and plate sous vide–cooked foods like a pro. A complete guide to sous vide equipment and packaging. A map of sous vide cooking featuring time-and-temperature settings for any food you feel like cooking. Plus, learn to manipulate time and temp to customize your cook and get the perfect doneness and texture! Techniques for preparing vegetables to keep them bright and snappy—you know, just the way you like ’em.

Sous Vide: Beyond the Basics

Spherification is kitchen alchemy, a technique that enables you to imbue a flavorful liquid with the appearance of being solid, an illusion that’s broken when the spheres burst with flavor as they’re eaten. ChefSteps’s course on spherification will help you prepare dishes that surprise and delight your family and friends by making the impossible possible in your kitchen. Enroll with ChefSteps for helpful step-by-step demonstrations of the relevant techniques, use our reliable recipes as a starting point, and get the support of a friendly community of experienced cooks and world-class chefs who will answer your questions.

Spherification

Welcome to the ChefSteps air frying class! In-depth guides about the mechanics and science behind air frying; delicious and innovative recipes that demonstrate the versatility of the technique; a primer on designing meals made entirely in an air fryer, with accompanying proof-of-concept recipes; a tip sheet on the different kinds of air fryers on the market; we’ve got it all, and a whole lot more. Air frying has a devoted and fast-growing following, for good reason: The air fryer is a powerful, efficient cooking tool that utilizes time-tested technology to deliver delicious results. In this class we’ll explain the science behind that power and provide you with everything you need to know how to get the most out of your air fryer. Let’s get cooking.

Air Frying

How do you take your coffee? We bet you have a tried-and-true answer—maybe you prefer it with a spoonful of sugar, a spot of half-and-half, hazelnut syrup and whipped cream, black, or just-give-me-the-damn-coffee-before-I-cut-you. The thing is: It doesn’t matter how you take it. If you take it every day, it should be perfect. Shouldn’t it? This class is about just that: Dialing in your daily brew—choosing your favorite roasted beans, picking the perfect brew techniques, and refining your recipe—until that morning ritual isn’t just about caffeine intake, it’s a full-on culinary experience. To create this one-of-a-kind class on all things home brew, we teamed up with two coffee experts—James Hoffmann, founder of the renowned London roastery Square Mile Coffee and author of The World Atlas of Coffee; and lauded coffee consultant Ben Kaminsky, cofounder of Boston’s Barismo and a three-time World Tasting Champion. Whether you’re new to home brewing or come bearing serious coffee skills, this class will offer you one-of-a-kind insights, exclusive game-changing techniques (sludge-free French press! amazing dairy-free latte!), and practical advice from coffee’s cutting-edge experts. And to round out this crash course in everyone’s favorite caffeinated beverage, we offer four killer ChefSteps recipes, including a novel technique for coffee “chocolate,” a bitters recipe to instantly up your cocktail game, a coffee-infused butter to spread all over your steak, and a flavor-packed rub that perks up any protein in a flash. And when it’s all over, we’ll ask you again: How do you take your coffee? Your answer: My way.

Coffee

Welcome to the ChefSteps seitan class! Seitan is one of the most miraculous foods in the world. You can imbue it with almost any flavor, mold it into almost any shape, and manipulate it to produce almost any texture! It’s a blank canvas, and the only limit on its potential is your imagination. Seitan is so versatile because it’s made of pure gluten, the protein in wheat flour that makes the vast world of bread possible. This class is designed to give you the competence and confidence to master making seitan dishes of all kinds. With in-depth guides explaining the science behind why gluten and starch molecules behave the way they do, a suite of interrelated recipes that demonstrate how to produce all kinds of wheat meat wonders and unlock the culinary potential of starch, step-by-step videos to guide you through our seitanic rituals, and so much more, this class is meant to show that seitan is for everyone. Whether you’re looking for an alternative source for plant-based protein, you want to explore the intricacies of a centuries-old technique, or you just have a thing for culinary alchemy, this class will give you the ability to transform a bag of flour into all kinds of uniquely delicious things. Nuggets, hot dogs, and hams are just the beginning. Welcome to the wide world of wheat meat.

Seitan

It’s a solid. No, wait, it’s a liquid. Great god of super-cool science, it’s both. In this class, you’ll learn the basics of fluid gels—substances that act like a solid when left alone but become liquid when stirred or blended. You’ll use fluid gels to form liquid layers in a verdant vegetarian parfait. You’ll create a deconstructed Orange Creamsicle dessert that presents Fresh Orange Fluid Gel in two ways—in gel and foam form. You’ll learn how fluid gels make great salad dressings that coat vegetables completely, and you’ll create a Beet Fluid Gel that lends a pop of color and flavor to delicate blini hors d’oeuvres. Enroll with ChefSteps for helpful step-by-step demonstrations of the relevant techniques (including detailed plating tips), showstopping recipes that have been thoroughly tested in our kitchen, and access to our community of chefs and home cooks. Break out the blender and start drafting that guest list—by the time you’ve completed this class, you’ll have all the makings of a magical modernist dinner party.

Fluid Gels

Whether you’re a beach bum or a homebody, we’ve got a clambake for you. Here you’ll find recipes and instructions for throwing a full-blown beach clambake, complete with raging fire and cooler of beer, and for a home clambake hack, served inside a dutch oven with fresh seaweed and beach rocks. We’ve got techniques for breaking down whole crabs, cleaning geoduck, and making spicy, salty garnishes—so whether you’re staying home this weekend or hitting the beach, you’ve got dinner plans on lock.

Clambake

We’re just going to say this: We think you should have a whipping siphon (also known as a cream whipper or whipping canister or whip cream thingy), and a high-end one at that. Yup, that glimmering canister that your barista uses to top that hazelnut latte belongs in your home kitchen, too. Why? Because the best whip cream thingies do a heck of a lot more than whip cream. And we can teach you to do all sorts of amazing stuff with one—from fizzy, fresh-juice sodas to no-fail hollandaise, from creamy, homemade burrata—whut?—to spongy feather-light cake. Yeah, you can make a cake in a whipping siphon. Crazy, right?

Whipping Siphons

Ice cream may seem like the simplest of lazy-day treats, but delving into the science can mean the difference between a coarse-and-crispy frozen fail and the smooth, creamy stuff they serve at your local parlor. Plus, it’s a whole lot of fun. Just in time for summer, we’ve assembled a class that will make a master out of anyone willing to cool things down in the kitchen. Go hi-tech with Aerated Green Apple Sorbet or a Root Beer Float Cryosicle, or keep things folksy with our classic mint chocolate chip. Planning a dairy-free party? We’ve got a pistachio gelato that’s going to blow your milkfat-free mind. Along with 14 recipes for frozen desserts that will surprise and delight your guests throughout the year, we’ve got plenty of ideas for toppings, plus tips and techniques to make the most of your ice-cream-making equipment—whether you’re churning in a stand mixture with dry ice or a state-of-the-art Carpigiani contraption. So stock up on cones and fire up the backyard speakers—you’re about to show the neighborhood a whole new take on the ice cream social.

Ice Cream

Welcome to the new and improved ChefSteps espresso class! With everything you need to know to master this uniquely delicious method for brewing coffee, all in one place, this class is designed to put the skills of a professional barista within reach, no matter your skill level. In-depth explainers for the fundamental techniques and principles behind espresso? Check! How-to videos from leading espresso experts for dialing in your machine, learning the nuances of latte art, and mastering an array of café-quality drinks? Of course! Recipes, tips and tricks, and killer creative coffee ideas from our team of chefs? You know it! Guides, graphics, and glossaries to get you fluent in the lingo for a lungo? Certo! With a whole lot of help from coffee-industry veteran Sarah Dooley, Breville’s U.S. manager for Beanz.com, and a few key assists from L.A.-based barista and coffee shop owner Charles Babinski, we’ve created an espresso resource unlike anything available elsewhere. Let’s get brewing.

Espresso

We’re guessing you’ve made a burger before. In fact, we’ll bet you’ve made a damn good burger and have a solid argument about why yours is hard to beat. We’ll bet you have a favorite burger joint, a favorite ground beef, and a better-than-average topping combo. But let’s get one thing straight: this class isn’t about how to make burgers. It’s about leveling up and designing your very own chef-quality sandwich, with professional-style condiments, fresh burger buns, and homemade fries to match. Whether you’re making a snappy mushroom patty augmented by caramelized onions or a beefy burger topped with ChefSteps’s Homemade Ketchup and Kewpie-Style Mayo, this class will walk you through each step of mastering a restaurant-level burger. You’ll bone up on the science of making Melty Cheese Slices and learn how we ran trials to come up with our perfect patty. You’ll re-create classic commercial condiments in your own kitchen. And in the end, you’ll wind up with a whole new appreciation for this most American sandwich. Best of all, we designed the techniques here with predictability in mind—meaning you can plan your next party knowing your guests will get a memorably great sandwich. No, the ChefSteps Burger Class is not about making ordinary burgers. It’s about developing the culinary know-how to create a true gastronomical experience of your very own. Who knows? You may discover something so groundbreaking that you’ll quit your accounting job to open a burger joint. And if you do, please invite us. We kinda love burgers.

Burgers

Ambitious cooks are a restless bunch—the better we get, the more challenges we seek. When you’ve reached the point at which you can masterfully replicate great recipes at home—anticipating timing issues, controlling temperatures, making confident corrections when problems arise—it’s time to start designing your own dishes. Here, we share the steps that we use to create dazzling and delicious composed plates. We offer up the recipe for one of our own successes—a flavor-packed, texture-driven soup/salad hybrid we served at a recent dinner. Re-creating the recipe at home will provide essential practice; as you prepare it, you’ll think about how each component came to be part of the unified whole and how the steps we outline might apply to your own original creation. Once you’ve worked through the project, you’ll be all set to break out on your own, developing a dish to amaze and delight your nearest and dearest. Be sure to share photos in the discussion—we can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Design a Dish

For any cook who’s ever burned a steak, destroyed a perfectly good piece of fish, or rubberized a chicken breast, this is the class for you. With just one simple and versatile technique, you can achieve mouthwatering, flavorful results every time, in your own kitchen. All you need is an oven, a pan, and a thermometer—we’ll show you the rest. We’ll empower you to choose, purchase, and cook tender cuts at home with confidence. The class includes lessons on how chefs shop for meat and seafood, information about which cuts work for which preparations, and clear, simple steps for cooking tender cuts of meat. If you have questions, please ask. Our culinary support team is standing by.

Tender Cuts

Welcome to the ChefSteps countertop oven class: 13 articles of scientific insights and practical tips; a section on baking that everyone can access; 6 new recipes, plus bonus content for Studio Pass members only. The large ovens installed in home kitchens were invented and moved into homes after World War One. At the time, a large oven was an unbelievable innovation for home cooks. But what felt brand-new in 1918 is pretty outdated now. What is today’s upgrade on the large oven that can level up your cooking immediately? The countertop oven. In this class, we show you the science of how a countertop oven works—whether you are roasting, broiling, or dehydrating—and why you should choose a particular cooking cycle for that meal you want to make. We also have some incredible new recipes, with extensive video tutorials and scientific explanations of what is happening while you cook. Of course, we also have tips and tricks for you, including hacks and other tools you can use to make your countertop oven as useful as any other oven. We have made the baking section of the class— including recipes for amazing chocolate chip cookies, plus savory and sweet soufflés—available to everyone. As well, we share some classic ChefSteps recipes we have re-tested in countertop ovens and found success. For Studio Pass members, we have an incredibly detailed guide—with videos for every step—to making croissants. We have vegetable jerky, red cabbage with creamy koji sauce, gluten-free chocolate soufflé, and what Grant believes might be your new favorite lasagna. Now, let’s get cooking.

The Countertop Oven Class

Home

Every culture has its fried chicken. Crispy, salty, meaty, and juicy—it’s easy to see why it’s universally loved. 

This version is a marriage between Nashville hot chicken and Taiwanese popcorn chicken. I’d worked in fine dining for a while, most recently as a sous chef at Eleven Madison Park, but when the pandemic hit, I decided to start a fried chicken popup. People loved it, and now I sling chicken all day every day at Pecking House in New York City.

From the Southern culinary tradition, I cribbed the buttermilk marinade (for tender, juicy, well-seasoned meat), the double fry (to create an incredibly craggy crust), and the chile oil dip. From Taiwanese popcorn chicken and other kinds of Asian fried chicken, I borrowed the technique of using a mix of starches in the coating to produce a more pronounced crunch. I also took advantage of the distinctive and aromatic spices of the Chinese pantry: numbing Sichuan peppercorns, fiery Tianjin chiles, and the warmth of Chinese five-spice powder. (And, of course, a little MSG.)

Making exceptional fried chicken isn’t hard, but it does require attention to detail. Let me break those details down for you:

The chicken: There’s a lot of different ways to break down a chicken, each suited to different applications. Our method aims for consistently sized pieces while preserving the integrity of the skin as much as possible. Where it differs from other chicken butchery methods is primarily in the way the breasts are prepared. We keep the rib cage on, so it serves as an anchor for the skin, and we split the whole breast through the keel, which helps to insulate the meat while it fries. Instead of cutting the split breasts exactly in half crosswise, we split them on a bias on the “40-yard-line,” which gives you more consistently sized pieces that’ll cook through in the same amount of time.

The dredge: The No. 1 thing you want for the coating is for it to stick. In other ChefSteps fried chicken recipes, that’s accomplished by letting the chicken sit in its dredge, which helps to hydrate the flour. We wanted something a little more efficient for handling large volume, so we achieve a similar effect by just adding a small amount of flour to the buttermilk marinade. The flour hydrates, thickening the marinade to an almost yogurt-like consistency, and that paste ends up forming a lattice the dry dredge can hold onto during the frying process. So, we can just pull the chicken out of the marinade, dredge, and get straight to frying.

Crispy and juicy chicken: If you start off with cooked chicken, like [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/foolproof-sous-vide-fried-chicken sous vide fried chicken], all you need to do while frying is crisp and brown the crust. When you cook from raw, you have to cook the chicken through without burning the crust, and you have to get the crust crispy without drying the chicken. Our solution is to fry at a relatively low temp ([f 325]) and use a double fry. This is super simple to do in a commercial fryer—there’s lots of oil, so adding cold chicken doesn’t drop the temp too much and it recovers quickly. In a home kitchen, you’ll be using a smaller volume of oil, so you need to start off with oil at a higher temperature—[f 350]—which will then drop down to [f 325] once you add the chicken. You also want to keep the chicken pieces moving more than you would in commercial fryer to ensure even cooking. (Be gentle; you work hard for that crust.)

Chile oil: The key to the chile oil, other than the spice mix used to season it, is viscosity. To get it to cling to the fried crust with just the right amount, you don’t want it too liquid. We found a mix of duck fat and neutral oil keeps it both flowing and slightly viscous (with the duck fat providing extra depth of flavor and richness), and that viscosity is enhanced by the maltodextrin in the vinegar powder we add to the oil for a little acidity. At room temp, the chile oil coats the chicken just right.

Chili fried chicken recipe (pecking house)

Chili Fried Chicken

Dirty rice is an iconic Creole dish of seasoned rice mixed with chopped up, cooked down offal, often chicken livers and giblets. The “dirty” in the name refers to the speckled brown coloring the rice takes on once the livers and giblets have been mixed in. Deeply savory, with a pronounced minerality from the liver and other offal, it’s one of the all-time great side dishes.

Fried rice is an iconic Chinese dish of rice tossed in a wok with finely cut vegetables and proteins. The best fried rice consists of cooked rice, coated in fat so that each individual grain is distinct, tossed in ripping-hot wok over the flames of a high-output gas burner, which periodically ignite aerosolized fat to produce the inimitable smoky flavor known as wok hei. 

What this recipe asks is: What happens if you made dirty rice, but with Chinese fried rice technique? It’s one of the most popular sides that we serve alongside our [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/chili-fried-chicken Chili Fried Chicken] at [link https://www.peckinghouse.com/ Pecking House].

We borrow “the scrape” technique from Cajun cuisine, in which a purée of chicken liver is smeared onto a cast iron griddle and cooked until deeply browned on the bottom, and then it’s scraped off the griddle and chopped up into fine bits with a spatula. We also use the Cajun “trinity”—celery, green bell pepper, and onion—to hit that distinct flavor profile. But we cook everything in a ripping-hot wok, and we use the standard techniques for making great fried rice: cooking, cooling, drying, and fluffing the rice beforehand, so the grains of rice remain distinct; cutting the vegetables into the finest of dices, so they cook to “tender-crisp” in seconds; and, of course, using a high-output burner so the flames lick the fried rice as it’s tossed just over the lip of the wok, for wok hei.

Each grain of rice is coated in oil (and a little butter, for richness), and each bite has a little minerality from tiny speckles of charred chicken liver, a little sweetness from the onion, and a little grassiness from the celery and bell pepper. Seasoned with salt and a little MSG, it’s a side that works incredibly well with strongly seasoned mains (like our Chili Fried Chicken) but can also stand on its own as a light meal.

Dirty Fried Rice

Break out your [link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WDW8XKEGgU cornballer], folks, because it’s time to fry some cornballs!

Hush puppies are basically fried cornbread nuggets. Packed with cubes of smoky tasso ham, cheddar, and sliced scallions, these nuggets are crispy, light, salty, tangy, and slightly sweet from the corn—the perfect side dish.

Our batter uses a mix of cornmeal and all-purpose flour, enriched with buttermilk and eggs and leavened with baking powder. Mixing the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients in stages helps prevent overmixing, which would develop the gluten in the flour a little too much, and it keeps the crumb light and almost cake-like. 

To boost the sweetness, we serve the hush puppies with “apple honey.” No, it’s not honey made in an apiary on an apple orchard—it’s a syrup made from freshly pressed, unpasteurized apple cider that has the same viscosity as honey at room temperature. Pasteurized cider—or cider that has been treated with enzymes to remove pectin [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pectin-free-juice to improve the product’s clarity]—won’t work in this application. Since the texture is produced by [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/science-of-pectin pectin’s gelling qualities], the cider needs to start with an ample concentration of pectin. With the added sugar and the natural acidity of cider, gently reducing the liquid will transform it into a golden, flowing syrup that tastes distinctly of apples. Call it “vegan honey”!

Serve the crispy, golden hush puppies up with a pot of apple honey and a honey wand alongside, so you can drizzle as little or as much as you like, and you might just forget about anything else on the table.

Hush puppies recipe with cheddar and tasso ham, drizzled with apple honey

Cheddar-Tasso Hush Puppies With Apple Honey

There are countless ways to break down poultry, depending on the culinary tradition you’re working in and/or the way you plan to use the various parts. For example, breaking down a bird [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/how-to-butcher-turkey-yakitori-style yakitori-style] requires a different approach than breaking down a chicken for [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/chili-fried-chicken Chili Fried Chicken].

This method for breaking down a chicken yields 10 bone-in pieces—two drumsticks, two thighs, two wings, and four breast pieces—plus a back that can be used to make [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pressure-cooked-blond-chicken-stock stock]. It’s commonly referred to as a “country-cut,” and it’s the best method to use for making classic Southern-style [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/the-ultimate-guide-to-fried-chicken fried chicken] or a stew. The process is designed to produce serving pieces of relatively consistent size, which makes it easier to nail cook times, and it also preserves the integrity of the skin, particularly on the bone-in breast pieces. 

Let’s get into it.

How to cut up a chicken into 10 bone-in pieces for fried chicken and stews.

How to Butcher a Chicken: 10-Piece Country Cut

Steak frites is a bistro classic: seared steak with a deeply browned crust and medium-rare (or “bleu”) interior, a towering pile of crispy golden fries, often accompanied by an aromatic sauce that’s just as delicious when doused over the meat as it is when used as a dipper for the spuds. 

The most iconic steak frites has to be served at [link https://www.relaisentrecote.fr/?page_id=205&amp;lang=en_GB Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte], a Parisian institution that has gone worldwide. They don’t have anything else on the menu: just steak frites, served with a side salad, although you can get a second helping of steak—and dessert, if you want.

What’s funny about it is the steak and fries ... they’re just all right. The real draw is their secret sauce. It’s got it all: It’s creamy and savory, it’s briny, it’s got a pronounced acidic tang, and it’s got a raft of herbs mixed up into it—not quite a hollandaise, not quite a mayo, but 100 percent delicious. We reverse-engineered it and came up with something very close but better, fresher, and super simple to make. 

Since the steak and fries are only so-so at the restaurant chain, we knew we—and you!—could do better. Pick your [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-guide-to-steak favorite steak], give it a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/presearing-for-sous-vide quick sear] to jump-start the Maillard reaction, [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/sous-vide-steak cook it sous vide], and then sear it right before serving for the ultimate steak, perfect for saucing.

The fries? We’ve developed the [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-crispy-french-fries ultimate crispy frites], which are basically the Pringles of fries—riced potatoes mixed with starch and formed into batons before getting double-fried to produce an ultra-crispy exterior with a light and fluffy center.

Ultimate Steak Frites

A good oysters Rockefeller is hard to beat: perfectly cooked oysters, lots of tender greens, a touch of cream, and a crunchy crumb topping.

It’s not a complicated dish, but to get it right, you have to focus on the details, starting with selecting the right size oysters. For cooked oysters, I like getting ones that are just a little too big to comfortably shoot raw; a longer cooking time gives the topping time to crisp up and brown, and since oysters shrink a little during the cooking process, they end up being the perfect size once they come out of the oven. 

The goal with roasted oysters is to heat them through to the point that they firm up to a custardy texture that you can easily bite through, like a cheesecake or [f 149] [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/the-egg-calculator sous vide egg]. I aim for a final internal temperature of [f 115], and pull them from the oven when they’re just shy of that mark to account for carryover cooking.

For the greens, any tender but sturdy greens will work—spinach is the classic, but chard or foraged greens like miners lettuce are fantastic as well—but the key is to use a light hand with the cream and a heavy hand with the greens (I like a lot of greens). You want the sweet, sweated-down allium flavor to come through with the greens. A little Pernod adds a background anise note that helps brighten them up a bit, too.

To top it all off, I make a crunchy crumb topping of crushed up oyster crackers mixed with Parmesan. Since they’re going in an air-fryer, the topping will be crispier than if they were baked and they’ll cook more evenly than if they were broiled, but to help out on both fronts I like to enrich the topping with the butter used to sweat the shallots and garlic.

This recipe is a part of The Road to Cooking with Grant Crilly, a ChefSteps series that offers intimate portraits of some of the most exciting culinary experts in the country, and explores how their journeys have shaped their approach to cooking.

Oysters Rockefeller

Classic creamed spinach is heavy, sludgy, and mushy. This creamed spinach? It’s light and bright, the spinach is tender-crisp, the sauce is super velvety smooth, and it comes together in 5 minutes. 

In the traditional version, spinach is just an afterthought—it’s more of an excuse to eat cheesy béchamel with a little vegetable matter mixed in than anything else. Here, the spinach is barely cooked, just enough to wilt it without obliterating it completely, and the flavor comes through clearly. 

The key is using [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/roux-vs-slurry cornstarch rather than roux to thicken the sauce]—and dialing in the right slurry proportions. The sauce out of the pan is just a tad too thick, which accounts for the liquid the spinach will exude as it sits. 

It’s the classic steakhouse side, all lightened up!

Light and Bright Creamed Spinach

The ribeye is one of the most desirable “trophy” steak cuts, with its ample amount of intramuscular fat and two tender and beefy muscle groups, the longissimus dorsi (the “eye” of the ribeye) and the spinalis dorsi (the “ribeye cap”). 

Since it’s such a rich cut, it tastes amazing when given a nice char on the grill. However, its fattiness makes grilling tough—all that fat causes flare-ups as it renders, and you don’t want a beautiful char to be marred by the taste of burnt soot. 

This technique maximizes the utility of a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/two-zone-grilling-guide two-zone grilling setup]. Frequently moving the steak around on the hot zone of the grill gives you great charring without uncontrollable flare-ups. Once charred, the steak is slowly brought up to serving temperature in a just-warm butter bath set up in a cast iron skillet on the cool zone of the grill, which gives you precision control over doneness. 

A scattering of herbs and big squeeze of lemon juice adds brightness to the perfectly cooked, perfectly charred steak.

Grilled and Butter-Rested Ribeye Steak

We’ve got sous vide versions of all your ’cue favorites—[link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/smokerless-smoked-brisket brisket], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/smokerless-smoked-pork-shoulder butt], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/smokerless-smoked-ribs-incredible-barbecue-no-smoker-required ribs], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/bbq-beef-short-ribs short ribs]—and they’re just as good, if not better and easier to make than the real deal. We took all our experience with turning [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/decoding-tough-and-tender-cuts tough hunks of meat] into tender and juicy ’cue and translated it to the task of creating our version of the star of the Jewish delicatessen: sous vide pastrami. 
 
“Pastrami” comes from the Turkish “pastirma,” or “pressed,” which refers to jerky-like cured meat product. [link https://tastecooking.com/pastrami-everything/ The preparation ] was brought by Romanian immigrants to the United States, and it was perfected in iconic Jewish delicatessens in New York like [link http://katzsdelicatessen.com/ Katz’s]. Instead of using premium cuts of meat, delis used inexpensive brisket, specifically the navel cut, and they’d dry cure the beef, smoke it, then steam it until tender for service. 
 
As people realized how delicious the preparation could be, “pastrami” products became available at supermarket deli counters and on the cold cuts shelf. But that “pastrami” is almost always sad and dry. Often made from beef shoulder cuts and designed to be sliced thin and eaten cold, it never really had a chance of measuring up to the great pastrami you can get at Jewish delis across the country. 
 
Our version blows any supermarket pastrami offering out of the water, and a big part of that is we use one of the beefiest cuts of meat–short rib!—and we serve it up hot. 
 
EDITORS’ NOTE: We’ve retested and updated this recipe to include an option for a shorter sous vide cook at a higher temperature that produces a leaner, more firm pastrami for folks who prefer that texture. We still favor a 48-hour low-temp cook—our preferred temp is now [f 147]. We also provide two options for the order of pastrami-cooking operations, and we have outlined the pros and cons for each in the “Before we begin” section. In the updated video, Grant goes with the sous vide then smoke option, but we kept the original recipe instructions for the smoke then sous vide method. Both produce excellent results, and it comes down to a matter of preference.

The keys to our killer homemade pastrami recipe? A seven-day brine and the precise power of sous vide cooking.

Sous Vide Pastrami

Like any proud parent, we love all our french fry recipes equally. [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/thin-cut-french-fries Thin-cut], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/thick-cut-french-fries thick-cut], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/air-fried-frozen-french-fries air-fried]—each is delicious in its own right; each one has its time to shine. But this french fry recipe ... well, we love it just like the rest, but maybe a little more.

Designed to go along with our [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-steak-frites Ultimate Steak Frites], these fries are the fluffiest of them all, thanks to the fact that they’re not made from planks of potato; they’re a combo of riced potatoes and cornstarch. They’re basically processed potatoes, a Pringles approach to our classic fries.

This process gives you a leg up on time and convenience. Whereas our other french fry recipes work best with [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/finding-perfect-french-fry-potatoes perfect french fry potatoes], you can use any russets you have around for these. And the cooking process is comparatively streamlined: You just boil ’em til tender, mix them with starch, let the dough chill and set, then cut it up and get frying.

In the end, we might like these french fries more than our others not because they’re quick to make, or because they’ve got a short ingredient list, or they’re dead easy. It’s because, fresh out of the fryer, they’re actually just the best fries we’ve ever made (and they stay crispy for hours).

Ultimate Crispy French Fries

People think Texas barbecue is all about beef: [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-smoked-bbq-brisket thick slabs of tender, smoky brisket] and Lone Star State–sized beef ribs. But Texans also smoke some killer pork ribs.

Joe Yim of Knox Ave BBQ gave us the rundown on how to make the best Texas-style spareribs. Like brisket, they’re a study in moderation: completely tender, but with a little bite; seasoned with a judicious amount of salt and black pepper to get a nicely textured bark; and a spare lacquering of barbecue sauce, applied right toward the end, bumps up the flavor while allowing the taste of pork and smoke to really come through.

We’ve done ribs before but never ribs like these. Our [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/smokerless-smoked-ribs-incredible-barbecue-no-smoker-required sous vide ribs], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/apartment-ribs-smokerless-smoked-ribs-the-og-version apartment ribs], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/oven-kansas-city-style-barbecue-ribs Kansas City–style oven ribs], and [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/dry-style-baby-back-ribs smoked ribs] recipes will all get you a stellar rib dinner, but they all use baby backs. This recipe uses [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/spareribs-baby-back-ribs-what-is-the-difference whole spareribs], and they’re smoked from start to finish on a regular old charcoal grill—no offset smoker required.

Joe Yim of Knox Ave BBQ's recipe for Texas-style barbecue ribs

Texas-Style Barbecue Ribs

When you make a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-smoked-bbq-brisket Texas-style brisket], you end up with a lot of [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/how-to-trim-brisket-bbq trim]. And one of the best things you can do with that trim is grind it up and make smoked brisket burgers. They’ve got everything you love about smoked brisket, but they only take a couple of hours instead of 14 (or more!). Rich and juicy, with a beautifully smoky crust that’s reminiscent of the best barbecue bark, they’re an upgrade on your regular old backyard grilled burgers, not least because the low-and-slow smoke—which makes it easy to nail whatever internal temperature you like—dries out the exterior so you can get a killer sear.

While nothing compares to a masterfully smoked brisket, these burgers come very, very close.

Recipe for smoked brisket burgers using brisket meat and trimmings.

Smoked Brisket Burgers

We’ve tackled Texas-style barbecue brisket before. We’ve developed two indoor recipes that get you as close as you can get to the real thing without a smoker, using both [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/smokerless-smoked-brisket sous vide] and a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/oven-barbecue-brisket low-temperature oven]. But we’ve never done the real deal smoked brisket—until now.

To get it right, we turned to pro pitmaster Joe Yim of Knox Ave BBQ, who honed his craft for years at some of the top barbecue spots in Central Texas. Joe lives, breathes, and dreams about barbecue. He walked us through every detailed step of the brisket process: [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/bbq-brisket-timeline how to plan the cook], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/how-to-trim-brisket-bbq how to trim brisket], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/how-to-wrap-bbq-brisket how to wrap it], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/how-to-slice-bbq-brisket how to slice it]. And, of course, how to smoke the dang thing!

Best of all? He showed us how to make pro-level brisket with a regular old charcoal grill. No offset smoker required. This is the best brisket you’ll ever have. We guarantee it.

A step-by-step guide to making Texas-style barbecue brisket in a charcoal grill

Ultimate Texas-Style Barbecue Brisket

Once you’ve [link how-to-trim-brisket-bbq trimmed], seasoned, smoked, [link how-to-wrap-bbq-brisket wrapped], and rested your [link ultimate-smoked-bbq-brisket barbecue brisket], it’s time to slice it.

Just like every other technique associated with producing Texas-style barbecue brisket, the method for slicing it up is tailor-made to the preparation, designed to minimize waste and ensure that every slice that comes off the brisket has structural integrity and is surrounded by a continuous layer of undamaged bark.

We asked Joe Yim of Knox Ave BBQ to show us how it’s done. Grab your serrated bread knife and your perfectly cooked brisket, and let’s get into it.

A pro pitmaster demonstrates how to slice barbecue brisket

How to Slice Barbecue Brisket Like a Pro

Trimming a brisket properly is the first step in making a great [link ultimate-smoked-bbq-brisket barbecue brisket]. 

Trimming helps the brisket cook more evenly, producing even bark formation; golden, rendered fat; and juicy meat. The goal for barbecue pros is to produce a smoked brisket that’s cooked in a way that every single slice will satisfy discerning paying customers.

So, if you want to serve competition-worthy brisket, start by trimming your brisket like a pro.

How to trim a brisket properly for making barbecue brisket

How to Trim Brisket Like a Pro

Wrapping is one of the key techniques for making great barbecue brisket. 

The wrap can be used for two purposes: to help rest a finished brisket or to help finish cooking a brisket that needs a little help getting to the “memory foam” tenderness we’re looking for in the flat before pulling it off the smoker to rest.

For resting, the wrap ensures that every part of the oddly shaped cut of meat cools at a similar rate, so all those hours you spent smoking the brisket don’t go to waste. As a cooking finishing move, the wrap allows you to [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/bbq-brisket-timeline bump up the temperature of the smoker in the final stages of tenderization] without drying it out or burning the bark.

We asked pitmaster Joe Yim of Knox Ave BBQ to demonstrate three techniques: two butcher paper methods—a beginner and a pro-level wrap—and a new-school “foil boat” method.

A pro demonstrates how to wrap a barbecue brisket three ways: two butcher wraps and a foil boat method.

How to Wrap Barbecue Brisket Like a Pro

[link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-smoked-bbq-brisket Smoking a Texas-style brisket] takes time—a lot of time—and patience.

Transforming the oddly shaped cut of meat with two distinct muscle groups and tons of connective tissue and intramuscular fat so that it can be cleanly sliced, with each slice consisting of tender, juicy meat surrounded by a distinct ring of bark, is a careful balancing act of time, temperature, and moisture levels. 

And even when you’ve accomplished that perfectly, serving it to your family and friends at a reasonable hour requires serious scheduling skills. There’s no point in making the perfect brisket if you make everyone wait around until 11 p.m. to eat it!

Joe Yim of Knox Ave BBQ helped us create this smoked brisket timeline to give you all the information you need to know to serve your perfectly smoked brisket at its peak, at whatever time works for you.

A 2-day timeline for making barbecue brisket

Plotting the Barbecue Brisket Timeline

Birria has exploded in popularity here in the States over the past few years and for good reason. Tender, braise-y meat swimming in a rich, spicy, and acidic consomé—what’s not to love? It’s great on its own, in tacos, quesadillas, and even mixed into instant ramen cups. If your local taqueria has recently added [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/quesabirria quesabirria] to their menu, it’s most likely being made with [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/beef-birria Tijuana-Style Beef Birria], which can be great, no argument there. But you know what’s even better? The GOAT birria from Jalisco: birria de chivo.

I’ve been making goat birria at my family’s restaurant, [link https://www.birrieriazaragoza.com/ Birrieria Zaragoza] in Chicago, since I was 12 years old. Like [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/the-secret-to-mastering-croissants-at-home croissants], this birria is a three-day process (that’s why most folks leave it to the pros to make both). The goat is dry-brined, steamed, marinated in mole, roasted in lard, and served with a lightly fermented and simmered tomato consomé. It’s out-of-this-world delicious. And if you can’t make the trip to Chicago, now you can make it at home.

Jalisco-Style Goat Birria

You’d be hard-pressed to find a dish that’s blown up in popularity quite like birria in the past few years. Tacos, pizza, ramen—[link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYey8ntlK_E we can <s>pickle</s> birria that!] And if you’ve had birria, odds are that you’ve enjoyed this beefy braised version from Northern Mexico, rather than the OG [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/goat-birria goat birria from Jalisco].

Let’s get this out of the way: Beef birria is legit, it’s delicious, and, for most folks, it’s more approachable than goat. Beef is easier to source, and this version takes one day to make instead of three. This is a great introduction to birria, and you can always graduate to the G.O.A.T.

Tijuana-Style Beef Birria

Take a trip to Ensenada, Mexico, with these super-crispy fried fish tacos. Battered strips of fish, swaddled in corn tortillas, anointed with a simple tomato salsa, shredded cabbage, and mayocrema. These fish tacos are all gas and no brakes.

The key is in that batter. We use a beer batter, bolstering the malty notes of a crisp Mexican lager with chicken bouillon powder (MSG, baby!), oregano, honey, and yellow mustard, so the crust is super tasty all on its own. To get it extra crispy without becoming tough, we use a mix of wheat and rice flours, which limits gluten formation, and we use both baking powder and vodka to create a lattice-like network of starches and wheat proteins that fries to a crisp in a just a couple of minutes, ensuring that the fresh fish (as fresh as possible, please!) is perfectly cooked.

Ensenada-Style Fish Tacos

Every cuisine has a bunch of different ways to cook pollo al carbon, which essentially translates to “charcoal chicken.”

This recipe leans toward the pollo al carbon commonly served on the roadside in Sinaloa, Mexico. We spatchcock the chicken to promote even cooking and easy handling on the grill, then marinate it in a paste made from guajillo chiles, aromatics, spices, and citrus and pineapple juices. Cooking the bird on the cool side of a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/two-zone-grilling-guide two-zone grill setup] gives us precise control over the cook and gently tightens the skin. Transferring the chicken over to the hot side of the grill right at the end adds some beautiful char and crisps the skin nicely.

Carve it up and set the platter down in the middle of a spread of [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/how-to-shape-your-homemade-masa-tortillas warm tortillas], rice and beans, [link https://www.chefsteps.com/gallery?generator=chefsteps&amp;published_status=published&amp;difficulty=any&amp;sort=relevance&amp;search_all=salsa&amp;premium=everything salsa] and hot sauce, and some chargrilled knob onions, and it’s a meal fit for a celebration. It’s the simplest of pleasures—a whole chicken, expertly grilled—but with all the flavor dials turned up for a bird with the juiciest meat and the most delicious skin.

Pollo al Carbon recipe (grilled, marinated whole chicken)

Pollo al Carbon

Cochinita pibil is a Yucatecan preparation that’s more of a ritual than a dish: whole suckling pig, doused in an aggressively spiced marinade of citrus juice, vinegar, and achiote (aka annatto; for its distinctive red coloring), wrapped in banana leaves and slowly cooked in a “pib,” a kind of earthen oven dug in a hole in the ground. 

If you want to break down a whole pig and dig a hole in the ground to make this recipe, go ahead—I’m a big fan of that energy. Check out the video to see how we built an aboveground pib and hosted an epic cochinita feast.

If you don’t want to do any of that, don’t worry: Cooking cochinita pibil in an oven works great, since pibil is essentially a braise with added smoke flavor. You don’t even need a suckling pig, since a pork shoulder produces fantastic pibil. The key is to use gentle, moist heat, just like with [link https://www.chefsteps.com/barbecue-landing barbecue], so all the [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/decoding-tough-and-tender-cuts tough collagen in the shoulder converts to melty gelatin]. Shredded and dressed with the braising liquid, it’s melt-in-your-mouth delicious, perfect for stuffing into tortas, serving in tortillas, or piling on top of a bean-stuffed and deep-fried tortilla for a panucho.

This recipe has a lot of downtime, so you have lots of time to practice your [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/how-to-shape-your-homemade-masa-tortillas handmade tortilla skills], make some [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/salsa-de-habanero creamy habanero salsa], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pickled-red-onions pickle some red onions], and otherwise get ready to eat some of the best tacos you’ve ever made.

Cochinita Pibil

These lightning-quick pickles get a little zip and zap from a bit of habanero and Mexican oregano, so they’re perfect for whenever you want to add a little personality to a meal by offering a condiment for the table. They’re particularly excellent served alongside [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/cochinita-pibil-oven cochinita pibil].

Yucatán-Style Pickled Red Onions

This simple but fiery salsa is a great example of the big, bold flavors of the Yucatán Peninsula. It’s great on anything from grilled meats and seafood to tacos stuffed with delectable braises—if you’re making [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/cochinita-pibil-oven cochinita pibil], you’re going to want some of this stuff to serve alongside.

Blooming the habanero in oil before blending the salsa intensifies the capsaicin heat, even as it brings out more of the sweetness from the peppers. And while it’s hot, don’t worry: The acidity and sweetness in the citrus juice helps to offset some of its more aggressive face-melting qualities.

The best part is its texture. Super creamy thanks to the oil-in-water emulsion that forms in the blender, it’s sort of like guacasalsa, the “[link https://lataco.com/fake-guacamole-is-here fake guacamole]” salsa popularized by taquerias, which is made from cooked tomatillo and squash and mimics the creaminess of avocado.

Salsa de Habanero

Caldo de siete mares—“soup of the seven seas”—shares characteristics with other seafood stews from across the globe. Legend has it that, like cioppino or bouillabaisse, it was created out of necessity, a way for fishermen in the Ensenada area of Baja California to use up their unsold catch. 

And like all great seafood soups, the key to a killer caldo de siete mares is a super flavorful stock. Here, we quickly infuse chicken or seafood stock with aromatics—alliums, carrots, dried chiles, tomatoes, warm spices, bay leaves, and [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/mariscos-sazon my flavor-bomb Mariscos Sazón], which includes umami-rich dried shrimp—as well as fresh shrimp shells. That “quickly” isn’t for convenience, it’s for maximum flavor: The volatile aromas in shrimp shells that we associate with “shrimp flavor” are quickly extracted through cooking, and you’ll get diminishing flavor returns if you simmer the stock for hours. Puréeing and straining the stock (shells and all) yields a super aromatic soup base with plenty of body, which serves as a perfect backdrop for all the seafood.

With the stock taken care of, you can focus on seasoning and cooking each piece of seafood perfectly. We stagger the seafood cooking in stages, rather than dumping everything in the pot at once and either hoping for the best or fishing things out one at a time as they’re ready. The reward for attention to detail? Tender seafood and a super savory broth that gets a final flavor boost from shellfish liquor as the clams and mussels open up right before it's time to serve. This is the way.

Caldo de siete mares recipe (Mexican seafood soup)

Caldo de Siete Mares (Mexican Seafood Soup)

The [link https://www.chefsteps.com/cuts/beef-porterhouse-steak porterhouse] is the king of steaks.  

The unique pleasure a porterhouse provides is that you get two steaks in one. It’s a cross section of the short loin that contains two prized cuts—a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/cuts/beef-boneless-new-york-strip-steak New York strip] and a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/cuts/beef-filet-mignon filet mignon]—separated by a big old bone.  

Like a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/cuts/beef-tomahawk-steak tomahawk], a porterhouse ain’t cheap, and we certainly wouldn’t fault anyone for taking a safe [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/sous-vide-steak sous vide] or [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/cryo-seared-tomahawk-steak reverse-sear] cooking approach to protect their beef investment, ensuring a perfect edge-to-edge cook. But if you’re willing to take on a little risk, we think a porterhouse is at its best when cooked in a hot pan, basted in butter, and finished in a low oven to intentionally yield a wonderful gradient of textures and temperatures within one mammoth steak. 

When you’re cooking a 3-pound steak that can feed a crowd, variety is a good thing. Folks who like their beef rare can feast on slices of strip or filet from closest to the bone. Like you beef more well-done? The slices from the narrow end of the strip are perfect for you. Like chewing the fat? Wait until you try the knob of golden fat attached to the bottom of the filet, which eats like roasted bone marrow. A properly cooked porterhouse has a little something for everyone.

Pan-seared and roasted porterhouse steak recipe

Ultimate Porterhouse Steak

Real-deal porchetta is a beautiful thing: A whole, boned-out pig, seasoned with fennel and garlic, roasted until the skin is crispy and glassy and the meat is meltingly tender and juicy. Chop it all up for a delicious mix of lean and fatty meat with shards of crunchy skin, stuff it into a sandwich, and you’ve got one of the most iconic Italian street foods.

Making it is obviously a chore—like whole hog barbecue, it’s almost exclusively done by professionals who sell to large crowds. And a lot of places choose to go with a more manageable preparation, using pork belly and loin to approximate the blend of meat, fat, and skin of a whole pig. But even the smaller preparation is extremely hard to do well, and it’s often done poorly.

This recipe gets all the details right, but it’s a project. It requires a special order cut of high-quality pork, time to properly dry out the skin, some butchery technique, a sharp knife, and a two-stage cooking process. 

The skin: Nothing can ruin a beautifully roasted pork belly and loin like hard, impossibly chewy skin. There are two keys to getting pig skin super crispy in an oven: getting it dry and cooking it hot. The less moisture in the skin, the quicker it dries out and crisps in the oven, and using an intense blast of heat right at the start of the cooking process rapidly converts any remaining moisture into steam, puffing the skin up so as it dries it forms a glassy, crunchy crust.

The meat: Porchetta should have assertively seasoned meat, and it should be luscious and juicy, both of which are challenging because it consists of a lean, whole muscle that’s technically “overcooked” and dry above [f 140] encased in a very fatty, tough cut that’s only palatable when thoroughly cooked through to a higher internal temperature of [f 170]. 

Our process is engineered to nail every one of these goals:

-Using a specific cut of pork—skin-on belly with the loin attached—guarantees that the loin will nest neatly in the belly, with enough skin to completely the entire roast. 
-Air-drying the pork in the fridge dries out the skin and intensifies the flavor of the meat. 
-Trimming the belly guarantees that you have enough skin to fully encase the roast. 
-Butterflying the loin maximizes surface area for seasoning. 
-Scoring the skin encourages fat rendering during roasting. 
-A high-heat start puffs and crisps the skin, and a low-temperature roast gently brings the meat up to temperature.

While it isn’t a whole pig, we get that it’s still a big endeavor, but there’s no arguing with the results. This is the ultimate roast porchetta.

Ultimate Roast Porchetta

Pâté en croûte is the pinnacle of charcuterie. Endlessly variable and brutally difficult to prepare well, it’s a test of a cook’s ingenuity, skill, and creativity. Few preparations involve as many intertwined elements and processes, every one of which can go drastically wrong, and every wrong move often means ruining the entire preparation. The pâté en croûte maker is part butcher, part pastry chef, part technician, and part engineer. 

We brought in master butcher Kevin Smith of of Seattle’s [link https://beastandcleaver.com/ Beast &amp; Cleaver] to demo his award-winning pâté en croûte, so you can make one like a pro.

Pâté en Croûte

Christmas pudding is a classic holiday dessert with medieval roots that serves as a great introduction to the wild world of British cuisine. It’s a pudding but not a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/custard-parametric-analysis custard]. It’s a dessert, packed with beef fat. It’s (sort of) a cake that’s steamed, not baked. If you’re going full medieval, you make it a year in advance, wrap it in a pillowcase, and hang it over the fireplace until next Christmas. And then you douse it in booze and set the whole thing on fire.

Christmas pudding defies logic and definition, but one thing is for sure: When done right, it’s downright delicious.

In terms of texture and flavor, Christmas pudding gives off [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pure-24-carrot-cake-with-fresh-carotene-cream-cheese-frosting carrot cake] vibes with a baba au rhum boozy kick. It’s at once dense and moist, rich and delicate, sweet and spiced. Finished with a flourish of flaming brandy and a generous pour of lightly sweetened cream, this is a holiday dessert worth celebrating, without being a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/classic-panettone-in-one-day panettone-level] project. Take it from the pudding pro himself, Kevin Smith: “This is the easiest dish in the world to make.”

Hold on a sec, you may be saying, puddings and cakes are never easy. What’s the catch? Well, the thing about Christmas pudding is that the process of making it is nothing like making a delicate batter or temperature-sensitive custard. You don’t need a stand mixer or a double boiler. In fact, in terms of composition and procedure, this pudding more closely resembles meatballs, just with a mix of brandy-soaked dried fruit standing in for ground meat. 

Like a meatball farce, the pudding is bound together with eggs and a breadcrumb panade. Just like a good meatball, the pudding base is enriched with extra animal fat, in this case beef suet, the hard fat that surrounds the cow’s kidneys. Grated fresh quince is folded into the mix, which keeps the pudding moist and light, just as grated daikon does in [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/xiu-mai-vietnamese-meatballs Vietnamese xíu mại]; they’re even both steamed! But unlike with meatballs or cake batter, the mixing method for Christmas pudding is completely foolproof because there’s no worry of overmixing. There’s no myosin to develop, and there’s so little flour in the base that gluten development isn’t a concern.

Just stir everything together, pack it in a mold, steam it, then set it on fire. No wonder this is our favorite butcher’s favorite dessert! And now it’ll be your favorite, too.

Christmas Pudding

Toro is the best steak you’ve never heard of. Why is that? Well, because it’s a cut that master butcher Kevin Smith of Seattle’s [link https://beastandcleaver.com/ Beast and Cleaver] came up with! Seriously, it’s one of the few steaks you won’t find in our [link https://www.chefsteps.com/cuts Cuts catalog].
 
The toro is the highest abdominal muscle on a cow, and it has a lot of marbling—it may just be the most marbled muscle on the whole animal. Because of that, and the fact it comes from the belly area, Kevin thought the Japanese word for fatty tuna belly—“toro”—was the perfect name for this steak.

Because of all that intramuscular fat, it’s important to cook the steak to medium-rare plus, so the fat renders and becomes tender. There’s nothing pleasant about chewing on cold fat. The cooking method maximizes flavor: After searing and butter-basting the steak to a rosy medium-rare, we slice it before it’s fully rested and toss it back in the still-warm brown butter that’s been spiked with umami-rich shio koji. The open grain structure of the toro readily absorbs the broken pan sauce, for a deeply savory and satisfying steak that is our new-found favorite cut.

How to cook toro steak recipe (Toro Steak)

Toro Steak With Koji Brown Butter

Picanha is the steak that you can cook like duck breast. The sirloin cap, from the rump of the animal, even looks similar to a super-sized duck breast with a triangular shape and robust fat cap. We like to score the fat cap and slowly sear the picanha in a pan to evenly render and crisp the fat before giving it a butter baste and finishing it in a low oven.  

Because of the uneven shape of the cut, cooking it this way produces a gradient in doneness, so you get a wonderful range of textures and flavors, from the crispy fat and more well-done meat around the edges of the picanha, to the blushing medium-rare interior.

Seared and slow-roasted picanha steak recipe

Slow-Roasted Picanha Steak

You can find grilled pork belly all over the Philippines: Marinated in an acidic, slightly sweet, and very savory soy-based mixture to tenderize and season the meat, the pork belly is then cooked from start to finish on a grill, the marinade basted generously over the belly until the outside is sticky, caramelized, and charred.

Cooking pork belly from start to finish on a grill is tricky, especially when it comes to dialing in the perfect not-too-tender texture, with just the right amount of chew. It takes time to convert all its ample [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/decoding-tough-and-tender-cuts collagen into gelatin], and without careful heat management, the sugars in the marinade will burn long before the pork is anywhere near cooked. And, since it’s a cut with a lot of fat, it’s prone to flare-ups.

But if you cook the pork sous vide before finishing it on the grill, you can spend more time relaxing and less time babysitting the belly on the grill. The belly will have the perfect texture before it even hits the grill, which lets you focus on quickly building up and caramelizing successive layers of glaze while finishing it over hot charcoal. 

Served with some garlic-shrimp paste fried rice and a pickle—I’ve been obsessed with this pineapple-kimchi atchara I’ve been making at home, which has sweetness and heat that complement the rich belly—and it’s my perfect meal.

Inihaw na liempo recipe (Filipino barbecue pork belly)

Filipino-Style Grilled Pork Belly (Inihaw na Liempo)

Pla gapong neung manao is a classic Thai dish consisting of steamed fish served in an acidic broth with lots of minced garlic and fresh chiles. It’s as easy to prepare as it is impressive to serve and tasty to eat. 

The fish is scored, stuffed with lemongrass, gently steamed, and typically served in a fish-shaped heated serving platter with a chamber that can accommodate hot coals or a can of Sterno so the dish is bubbling hot when it's served. The fish is doused in a cooked sauce made with lime juice, minced garlic, sliced shallots, and vibrant chiles. Garnished with a tangle of fresh cilantro, it's an incredibly aromatic and beautiful centerpiece to a meal.

[link https://www.amazon.com/Shabu-Plate-Shape-Aluminum-Street/dp/B078JXWC6Q?tag=chefsteps02-20 The heated serving platter] intensifies the aroma of the fish and its broth, but it’s entirely optional—just make sure you use a serving platter that can accommodate all of the broth. I like to shingle thin slices of lime over the top of the fish, because it looks nice and adds an extra aromatic bump from the oils in the lime zest, but that, too, is optional. Be sure to pile the minced garlic, chiles, and sliced shallots high on top of the fish before adding the cilantro.

Pla gapong neung manao may be a simple dish, but it’s a classic for a reason. A bit of tender fish, scooped up with some of the deliciously sour broth, bits of minced garlic, chiles, threads of shallots, and cilantro, paired with steamed jasmine rice ... it’s the perfect bite: salty, aromatic, sour, spicy, bitter, and just a little sweet.

Pla Gapong Neung Manao  recipe (Thai-style whole steamed fish with lime dressing)

Thai-Style Steamed Fish With Garlic and Lime (Pla Gapong Neung Manao)

Sizzling sisig has been the best-selling dish at [link https://www.pigandkhao.com/ Pig and Khao] ever since we opened. It’s the ultimate drinking food: salty, acidic, crispy, chewy, fatty, and meaty—it almost demands being served alongside a bucket of cold beers. Just like at Chili’s, once we run one sizzling platter out of our open kitchen, more orders come flying in—for pig’s head, not mid fajitas.

A traditional Filipino dish, sisig transforms a braised pig’s head into a plate of pork hash with all kinds of different textures, from gooey and rich (the jowls, the cheeks) and deliciously chewy (the ears) to crispy and satisfyingly crunchy, with little hits of char and smoke in the mix, all dressed in a bright, savory-sour dressing. Getting that mix of textures and flavors requires some work—you have to braise, grill, and sear the pork—but the effort is way worth the reward. I even go a step further and add a deep-frying step for a crispy pig ear garnish (optional but so worth it!).

There are two keys to the dish’s success: picking the right pork cuts and braising them for the right amount of time since they contain different amounts of connective tissue. I don’t use the snout or skin, which can make the chopped meat mix lean a little too gelatinous and fatty. And you have to pull the jowls out of the braise well before the ears; otherwise, they’ll be hammered by the time the ears are done.

While the very best sisig is made with a pig’s head, you can make it with other more familiar pork cuts, such as shoulder and belly; it’ll be almost as good. For me, the only ingredients that are non-negotiable are pig ears, because of their amazing texture, and the (completely untraditional) finely cut makrut lime leaves, which complement the citrus in the dressing.

Sizzling sisig recipe (Filipino crispy pork with eggs)

Sizzling Pork Sisig

Sizzling sisig has been the best-selling dish at Pig and Khao ever since we opened. It’s the ultimate drinking food: salty, acidic, crispy, chewy, fatty, and meaty—it almost demands being served alongside a bucket of cold beers. Just like at Chili’s, once we run one sizzling platter out of our open kitchen, more orders come flying in—for pig’s head, not mid fajitas.

A traditional Filipino dish, sisig transforms a braised pig’s head into a plate of pork hash with all kinds of different textures, from gooey and rich (the jowls, the cheeks) and deliciously chewy (the ears) to crispy and satisfyingly crunchy, with little hits of char and smoke in the mix, all dressed in a bright, savory-sour dressing. Getting that mix of textures and flavors requires some work—you have to braise, grill, and sear the pork—but the effort is way worth the reward. I even go a step further and add a deep-frying step for a crispy pig ear garnish (optional but so worth it!).

There are two keys to the dish’s success: picking the right pork cuts and braising them for the right amount of time since they contain different amounts of connective tissue. I don’t use the snout or skin, which can make the chopped meat mix lean a little too gelatinous and fatty. And you have to pull the jowls out of the braise well before the ears; otherwise, they’ll be hammered by the time the ears are done.

While the very best sisig is made with a pig’s head, you can make it with other more familiar pork cuts, such as shoulder and belly; it’ll be almost as good. For me, the only ingredients that are non-negotiable are pig ears, because of their amazing texture, and the (completely untraditional) finely cut makrut lime leaves, which complement the citrus in the dressing.

Not all pozole is created equal. A deceptively simple soup, packed with plump kernels of hominy and tender morsels of meat and served with an array of raw vegetables and crunchy stuff like tortilla chips and fried pork rinds, pozole can run the gamut from bland to holy-smokes-this-is-good. 
 
Our pozole rojo might just be the champion of the latter camp. With a rich pork stock serving as the base, heirloom corn kernels transformed into perfectly cooked hominy, and a rust-red mole made from dried pasilla and guajillo chiles, it’s packed with flavor. Add in our secret ingredient—[link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/classic-carnitas Classic Carnitas]—and all other pozoles will pale in comparison.

Pozole Rojo

Carnitas is a classic of Mexican cuisine: confit pork cooked gently until meltingly tender, then fried until crispy and stuffed into warm tortillas and topped with a bright salsa to balance the richness of the meat. 
 
This version uses traditional technique, dialed in with precision. We confit the pork low and slow in lard, then jack the temperature of the fat up to crisp the meat to finish. In a nod to whole hog carnitas preparations, we use both pork butt and ribs to produce more textural variation. The one-pot method offers one distinct benefit over other techniques, like using sous vide or an oven: You can pull the different cuts of pork from the fat when they reach your desired doneness and just slide them back in when you’re ready to bump up the temp for the finish. 
 
You can serve the carnitas in tacos, or you can put them (or leftovers!) to use in a killer [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pozole-rojo Pozole Rojo].

Classic carnitas recipe cooked with precision

Classic Carnitas

Crispy tortillas wrapped around meltingly tender birria and gooey melted cheese, a quesabirria taco is essentially a leveled-up quesadilla, and it’s all kinds of delicious. Served with a cup of consomé for dipping, it’s no wonder this dish has gone viral over the past few years. 
 
The key to great quesabirria, of course, is starting with excellent birria and consomé—our recipes for [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/beef-birria Tijuana-Style Beef Birria] and [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/goat-birria Jalisco-Style Goat Birria] will set you straight on that front. The rest couldn’t be easier. Everyone knows how to make a quesadilla, right?

Recipe for quesabirria tacos using either Tijuana-style beef birria or Jalisco-style goat birria.

Quesabirria Tacos

Let’s face it: Wedge salads aren’t usually prepared with a lot of care. Quarter a head of iceberg, toss it on a plate, douse it with lumpy blue cheese dressing, scatter some bacon bits and diced tomato and onion on top, impale it with a steak knife, and serve it up with some steakhouse sass and a martini.  

Of course, it’s delicious—no one can deny that. Like [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/shrimp-cocktail shrimp cocktail], even a bad wedge is pretty great. But what if you put a little thought into its construction, transforming it from an afterthought appetizer into something great? 

That’s what we did. 

Don’t worry, we’re not looking to overcomplicate the classic wedge. We’re just taking a sad song and making it better by separating iceberg quarters into layers, laminating them with dressing and toppings, and reassembling them back into wedges. And then showering them with frozen grated blue cheese (no lumpy dressing here). Every bite is balanced and bright, for a truly worthwhile wedge.

Loaded and Laminated Wedge Salad

It’s hard to beat a well-made duck confit. Rich, fork-tender meat encased in crisp, mahogany-hued skin, it’s in the running for the bistro classic G.O.A.T. race; for our money, it might even rival [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-steak-frites steak frites]. 

The process for making duck confit is super simple: Lightly cure duck legs with salt; gently cook them in fat until tender; and crisp the skin. Getting these steps just right requires precision. Go too heavy on the seasoning and you’re left with hammy, salty confit. Confit the legs at too high a temperature and they turn dry and stringy. And, if you rush the crisping step, you risk tearing and burning the skin. 

Building off our [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/brining-guide poultry brining testing], we settled on curing the legs with 1% salt for 24 to 36 hours. We dialed in the temperature of the duck fat at [f 195] to cook this confit, deviating from our [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/easy-crispy-duck-leg-confit sous vide confit], which cooks at a lower temperature for a much longer time. Just like with sous vide, precise control allows to choose your preferred doneness for the confit—in this case by simply extending the cook time rather than changing the cook temperature. 

And when you can dial in the exact temperature of your pan for crisping the skin for serving, you’re guaranteed perfect results. It’s classic confit, without the guesswork and hassle of juggling a vat of hot duck fat in and out of the oven.

Duck confit recipe with precision induction.

Precision Duck Confit

A good oyster, with its fresh, briny sweetness and beautiful texture, doesn’t really need anything more than a squeeze of lemon.

But if you’re going to dress freshly shucked oysters with a mignonette, the condiment should complement the flavor of the oyster—neither too harshly acidic nor overloaded with extra flavors—and any added textural elements should be pleasing to eat (you don’t want large bits of black pepper or shoddily diced shallot).

This mignonette hits all the right notes: sweet, acidic, with a pronounced but not overpowering vegetal bite. It’s also a breeze to make. Steep grated red onion (no meticulous brunoise required) in an aromatic brine for a few minutes, and you’re rewarded with a bright neon pink mignonette that will brighten up any [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-seafood-tower seafood tower].

Neon Mignonette

[link https://www.chefsteps.com/cuts/beef-trimmed-tri-tip-roast Tri-tip]—aka Newport or Santa Maria steak—doesn’t get much love, and that’s a shame. It’s super flavorful and beefy, and like our other favorite, under-appreciated cut, [link https://www.chefsteps.com/cuts/beef-boneless-square-cut-chuck chuck], it can be prepared as a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/flavor-packed-feast-worthy-chuck-roast showstopping roast] or as a killer, [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-grilled-chuck-steak budget-friendly steak].

Cooking tri-tip properly can be challenging. It’s a whole muscle of uneven thickness; the direction of the grain changes about halfway through the muscle; and, since it comes from the rear leg, [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/decoding-tough-and-tender-cuts it can be tough] when cooked too rare or too well-done.

Cooking tri-tip sous vide addresses two of these challenges: It’ll cook evenly from edge to edge, and you can dial in your preferred doneness and texture. Not only can you get a perfect medium-rare steak every time, you can also control tenderness simply by extending the cooking time. For this tri-tip, we provide two options: steaky with just the right amount of chew or melt-in-your-mouth tender.

Separating the tri-tip into two pieces makes it easier to figure out which way the grain runs, which will make it easier to slice against the grain once the beef is cooked sous vide. It also slightly increases the surface area of each piece, so you can add more of the aromatic blackening spice and get a higher ratio of blackened crust to rosy meat.

You can serve the tri-tip all by itself, and it’ll be the star of any cookout. But when it’s dressed with our [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/grilled-tomato-vinaigrette Grilled Tomato Vinaigrette] and paired with a simple grilled radicchio and gem salad with roasted pine nuts and goat cheese, it’s this summer’s steak salad stunner.

Blackened Tri-Tip Steak Salad

Every good yakitori shop takes pride in their tsukune, or chicken meatballs, because they test the limits of a cook’s creativity and ingenuity. You have to transform a humdrum food, often made with scraps, into something extraordinary.

Yakitori chefs dial in the proportions of lean and fatty meat to skin and cartilage in order to produce the most texturally interesting meatball they can. Then, they figure out a cooking process that complements those choices. Some meatballs are steamed before skewering and grilling; others are formed into fat logs on two skewers and all the cooking is done over the coals.

We ultimately settled on a mix of finely hand-chopped knee cartilage, blitzed skin pieces, and ground leg meat, which we season minimally with scallions and sansho pepper for a little grassy, floral heat. Bound with egg yolks and panko and then chilled, the mixture can be formed into smooth, perfectly spherical balls and cooked hot and fast over a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/diy-hibachi-grill-konro hibachi grill]. When cooked, they have a tender, falling apart texture, and the bits of skin and cartilage provide a little crunch and pops of juiciness with every bite.

Tsukune are often dipped in a sauce, or tare, that’s fortified by all the grilled chicken and vegetables that get dipped into it. To replicate that flavor profile, we grill the leg bones of the bird and a scallion and steep them into the sauce. Thickened slightly with cornstarch to mimic the gelatinous viscosity of a yakitori shop’s tare, the sauce is easy to glaze onto the tsukune right at the end of cooking.

Tsukune recipe (chicken meatball yakitori)

Tsukune (Yakitori-Style Chicken Meatballs)

In Turkey, adana kebabs are a point of national pride. Rightly so, since they’re super delicious: hand-minced lamb, fortified with extra fat, seasoned with fresh sweet red peppers (also hand chopped) and salt, molded onto flat metal skewers, and grilled over oak. Those qualities are all non-negotiable, since adana kebabs are protected by a designation of origin with [link https://web.archive.org/web/20110903072459/http://www.adana-to.org.tr/tr/kebap/talimat.htm specific prescriptions for how they’re supposed to be prepared].

Our adana kebabs aren’t made from a 1-year-old sheep that grazed on the indigenous flora of southeastern Turkey, but they are made with lamb we grind ourselves. And we tried to stay true to spirit of the way the official ones are made, limiting the seasoning to fresh and dried chiles for fruity flavor, smokiness, and peppery bite and a little sumac and cumin for floral and earthy notes to complement the fatty meat.

The key to making the kebabs is letting the meat mixture chill after mixing and after you’ve molded it onto the skewers. As the meat rests in the refrigerator, the salt starts unwinding the meat proteins, dissolving myosin present in the meat to form a gel. That gel helps the meat to stick together, and it helps to bind water and fat, which yields a juicier kebab.

They won’t pass the sniff test at the next Adana Chamber of Commerce audit of official adana kebabs, but they’ll pass your these-are-the-best-kebabs-I’ve-ever-eaten-in-a-backyard test with flying colors.

Adana Kebab (Turkish Ground Lamb Kebabs)

Dashi is the foundational stock in Japanese cuisine. Packed with umami, it’s used in a wide variety of applications, like sauces, soups, custards, and braises. 

While you can make a dashi out of any ingredient—it just means “cooking broth”—it typically refers to a broth made with kombu, or dried kelp. Dashi that has been made with a combination of kombu and katsuobushi—shavings of boiled, smoked, and dried skipjack tuna loin—is commonly referred to as “ichiban dashi” (“first” or “number one” dashi), as it is the most widely used version of dashi in both restaurant and home kitchens.

Ichiban dashi is an umami powerhouse, as kombu contains a high concentration of salts of glutamic acid (or glutamates) and katsuobushi contains a high concentration of salts of inosinic acid (or inosinates), and the two amino acids have been found to have a synergistic relationship when eaten in combination. Simply put, when we eat the two ingredients together, they seem to be far more savory than when either is eaten in isolation. Dashi can also be made with dried shiitake mushrooms and other dried fish products, like the niboshi, or dried infant sardines, we recommend using in this recipe.

In classical Japanese cooking, there are many best practices associated with cooking with kombu and katsuobushi, particularly when using these ingredients to make dashi, with ideal temperature ranges and times that strike a balance between flavor extraction and clarity. For the “cleanest” dashi flavor, simmering kombu at [f 140] for an hour will maximize flavor extraction without creating off flavors or odors and without muddying the clarity of the broth. Similarly, when extracting flavor from thinly shaved katsuobushi, it’s best to steep it in water that’s been brought to [f 185] for no more than 15 to 30 seconds. The importance of temperature control, particularly for extracting flavor from kombu, makes dashi a perfect candidate for sous vide cooking.

Sous Vide Dashi

Chinatown barbecue shops with char siu, roast duck, and soy sauce chicken hanging in their front windows specialize in a variety of foods collectively called siu mei—a catchall term for meats often roasted over an open-fire. There are few foods as emblematic of siu mei than Cantonese roast pork belly, or siu yuk—fragrant, succulent meat hiding beneath a uniform layer of golden brown, super-crispy skin.

This version is a calculated spin on the traditional process of roasting a side of cured, skin-on pig over an open fire, utilizing a few modern-day techniques. 

We cook the pork sous vide, ensuring a consistent, luscious texture throughout the meat. The low, slow process of sous vide also renders the otherwise tough skin soft and pliable, which makes pricking the skin—an essential step in creating siu yuk’s characteristic crispy, bubbly, crackled crust—light work. To guarantee the skin crisps and puffs, we air dry the cooked pork for three days, and then blast it in a hot oven (ideally, an air fryer).

The result is a delight in textures and flavors: silky, salty, melt-in-your mouth meat and a deeply golden brown, crispy-crunchy skin.

Crispy Cantonese roast pork belly (siu yuk) recipe using Joule Turbo sous vide circulator and an air fryer.

Crispy Cantonese Roast Pork Belly (Siu Yuk)

Egg foo young is a distinctly Chinatown dish that’s been a mainstay in Chinese menus as far back as the mid-1800s. And it’s not hard to see why: It’s basically a deep-fried, savory omelet packed with all kinds of meats and vegetables, and draped in velvety, umami-rich brown sauce. It’s crispy, it’s savory, it’s a little greasy, and it’s deeply satisfying.   

This recipe puts a new spin on the takeout classic, but cranks up the crisp factor to 11, drawing inspiration from Thai crispy omelets, or khai jiao. It’s crispier and craggier than a traditional egg foo young, but with a super-light texture. And best of all, it’s not greasy or dense.

New School Egg Foo Young

Hainanese chicken rice is just poached chicken and rice, and yet it’s one of the most iconic  dishes in the world. It illustrates how a seemingly simple preparation can be refined into a meal that’s a perfect expression of a single ingredient: poached chicken, served with rice that’s been cooked in the poaching broth. The broth is also seasoned and served with the chicken and rice for sipping, along with a couple of dipping sauces that keep every bite interesting. 

The key to its preparation is a three-step poaching method that yields an attractive appearance, tender and silky meat, and, most importantly, a unique “bite” to the skin, one of the most prized parts of the dish. The skin is rubbed with salt to remove any imperfections; the whole bird is blanched to shrink-wrap the skin around the flesh; and it’s placed in an ice bath after poaching. Our one addition to the method is a dry brine, which, while unconventional, yields evenly seasoned meat and provides a buffer against overcooking, as slightly cured meat has a better water-holding capacity.

The chicken is the star, but the poaching broth and the rice are important supporting players. Granulated chicken bouillon provides a glutamate boost to the broth, and fragrant pandan leaves add intoxicating notes of vanilla and coconut to the broth and rice while also bringing out some of jasmine rice’s inherent aromatic complexity. Served with a spicy and acidic fresh chile-garlic sauce and [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ginger-scallion-sauce classic ginger-scallion sauce], every bite is grab-bag of texture and flavor.

Hainanese Chicken Rice

The best scallion pancakes are crispy, with uniform and distinct layers, and a slightly chewy but still tender interior.

The key to this recipe is our method for laminating the dough. Less like [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/puff-pastry puff pastry] and more like [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/big-macau-egg-tart Chinese puff pastry], scallion pancake dough contains alternating layers of dough and a paste made from oil and flour. Usually, the lamination process is accomplished by coiling the dough and then rolling it flat, which requires practice and skill. For more consistent results, we use a pasta roller to produce thin sheets of dough that can be easily folded into 10 perfect laminated layers.

Just like your favorite restaurant versions—maybe better!—they’re surprisingly easy to make, as long as you have the counter space.

Ultra-flaky Taiwanese scallion pancakes recipe

Ultra-Flaky Scallion Pancakes

If there’s one dish that captures the spirit and finesse of Cantonese cooking, it’s whole steamed sizzling fish: a whole fish steamed with aromatics, topped with julienned green onion, anointed with smoking hot oil, then doused in a slightly sweetened soy sauce.  

It’s a simple but dramatic preparation, but it’s tricky to get just right. The sauce is minimalist, ditto the aromatics, so there’s not a lot to mask the quality of the fish or how it’s been prepared. The key (after [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/selecting-fish-for-purchase selecting the right fish]) is all in the steaming technique: cooking the fish so its flesh is perfectly tender and silky, not chalky and overdone. 

In many classic Chinese seafood restaurants (the ones with the galleries of fish tanks in the windows), the fish is typically cooked in giant steam ovens, which give cooks two options: fast, vigorous steam and low, gentle steam. Typically, home cooks only use the latter option in their steaming setups, letting the water simmer or boil for the duration of the cook.  

But if you dial in the precise temperature of the pan—and thus the water inside the steaming setup—you can regulate both the temperature and the amount of water vapor that will cook your fish, creating a far more gentle cooking environment than a steamer with billowing heads of steam. The internal temperature of the fish will consequently rise more slowly, giving you ample time to monitor its progress with a probe thermometer and reducing the risk of overcooking significantly.

Cantonese-Style Sizzling Steamed Fish made with precision induction cooking on the Control Freak Home.

Precision Cantonese-Style Sizzling Steamed Fish

Ginger-scallion sauce is delicious on almost anything. Spoon it over rice, toss it with noodles, serve it alongside grilled, roasted, or poached meat, like [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/hainanese-chicken-rice Hainanese chicken rice]—it works with it all! 

The key to its preparation is sizzling the fresh ingredients and dried spices with smoking hot oil, which “blooms” their flavors, releasing oil-soluble flavors into the sauce.

Ginger-Scallion Sauce

If you’ve been looking to add some sizzle, spice, and table-side theatrics to your salad game (because why should chain restaurant fajitas get all the glory?), then this dish is for you. 

This salad takes advantage of the textural marvels of [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/how-to-make-yuba-tofu-skin yuba], balancing tender-chewy blanched tofu skin “noodles” with crunchy fried puffed yuba chips that get seasoned with a Yunnan-inspired dipping chile powder, soy sauce, and sesame oil, before getting baptized with a hot oil bath right before serving.

That hot oil sizzle isn’t just for show—the oil instantly blooms the oil-soluble volatile aromas in the spice mix, drawing out tingly heat from Sichuan peppercorns and chile powder, medicinal notes from sand ginger and dried tangerine peel, and warm spice complexity from toasted star anise, black cardamom, cumin, and cinnamon.

Fresh scallion and cilantro balance out the heady spices and slow-building dried chile burn for a seriously satisfying—and unintentionally vegan—salad that eats like a hearty noodle dish.

Spicy sizzling yuba (bean curd skin) salad recipe.

Spicy Sizzling Yuba Salad

Hor fun are thin, wide rice noodles that are perfect for stir-frying, and they’re the foundation for one of the most iconic dishes in Cantonese cuisine: [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/beef-chow-fun-gon-chow-ngau-ho Beef Chow Fun]. Slightly porous, which makes them excellent at absorbing sauce, they’re also resilient enough to survive a spell in a ripping hot wok while retaining a pleasing chewiness, a perfect example of what Taiwanese call “Q” texture (basically, “al dente” for Asian people).

You can buy hor fun noodles at any Chinese supermarket but making your own is worth the effort. Store-bought noodles tend to be brittle before cooking and mushy after, and they often get mangled during the cooking process. Making them from scratch isn’t complicated at all: Steam a thin layer of batter made from a combination of rice flour and tapioca starch until the starches fully gelatinize to produce smooth, slippery noodles with no hint of graininess. (The process is nearly identical to making [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/wheat-starch-noodles-liangpi liang pi].)

Straight out of the steamer, these noodles might appear almost too chewy. But once they’re boiled in a soup or stir fried in a sauce, they hydrate further and soften slightly. Just make sure you make enough, since you’ll want to have these noodles in everything.

Hor Fun Noodles

The Chinese egg tart is a staple of any Chinatown bakery: Individual servings of silky sweet, bright yellow [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/custard-parametric-analysis custard] encased in super flaky puff pastry.

But what about a big version? An egg tart you can whip up for a potluck and share? Chefs like Brandon Jew of San Francisco’s [link https://www.misterjius.com/ Mister Jiu’s] and Jonathan Tam of Copenhagen’s [link https://www.jatakcph.com/ JATAK] have offered their own riffs on the big egg tart, each of them celebrating the pastry in a unique way. Whereas Jew’s tart draws influence from the Macau-style tart, or po tat, with its caramelized top, Tam’s tart looks more like the uncaramelized Honk Kong–style daan tat.

I wanted to do a big Macau-style tart with a Chinese puff pastry crust, made from scratch, but there were a few challenges to getting there. Going big meant that the filling and the crust—especially the crust— would take longer to cook. Since egg-based custards tend to overcook easily and curdle, I had to strike a delicate balance between timing and temperature.

To hedge against overcooking, I use a starch-based custard—essentially a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pastry-cream pastry cream]. Starches slow protein coagulation by blocking protein molecules from bonding during cooking. Not only does starch help the custard become silky, smooth, and thick, it also means you can cook the custard far longer without curdling the eggs. For added browning, I incorporate heavy cream into the custard, providing more milk proteins for caramelization. And instead of whisking, I blitz the chilled custard with an immersion blender, ensuring a smooth finished texture. 

Puff pastry thrives in a hot oven—around [f 400] and higher produces the most dramatic layers—but I found slightly higher temperatures were necessary to achieve optimal caramelization of the top. The result is a tall, deeply browned, silky yet sliceable custard, surrounded by hundreds of delicate, flaky layers.

Chinese Macau-style egg custard tart (pastéis de nata) recipe.

Big Macau Egg Tart

Yuba—aka fu pei, tofu skin, or bean curd skin—is the foundation of several classic dishes throughout Asia, from Cantonese dim sum like fried bean curd skin rolls to the more elemental presentations of Japanese Buddhist cooking, like yuba braised in dashi. Yuba can be eaten fresh, fried, boiled, and even dried. 

The process for making yuba is relatively straightforward but requires a lot of technique and patience. Soy milk is heated until a “skin”—a creamy yellow, protein-lipid film that’s produced through a combination of protein coagulation and drying—forms on the surface. The thin tofu skin is carefully harvested repeatedly using a long bamboo skewer or dowel, and it’s either eaten immediately or hung to air-dry for longer-term storage.

These days, most people get their yuba at the store, where it’s sold as semi-dry sheets, dried sticks, or as dried chips. And while you can’t beat that kind of convenience, the flavor of store-bought yuba pales in comparison to freshly made yuba, particularly yuba made from fresh soy milk made with good soybeans.

Yuba makers use giant steam tables to heat large pans of soy milk, harvesting four to eight giant sheets at a time. Since the optimal temperature for film-forming is relatively low (it starts at [c 80] and maxes out at around [c 88]), the gentle heat from these steam tables is ideal. 

When making yuba at home, the best cooking method is also the simplest: Heat soy milk in a large nonstick skillet—the larger, the better—over direct heat until a skin forms, then carefully remove the yuba sheet with a wooden dowel and hang it to dry. Unlike more unwieldy techniques involving double boilers and steaming in hotel or sheet pans, this method allows you to reasonably control the temperature within a range, and the nonstick coating makes it easy to harvest sheets that form on the surface, as well as scrape off and remove any excess coagulated soy milk (called “amayuba,” or sweet yuba) from the bottom of the pan throughout the process.

Beyond the little details, the key to this recipe is time. This process takes hours and can take a whole day if you’re trying to make a substantial quantity of yuba. But for the patient, the payoff is yuba that tastes better, is more aromatic, and silkier than any you could buy in a store.

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