DIY Food

Dry Your Own Herbs and You’ll Never Have to Buy Bottled Again

Can You Dig It is a monthly series by Kristin Guy in which a real-life garden DIY is tackled with style. Whether you’ve got an expansive outdoor plot or just a few houseplants, Kristin will inspire you to grow even more with easy-to-accomplish projects and horticultural know-how. When you think about preserving summer produce, pickling and canning are typically what comes to mind. Drying tends to be an afterthought, but it can be just as powerful for saving summertime flavors! There’s something calming about the drying process, too—you quite literally have to slow down and be patient—and you can easily create your own drying tools to make this ritual even more special. Read More >> …

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How to Properly Shut Down a Grill

Summer might be halfway over, but I’m determined to make this the season I finally invest in a grill for my backyard. After chatting with plenty of pitmasters, barbecue enthusiasts, and professional chefs, it seems like a charcoal grill is the way to go. (While I love the ease that a gas grill offers, you just can’t replicate that charred goodness a charcoal model can bring.) Still, I do have some hesitations about officially jumping on the charcoal bandwagon. How will I master that perfect char? Trial and error, I suppose. What about creating two cook zones? Looks like I’ll need to be strategic about where I place my coals. And what about putting out my charcoal grill? Oh, right. Though it might seem like a small step to wrap up your grill session, it matters.
“When cooking with fire, it’s very important that we’re responsible for the fire from the moment we start it until it’s…

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Here’s How to Emulsify Anything

A creamy hollandaise sauce drizzled over eggs Benedict. A rich, herby bearnaise sauce served on the side of a pan-seared steak. A rich dressing tossed over crunchy lettuce and juicy tomatoes. These silky, luxurious sauces all get their body via a process called emulsification. To understand emulsification—aka the process that happens when oil and water mix to create stable substances like mayonnaise, salad dressing, and even milk—we are going to have to talk science for a minute.
We promise that there will be no atomic diagrams, no Latin, and no, Bill Nye won’t be standing by your side in the kitchen. And if you hang on until the end, you’ll be rewarded with creamy aiolis, mayonnaise that won’t break, and vinaigrettes that hold together for days in the fridge.  Read More >> …

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Making Paneer at Home Is Totally Doable, Promise

Considering that India is one of the largest milk producing countries in the world, it is rather surprising that it doesn’t have a major cheese-making culture. You won’t find stinky and moldy cheeses in the shops that line India’s busy, narrow streets —but almost every dairy shop carries paneer, an immensely popular fresh cheese. 
Paneer is such a dominant culinary symbol in India because, unlike other cheeses, it doesn’t require animal rennet. This makes it perfect for the predominantly vegetarian Indian diet. Paneer makes a great meat substitute in most Indian recipes, but even non-vegetarians like myself love it. From sweets, to fried snacks, to cream-drunk royal curries, paneer is used in North Indian dishes extensively. Its mild taste, texture (similar to that of halloumi or tofu), and capability to soak in flavors and withstand high cooking temperatures make it a household favorite.  Read More >> …

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How to Make Almond Paste From Scratch

It’s always more fun to DIY. We’re here to show you how to make small batches of great foods at home. Today: With Linda Xiao from The Tart Tart’s homemade almond paste, you can take your almond-based desserts and pastries to a whole new level.
Read More >> …

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How to Make Kombucha at Home

I went from questioning kombucha, to loving kombucha, to brewing my own kombucha—with a few road bumps along the way.
Fear is born from ignorance, and before I understood what kombucha is or how it’s made, I was skeptical—if not terrified—not just of making it, but trying it. Read More >> …

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How to Blanch Vegetables Like a Champ

We are definitely, positively in the throes of winter braising, roasting, boiling, and baking. And that’s great—for a little while. But we’re especially eager for the coming of spring’s low-maintenance bounty: tangles of pea shoots, slices of radish, leggy asparagus, peas popped directly from pod to mouth. When we do cook these tender little things, it doesn’t take much—and one of our favorite ways to do it is to blanch.
Blanching requires little more than putting a large pot of water on to boil, salting it to an oceanic extreme, and preparing your vegetables: trimming your beans, breaking down a head of broccoli. It serves three purposes: to partially cook vegetables, to season them evenly, and to retain their color—the process both makes your asparagus a brighter shade of springy green, and keeps it greener for longer. As Test Kitchen Director Josh Cohen suggests in the video above, blanching helps “freeze” a vegetable at its peak (and…

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How to Make a Funfetti Cake From Scratch

It’s always more fun (and fulfilling!) to DIY. Today, we’re making an artificially delicious childhood treat a little bit more authentic. Molly Yeh from My Name is Yeh shows us how.
Deep in the heart of Park Slope, my family and I sat at my sister’s wedding rehearsal dinner, eating and drinking merrily, as a wedding party does. Up until that point, my day had been spent in my small Brooklyn kitchen, baking cakes in five of my sister’s favorite flavors (pistachio, black sesame, lemon, chocolate, red velvet) for what would be my very first wedding cake. It was epic—enough for a wedding four times the size of my sister’s—and I was a very proud maid of honor. Read More >> …

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How to Peel Your Eggs Perfectly, Every Single Time

The best kitchen tips are usually passed along from friends, or parents, or—if you work in an office with an always-bustling test kitchen—from colleagues. And such is the case with eggs. We all learned to cook them from someone, somewhere; they’re personal, they’re nostalgic, and also pretty genius. But make no mistakes—they can be finicky, and, when hard-boiled, a real pain to peel. Read More >> …

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How to Peel Your Eggs Perfectly, Every Single Time

The best kitchen tips are usually passed along from friends, or parents, or—if you work in an office with an always-bustling test kitchen—from colleagues. And such is the case with eggs. We all learned to cook them from someone, somewhere; they’re personal, they’re nostalgic, and also pretty genius. But make no mistakes—they can be finicky, and, when hard-boiled, a real pain to peel. Read More >> …

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How to Make Meatballs in 5 Simple Steps, With Any Type of Meat

Here at Food52, we love recipes—but do we always use them? Of course not. Because once you realize you don’t always need a recipe, you’ll make your favorite dishes a lot more often. Today: If you can source good ground meat, you can make meatballs. Jennifer Steinhauer (a.k.a. Jenny) teaches us their ways. Photos by James Ransom. 
Meatballs are by definition not a recipe kind of food. You need some meat—about a pound of it—and you will make them into balls. They need something to bind them (that’s where eggs and breadcrumbs come in), and some seasoning and flavor, especially if you are using poultry meat, as I tend to. I like to dump a lot of cheese in mine for extra yum. Read More >> …

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How to Cream Butter and Sugar Without a Mixer

Inspired by conversations on the Food52 Hotline, we’re sharing tips and tricks that make navigating all of our kitchens easier and more fun.
Today: How to cream butter and sugar the old fashioned way. Read More >> …

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How to Cream Butter and Sugar Without a Mixer

Inspired by conversations on the Food52 Hotline, we’re sharing tips and tricks that make navigating all of our kitchens easier and more fun.
Today: How to cream butter and sugar the old fashioned way. Read More >> …

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How to Make Vegetable Stock Without a Recipe

We love recipes—but do we always use them? Of course not. Because once you realize you don’t always need a recipe, you’ll make your favorite dishes a lot more often. Here, we show you how to make soups and stews more flavorful with whatever vegetable scraps you have on hand—or the cheapest produce at the market.
If you’re not already making your own vegetable stock, you should start now. Read More >> …

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How to Make Vegetable Stock Without a Recipe

We love recipes—but do we always use them? Of course not. Because once you realize you don’t always need a recipe, you’ll make your favorite dishes a lot more often. Here, we show you how to make soups and stews more flavorful with whatever vegetable scraps you have on hand—or the cheapest produce at the market.
If you’re not already making your own vegetable stock, you should start now. Read More >> …

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The Best Substitute for Cake Flour and Self-Rising Flour in Baking

A lot of us keep a gargantuan container of all-purpose flour in our pantry—a near-lifetime supply, if you’re anything like our Test Kitchen. All-purpose flour is the faithful old floury friend that we lean on for pancakes, muffins, and everything in between. More devoted bakers might even have a few wildcards in their baking arsenals, like whole wheat pastry flour or almond flour or spelt flour. But only in the most organized and well-stocked of home pantries have we found a bag of the self-rising variety, or ultra-soft cake flour, resplendent in its old-school packaging.
If you don’t bake a whole lot, or didn’t plan quite so far ahead (*raises hand*), you might get tripped up on a recipe that calls for one of these somewhat uncommon, vaguely esoteric flours. Should you take another trip to the grocery store to pick them up? No, we say happily. As it turns out, both cake flour and self-rising flour…

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The Best Substitute for Cake Flour and Self-Rising Flour in Baking

A lot of us keep a gargantuan container of all-purpose flour in our pantry—a near-lifetime supply, if you’re anything like our Test Kitchen. All-purpose flour is the faithful old floury friend that we lean on for pancakes, muffins, and everything in between. More devoted bakers might even have a few wildcards in their baking arsenals, like whole wheat pastry flour or almond flour or spelt flour. But only in the most organized and well-stocked of home pantries have we found a bag of the self-rising variety, or ultra-soft cake flour, resplendent in its old-school packaging.
If you don’t bake a whole lot, or didn’t plan quite so far ahead (*raises hand*), you might get tripped up on a recipe that calls for one of these somewhat uncommon, vaguely esoteric flours. Should you take another trip to the grocery store to pick them up? No, we say happily. As it turns out, both cake flour and self-rising flour…

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