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Roll up your sleeves and get ready to butcher a fish, churn your own frozen yogurt, or fry a batch of doughnuts.
Even the 15-minute meal can be a worthy lesson. Learning to perfectly salt a burger patty, or poach a perfect white orb of an egg, or transform the outside of a grilled cheese to the just the right shade of gold. But nothing gives home cooks a technique crash course like cranking the music, rolling up your sleeves, maybe even opening a can of Grimm Super Swoon, and digging into a slightly ambitious cooking project.
Maybe this means butchering the whole snapper you were able to score from the fish market—finding a way to use each and every part of it, from the eyeballs to the tail. Maybe it means making your own pâte à choux and constructing a Paris Brest worthy of a Parisian pastry shop from scratch. Or maybe it’s as simple as wanting to make your own soy milk for breakfast tomorrow. You can live this truth.
Here we’ve brought together some of our favorite TASTE projects—home cooking endeavors that will engage your creativity, teach you a few new tricks, and hopefully offer an excuse to stop refreshing the news on your phone. And at the very least, when all is said and done, you might just have something good to eat. And if not, at least you tried. —Anna Hezel
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Peanut Butter on the Outside
What if a PB&J were made with the peanut butter on the outside, and it was a dessert?
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Salt-Roasting Isn't Just for Fish
With a few handfuls of cheap salt and an egg white, you can make your vegetables taste richer, juicier, and even more like themselves.
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New Bun on the Block
With its heady aroma and dramatic knots, the Swedish cardamom bun is worth getting behind.
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We Bow to the Master: Pâte à Choux
Whether or not you know it as pâte à choux, this is the classic pastry you’ve been eating all along.
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Potatoes: They’re Better as Ribbons
Thinly sliced and accordioned in a skillet, this technique gives hasselbacking a run for its money.
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Rethink Your Whole Fish Strategy
Josh Niland’s tips on buying, aging, and cooking nose-to-tail at home.
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Put the Tea in Tiramisu
Swap coffee for matcha, and the Italian classic takes on a whole new persona.
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The Secret Society of Marmalade Makers
Each winter the world’s marmalade makers emerge from hibernation for a jam session of epic scale.
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The Republic of Georgia Has a Family of Cheesy Breads
If you can roll out pizza dough, you can make khachapuri—Georgia’s famous cheese- and egg-filled bread canoes.
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In Defense of the Chewy Doughnut
Forget cake doughnuts and yeast doughnuts. Mochi doughnuts add some bounce to your bite.
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Watch YouTube, Make Black Garlic
When you cook garlic very slowly for a very long time, it becomes milder, sweeter, and looks really cool.
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The Salty, Savory Side of Soy Milk
This Taiwanese approach to breakfast will sell you on homemade soy milk.
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Let Them Steam Cake
A bamboo basket is great for dumplings, but even better for this impossible-to-overcook cake.
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My Love for Gnocco Fritto
I miss gnocco fritto like an old friend. When we get together, the conversation comes so easy.
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Will the Real Frozen Yogurt Please Stand Up?
Real froyo has a secret—and it comes from a can.
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Lasagna Meets the Calzone Halfway
This popular Sicilian street food bakes all of the best, crispiest bits of lasagna into a toasty loaf of bread.