This year, my wife and I managed to get through Thanksgiving without any major mishaps or blow-ups. That domestic and culinary tranquility was thanks (at least in part) to the answers Kenji and Stella gave on our special episode of “Ask Special…

In part two of my conversation with the extraordinary bakers Amy Scherber of Amy’s Bread and Melissa Weller of High Street on Hudson, we take a deep dive into what makes a proper (and I would say perfect) bagel, keeping wholesale bread fresh and…

This week’s Special Sauce episode unintentionally turned into a carb fest. Although I knew I was having on a couple of the finest bakers in the land- Amy Scherber, the founder of , and Melissa Weller, a baker and partner at – I had not anticipated…

I don’t know about the rest of you Thanksgiving hosts out there, but my wife and I tend to become increasingly stressed as the holiday approaches each year. On more than one occasion, I’ve reached out to Kenji and Stella to help relieve my…

On this week’s Special Sauce, we take a deep dive into , the new cookbook from Ivan Orkin and Chris Ying. We pick up where we left off in last week’s conversation, and Chris and Ivan talk about how this new project came about. They said that while…

Sometimes, my Special Sauce interviews are the best way to catch up with old friends and colleagues. I was reminded of that when Chris Ying and Ivan Orkin, co-authors of , walked into the studio. The first thing you have to know about Ivan and…

On Special Sauce this week, I had the pleasure of continuing my deep dive into the history of fast food with Adam Chandler, the author of . But before I tell you more about that conversation, we kicked off this episode, as we always do, with another…

This week’s Special Sauce episode kicks off with Serious Eater Marc Lampert asking Kenji about the process of cooking with ingredients packed with umami. “Does umami cook out like an acid would?” Marc asked. Here’s part of Kenji’s response: “A general…

This week’s episode of Special Sauce kicks off with our new culinary Q&A segment, “Ask Kenji.” At the behest of listener Dave Shorr, Kenji lays down the law on the best way to freeze chicken. It’s a simple process that includes placing chicken…

This week’s Special Sauce kicks off with our new culinary Q&A segment, “Ask Kenji.” This time around, Kenji schools us and serious eater Paul Anderson on the differences between cornstarch and flour when used as thickeners. Among them: Unlike…