Latest news with #SohlaElWaylly
The Guardian
a day ago
- General
- The Guardian
Get a sharp knife, season properly and don't do too much at once: how to start cooking
Food is more than just nutrition: it can be joyful, social and exciting. But the act of preparing it can feel awfully daunting. Many beginner cooks suffer from a fear of failure, a lack of foundational knowledge and a poor understanding of how long it actually takes to prepare a dish, says Sam Nasserian, founder and CEO of Cozymeal, a culinary services company. But 'once people learn the basics and try a few recipes, they're surprised by how easy and fun cooking can be', he says. And there are lots of benefits to cooking at home. Namely: it tends to be healthier and cheaper than eating out or ordering in. So how does one start cooking? We asked experts. Not as much as you think. It's easy to get overwhelmed by all the elaborate cooking gadgets out there, but experts agree you really only need a few key tools and ingredients to prepare most dishes. Caroline Chambers, author of a book and Substack both called What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking, says you can go far with just 'a chef's knife, a cutting board, a good nonstick pan, a few rimmed baking sheets, and a few silicone spatulas'. Nasserian also suggests a medium-sized oven-safe skillet, a small lidded saucepan, measuring cups and spoons, a colander and some storage containers for leftovers. You don't have to go for the fanciest, most expensive gear either, says Sohla El-Waylly, author of the cookbook Start Here. When it comes to a knife, for example, 'you just need a sharp knife that you feel comfortable sharpening', she says. 'That might be the cheapest knife you pick up from Walmart.' Then, if you feel inspired later, you can level up. Quality can make a big difference when it comes to basic spices and pantry staples, though. El-Waylly recommends stocking up on good kosher salt, like Diamond Crystal – 'It's very fluffy, light and forgiving when you first start cooking,' she says – and fresh black pepper that you crack yourself, either with a knife or a pepper mill. 'I know it sounds boring, but it's the basics where you can really screw yourself up right off the bat,' El-Waylly says. Other useful ingredients she recommends keeping on hand are olive oil, a neutral oil (like canola oil or avocado oil) for high temperature cooking, a couple of vinegars, bags of rice and some beans. There is a popular idea that cooking is intuitive. It might be for some, but intuition usually only comes after lots of practice. 'Cooking is a learned skill, just like riding a bike or learning to read,' says Chambers. 'If your mother or some other authority figure in your life didn't teach you the fundamentals, how should you be expected to have acquired them?' The first thing Chambers recommends is enrolling in or watching a knife skills class (there are free ones online). 'Knife skills are the fundamental skill in cooking, and if you don't have a basic knowledge of them, you're always going to feel frustrated and slow in the kitchen,' she says. More from How to start: How to start meditating How to start weightlifting How to start budgeting How to start running Nasserian is keen on knife skills too, including learning a safe knife grip. Another important step is developing good cooking habits, like setting up ingredients before you turn on the stove – also known as 'mise en place'. Properly seasoning food is where a lot of beginners slip up, Nassierian says, especially by 'under-seasoning early and over-salting later'. 'You season throughout the cooking process, not just at the end,' says El-Waylly. 'Every time you add something to the pan, add some salt.' Tasting the food as you cook is essential. This doesn't only help with seasoning, but also with learning how flavors develop, says El-Waylly. 'When you're working with spices and you taste something early on, you might feel like the spices taste like themselves and don't come together,' she says. 'But when you taste as it's cooking, you'll notice flavors blending and harmonizing.' Sign up to Well Actually Practical advice, expert insights and answers to your questions about how to live a good life after newsletter promotion For those who are learning how to cook, 'super low effort, super high reward recipes are essential', says Chambers. She says her tiny tomato pasta and taco salad recipes are especially popular among novice cooks. Nasserian also recommends trying recipes that will teach you core cooking skills: a one-pot lentil soup can teach you how to time sauteing and simmering; sheet pan chicken with vegetables, chopping and roasting; a three-egg omelet, heat control; and a vegetable stir-fry, knife work and sauce rations. 'Rotate through them for a couple of weeks, and you'll have the confidence to tackle almost any recipe,' Nasserin says. When you first try anything, you will inevitably make mistakes. But there are easy cooking gaffes to avoid. Don't overcrowd pans, says Nasserian (this can prevent browning and make ingredients soggy rather than crispy). And if you want to sear meat, make sure the skillet is hot enough before you drop it in (as in, very, very hot). Most of all, experts suggest starting off small and not biting off more than you can chew. 'TikTok makes it look really fun to cook an eight-part dinner party,' says Chambers. 'And it is fun! If you know how to cook.' El-Waylly says it's important to be realistic about timing. 'A lot of recipes will have a cook time of 45 minutes,' she says. 'But if you're starting out, give yourself three hours.' And if you're fretting about having people over for a meal, don't worry – the pros do it too. 'I still get nervous every time I cook for somebody. I don't think that ever goes away, and that's fine,' says El-Waylly. 'It means you care.'
New York Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Cooking 101
Chefs demonstrate techniques and share essential recipes that are fundamental to making great food. Published June 25, 2025 Updated June 25, 2025 Welcome to the home base of Cooking 101, our series on essential cooking skills. Every edition of the series covers a different technique, tool or ingredient, and each host shares the tips, recipes and kitchen wisdom that they believe will set you up for success, no matter where you are in your cooking journey. View all the recipes featured in Cooking 101 Hosted by the chef and cookbook author Sohla El-Waylly, each episode focuses on a different ingredient, how to shop for it and the best ways to prepare it. Watch her as she shares the culinary methods she believes are truly worth mastering. As she says in the first episode, 'Welcome to my cooking school, but it's free, no debt.' What You'll Learn What to look for when buying steak; all about labeling, like what fat percentages mean and how you can use them to your advantage; how to cook tough cuts; how to test for doneness and more. David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Cyd Raftus McDowell. James Ransom for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Johnny Miller for The New York Times What You'll Learn How to correctly boil your pasta; how to easily measure 12 ounces of pasta; what to do if you accidentally threw out your pasta water; why you generally shouldn't rinse your pasta and more. Grated Tomato Pasta Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food stylist: Cyd Raftus McDowell. Spaghetti Carbonara Linda Xiao for The New York Times Spaghetti Stir-Fry With Chicken David Malosh for The New York Times What You'll Learn How to buy the freshest heads of broccoli; how to slice and chop it perfectly; how to cook it to bring out maximum flavor and more. Recipes in This Episode Broccoli With Sizzled Nuts and Dates David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Cyd Raftus McDowell. Quinoa and Broccoli Spoon Salad David Malosh for The New York Times Sesame Broccoli Joe Lingeman for The New York Times What You'll Learn How to shop for fish; the difference between farm-raised and wild-caught; how to get crispy skin; how and why to dry brine fish; how to braise frozen fish; how to shallow fry and more. Recipes in This Episode Roasted Salmon With Dill and Cucumber Salad Mark Weinberg for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. Coconut Curry Fish Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Susan Spungen. Fish Tacos Craig Lee for The New York Times What You'll Learn How to handle raw chicken safely; how to spatchcock a whole bird; how to ensure your chicken doesn't become dry; how to braise and more. Recipes in This Episode Spatchcock Roast Chicken Mark Weinberg for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. Coconut Milk Chicken Adobo Christopher Testani for The New York Times Hara Masala Murgh (Green Masala Chicken) David Malosh for The New York Times What You'll Learn How to shop for rice; the differences between short-, medium- and long-grain rice, brown rice and white rice; how to make a perfect pot and rescue a failed one; and how to cook pilaf, fried rice and more. Recipes in This Episode Butter Pilaf Linda Xiao for The New York Times Basic Stovetop Rice Karsten Moran for The New York Times Whatever You've Got Fried Rice David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks. What You'll Learn How to shop for eggs and expert tips for all the ways to cook them: scrambled, fried, over easy, over hard, sunny-side up, hard-boiled, soft-boiled, poached and more. Recipes in This Episode Cheesy Frittata Johnny Miller for The New York Times Article: These 11 Tips Will Make You a Better Cook 'Properly equipping yourself in the kitchen is crucial to not only making good food,' Sohla El-Waylly writes, 'but also having a good time while you do it.' NYTCooking Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram , Facebook , YouTube , TikTok and Pinterest . Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice .
The Guardian
4 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
Get a sharp knife, season properly and don't do too much at once: how to start cooking
Food is more than just nutrition: it can be joyful, social and exciting. But the act of preparing it can feel awfully daunting. Many beginner cooks suffer from a fear of failure, a lack of foundational knowledge and a poor understanding of how long it actually takes to prepare a dish, says Sam Nasserian, founder and CEO of Cozymeal, a culinary services company. But 'once people learn the basics and try a few recipes, they're surprised by how easy and fun cooking can be', he says. And there are lots of benefits to cooking at home. Namely: it tends to be healthier and cheaper than eating out or ordering in. So how does one start cooking? We asked experts. Not as much as you think. It's easy to get overwhelmed by all the elaborate cooking gadgets out there, but experts agree you really only need a few key tools and ingredients to prepare most dishes. Caroline Chambers, author of a book and Substack both called What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking, says you can go far with just 'a chef's knife, a cutting board, a good nonstick pan, a few rimmed baking sheets, and a few silicone spatulas'. Nasserian also suggests a medium-sized oven-safe skillet, a small lidded saucepan, measuring cups and spoons, a colander and some storage containers for leftovers. You don't have to go for the fanciest, most expensive gear either, says Sohla El-Waylly, author of the cookbook Start Here. When it comes to a knife, for example, 'you just need a sharp knife that you feel comfortable sharpening', she says. 'That might be the cheapest knife you pick up from Walmart.' Then, if you feel inspired later, you can level up. Quality can make a big difference when it comes to basic spices and pantry staples, though. El-Waylly recommends stocking up on good kosher salt, like Diamond Crystal – 'It's very fluffy, light and forgiving when you first start cooking,' she says – and fresh black pepper that you crack yourself, either with a knife or a pepper mill. 'I know it sounds boring, but it's the basics where you can really screw yourself up right off the bat,' El-Waylly says. Other useful ingredients she recommends keeping on hand are olive oil, a neutral oil (like canola oil or avocado oil) for high temperature cooking, a couple of vinegars, bags of rice and some beans. There is a popular idea that cooking is intuitive. It might be for some, but intuition usually only comes after lots of practice. 'Cooking is a learned skill, just like riding a bike or learning to read,' says Chambers. 'If your mother or some other authority figure in your life didn't teach you the fundamentals, how should you be expected to have acquired them?' The first thing Chambers recommends is enrolling in or watching a knife skills class (there are free ones online). 'Knife skills are the fundamental skill in cooking, and if you don't have a basic knowledge of them, you're always going to feel frustrated and slow in the kitchen,' she says. More from How to start: How to start meditating How to start weightlifting How to start budgeting How to start running Nasserian is keen on knife skills too, including learning a safe knife grip. Another important step is developing good cooking habits, like setting up ingredients before you turn on the stove – also known as 'mise en place'. Properly seasoning food is where a lot of beginners slip up, Nassierian says, especially by 'under-seasoning early and over-salting later'. 'You season throughout the cooking process, not just at the end,' says El-Waylly. 'Every time you add something to the pan, add some salt.' Tasting the food as you cook is essential. This doesn't only help with seasoning, but also with learning how flavors develop, says El-Waylly. 'When you're working with spices and you taste something early on, you might feel like the spices taste like themselves and don't come together,' she says. 'But when you taste as it's cooking, you'll notice flavors blending and harmonizing.' Sign up to Well Actually Practical advice, expert insights and answers to your questions about how to live a good life after newsletter promotion For those who are learning how to cook, 'super low effort, super high reward recipes are essential', says Chambers. She says her tiny tomato pasta and taco salad recipes are especially popular among novice cooks. Nasserian also recommends trying recipes that will teach you core cooking skills: a one-pot lentil soup can teach you how to time sauteing and simmering; sheet pan chicken with vegetables, chopping and roasting; a three-egg omelet, heat control; and a vegetable stir-fry, knife work and sauce rations. 'Rotate through them for a couple of weeks, and you'll have the confidence to tackle almost any recipe,' Nasserin says. When you first try anything, you will inevitably make mistakes. But there are easy cooking gaffes to avoid. Don't overcrowd pans, says Nasserian (this can prevent browning and make ingredients soggy rather than crispy). And if you want to sear meat, make sure the skillet is hot enough before you drop it in (as in, very, very hot). Most of all, experts suggest starting off small and not biting off more than you can chew. 'TikTok makes it look really fun to cook an eight-part dinner party,' says Chambers. 'And it is fun! If you know how to cook.' El-Waylly says it's important to be realistic about timing. 'A lot of recipes will have a cook time of 45 minutes,' she says. 'But if you're starting out, give yourself three hours.' And if you're fretting about having people over for a meal, don't worry – the pros do it too. 'I still get nervous every time I cook for somebody. I don't think that ever goes away, and that's fine,' says El-Waylly. 'It means you care.'
WIRED
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- WIRED
MSG Is (Once Again) Back on the Table
May 11, 2025 6:30 AM Monosodium glutamate has a poor reputation in the US, which is both unfortunate and based on misinformation. A spate of new cookbooks highlighting its powers is here to awaken our senses. Photo-Illustration:All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. Making a recent dinner, my wife Elisabeth put together Sohla El-Waylly's 'hot and tingly' smashed cucumber salad, a wisp of a recipe that combines favorite ingredients like cukes, chili crisp, salt, sugar, and rice vinegar, along with something less commonly used in our household, MSG. Tucking in, it wasn't a surprise that the salad was good, but the monosodium glutamate gave it an extra savory deliciousness that made me wonder if Elisabeth intentionally set the salad bowl out of my reach. In my decades living in North America and Europe, MSG was an unfortunately infrequently used ingredient, yet here it was making our tongues happy. Being drawn to it now was inspired by a trend I picked up on while reading some of the best new and recent cookbooks. Easiest to pick out is the just-released Salt Sugar MSG , by Calvin Eng and Phoebe Melnick, that's a Cantonese-American extravaganza of deliciousness. Tu David Phu and Soleil Ho made regular use of MSG in 2024's The Memory of Taste , and Meathead Goldwyn makes a plea for its use with a special section way up on page five of his brand-new cookbook, The Meathead Method . Plugging MSG into Eat Your Books, a subscription service that allows you to search recipes from within your own cookbook collection, I could see that among my cookbooks, El-Waylly makes great use of it in her 2023 James Beard Award book, Start Here . Helen Graves has a recipe for an MSG martini in her BBQ Days, BBQ Nights , along with a warning that—I'll paraphrase—you'll likely get hammered if you have more than one of them. Salt Sugar MSG , By Calvin Eng with Phoebe Melnick. Buy it at Amazon ($29), ($35), or Powell's ($38) Courtesy of Clarkson Potter/Crown Publishing If I searched Eat Your Books for MSG but took out the results from these books, the list dried up to almost nothing. That's a shame considering what great work the ingredient does in the kitchen. El-Waylly uses it in that cucumber salad, a cauliflower and coconut soup, and a cool pistachio ranch fun dip made fun because she loves ranch. Meathead likes it on chicken, mac and cheese, and meat in general. Tu David Fu uses it with stir-fried clams, sticky rice dumplings, and tomato-braised salmon belly. Calvin Eng uses it on just about everything. "I keep salt, sugar, MSG on my counter all the time," says Eng who's such a fan that he has a little MSG heart tattoo on the back of his left arm. A self-professed "lover and user of MSG on a massive scale," he still has aha moments with it that help him appreciate its power. His favorite example is Cantonese chicken broth with scallions, garlic, ginger, and Shaoxing wine, finished with salt and MSG. Once for a private dinner, he featured a head-to-head tasting of the broth with salt next to broth with salt and MSG and was deeply impressed at the difference. "It adds so much umami," he says, referring to the savory "fifth taste" that accompanies salt, sweet, sour, and bitter. "It adds a layer. It makes you want more." Indeed, I tried little head-to-heads with mugs of my own broth and enjoyed getting a hang of its effects and how to use it. Salt adds depth, but salt and MSG can make broth bigger, deeper, rounder, and more delicious. Seasoning with MSG takes practice. Eng mentions that he didn't fully understand it until he worked in restaurant kitchens, but offers a simple suggestion on how to get used to using it. "Have it on your counter next to your salt," he counsels. 'Use both, but use less salt than you normally would, and taste as you go.' More Than This MSG is derived from glutamic acid (one of the amino acids) and is naturally occurring in delicious, umami-packed foods like anchovies, parmesan, tomatoes, and kelp. When I asked chef turned food scientist, author, and fermentation expert David Zilber about how MSG makes things so delicious, he responded with his own question: "Shall I put this in Cheeto terms for you?" My response was an emphatic yes. "Glutamate is one of the most abundant amino acids in the living world. When you take it out of its natural context and add it to other foods in large quantities, it gets you to eat more," he explains. "They are like the signals in nature that the human body looks for when searching for the most digestible and nutritious foods. It hacks ancient and primal physiology to make bland foods more palatable and moreish." Perhaps this makes my whole ritual of keeping a damp cloth next to my snack-touching hand on my annual (?) Cheeto binge make more sense. Cravings are certainly affected by what we do and don't like, Zilber explains, "but at the chemical level, smell and taste are the most 'hands in the dirt' senses our body has." Courtesy of Clarkson Potter/Crown Publishing For as helpful as it is for making food better, the ingredient has had a tough go of it in North America. MSG "is derived from glutamic acid, one of the 22 amino acids," says my 2007 copy of The Food Lover's Companion , which calls the ingredient a popular flavor enhancer in Japan and China. It also says "some people have reactions to MSG that caused them to suffer from a variety of maladies, including dizziness, headache, flushing, and burning sensations," information that is, like my copy, dated. This stems from a 1968 letter from Robert Ho Man Kwok printed in the New England Journal of Medicine, citing symptoms like dizziness, headache, and nausea that were dubbed 'Chinese restaurant syndrome' and prompted many Chinatown restaurants around the world to hang glowing neon 'NO MSG' signs on their front windows. Problematically, it appears that either Kwok's story was more anecdotal than science-based or an orthopedic surgeon named Howard Steel penned the letter as part of a $10 bet with a colleague to see if he could get it published in a prestigious medical journal. Regardless, the Journal never made enough of an effort to correct things as they spiraled into a problem and a faux syndrome was born. (More on this in act one of this April 2025 episode of This American Life .) Stuff like this makes for yarns that would be a lot more enjoyable if they didn't trail a 50-year xenophobic stink in their wake, and the "MSG is bad for you" stereotype persists. Too much of it can be harmful to you if you're ingesting ridiculous quantities. As El-Waylly writes, 'If you have 1/2 cup of it on an empty stomach without food, you might feel ill, as you would from eating 1/2 cup of salt.' The dose makes the poison. Eng's solution for promoting MSG, and one he encourages other chefs and food professionals to mimic, is right there on the cover of his book: Talk about it. Normalize it. Try it out. Personally, I grabbed the aforementioned books and started cooking from them. Along with the hot and tingly cuke salad, El-Wally's dill pickle cucumber salad with pickle brine, onions, and toasted coriander seeds is another great place to start, and something that nearly set off a dinnertime squabble over who got the last bowl at a Ray-family meal. I tried Eng's popcorn recipe, which also features a dusting of toasted Szechuan peppercorns, fried garlic, MSG, and melted butter. I riffed on his sour cream and green onion dip, making mine with caramelized onions, then showering it with chives from my garden, quick-pickled onions, black pepper, and crumbled store-bought fried onions. Not long afterward, I made a rather exquisite bagel with butter, cream cheese, smoked salmon, shallot, scallion, salt, pepper, and MSG. It's hard for something with ingredients this fantastic not to be delicious, but I started thinking that the MSG turned them all into the best versions of themselves. There's a ways to go before MSG is anywhere near as mainstream as salt, but until then, I invite you to join me on the Normalization Team and, like Eng suggests, keep a container of it on the counter, right next to the salt.
