Salmon is a great fish to work in to your diet and it's good for you too. Full of Omega 3, a "good fat" that may reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes and more. Salmon is also a good source of B12, Niacin and vitamin D. In this how-to video, Rita shows you how to sauté sa ...more
Theo Gray of Gray Matter explains the principle behind sending steel up in flames- as long as it's steel wool, of course. The process is beyond simple. Spend 2 bucks and 2 minutes: purchase a steel wool pad, hold in pliers, light with a match. But the question is, why is steel ...more
To get out from the Soul Bridge in the Ashland of Darksiders on the Xbox 360, you should watch this video to make sure you do it without getting killed. Make your way up the western rocky ramp and head due west to find the Soul Bridge. Approach it riding Ruin and you'll be abl ...more
After beating Silitha, you'll have to return its heart. Watch this walkthrough of Darksiders on the Xbox 360. After Silitha's death, you'll find yourself in a cave two levels below where you originally fought her. Use the Crossblade to hit the crystal blade on the rock platfor ...more
If you can't beat Silitha in the Xbox 360 video game Darksiders, then perhaps you should check out this video on accomplishing just that. Silitha is a gigantic and ugly spider-like creature that dwarfs War. She can teleport around the arena and likes to appear directly above W ...more
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our tutorials, post to the community corkboard, and come play on our free server! There have been a ton of cities and towns popping up all over the map recently, and I'm thrilled that one of them is the winner of this week's Staff Choice ...more
With the aid of America's top botanical experts, Michael Tortorello of the New York Times has compiled a wonderful list of 15 hard-to-kill houseplants for the green thumb inept. Pictured above: One of Tortorello's experts, Mark Hoover, keeper of 878 houseplants.. Below, Tortor ...more
Deb and Alex's Smitten Kitchen is a treasure trove of beautifully photographed, delicious looking recipes. Every recipe is painstakingly outlined, including their recent post on making perfectly cooked, painless pizza. Personally, I have yet to get pizza dough right, so I'm an ...more
The art of eating leftover pizza. Some like it cold. Some even whip it up into a leftover pizza sandwich. Me, I like my pizza reheated. The trick to de-icing perfection? For all the lazy bums out there, who can't handle the thorough (re: slow!) oven method, Aaron Mattis, of S ...more
Scott demonstrates how to make southern-style black-eyed peas and turnip greens. Use one pound of frozen chopped turnip greens and used two cups of dried black-eyed peas. Soak the peas overnight in six cups of water with two teaspoons of salt. In the morning drain the peans. U ...more
Scallops are delicious and make an exotic addition to the dinner table. Luckily, they are not difficult to prepare. Check out this tutorial and learn how to make scallops so good they will impress your friends and family. You Will Need • Scallops • Salt and pepper • Cast-ir ...more
This video is a demonstration of how to sear salmon, with ideas on how to serve it. She has two salmon filets with skin on. She brushes them with olive oil and sprinkles them with sea salt and pepper. She heats a cast iron skillet with olive oil in it and places the filets ski ...more
In this video from Gourmet Magazine, Ian Knauer shows us how to clean and use dried chilies. Chile de arbol is the spiciest. To make a great hot sauce, boil about 40 of these with the seeds in and blend with some garlic and water. Next is the chipotle chili. You can often find ...more
Watch this video to learn how to make a delicious dinner dish. After watching this video, you'll be able to make blackened fish in no time. Things You'll Need: 2 Tbsp paprika 2 & 1/2 tsp salt 2 tsp lemon pepper 1 & 1/2 tsp garlic powder 1 & 1/2 tsp dried basil leaves, crushed ...more
Make mouths water with this crab cake and lemon dill sauce recipe. In a bowl add 2 eggs, 1/2 cup breadcrumbs, 1/4 cup of mayonnaise, 1 teas. Worcestershire sauce, 1 teas. Old Bay Seasoning, 1/4 teas mustard powder, and 1/4 teas. black pepper. Blend mixture until it is all meld ...more
Chef Jason Hill is at the Mission Tortilla Factory in Anaheim, CA to show you how to make restaurant quality tortillas. Add butter at the end and you're good to go! To prepare this flour tortilla recipe, you only need four ingredients: flour, baking powder, vegetable shorteni ...more
Feel you have too small of a kitchen to keep everything you need inside it? Not true. Even if you have a small kitchen and a small budget, you can still save money by stocking it efficiently. You Will Need: • Basic pantry staples • Multi-purpose cookware Step 1: Start with ...more
In the Xbox 360 game Darksiders, you'll eventually have to play the Iron Canopy level, which consists of The Seesaw, Webbed Floor, Two Lifts 1 Bomb, Loom Wardens, Broodmother, Silitha and Return Silitha's Heart. War will be ambushed and captured as he enters the Iron Canopy. W ...more
There's no better shrimp than shrimp from Maine. Maine always has the best seafood, so why not use them in all your meals. These Gulf of Maine shrimp are very small and have an extra sweetness, unlike any other shrimp in the world. See how to make this Maine shrimp fritters me ...more
Meat and bourbon is a delicious marriage—whether it's bacon-infused bourbon or bourbon drenched steaks, or perhaps the most ingenious combination of all: bourbon-spiked chilli. The hint of bourbon is subtle, but it packs just enough punch to set this delicious chili apart in ...more
I was getting kind of sick of ordering delivery pizza (this happens at least 2-3 times a month). It was time to put a spin on gourmet pizza, but I just didn't know what it would be. Without pizza dough or an oven that is capable of creating the perfect pizza crust (I don't hav ...more
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim set off a bang in the video game world this month. It will likely be video game of the year a few times over. Skyrim is another part to a series set in the fantasy world of Tamriel, a world filled with mystical creatures, folklore, and even its own ...more
This is a video which demonstrates how to cook lemon Cornish hens. This will be a great addition to your dinner repertoire. No one will be able to keep their hands off it. Ingredients: Cast Iron Pan Baby Chickens Olive oil Salt & Pepper Garlic Powder Ground Mustard Chicken Bro ...more
In this tutorial, we learn how to make tortillas with a tortilla press. First, you will need masa, which is corn flour with lime juice in it. Pour out some masa into a bowl, then add in warm water to the bowl to make a dough. After this, mix the masa and the water until you ha ...more
Discover yet another of the delicious use for that cast-iron skillet you bought in this video from Jenny Jones, who teaches you how to make a Dutch Baby. No, you don't have to go to the Red Light District. Heck, you don't even have to leave your kitchen! A Dutch Baby in this c ...more
You probably already know that cooking involves a ton of chemistry. Bread rises because of the reaction between the flour and leavener, and the delicious crust on your steak is formed by the Maillard reaction. Understanding the chemistry going on behind the scenes is one of th ...more
I don't deep fry food that often, mostly because it uses a ton of oil, which is expensive, and the cleanup is a son of a mother. (That oil really splatters everywhere.) Plus, no matter how careful you are, you will get hit by hot oil at some point and it will not be pleasant. ...more
Tagine is both the name of a cooking vessel and also the dish that is cooked within it. In fact, some might say tagines are the national dish of Morocco. These slow-cooked stews and braises, often combining meat, vegetables, spices, and dried fruits, have a character unlike an ...more
You're in the middle of cooking and a car alarm, cute kitten, or neighborhood brawl made you step away from the stove for a few minutes longer that you should have. It happens to almost every home cook. Most of the time, nothing dramatic happens, but every now and then, you en ...more
I went to get my boat ready for the summer and discover that my engine block was cracked. I looked online to find the cost of a new block to be way out of my range so I decided to see if I could repair the cracked block. Cast iron is very sensitive to heat and I do not have th ...more
Even the most seasoned kitchen cooks experience the annoyance of accidentally burning food on their pots, pans, and casserole dishes. When dishwashing soap and water doesn't work, what is the best way to remove burned-on gunk from your cookware? For the simplest method that r ...more
One of my favorite things to do when I visit my parents is cook. Aside from the fact that I adore cooking with my mom, there's something comforting about returning to the kitchen that I first started playing in 20 years ago. Nearly all of the tools and appliances are the same ...more
A good, sharp knife is a cook's best friend, which is why there's so much passionate debate about what kind you should get. Most enthusiastic home cooks opt for a stainless steel knife, but it turns out there's a different option that the pros favor, and that's carbon steel. T ...more
As you get barbecuing this summer, you're likely to encounter a few grills that aren't exactly the cleanest. At parks or campgrounds and even on your friends' grills (or, um, your own), no one wants to place food on gunked-up grill grates. The leftover mess from previous barb ...more
There are a lot of techniques out there for how to cook the perfect steak, from flipping it multiple times to applying a spice rub or dry brine to aging the beef. But it turns out that there's a super-easy way to make a great steak at home, and all you need is a good cast-iron ...more
Hash browns are a breakfast staple and for good reason: they're simple, salty, and crispy, and so delicious that you can easily down several servings of them in one sitting. Basically, they're the French fries of breakfast. Despite their simplicity, hash browns can be difficu ...more
To flip, or not to flip, that is the real question. When you're nervously standing over the stove or grill, what do you do with that steak before you? I always believed that to have a perfect medium or medium-rare steak, I needed to let a thick cut of meat sear on one side fo ...more
As I said in this earlier post, there's no easy way to explain or define the Steampunk aesthetic. There are a large number of Steampunk tropes or "cues", as I call them, that bring to mind the feeling of Steampunk. These cues combine to push past the "not-Steampunk" threshold ...more
We like our Egg McMuffins around here, albeit homemade with our preferred ingredients: whole wheat (or homemade sourdough) English muffins, a slice of thick Tillamook cheddar cheese, a meat, perhaps, like Canadian bacon, and finally—that perfectly-fried, perfectly-shaped egg. ...more
Nothing makes my stomach growl and my mouth water quite like the smell of roasting chicken. It's a pretty universal reaction, too—there's a reason every grocery store places its rotisserie grills and delis near the entrance, after all. The appeal of the grocery rotisserie chi ...more
Instant ramen noodles are hardly gourmet dining, but with a little extra time, effort, and ingredients, this humble staple of college dormitory dining can be elevated at least a little bit to resemble a more hearty and appetizing meal. Spaghetti sauce and a few extra ingredie ...more
Even though I often end the workday exhausted and just want to wrap rotisserie chicken parts in a store-bought tortilla and shove it in my eating hole, I generally try and take a couple of minutes to warm up said tortillas before I begin my meal. But if you're starving, do you ...more
French fries, like mashed or roast potatoes, are the type O blood of the food world—they're compatible with just about everybody. That's why it's so sad to bring home leftover frites (that's French for French fries) and have to toss them out the next day because they don't tas ...more
Paper towels are great for absorbing your kitchen spills, but did you know that they're also perfect for cooking bacon in the microwave? Simply place bacon side-by-side on a layer of two paper towels and place two more paper towels on top of the bacon. Zap in the microwave at ...more
I've never had a problem with veggies—we've always been the best of friends—but I do have a lot of other people in my life that have been less than enamored with this basic food group in the past. Some cite the bitter flavor associated with veggies like Brussels sprouts, while ...more
Making a good crêpe takes practice and commitment. The batter is rich—most recipes incorporate melted butter, whole milk, and several eggs—and the cooking of the crêpe requires good technique. You have to learn to deposit and swirl just the right amount of batter to get the th ...more
Need to get a painful splinter out of your skin? Apply some bacon grease onto the affected area and place a band-aid on it overnight. The bacon grease will soften the skin tissue and draw out the splinter, making it easier to remove with tweezers the next day. After cooking y ...more
The oven is arguably our most essential kitchen appliance (right alongside the fridge, freezer, and yes, even the microwave). But even though we've been using them for a few millennia, many of us know so little about our ovens that our cooking or baking can feel like a roll of ...more
Mobile augmented reality developer Blippar's mission is to construct a computer vision map the world, with visual recognition of thousands of notable buildings, bridges, castles, holy places. A major step toward that goal has been taken by the company this month with the annou ...more
We've heard of putting French fries on a slice of cheese pizza; after all, two fast-food favorites together are almost always better than one by itself. But French fries used as the crust of a pizza in lieu of traditional dough? That's an entirely different ball game. Don't Mi ...more
When I was a little kid, my parents often eschewed cakes for my birthday parties, and instead opted for ice cream sundaes and banana splits. It made perfect sense: ice cream is so easy, and you can get multiple flavors to ensure that everyone is happy. Don't Miss: How to Make ...more
Most people who cook end up having at least three or four different kinds of spatulas in their drawers. I personally have at least five. However, if I had to do it all over again, I would purchase only one, and that would be a flexible fish spatula. Flexible fish spatulas are ...more
Sometimes I forget that I'm also a fiction writer, so I thought it might be a nice change of pace to share one of my stories with you. I wrote this piece awhile ago for an anthology that never came together and I'm tired of just sitting on it. It's one of the more odd stories ...more
Whether you're anxious to tune into this Sunday's Super Bowl 50 to see Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers take on Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos, or to see if you win some money on your silly prop bet, or just want to tune in for the commercials, there are a handful o ...more
Convenience in the kitchen can be a very, very good thing. As fun as it can be to spend hours toiling over Julia Child's boeuf bourguignon, there's a reason that we have canned soup, microwave dinners, bouillon cubes, and, of course, boxed mixes. Boxed mixes get a bad rap, bu ...more
Cooking on a budget isn't always easy, but there's a silver lining: it can be really fun. Ever since I started supporting myself I've enjoyed going shopping, finding the most affordable items, and learning how to make the most of them. Sure, sometimes I wish I could afford to ...more
A long time ago I was reading an issue of Saveur and saw an article about a trendsetting bar in Portland. The bartender at the joint had started making enormous blocks of smoked ice for his cocktails. When a patron ordered a drink that called for the smoked ice, the bartender ...more
We're all familiar with the sinking feeling that happens when you cruise through a recipe, only to arrive at an instruction that calls for a tool you don't have. Some of the best food hacks (and my personal favorites) exist to combat that problem. Why spend money on a kitchen ...more
Every year, when summer rolls around, I get excited because it's grilling season. And every year, when summer comes to a close, I get sad because grilling season is ending. To me, nothing can beat being outside next to a hot flame or some coals, with a beer in one hand and so ...more
Tomatoes are the perfect barometer for kitchen knives and knife skills. If you've ever watched an infomercial for a set of knives, you've surely seen the enthusiastic host waxing about how well the knives cut tomatoes. And if you've ever had your knives sharpened, you've most ...more