Simple Cooking

Old Bay Seasoning is the brand name of a blend of herbs and spices produced in Maryland by McCormick & Co. You can make a homemade version of Old Bay by following this recipe.

The flavor of the soy paste really shines here, so use the best-quality one you can find. We like Yu Ding Xing’s glutinous rice soy paste.

Dark soy sauce along with regular soy sauce is what gives these wings their rich color. We like to use all flats—arguably the best part of the wing!—but a mix with drumettes or whole wings works too.

Flattening pork chops with the dull edge of a cleaver or heavy knife gives the surface an almost fluffy texture and helps the potato starch coating adhere.

This crispy-crunchy-salty mix gets its green hue from a blend of ground seaweed snacks, dried dill, and lime zest. The seasoning of garlic powder, cayenne, salt, and sugar rounds it all out.

Use this easy dumpling dough with any filling you like, or add some puréed vegetables to the dough for colored dumpling skins.

A frozen Negroni, no slushy machine required. 

Shelled raw peanuts are easy to find at Asian markets, health food stores, and other specialty food stores.

This version is made with up to eight spices. It’s worth using them all for the fullest flavor.

Whipping an egg into the filling of these simple, folded dumplings makes them fluffy and moist—and a double hit of soy amps up the umami.

It’s a humble combination of two everyday ingredients, but Kiribath has enormous significance in Sri Lanka—it’s cooked by the Sinhalese to mark the new year in April, and on other special occasions that celebrate new beginnings.

Pol Sambol (like all sambols) is a versatile, vivid relish, given an intense hit of flavour from Maldive fish: smoked, sun-dried tuna, flaked and used sparingly

I try to make a big batch of steel-cut oats early in the week, ready to reheat for breakfast in the days that follow. This is a favorite autumnal way of topping it, which helps to keep an old standby interesting through all the weeks of the year. Rather than stirring the squash into the full pot of oatmeal, you can add it to individual bowls, treating it as a topping.

By coarsely mashing, seasoning, and storing the squash to use later in the week, you've got an ingredient that'll yield more types of dishes than would be easily available to you if you were to have cubed and roasted leftover squash. It's a spread, a sandwich filling, sweet component of a frittata, the starting point of an easy appetizer. 

This delicately spiced mussel soup uses the bivalves at their very best, when they’re plump and filled with flavour. The curry powder, chutney and raita give the soup a scent of the warm sub-continent, in the depths of dreary January.

Nachos can stand an ingredient riff, but to make sure that the cheese is melted throughout and that each bite has the requisite combination of tastes and textures, follow this plan.

This refreshing blended drink is inspired by ayran, doogh, and lassi. Yogurt makes it tangy and creamy; white pepper gives a touch of earthy heat.

Watermelon contains natural sugars and plenty of liquid, which make this smoothie light and refreshing. The fresh mint gives it that je ne sais quoi that you might not be able to pinpoint right away, but which makes the flavor a total standout. 

This smoothie is a fresh take on a Creamsicle—the secret ingredient is persimmon, which provides sweetness and creaminess while letting the mango flavor shine through.

This smoothie mimics the flavors of everyone’s favorite muffin.