Serious Eats / Jesse Raub The first time I saw someone brew a pourover with a scale, it blew my mind. As a barista, I weighed coffee out to the exact gram, but the water was measured loosely by volume (or in less ideal situations, just eyeballed). By actually setting the whole pourover rig on top of the scale, you get immediate feedback on the coffee-to-water ratio. All of a sudden, the coffee I brewed drastically improved—and it was clear that a ratio of 1:15 coffee to water resulted in a much different cup than, say, 1:17. If you’re only using 20 grams of coffee to make a single cup, however ..read more

Serious Eats Have you ever met someone who doesn’t believe in favorites? The ones who prefer to quantify each like or interest instead of using the label of “favorite?” Well, I can confidently tell you that the Serious Eats staff are the exact opposite type of people. We say our opinions with our chest—when we love something, we LOVE something, and we’ll make sure you know about it. So our year-end roundups are always a fun time around the office, where we all get to wax poetic about our favorite versions of all the things that make up this lovely little food website: recipes, images, gear, an ..read more

Serious Eats / Russell Kilgore Unlike tabletop rollers or pasta maker attachments made for stand mixers, extruder-style machines mix, knead, and press the dough for you. (The dough is forced through a cutter disc, shaping it into noodles.) The only time you need to get hands-on with an extruder is when it’s time to guide the noodles away from the machine and slice them off of the disc. But efficiency isn’t the only metric we consider when cooking dinner. We, like many other pasta fans, wondered whether extruders were worth the higher price tag than their manual counterparts.  To find out ..read more

Serious Eats / Lorena Masso I sat here for a while attempting a whole spiel about how good our work was this past year. Each version of it, though, could be distilled into: "TL;DR: Our work was really so good." And honestly, the more I think about it, the recipes really speak for themselves! I hope you'll trust that, as with all other years of Serious Eats past, we are so thrilled with and grateful for the kinds of work we were able to get live onto this silly-goofy-nerdy-so-good website. And while yes, of course, we are proud of all of it, we wanted to round up a few standout examples of reci ..read more

Serious Eats / Jesse Raub Coffee percolators have been around since the late 1800s and were the dominant brew method for much of the 20th century. It wasn’t until the advent of the automatic drip coffee maker in the 1970s that percolators fell out of fashion. Both percolators and drip brewers use the same principle: As water heats, steam bubbles drive hot water up a tube and out over the coffee grounds. The big difference is in the filter. With a drip coffee brewer, water travels to a sprayhead and then drips through the grounds in the filter and into the pot below. Percolators instead distrib ..read more

Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez Although Thai food is known abroad for its stir-fried noodles like pad thai, noodle soups are arguably even more popular among native Thais. What makes them so popular? Well, many things: the affordability, the ubiquitousness, the speed of ordering and eating, and of course the flavor. Noodle soups are an industry unto themselves in Thailand, as common as sandwich shops in the States, and they fulfill similar funcion, offering convenient and immensely satisfying one-bowl meals in a flash. Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez One style of Thai noodle soup that hits ultimate ..read more

Serious Eats / Karina Matalon In true Jamaican manipulation of syntax and the Queen’s English, all beans and pulses are called peas, irrespective of whether they are beans, lentils, or legumes. In the category of bean dishes, Jamaica’s "stew peas" ranks very high on our list of perfect comfort foods. A thick and substantial stew made with red kidney beans and coconut milk, with the addition of fresh beef, salted beef, and pig tail, stew peas is a rich, creamy, and salty stew that develops its unique flavor by simmering for hours on the stovetop. Typical seasonings like scallion, garlic, thyme ..read more

Serious Eats / Julia Estrada Breaded chicken is crunchy, golden-brown, and delicious. What's not to like? These seven bread chicken recipes showcase different methods and sauces, and there's truly something for everybody—whether you love a classic chicken piccata or DIY Chinese takeout. Easy Breaded Fried Chicken Cutlets Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik The secret to the richest chicken cutlets? Clarified butter and a little Parmesan. Chicken Schnitzel Serious Eats / Mateja Zvirotic Andrijanic Juicy and tender, with a golden, crunchy exterior that is almost impossible to resist. Chicken Piccata (Fri ..read more

Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez For many of us, snacks are an absolutely vital part of our daily routine. Yet, most of us don't think about making snacks at home unless we're planning on hosting a party. We devote a lot of our cooking bandwidth to preparing dinner, but snacks are often essential for sustaining us through the day. Store-bought options are great, but just as a flavorful dinner is worth a little extra effort, so is a delicious snack! Sure, not everyone has time to lovingly recreate a childhood treat, but many of these snack recipes come together with less than 15 minutes of prep. Yo ..read more

Serious Eats / Andrew Janjigian One reason people rarely make croissants at home—or do, but fail to achieve those as beautifully produced in bakeries—is that they don’t have access to a dough sheeter. Croissants and other laminated pastries like danish, puff pastry, and kouign-amann are made by gradually rolling layered slabs of bread dough and butter to thinner and thinner depths, both evenly and quickly, before the butter warms up. While it is entirely possible to make laminated pastry doughs by hand, it’s also something of a bear to do, especially for beginners.  Bread dough is natural ..read more