I am a huge, huge fan of boneless, skinless chicken thighs. They are inexpensive, tasty, and easy to cook. In fact, I find it difficult to mess up chicken thighs. They are just dark enough to stay tender, but not so dark as to put off people who prefer white meat. Everyone who eats regularly at my house has eaten chicken thighs!

In the summer I grill these babies every week, especially when I have a big table of people to feed. But in the winter, when I don’t feel like stepping outside to the grill but do feel like turning on the oven, I bake the chicken in the oven. It’s easy as 1-2-3. Here’s what I do.

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If you’re anything like us, you just can’t wait any longer for asparagus season. It’s one of the green vegetables that truly signals that we survived another winter and made it to spring. While it might not be at its peak just yet, it is slowly hitting grocery store shelves and farmers market stalls. We say it’s time to start bringing it into the kitchen. Here are five ways to do just that.

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Welcome to the Great Debates, where we consider the greatest nutritional controversies of our time. Our goal isn’t to tell you what to think or do, but rather to present both sides of hot-button issues, like coffee (is it good for you?) and breakfast (the most important meal of the day?). What’s being said? Who’s saying it? Then it’s up to you to make your own decisions.

If you are looking for evidence that red meat is killing you, there is no shortage of cautionary headlines. Here’s a brief, incomplete sampling: “Red Alert on Red Meat” (Time, 2001); “Dying for Some Red Meat? You May Be” (Washington Post, 2009); “Red Meat Linked to Cancer and Heart Disease” (New York Times, 2012); “Meat Is Linked to Higher Cancer Risk, W.H.O. Report Finds” (New York Times, 2015); “Eating too much red meat ‘can age the body’, researchers claim” (The Guardian, 2016); Red Meat Tied to Diverticulitis Risk (New York Times, 2017).

We could do this all day!

And yet there is a wrinkle, which is that plenty of other studies suggest red meat not only won’t kill you, but may in fact even be good for you. A 2012 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that eating lean beef might actually reduce the risk of heart disease. Multiple studies have shown meaty, Atkins-like diets to be particularly effective for weight loss. And then there are the various health benefits of saturated animal fats.

There is enough conflicting (and muddled, and often flawed) evidence to leave a person very confused, and also hungry. Should we foreswear our organic, grass-fed hamburgers? Should we eat more hamburgers? Are we eating just the right number of hamburgers? Does it even matter at all?

In the interest of both taste and longevity, let us examine the evidence.

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If you really want a good homemade turkey burger, you can’t simply treat the turkey like ground beef. Even lean cuts of ground beef cook up juicy and flavorful, but ground turkey needs a few sidekicks to make that a reality.

This recipe understands all that and adds a really smart step to make these the juiciest turkey burgers you’ll ever make at home. The secret is a breadcrumb-yogurt mixture — seasoned with both Worcestershire and soy sauce, and studded with sweet shallots — that gets gently folded into the meat. The way you cook these burgers is key, too. We’re using a two-step cooking process that guarantees a burger with a golden-crisp exterior and juicy center. Now, aren’t you intrigued?

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Who: Slade Rushing, executive chef at Brennan’s, and Allison Vines-Rushing, chef at Port City
Where: New Orleans, Louisiana

Slade Rushing and Allison Vines-Rushing are kind of a big deal. In New Orleans, yes, but also in the greater food world.

The husband-and-wife team made a name for themselves at Jack’s Luxury Oyster Bar in New York (now closed), then solidified their power couple status at MiLa in New Orleans (also closed). Allison earned a James Beard Award (Best Rising Chef of the Year) while at Jack’s, and Slade was nominated for a Beard in his current role as the executive chef of Brennan’s.

Now, if you live in New Orleans, you have almost certainly eaten at Brennan family restaurant. Ditto if you have ever visited New Orleans. And even if you have only thought about making the trip down to the Big Easy, chances are you have heard of a restaurant run by someone with a connection to the Brennan family.

The point is: Brennan is a name that means something in New Orleans. So being the executive chef of Brennan’s, the original fine-dining establishment responsible for starting the empire (and inventing bananas foster!) really means something.

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(Image credit: Faith Durand)

I’ve been meal planning regularly since my first kid was born more than five years ago, and I can say without question that these are the five most helpful questions to get you started on deciding what to make for dinner each week. You don’t need to figure out a Google spreadsheet or browse Kitchn’s recipe page for recipes before you start practicing these five questions every week (or every two weeks if that works best for you). Their goal is to help you figure out what really matters before you even begin to think about a recipe.

Here’s how I do it: On Friday evenings, after pizza dinner is cleaned up and the kids are in bed, I make myself a cocktail and pull out my paper planner to create a meal plan for the week ahead. And every week before I start searching for recipes, I go over these five questions with my calendar.

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From Apartment Therapy → Here’s Proof That Kitchen Contractors Do IKEA Hacks Better Than The Rest of Us

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Keep a bag of frozen tortellini tucked away in your freezer and you can rest easy knowing that a quick meal is always at the ready. This series on fast tortellini dinners will show you how to transform frozen tortellini into dinner using pantry staples and a few surprising techniques. Pasta sauce is just the beginning!

Frozen tortellini deserves to be dressed up and made to feel a bit fancy sometimes. Here’s how: Toss it in creamy, dreamy mascarpone cheese, along with plenty of bright lemon juice, colorful peas, and, most importantly, crispy prosciutto crumbles. It’s the fastest way to turn frozen tortellini to a fancy-pants dish of macaroni and cheese.

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Your range is a wonderful and complicated thing that helps you put dinner on the table. And even though it may see like a complicated heat box machine, it’s actually pretty simple to repair.

The ceramic top has a crack? No big deal! A new one can be popped into place (just don’t cook on it until then, as it could further shatter or lead to some electric shocks!). The oven seems to be giving off a lot of heat? You might just need a new gasket. Is the control panel being wonky? That’s probably an easy fix, too. You can even get a new thermostat or heating element if the oven isn’t heating up as fast or evenly as it used to.

If you’re feeling particularly handy, you can even do a lot of these little fixes yourself (hello, YouTube!), or you can get a certified repair expert out to your house.

The point is: Ranges are almost always worth a fix — there’s just this one time when they’re not.

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If this is the year you finally make corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick’s Day, we’re here to help! From buying the ingredients to choosing a cooking method, here is everything you need to know about making this Irish-American classic.

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