Of all the people that I thought would become a social media superstar in 2018, Jennifer Garner was not among them. And yet here we are. This is the year that Garner stole our hearts on Instagram, and proved that the world would be a better place if she had her own cooking show. After all, she’s probably picked up a few tricks from her best friend, Ina Garten. In fact, Garner already has a cooking show of sorts, which she features on her Instagram page, cheekily titled “Pretend Cooking Show.”
If you’re hosting Thanksgiving this year, there is one thing that can be easy to overlook when putting out the dessert spread: the coffee. After that big meal, a small cup of hot joe really hits the spot — especially with some pie. Here’s what you need to know.
Here’s a thing I’m certain we can all agree on: Typically the best sides on the Thanksgiving table are meatless. Whether you’re planning on eating the turkey or not, you’ll definitely need some killer side dish recipes. Here are 25 vegetarian salads, stuffings, mashes, and casseroles for your Thanksgiving spread.
Here’s why we love sangria (and mulled wines) for the holidays: They make inexpensive wines more festive, feed the thirst of a crowd easily, and look gorgeous on a bar or table.
Sangria is simply wine, a little liquor, sometimes sugar, and fruit or spices added for flavoring and can be made in big batches days in advance. Here are 10 of our favorites for Friendsgiving.
I know, I just wrote another meal plan around eating down my pantry in an effort to keep my grocery budget in check, but after a week of birthday dinners, election night self-soothing, and general laziness our family needs another week of easy, cheap dinners.
The recipes are simple because as we head into the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, I want to use any extra cooking time I have on making pie crusts, freezing gravy, and just generally preparing for one of my favorite meals of the year. Here’s how we’re keeping meals cheap and easy in our house this week.
Ina Garten and Brussels sprouts: Could there be a more perfect pairing? (Other than Ina and Jeffrey, of course.) When considering the most popular Thanksgiving recipes on the internet — many of which we’re sharing on Kitchn this month — Ina’s balsamic-roasted Brussels immediately came to mind. Not because I’d made them before, but because anybody who has won’t shut up about them.
It wasn’t that long ago that Brussels sprouts were known as the stinky, mushy veggie that you spooned onto your plate to be polite to your aunt who made them but then promptly hid under your mashed potatoes and gravy. In fact, if you were assigned to bring Brussels sprouts to Thanksgiving dinner, it probably meant you weren’t trusted to bring something important (sorry, Aunt Jan).
But Brussels sprouts have made a huge comeback. People love them now. And if you’re in charge of making them, they better be good. I had to know: Were Ina Garten’s Brussels sprouts worthy of that coveted spot on my Thanksgiving table? Here’s what I found out.
Halloween might be over, but it’s never too late to celebrate an awesome costume, even if it’s going on a paper turkey rather than a human. Forget tracing your hand and turning it into a turkey, that’s so 20th century: kids these days (or their parents or teachers) have gotten more creative with their Thanksgiving crafting, and the hottest craft for these rainy November days is the turkey in disguise.
In the hierarchy of Thanksgiving side dishes, a big bowl of mashed potatoes is forever firmly planted at the top of my list. In fact, it’s my favorite dish on the holiday table, period. And this month I tested some of the most popular mashed potato recipes out there — from Alton Brown, Ina Garten, Martha Stewart, and Ree Drummond — to determine which one was the absolute best.
Cooking and tasting these four recipes back-to-back showed me the clear differences — sometimes small, sometimes big — that can set this staple dish apart from its peers. So, which one deserves a prime spot at your Thanksgiving table? Here’s how they ranked, from my least favorite to most favorite.
Making salad dressing from scratch is nearly as fast and easy as shaking up a store-bought bottle, and the taste is exponentially better than even the most “gourmet” jar of blue cheese dressing. (And can I just say that homemade ranch is reason alone to eat a salad tonight?)
I realize that the internet needs another recipe for caesar salad as much as it probably needs another new spin on chocolate chip cookies (guilty as charged, of course). Thus, it was nowhere on my agenda to suggest one. Plus, I’ve told you before that the only caesar dressing I need in my life is my hopelessly, unapologetically inauthentic one — no raw yolks, no tinned fish, and keeps in the fridge for a month, easily — which I’ve shared in some form over here and in Smitten Kitchen Every Day (in a salad with broken eggs and crushed croutons that you need in your life, trust me).
But earlier this year I was invited to be on Cherry Bombe Radio, which records at the Heritage Radio Studios, which broadcasts from two recycled shipping containers behind the Roberta’s Pizza in Bushwick, at the edge of the garden where many of Roberta’s ingredients are grown. My son was home from school that day and I do not know what the 9 year-olds in your life are like, but if I told the one I’ve been assigned that I was going to be hanging out somewhere eating legendarily delicious pizza and not invite him along, he’d (rightly) declare it excessive cruelty. So he came along and along with pizza, ordered the very caesar-y romaine salad with candied walnuts and he declared it the best salad he’d ever eaten and begged me to make it at home. Again, I don’t know what the grade-schoolers in your life are like but I consider it a general rule that if a kid requests salad, they get it.