Technique & Reference
How to roast a chicken, how to make bone broth, how to cook salmon four ways. The reference layer underneath the recipes.
Recipes age out, technique doesn't. The technique hub is the layer of knowing-how-to-cook the rest of the site rests on, roasting a whole bird, building a sheet-pan dinner, cooking salmon to four different finishes, breaking down a Dutch-oven braise. We write these once, properly, and link to them from every recipe that uses the move.
- Recipes live
- 9
- Planned
- 30
The complete guides.
Air Fryer Recipes: What the Machine Is Actually Good At
It is a small convection oven with an aggressive fan, which tells you almost everything about what it does well and what it does badly. Crisp surfaces on small pieces of food, yes. Anything wet, battered, or bigger than the basket, no. The temperature translation from a normal oven, the half-empty basket rule, and the dishes worth cooking in it.
Read the pillarThe GuideInstant Pot Recipes: Where Pressure Actually Saves Time
Pressure cooking is not fast for everything, it is fast for a specific and fairly short list: dried beans, stock, tough collagen-heavy cuts, and whole grains. Everywhere else the come-up time eats the saving. Which dishes are worth the pot, why the printed cook time is never the real time, and how to stop the burn warning.
Read the pillarThe GuideSlow Cooker Recipes: The Cuts That Reward Eight Hours
A slow cooker is a collagen machine. Give it chuck, shin, shoulder, thigh or dried legumes and eight hours turns them into something a fast method cannot reach. Give it chicken breast, pork loin or a pile of vegetables and eight hours ruins them. Which cuts, how much liquid, when the vegetables go in, and why you still sear first.
Read the pillarThe GuideHow to Cook Rice: Ratios, Rest, and Why Yours Is Gummy
Rice is not difficult, it is unforgiving of two specific mistakes: too much water and not enough rest. Here are the absorption ratios by variety, what rinsing does and when to skip it, the ten minutes off the heat that decide the texture, and the food-safety rule about leftover rice that most people have never heard.
Read the pillarThe GuideHow to Roast a Whole Chicken
The technique pillar, dry brine, spatchcock, high heat, sheet pan. 2 hours total, 6 servings.
Read the pillarTested, timed honestly, ledger above the fold.
How to Cook Steak: Salt It Early, Dry It Properly, Use a Thermometer
There are only four variables in a steak and none of them is the pan. Thickness decides the method, surface moisture decides whether it browns or steams, internal temperature decides doneness, and the rest decides how much of the juice ends up on the board instead of in the meat. Salt forty-five minutes ahead, cook to a number rather than to a timer, and stop cutting into it to check.
Scrambled Eggs: Low Heat, Constant Motion, Off the Hob Early
Scrambled eggs are a temperature exercise with an eight-minute margin for error and almost nobody uses it. Egg protein sets between 145F and 165F, and above that it squeezes out water and turns to rubber sitting in a grey puddle. Low heat, a spatula that never stops, fat that goes in cold, salt at the start, and the pan off the burner while they still look underdone.
Mashed Potatoes: Cold Water Start, Warm Dairy, and Never a Blender
Gluey mash is not a seasoning problem, it is a mechanical one. Potato starch granules burst when you agitate them, and once they have burst nothing brings the texture back. Start the potatoes in cold salted water so they cook evenly, dry them over the burner, push them through a ricer rather than beating them, and add butter before dairy. Forty-five minutes including the pot you have to wash.
How to Cook Lentils: Times by Variety, and the Salt Myth
Four common varieties, four completely different outcomes, and one recipe on the back of the bag for all of them. Brown lentils hold for twenty-five minutes then collapse. Puy and beluga stay intact for forty. Red lentils are not meant to hold their shape at all. Salt the water from the start, keep it below a boil, and finish with acid off the heat.
Hard-Boiled Eggs: Eleven Minutes, and Why Yours Will Not Peel
Almost every problem people have with boiled eggs is one of two things: they started the eggs in cold water, or the eggs were too fresh. Lower them into water that is already boiling, run the timer by the minute rather than by guesswork, and shock them hard. Six minutes for jammy, nine for creamy, eleven for fully set with no grey ring.
How to Cook Rice: Ratios, Rest, and Why Yours Is Gummy
Rice is not difficult, it is unforgiving of two specific mistakes: too much water and not enough rest. Here are the absorption ratios by variety, what rinsing does and when to skip it, the ten minutes off the heat that decide the texture, and the food-safety rule about leftover rice that most people have never heard.
How to Roast a Whole Chicken
The technique pillar, dry brine, spatchcock, high heat, sheet pan. 2 hours total, 6 servings.
Bone Broth: Slow Method, Real Gel, Sippable
A 24-hour bone broth recipe that gels at the fridge, collagen-rich, low-sodium, sippable from a mug. Tested for connective-tissue support alongside BPC-157 and TB-500 protocols.
Air Fryer Chicken Breast: Juicy, 18 Minutes
The reliable juicy method: quick brine, 375F/190C, time by thickness, pull at 165F/74C. 18 minutes active, 4 servings, honest about dry-out.
Technique and background, plain English.
- The Roundup9 min
Best Non-Toxic Cookware: What We Actually Cook On
The non-toxic cookware we actually cook on, ranked. Carbon steel, ceramic, cast iron, stainless, plus the set we would skip and why.
- The Roundup8 min
Best Blender for Smoothies: Tested on Frozen Fruit and Protein
We blended frozen fruit, protein powder, and nut butter through six blenders to find the ones worth the counter space and the money.
- The Roundup8 min
Best Meal-Prep Containers: Glass That Survives the Week
The glass meal-prep containers we actually reach for: leakproof, freezer-to-oven, no stains or microplastics. Honest picks, weight and cost included.
The Clean Chef Starter Kit.
A 14-day anti-inflammatory meal plan PDF, grocery list by section, macros totaled per day, Sunday prep sequence. Free.
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