Guides

Chinese New Year offers tons of opportunity for celebration: parades, dim sum brunches, and Chinatown feasts. It’s also a brilliant reason to throw a party! If you’re feeling ambitious, celebrate the year of the dragon by making your own dumplings or bun–or supplement any of the great main course treats that follow with takeout dumplings from one of NYC’s many $1-for-four-dumpling joints.

**The Best Chinese-Inspired New Year’s Treats**

1. Pork and String Bean Stir Fry. This was invented as an easy weeknight dinner for two, but it doubles as a buffet main…

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If you’re thinking about investing in a slow cooker or you own one but it’s tucked away on a shelf, this week is tailor made for you.From Monday til Friday, here, on Small Kitchen College, The Naptime Chef , and the sites of our wonderful partners, we’re plumbing the depths of the electric slow cooker, as well as slowly cooked food (in the oven, on the stove) in general. Slow-cooked food gets incredibly tasty, tough meats grow rich and soft, and soups come away with extraordinary flavor. You have to plan ahead, but you get…

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Cozying up with a bowl of stew is our favorite way to spend a drowsy winter weeknight evening. Most stews are one-pot meals, and most get better with time–genius! That means you get to make them in advance, maybe even on Sunday, and enjoy the fruits of your cooking later in the week. Though stews may be best enjoyed wearing sweatpants and flannel, they also wind up being quite elegant, refined enough for a dinner party (think Julia Child and Boeuf Bourguignon).

**9 Stews To Keep You Cozy This Fall**

Slow-Cooker Beef Stew with Red…

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As food bloggers, you might imagine that we’d be tethered to a line that runs from our kitchens to our desks. You would be fairly justified in imagining this. But in real life, things are a little different. There are days–glorious, delicious days–when we cook and photograph all day and eat things like Grits with Frizzled Shallots and a Fried Egg for breakfast, Golden Zucchini Sandwiches for lunch, and Coconut-Crusted Tilapia for dinner. There are also days when deadlines approach and we can hardly be bothered to cook, as there’s so much typing…

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The new year is a time to reinvent yourself, even in the kitchen. Sure, you’ll go to the gym more and eat less like a college student this year. Sure.

But really, let’s be realistic about this.

Here are our simple, straightforward food resolutions for 2012. Attainable, green, and heart-warming, they’ll give us goals to meet all year long. Are you making any cooking resolutions? Where will your kitchen bring you in 2012?

**Food Resolutions to Make in 2012**

1. Simmer Stock. When you’re a quarter-life cook, convenience is undisputedly queen. But when you do have some extra time, and some…

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With the holidays near–er, here–holiday party season is in full swing. We’re sure you’ve already labored over festive meals and decadent desserts to serve to your loved ones when entertaining at home. If you’re still hosting, for New Year’s Eve, perhaps, you deserve to take a break. Or at least appear to in front of your guests.

These awesome appetizers require almost no moment-of work or attention. Some need to be pulled out of the oven or gently reheated, but other than that, they’re purely make-ahead. For the most part, they’re easy too, requiring no more than a few…

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‘Tis the holiday season, and that means it’s time for lots and lots of cocktail parties. While we usually spend more time tending to our finger food than what’s on top of the bar when we’re hosting, there’s nothing like a specialty drink to make your guests extra merry. In today’s prep school video, Phoebe makes a classic eggnog with rum that is sure to get your bells jingling.

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Christmas Cookies! With just a few short weeks to go, it’s time to start baking…or at least time to start thinking about baking.

Just the mention of cookies smiles to our faces. Between holiday parties and cookie swaps, we’ll be eating our fill. The question is, what to bake? There is the classic: a sugar cookie, artfully decorated. There’s the historical: a mandelbread recipe, passed down from Cara’s grandma. And there’s the seasonal: a spiced snickerdoodle, or a super-gingery gingersnap.

The best Christmas cookies look pretty and taste great, and they also keep well. That last quality means they…

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Our first-ever BGSK gift guide highlights eight days of presents we know you want to give and receive. To cut through the cluttered shelves of kitchen-oriented goodies, we’re spending eight days showing you the best of the best of the kitchen goodies to wrap up for or unwrap on Hanukkah and Christmas.

Today is Day #6–The 7 Best Giftable Food Activities.

There are food gifts like boxes of chocolate bark that can fit inside a stocking, and then there are those that are simply explained in a card. Who says the best presents have to be material things? For…

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We all keep a growing list—written or mental—of all the great restaurants and food finds that we’ve tried or are dying to track down in the future. Some people have detailed spreadsheets, columns dedicated to cuisine, price, and notes to catalog what dishes they ended up ordering and loving. Others keep it simple, jotting down names and places on their smartphone, tablet, or Moleskine every time they get a good suggestion.

No matter what your method is, there comes a time when you’re stuck standing on a street corner…

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