Chefs
Hi, we are Bryan and Jessie - a recently married couple who enjoys cooking at home, eating at our favorite local restaurants, and trying new restaurants and recipes. We also have two pets - Brew, a black lab, and Alton Brown, a domestic shorthair.
Foods we couldn't live without: blue cheese, potatoes, gin, popcorn, garlic and butter
Number of cookbooks we own: 57 and counting
Favorite kitchen tools: Shun knives, Le Creuset cookware
Techniques Archive
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Greek yogurt totally from scratch
OK, if you want to make Greek yogurt (think brands like Fage and Chobani), the simple way to do it is to drain plain yogurt overnight. But if you really want top-notch Greek yogurt that not only tastes better but costs a wallet-load less, you’ll want to start from scratch. Fear not – the bacteria won’t [...] -
Roasted Banana and Coconut Ice Cream
Sorry for the lack of posting recently. Our jobs have taken up a lot of time. We haven’t stopped cooking, or inventing and trying new things — far from it — we just haven’t found much time to write in the last month or so. Lately, I’ve been baking a lot, and Jessie’s been making ice [...] -
Bison tenderloin in bourbon sauce
If you’ve been eying the frozen Bison meat in your supermarket but are afraid of cooking with it, fear not. A good cut of bison is as hard to screw up as a good beef steak, and if you take a few extra steps to impart as much flavor as possible, it’s a great “special” [...] -
Take that, Double Down.
I didn’t intend to cook a take on the KFC Double Down sandwich the other night, but about midway through I realized I was. One of the things I love most about cooking is that you can improvise as you go, as long as you know the basic techniques. This recipe is far from technique-intensive, but [...] -
Fresh take on grilled corn: Tequila
Jessie and I grill flank steak on a regular basis, and almost always grill sweet corn with it. Tonight, at Jessie’s prompting, I tried something a little different with the corn. First, here’s my typical procedure for grilling sweet corn: Peel back the husks, making sure to not remove them completely. Remove the silks (I use [...] -
Stuffed peppers that go to 11
One of our local grocery stores had some gorgeous, huge Anaheim peppers fresh yesterday, so Jessie and I decided to throw together a quick and spicy take on chiles rellenos. The end result was just about right for our tastes, especially with a squeeze of lime juice, tablespoon of sour cream and a few dollops of [...] -
Real ‘popcorn’ chicken
Tired of using breadcrumbs for the breading on your fried chicken? Try popcorn. Jessie made a tasty rice dish last night and asked for chicken to go along with it. Since I didn’t feel like doing the same old, same old, I tried an experiment with some freshly popped large-kernel popcorn we picked up in Amish [...] -
Fear not the chorizo
I don’t know why Mexican chorizo isn’t a staple in the typical American household. After all, it’s a versatile protein that can add wonderful heat to any dish. Want to make great tacos without buying expensive (and generally tasteless) taco seasoning? Just saute up some Mexican chorizo. Want to replace ground beef in (some) recipes [...] -
One-recipe review: ‘Cooking Know-How’
In honor of Jessie’s birthday, I wanted to cook a grand meal tonight. I figured it would be a perfect opportunity to try a meal (and, hence, do a traditional one-recipe review) from Cooking Know-How by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough. We were fortunate enough to meet the authors and attend a cooking demo of theirs [...] -
Foil-baked potatoes on the grill
It was fairly nice out this afternoon, so I decided to grill out on the back deck. I won't go into details about everything you see on the plate above (the buttermilk biscuits were left over from breakfast, and I warmed them up on the top shelf of the grill - delicious), but I was really pleased with the steak and potatoes. -
Easy steak in brown ale sauce
I’ve been extremely busy with work lately, and haven’t had as much time to experiment in the kitchen as I’d like. I’ve mostly just been sticking to my tried and true favorites. But tonight I decided to try something new again. We had some beautiful grass-fed flat-iron steaks from Amish country, and I thawed them out [...] -
Pork with Riesling and shallots
I’ve cooked a lot of pork in my day, and this might be my all-time favorite creation. This was an ad-libbed meal using what we had sitting around in the freezer and the fridge, and I can’t wait to try the sauce on other proteins (especially chicken). If you’ve ever made Bifteck Bercy (see “Mastering [...] -
Sweet corn with pea shoots
For the last week I’ve been delicately tending to my pea shoots as they sprouted from seeds on the kitchen windowsill. I just recently tried “sprouting” for the first time, and wanted to find an interesting way to try the first of many sprouts to come. Right now we have snow peas, broccoli, mustard and mung [...] -
Spicy, cheesy burger on a pretzel bun
It was 37 degrees here today, so I started thinking about summer. And of course thinking about summer leads to thinking about burgers. This recipe calls for a few "specialty" items, but you should be able to find pretzel rolls at your local grocery store, and you can order the special pickles I use online, or find another generic brand of spicy pickle if you can. -
WTF do you do with a Cornish game hen?
Every time I walk down the frozen meats aisle in the grocery store I see this cute little vacuum-sealed Cornish game hens. They seem like they should be so simple to cook and prepare — after all, they’re so cute and tiny, and certainly a pre-plucked, pre-cleaned bird sealed in plastic should be as easy [...]