Rachael Ray

I always took pride in the fact of my indifference to vegetables. If it didn’t have parents, I didn’t want to eat it. My hostillity to the whole plant kingdom was famous. But getting old and fat has weakened my resolve. And the sudden appearance, so sudden and unexpected, of some intensely gratifying vegetable dishes, has also eased my process of gender transformation. One person I have to thank for this is my friend Paul Denamiel. Paul is one of the last persons I would have ever expected to help me transition into a part-time plant eater. For one thing, Paul is the chef of Le Rivage, an old-school French restaurant where I have eaten often, and heartily, and [...]...

I got a call from Robbie Richter the other day. Robbie Richter is a New York barbecuer, and probably my oldest friend in meat. I’ve cooked with him, and drunk with him, and argued with him about the use of water pans, for ten years. His brother is my doctor. Now, after all these years, he is leaving for LA so we decided to cook one last blowout meal together. And we did. There were beef shortrib tacos, with a sriracha / kewpie mayo and a piquant Korean bbq sauce, and kim chee, and fresh cilantro; there was a jamaican jerk pork belly, which Robbie finished on the grill; there were some fantastic mojo-marinated chicken thighs. And there was a [...]...

Braising seems to belong to winter in exactly the same way that grilling does to summer. And yet….I like to grill in winter. I do it all the time. And it’s not like I live in a cabin.. The nights are still cool, and even when they get warm, it’s not like I live in a cabin. A freon fortress is my summer home. So why should I give up on braising? The only difference is that I braise smaller things; things like pork chops. My first braise of the spring was, in fact, a very large pork chop cooked with a lot of white wine. I will say here that I have never been overfond of big, thick porkchops. Or [...]...

It being spring, my mind has turned to thoughts of grilling. The fragrant smoke, the glowing embers, the sizzle and his of precious meat juices combusting like shooting stars as they fly from sputtering lamb chops. Sadly, as a New Yorker, I live in a tiny apartment and have no room for the offset smoker I so long for; I have to make due with a Weber kettle grill, a tool I have written about here with some frequency. Still, as Uncle Charley says in Death of a Salesman, “a salesman is got to dream boy. It comes with the territory.” A friend of mine just bought a house in Westchester and has a big house there. Well, I’ve never seen [...]...

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” The disorienting opening line of George Orwell’s 1984 came to mind today, when I set out too grill - Yes! - the first meat of spring. And it being spring, it seemed only right to make spring lamb. It wasn’t real spring lamb of course; it’s not time for those innocent little creatures to be slain yet. But it is spring, and it was lamb, and that is spring lamb enough for me. The wood was oak and the cut was a rolled leg and the result was so spectacular that I was forced to eat it before I could take a picture. The [...]...

This is a little bit hard for me to admit, so I’m just going to go ahead and say it. I have started cooking, and eating, vegetables. I’m not proud of it. Only the toxic bloat of my once-robust carcass brought  it about. But that said, having now committed to trying to cook plants, it seems only fair to share the process with you. After all, Rachael cooks vegetables all the time, and pretty goddamned well. Of course, she’s been doing it for her whole life. I have never done it for a single day. But armed with a few good cookbooks and a determination not to die before the age of fifty, I decided to go to the greenmarket and see [...]...

I’ve always had an ambivalent relationship with roast beef. The truth is, that taken as roast beef, I don’t really like it that much — although I feel like I should. I love roast beef sandwiches, such as the life-altering one at Eataly in New York, but roast beef itself is always a big “meh” The reason is clear: except in the case of a standing rib roast, it’s almost always made from the toughest, leanest parts of the beef carcass. Have you ever had a top round steak? No? There’s a reason. Beyond roast beef’s anatomical problems, though, there is a larger issue relating to what I think is the single biggest issue relating to meat: the relationship between the [...]...

“Country ribs,” as they call them at my terrible local grocery store, don’t really exist. All they really are are cut up blade pork chops, the weird pieces at the far end of the loin near the shoulder. Nobody really knew what to do with them, so they basically just said, “the hell with it. Let’s just cut them into pieces and pretend they’re ribs.” Like real ribs, though, they have a lot of bone in them, and bone is a good thing when it comes time to braise things. One reason is the taste: bone tastes good. The essence of any kind of stew is stock, and stock is mostly bones. I don’t know about you, but I don’t [...]...

Aaron Issacson, known to the world as Mr. Recipe, is New York City’s greatest spice importer, and a well-known expert on spices and seasonings. Since my own knowledge of spices basically begins and ends with salt, I thought I might provide a service to Rachael Ray readers by asking him a few simple questions on the subject. In the first installment of what is sure to become a very annoying series, I asked Mr. Recipe what spices a person should keep in his or her kitchen. Look, Mr. Recipe. When you get your first apartment somebody always gives you a rack of two dozen little bottles, 20 of which you never open. I don’t even know what mace is! Do I [...]...