Blog Posts by bon appétit magazine

By Hunter Lewis, Janet McCracken and Mary-Frances Heck, Bon Appétit

Photo by Craig CutlerAny holiday that revolves around an centerpiece dish (ahem, turkey) can be stressful. Easter is all about the ham. Unfortunately, preparing this piece of meat isn't always straightforward, so we asked the test kitchen for a little advice.

Don't Buy Just Any Old Ham

It's Easter, not just another Sunday meal. Call your butcher to reserve a good-quality smoked bone-in ham instead of buying from the supermarket. If that doesn't work, there's still time to order from d'Artagnan.com (they'll even ship overnight). Whether it's bone-in or partially deboned, order a ham with some kind of bone in it. It will give you a sense of where to take the ham's temperature to determine doneness (see below), plus, that leftover bone will bring a soup or pot of beans to the next level. Also: Plan to buy at least 1 lb. of meat per person so you'll have plenty of leftovers.

Read More: Snacks You Thought Were Healthy But Really Aren't

Don't Read More »from Avoid These Common Ham Mistakes This Easter

Louise McCready


A Little History
In 1824, John Cadbury opened a shop in Birmingham where he sold tea, coffee, hops, mustard, cocoa, and drinking chocolate, which he made himself using a mortar and pestle. A century later, in 1923, the company that grew out of his shop released its first cream-filled eggs. But the Cadbury Creme Easter Eggs we all know and love weren't invented until 1971. Four years later, the first TV ad appeared for Cadbury Creme Eggs and these chocolate confections became an international Easter classic. Many Americans will remember the "clucking bunny" campaign, begun in 1982.

Read more: Your New Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie 

 




How are they made? 
The Cadbury Creme Egg is manufactured by pouring liquid chocolate into a half-egg shaped mold, which is then filled with white fondant and a dab of yellow fondant. Because the fondant has a greater density than chocolate, the two don't mix together and the fondant pushes the chocolate outwards. The two

Read More »from Cadbury Creme Eggs: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know

Danielle Walsh

Spring is here! Which means you want to scour every surface of your house, purge your wardrobe of stuff you haven't worn in over a year, and remove dust bunnies to make room for the Easter bunny. But there's one place in your house that you dread cleaning, not knowing what lurks behind its deceptively pure, white door.

No, it's not your bathroom sink. It's your refrigerator.

Baby steps. The first one: use up all those odds and ends in the crisper drawer, the dairy section--every nook and cranny. A link of chorizo? Chop it up and throw it in a soup. A bunch of kale? Saute it and toss with pasta. Here are six dishes that can mold themselves around whatever you've got.

Well, except for that funky jar of old mayo. But you'll deal with that later.

More from Bon Appétit:

Healthy Snacks? Maybe Not
Your New Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie

Spring Vegetables: 26 Ways to Eat 'Em

8 Essential Kitchen Gadgets

Easy Ways to Upgrade Instant Ramen Noodles

Top 20 Best-Tasting

Read More »from 6 Fridge-Cleaning Recipes

The question of what will become of the uneaten matzo from our Seders is as much one of expectation as utility. Remember, please, that the Haggadah--the Jewish text used for the yearly Passover observance--refers to matzo as the "bread of affliction, the poor bread." We are forewarned, then--tasty, possible; delicious, unlikely. That said, I do like matzo, coated with good butter and topped with a dusting of kosher or sea salt, but it is nothing to get excited about, and for some, it is cause more for merriment than sustenance. An Internet search of the viable uses for leftover matzo reveals as many jokes as recipes (uses as grout or to paste cracked tiles competes with every variant on matzo brei or matzo kugel).

This strikes me as unfair. Matzo consists of nothing more than flour and water. It benefits from no fat, no seasoning, no leavening to free it from its earthbound density. It is also, in most cases, a generic and industrially produced commercial product. What do we

Read More »from 5 Things to Do with Leftover Matzo

Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl


From the Marx Brothers to Jon Stewart, for years Jewish humor has helped define American culture. Historians have often speculated that this rich vein of comedy stems from young Jewish children watching their parents try to pair wine with the Passover Seder meal. Ba dum sha!

But really: you start with pickled horseradish and gefilte fish, move on to chopped chicken liver, perhaps a sweet-and-sour-stuffed cabbage, or beef borscht, then there's a baked chicken stuffed with matzo or a ketchup-topped brisket, and somewhere in there come hard boiled eggs and charoset, that mixture of cinnamon, nuts, and fruit. This is supposed to pair with wine? Let me tell you about the best wine pairing for pickled horseradish. It's beer. So, does that mean you should give up and have beer this Passover? No! There's a solution to this problem--but it's drastic. It's really drastic.

Read more: Your New Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie

It involves admitting that your grandparents

Read More »from Passover Seder: What Wine Do You Pair with Gefilte Fish?

Josh Bernstein

It often starts with a single batch of homebrewed beer. Your friends like drinking the bitter IPA, or the roasty stout. More beer is brewed. More accolades. "You should start a brewery," someone suggests, planting a seed inside your hobbyist head: Could this be a career?

Taking the professional leap, however, is not so simple. Costs and licensing fees to open a brewery can easily runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. The loans may be crippling. That's why aspiring brewers are starting to think small.

These days, hopped-up entrepreneurs are increasingly opening pint-size nanobreweries. What constitutes a nano? The cutoff point is debatable, but one measuring stick is that nanobreweries make beer on a three-barrel system or smaller. That's less than 93 gallons at a time, a minuscule amount that allows brewers to experiment, take creative risks and see what sticks. And according to San Diego's Hess Brewing, which has kept a running tab of

Read More »from The Best Nanobreweries in the U.S

Photo by Romulo YanesBy Marilyn He, Bon Appétit

By now, pretty much everyone knows that salty and sweet are inextricably linked. It's why people dip Wendy's fries into their Frostys, why they eat caramel popcorn, why we layer salt on chocolate chip cookies. The appeal of salty-sweet may have biochemical explanations, but it also just feels sophisticated--an adult way to get a sugar fix.

With that in mind, we'd like to introduce you to the Almond Bread Pudding with Salted Caramel Sauce. Rounds of brioche or challah are spread with almond butter, artfully arranged with a sliced almond and raw sugar topping, and baked in vanilla custard. Add a dusting of powdered sugar, and it's ready for that adult topping--a decadent (and hearty) drizzle of salted caramel sauce.

You kids have fun now.

Read More: Delicious Winter Appetizer Recipes

Almond Bread Pudding with Salted Caramel Sauce
Recipe by Alison Roman
8-10 servings

Adding salt to this classic sauce lets you taste the rich complexity of the caramel,

Read More »from Almond Bread Pudding with Salted Caramel Sauce

Danielle Walsh


A couple of weeks ago, I found myself at the famed Blue Hill at Stone Barns in upstate New York. I was seated at a long, wooden communal table with 30-plus people in the food and wine industry, only some of whom I knew. The table was festooned with gorgeous floral arrangements--anemones, deep plum artichokes, and succulents--one of which was plunked right in front of me. At first I was delighted. Then the DIY tacos arrived: a plate piled with smoked shrimp, pickled mussels, and an untold number of condiments, all totally blocked by that beautiful arrangement. I couldn't assemble my taco without reaching rudely in front of my neighbors and getting out of my seat. My dream was becoming a communal table nightmare.

This shared dining arrangement has found its way into restaurants all over the country, from Son of a Gun in Los Angeles to Amis in Philadelphia. Some restaurants make it the only seating option; others center a communal table among other two- and four-tops.

Read More »from Communal Table Dining Etiquette