Blog Posts by Serious Eats

I've long stopped counting on airline food as a viable meal; with some airlines still serving those terrible little trays of mushy pasta and limp salads, some now charging $9 for stale sandwiches, and some not serving food at all, it's generally easier to bring your own meal aboard or just eat ahead of time. So I was stunned when this tray landed in front of me on an Air France flight, economy section. (Forgive the iPhone photo. It's hard to get your DSLR from the overhead bin when this lunch is on your window seat tray table.)

It could've been called a five-course meal: two crusty rolls with a sizable wedge of Camembert; a lovely square of pâté with a cucumber-dill relish; reasonably tender white-meat chunks of chicken over a not-too-overcooked pasta and strands of squash; a delicious lemon-almond tart with a (slightly too sweet) raspberry compote; and squares of dark chocolate to finish. Plus 187mL of a very drinkable Merlot, and a smaller bottle of tawny port. For lunch!

There's been a lot of talk about doughnuts around these parts lately. And while I love a good doughnut as much as the next person, I don't love the guilt that comes with scarfing one down. That's why I was excited to try King Arthur Flour's Buttermilk Doughnut Mix ($6.95). The doughnuts are baked, not fried, and each one weighs in at a reasonable 190 calories.

Each box contains two bags of doughnut mix, and each one yields six regular-sized doughnuts. Sometimes it's nice to not have to commit to a dozen doughnuts. To prepare one bag of mix, combine it with two eggs, two tablespoons of milk, and two tablespoons of melted butter.

Spooning batter into a doughnut pan is tricky business. It's hard to spread it evenly in the ring-shaped indentations with getting it all over the place. I found that using a small spoon (and my fingers) was the best method. After 10 minutes in the oven, the doughnuts emerged incredibly puffed and fluffy with bronzed bottoms and smooth, golden

As crumb-wearing fans of McVitie's biscuits, we had to share this little news tidbit about the Royal Wedding dessert menu. Prince William and Kate Middleton announced the flavors of the two cakes they'll be serving at their April 29 wedding.

According to Agence France Presse, they'll have a multi-tiered fruitcake and a McVitie's chocolate biscuit cake. Apparently William was a fan of the biscuits during teatime as a wee lad and asked McVitie's to create it according to a special recipe from the Buckingham Palace kitchens.

"It has a couple of secret ingredients we can't tell you about but it will have dark chocolate, to give it a really nice flavour, and use rich tea biscuits that will be broken up," said the firm's head chef. The fruitcake, on the other hand, is being developed by celebrity cakemaker Fiona Cairns, who's also baked for Paul McCartney and Pink Floyd.

We realize this isn't serious eats, but have been on a McVitie's kick recently and wouldn't say no to a

It's no surprise that an athlete would eat more food than the average person. But this is burger related, so here you go.

For a typical meal at In-N-Out, two-time Cy Young Award-winning San Francisco Giant's pitcher Tim Lincecum eats three double-doubles (without lettuce and tomatoes), two orders of fries, and a chocolate-strawberry milkshake, for a total of about 3100 calories. He tells Jim Caple of ESPN.com:

Caple takes the opportunity to try out Lincecum's meal on video. He does a pretty good job, but this is something better left for the pros.

ONE: Cook with Chocolate

If you're looking for an awesome cookbook, try a couple of our old standbys-or some new faves: Making Artisan Chocolates by Andrew Garrison Shotts; Chocolate Obsession by Recchiuti/Gage/Caruso; and Fine Chocolates: Great Experience by Jean-Pierre Wybauw.

TWO: Get Informed

American Chocolate Week's official website is sponsored by the National Confectioner's Association, and is actually quite comprehensive as far as growing and processing goes. It offers a look at some of the farms and communities involved in growing cacao, as well as the economic and social implications of fair wages and prices for farmers. It's a neat site to browse around and has a lot of useful info.

THREE: Meet Like-Minded Chocolate Folk

If you're looking to connect with other chocolate-minded nerds, The Chocolate Life is an amazing website run by all-things-chocolate expert Clay Gordon, offering a little bit of everything-classes and workshops, meetups, chocolate-centric trips,

In the fast food world, fried chicken sandwiches are the new black. Just about every chain, whether a burger chain or fried chicken establishment, offers multiple versions.

But which are the best? We tried the standard fried chicken sandwiches*, whether chicken patty-like or chicken fillet-like, from KFC, Popeye's, McDonald's, Chick-fil-A, Wendy's, and Burger King.

During the tasting, one thing became very clear: not all chicken is created equal.

* We left out spicy chicken sandwiches for now. More fodder for a future taste-test! Please chime in with your favorites.

Flight One: 'Chicken Product'

These are the sandwiches where the meat you bite into seems like a reconstituted chicken patty-let's call it a giant McNugget-than any part of the animal. The McChicken wins for the best name, and brings with it a nice peppery kick, though it doesn't have a good crisp. In true McDonald's style, the mayo and bun feel eerily familiar-just what you'd expect from McD's,

Last week we told you about Ben & Jerry's new flavor, Late Night Snack. It's a vanilla ice cream base with caramel swirls and chocolate-covered potato chip clusters. We got our paws on a few pints (OK, five) and have some thoughts.

So, yes, it might be a "creative borrowing" of the San Francisco ice creamerie Humphrey Slocombe's flavor, "After School Special," which is Tahitian vanilla ice cream with chocolate-covered Ridge potato chips and caramel mixed in. But overall, caramel plus potato chips (read: salt!) plus chocolate is a good thing, no matter who thought of it first. Shoot, didn't we invent this when we were seven?

Even though we read "clusters," we were still expecting actual chips (flat, crispy) but they're more like potato pebbles coated in chocolate. There are crunchy ones and soggier ones; obviously you want to spoon for the crunchies (those are the jackpot bites). The ice cream has all that salty-sweet glory happening, like a salted caramel dessert

I couldn't help but get excited by this Talk Thread on the one spice Serious Eaters would keep if they could have only one. I couldn't answer for myself-even thinking about was too much like deciding which children to abandon-but it did get me thinking about the essentials of what spices are really about. What do we really use them for and how do they effect our experience of a food?

To answer the question I developed this list: ten spices* I can't live without, and that with nothing else you could command a kitchen of daring, exotic, and incredibly varied flavors. Though lists like these are inherently personal, I've specifically included spices that can be used alone or in tandem with a wide array of foods in the internationally-minded Western kitchen. It's a basic list, but diverse enough to get you making some delicious spiced-up chow. Whether you're starting a pantry from scratch or stacking things to make room, this list has something for you.

1. Aleppo Chile