Category Archives: Cooking

Here you’ll find everything about cooking that isn’t actually a recipe. Tips, techniques, gripes, whatever.

Baking sourdough bread during the pandemic

Lots of new folks are finding their way to Burnt My Fingers these days, and many head straight for our post on how to make sourdough bread in your Instant Pot. But it’s a bit of an (intentional) misdirection because … Continue reading

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Comfort Classics: Better-than-Mounds-Bars

Our Cashew Nut Clusters really are better than Mounds Bars! You get the same holy trinity of dark chocolate/coconut/nuts but without the corn syrup and preservatives, and we up the game by using high quality dark chocolate, cashews instead of … Continue reading

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Let’s make Chinese takeout at home!

In upstate New York, almost all Chinese takeout places are currently closed. A local paper surveyed them* and found that most were unable to get standard ingredients, like egg roll wrappers, that are shipped from the NYC area. Hopefully that … Continue reading

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Thank heaven for corned beef and cabbage

In the time of COVID-19, we’ll be switching our focus on simpler meals that can be prepared using ingredients that are already in your home or readily available. Today being St. Patrick’s Day, we can start with a real winner: … Continue reading

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How to make an Ethiopian combination plate

When you go to an Ethiopian restaurant in the U.S., you likely order a vegetarian Ethiopian combination plate and then a meat dish or two (which tends to be much more expensive) on the side. This is a satisfying and … Continue reading

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Fun with fonio

Chef Pierre Thiam sent me home from the Fancy Food Show with a nice supply of fonio. His Yolélé Foods sources the grain from small farms In West Africa, where Thiam was born. Fonio is a tiny seed related to … Continue reading

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Cavender’s Greek Seasoning

Cavender’s Greek Seasoning is something we always have in our kitchen. Although it’s advertised as the only seasoning you need, we mainly use it on grilled meats, especially steaks. An ideal prep will have Cavender’s on one side of the … Continue reading

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Yummy (the 50s called, and it wants you to eat its tuna loaf)

Yummy is a new song and video in which the shape-shifting Justin Bieber is seen cavorting with various 50s-inspired dishes and Jello molds. And my Yelp friend Eric T has alerted me to a Buzzfeed compendium called “21 Truly Upsetting … Continue reading

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Instant Pot jumps the shark with sous vide function

Can you do sous vide in the Instant Pot? Instant Pot, the company, is now making its own immersion circulator, with a design similar to the best-selling Anova. (Warning! Affiliate links!) You can purchase the giant Aura Pro Multicooker, whose … Continue reading

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Food for Thought: The Food of Sichuan by Fuchsia Dunlop

  We received The Food of Sichuan for Christmas and discovered that, rather than an entirely new book, it is “a new updated version of the classic Land of Plenty”.  If you didn’t get the older book on our recommendation, … Continue reading

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