Pantry Tips

March is here! And you know what that means? It’s time for another #CookMoreIn2013 tip from us. March’s tip is going to address a question we get from so many readers: “What should I stock in my pantry?” The right answers to this question will enable you to always have a meal on hand. I compare putting together an optimal [...]

Last Monday, I got home from the gym at around 8:00 pm without a plan for dinner. Between 8:00 and 8:30 I got from, “Crap, what’s for dinner?” to dinner, and this is how it happened: 8:00 PM: Survey freezer and fridge. I found 2 stalks of lemongrass + some fresh noodles + half a block of tofu + frozen seafood [...]

During my days as an in-home cooking instructor, I saw spice cabinets and drawers in every state: over-crowded, unorganized, filled with duplicates or unidentified containers, spices well past their shelf lives, or sometimes just non-existent. We all aspire to learn how to use spices and incorporate them into our cooking effectively and have them beautifully organized a la Container Store [...]

It’s looking like “Herb Week” over here at CS HQ. On Monday, we featured a quick herb sauce that can be used to dress up any routine weeknight dish, and today we’re going to share the best way to store herbs. Store herbs correctly and they’ll go from a few days of shelf-life to a few weeks. It will require [...]

Dear Cook Smarts, I go grocery shopping just once a week and find that towards the latter half of the week a lot of the food I’ve purchased has already gone bad. I end up having to toss the spoiled ingredients, which screws up my meal plan. What can I do to prevent this from happening? I’m pretty sure this [...]