James Kenji Lopez-Alt posts
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The LA Hot, My Favorite Childhood Sandwich
As far as I know, the “LA Hot Sandwich” (pronounced like the letters L-A) was my mom’s own invention, inspired by the lunches she and my dad used to eat at The Dutch Goose in the 1970s. The Dutch Goose, a Menlo Park sports bar best known for its messy deviled eggs, cold beer, and hearty sandwiches, served a Louisiana Hot: a split, seared Louisiana-style hot sausage on a toasted hoagie roll with lettuce, tomato, and yellow mustard.Through my teenage years in New York, Saturdays meant trekking from my mom’s apartment on 125th and Riversid...
A Tour of Asian Family Market in Seattle
Asian Family Market is located at 13200 Aurora Ave N suite A, Seattle, WA 98133Asian Family Market on Aurora in North Seattle has become my favorite supermarket in Seattle because it manages to hit that sweet spot between practicality and adventure. On one hand, it’s where I go for the staples: fresh herbs, noodles, tofu, dumpling wrappers, and everyday vegetables. On the other hand, it’s also where I stumble upon something unexpected that reshapes what I want to cook that week. The produce section is a standout: ripe peaches and stone frui...
The Secret Ingredient for the Juiciest, Most Flavorful Chicken Cutlets
This is a recipe I developed for the New York Times, and you can read it 100% free with these gift links:Mayo-Marinated ChickenChimichurri with salmuera Photo: David Malosh for The New York TimesPhoto Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne********You may love it. You may hate it. But there’s no denying that mayonnaise is one of the most unexpectedly powerful tools in the kitchen. In this new video, I revisit my NYT Cooking piece on why mayo works wonders for beef, pork, chicken, and even fish.I know the idea of smearing mayonnaise on raw chicken mig...
Pizza Rant: It's called a PLAIN SLICE.
This morning, as I was casually flicking through my Instagram feed, I came upon a video so shocking, so vile, so downright wrong, that I had to set my phone down and remind myself that easy, non-controversial topics like U.S. politics or the eternal debate over whether a hot dog is a sandwich still exist. It was the kind of video that makes you question the direction of civilization, the kind that makes you briefly wonder whether the locusts and floods might actually be a blessing. For a split second, I thought I was witnessing the end of days....
For the Crispiest Colombian Empanadas, Pressure Cook Your Popcorn
I absolutely love when a simple kitchen hack leads to mind-blowing results, and my new video up on the NYT Cooking channel does exactly that. If you've spent time in Colombia, you've likely tasted (and loved) their diminutive beef and potato empanadas; in particular, it's the golden, crunchy, hearty, crispy shell that sets them apart from other styles of empanada.The difficulty with making them at home is ingredient-based. The particular type of corn used for fresh masa (dough) is not easy to source in the U.S. In Colombia, both emp...
This is What Happens When a Big Mac Snack Wrap and a Chop Cheese Have a Baby
A chop cheese or a Big Mac—those were my late-night staples when I lived in Central Harlem in the mid-2000s. Both hit the spot after a night out, and judging by the lines, I wasn’t the only one who thought so.The chop cheese, a ground beef and cheese sandwich born in East Harlem, was practically unknown outside the neighborhood until maybe eight years ago. Even my younger sister, who lived in Brooklyn at the time, had never heard of it.Now it’s everywhere. You can still get it at the source—Hajji's Blue Sky Deli on 1st Ave. and 110t...
The Pasta Dish That Will Make You Rethink Zucchini
I didn’t expect much when the server set down a bowl of spaghetti coated in a creamy, drab-green sauce tangled with dark brown coins of zucchini and wilted basil leaves. But knowing my friend Nick Anderer, chef and co-owner of Leon’s in New York with his wife Natalie Johnson, there had to be something special lurking beneath the unassuming presentation.My partner Tessa and I had already worked through a lineup of dishes that played clever riffs on simplicity: spot prawn crudo with grapefruit (pink on pink, impeccably balanced), spring veget...
This Corn Salad has Been the Star of My Cookouts for 20 Years
I'm not entirely sure why my old chef Ken Oringer put "Mexican Street Corn" on the menu at his Boston area Spanish restaurant Toro, seeing as the dish is neither a tapa nor Spanish, but it was there on the menu, and it was delicious.It also happened to be one of the restaurant’s top sellers (probably still is), which meant that as a line cook in the early 2000s I spent hours every day grilling whole ears of sweet corn, snapping them in half, and tossing them in a giant bowl with garlicky mayo, crumbled cotija, lime juice, cilantro...
How to Stop Serving Watery Coleslaw!
Coleslaw, when it’s done right, is crisp, creamy, and refreshing—the cool, crunchy foil to smoky ribs or a juicy pulled pork sandwich. But you know how this story usually goes: you taste it in the kitchen and it’s perfect—bright, tangy, crunchy, balanced. Then ten minutes later, just as everyone’s digging into the perfectly charred skirt steak and grilled potato salad, your slaw has transformed into a sad bowl of cabbage and carrots bobbing in watery mayo soup.Here’s the issue: cabbage, carrots, and onions are mostly water. Dependin...
Grill Your Potato Salad!
You can find a video walk-through of this recipe as part of my Grilled Skirt Steak with Herb Sauce video.Don't get me wrong. I love potato salad in virtually all forms, whether the creamy, mayo-based American classic, the vinaigrette-based Austrian-style potato salad we serve at Würsthall, or the tender, mashed potato-like version my Japanese grandmother used to make.But in the summer, when the grill is fired up and I can't find enough things to grill, you can bet my potatoes are hitting that live fire. Grilling your potato salad resul...
Grilled Skirt Steak with Herb Sauce: A Simple Formula for a Winning Cookout
You know that feeling you got the first time you played Street Fighter II at the arcade? When winning meant holding your ground for the next round, and losing meant coughing up another quarter—or worse, standing on your tiptoes behind the older kids, trying to reverse-engineer their Hadoukens? Back when you didn’t have muscle memory or strategy, just pure panic and furious button-mashing?That’s what I felt like about a decade ago competing on an episode of Guy’s Grocery Games. Cooking under pressure on a familiar restaurant line is one ...
A Simple Summer Salad that Explodes with Flavor
Kedai Makan — Kevin Burzell and Alysson Wilson’s Malaysian spot that began as a pop-up in 2013 and evolved into a now-shuttered brick-and-mortar in Capitol Hill — was one of the first places I ate in Seattle after moving here during the pandemic in 2020. I remember plenty of standouts: the roti jala, its delicate egg-net perfect for tearing and dragging through curry; the Malacca-style Hainanese chicken rice. But the dish I never fail to order — and that has never failed to impress visiting friends — is the Kerabu Timun Nanas, a sweet...
Mentaiko Spaghetti is Classic Japanese-Italian Comfort Food
This is a recipe I developed for the New York Times. You can get the recipe 100% free with this gift link.****When I was a kid growing up in Morningside Heights, breakfast at my Japanese grandmother’s apartment one floor below ours almost always meant rice and eggs — sometimes raw, beaten into the rice with soy sauce (tamago kake gohan), but often it was tarako: salted, cured pollock roe, lightly grilled or broiled until smoky, then crumbled over hot rice and sprinkled with nori. It was salty, briny, a little funky, and completely delicious...
Grilled Sausages with Beer-Braised Peppers and Onions Recipe
Every recipe I publish here is personally tested, tasted, and approved.What I like about this recipe:Cooking the sausages gently in a pan filled with its toppings ensures that they cook through while staying juicy and flavorful.Holding the charred sausages warm in the pan of toppings, keeps them plump.Cooking the toppings directly in an aluminum pan on the grill maximizes efficiency and grilled flavor.Yield: Serves 6Active Time: 30 minutesTotal Time: 1 hourIngredients2 tablespoons (30ml) vegetable oil1 large onion, sliced into 1/4-inch strips (...
Testing the Ooni Volt Indoor Pizza Oven
Tonight—Friday, July 25th—is the night of Tasting Notes, my live multi-sensory stage show produced in Seattle with the members of the Seattle Chamber Music Society, along with some of Seattle's best chefs. You can read more about the event and get tickets with a 20% discount at the link right here.As part of the show, my friend Lee Kindell (founder of Moto Pizza here in Seattle) and I are going to be baking pizzas live on stage. Because Benaroya hall will not allow us to build a large wood fire in the middle of Taper Auditorium, we will...
20% Off Tasting Notes Tickets for Patreon Subscribers! July 25th, Benaroya Hall
Hey folks - Tasting Notes, my live multi-sensory stage show combining classical chamber music with cooking demonstrations from the world class chefs and top musicians is coming back to Seattle next Friday, July 25th, at Benaroya Hall and I couldn't be more excited.You can get tickets here. Use the code "kenji20" when checking out for a 20% discount.What is Tasting Notes?Tasting Notes is a live, multi-sensory stage show that features musical performances and demonstrations from some of the best chefs and musicians in the world. Expe...
The Best Slow-Smoked Pork Chops I've Ever Made
The other day I picked up a few thick-cut pork chops from Beast and Cleaver, my favorite local butcher shop. With such incredible pork and a few beautiful Seattle summer days ahead of me, I wanted to make sure that I made the most of them. That's when I thought about my smoked porterhouse technique.Years ago, I wrote an article about smoked porterhouse steaks built around the reverse-sear technique I first developed at Cook’s Illustrated. The principle behind reverse-searing is that by gently bringing meat up to temperature over low, indi...
Twelve Rules for Better Burgers
By J. Kenji López-AltGrilling season is here, and whether you're smashing them on a flattop, searing over blazing coals, or carefully tending a gas grill, the fundamentals of great burger-making don’t change much. I’ve written about burgers a lot over the years—how to grind the meat, how to blend beef cuts, when to season it, why you should never let a crusty spatula tyrant tell you how often to flip.This is the updated, expanded version of my original 10 burger commandments. I’ve added two new tips, fine-tuned the rest, and includ...
How to Grill Thin but Juicy Burgers
I wrote about this technique for the New York Times a couple summers ago, based on a Whopper-but-better facsimile I developed years earlier over at Serious Eats. The idea was to get that fast-food-style thin patty—charred, a little smoky, stackable—but cooked on an actual grill, not a griddle.A couple years ago, I wrote a “Thin but Juicy Grilled Burgers” recipe for the New York Times. The technique I demonstrated there was based on a Whopper-but-better facsimile I developed years earlier over at Serious Eats. I was trying to solve a spe...
Why I use Metric Units and Scales when Baking, Even in The Land of Freedom Units
I’ll cut to the chase: using scales and grams for baking recipes is more accurate, it’s faster, and it means less cleanup. At home, I use an 11-pound baking scale from OXO that is no longer in production, but their new model has all the same functions. I also use a small coffee scale from Hario for measuring very small quantities.OXO Good Grips 11-Pound Stainless Steel Food Scale with Pull-Out Display Hario V60 Drip Scale and TimerLet’s start with accuracy. To demonstrate this, I measured out two separate cups of flour using two popular ...
Brown Butter is the Secret to this Moist and Tender Corn Bread
A Northern-style cornbread with a crisp crust, a tender crumb, and a nutty hit of brown butter.Anyone else grow up on Jiffy cornbread mix? My mom regularly mixed one of those blue and white boxes with an egg and milk and used it to top her tamale pie. I’m not sure if its sweet, moist, cake-y flavor has changed at all over the years (to my taste buds it hasn’t), but the packaging has remained nearly identical. I keep boxes of it in my pantry at all times, either to bake off as a side for chili, or to top the tamale pie I feed my kids. (The v...
Sanshoku Don is Japanese Comfort Food for All Ages
This is the meal I make when Alicia is hanging upside down on the rope ladder in our tiny play room, Wombat is in the bathroom trying to look at his own butt, and the cats are dissecting another roll of toilet paper. In other words: it’s quick, easy, and will get zero complaints from the kids when it’s actually time to eat.Sanshoku don is a simple Japanese rice bowl topped with three components—typically seasoned ground meat, soft scrambled eggs, and greens—arranged in stripes over hot rice. It’s fast, flexible, and built for real-lif...
Pizza Dough Sandwiches with Zucchini and Provolone
Making good dough is easy. Stretching that same dough into a thin pizza skin, topping it with wet ingredients, and launching it into a hot pizza oven is not. Even after stretching and launching thousands of pizzas in my life, I’ll bake off the occasional “I wasn’t making pizza—this was always meant to be a calzone” pie.That’s why I love recipes that are pizza-adjacent, but don’t require nearly as many difficult learned skills. This recipe uses pizza dough (homemade or store-bought), but rather than requiring hand-stretching, you u...
A Meal From the Wok: How to Stir-Fry Three Dishes in a Row
The other day I was cooking a meal for my family in the wok and thought it might be useful for you to see how I cook multiple dishes in a row without compromising their quality. All three of these recipes – Kung Pao Chicken, Fish-fragrant Eggplant, and Smoky Stir-Fried Cabbage – can be found in some form online at those links (the cabbage has a NYT paywall). Or you can get updated versions of them in my second book, The Wok (Signed copies available at Book Larder).The Wok is an ideal vessel for cooking a full meal of piping hot dishes in a ...
The Full Toshi Kasahara Teriyaki Interview
Yesterday I put up a post that I claimed was a longer version of the interview with Toshi. I accidentally put up the abridged Youtube version on that post.Here is the actual extended interview.
Meet Toshi Kasahara, The Man Who Invented Chicken Teriyaki as we Know it.
This is the full version — exclusive for you, my beloved Patreon subscribers — of the abbreviated interview you can find on my YouTube channel. “It’s not a passion!” Toshi Kasahara insists, waving off the suggestion as I sit outside his Mill Creek teriyaki shop — the one where, at 76 years old, he still trims, marinates, and grills chicken thighs five nights a week. It’s just a business. For someone who has been grilling what’s arguably Seattle’s most iconic dish for nearly half a century, it’s a striking thing to hear.I rec...
The First Grilled Burger of Burger Season
I had some excellent leftover ground beef from Beast and Cleaver from a video shoot last weekend, so I made myself a burger for lunch. It's just a classic grilled cheeseburger, made with great beef.When making a big fat burger like this (6 ounces per patty or more), it's important to handle the beef gently so that it is minimally compressed, and to form it with a slight dimple in its center–like a red blood cell–so that it ends up flat and even as it cooks.Yield: Makes 4 burgersActive Time: 15 minutesTotal Time: 15 minutes, plus tim...
I Wrote a Recipe for The Simpsons. Here it is.
A few months my podcasting partner for The Recipe, Deb Perelman (of Smitten Kitchen), got an email from one of the producers of The Simpsons asking if we'd be interested in providing a recipe for an upcoming episode with a chance to appear in the background.Even when I'm in a phase of my my life where I'm trying to say "no" to more engagements, this one was a no-brainer. I've been a fan of the Simpsons ever since the Tracey Ullman show days. In college I owned a recorded-from-tv video collection of every season from 4 th...
Ceviche and the Science of Marinating Fish
Ceviche has long since spread from its native Peru (archaeological evidence reported in El Paisshows native Perucians eating a similar dish nearly 2,000 years ago), past South and Central America, and across the globe, picking up flavors along the way. Though the classic Peruvian version, made with citrus juice, chilies, cilantro, corn, and sweet potato is a classic for a reason, I think of the dish more as a blueprint for exploring other flavors. The heart of ceviche is simple: slices or chunks of raw fish (or sometimes shellfish) transformed ...
Public knife drop at noon pacific, today!
Hey folks! We are going to be dropping 25 more knives available publicly at noon Pacific today. If you missed out on Sunday’s private drop, you get another shot! Given that Sunday sold out in under four minutes, we expect these to sell extremely fast as well.Thank you so much to everyone for supporting this project. Gordon and I are thrilled and overwhelmed at the response. We hope that you enjoy your night as much as we loved designing and making them. There will be more nice drops in the future, but as Gordon is a one man operation, And the...
