Latest news with #SamSifton
New York Times
18-03-2025
- Lifestyle
- New York Times
Honey Garlic Shrimp, Mine All Mine
Every week, I check in with our newsletter editor, Mia Leimkuhler, to make sure whatever recipes I'm featuring here in Five Weeknight Dishes don't overlap with the dishes that Sam Sifton and Melissa Clark are writing about in our flagship New York Times Cooking newsletter. (If you don't get it yet, it's free to subscribe!) But I called dibs on the new honey garlic shrimp recipe below as soon as I saw it. This one was mine. It's exactly the kind of recipe I want to send your way every week: smart, fast and built on ingredients you may keep around. It's also the recipe I need these days. Can I be real with you all? I'm losing steam in the kitchen, a symptom of late-winter blahs. A fast recipe that punches hard on flavor is a good midweek win. (Here's another nice midweek win if you have a sweet tooth like I do: microwave Nutella pudding cake, a homemade treat in five minutes flat.) I'm living for the promise of spring (and spring food and spring break). We have an amazing new collection of spring pastas for you, as green as the shoots we'll soon see in the trees. Ideas? Requests? Email me anytime at dearemily@ I love to hear from you. Spicy sheet-pan sausage and squash; perfect buttermilk pancakes. Wondering what to cook tonight? Here's your answer, courtesy of Lidey Heuck. The early reviews are raves. I keep frozen shrimp on hand to make recipes just like this one. View this recipe. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
18-02-2025
- Lifestyle
- New York Times
10 Ways to Turn Store-Bought Rotisserie Chicken Into a Healthy Dinner
If you're reading this, it may already be too late: The day's done, you're zapped. Why not put a bird on it — that is, a char-kissed, ready-to-eat rotisserie chicken? Put your trust in this staple, and you can have spring salads, sandwiches, soups and suppers that are easy, delicious and even healthy. 1. Rotisserie Chicken Salad With Greens and Herbs A lime-garlic dressing electrifies Sam Sifton's endlessly riffable no-recipe recipe for a simple salad of rotisserie chicken, arugula, cilantro and scallions. But if arugula isn't on hand, most greens will work — and an avocado takes them over the top. Recipe: Rotisserie Chicken Salad With Greens and Herbs 2. Chicken Tortilla Soup Sarah DiGregorio's quick recipe gets its deep roasted flavor from one ingenious sleight-of-pan: broiling jalapeños, tomatoes, garlic and onions to a crisp. Slip in the chicken after the broth boils, along with frozen corn or hominy, that lightly chewy kernel typically found in pozole. Finally, skip Coco Chanel's advice, and add an extra accessory. Crushed chips, sliced jalapeños and a dollop of Greek yogurt are all delicious adornments. Recipe: Chicken Tortilla Soup 3. Rotisserie Chicken and Greens Pasta This elemental pasta brings together rotisserie chicken, chopped greens and pasta (make it whole-grain if you like) with a silky sauce that invites tailoring: The cream is optional, and you can use olive oil in place of butter. Christian Reynoso reminds us of one cardinal rotisserie rule: Season the meat as you would anything else (here, with salt and pepper). Recipe: Rotisserie Chicken and Greens Pasta 4. Crispy Wonton Chicken Salad Eric Kim's paean to the very '90s Chinese chicken salad is tangier, crunchier and more adaptable than you remember. Dial up different flavors by adding extra herbs, sliced almonds, julienned carrots or mandarin slices. Recipe: Crispy Wonton Chicken Salad 5. White Chicken Chili Yes, chili can be light and healthy — and quick, when aided by a handy rotisserie chicken. Lidey Heuck's recipe unites a creamy white bean base with canned green chiles, pops of corn and morsels of chicken for an everyday, easy-listening kind of chili. Make a moment of it with a toppings bar of cilantro, tortilla chips and fresh chiles. Recipe: White Chicken Chili 6. Green Goddess Chicken Salad Sandwiches Can a sandwich dare to be dinner? It can if it's Lidey Heuck's chicken salad sandwich, glammed up with avocado and green goddess dressing. Spike it with crushed chips and serve with a simple salad for a springtime vibe. Recipe: Green Goddess Chicken Salad Sandwiches 7. Chicken and Red Lentil Soup With Lemony Yogurt Rotisserie chicken effectively halves the cooking time for this soothing lentil soup from Andy Baraghani — but you'll want to add a rich chicken broth to compensate. Don't skip the lemony yogurt, and do pile on chopped herbs sky-high. Recipe: Chicken and Red Lentil Soup With Lemony Yogurt 8. Sesame Snap Pea-Chicken Salad Blanched snap peas, shredded chicken and one addictive sesame dressing come together in this light salad by Hana Asbrink. Commit to using Kewpie for the dressing, then commit the dressing to memory. Recipe: Sesame Snap Pea Chicken Salad 9. Cucumber Salad With Roasted Peanuts and Chile Crisp cucumbers meet crunchy peanuts, and nutty sweetness meets numbing spice in Sue Li's irresistible salad. It's wonderful as is, but it's also a welcome home for that tender rotisserie chicken. (Don't fret about the sauce — there's plenty.) This salad tastes great with age, though, on Day 2 or 3, it never hurts to add a fresh cuke to liven things up. Recipe: Cucumber Salad With Roasted Peanuts and Chile 10. Chicken Noodle Soup The soul wants what it wants, and when it wants chicken noodle soup, it can have it any night of the week. Such is the promise of Ali Slagle's comforting classic, all egg noodles, carrots and herbs. Use the best stock you can find. And the day after, turn your fallen bird into Jacques Pépin's chicken stock, completing the circle. Recipe: Chicken Noodle Soup Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.
New York Times
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Singular Magic of Torrisi: New York City on a Plate
New York is full of places to have an excellent meal, but few tell the complex story of the city and its people the way Torrisi does. In this installment of Story of a Restaurant, Sam Sifton takes you on an immersive video journey through some of the city's most evocative dishes. As he puts it, 'Restaurants tell stories about the places they exist in, the places they aspire to.' One of the most celebrated restaurants in Manhattan, the Michelin-starred Torrisi is the home kitchen of the chef Rich Torrisi, one of the partners in Major Food Group. It's not easy to get a reservation, but if you do manage to secure a table, the culinary history of the five boroughs unfurls as the meal arrives at your table. Through dishes like capellini Cantonese and cavatelli with Jamaican beef ragù, Mr. Torrisi traces the influences of the various communities — Chinese, Caribbean, Italian, Jewish and others — that make the city what it is. 'The fact of the matter is what we eat tells us something about who we are,' Mr. Sifton said. 'Anyone who comes to this restaurant will taste the flavors of America as refracted through the eyes of — I'll just say it — the artist who created the dishes.' This video was made with support from Meta. The version here was designed for the web. The full spatial-video experience is available on the Meta Quest 3 headset. To view it, visit Meta.
New York Times
29-01-2025
- General
- New York Times
Our Ultimate Guide to Making the Best Chili
From equipment to ingredient selection to the step-by-step cooking, here's how to make a superb version of this cozy staple. By Sam Sifton Sam Sifton is the founding editor of NYT Cooking, and an assistant managing editor leading culture and lifestyle coverage for The New York Times. He's also a cookbook author and one of the writers of the Cooking newsletter. Published Jan. 29, 2025 Updated Jan. 29, 2025 A beef chili infused with red chiles, chocolate and beer for bold flavor. By Julia Moskin Every practiced American cook's recipe for chili is definitive and the best. A classic chili, the Texas bowl of red, is simply beef and hot peppers, simmered to perfection. But there's no one recipe for the dish and no incorrect one — at least if we're being honest with ourselves. You can make chili with beans; lamb or bison; venison, turkey or pork; with tomatoes or beer, with fresh chiles or dried, with chili powder or without. You should make chili as you like: delicious. We'll help. A large, heavy-bottomed wide pot or Dutch oven. Enameled cast-iron is maybe best, because if you find yourself making chili with tomatoes in a plain cast-iron pot, the fruit's acidity may react poorly with the metal, leaving the chili with an off taste. A heavy stainless pot will do, as will an aluminum one if you're careful not to let the bottom of the chili burn. A food processor, blender or spice grinder. You can make a credible chili with ground chile powder, and indeed we do so all the time. You can certainly make one with fresh chiles as well. But it's our view that there is little to match a chili made with a mixture of fresh and dried chiles either toasted and ground in a spice grinder, or simmered in chicken stock. A mortar and pestle. Ground cumin from the store will work just fine, as will ground coriander, if you're using it. But the flavor delivered by freshly toasted spices pulverized in a mortar is impossible to match. Wirecutter, a product recommendations website owned by The New York Times Company, has tips on finding the best Dutch oven , food processor and blender . Karsten Moran for The New York Times A great chili rests on two foundations: its protein, and the peppers that flavor it. It is, essentially, a stew. We'll get to the chiles, but let's begin with the protein. If you're cooking with meat, look for a cut high in fat and flavor. If you're cooking with beans, find a sturdy variety: A pinto or navy bean is excellent. Chuck beef, from the steer's shoulder, is great for chili. But you can also do very well with brisket and short ribs, and there are fantastic chilis made of lamb and pork shoulder. Whatever protein you use, cut the meat into 2-inch cubes, or, if you'd like to work faster or simply prefer the texture, use ground meat. In much of Texas and at the butcher shop anywhere, you can get your meat coarsely ground, which just about splits the difference between cubes and ground. But you can also use a combination: Some cooks even like to use a number of different cuts, combining stew meat with ground. Consider ¼ to ⅓ of a pound per person. It should yield enough fat to flavor your chili well. Whatever you choose, be sure to fry some bacon in the pot before you get started, and then set it aside to crumble into the chili later in the process. There are those who swear by ground turkey chilis or who make the dish with chicken. Be careful when doing so, however, so that the meat does not dry out. Consider ¼ to ⅓ of a pound per person, supplemented perhaps with a few strips of bacon to help keep everything juicy. Or use chunks of dark meat from the richer, fattier thighs, or even duck. Farm-raised or wild-shot game — venison, buffalo, moose, marsh duck, goose — often bridges the distance between red meat and poultry: It delivers powerful flavor whether it comes from the field or the sky. Cook ¼ to ⅓ pound per person, substituting some ground beef or lamb if the game is very lean. As with turkey and other lean cuts, you'll want to add some fat to the proceedings, for flavor and lusciousness. There are those who consider beans in chili to be an apostasy. But they can be delicious and, indeed, are an easy way to 'stretch' a chili from a dish that serves six to a dish that serves 10 or even 12. (Figure something in the neighborhood of a cup of cooked beans per person.) Pinto beans make a wonderful addition to a beef chili, and white ones are beautiful with poultry and lamb. Some may cook only with beans, using chiles and spices to deliver big flavor into each legume. It is a good idea, in this case, to think about increasing the variety of chiles used, and to consider increasing the level of spice as well. A base of sautéed onions and garlic, heated through with oregano before adding chiles and beans, is a fine way to start a vegetarian chili. (Take a look at Melissa Clark's recipe for a vegetarian skillet chili, if you want a starting point — or a finishing one.) All will defend their decisions as the only permissible ones. And do you need to cook the beans from scratch? You do not, unless you want to. Chili should never be a project. Top row, from left: Dried ancho chiles, dried New Mexico chiles and fresh jalapeño peppers. Bottom row, from left: Dried chipotle peppers, dried pasilla peppers and fresh poblanos. Karsten Moran for The New York Times Traditional Texas chili is made with meat, chiles and little else. What kind of chiles and what form they take is a matter of some debate. Best in our view is a mixture: fresh jalapeños, dried anchos and pasilla powder. Some varieties of chiles are hot, some sweet and some smoky. Some are dried and toasted and ground together; others are toasted and then simmered in water or stock before being blitzed in a blender or food processor or fished from the pot and discarded; still others are used fresh. As a general rule, you'll want to add any chili powder early in the process, preferably after you've seared the meat and as you're cooking down any aromatics. But whole chiles can be added along with the cooking juices, and pulled out before serving. The world of chiles is broad, but here are a few varieties that work especially well in chili. There was a time when some of them were hard to find, even in large urban supermarkets. That is no longer true, save perhaps in the case of the delicious Chimayo. In which case, as ever, the internet can provide. Poblano: A big green pepper that is not too punchy in its heat. As poblanos ripen, the fruit reddens. Ancho: A dried, ripe poblano pepper becomes an ancho chile, sweet and smoky, mild to medium hot. Pasilla: This is a dark chocolate-brown dried pepper of moderate pungency, and brings great deepness of flavor to a chili. Jalapeño: Arguably America's pepper, this fiery little fruit can provide real zip and freshness when added to chili. When it has been smoked and dried, a jalapeño is called a chipotle. Chimayo: A New Mexican pepper of extraordinary richness, which when dried and ground brings a deep redness to all that it touches. If you can't find any Chimayos, note that any pepper from the state of New Mexico, usually labeled a 'New Mexican' chile, is a worthy substitute, fresh or dried. Homemade chili powder, left, and store-bought. Karsten Moran for The New York Times Confusingly, chile powder and chili powder are two different things. (More confusingly, The Times has conflated them for years.) Chile powder is just dried, pulverized chiles. Chili powder, on the other hand, is a mixture of dried, ground chiles with other spices, and it helps bring a distinctive flavor to the dish that bears its name. Homemade Chili Powder: Come up with a good recipe for chili powder, and it will give you some of the confidence to call your chili the best you've ever made. To follow the Texas restaurateur Robb Walsh's recipe, toast three medium-sized ancho chiles in a pan, then remove them and allow to cool. Do the same with a ½ teaspoon of cumin seeds. Seed the anchos and cut them into strips and then process them in a spice grinder with the cumin seeds, a big pinch of Mexican oregano and, if you like, a shake of garlic powder. Use that in your chili, and then store what's left over in a sealed jar . Use it quickly, though. It grows stale fast. Store-Bought Chili Powder: Chili powder is, like the dish it serves, a Texas tradition, most likely dating to the arrival in the state of German immigrants who thought to treat the local chiles as their forebears did the hot peppers in Europe, drying and grinding them into a kind of New World paprika. Eventually other spices were added — cumin and oregano and garlic powder, for instance — and now each chili powder you see in a store is slightly different from the last. For some, using chili powder in chili is anathema. They don't like the uncertainty of knowing what the mixture is going to taste like in their stew. They don't trust that the powder is fresh. They believe the resulting chili won't have layers of flavors. For many others, though, chili powder is a delicious timesaver, particularly if they've found a chili powder they like. If you do find one, use it a lot. The critics aren't wrong about the freshness. You've gathered your protein, and made executive decisions about your spices. It's time to make the chili. Making one calls for layering flavors into the stew, deepening each as you cook. 1. Start by browning the meat in batches, then removing it to rest while you sweat onions, garlic and peppers, in whatever form you're using them, in the remaining fat. If you're making a vegetarian chili, start with the sweat! Karsten Moran for The New York Times Karsten Moran for The New York Times 2. Then comes liquid, which will deglaze the pot and add flavor, while also providing a flavorful medium in which to simmer your meats or beans. In her Texas-style chili (below), Julia Moskin here at The Times taught us to use dark beer along with water and some canned tomatoes, but you can use plain stock instead, or a lighter beer, or more tomatoes in their juices, or a combination, according to your taste. Some like to add body to their chili by adding masa harina to the stewing liquid, or a sliced-up fresh corn tortilla that will dissolve in the heat. Julia allows for both in her recipe, which we've taken as our standard, but we encourage you to use the information you've gleaned here to make chili your own. The dish is very simple: browned meat and chiles, or chili powder, or both, simmered until tender. Everything else is up to you. Karsten Moran for The New York Times 3. Add a few dried peppers to simmer, and add the protein back. If you're cooking beef or game, consider adding a tab of dark chocolate to help deepen the flavor of the sauce. Karsten Moran for The New York Times Karsten Moran for The New York Times 4. Simmer. Bring the heat to the lowest possible temperature until the protein is, as the saying goes, fork-tender. That could take 30 minutes if you're working off coarsely ground beef. It could take four hours if you're working with venison or a big clod of beef. If your stovetop can't go lower than a fast simmer, cook the chili in the oven instead, partly covered, at 325 degrees. Or use a slow cooker set to low, and keep a good eye on it after four hours or so. Fish out the dried peppers, and you're ready to eat. Once you've aced Julia's master recipe for Texas-style chili, you can explore other chili styles, whether it's a vegetarian chili with winter vegetables, Cincinnati-style chili, chili-gumbo of south Louisiana, Pierre Franey's lamb chili with lentils or his turkey chili. All reflect and celebrate America's ever-changing relationship with the dish. Karsten Moran for The New York Times The chili's done, but don't eat it yet. As with gumbo and beef stew, chili is a dish that benefits mightily from an overnight 'cure' in the refrigerator. Reheat gently on the stovetop or in a low oven when you're ready to eat, and top it with any or all of these fixings. Chili gains a lot from the bright punch of alliums: Chopped onion and scallions are a great bet. As are avocado slices , or, one better, homemade guacamole. Cut through the dish's richness with the clean flavors of fresh chopped tomatoes and cilantro leaves . Or if a lightly vinegary finish is more your speed, top your chili with pickled jalapeños or red onions. To mellow your chili's heat, pair it with a spoonful of sour cream , or some plain Greek yogurt . Shredded Cheddar or Monterey Jack can add a mellow saltiness. And, lastly, consider the fried egg. A worthy companion, it can even make last night's chili dinner into a hearty breakfast. Pour the chili over rice, whether white or brown ; spaghetti , as a nod to the Cincinnati style; or warm and creamy grits . Or top it with corn or tortilla chips , crumbled Saltines , oyster crackers or Fritos . (Or, put the chili on top of those Fritos for a Frito pie.) Serve it with warm tortillas or one of many kinds of cornbread. Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks. Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Liza Jernow. David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram , Facebook , YouTube , TikTok and Pinterest . Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice .
