kitchen aid

The tang and robustness of balsamic vinegar dominates, but also finds a nice balance with barbecue sauce standards like ketchup, honey, mustard, and molasses.

In the battle between chocolate "mushroom cap" and biscuit "mushroom stem" snacks, how does the imitator stand up to the original? Pretty well.

Allow us to present 32 grilling recipes for snacks, appetizers, hors d'oeuvres, and sides to grace your Memorial Day table, each one tested, tasted, and Serious Eats approved.

If you live in New York and you like sweets, you owe it to yourself to try Levain Bakery's famous chocolate chip cookie. But what about their other, less well known dessert products? Is Levain a one trick pony? To find out, I bought a slice of their Sour Cream Pound Cake ($3.50).

Cucumbers and celery, intensely flavored with garlic, ginger, and lime juice, are served on top of sliced avocado.

I didn't stop by Owen & Engine with steak on my mind. But I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a steak as completely as the dry-aged ribeye steak here.

With 33 grilled chicken recipes and 24 more for grilled steak you might want to go easy on dessert this Memorial Day.* That's cool because one of the best backyard cook-out dessert recipes I know is not only extremely quick to throw together but it's infinitely adaptable. It's grilled fruit with ice cream.

Santa Cruz bakes its pan dulce throughout the day. It does fresher, tastier versions of the Mexican pastries than pretty much anywhere in the borough, and it does so for a dollar a pop.

While the Gala is the centerpiece of the Manhattan Cocktail Classic, the five-day conference is filled with events, tastings, seminars, and party after party. Here are more of our favorite sips.

To celebrate National Burger Month, we're teaming up with famed New York City meat purveyor Pat LaFrieda to give away a case of their burger patties (24 per case) each week this month. Patties will be shipped fresh anywhere in the U.S. (sorry, international readers!), perfect for throwing a giant burger party or for cooking burger-centric meals at home. Enter here for a chance to win.

During the darkest days following Hurricane Sandy's impact on the East Coast, there was no greater sight than watching help pour in from unlikely places. One was New York's food truck community, and now we have a chance to honor their work.

In Phoenix, Federal Pizza makes a mean porchetta sandwich... but get there early, it's available in limited quantities.

A few weeks ago, head bartender Phil Vuong and his team launched a brand new beer cocktail menu at Brew Exchange in Austin. Shandies may dot beer menus around Austin, but this is the first complete beer cocktail menu that I've found in the city.

Do you find your favorite cookies missing a nicotine sting? Smoke & Pickles: Recipes and Stories from a new Southern Kitchen fixes that for you, featuring a sugar cookie dough infused with cigar leaves and topped with a boiled down mixture of coconut, molasses, and tobacco water.

The newly minted Sen occupies an ambitiously large space on 21st street in Manhattan. The menu is a congruous blend of traditional and modern: classically prepared sushi and a broader, more eclectic kitchen menu with pan-Asian focus. If the concept sounds less than original, it's worth mentioning that Sen is an offshoot of the nearly two-decades-old Sag Harbor restaurant renowned for their sushi.

Bamonte's is a red sauce joint so old and distinctive that it is older than many of the dishes on its menu. It still holds up today.

I don't know who it is that designated May as National Burger Month, but I'd like to give them a big, sloppy, greasy, onion-scented, cheese-covered kiss on the mouth. Or perhaps just a hug is fine. What better excuse to celebrate our national sandwich (national food?) and look back at the dozens of well-tested burger recipes we have in our archives? Here are 32 recipes that run the gamut form simple to complex, with representation from around the country, breaking regional borders, and indeed inter-species relations. Perhaps burgers are the key to world peace.

This warm chocolatey pudding is eggless, creamy, and a snap to make if you use fine grain or instant polenta.

A chat with the Texas Monthly barbecue critic and author of the recently released barbecue opus The Prophets of Smoked Meat: A Journey Through Texas Barbecue.

As Logan Square's dining options become increasingly upscale, I'm glad a place like The Rocking Horse is still putting out solid, frills-lite bar food. And as long as you're sticking with chicken, I can vouch that you'll leave happy, too.

We've all got memories of a favorite bar from long ago. Maybe there was a legendary karaoke night, or a great burger to soak up the $2 drafts, or quirky regulars. We asked 26 bartenders about the first bar they ever loved. Here are their answers—from Miami to Missolua, Seattle to South Carolina. What's the first bar you ever loved?

When Leah Cohen isn't plating dishes of crispy pata or grilling pork jowl, she's often not far from her restaurant Pig and Khao on the Lower East Side. She lives around the corner from her restaurant, after all, but if she's not eating in her own kitchen, there are endless options around the neighborhood. Here are some of her favorites.

There are few dishes more evocative of Southern simplicity than a bowl of fresh beans with butter. Matt and Ted Lee's recipe for butter beans in their new cookbook, The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen, is no exception. Their version incorporates bright lime juice and mint, for a taste that is at once butter-rich and herbaceously refreshing.

As we enter our fourth week of Marmageddon, we'll be delving into the world of baking. Most people enjoy their Marmite on some toast with butter, so we were confident that adding the salty spread to some cheddar-studded scones would hit the spot. These small cakes are simple and deeply savory, begging to be slathered in even more Marmite and butter.

Call them Hello Dollys or Magic Cookies or Seven Layer Bars. Given that these chocolate-pecan-coconut bar cookies take about 5 minutes to throw together and 30 minutes to bake, I think we can all agree to call them our next afternoon snack.

Intelligentsia Coffee, no longer content with strongholds on the West and Middle coasts, opened its eighth coffee bar this week in New York City's High Line Hotel, finally heralding a flagship NYC location for the Chicago-based specialty roaster, along with new pourover methods and a custom built espresso machine.

Nightingale 9, Rob Newton's new effort at Vietnamese cooking in Carroll Gardens, seems poised to bridge all sorts of gaps, such as the false one between traditional Asian cooking versus modern and the more real one between casual eating and studied cuisine. Though his food veers towards traditional Vietnamese forms, there's something about his cooking that reminds me of Tien Ho's tenure at the then-Vietnamese-esque (and damn good) Ma Peche. It's thoughtful, precise, and pretty original. As a casual neighborhood with greater ambitions, the restaurant doesn't fail. But it doesn't fully succeed either.

"Little Bird has a classic French bistro theme with a Pacific Northwest flair, and I tend to approach cocktails that support that theme," says Tom Lindstedt, lead bartender at Little Bird Bistro on Portland's SW 6th Avenue. "I like to take something recognizable and give it a French twist." We asked Lindstedt which cocktails we should order the next time we stop by Little Bird. Here's what he had to say.

What our editors are reading today.

I was obviously saddened to hear that all of Grub Street's city sites except New York closed to today. Mostly, I'm just upset that I won't be able to read what current editor, Mike Gebert, has to say about the dining scene.