10 epic doughnuts to celebrate national doughnut day It’s not like Americans needed an excuse to celebrate the joy of eating doughnuts, but just to be sure, there is a National Doughnut Day. This year it falls on Friday, June 7. The holiday began in 1938 when the Salvation Army decided to honor volunteers who passed out doughnuts to soldiers fighting in the front lines of WWI. In patriotic celebration, we’ve put together a list of some of the most unusual and delicious doughnuts across the nation. If you can't try these works of fried greatness, grab your free Krispy Kreme or Dunkin’ Donut and just bask in the glory of these epic pastries.
10 messiest dishes to make We all take chances in life, especially with our cooking. Whether it’s using a sharp blade or handling scorching-hot liquids, sometimes we put ourselves at risk when whipping up a great meal. Not only can cooking be dangerous, but it can be messy, too. No matter how many years you went to culinary school or how obsessive-compulsive you are about cleanliness, there are some recipes that are just going to get downright messy. Like breading chicken for example, because no matter how many times you try to remember to use your right hand for dry ingredients and your left for wet, you’ll always end up with sticky and chunky gunk stuck to your fingers. Or meatballs. How else are you going to mold that ground beef into perfect, neat little balls without diving in hands first into that ground beef and getting it all over your hands and under your finger nails? And don’t get us started on mincing garlic, because the day someone figures out a cure for sticky-minced-garlic-hands syndrome is the day we are happy cooks. Despite all of the whining, this rant isn’t meant to turn you off from cooking, especially cooking these dishes. We couldn’t live without these dishes, not only because of the way they taste when they’re done but because they’re some of the most creative and therapeutic recipes we like to work with. This is meant to celebrate these messy recipes in all of their glory, and to tell you that, hey, it’s OK to get a little messy sometimes.
Top 10 kitchen tricks from expert cooks Simplifying strategies, tips, and techniques—from the Real Simple test kitchen to yours.
Best back-of-the-box recipes Here at The Daily Meal we value preparing a homemade meal every night, but that’s not often the case for everyone. For some people, the thought of standing over the stove exhausts them, and peeking into the takeout menu drawer seems like a much simpler alternative. Whether it’s a busy lifestyle or the concept of making something "from scratch" is intimidating, there are things that hold some of us back from getting into the kitchen. But a home-cooked meal doesn’t have to be intimidating, and thankfully for us, some of our favorite store-bought food products feature easy, delicious recipes on their packaging that make use of the products we've already purchased. Did you know that you can get homemade gumbo from a Campbell’s Soup can or that you can serve a prize-winning meatloaf with help from Quaker Oats? All of these recipes take minimal time and average skill to execute, and they highlight some of our favorite brand-name foods in ways we never thought of before. Best of all, they’re homemade. From appetizers and main dishes to dessert, these are some of our favorite back-of-the-box recipes that are sitting in your grocery store’s aisles waiting to be put to use. To make these recipes even more unique, we’ve added our own twist to each one so that you can make these recipes your own. So stop letting the kitchen intimidate you and take some help the best back-of-the-box recipes. Before you know it, takeout menus will be a thing of the past.
Find and cook the best bacon Real Simple staffers pigged out on 58 versions of the best food on earth, bacon. These winning strips truly sizzled.
America’s 5 best BBQ hot spots It’s that time of year when a man’s mind starts to turn to thoughts of hot, steaming piles of meat, served atop fluffy white bread, drowned in tangy, rich sauce, and accompanied by buckets of slaw, mac and cheese, potato salad, and about 17 buckets of ice cold beer. Now that we think about it, there isn’t actually a time of year when we’re not dreaming of barbecue, but with summer coming up, it seems as good a time as any to plan a road trip to the following meat masters.
America's top tater tots There’s something magical about the humble Tater Tot. Some might even argue that it’s the perfect food: bite-size, salty, crispy, crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside, greasy but not overly oily, and a great vessel for just about any topping. Its abundant nooks and crannies allow for nearly limitless surface area (aka more crunch) and it boasts a pillowy interior that french fries can only hope to emulate — let’s just say there are many reasons why it’s one of our favorite childhood foods. "Tater Tot" is actually a registered trademark of Ore-Ida, the company that invented them in 1953. Founders F. Nephi and Golden Grigg (great names) found themselves with an excess of potato scraps after making french fries, and were sick of selling them off for a pittance as animal feed. So they chopped them up, added in some flour and other seasonings, and then sent the whole mess through an extruder and into the deep-fryer. And a legend was born. Tots straight out of the deep-fryer are certainly a wonder to behold (as many a cafeteria worker can attest), but one thing that makes tots great is their versatility. They can be eaten plain, sure, but why not top them with, say, pulled pork? In today’s no-holds-barred, the-fattier-the-better foodiverse, tots have taken off, most likely because not only does the humble processed spud serve as a great vessel for all types of toppings, it also takes us back to a simpler time, when all we needed to be happy was something deep-fried and delicious (come to think of it, that still applies). Recently, tots have been making their way onto menus, and in a big way. Plenty of bars and restaurants are topping their tots with some unbelievable stuff, and even high-end places like Bar Boulud in New York City and The Aviary in Chicago offer highbrow versions of this lowbrow treat. We’ve tracked down the best tots in the country, from pub grub utopia to fine dining whimsy, and ranked them accordingly. While some are made in-house, others are simply fried to perfection and topped with something great. The main criteria? All these tots hit that spot that only the perfect tot can hit. So loosen your belt, and read on for our list of the country's top tots.
11 ways to cook with Guinness In honor of St. Patrick's Day, we've gathered a few recipes featuring—what else—Guinness!
