Celebrity chef and restaurateur Bobby Flay may be best known for Southwestern food and his grilling mastery, but even he sometimes just wants a classic down-home dish, like a French dip sandwich. "I'm a sucker for, like, good American comfort food," Flay admitted on an episode of the Food Network's "Beat Bobby Flay." While that may be true, he's not above elevating his French dip sandwich with a secret ingredient that might surprise you.

Bobby Flay's Secret Ingredient Jus For The Perfect French Dip Sandwich

Some great dishes are born from minimalism, but not chili. To make a good, cookoff-worthy chili, you should be dumping about half of your spice cabinet in there, and that's only a slight exaggeration. Chili should have a bold flavor. Of course, that means plenty of chili powder, cayenne pepper, and hot paprika, but you need more than just spiciness. A touch of smokiness will help you harken back to the early versions of chili eaten around campfires on the American frontier.

The Unconventional Chili Ingredient You'll Start Craving Constantly

A big part of the BLT's appeal is its simplicity: Bacon, lettuce, and tomatoes all have different textures, but their flavors are all tasty without being especially overpowering (same goes for mayonnaise, that unofficial fourth ingredient). It's hard to mess up a simple BLT sandwich. That said, it's also hard to resist the appeal to experiment, precisely because you can take those straightforward flavors in so many different directions. This can mean swapping out your BLT's mayo for another condiment or Italian dressing, or it can mean spicing up your sandwich (not always literally) with pimento cheese.

The Creamy Cheese Worthy Of Being Added To Your BLT

It's easy to tell when you've undercooked a pizza: The crust hasn't browned at all, the middle looks too chewy, and the dough will be soggy in a very gross, unappetizing way. There's also some risk: Raw dough can contain pathogens that you'd kill by cooking properly, and a pizza isn't safe until it's entirely cooked. When you ask about the ideal temperature for baking a pizza in a standard kitchen oven, the conventional wisdom is "as hot as your oven gets." A common mistake with cooking pizzas is temperature, and whatever temperatures you're used to cooking at, you likely need to go even higher for a pizza.

What's The Best Temperature To Cook Pizza In The Oven?

Cast iron cookware can be complicated. After all, there are a few extra precautions you'll need to take when working with it, including using the right utensils, properly removing stuck-on food, and seasoning your pans well. One of the most important things to remember to be mindful of when working with cast iron, though, is to always stack pans with protection.

The Storage Mistake That's Sabotaging Your Cast Iron Skillet

Macaroni and cheese is the ultimate comfort food. It's loved by kids and adults alike, and, conveniently, you can order it from quite a few fast food restaurants. However, some options are much tastier than others. If you love mac and cheese as much as I do, which is a lot, knowing how fast food recipes measure up against each other in a head-to-head comparison will serve you well. After all, you may be in a hurry if you're grabbing fast food, but that doesn't mean you have to settle for subpar mac.

The Best And Worst Of Fast Food Mac And Cheese Ranked

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Herbie J Pilato

It's been more than four decades since former child star William “Billie” Thomas Jr. died in Los Angeles of a heart attack at only 49 on October 10, 1980. Best known as "Buckwheat," the character he portrayed in the original Hal Roach-ignited Our Gang/Little Rascals classic film shorts from 1934 to 1944, Thomas faced similar challenges and misfortunes of several of his co-stars and other former child actors. This is his story.

Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas - 'Little Rascals'/'Our Gang' Child Star: 44 Years After His Tragic Death

When you're craving seafood, plenty of chain restaurants offer dishes like lobster, shrimp, sushi, and seafood boils. Some are seafood chains that focus mainly on fish and crustaceans, while others are more general and just happen to have some seafood dishes on the menu. Some take their seafood very seriously, offering only high-quality products prepared with expertise and care. Others go the lesser quality route.

Chain Restaurants That Serve The Highest And Lowest Quality Seafood

Rye bread — the hallmark loaf for the best Reuben sandwich – is characteristically more dense than loaves made with wheat flour, but it doesn't have to be so dense that it's flat and gummy with a super compact crumb. Nathan Myhrvold, founder of Modernist Cuisine and lead author of the "Modernist Cuisine" and "Modernist Bread" cookbook series, has well-researched advice for how to make fluffier rye bread at home. By choosing the right type of flour in your bread recipe, you can seriously alter the texture of your rye bread. Myhrvold explains, "If you want a fluffier 100% rye bread, you can't use a flour with bran and germ; opt for a light, finely milled rye flour that contains only endosperm."

The Flour Tip You Need For Fluffier Rye Bread

Traditional lasagna tends to have many ingredients and takes hours to prepare, especially when made from scratch. While my family loves the layers of rich meaty sauce, creamy ricotta, and tender noodles all topped with more cheese, they also gobble up basic jarred marinara and store-bought ravioli with the same enthusiasm.

The 4-Ingredient Dinner I've Made Hundreds of Times

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‘This is a game changer.’ Ordering off the kid’s menu comes with a certain set of expectations. Small portions, lower prices—possibly an age restriction—but generally, nothing too off-base as far as ordering food.

‘For $6, who cares?’: Applebee’s customer shocked after ordering both adult and kids’ cheeseburgers

Elevating your home cooked beef to steakhouse quality is no easy task. According to chefs, restaurant steaks taste better due to several factors, like improved heat sources, ingredient quality, and not to mention preparation skill. However, that's not to say enhancing your beef isn't worth attempting, with an excellent technique being dry-aging. By resting steak in a specific climatic environment, the flavor intensifies, develops new savory notes, and the cut becomes more tender.

The Tell-Tale Signs Your Dry-Aged Steak Is Ready To Devour

If you've ever cooked up your own homemade barbecue sauce — say, if you were cooking some exquisite baby back ribs – then you'll know that nothing beats the impactful punch that a flavorful sauce gives you. So when you revert back to a generic bottled barbecue sauce next time out, you'd be forgiven for being a little disappointed at the relative lack of spirit found in many store-bought offerings. So what should you do with a bottle of sauce that's just sitting on your shelf, waiting to go bad? Worry not, there's a solution to elevating that hum-drum bottle of sauce to yield a product more akin to your delicious homemade goods.

Instantly Improve Bottled BBQ Sauce With The Help Of This Pantry Staple

Stashed in the back of your pantry, gathering dust, is a can of sweetened condensed milk. And it's ready for its big break. The syrupy, sweet, complex, and caramel-ly flavor is tough to duplicate and it is a pantry staple you should consider having on hand at literally all times.

15 Genius Hacks For Your Can Of Sweetened Condensed Milk

Ground beef is the perfect way to add protein to several recipes. You can brown it for chili, soup, or even pasta, plus it's an essential ingredient when you're forming a tender, juicy burger. If you buy a package of ground beef and find you don't need all of it, there's no need to toss it because it freezes so well. But when it comes time to defrost it, there are a few tried and true methods. You only need some cold water or a microwave to thaw it quickly, but the refrigerator is recommended if you have the time. Regardless of the method, never defrost ground beef at room temperature.

The 3 Best Ways To Defrost Your Frozen Ground Beef

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve frantically searched “what to make with a pound of ground beef” online, but I can tell you it’s a big number. Bored with burgers and filled with meatball ennui, I’ve made the search many times. One...

The 10-Minute Ground Beef Dinner I Make Once a Week

You've probably encountered pimentos without even knowing it. The brightly colored vegetables are often found diced and mixed into cheese dips or tucked neatly into pitted green olives. Yes, that familiar red filling in your olives is actually a pimento pepper. While this might be its claim to fame, the pimento is so much more than just a pretty garnish. It's a highly versatile vegetable that can lend itself to many forms and uses in the kitchen.

What Are Pimentos, And Who Decided They Should Be Stuffed In Olives?

For all those craving a baker's dozen, skip the trip to Krispy Kreme. That's right, we said it. Sweet treat fanatics might balk at this idea, we know, but hear us out first. By the time you've made the drive to a donut shop, waited in line, and salivated all the way home at the smell of these fluffy treats, you could have easily transformed store-bought pizza dough into delicious air fryer donuts instead.

Transform Store-Bought Pizza Dough Into Air Fryer Donuts In 3 Easy Steps

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Alameda Post

Refined by New York chemist Robert Chesebrough almost 150 years ago, petroleum jelly is still widely used today in topical applications. Even with the myths that abound online about it being carcinogenic, it has withstood the test of time.

Wonder Jelly

When it comes to shellfish, there's an old saying that we should only indulge in shellfish during months with an "r" in their names — September through April. This advice dates back to a time before modern refrigeration and advanced aquaculture, when the risk of spoilage and bacterial contamination made consuming shellfish in warmer months particularly risky. While this rule had its merits back in the day, Chef Sammy Monsour, author of the seafood cookbook "Salt & Shore," calls this advice outdated, as many shellfish varieties are now sustainably farm-raised and safely available fresh year-round. "It's an incredible shift that allows us to savor these delicacies whenever the craving strikes," says Monsour.

The Best Season To Buy Your Favorite Shellfish

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Bobby Flay's Brilliant Hack To Reheat Dinner Party Dishes

Planning a large dinner party would stress anybody out. There are so many variables, like what time will everybody arrive? Will there be enough food? And...

Bobby Flay's Brilliant Hack To Reheat Dinner Party Dishes

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