James Kenji Lopez-Alt

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 Par...

A Tour of Asian Family Market in Seattle

Asian Family Market is located at 13200 Aurora Ave N suite A, Seattle, WA 98133

Asian Family Market on Aurora in North Seattle ...

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:

• 2025-09-17 13:00:16 +0000 UTC View Post

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 sti...

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, hea...

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 p...

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 2025-08-30 00:23:01 +0000 UTC View Post

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...

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 e...

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 2025-08-21 17:45:22 +0000 UTC View Post

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 Ha...

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 o...

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.

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When I was a kid growing up in Morningside Heights, breakfast at my Japanese grandmother’s apartment one fl...

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 ...

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 2025-07-25 09:26:43 +0000 UTC View Post

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...

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 mo...

Twelve Rules for Better Burgers

By J. Kenji López-Alt

Grilling 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—2025-07-03 17:06:53 +0000 UTC View Post

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 at2025-07-03 07:33:56 +0000 UTC View Post

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 Ha...

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 box...

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 w...

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 al...

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 – 2025-06-11 17:18:33 +0000 UTC View Post

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. 2025-06-10 18:19:07 +0000 UTC View Post

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 i...

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 b...

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...

Ceviche and the Science of Marinating Fish

Ceviche has long since spread from its native Peru ( archaeological evidence reported in El Pais shows native Perucians eating...

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 ...