Every since my wife, Adri, got pregnant with our now-eight-month-old daughter, Alicia, I regularly get asked what my plans are for feeding her. How can someone who writes about food and tests recipes for a living meet the picky and precise needs of an infant without losing his mind?

Good knife skills are lessons you learn over time.

A tempura batter has a lifespan of only moments before the flour becomes too saturated with water and a fresh batter must be made.

There was a lightbulb moment as soon as I walked in the kitchen and started working. I love the physical action. I love the whole idea of feeding people and bringing people together over food. I love the craft involved.

Brussels sprouts are unique creatures. When cooked poorly, they can give off a strongly sulfurous aroma that many find unpleasant. But if you can crack through that aroma and release the natural sweetness hiding underneath, then you're rewarded with one of the most delicious vegetables around.

For creamy sea urchin pasta recipes, the typical process is to saute garlic, shallots, and chilies in olive oil, then add the pasta and pour in a sauce made from raw sea urchin roe blended with softened butter or heavy cream.

Pancakes are simple. They're diner food. They're what you make on a Sunday morning with the kids. Crepes are fancy. They're French-bistro food. They're what you make once a week after your Parisian vacation because you want to relive some pleasant memories.

There's no question that resting meat helps it to retain juices, though the exact degree to which it does so is up for debate. I've tested dozens of steaks over the years, and I've found significant variation.

I first became aware of Lao Gan Ma chile crisp at a potluck baby shower in 2016, where a friend brought a bowl of chilled hand-pulled noodles that he tossed with black vinegar, soy sauce, sesame seeds, scallions and a ladleful of the sauce.

Organizing your fridge for maximum efficiency - in terms of food shelf life, food safety, and easy access to the things you reach for most - should be a top priority.

No matter how many great things you say about Jacques Pepin, there's always more. Through his books and videos, he taught me the importance of technique in the kitchen, but, more significantly, he showed me what it means to be a great teacher and educator.

Most ceramic plates, bowls, and cups have an unglazed rim around the very bottom, where the piece was in contact with the floor of the kiln. This unglazed ceramic is harder than metal and can be used just like a sharpening stone.

Over the years, I've discovered that lessons in cooking come in two forms. There are the lessons that you never fully learn; skills that you get better and better at, but never quite perfect. Then there are the lessons that you only need to learn once because the results of not following them will literally scar you for life.

A fridge is basically just a big, cold box with a few shelves in it, right? Well, that's true, but where you store food in the fridge can have quite an impact on its shelf life.

Tri-ply pans try to split this difference by sandwiching a layer of aluminum in between two layers of steel. They heat evenly and store plenty of energy. Tri-ply pans are also more sturdily constructed than disk-bottom pans, which have aluminum disks attached only to their bottoms.

Like broccoli, their closely related cousins, Brussels sprouts benefit from extremely high heat and browning, to the point of a near-char, in order to intensify their sweetness and bring out their unique nutty flavor without turning them overwhelmingly sulfurous.

Evaporated milk is a highly concentrated source of milk protein micelles - bundles of proteins that can act as powerful emulsifying agents - which help to keep the sauce creamy and smooth.

In its pure crystalline form, MSG can be added to soups, stews, sauces, and stocks to add a rounded, savory flavor.

Walk into any Japanese fish market, and you'll see neat rows of sea urchin roe sold in little wooden trays.

You can cook a limited number of sous vide recipes in a beer cooler, but if the person you're buying for wants to start cooking like the pros, they'll need a dedicated circulator that's designed to maintain the temperature of a water bath to within one degree.

I came from a family of scientists. My father is a microbiologist and my grandfather is an organic chemist. I had a very science- and math-heavy childhood.

After your knife and your cutting board, quality pots and pans are the most important tools in your kitchen, and a good set can run hundreds, even thousands, of dollars.

Frying is essentially a drying process. Batters and breadings are formulated to dry out in a particularly graceful way.

Panko crumbs have tons of surface area, leading to exceptionally crisp coatings.

Different hot sauces fulfill different needs, and I wouldn't want anyone to live in a world in which each fridge held only one bottle.

My first restaurant job was Knight of the Round Grill.

No matter how your breading or batter is constructed, it serves the same function: Adding a layer of 'stuff' around the item being fried means the oil has a tough time coming in direct contact with it, and thus has a hard time transferring energy to it.

One of the handiest features of crepes is that you can cook the pancakes all the way through and refrigerate them, to be reheated and stuffed later.

I like to cook my crepes in a little butter, which gives them a nice, golden-brown color and lacy-looking surface. I rub a thin layer into a preheated skillet, then wipe out all the excess with a paper towel.

Like regular table salt, MSG can also help boost our perception of other existing flavors. Tomato soup with a pinch of MSG tastes a little more tomato-y. Add a dash to beef stew to make it taste beefier.

Mapo tofu is my favorite food in the world. We always have tofu at home. Like, a lot of it.

Making sea urchin pasta is a lot like a toddler playing with Play-Doh: There are a million right ways to do it, and most of them are salty and delicious.

Historically, almost every cookbook and chef have taught that when you're cooking a piece of meat, the first step should be searing.

The perception of juiciness involves a complex jumble of things, including how quickly juices are squeezed out of meat fibers by our teeth, how much saliva we produce, and the ratio of liquid fat to water-based liquid.

See, tomato skins are really good at keeping tomato juices inside the tomato, but they have one defect: Moisture can escape from the tops, where the tomatoes were attached to the vine.

Tempura-style batters were originally brought to Japan by Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century.

Sometimes even a well-rested steak will lose juices when you cut into it. Sometimes a completely un-rested steak won't spill a drop. But as a general rule, resting meat for about one-third of its total cooking time guarantees that more juices will stay inside than on your cutting board or plate.

When planning a Thanksgiving menu, it's always a balancing act between representing all the classics and satisfying all the members of your family.

An ice cream sundae isn't complete without a crunchy element.

I wasn't meant to be a cook. It's a profession I accidentally fell into one summer between college semesters while looking for an easy job as a waiter. Nobody would hire me as a server, but one restaurant, in desperate need of a prep cook, told me that if I could hold a knife, I could have a job.

Once you start thinking of different dishes in terms of how they're heated, you quickly realize that the key to successfully pulling off a big meal is to diversify. If you plan on five casseroles and a turkey, you're gonna run out of oven space. Don't do it!

Typically, the thinner the gauge of a pan, the more intense the hot and cool spots that form on its interior, which can lead to uneven cooking.

Batters are made by combining some sort of flour - usually wheat flour, though cornstarch and rice flour are not uncommon - with a liquid and optional leavening or binding ingredients, like eggs and baking powder.

So in order to make a large volume of sausage, you need to have a dedicated refrigerated room, where you can grind and mix and stuff and everything, because if sausage mixture gets too warm while you're forming it, it doesn't bind properly, and your sausages end up crumbly and dry.

If you want to get really crazy, Brussels sprouts love cured pork. Crisp up some bacon, pancetta, or chorizo in a skillet; save the crisp bits; use the fat to roast the sprouts; then toss them together with the meat when they come out of the oven.

Fattier, expensive cuts like prime rib or New York strip are celebratory centerpieces that do best when simply roasted with salt and pepper and served straight away.

Many call for cooking pasta directly in milk, a technique that works okay, but it can lead to scorching if you're not super careful with stirring. I prefer the evaporated-milk route because it ensures a clean pan with no burnt bits on the bottom.

Steel is dense, which means that, for a given volume, it can hang on to more thermal energy than aluminum can. On the other hand, aluminum is highly conductive, which means that it can transfer heat from one place to another very rapidly.

When I had a side-by-side-style freezer, I kept everything - soup, ground meat, steaks, cooked rice - frozen in flat packs that I filed away vertically like vinyl records.

A zipper-lock bag will work for basic, short-term sous vide cooking projects, but for extended cooking and storage, you'll want to pair your sous vide circulator with a vacuum sealer.