Some dinners are made for the table. This one is made for when the game is on. Sheet pan kielbasa with Yukon Gold potatoes and sweet Vidalia onions has become one of those dinners everyone in our house looks forward to, especially during college football…

Chicken Cacciatore reminds me how satisfying simple food can be. Bone-in chicken thighs are browned to build flavor, then slowly braised with tomatoes, wine, mushrooms, and a traditional soffritto of onion, celery, and carrot. It’s not particularly complicated. What matters are the small decisions along…

Some recipes begin with a carefully developed plan. This one began with a chuck roast in the freezer and my wife’s increasingly frequent reminders that it was still there. At the same time, I had polenta on the brain. I had recently returned to making…

Crispy, blistered, and cooked in a cast iron skillet with just enough olive oil to lightly fry the crust, this cast iron flatbread pizza has the kind of texture that makes delivery pizza hard to go back to. There was a time when I could…

I never knew roasted jalapeños could taste like that. These Polish dogs were born from that discovery, pairing charred Polish sausage, creamy coleslaw, and stone-ground mustard with roasted jalapeños that are milder and far more flavorful than most people expect. My production schedule for this…

Snow has a way of clarifying things. When the wind chills drop below zero, what you want isn’t just something warm—you want something comforting. A pot that works all day, filling the kitchen with an aroma that promises dinner long before it’s time to eat.…

Red wine braised short ribs weren’t something I grew up eating—at least not in the form they take here. When my mom made braised short ribs, there was no red wine involved, and the result was pretty mild. They weren’t bad food per se, but…

We don’t do Christmas all in one day. There’s the big family gathering at my aunt’s farm, a few quieter visits with friends, and then — finally — our Christmas at home. That’s when I got a new cast-iron skillet. And like any good cook,…

The oven steps up when the weather says “no” to the smoker. Low heat. Some patience. Voilà. Oven-Made Pulled Pork that’s unbelievably tender and tastes like it spent all day in the smoker pit. It’s 19 cold degrees with icy sleet spitting sideways against the…

I didn’t set out to make Spatchcock Cornish Game Hen—well, not at first. In fact, we hadn’t cooked game hen all that often. We’d had it a couple of times over the years, but I’d mostly written it off as more trouble than it was…