Recipes - Modernist Cuisine

Recipes

Pork Cheek Hum Bao

Steamed buns or bao are a significant staple in Chinese cuisine. Some authorities date the origin of steamed bao all the way back to the Warring States period (475–221 B.C.E.) in China, although others suggest bao is a few centuries more recent than that. Bao have relatives in various Asian countries, including Korean mandu, Malaysian […]

Chocolate and Cherry Sourdough

By adding cherries, we have taken the beloved combination of bread and chocolate in a new direction. A variation of our Sourdough Master Recipe, this dough is only moderately sweet; the natural sourness of the dough tempers the sweet character of the inclusions. Given how many taste testers were waiting when these loaves came out […]

King’s Day Bread

In many cultures, there’s a holiday tradition of baking bread with a small token hidden inside, such as a coin or a whole almond. It’s a nice surprise for whoever gets the slice with the token, which is sometimes said to bring a year of good luck. Though our own version may be showier than […]

Fish Brine

Salt is not just a universal seasoning. It also has a powerful chemical ability to retain juices within fish and meat during cooking, provided you distribute the salt evenly throughout the meat at the proper concentration. Slathering salt on the outside of a fish or a piece of meat doesn’t work very well, unless you […]

Pressure-Rendered Chicken Fat

A recipe for fat may strike some as strange, but fat is one of the key flavor elements in food. French cuisine would be unrecognizable without cream and butter. Indian cuisine relies heavily on ghee (clarified butter). Chefs in Mediterranean countries turn habitually to olive oil, while those in Tibet always have yak butter on hand. The recipe […]

Pressure-Cooked Chicharrón

It’s hard to miss the fanfare (or better yet, 12th-manfare) around Seattle right now—the Space Needle glows green at night and enormous 12s can be spotted along the skylines of Seattle and Bellevue, just across Lake Washington. Whether you’re a fan of the Seahawks, Patriots, or the commercials (or biding your time until next year), […]

Caramelized Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin pie is one of the most popular Thanksgiving desserts; therefore we devoted some time to analyzing what makes this pie so easy to identify. It’s typically the spices you taste, not the pumpkin, so we came up with a way to extract the true taste of pumpkin while skipping the spices, at least in […]

The Colonel’s Fried Chicken

Inspired by Colonel Sanders’s ingenuity and passion for succulent poultry, we created The Colonel’s Fried Chicken recipe.

Cold-Infused Dashi

Dashi is elegantly simple yet incredibly important to Japanese cuisine. Literally translating to ‘broth’, dashi is full of umami goodness, which makes it both delicious alone and as an indispensable tool for layering and developing flavors in countless Japanese recipes. In fact, the distinct reaction of taste receptors with glutamate was first identified after slurping […]

Shrimp and Grits

There is something deeply inviting about a dollop of fresh butter slowly melting on top of a warm bowl of grits. Indeed, magic can be found at the bottom of that bowl. For many of us who were raised in the south, grits are a reminder of home, of nourishing breakfasts that taught us to […]

Pressure-Cooked Fresh-Corn Tamales

Tamales are a true comfort food. Warm pillows of ground cornmeal surround both sweet and savory fillings. The dough of these steamed bundles is made from course-ground corn flour called masa harina. Inside, a bounty of different fillings can be found: cheeses, pork, chilies, cinnamon and raisins, and roasted vegetables. The corn husks of tamales […]

Coffee Crème Brûlée

The term “custard” spans so many possible ingredients and techniques that it is most useful to think of a custard as simply a particular texture and mouthfeel. Custards have been made for centuries by lightly cooking a blend of eggs and heavy cream, but Modernist chefs have invented myriad ways to make custards. The techniques […]

Matzo Ramen

When it came to preparing for Passover, my mother would always buy matzo in bulk, just in case we ran out. After the holiday, my family would attempt to consume the remaining boxes of matzo, only to surrender to fatigue after a few weeks. Those boxes would then be stored in my parent’s pantry and […]

Easter Eggs, Two Ways

Good Easter eggs shelter hidden surprises—plastic eggs break open to reveal jelly beans, and chocolate eggs often hide nougat, caramel, fudge, or peanut butter. We embraced this idea, but reimagined the egg’s contents in our own versions of this iconic treat. Our first egg is a tribute to our favorite candy eggs, with a bit […]

Lamb, Slow-Baked Onion, and Pistachio Puree

Lamb has a rich tradition of being the focal point of spring meals. Signifying the passing of winter and the renewal of life, lamb was often the first fresh meat available each year, making it a logical springtime choice. Whole lambs were cooked on spits or in earth ovens, bringing together communities for religious and […]

Matzo Ice Cream with Manischewitz Caramel

Whimsy is one of my favorite things about Modernist cuisine. When I nostalgically described my childhood seder dinners to our culinary team, two themes emerged: matzo and Manischewitz. Matzo is an incredibly humble yet important food—I like mine sandwiched with a generous portion of haroseth, which my mother made with walnuts, wine, and apples. I […]

Smoked Dry-Rub Pork Ribs

Nathan, I, and the entire Modernist Cuisine team were saddened earlier this month when barbecue legend John H. Willingham passed away.

Red Wine Glaze

A red wine glaze is a standard sauce and a favorite of many chefs, but the classical technique for preparing it is both lengthy and labor-intensive. We retooled it, using a pressure cooker, to get great results much faster.

Melty Queso Dip

When I brought this dip to a party, explaining that it was actually made from real pepper jack cheese, I was met with baffled looks. “What else is in it? Butter? Cream?” my friends asked.

Frozen Fruit Rolls

We recently watched a video on YouTube of a Thai street vendor making ice-cream rolls in just a few minutes. Ingenious! Of course, we had to try it on our new baking steel. The steel, placed atop a 10 lb block of dry ice, can cool down from room temperature to -9.4 °C / 15 […]