Quotes from Sohla El-Waylly

The 'Test Kitchen' is really fun as long as you play your role, and I didnt like the role I was put in. It became increasingly frustrating to become a sidekick to people with significantly less experience than me.

I never really knew my 12-inch-long tweezer tongs were special until I started getting 50 Instagram DMs a day about them. Dont you all have these? Well, you should.

When you mix wheat flour and water together, the proteins in the flour combine to form a gluten network. This structure is what gives bread dough the strength and elasticity to capture all the bubbles and burbles produced by yeast in order to grow fluffy, chewy, and light when baked.

Yellow plantains have a bit more sweetness and straddle the line between savory and sweet, while fully ripened black plantains are nearly as sweet as bananas, making them perfect for desserts - try them roasted with cream and sugar .

A ripe watermelon will have a patch, creamy yellow in color, where the melon rested on the ground. If a watermelon has a white patch - or none at all - it hasnt fully matured.

I think of raita as just a versatile yogurt sauce to serve alongside all kinds of dishes - not just the traditional fare. Whether on a burger, spooned into stew, or served with grilled fish, raita presents endless possibilities and opportunities for inspiration.

The base of raita is traditionally unstrained whole-milk yogurt, but I like to break away from convention and reach for whatever fermented dairy I have on hand. Ive used buttermilk, Greek yogurt, sour cream, and any combination thereof for the base of my raita.

Definitive statements get people riled up, which is why I usually moonwalk away from them, but here goes nothing: You cant eat a South Asian meal without raita. Raita is the savory yogurt condiment thats served alongside everything - from Pakistani lamb biryani to Bengali shami kebabs and South Indian okra stir-fry.

Even though there's always a place in my heart for frozen Eggos, nothing beats the taste of homemade waffles, and making your own lets you skip the busy brunch rush.

Lightweight and slim, immersion blenders can appear to have all the grit of a Bichon Frise, but the reality is that they're no less than the business end of a blender, minus nearly all of the protection. If mishandled, they can be one of the most dangerous cooking tools.

Sure, making homemade aioli is not so bad. All you need is to mix an egg or yolk with lemon juice and garlic, then slowly drizzle in oil while whisking like theres no tomorrow, before finally bedazzling with your choice of mix-ins.

Chickens from smaller producers tend to be smaller in size, and therefore have an optimal ratio of bone to meat, for a juicier fried chicken.

When my husband and I worked as line cooks in LA, we lived in a constant state of broke and tired.

So when I was tasked with developing a zucchini fritter recipe even I could love, I stole a trick from my mother's Bengali onion fritters, piyaju. Instead of flour and eggs, theyre made with blended red lentils, which manage to stay wispy and crispy against all odds.

Dashi is the building block for some of the most delicious foods. The deeply flavored broth is made by steeping kombu, a type of dried kelp, and katsuobushi, a dried and aged tuna.

We know more people who have gone to the ER for an immersion-blender injury than just about any other, and we've seen almost every kitchen mishap imaginable.

Four-year-old me was a little tyrant, stomping around and demanding to be entertained. Mr. Rogers and Elmo were never enough; I wanted magic markers that changed colors and to run through the house with all my digits dipped in finger paint.

Instant dashi is also the key ingredient to these savory dinner oats, which I developed specifically to showcase this powerful powder. Someone a long time ago decided that oatmeal belonged in the breakfast category, but I think that chewy, hearty, steel-cut oats need more airtime in our lives.

Flan is really all about the caramel. Sure, when made right, the custard will be creamy and rich without being dense or heavy, with a little jiggle that melts in your mouth.

Ginger is often called a root, but it is actually a rhizome, which means it is an underground stem that sends shoots and roots laterally in all directions. This is why ginger often looks so gnarly and knobby, making it tough to know where to get started when prepping it.

An ideal potato gratin will contain creamy and tender potato slices, topped with a crunchy, golden crust, and browned edges underneath and all around - a quality that requires good heat transfer from the dish to its contents.

Crispy-skinned fish is an elusive thing. As soon as your filet makes contact with a hot pan, it wants to curl up, which leads to uneven cooking and floppy skin.

Whenever I'm cooking at home over a steamy pot, I daydream about the day I'll have a soda gun installed in my kitchen to spray seltzer directly into my mouth.

While the set-up of my home kitchen looks very different from that of a restaurant, theres one thing that has remained from my years as a line cook: the stack of sizzle platters thats always by my side. And its not going anywhere.