Tips for Getting Better at Cooking in 2023

nytimes cooking worth it, Eric Kim’s breaded Ritz cracker chicken breasts, Yewande Komolafe’s craggy tofu with star anise sauce, and even more brilliant recipes are included in Easy Ways to Be a Better Cook, nytimes cooking worth it.

Last week, my colleague Alexa Weibel compiled this wonderful dish list, which she generously annotated with her wisdom: 10 Brilliant Recipes to Improve Your Cooking Lex has a lot of knowledge about great recipes; Our ombré gratin and the five-ingredient creamy miso pasta, which is a fan favorite, are two of her many New York Times Cooking gems.

The following is a list of two recipes from Lex’s list, as well as other excellent options that I hope you’ll try. Take a look at “Learn to Cook (and Love It) in 10 Easy Dishes” if you’re just starting out in the kitchen or want to find easy recipes.

Please send me your recipe at  and tell me if you’ve learned anything useful from a New York Times recipe. It might appear in a subsequent newsletter. What’s more, — deal alert — temporarily, you can save money on all of The New York Times, including Cooking. Buy in now during our All Entrance deal for limitless recipes and kitchen guidance, in addition to all that The Times offers, nytimes cooking worth it.

Ritzy Cheddar Chicken Breasts This recipe:

which is on Lex’s list and can probably satisfy anyone, contains a lesson: When used as a garnish or ingredient, crushed crackers provide a fantastic crunch. The same is true for potato chips, cornflakes, pretzels, and other crisp treats.) Eric Kim coats chicken breasts by crushing Ritz crackers and tossing them with shredded Cheddar.

Ali Slagle’s new recipe for one-pan salmon niçoise with orzo is a substantial take on niçoise salad. It substitutes canned tuna for salmon fillets, eliminates boiled eggs and potatoes, and adds orzo (an underrated ingredient, in my opinion). It’s full, bright, and quick.

Glazed Tofu with Star Anise and Chile: Another recipe on Lex’s list:

Yewande Komolafe’s coated tofu. Lex points out that most recipes for tofu call for cubing and searing the tofu. However, Yewande’s method of first searing the entire block of tofu and then breaking it into pieces yields craggier edges that are better suited to soaking up sauce. The crouton recipe by Samin Nosrat also works on the same principle—rough edges that absorb more sauce.

With fresh clams, making Linguine With Clam Sauce Pasta Alle Vongole is simple:

Despite its simplicity, it is also shockingly delicious. However, new mollusks mean an outing to a store that sells new fish, in a perfect world that very day, just before supper. At Five Weeknight Dishes, we rarely make trips to the store after work in the last minute. So: canned clams, which are used in this excellent recipe from Colu Henry to give a different but still tasty take on the standard dish.

Velvety Scrambled Eggs Kenji López-Alt:

who always seems to be thinking of better ways to cook eggs, has taught me a lot about eggs. See: his method for boiling eggs and a fundamental method for breaking them up.) Beaten eggs are to be poached in cream in this recipe. That might come across as fussy. It elevates dinner scrambled eggs to something more exquisite and is not at all.