Ham and cheese between two slices of bread do not make a great sandwich. But add some creamy mayonnaise, maybe some bright pickles, and some crunchy vegetables, and we got a decent lunch going on.

It's good to recognize your flaws, but it's also good to recognize your skills.

Though hot sauce preferences are personal, I'm pretty open to all styles. All except stunt sauces, that is - you know, sauces that are primarily designed to test your machismo.

Your goal when searing a steak is to make sure that the temperature and evaporation buckets are as small as possible, so that you can rapidly fill them up and move on to the important process of browning.

The higher the temperature you use to cook, the faster energy is transferred, and the less evenly your meat cooks. Conversely, the more gently a steak is cooked, the more evenly it cooks.

Traditional cooking techniques inevitably form a gray band of overcooked meat around the outer edges of a steak. Sous vide, thanks to the gentle heat it uses, eliminates that gray band, producing a steak that's cooked just right from edge to edge.

The good news is that even if your early crepes have funny lumps and bulges or aren't paper-thin, they're still gonna be plenty edible and delicious.

You'd think that being that guy who always has pizza to give away would make you really popular with the neighbors, but I've had people turn down free pizza after I'd offered it to them too many times.

My job on that first day, like for most green cooks, was official kitchen gofer. Whatever any other cook needed doing, I did it.

Symbols have power and meaning and can mean different things to different people at different times and in different contexts.

I am very proud to come from a diverse family. My mother is an immigrant from Japan and my father is from a steel town in Western Pennsylvania. My family spans across the political spectrum.

I take my daughter to the San Mateo farmers market every Saturday morning, and despite repeated advice to the contrary, I usually do it on an empty stomach. Bad mistake. I wind up buying far more produce than our small family can eat within a week, which means I'm constantly trying to figure out ways to pack more vegetables into a single meal.

Air is the enemy of most foods and can increase their rate of spoilage. By transferring them to smaller containers, you not only minimize air contact, but you also help keep your fridge organized and easy to navigate.

There are a number of things that can cause your fridge to break down or lose power: electrical shorts or surges, clogged ventilation, et cetera. So it's possible that even with your temperature dial adjusted to the correct position, your fridge might be far warmer than it should be.

In those rare cases in which you have a dull knife and cooking to do, but no ceramic in sight, the top edge of a rolled-down car window will work just as well. Even a smooth stone or slab of concrete outside can work in a pinch.

The key characteristics of a tempura-style batter are extreme lightness of color and texture: Good tempura should be pale blond with an extraordinarily lacy, light, and crisp coating.

Tempura chefs are sort of like the Jedi of the cooking world: They must deftly perform with the utmost skill and precision, using extremely dangerous tools, all while maintaining a calm, serene demeanor. It is an elegant technique, from a more civilized time.

As a recipe tester, it's really easy to fall into the trap of eating only what I'm testing. Sometimes this is okay, but other times it means four straight days of Buffalo chicken wings, lunch and dinner.

Cooking for a family, and specifically cooking to stimulate exploration of new flavors and textures, has led to mealtimes that are both healthier and more exciting.

Kombu isn't the only food rich in glutamic acid, though it may be the richest.

I like to think of deviled eggs as a suit. The egg white and filling are like the jacket and pants - they're the main attraction, and the part that the egg is largely going to be judged by.

The texture of Mexican crema is thinner than that of regular American sour cream, but it also has a more distinct tang to it.

A tender beef roast with a well-browned exterior is about as easy to pair with wine as a dish can be. You have your pick of just about any medium- to full-bodied red wine, from any place.

The higher the surface area-to-volume ratio of a given amount of meat, the more efficiently it will freeze and the less damage it will suffer.