For the Love of Un-Simple Things: Chicken and Smoked Sausage Gumbo

Just a little love for laborious cooking projects.

The older I get, the more I appreciate the un-simple things. Sure, I admire the shining brilliance of singularly perfect foods — like the best summer tomatoes or a properly aged steak — but I'm far more interested in dishes that combine dozens of components into a complex and bewildering whole. I speak of Mexican moles, feisty Thai salads, balanced Indian curries, and, of course, a certain C...

How to Make Shoyu Ramen at Home

With a lot of help from Takashi's Noodles.

One sip of real ramen is enough. That’s all I needed to permanently erase all those memories of those pathetic packaged noodles, which I greedily warmed up in the microwave during college. One sip. Done. It was also enough to make me question whether there was a better soup on the planet. Fragrant, rich, and soothing, it has no parallel in the Midwest cuisine I grew up on, and while other marve...

Building the Best Ramen: The Noodle Question

Leaving the packaged noodles behind...

Ramen is Japan’s ultimate comfort food, the equivalent of a cheeseburger, fried chicken, and deep-dish pizza into one.
- Takashi Yagihashi from Takashi’s Noodles

I may live in Chicago, but I’ll admit that I'd probably pick ramen before those other foods when I'm in need of something truly comforting. Those big bowls of noodles and broth seem especially perfect at warding off a brutal...

My Chicago: Spicy Yeul Ramyon from the Joong Boo Market

How to dress up cheap ramen.

Every Friday, we publish a story about life as a cooks and eaters in Chicago. Markets, restaurants, secret finds, really tasty bites--or just a great story. We're lucky to live here.

Close your eyes and think about instant ramen...I know it's probably been a while. You probably have in mind some MSG-laden bastion of cheap college eating, because that's where I used to be, too.

But now it...

Building a Better Chicken Soup

Some tricks to improve this classic soup.

It's cold season, and everyone's coming down with something.  Chicken soup is a nourishing potion, one that seems almost automatic even though I've never really questioned why. Most of the time this tradition involves nothing more than opening a can of Campbell's chicken noodle soup: somehow those minuscule pellets of chicken and mushy noodles are okay once your temperature is above 100.

Bu...

In Search of Dashi and Perfect Miso Soup

A better way to make Japanese soup.

Turns out, once you have all the ingredients, the process is rather straight forward and won't take longer than 30 minutes or so.  And since most of the ingredients besides the tofu are pantry items, whipping up a new batch of miso soup in the future should be a breeze.

Bonito smells like, well, dried fish, but it looks more like pencil shavings. They are the body behind the miso, and make the...

Jacques Pepin''s Corn Chowder

Possibly the easiest corn chowder recipe on the planet

A warm comfort food that, in this case, is remarkably easy to make. Generally chowder is thick and hearty with bacon and potatoes and thick creamy base, but this version instead goes for elegant. It’s almost (but not) too thin, almost silky, surprisingly tasty considering the lack of any complicated seasoning.
By Blake Royer

On a Sunday afternoon, corn chowder is the idea.  A soup bot...