10 cozy things to cook in january
from chickpeas to cabbage, blintzes to brownies
Monday, January 6, 2025
Good morning!
Here's Why It's Been So Hard to Find Eggs [Food & Wine]
How Tortillas Lost Their Magic [The Atlantic]
Happy New Year, friends! I am reluctantly easing back in from our winter break vacation to Argentina and Uruguay. It was my first time going to South America, and also my first time experiencing a true summer in the middle of our winter, and I loved it. I’m working on a write-up of the vacation and will share it here as soon as it’s ready. [You can find my previous travel write-ups here.]
Meanwhile, back in the land of 4pm sunsets, thick comforters, and a fresh dusting of snow coming down right now, I’m happy to be back in my kitchen where the knives are sharp and the pots have lids. I find January to be a fascinating month for cooking: for some, it’s austerity measures; for others, it’s comfort food. Below, a January cooking agenda that I hope is a happy blend of everything we crave, from hearty bowls of spaghetti to an addictive cabbage salad.
Cheers!
Deb
I’ve written three cookbooks and I’m a tiny bit biased, but I think you’d love them all. Wondering what you might cook from Smitten Kitchen Keepers in the depths of winter? I thought you’d never ask! Try the ginger garlic chicken noodle soup, charred salt and vinegar cabbage, creamy coconut rice with chili-lime vegetables, and oven-braised beef with harissa. To finish, I recommend the oatmeal date shortbread, the chocolate dulce puddle cakes, and/or the white Russian slush punch. Were you looking for a list of all the recipes in each of my cookbooks? I’ve added these in a separate page and hope it makes it easier for you to find everything you want to cook.
“One of the winning elements of ‘The Recipe’ is that it’s not prescriptive — rather than settling on one universal ‘perfect’ recipe, the chefs explain their personal preferences, then give listeners the information they need to make their own adjustments. By breaking their recipes down ingredient-by-ingredient, digging into what each one is doing, they make the science of cooking approachable and fun.” — New York Times, 7 Podcasts to Inspire a New Hobby
“J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Deb Perelman’s new podcast gets to not only the heart of how they make their recipes—but also the why behind each decision, too.” — Esquire, The 26 Best Podcasts of 2024
The latest full episode of my podcast with J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, The Recipe with Kenji and Deb, is all about Onion Soup! You can listen to it anywhere you get your podcasts, such as Apple, Spotify, and more. A few weeks ago, we ran an excerpt of the new special audiobook edition of Smitten Kitchen Keepers, Smitten Kitchen Keepers: A Kitchen Counter Conversation. You can listen to it here.
cheese blintz
Let's warm up the Russian way: sweet cheese filled crepes, fried in butter until golden and crisp, and draped with fruit. It's the only thing that makes sense right now.
carrot soup with tahini and crisped chickpeas
An unboring carrot soup with a lemony tahini swirl, smoky spices, and crispy chickpeas as croutons that's vegan and magical, mostly because it was inspired by one of my favorite snacks, carrots dipped in hummus.
pickled cabbage salad
I love having a jar of this in the fridge all year long.
chicken wonton soup
The happiest mash-up of two already excellent things: bubbeleh-style chicken noodle and takeout wonton soup, all quick and easy.
oven fries
Can oven-roasted french fries ever be as good as the golden, glistening, crisp and glittery with fine salt ideal? You can trust this french fry junkie and technique pedant to find a way.
crispy rice and egg bowl with ginger-scallion vinaigrette
This dolsot bibimbap-inspired crisped-up bowl of rice (it gets crackly at the edges and almost smells like popcorn), with a crispy fried egg, a mash-up of a classic ginger-scallion sauce and a vinaigrette, and crunchy vegetables is my favorite thing to do with leftover rice and whatever vegetables are lingering in the fridge.
perfect meatballs and spaghetti
This is the best (and easiest) spaghetti and meatballs I’ve ever made. A streamlined technique gets this whole thing on the table in under an hour, which means we get to have this for dinner more often. 🍝
buttermilk roast chicken
Sure, the best part of fried chicken is the battered, seasoned, golden crisp exterior. The next best part? The buttermilk-brined impeccably tender meat within. This is that, no cauldron of deep-fry oil required.
olive oil brownies
Do not underestimate the power of a perfect olive oil brownie. These are thicker and more deeply chocolatey than my usual brownies recipe but remain one bowl, hand-whisked, and could be coming out of your oven in 45 minutes.
key lime pie
Key lime pie is way too easy to make at home to not treat yourself. It’s so sunny and bright, like an in-kitchen vacation, I always wonder why I don’t make it more often. [Video below!]
key lime pie
shop my favorites
Ever wonder where I get my cutting boards, paring knives, offset spatulas and more than you see when I cook? I've created a page on Smitten Kitchen with links to some of my favorite kitchen items, the ones I'm asked about the most — yes, including the the Smitten Kitchen x Staub Braiser (currently out of stock but we’ll have more in soon!). For each item, I've attempted to provide a range of shopping links so we're not just focusing on one giant retailer.
See you next week!
