Behind the Recipes
Welcome to Behind the Recipes, an Allrecipes column that goes beyond the plate to celebrate the people who make us the “home of the home cook.” Through candid conversations with passionate cooks of all kinds, we uncover the real stories behind their signature dishes—the challenges they’ve faced, the inspirations that drive them, and the tried-and-true recipes they can’t live without.
In her debut cookbook, Salt, Fat, Acid Heat, Samin Nosrat shared the vast knowledge she acquired in the kitchen at Chez Panisse and other professional kitchens to create a roadmap to flavor. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat quickly became a beloved tome for home cooks, on par with books like The Joy of Cooking, and it rocketed Nosrat to culinary stardom, including a four-part Netflix series.
But what it didn’t do was help Nosrat find meaning in her life, and now, eight years later, she’s come through periods of loss, depression, and grief with clarity on what it means to live a good life. Namely, she says in her new cookbook, Good Things, that it means sharing time, attention, and, yes, food with the people she loves.
Over a video call, I asked Nosrat about the lessons she learned while writing Good Things and what the book can teach us about caring for others, as a host or a guest. Read on to hear Nosrat’s philosophies about ingredients, recipes, and hospitality.
You have a notoriously ambivalent relationship with recipes. In the book (in a section called “The Problem With Recipes”), you say, “We’ve learned to expect the wrong things from recipes. We’ve been trained to believe if we just follow what’s on the page, word for word, we’ll get the same results every time.” What should we expect from recipes?
You should be able to expect consistency, and you should be able to expect that a well-tested recipe, followed pretty carefully, should deliver good results. It’s just that I think social media and capitalism have created an expectation in all of us that everything is just supposed to be perfect and exactly the same.
I know consistency technically means getting a consistent result, but I actually think that there’s a margin. Even when you fry an egg every single day for breakfast, some days you break the yolk. Some days, there’s a little brown on the lacy edge of the white. There are so many variables beyond you standing there and doing the same thing every time that will affect the outcome. And that is, in some ways, actually quite a beautiful thing, because that’s life, and life is ever-changing. To believe and hope that what we’re going to get is a carbon copy is only going to lead to disappointment on all ends.
In the section called “Condiments, Components, and Toppings,” you discuss keeping a variety of small flavor enhancers, such as garlic and herb labne, on hand to elevate simple dishes. How does stacking your pantry with these homemade condiments help you make meals more enjoyable? What are some of your favorites from the book?
I always love the Calabrian Chili Crisp (p. 56) because it exists in this neutral all-purpose zone. It doesn’t necessarily take your meal in any one direction, which is nice. It’s not super spicy. It’s just very flavorful. I usually add that and a spoonful of labne. Sometimes I stir a little bit of the Preserved Meyer Lemon Paste (p. 79) into labne or yogurt, and that becomes like my dollop of creamy stuff. The House Dressing (p. 117) is a great topper for, like a bowl of vegetables.
But really, it allows me not to have to think about a menu or make the decision beforehand. It allows the entire cooking process to be a lot shorter and quicker, because then I just have to cook things, and the choice of making it Korean, Japanese, Mexican, or Indian happens when I open the fridge and choose my condiments. It allows for more flexibility and, I think, a little more fun, and I’m always just grateful to my previous self who did the work.
In the book, you say, “I use so much citrus juice and zest that I feel mildly alarmed when I don’t have lemons and limes around.” What ingredients, if you have them in your pantry, make you feel a bit safer?
Fresh herbs, whether they’re in the garden or in my fridge. Citrus. Parmesan cheese. I save all my chicken bones as I cook, then make stock in the Instant Pot, which is just so good, and I freeze multiple quarts at a time. When that gets down to one, I’m like, “I gotta make more.” There are certain things where I feel like, if I have them, it’s a building block to a really simple meal, like rice—I always have to have rice. I always have to have a bunch of different pastas, a few different kinds of beans, both dried and canned.
Good Things makes a strong case for savoring and appreciating ingredients in a way that feels especially relevant right now, when many people are voicing concerns about affording groceries. One of my favorite tips was for vanilla beans, which always feel like a luxury item and are especially in demand around the holidays. Tell me about your approach to vanilla beans and other ingredients that might have more to give than people think.
Vanilla beans are fully a luxury, and I think it’s important to say that they deserve to be. Because once you learn a little bit about vanilla beans, you understand. There are just so many hands that touch a vanilla bean by the time it gets to you. And so that sort of explains why each individual one costs $6 to $10, and I do think there’s a way to really stretch that. You can make do with a quarter or half a pod, and then I always save the pods, because it’s impossible to get every single seed out.
There are many things you can do to them, like make vanilla sugar. I like to add my pods back into my vanilla extract, then, as it reaches the bottom, I top it with new booze. Three to six months later, I can start using that as more vanilla extract. Even if I’ve steeped the vanilla pod in milk, I’ll wash it off, dry it, and still use it, because to me, they’re very precious and very flavorful.
Aquafaba (the liquid in a can of chickpeas) shows up in Good Things, bringing creaminess to recipes like Fava’s Caesar (p. 128). Tell me more about that.
I just sort of fell in love with the possibilities that aquafaba affords us. The fact that you can use it to thicken sauces and dressings was a real boon to me in the book. A thing I’ve been doing lately is, I put the aquafaba in the food processor with some lemon juice, and just turn that on and leave it, and you come back, and you basically have the fluffiest whipped aquafaba—It almost looks like a meringue, it’s so thick and fluffy.
I’ll put the chickpeas in a pot covered with water, salt, a little cumin, and some baking soda, and I’ll simmer them for an extra 15 or 20 minutes so they get really, really, really soft. And then, once the chickpeas cool, I proceed with the hummus. At the end, I fold in the whipped aquafaba, which really lightens it and makes it so nice. And it’s cool, because you have the sense that you’ve used your whole can.
In the section “Good Things Are Meant to Be Shared,” you give readers some large-format recipes that are perfect for entertaining. What are a few of your favorites around the holidays?
The garlic bread, the pane criminale (p. 329), is a fun one. It invites your hands. One of the things I think about for the holidays that, to me, I feel like is an underutilized opportunity by most people, is that it’s one of the few times of the year that we pretty much all have a kitchen full of hands available to us. And so there is a way to put people to work and take advantage of that to make things that might be much more time-consuming or labor-intensive to do on your own.
If your kitchen has enough room for a few people to stand there and help make something that would take a single person, you know, upwards of an hour to do all these individual steps, it can go so much more quickly and be so much more fun for everyone to participate in. It could be anything that involves assembly, like creamy spinach lasagna (p. 355) or the kukukopita (p. 330).
It sounds like what you are saying is to let your guests be helpful. What is something you wish, when a guest comes into your home, they would do, or what do you do to be a kind guest when you go to someone else’s home?
Often, I feel like there’s an idea in your head of how you’ll be ready when people show up. And then there’s the reality, which is that often, like, you haven’t even gotten a chance to go upstairs and change, let alone set the table.
I try to think about the things I can leave behind for other people to do, where they kind of can’t do it wrong. I don’t have to manage them the whole time—things like picking herbs, washing lettuces, making a salad dressing, or like anything, where, even if there’s just simple steps in a recipe, I can hand over and let them follow, or other parts of like creating a dinner or a meal that are not necessarily cooking, like setting the table, opening the wine. It is really gratifying to get to contribute in some way. It just doesn’t always have to be in the kitchen.
How do you tackle holiday leftovers?
Everyone always has leftover turkey, right? Buy yourself a good mole paste, make some turkey mole, chop it up fine, and then have a tamale-making party the next day. I would never take it on myself to do it alone, but once you have a ton of people, it’s so fun and so easy, and then you can turn these leftovers into this really delicious, extraordinary other thing.
What are some non-cooking steps that are part of your process of getting ready to welcome guests into your home?
Sometimes, if I have the energy, I’ll think about the music I want to play, or I’ll go outside and make a flower arrangement, or just take pleasure in choosing the linens we’re going to have.
I always try to think about the flow of a party and a room. There are certain places where people naturally always congregate. We come into the kitchen, even if it’s not particularly welcoming, because usually there are people doing stuff in a kitchen. Or they will always sort of make their way to where drinks are. So I try to think about how I can create a good flow of traffic and spread that out so that everybody’s not just coming into the kitchen. So I spread snacks out. I spread drinks out. I spread things out to sort of get the party moving so that people don’t clog up your kitchen.
How do you feel about a designated kids’ table vs. having kids at the table with everyone else?
It depends on how many people, but almost always, the kids are just at the big table with us, because there’s enough room. And I do think, when possible, that’s the best for everyone, and it is a great way to get kids eating and to create a sense of belonging. I have nothing against the kids’ table if it’s needed to make a party work, but I do think making sure everyone eats the same thing, regardless of where you are, just getting kids eating off of the same platters and off the same table is going to help encourage them to, ultimately, grow up to be better eaters.
In the book, you’re very candid about your experience with depression after the release of Salt, Fat, Acid Heat. Looking back on your journey from SFAH to Good Things, what would you say to the Samin who had just published SFAH?
I wonder if she could hear it, but it’s like, you don’t have to try so hard. I would say that in many different formats. Basically, like, everything doesn’t have to be the best and the hardest, and that’s not a reflection of my value as a human being. Everything doesn’t have to be perfect. And just being yourself is enough. That’s the thing I have been trying to teach my younger self, and it’s also, in some ways, what I’m trying to model for the reader. It’s enough to put out popcorn. It’s enough to put out olives. You can make all this stuff from scratch, but it’s also fine to just order empanadas. The fact of gathering together and being together is so much more important than what it is that you’re gathering around.
