Author: Jawdah Hannad Basara

When a jacket potato is cooked correctly, there’s a certain satisfaction that comes from the skin crackling under a fork, steam rising off the floury white center, and a pool of butter already vanishing into the cracks before the beans even come out of the tin. It’s one of those fundamental British skills that no one really needs to learn, but for some reason, everyone seems to be making a small mistake. It turns out that the air fryer alters things in a way that is genuinely hard to ignore. Most people struggle with the timing question. Depending on the…

The air fryer quietly became the standard cooking appliance in Britain somewhere between the Sunday fry-up and the school run. And with it came the question of how long to cook Richmond sausages in the air fryer, which is now a topic of surprisingly intense discussion in Reddit threads and Facebook groups. People’s responses vary from eight minutes to almost thirty minutes, which reveals information about air fryers and their owners. For fresh thick sausages, it makes sense to cook them for 15 to 18 minutes at 180°C, turning them halfway through. This is also what Richmond itself recommends. Sausage…

You can indeed cook Aunt Bessie’s Yorkshire puddings in an air fryer, but that doesn’t really tell the whole story. Heat to about 200°C, add no more than four frozen puddings to the basket, and cook for two to four minutes until they are crisp, golden, and hot. The fact that Aunt Bessie’s now includes instructions for air fryers on the pack gives you an idea of how British cooking has evolved. The humble Yorkshire pudding has found itself in the center of a quiet domestic change taking place here. Somewhere during the energy price squeeze, when heating a full-size…

The same silent panic occurs in American and British kitchens every year, usually during the final week of November. When a turkey is taken out of the freezer with plenty of time to spare, it thaws more quickly than anyone anticipated. Or visitors put off dinner for two days. Suddenly, a household is staring at a huge, raw bird and wondering how long it can remain there before it starts to cause problems. The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service says the short answer is one to two days. Before it needs to be put in the oven or put…

This specific kitchen moment has an almost universal quality. When you see double cream at the grocery store, you buy two or three cartons because the price is too good to pass up, use half of one for a recipe, and three days later you’re standing in front of the refrigerator wondering what to do with the remaining portion. Can it be frozen? Specifically, can double cream be frozen in its carton exactly as it is? This is the question that almost always comes up. In a nutshell, the answer is yes. Before you simply put the entire carton in…

A seafood boil the following morning has a subtly depressing quality. What was a spread of glossy crab legs, plump shrimp shimmering in garlic butter, and sweet corn stacked high on brown paper a few hours ago now sits in a container in the refrigerator, looking a little dejected and smelling slightly of Old Bay. No one desires to squander it. Additionally, no one wants to eat it cold. How to restore it without making every shrimp piece chew like an old rubber band is the question. Treating seafood like pot roast leftovers is the biggest mistake most people make.…

The smell of peaches before you actually see them, ripe, warm, and almost too sweet, sitting in crates at a farmers market or piled on a kitchen counter going soft, is a summertime moment that most people can probably recall. This cobbler is all about that smell. Not the pan size, not the baking time, not the Bisquick box. The peaches. There have been variations of this recipe in American kitchens since at least the 1960s, which may be explained by the recipe’s almost embarrassing simplicity. The original recipe, which included Bisquick mix, milk, butter, sugar, and canned peaches, was…

Seeing a Ninja Slushie machine operate has an almost theatrical quality. In about an hour, you have something that looks like it came out of a restaurant machine—smooth, icy, and strangely satisfying in a way that a standard blender never quite manages. The drum spins, and the mixture gradually thickens against the cold barrel walls. Even though it’s a small domestic moment, it doesn’t seem insignificant when you’re wondering why you ever paid $14 for a frozen margarita at a bar while standing in your kitchen on a July afternoon. It’s easy to see why the strawberry margarita is currently…

Even when it acts otherwise, London has always taken its cuisine seriously. You can sense it when you stroll through Mayfair on a Tuesday night: the subdued buzz of eateries conducting serious business, the suited employees moving with the practiced efficiency of people who know exactly what’s at stake. Behind those doors, the chefs are more than just cooks. They are often brands unto themselves, creating empires just as much as menus. For more reasons than just being the loudest, Gordon Ramsay is the obvious first choice. Since 2001, his flagship restaurant in Chelsea, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay on Royal Hospital…

The fact that a show that takes place in a white tent in an English field has grown to be one of the most exported television formats worldwide is subtly amazing. The Great British Bake Off, which debuted on BBC Two in 2010 before switching to Channel 4, did more than just make entertaining television. It created a sense of patriotism. Every autumn, for a period of time on Tuesday nights, a sense of collective calm descends upon Britain. The flour rises. Judges narrow their eyes. And a country lets out a sigh at nine o’clock. However, MasterChef is more…