We Gave These Classic American Recipes a Makeover
A freshly baked chocolate chip cookie, a bowl of chicken noodle soup, a slice of apple pie—these recipes scream “iconic American cuisine.” And while they’re all classics for (very good) reasons, we couldn’t help but give them a Milk Street twist.
French Toast, Perfected
After 40 years, Chris FINALLY figured out how to make French toast.
The promise of French toast is a bread that’s sweet and moist on the inside, but still essentially “toast.” The reality usually is closer to wet bread. The solution? Adding semolina to the egg yolk and milk mixture, which gives the breakfast classic a crisp exterior and custardy interior.
Rice Flour Drop Biscuits
Drop biscuits are the opposite of dense, chewy, over-worked biscuits. We love traditional, rolled biscuits, but shaping them isn’t always an easy feat. With drop biscuits there is no shaping, just scoop and bake, which keeps the gluten development to a minimum so your biscuits will remain tender instead of tough. We use a combination of all-purpose flour and rice flour to inhibit gluten formation even further. The butter is grated in while ice cold so the teeny pieces are evenly distributed. The finished biscuit has a crispy exterior and a light, tender crumb.
Hand-Torn Chicken Noodle Soup
These super simple dumpling-like noodles in broth riff on a bowl of sujebi, which we learned to make in Seoul from home cooks Insook Park and chef Hyeong Joon Woo. “Each of the women grabbed a fistful of the smooth, taut dough and quickly tore off small chunks, flattening them between their thumbs and forefingers as they went, dropping them into the simmering broth while lightheartedly bickering over who did it better,” our editorial director J.M. Hirsch writes.
“In just minutes the noodles—rough and irregular in all the right ways—floated to the top. They were tender, with just the right chew. So much better than the mushy noodles I associate with chicken soup.”
Kimchi Grilled Cheese with Ham
Grilled cheese isn’t really a recipe. It’s the kind of food you throw together with whatever you have on hand. However, the pairing of kimchi and cheese is one that we love so much that we needed to put something in writing to make it official. The acidity and punchy flavors of the kimchi cut through the richness of the cheese, making it a more iconic duo than perhaps even PB+J.
Cream-Free Tomato Bisque with Parmesan Croutons
Tomato soup and grilled cheese—all in one bowl, and far more flavorful. In place of the grilled cheese, we top the soup with cheesy Parmesan croutons, and thicken it with bread, not cream. Omitting the cream allows the flavors to shine through (dairy tends to mute them), while the starch in the bread keeps the soup smooth and velvety. A childhood favorite for grown-up palates.
Fire-Roasted Tomato Chili con Carne
We love a classic ground beef chili, but this is not that chili. This pressure-cooked chili con carne is made with chunks of chuck roast that are cooked until they are fall-apart tender. The hearty, tomato-based braising liquid then is thickened with crushed tortilla chips. Chipotles in adobo bring heat and smokey flavor. We use ancho chili powder for a more earthy, complex flavor than regular chili powder.
Browned Butter Skillet Cornbread
For a crispier, more savory Southern-style cornbread, we bake the batter in a pool of browned butter in a cast iron skillet. If you follow food media, you’re probably weary of hearing that browned butter adds a layer of depth and nuttiness that amplifies other flavors, but we'll say it again because it’s a game changer. We use it in the cornbread batter to add a caramel-y, rich flavor that complements the cornmeal, and in the bottom of the skillet to develop deep browning and achieve a crisp, crackly crust.
Fettuccine Alfredo
American iterations of fettuccine Alfredo are often doused with a heavy, cream-based sauce at best, or a gloopy, congealed blob-in-a-jar at worst. But that isn’t the case in Italy. Fettuccine Alfredo, the Roman way, is essentially fancy buttered noodles. It starts with a silky-smooth butter sauce that is tossed with noodles and starchy pasta water. We rely on a few key techniques from home cook Francesca Guccione, of Castelnuovo di Porto, who uses only the freshest ingredients. There are just three— pasta, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and butter.
Spaghetti and Meatballs
Generally, meatballs on spaghetti is an American thing. In Italy, pasta typically is primo (first course), and meat—including marinara-drenched meatballs—are secondo (the main). Culinary historians generally credit New York’s Italian community with marrying large, Neapolitan-style meatballs to pasta. However, in towns across the Abruzzo region in central Italy, our editorial director, J.M. Hirsch learned to make its ancestral dish: pasta alla chitarra con pallottine— teeny tiny meatballs disbursed evenly throughout the dish. They cook quickly and infuse the sauce with meaty flavo, which clings to the starchy, rough-cut noodles.
Christopher Kimball’s Double-Crust Apple Pie
It’s only a minor overstatement to say that apple pie is holy for Chris Kimball. This recipe is the product of decades of study. The double crust is easy to mix and roll out, with a result that’s tender and flaky. Chris swears by a combination of apples: sweet McIntoshes, which break down into a soft applesauce that envelops tart, firm slices of Granny Smiths. He rigidly rejects cinnamon, which overpowers the apple flavor—instead, he heightens it with a brightening cut of lemon.
Tahini Swirl Brownies
A tahini swirl is the perfect foil to dark chocolate. Its creamy texture and nutty notes, mixed with sugar, brings to mind the sweet sesame flavor of halvah candy, balancing the chocolatey depth. The marbling effect is visually appealing but also functions to create a nice textural contrast that lets that tahini flavor shine.
Rye Chocolate Chip Cookies
“I am not going to list the shortcomings of the Toll House chocolate chip cookie,” Christopher Kimball writes. “That would be like denouncing the pope at a vespers liturgy in Chartres: not a welcome sentiment.”
What he does suggest is using rye for white flour—what he calls a “revelation,” which he discovered at Claire Ptak’s Violet bakery in London.
Brown Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Every single ingredient in these cookies gets a flavor upgrade through special treatment. First, we toast the oats and pecans to boost their flavor, then deeply brown the butter for even more nutty and butterscotch-y notes . The oats are ground up for more of a refined texture than what you’d normally see in an oatmeal cookie. Finally, we use contrasting chocolates: Large chunks of bittersweet chocolate provide a bitter respite from all the sugar; finely chopped pieces of milk chocolate bring melty, gooey sweetness.
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest.
And if you're looking for more Milk Street, check out our livestream cooking classes with our favorite chefs, home cooks and friends for global recipes, cooking methods and more.
Willow Montana
Willow Montana is the Production Manager of Digital Media at Milk Street. Willow spends their days coordinating and planning video shoots, managing schedules and overseeing the execution of digital projects. They studied Baking and Pastry Arts at Johnson and Wales University and worked in restaurants while putting themself through six more years of college. They hold a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in English Literature and a Master’s of Fine Arts in Publishing and Writing. Willow is a firm believer in living a slow, quiet life and making things by hand. When they aren’t following the developers around with a camera at the Milk Street office, they may be found at home shaping loaves of sourdough, caring for dozens of houseplants and, occasionally, out in the wild at a punk rock show.
