The Chopping Block Cooking Blog | Cooking Techniques

Homemade Corn Tortillas

When I go to a Mexican restaurant and they ask me “Corn or flour tortillas,” I am always going to choose corn. I think they are so much more flavorful! In Chicago, you can go to just about any ...

Food Comics: Steak Techniques Part 3

We are pleased to introduce Food Comics from The Chopping Block where our resident Cartoonist Tom O'Brien illustrates his cooking adventures. In this final part of a three-part series, he ...

Every Day Can Be Fry-Day with an Air Fryer

I never really considered myself to be a cook obsessed with gadgets. Sure, I have had a CrockPot since I graduated from college, the Instant Pot has truly changed my life, and I use my Vitamix ...

Stop Using Unsalted Butter

Conventional wisdom tells us a lot of things when it comes to cooking: searing meat seals in the juices, salt your water to make it boil faster, don’t cut raw meat on a wooden cutting board, add oil ...

Food Comics: Steak Techniques Part 2

We are pleased to introduce Food Comics from The Chopping Block where our resident Cartoonist Tom O'Brien illustrates his cooking adventures. In this second part of a three-part series, he ...

New Ideas for Breakfast

It is 7am as I write this. I woke up this morning as I usually do, ready for a cup of coffee but not breakfast. In fact, I rarely wake up ready for breakfast. I’m pretty sure some of that might be ...

The Art of the Vinaigrette

I remember the first time a house-made salad dressing rocked my world. It was the summer of 1988, and I was bussing tables at a swanky new bistro in town. I was 17, and just beginning what would ...

The New Way to Cook Tofu

One simple step when cooking has changed my tofu life. This method may not be new to everyone, and it certainly isn’t revolutionary, but I’ve been seeing it popping up on the food media scene ...

Don't Knock Mushrooms until you've had them Cooked Properly

I often hear from students in our cooking classes about the foods they say they don’t like. When I hear this, my next question is always “What don’t you like about it?” As a nutritional chef, I run ...

The "S" Words of Cooking

I remember as a child I always had one friend that liked to experiment with cursing. The scenario was always the same: my friends and I would be somewhere out of the listening ear of an adult, ...