As a home cook in Chicago, finding good seafood is always a going concern. At Chicagoist, we are always on the lookout for ingredients that are worth your time. Not being close to any coast makes buying fish in Chicago more of a challenge than buying our beloved pork or beef. We visited Dirk's Fish & Gourmet Shop in Lincoln Park to check out the fresh catches and sea how Dirk's measured up with other fishmongers around the city. more ›

"I'm passionate about home cooking," says Meez founder Jen Moore. "So if someone takes my recipe, that's good for me. I got someone who wouldn't cook dinner to cook at home." Meez Meals, named for "Mise en Place," the array of pre-chopped and prepped ingredients chefs have at their disposal, is trying to make home cooking faster and easier - and possibly inspire some cooks to try new things. Customers order from a weekly menu of delicious dishes, and all the ingredients, portioned and prepped, are delivered to their doorstep. If you're busy, but still love to cook interesting food, Meez Meals is a great service for you - and Chicagoist readers get a discount on their first order. more ›

Some boneheads may think that spring is coming, but we true Chicagoans are not fooled. We're in for one, maybe two more sights of snow before we can even begin to think about packing away our winter coats. To home cooks, you know what that means: crock-pottin' season ain't over, baby! more ›

If we started this week's edition of What's for Dinner with the term "hot breasts," you might be a little worried about where we were going with it. Rest easy - these stuffed chicken breasts are packed with cheesy, blistering goodness and wrapped in bacon. Keep some beer nearby - thanks to the fiery Serrano peppers, you'll quickly reach for a cold one (or maybe two). Serrano peppers are quite a bit hotter than jalapenos and are perfect for someone looking for a little extra kick. Try making our recipe this week, created in Chicagoist's own test kitchens. more ›

Playing Santa to a foodie this year? Us, too. Cooking classes make great gifts, but in a city where many different restaurants and cooking schools offer classes aimed at educating the home cook, how do you choose wisely? Take pasta. You can learn to make it from scratch at two of Chicago's popular "recreational" cooking schools, the Chopping Block and Cooking Fools. To help you make an informed purchase for your fellow-foodie, we did some fieldwork at both spots. more ›

Isn't that pretty? After two weeks of curing, dry aging, smoking and slicing we now have 8 pounds of pancetta and bacon. The pancetta (pictured above), was ready for slicing and cooking. Here's something we discovered: For the bacon we had considered doing an applewood smoking of the bacon. Instead we went with hickory. For that, we set up our bullet smoker (a Weber Smoky mountain is ideal, we have a Brinkman bullet smoker) to reach a temperature of 120 degrees and smoked the bacon for 2 hours. You don't want the bacon to cook during the process, so try to keep the temperature constant. more ›

This wonderful "San Francisco in June" we've been experiencing has its advantages. Among them is having the ability to fire up an oven and bake a pizza without turning the kitchen into a hot and unbearable pit of Hell. We also like making flatbreads on the grill and, rather than spend a small fortune on ready made pizza dough, we like to make our own and don't give a damn about having the dough formed in a perfect circle, so much as it's crispy when the baking's complete. more ›

If you'll remember, we recently purchased 10 pound of pork belly. Eight pounds are currently suspended in our pantry being dry-aged into pancetta and bacon. more ›

A week has passed since we threw 8 pounds of pork belly into freezer bags full of salt, sugar, cracked black pepper, fresh oregano and thyme and some pink salt, for some. Yesterday it was time to hang that pork belly and let it dry age. more ›

When you walk into the Spice House in Old Town with 10 pounds of pork belly strapped to your back, you're telegraphing to the employees what you need. What we were looking for was four ounces of sodium nitrate, aka "pink salt." more ›

• Hot on the heels of L2O's Beard nomination, Laurent Gras offers recommendations for cookware, appliances, spices and other kitchen essentials for the home cook over. The $279 brick toaster oven with convection from Cuisinart pictured above is among those listed. Also oin the list, a Pasquini Livia 90 semi-auto espresso machine ($1975 at Amazon.com). [men.style.com]
• Sun-Times food editor Janet Rausa Fuller also has some gadget recommendations, but at a more reasonable price range. [Sun-Times]
• Last week it was Pat Bruno, this week Helen Rosner casts a critical glare at Steve Dolinsky. [WBEZ, MP Chicago]

With a lineup filled with food seminars, cooking demonstrations, wine classes and a beautifully equipped Viking Culinary Stage at the Pritzker Pavilion, you would think that Chicago Gourmet would’ve been a Mecca for home cooks looking to jazz up their dishes. Think again. While some of the seminars were informative (most notably Greg Hall on beer and cheese and Paul Bartolotta on seafood), others were thinly veiled promos for books, products or restaurants. more ›