Every Friday morning, Bon Appétit senior staff writer Alex Beggs shares weekly highlights from the BA offices, from awesome new recipes to office drama to restaurant recs, with some weird (food!) stuff she saw on the internet thrown in. It gets better: If you sign up for our newsletter, you'll get this letter before everyone else.
Stains and beans
I made the New Year’s intention to be better about stain removal in 2020 and to eat more beans. Both of which came to a head last weekend when I made a pot of Basically’s black bean soup in my cute white Milo dutch oven (you should...buy the black one). The soup was great, 10/10 would cook again, even though I made the fatal mistake of using old [BRAND NAME REDACTED] grocery store beans that never fully softened. I blended it to smithereens to cover that up. Then I had a pot tye-dyed purple-black from the beans. Until I remembered a tip from an old bonappetit.com article. You sprinkle baking soda in the pot, fill it with water to whatever level your stain reaches, boil it for 5-10 minutes, and let it sit overnight. The next morning I was able to scrub all of the bean grime out.
Unrelated but another life-changing stain tip for me: red wine stain on your tablecloth? Make a 1:1 mixture of dish soap and hydrogen peroxide, pour it on the stain, let it soak in, then launder per usual and learn how to pour properly.
Get the recipe: Basically Black Bean Soup
Get the knowledge: How to Clean Your Dutch Oven (Without Ruining It)
Slive and let slive
“Sometimes a QUEEN has to remind everyone why she’s QUEEN.” That sassy quote is on a pristine kitchen towel on the set of “Cooking with Paris,” Paris Hilton’s new cooking show on YouTube. “I am an amazing cook,” says Paris holding a tiny dog in a Chanel sweater. She goes on to reference her mother’s “amazing pastas, lasagnas, and...Thanksgiving” before showing us how to make lasagna. In fingerless gloves (!), she “steams” lasagna noodles in a pot of water, complaining that she prefers the already-cooked noodles, and that she wished the mozzarella was already shredded too. “I’m making this a lot more work than it is,” Paris sighs. It’s almost as if she wishes the lasagna were already cooked, by someone else, in a restaurant maybe? “Cooking with Paris” will make you question what it means to be an amazing cook, or at least make you question why there’s an essential oil diffuser on the kitchen island. I admire a show that pushes the boundaries like that.
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