We wanted a waffle recipe that produced crisp-on-the-outside, creamy-on-the-inside waffles. We found that a thick batter lets the outside of the waffle become crisp while the inside remains custardy. Buttermilk made our batter extra thick. Because crispness is so important in waffles, we tried substituting cornmeal for a bit of the flour in our waffle recipe and found that 1 tablespoon per cup of flour adds extra crackle. The extra effort of separating the egg and then whipping the white and folding it into the batter proved worth the trouble. The waffles turned out fluffier inside; we could actually see pockets of air trapped inside when we cut into a cooked waffle.

Historians believe that the Belgian waffle was introduced to the United States at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. Taller than conventional waffles and with deeper pockets, the European import became wildly popular. Today there are many Belgian waffle makers on the market. We set out to find the best one by making hundreds of waffles. After a month of waffles for breakfast (and lunch), we had a solid winner—an iron that made picture-perfect Belgian waffles, two at a time, in under 5 minutes. Offer ends at 11:59 p.m. PT on October 23, 2017.

If you have the right recipe, Chinese dumplings can be as much fun to make as they are to eat. We started by making a boiling water and flour dough that is easy to roll out and is moist but not sticky. For our filling, we added vegetable oil and sesame oil to ground pork to mimic the richness of the fatty pork shoulder that is traditionally used. Soy sauce, ginger, Chinese rice wine, hoisin sauce, and white pepper added flavor, and cabbage and scallions contributed subtle crunch. Mixing the filling in the food processor was quick and tidy; it also developed myosin, a protein that helps the filling hold together when cooked. We swapped the traditional multipleat crescent for a simpler two-pleat shape. Our recipe makes 40 dumplings, so you can cook some right away and freeze some for later.

by Andrea Geary

Forget casinos and racetracks: I do my gambling at Chinese restaurants when I order scallion pancakes. Hitting the jackpot means digging into deep golden-brown flatbread wedges with crispy exteriors that break away in flaky shards to reveal paper-thin, scallion-studded layers within. But as luck more often has it, I usually end up with floppy, pallid triangles with doughy inner leaves that fuse to form a single dense, gummy layer. I decided it was time to stop leaving good scallion pancakes to chance and develop my own recipe.