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Cracking Dungeness crabs can be a deliciously messy business. But it doesn’t have to be! 

The team at ChefSteps has tons of experience with these critters. We’re based in Seattle, which is famous for its crab, and we’ve shopped for, cleaned, cooked, cracked, and picked countless crabs both at home and in restaurant kitchens.

We’ve pooled our collective knowledge about all things Dungeness crab and set it down here, so you can be 100 percent confident that you’re buying the best crab possible, cooking and cleaning it perfectly, and not wasting any of it. 

Let’s get crackin’!

Ultimate guide to purchasing, cooking, and cleaning Dungeness crab

The Ultimate Guide to Dungeness Crab

Ordering espresso drinks can be daunting: There are so many terms to remember and so many options.

This guide explains what goes into each drink and how they’re typically served, so you can pick the perfect one to suit your mood.

A guide to espresso drinks with diagrams.

The Ultimate Guide to Espresso Drinks

Choosing the highest quality ingredients is the most important part of making a great chocolate chip cookie, right? Nope. 

We found out from making nearly 1,000 cookies over 4 weeks that paying attention to the process makes the difference between a pretty-good cookie and an astounding one. Want a cookie that makes everyone close their eyes in pleasure? Pay attention to the process. 

Preheat the oven to [f 375]. Cream butter and sugar. Incorporate eggs and vanilla. Add flour, salt, baking soda, and chocolate chips. Eat some dough. And, if you’re still up for it, bake the rest into cookies.  

This is the time-honored process for making chocolate chip cookies. The same way most home bakers have used the Toll House recipe for the last 80 years, most of those people have been religiously using the same process to make those cookies. These actions are collective muscle memory. However, it’s important to question what feels deeply familiar if you want to learn something new. 

What temperature is best for the kind of cookies you want to make? How long should the cookies be in the oven? How do you know the cookies are done, in **your oven,** instead of relying on the timer? 

Do you really need to sift the flour? Do the baking soda and salt have to go in with the dry ingredients? Do you really need to cream the butter and sugar together? Or can you just throw it all into a bowl and mix it up? 

We were determined to find out. Using our [link /activities/the-ultimate-guide-to-chocolate-chip-cookies-it-was-supposed-to-just-be-average-we-were-wrong Ultimate Average Chocolate Chip Cookie] recipe for all the trials, we tested everything about the process again, to help you learn the best techniques for making a damned-fine cookie for you and your people. 


For similar information about the ingredients check this out:
[fetchActivity chocolate-chip-cookie-all-about-the-ingredients]

The Ultimate Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies: Understanding the Process

What’s the difference between sausage and hamburger? It’s pretty simple. Sausage is what you call hamburger once you add seasoning, mix it up, and emulsify. 

Hamburger should be pure and simple—perfectly ground, loosely packed, and seasoned after you shape the patties. You can cook them sous vide, smash them, or even slice them for super sliders. 

We’ll walk you through how to get the best results when making your own patties—what meat to use and how to grind, shape, and cook. 

**Dig in!**

Learn everything you need to know to make great burgers. Learn how to grind beef and what lean-to-fat ratio works best for each type of burger.

The Ultimate Burger Patty Guide for Purists

There’s something truly magical about fried chicken. It’s so magically delicious, in fact, that 49% of Americans eat it at least once a week! 

But we’ve all experienced the less magical side of fried chicken: meat that’s tough or dry, chewy skin, a soggy or doughy breading, a crust that cracks off like a shell. 

We are here to lay the foundations of frying, gathering together the hows and whys so you can achieve fried poultry perfection at home. Here’s what you need to know to get that crispy, crunchy crust enveloping tender and juicy meat. 

Let’s get started.

Dig in to the science of fried chicken. From portioning your poultry to breading and dredging techniques and choosing the right oil.

The Ultimate Guide to Fried Chicken

“Should I brine my turkey?” “Is ‘brining’ just a fancy word for ‘salting’?” “What does a brine even do?” “I’ve got to brine my bird for 5 days??”

For many home cooks, the questions of when and whether to use a brine (and why!) mostly come up during the holidays, when you’re getting a big old turkey ready for Thanksgiving. 

There are several different brining methods that you can employ, each with pros and cons. To help you decide whether or not you want to brine your bird, we’ve created a decision tree/flowchart. If you find you do want to use a brine, we’ve created a chart to use as a quick reference guide for brine ratios and timing for standard poultry parts and weights, as well as a poultry brining calculator spreadsheet that you can use to input the precise weight of your bird (or bird parts) to get the exact measurements for the brine of your choice, along with suggested brining times.

The Ultimate Guide to Brining Turkey

Gazpacho! Everyone knows what it is, right? Maybe. 

In what might be the strongest example of menu word association, as soon you see gazpacho listed among appetizers and salads, your brain immediately reads it as “cold soup.” (Maybe some of your brains do something a little more interesting—“light liquid lunch,” say, or “salad smoothie.”) “Watermelon gazpacho”? Cold watermelon soup. “Avocado gazpacho”? Yup, cold avocado soup.

And yet gazpacho is a specific dish, one with a well-established provenance. Most people would be able to tell you that, actually, it’s a cold tomato soup from Spain. Others might say, actually, it’s a cold Spanish soup, but it doesn’t need to be made with tomatoes, as it was enjoyed long before the Columbian exchange.

So what is it? And how does one make gazpacho and “gazpachos” these days? What’s acceptable? What’s authentic? What <em>tastes</em> great? 

Read on for our approach to making soups in the style of one of the most iconic cold soups in existence.

Souped Up: How to Gazpacho Your Way

Cooking over coals is an evocative, almost primal experience. But in this day and age, with so many choices on the market, picking out a bag of charcoal at the store can be a daunting task. 

Within the two standard categories of charcoal—briquette and lump hardwood—you’ll find many different options, from size and shape to wood type and even infusions. This guide is here to help you find the “right” choice depending on your budget, your grill, and what you want to cook. 

While charcoal is a remarkably consistent heat source—and therefore a damn good way to heat your food—it doesn’t contribute to flavor in and of itself. If you want to learn more about how to achieve that desired smoky-sweet chargrilled flavor (and watch some sweet slow-mo video of fire, too) get curious in [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/grilling-geekery Grilling Geekery].

From briquettes to binchotan, learn about four different types of charcoal and the grills and cooking styles they’re best for.

Guides & Tools

Everything you need to level up in the kitchen. Tips, tricks, techniques, and more.

The Ultimate Guides

The Beef Index

Every cut, explained.