chicken wings

1.         Honey mustard is a popular sauce for dipping or coating chicken wings. You can change up this honey mustard recipe by substituting brown or spicy mustard, or by adding spices for a hot mustard or brown sugar for a sweeter taste. Honey mustard complements chicken well, especially if it has breading. Preparation takes about five minutes. If you are in a hurry, put the sauce in the freezer for 20 minutes instead of refrigerating. The sauce should have a yellow color to it.

2.         With fresh ground beef, even a well-done burger can be juicy

The difference in quality is pretty striking. Store-bought ground beef is usually ground too finely, and always compressed into a block on a Styrofoam tray. Rather than having the distinct grain and almost fluffy texture of fresh ground beef, it comes across as mealy—pulpy, almost. The tightly packed beef shrinks during cooking, squeezing out juices and fat. Fresh ground meat, on the other hand, has a much looser texture. As it cooks, fat melts, forming little nooks and crannies in its internal structure for juices to rest in, rather than being forced out of the patty. with fresh ground beef, even a well-done burger can be juicy.

Still curious, I tested one last theory. Perhaps the whole well-done-in-order-to-melt-cheese thing is a myth. I tried melting slices of American cheese in water baths set at different temperatures. You know what? Even at 120 degrees, American cheese is almost completely liquefied.

This means that even a completely rare Jucy Lucy can still have a molten cheese core, albeit one mixed with red meat juices. It's doable, but not too pretty: