Food
Classic Tartar Sauce
This homemade tartar sauce is creamy, bright, and so much better than anything you’ll find in a squeeze packet. It comes together in about 10 minutes, but its flavor improves after a little time in the fridge, once the shallot mellows and the cers, pickles, and herbs have a chance to settle in.
Classic tartar sauce should lean sharp, savory, and herb-forward. Fresh parsley and chives keep things lively, while dill pickles and lemon juice bring the salty, sunny flavor that makes tartar sauce such a natural match for fried seafood.
What kind of pickles are best for tartar sauce?
Truthfully, whatever pickle you like best will work here. Dill pickles give tartar sauce a sharper, more savory flavor, while bread-and-butter pickles make it a little sweeter. Cornichons work nicely too.
Read Epi’s guide to the best shop-bought dills →
Can I sw the herbs or add other ingredients?
Absolutely. Parsley and chives keep this tartar sauce fresh and balanced, but dill, tarragon, or other tender herbs work beautifully too. You can also stir in a little prepared horseradish for extra bite or add a splash of pickle brine if you like things especially tangy—or want a slightly looser sauce.
What do you serve with tartar sauce?
Food
Chimichurri Grilled Shrimp
These grilled shrimp are the kind of low-effort, high-reward dinner that tastes best eaten outside—you can practically feel the beach breeze in every bite. A confetti-like chimichurri packed with parsley, garlic, lime juice, red wine vinegar, and Fresno chile adds a splash of color and bright, fresh flavor that perfectly complements the charred shellfish.
Jumbo shrimp can go directly on the grate, but if you’re working with smaller ones, thread them onto skewers to keep them from slipping through. Tossing the shrimp with oil before grilling helps prevent sticking (without fussing with the grate) and encourages those smoky, lightly blistered edges everyone wants from grilled shrimp. Serve with grilled bread, steamed rice, a big green salad, or whatever else your cookout heart desires.
Do I need skewers for grilled shrimp?
Jumbo shrimp can go straight on the grill—though skewering them is fine if you prefer it. Smaller shrimp are easier to flip and less likely to fall through the grate when threaded onto skewers.
How do I know when grilled shrimp are done?
Food
Please Stop Buying Pre-Ground Coffee. Get a Coffee Grinder Instead.
The only problem, if you want to call it that, with the ESP is that it has no way to measure a dose of coffee. Getting an exact weight of coffee is incredibly important for pulling good espresso shots. It’s not a huge problem. It’s possible to put single doses in the grinder like you do with the Fellow, thanks to the low grind retention. The Encore ESP consistently had output within .1 or .2 grams of what went in.
Oxo Brew Conical Burr Coffee Grinder
Oxo Brew Conical Burr Coffee Grinder
I still like this former top budget pick. Oxo’s original burr grinder has 45 settings (the Compact recommended above only has 29), and it also has time dosing and a hopper that can hold 12 ounces of whole coffee beans. But that dosing mechanism only works so-so. It doesn’t lock in place, so it’s hard to set precisely. It still grinds evenly and has great grind retention, but the Compact can do everything you really need a burr grinder to do with a smaller footprint and a lower price.
With a price tag under $200, KitchenAid’s burr grinder is relatively affordable for everything it offers. It comes with 70 grind settings, which is plenty if you have a house that enjoys both espresso and French press. It uses a digital timer for its dosing and can also grind directly into a portafilter, making it the least expensive option we’ve found with both those features (the Breville Smart Grinder Pro has both, but is a bit more expensive). It’s durable—we’ve used it for years—and think it’s a good choice if you’re looking for a truly budget espresso grinder, but the evenness of the grind and quality of the materials is better on the Baratza Encore ESP.
Baratza Virtuoso+ Conical Burr Coffee Grinder
Baratza makes burr grinders that range in price from what we’d call very affordable (the Encore) to pro-level machines that can top $900. The Virtuoso+ is a step up from the brand’s entry-level machines, but that step is a sizable one. It uses a digital time dosing down to the tenth of a second, which I found to be very consistent. Using setting 18, which Baratza recommends for drip coffee, I repeatedly got exactly 9 grams of coffee in four seconds. Your mileage may vary with different roast levels, but use that as a jumping-off point. It uses Baratza’s M2 burr, which gives a bit more precision than the M3 burr in the Encore and makes this a better bet for brewing methods that need coffee ground at the extreme ends of the spectrum (Turkish, espresso, French press, or cold brew). We’d note, though, that the Encore ESP also uses the M2 burr, and while it doesn’t have digital dosing, it is less expensive.
Eureka Mignon Filtro Coffee Grinder
Eureka is an Italian coffee equipment company that specializes in high-quality (and often expensive) machines, most of which are well outside the price range I considered in these tests. And while the Mignon Filtro is Eureka’s most affordable model, it has the same sort of high-quality construction you’d expect from a much more expensive grinder with features like 50-mm flat burrs. It’s simple and fully manual, but it features stepless adjustment. That means the burrs don’t lock into preset settings, but expand and contract freely, allowing for ultra-precise, fine-tuned control. That kind of versatility is a big plus, but the downside is that it’s impossible to tell how the grinder is set when you look at it for the first time. The adjustment dial is numbered 1–5, but it can make four rotations, so it takes patience and a willingness to do some trial and error. It’s also really only equipped to do middle-of-the-road grinds for methods like drip or pour-over. Despite its relatively low price, it’s definitely a more advanced grinder.
Eureka Mignon Notte Grinder
The espresso-only entry from Eureka functions much like the Filtro, with manual operation and stepless grind adjustments. It’s designed to grind finer and only into a portafilter. The quality of the grind is wonderfully consistent, and the Mignon Notte also features a burr adjustment that makes it easy to clean and reset the burrs. If you are okay without any automatic dosing, you’ll like this grinder. I just think features like time-dosing or single-dosing (like Fellow does) are preferable options for most people.
Breville Smart Grinder Pro
Breville Smart Grinder Pro Coffee Mill
Breville’s Smart Grinder Pro, like many of its espresso makers, provides a quality product at a mid-level price. It uses conical burrs and offers 60 settings—plenty for all brewing methods—and both manual and automatic grind settings. The Smart Grinder Pro doses by time, and selecting a set number of cups correlates with a preset amount of grinding time. You’re going to need to tweak it, though, because while I got a suitable 9.8 grams of coffee on the 1-shot setting, I got 45 grams of coffee on the 2-cup setting, which is way too much. Forty-five grams of ground coffee is enough for four cups. The grinder is easy to adjust, though, produces a consistent grind, and allows for direct grinding into both a 54-mm and 58-mm portafilter, so if you’re willing to do some trial and error on the dosing, I think you’ll be hpy with this one.
Food
I Tried 20 Electrolyte Powders and Drinks to Find the Tastiest Ones
If you’d rather consume your electrolytes in gummy form, allow me to introduce you to Plant People’s Wonder Hydrate. These lychee-flavored gummies have a small amount of electrolytes per two gummy serving, so they’re best used as an everyday boost rather than for post-exercise rehydration. Oh, and they taste really good. So good that we’ve taken to passing the bag around at the office when we’re in need of something sweet in the afternoon.
For the coconut water fiend: Coco5
Coco5
Coconut Active Hydration With Electrolytes
Type: Ready-to-drink
Price: $2.50/serving
Sodium: 120mg
Sugar: 14g
Sweetener: Cane sugar and rebiana (a form of stevia)
If you, like me, crave ice-cold coconut water the minute you feel parched, you’ll love Coco5. Made up primarily of coconut water concentrate and filtered water, you can essentially think of this as a coconut water-based sports drink. Coco5 makes use of the electrolytes found naturally in coconut water (like potassium, calcium, and magnesium) and adds salt for an extra hydration boost. Available in six flavors, I thoroughly enjoyed the taste of each one I tried. The passion fruit flavor tasted remarkably of passion fruit for something that doesn’t have, well, real passion fruit in it, and I liked the addition of citric acid for the welcome tartness it brings.
For athletes and intense exercisers: Gatorade
There is a time and place for this OG sports drink. It contains more than triple the amount of added sugar as Liquid I.V., with 34 grams per 20-ounce bottle, but for serious athletes, pro football players, and the like—that is, people who are exercising for hours at a time every day—Grasso says that sugar is absolutely necessary.
A lower-sugar alternative to Gatorade: Gatorlyte
Gatorlyte Rid Rehydration Electrolyte Drink Mix, Variety 18-Pack
Another option from the Gatorade family is Gatorlyte. With far less sugar than traditional Gatorade (12 grams versus 34) and more sodium (490 milligrams versus 270), it’s a great pick for those looking for a widely available, ready-to-drink hydration solution. Do note that the extra sodium does mean Gatorlyte tastes a bit saltier than normal Gatorade.
The best hydration powder for kids: Hiya
Type: Bag/canister or sticks
Price:$1.93/serving
Sodium:85mg
Sugar:2g
Sweetener: Fruit, stevia, monk fruit
Food
What Are Heirloom Tomatoes, Anyway?
Each spring Spencer Huey brings thousands of homegrown heirloom tomatoes to a parking lot in Berkeley, California, for a one-day community sale. I grow 50 varieties of tomatoes and 2,500 plants, says Huey, a cook at Chez Panisse and creator of the Tomato Club substack. It’s a little crazy.
Fortunately, there are plenty of enthusiasts who share his devotion. As temperatures rise, heirloom tomatoes—open-pollinated varieties grown from seeds that have been passed down for generations—headline backyard plots, farmstands, Michelin-starred kitchens, and beyond. For devotees, the juicy flavors, rainbow colors, and irregular shes and sizes of heirloom tomatoes are worlds away from the blandly homogenous red armies sold in supermarkets.
But what are heirloom tomatoes, exactly? And how are they different from the ones your nearest grocery chain stocks all year long? Here’s everything you need to know.
In this article
What are heirloom tomatoes?
Heirloom tomatoes are flavorful varieties grown from seeds that farmers have saved and handed down from farmer to farmer, usually for at least 50 years. They’re created by a specific community or culture because they like the traits, the color, or the way the tomato tastes, Huey says.
To be clear, the tomatoes themselves aren’t antiques. They’re called heirlooms because their seeds predate the grim march of industrial hybridization. In the 20th century, many farmers began crossing tomato varieties to create hybrids that looked uniform, resisted disease, and could withstand long-haul shipping to retailers miles away. Taste was less of a priority.
Meanwhile, heirloom tomatoes are grown for flavor, Huey says. Their generations-old seeds are open-pollinated—fertilized by insects, wind, and the like—rather than being manipulated by breeders.
The term heirloom isn’t regulated, though. A savvy marketer can use that word to sell any fruit or vegetable, regardless of whether its seeds were around during the Nixon administration.
Heirloom tomatoes versus ‘regular’ tomatoes
Most tomatoes you’ll find in the produce sections of grocery chains are hybrids. They tend to be uniformly red and evenly sized, with thick skins designed to withstand transit.
Heirloom tomatoes are more diverse. Some are the size of cherries or golf balls, while others are charmingly bulgy and weigh up to three pounds. Depending on the variety, they may taste intensely sweet, tangy, smoky, savory, or almost citrusy. Colors include scarlet, orange, green, yellow, blue, deep purple, or a combination; insiders describe the stripey ones as tomatoes with shoulders. In any case, expect heirloom tomatoes to have thin skins and juicy, flavorful interiors.
Are heirloom tomatoes genetically modified?
One reason why heirloom tomato varieties vary so much is that they’re not genetically modified. Their generations-old seeds haven’t been altered by human hands eager to sell more produce to far-flung shoppers year-round. Open-pollination preserves the plants’ distinctive family characteristics, so heirloom tomatoes taste like, well, tomatoes.
