Garlic

Traditional Greek skordalia is mostly garlic and olive oil with some potato or nuts added to thicken it. We flipped the ratio in this recipe: more potato, less garlic. Serve as a dip, or thin out with lemon juice and olive oil and use as a sauce for fish.

You're still mincing your garlic? Get with the times, man.

You don’t need hours to simmer tomato sauce. This recipe shows you how to make an excellent one in 30 minutes, with 5 ingredients, in 1 pan, with very little effort.

If you really want to go all out, you can brown the lamb in a wood-burning oven (erm, if you've got one handy) where it could absorb smoky flavors. For the rest of us mere mortals, that step for this recipe can be done in a hot oven.

Memorize how to make the addictively crunchy breadcrumbs in this dish; use them to top all your pasta recipes forevermore.

Set this up on Sunday and have tapas at home when you get back from work, all week long. This recipe is from Morcilla, one of the Hot 10, America's Best New Restaurants 2016.

There are a lot of aioli recipes out there. This one uses a coddled egg instead of raw, and the blender method ensures a successful emulsion.

Don’t rush to shake the pan and toss the green beans before they blister; they need a little time to char. Learn how to make this recipe and more in our online cooking class with Sur la Table.

The tri-tip is a tender, triangular cut of beef tucked near the sirloin. There are only two per steer, so if your butcher is out, go with sirloin.

Massaging the greens both softens and seasons them before grilling.

Sardines can be a hard sell. Which is fine! Smoked trout, gravlax, or even grilled shrimp would be great too.

Here's how to grill it without starting a bacon fat fire—it's an art and a science.

A perfect cube is not essential, but try to get the lamb into roughly the same size pieces so they cook at the same rate.

Small squid tend to be the most tender, and a quick grilling time ensures they stay that way.

This combo makes everything better, except maybe ice cream. That would be weird.

A dead-simple shellfish dish that is pure Erickson: ocean-adoring, dairy-rich, fun to eat.

Translation: Garlic shrimp. Which explains why there’s a clove of garlic for every shrimp in this saucy dish.

Put a few ingredients in a jar, and just let it go—aka, the easiest way to start fermenting at home.

The biggest mistake of all is not using it. But here's what else people screw up when cooking with garlic (including burning it!).

It's time to stop hiding those onions, leeks, and scallions in braises and stews! We give you our guide to letting your alliums shine.

Use the brine as liquid for vinaigrettes. Add the chopped garlic to salads, potatoes, pesto, or schmear it onto sandwiches.

Available in the spring, green garlic is somewhat less intense than grown-up garlic, but still very pungent and extra-juicy. The dairy fat and tang of the labneh provide cooling balance.

Alliums, like green garlic bulbs, couldn’t be more at home in the oven, smothered in olive oil and seasoned with salt.

This dough will yield enough to make four large flatbreads or eight smaller ones.