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Photo: Andre Baranowski

25 Power To The People
    Seven years ago, a handful of food enthusiasts in the United States and Britain banded together to launch an online community called eGULLET (egullet.org). Life in the home kitchen hasn't been the same since. Before eGullet, we would share our culinary queries with our friends and family. In the eGullet era, we can cast our questions and opinions—whether they be about soup dumpling recipes or the best cuts of meat sold at a local Costco—into the world at large. And the world answers. The conversations on eGullet, as on other food sites, touch on restaurants and travel, but its main purview is the home kitchen, and the site's message boards sing with the voices of thousands of enthusiastic cooks from across the globe. We love how this no-frills site has brought cooks together and democratized the world of food: on a forum about braising, you're as likely to glean a tip from a self-taught home cook in Arkansas as from a well-known food authority, like the cookbook author Paula Wolfert. The site, which is run out of cofounder Steven Shaw's Manhattan apartment, has given home cooks a platform for exploring their passions, no matter how generalist or geeky: Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer for Microsoft, for instance, is famous for his frequent posts about the scientific experiments he conducts in his kitchen. "EGullet members," says Shaw, "are true believers in the power of food to nourish, spiritually and intellectually."

27 Going Pro
Home kitchens are fertile ground for a multitude of ideas, some of them entrepreneurial. All around the world, from the streets of Delhi to the apartment blocks of Newark, hardworking home cooks sell foods that they prepare in their own kitchens. Some vend their wares from carts; others cater for parties or prepare sandwiches, cakes, granola, and other dishes for sale at stores in their communities. For many, like Irma De Los Santos of Laredo, Texas, their HOME-BASED FOOD BUSINESSES began with a signature dish. "People were always asking me to make my tamales," she said. So, in 1976, she and her sister started preparing batches to sell after she was laid off from her job. The popularity of her corn husk–wrapped tamales, filled with such stuffings as chicken, pork, and chiles, grew by word-of-mouth; in an average week, she may make a few dozen for her regular customers, but during the holiday season she sells as many as 36,000 to devotees across the state. More than just a source of income, small enterprises like De Los Santos's have given a sense of pride and self-sufficiency to people lacking the time or the means to invest in a full-time business. "People from all over the world have eaten my tamales," De Los Santos says, "and that feels good."

28 Happy Together
Most weekend afternoons, in the recently remodeled kitchen of their home in Lidingö, Sweden, JOAKIM AND NIVA DAHL can be found preparing supper side by side. Niva, a 46-year-old television producer, usually takes on most of the prep work; "I am a true perfectionist when it comes to slicing and dicing," she says. Joakim, 42 and a film editor by trade, usually has the job of finding the ingredients (in the summer months he gathers wild foods, such as mushrooms and lingonberries, from the woods just behind the house) as well as the actual cooking. Today, the couple, married for eight years, are making a Swedish classic, biff à la Lindström (pan-fried venison burgers flavored with chopped pickled beets). The dish has a special resonance for Niva. "My great-uncle invented it," she says. As Joakim cooks the burgers, Niva stands nearby, chopping parsley for a garnish. As we watch them work together, it occurs to us that the act of cooking—particularly with someone we're close to—is often as satisfying as the meal itself.

29 Stout Companion
The ancient Romans first described a process for making a condiment with the seeds of mustard plants; since then, countless versions of the food we now call mustard have evolved. Of all the jars lining our refrigerator door, our favorite is HOMEMADE WHOLE-GRAIN MUSTARD, flavored with brown mustard seeds (which possess a pronounced but not searing heat) and Guinness beer (which lends a malty character and hints of sweetness). We slather it on sausages or sliced ham, mix it into gravies and vinaigrettes, or use it as a base for a rémoulade (a cold sauce of herbs, capers, and pickles with mayonnaise).

30, 31, 32, 33, 34 Pots and Pans
We've found these durable, versatile pieces of cookware to be the absolute best in their class, whether we're searing, simmering, poaching, braising, or frying. (For more great pots and pans, see 66-70.)

Our saucepans are the most popular pots in our kitchen: we recruit them for gravies, for delicate sauces like béchamel, and even to boil our morning egg. The best are made with a sandwich of different metals; our favorite is the 3-ply, 3-quart ANOLON ULTRA CLAD SAUCEPAN, which includes layers of fast-heating aluminum and durable, nonreactive stainless steel.

Copper pots are the most efficient conductors of heat, so foods get hot lightning fast and cook evenly. The downside? They're expensive. We think the stainless steel–lined 3.1-quart MAUVIEL COPPER WINDSOR SAUCEPAN is well worth the price: its flared sides (the signature feature of a windsor pan) speed up evaporation, a boon when you're reducing sauces and sautéing. The pot is heavy enough that we can stir without holding the handle, leaving one hand free to tend to dishes on other parts of the stove.

From Germany to Morocco, home cooks rely on pressure cookers, which use steam to create a high-pressure chamber, to get dinner on the table fast. Pressure promotes speedy cooking, allowing dishes like beef stew to get done in half the time, without losing any of their tender juiciness. Our favorite is the 6-quart FAGOR DUO PRESSURE COOKER, with its comfortable handle, stainless-steel body, and easy-to-control settings.

A nonstick pan is our choice for frying eggs and delicate fish filets. The 10-inch T-FAL ULTIMATE FRY PAN, from the French company that pioneered nonstick cooking in the 1950s, is the sturdiest around. Unlike Teflon-coated pans, it has a hard surface, made of a plastic-based resin called PTFE, that is virtually scratchproof and stands up to metal utensils.

The 4-quart ALL-CLAD STRAIGHT-SIDED SAUTÉ PAN is a multipurpose workhorse with a stainless-steel exterior and a quick-heating aluminum core. Its wide, flat surface offers maximal contact with the stove-top heat source, and the straight sides help trap moisture.

35 Red All Over
Make-ahead flavor bases—pastes, sauces, and spice mixtures used variously as soup or stew starters, marinades, rubs, and condiments—are the friend of home cooks all over the world. In North Africa, cooks have long relied on a garlicky chile paste known as HARISSA to lend depth to cooked meats and vegetables. The paste is traditionally made by soaking dried chiles (we've found that a variety of North American chiles are good substitutes for North African ones) in water until they're soft, then pounding them in a mortar with garlic and various spices. The result is a paste that can be added to dishes while they cook; we use it in the broth we cook couscous in and stir it into red lentil soup. Harissa is also commonly served on its own or diluted with fresh chopped tomatoes or olive oil as a dipping sauce for meats or breads. We've found it to be so dependable in its ability to liven up foods that we use it in all sorts of ways, including serving it alongside scrambled eggs and crudités.

36 Golden Standard
It's the archetypal family meal, a layering of sauce, cheese, and pasta that delivers comfort to the core and pleases every palate. Our favorite LASAGNE is a vegetarian take on classic, creamy lasagne bolognese. In it, the meat is replaced with earthy shiitake mushrooms and the noodles aren't boiled before baking, so they're less mushy when they come out of the oven.

37 Born in the U.S.A.
After British traders introduced China's soy-based kê-tsiap to the Western world, American cooks reinterpreted the condiment, using ingredients like beans and apples. Tomato ketchup, enhanced with onions, herbs, and spices, became the most popular version (by 1915, more than 800 brands had been bottled in the United States), but over time, the food's complexity gave way to the cloying sweetness characteristic of today's mass-produced varieties. Our HOMEMADE KETCHUP echoes early-American versions of the food. Sweetened with brown sugar (not corn syrup), it pairs well with everything from french fries to meat loaf.

38 Hooked on Classics
When FRANK GRUBER, an entertainment lawyer in Santa Monica, California, is in the mood for Chinese food, he doesn't reach for a takeout menu; he reaches for his 1973 edition of Lucy Ho's cookbook Authentic Chinese Cooking. When he's craving Italian, he'll grab his copy of Antonella Santolini's 1979 book Umbria in Bocca. And on a recent evening when he was cooking for friends, he turned to The American Heritage Cookbook from 1980 and found a recipe for a potato gratin flavored with anchovies, which he served with a haunch of roasted elk. The nearly 100 classic cookbooks Gruber owns are more than just keepsakes; they are his daily inspiration in the kitchen. "I'll open three or four books at once," he says. "It's kind of like having a conversation with all of the writers; their personalities come out in their recipes." What's more, many of his older books place a greater emphasis on making things from scratch—like those anchovies, which he fileted and oil-cured himself. Overall, says Gruber, his cookbooks help him stay curious and stay rooted in a style of cooking that allows him to slow down and appreciate life a little more.

39, 40 Cook's Library
David Thompson's THAI FOOD (Ten Speed Press, 2002) set a new standard for Asian cookbooks. The nearly 400 regional recipes from Thailand, ranging from street food to banquet dishes, are accompanied by essays and cultural information that encourage us to understand Thai cooking in new ways.

There are many good all-purpose cookbooks, but the tome we turn to the most—for information and inspiration—is still THE NEW BASICS by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins (Workman, 1989). This 850-page treasure combines takeaway material (a guide to chile peppers, roasting charts, illustrations, and sidebars on everything from the history of pizza to homemade mayo) and a conversational tone that makes us feel as if we were in the kitchen with these amiable authors.— Nach Waxman
owner of the Kitchen Arts & Letters bookstore in New York City

41 Tip To Tail
One of the finest communal meals we know of is a whole fish cooked on the bone along with hearty accompaniments. Our favorite method for WHOLE ROASTED FISH is a Portuguese-inspired preparation in which a red snapper is stuffed with herbs and cooked in foil with sausage, potatoes, clams, olives, and fennel. We like to take the fish to the table still enclosed in its shiny wrapper, then slash it open to serve.

42 Serious Sauce
Most of us keep a bottle of Lea & Perrins worcestershire sauce in our pantry, and rightly so: that English company made the condiment a household name after it began bottling the substance in 1838, and it's had a lock on it ever since—until now. This delicious HOMEMADE WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE has plenty in common with the bottled version, but it is bolder and bigger tasting and more redolent of its ingredients, including tamarind, ginger, cloves, cardamom, and other spices. We add it with abandon to bloody marys, and we rely on its pungent, herbaceous character to give unexpected dimension to marinades and sauces.

43, 44, 45, 46, 47 Salt
Good-quality salt—whether it's kosher salt, sea salt, or one of the myriad other types available these days—does a lot more than make foods salty; it heightens the flavors in a dish and even enhances texture. Here are five kinds that have a permanent place in our kitchen.

Of all the kosher salts to be had, DIAMOND CRYSTAL is our favorite. The crystals are of a unique, pyramidal shape that makes them dissolve quickly on both hot and cold foods. This is our favorite everyday salt for cooking.

Little known outside Japan, HAKATA ROASTED SEA SALT is a fine-grained marvel with a lingering, almost meaty flavor. Prized by Japanese cooks for its purity, the salt is excellent for sprinkling atop raw and grilled fish and for adding deep notes to ramen soups.

Delicately flaky, fruity-tasting MURRAY RIVER SALT, from the Murray Darling Basin in New South Wales, Australia, boasts a beautiful peach color produced by minerals in the water from which the salt is harvested. Its crunchy grains dissolve quickly, so it's ideal for using atop a leafy salad.

LE PALUDIER FLEUR DE SEL DE GUÉRANDE—pristine salt crystals harvested from marshes along the southern coast of Brittany, in western France—is one of the world's most sought-after salts. It delivers a burst of flavor and crunch when sprinkled on a finished dish, be that a pork chop or a simple omelette.

This coarse gray sea salt, called GRIGIO DI CERVIA, is from Italy's Emilia-Romagna region, and its color derives from trace amounts of clay found in the salt beds there. High in moisture, this salt makes a wonderful, crackly crust on roasts and steaks.

48 Big Braise
Oven-cooked meats, which work their wonders without much intervention, are a boon to home cooks. So are inexpensive cuts. Our favorite alliance of these two attributes is MATAMBRE, an Argentine dish (the name means hunger killer) that calls for covering a flank steak with vegetables and hard-boiled eggs and rolling it all together.

49 Best in Class
On the first day of winter last year, AMANDA GARBUTT, a 20-year-old third-year sociology undergrad at McGill University, in Montreal, was in the small kitchen of her off-campus apartment making braised lamb shanks for a few friends. The lamb recipe had come from a Bobby Flay cookbook, but she'd done some tweaking. "I added honey and balsamic vinegar," she explained. "I love the interplay of heat and sweet." As she reduced the braising liquid to a syrupy sauce and began to pull the tender lamb from the bones, a guest, hoping to pitch in, made a move to throw the bones away, but Garbutt stopped him: "I'm saving them for stock," she said. In every way, Garbutt seemed to exude the resourcefulness of a chef, which she insists she doesn't aspire to be, even though her dinners have earned her a reputation as an exceptional epicure. That's part of what we find inspiring about her: although she's of an age more closely associated with dorm food and eating on the run, she represents a growing contingent of young adults that makes real cooking a part of everyday life.