Mise en Place #0003: Dinner Party Chicken, an Exquisite Persian Salad, and Round-Ups Galore

Listen, if I’m being completely honest, I started writing this end-of-week recap midday on Tuesday. In my defense, though, it’s already been a long week! Oh! And if you’re still wondering what this whole schtick is, welcome to the third installment of Mise en Place, a weekly nonsensical recap of what we do at this beloved website. You can read the first two editions here and here.

It Tastes Like (Picture-Perfect, Thoughtfully Roasted) Chicken

Let this heretofore be known as the week we did it: We published The Correct Way to roast your way around a chicken. More specifically, Daniel published an incredibly authoritative, wonderfully comprehensive, helpful-as-heck guide to roasting a chicken literally perfectly. Call it a dinner party-worthy chicken, why don’t you. Also: It’s long! But don’t let that deter you; with patience comes perfection. And let’s be honest, it wouldn’t be a SE guide if it wasn’t long…just saying. 

I think you’ll all enjoy this piece and its accompanying table of contents—we love an extensive table of contents! This concludes the new content coming through from our sprawling, freshly revamped Knife Skills undertaking (you can find everything we’ve published in that vein here).

Nader, hi!

For the past few months, we’ve been working with Nader Mehravar, a longtime and accomplished academic and expert on Persian cookery and Iranian food. Nader’s work is…absolutely flawless. This is worth mentioning in our silly little  mailbag round-ups because this is a wildly discerning team of editors. His previous SE endeavors on topics like how to make tahdig and how to stock a Persian pantry were not only successful, but an excellent starting point for expanding our content surrounding Iranian and Persian cuisine (which has long been virtually nonexistent). So when the opportunity arose to publish his Sālād-é-Shirāzi recipe and gorgeous, near-perfect visuals to match (let the record show our visuals lead Amanda is as equally discerning as her culinary counterparts), we rushed to get it live on the site immediately. Rest assured, there’s more! to come for Nader and our Iranian and Persian section of the site in the new year, and for that, we’re ecstatic!

Tomato

Sālād-é-Shirāzi

This popular Iranian salad that features a combination of cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions is refreshing, simple, and quick to make.

rating:

cook time: 20 mins

serves: 4 to 6

view recipe

I just checked, and we mentioned Nader eight times across Slack conversations this past week, all in “oh man, does that look good” and “HOW LUCKY ARE WE”-type capacities. Go forth and chop vegetables! We promise it’ll be great. 

Round-Ups Make the World Go, Well, Round

Here’s a truly BTS-type bit for you: If you’ve noticed a rapid influx of round-up production from one SeriousEats.com, that’s because…a lot of you are clicking on round-ups these days! We decided to up these deliberately curated listicles given the amount of eyes and feedback from our initial batches. In particular, the past week saw a lot of movement in the world of cookies, hearty bean recipes, and pasta soups. I’m spending an ungodly amount of time looking into why these URLs are spiking the way they are. My working theory—and I am not kidding—is that we are all deeply, deeply depressed. Or, we’re just well into comfort food and baking season. How can you not be when the temps begin to drop? It’s one of the two! All we can say is that cozy is the name of the game here. 

See you next week!