Bon Appétit

A dollop of this romesco sauce improves everything from steak to roasted cauliflower.

Skip a step when making mac and cheese by not precooking the pasta. Instead, mix the dried pasta with a thinner-than-usual béchamel sauce, and it will bake perfectly in just 30 minutes.

Adding salt to this classic sauce lets you taste the rich complexity of the caramel, not just the sweetness. To save time, feel free to replace the almonds and butter with 1/2 cup store-bought roasted almond butter (with no added sugar). Just stir in the salt and almond extract and it's recipe-ready.

Here, a coarse sea salt like fleur de sel or sel gris plays a few important roles: It tempers and cuts the richness of the nuts and butter, it adds a concentrated crunch— and it makes the brittle look divine. Break this vibrant green pistachio brittle on top of ice cream or crumble it over rice pudding. Or, do what we do, and eat it straight off the baking sheet.

Chicken wings are great for stock. They're flavor-making powerhouses of bones, meat, and skin and are easy to find. Some supermarkets sell backbones and carcasses; feel free to use them toward (or instead of) the four-pound total.

This richly spiced one-pot meal is quick and easy enough for a weeknight.

Spoon this spicy and acidic sauce over a steak salad, serve alongside pan-fried chicken, or try it on a taco.

Finishing your cookies with a delicate, flaky salt like Maldon brings out the chocolate flavor and tempers the sweetness, creating the ultimate sweet and salty snack.

Harissa is typically made with hot chiles and served with couscous. This herb-based spin is great with roasted vegetables, or as a rub for fish.

Don't bother peeling the onions; their skins add a nice, rich brown color to this vegetable stock. If you'd like, remove the skins for use in dishes when a lighter color is preferred, such as in risotto or cream sauces.

Buy thinly sliced beef at Korean markets, or ask your butcher to cut it for you.

Psilakis uses fresh sheep's milk ricotta, but fresh cow's milk ricotta works, too.