Making Dinner More Fun and Less Wasteful with Carla Lalli Music of Bon Appetit

Have you ever wondered what it's like to create and share awesome recipes for a living? As the Food Editor at Large at Bon Appetit, Carla Lalli Music is an expert at making the complicated world of cooking accessible and fun for the home audience. 

In our chat, we cover advice for getting into food media as well as some of the common misconceptions about the industry. We also get into her recommendations for becoming a better cook, why confiting is the best cooking technique most people haven't heard of, and why you don't need to be afraid of not having every single ingredient that a recipe calls for. 

Carla generously shares the pantry items you should always have around, which cooking gadgets are worth it and which ones are a waste of space and money. We close with Carla's top cookbook recommendations, just in time for your holiday shopping! Whether you're looking to improve your home cooking or are just curious to learn what it's like to write recipes for a living, this episode is packed full of advice that you can use in your life and in your kitchen. 

Show Notes

Carla's Instagram is a must-follow. Carla's excellent cookbook is called "Where Cooking Begins." Carla's top pantry recommendations were onions, garlic, lemons, limes, eggs, yogurt, buttermilk, 1-2 types of vinegar, rice, noodles, nuts, parmesan cheese, anchovies, tuna, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, chocolate, and vanilla extract. Carla advised us that quarter sheet pans are some of the most useful, versatile, and compact kitchen hardware you can buy (or give as a gift!). Carla is a big fan of carbon steel saute pans. Carla thinks everyone should own a slotted fish spatula. Reilly is a huge fan of sikil pak, a Yucatan pumpkin seed sauce. Carla's top cookbook recommendations were: Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone by Deborah Madison. Autentico: Cooking Italian, the Authentic Way by Ronaldo Baramendi. Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian: More Than 650 Meatless Recipes from Around the World: A Cookbook by Madhur Jaffrey. Roast Chicken and Other Stories by Simon Hopkins. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat. The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern by Claudia FlemmingCarla's go-to karaoke song is "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N' Roses.