Who else would think of roasting a turkey in parchment paper or turning a grape into a cream cheese vessel?
It’s hard to imagine a recipe that Martha Stewart hasn’t made her own. After decades of publishing cookbook after cookbook, she has put her stamp on the quotidian realities of microwave cooking and the grandeur of weddings, multiple ways to make cheesecake, and her family recipe for pierogi. It’s almost too much to keep track of. Who could possibly know how to cook everything?
Well, her. A decades-long career of cooking, housekeeping, and hosting means Stewart has some tricks up her sleeve. Here are Eater staffers’ go-to Martha recipes and tips, which have enlivened our holidays and dinner parties. If you don’t know where to start with Stewart, start here.
The limited experience I’ve had with her is her collaborative cookbook with Snoop Dogg. If there’s a lesson I’ve learned from Martha by way of that work, it’s that food is always best when prepared with an open mind, and when influenced by those we love most (and perhaps especially those who might share a different culinary background or perspective). — Kayla Stewart, Restaurant Editor
After years of experimentation, my family has settled on this recipe for turkey roasted in parchment paper from Martha Stewart for our yearly Thanksgiving feast. It always results in a turkey that checks all the boxes — moist meat, browned skin, simple enough to please all tastes (though we stuff the cavity with herbs and garlic instead of stuffing). While the parchment paper steam bath is a little fussy, it’s still easy enough to execute in the middle of making a dozen other things. And it’s a genius hack for a bird that has caused so much consternation year after year. — Jaya Saxena, Correspondent
This classic chicken salad recipe from Martha is always a winner. Not surprisingly, she gets the textures just right with diced chicken, minced red onion, and celery, and just the right amount of creaminess with mayo (we know she’s a Duke’s fan) and dijon. What might be unexpected is a dash of hot sauce and the halved seedless grapes you add right onto the sandwich at the end — striking the ideal balance of snappy, spicy, and sweet. — Jess Mayhugh, Managing Editor
Even as a kid, I loved dinner parties: the buffet of food, the way I could sit and listen to the adults dish, and of course, the fact that my mom would often bring a sweet treat as our thanks to whomever was hosting. These desserts almost always came from Martha recipes and I loved them all. In the summer, there were lemon bars. In the colder months, I loved the caramelized topping of her pear upside-down cake — even more when it was paired with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I’d take her chocolate pecan pie over traditional pecan pie any day. But my absolute favorite was the chocolate caramel tart that my mom learned through Martha, though it actually originates from Claudia Fleming. The biggest takeaway: If you want to be a great dinner party guest, bring dessert. — Bettina Makalintal, senior reporter
Martha is who I turn to when I’m in need of a show-stopping centerpiece dessert. For a holiday party a few winters ago, she was my muse as I attempted a crowd-pleasing croquembouche with its many concentric tiers of pastry cream-stuffed puffs swaddled in a netting of spun caramel. I love this throwback video where she walks Julia Child through the process and shows her a clever trick to spin up extra feathery sugar floss by using a whisk that’s had its tips snipped off. Most recipes direct you to use forks to drizzle the caramel, but Martha realized that 20 or so prongs proves much more effective than the six or eight you’d get by doubling up forks. As Julia hovers over the counter marveling at the ingenious hack, Martha dips her tool into a copper pot and begins tossing wisps of hot caramel over a laundry rack to set. Martha is well-known for these sorts of crafty and inventive tricks, so much so that we sometimes forget she really is an expert cook. I don’t make croquembouche all that often but when I have, I’ve found this recipe — like many in her pastry catalog — much easier to navigate than others. — Nat Belkov, Design Director
Years ago, a copy of Martha Stewart’s Hors d’Oeuvres Handbook made its way into my parents’ household. My parents aren’t really hors d’oeuvres people, so I’m not sure how the book got there, but I quickly became both enamored and faintly afraid of it. I had no idea that there were so many dips and spreads in the world, or so many ways to dress a cracker or manipulate a cucumber. But the bit of witchcraft that continues to haunt me to this day, long after I attempted it myself, is the way Martha transforms a single grape from mere fruit into an actual load-bearing vessel. I can’t remember the specific recipe, but it entailed finding a bunch of seedless grapes and slicing each one in half to be painstakingly gutted and filled with seasoned cream cheese. Or maybe it was ricotta. I can’t remember, but it wasn’t the cheese that got me. It was the idea of this woman telling me, with absolute authority, that slicing, disemboweling, and filling several dozen grapes with a thimble’s worth of cheese was a reasonable way to prepare for a party. Sometimes, when I’m in full dinner party-prep panic mode, I stop and think, at least I’m not stuffing grapes. It could always be worse. That’s a good thing. — Rebecca Flint Marx, Eater at Home editor
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