THE BEST Food

While we’re more than happy to go with the Martha Stewart’s perfect bacon cooking method, there are lots of other ways to prepare delectably smoky, sliced pork belly. Bon Appétit’s Amiel Stanek offers up 50 different methods for cooking the artery-clogging treat, some more successful than others.

Even if you have a serious sweet tooth, you can’t really subsist on sugar. What If explores what might happen to your body and mind if you tried to survive for a month, dining entirely on sugar. While sugar provides energy, the lack of protein and other nutritional essentials would almost certainly do you in.

What’s better than a delicious cupcake? A machine that can crank out cupcakes for you on-demand, that’s what. Skeyntific shows off a robotic factory line he built that first pours dough for each cupcake, moves it into a modified microwave for cooking, then applies toppings using motorized caulking guns.

Grab a boost of caffeine any time with Pocket Latte’s ready-to-eat coffee snacks. Each square of their caffeinated chocolate has roughly the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee. They come in cream and sugar, dark roast, hazelnut, and lavender-vanilla flavors. Sold in packs of 12 or 24. You can grab individual bars at Vat19.

From James Beard award-winning chef Stephanie Izard’s bakery Sugargoat comes a delicious treat for lovers of sweet breakfasts. This very special dessert features layers of sourdough pancake cake with maple syrup-infused buttercream and a crumbled oat streusel on top. Serves one or more people depending on your mood.

Aidy Bryant created this trainwreck of a salad in a ridiculous SNL sketch earlier in 2020. Now Binging with Babish is here to close out the year with his interpretation of this mayo-, raisin-, and root-beer-filled nightmare meal. Can he remake it into something that’s actually edible?

Brooklyn’s Bushwick Kitchen makes four unique kinds of honey to complement sweet or savory dishes or to bring oomph to a blank canvas like toasted bread. Flavors include spicy habanero honey, a zingy Meyer lemon honey, a balanced sea salt honey, and original wildflower honey. They also sell a three-jar gift pack.

This unique waffle maker is ideal for kids and adults who love their wheels. Instead of cranking out ordinary waffle-shaped waffles, it makes seven edible cars, trucks, and buses. We can’t quite figure out their makes and models, but they’re all just as delicious as they crash into your mouth.

After wowing us with numerous gourmet snack foods, pastry chef Claire Saffitz has struck out on her own, with a video series to accompany her new cookbook, which features a mix of both sweet and savory recipes for home bakers. First up, soft and crispy foccacia. (Thanks Rob!)

From the Beverly Hills bakery that invented the 24-hour cupcake ATM, Sprinkles is shipping cupcakes from coast-to-coast. Sprinkle a little love with the flash-frozen Holiday Box: Four Red Velvet, Four Vanilla, and Four Chocolate Peppermint cupcakes decorated with green trees, gingerbread, snowmen, and sprinkles. Order by 12.14.20.

Does someone special on your shopping list have a sweet tooth? This elegant collection of chocolates comes with an assortment of delicious treats from Chicago/Pilsen chocolatier Uzma Sharif, including rich chocolate bars, caramels, sipping chocolate, marshmallows, and more. Also available in a medium size.

Do you love the fruity flavor of Swedish Fish but want something that lasts longer? Well now you can get that same taste and brilliant red color in candy cane form. Forget boring old peppermint when the holidays roll around, and hand these out instead!

Wherever you may hail from on this planet of ours, you’ve gotta eat. Casually Explained offers up his rudimentary and culturally-insensitive understanding of global cuisine from IKEA’s Swedish meatballs to Ayahuasca. Also, we are dying for some butter chicken and naan now.

Do you find yourself vegging out on the couch too much? Tayto won’t judge! This jumbo couch potato is happy to hang out with you while you lounge. This huggable tuber measures about 13″ tall, and is filled with soft and squeezy polyester stuffing. Just don’t give in to the temptation to slather him in butter and sour cream.

Whether you’re baking it or binge-eating it, bread is 2020’s #1 comfort food. And carbs don’t get better than goodies from NoCal’s Manresa Bread led by James Beard “Outstanding Baker” finalist Avery Ruzicka. Triple Chocolate Orange Panettone, Babka, Sourdough and more ship nationwide, as does their BREAD sweatshirt.

Craving carbs? White Mountain’s 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle is covered with images of Hostess snack cakes like Twinkies, HoHos, Ding Dongs, and Suzy Qs. We can’t guarantee it won’t make you hungry, but it will give you something to do other than running to the pantry to snack while you’re stuck at home.

You might not think it’s a good idea to clean your plates by wiping them down with more food, but these sponges from Fred suggest otherwise. There’s the The Breakfast Scrub if you love bacon, eggs, and pancakes, while the Washabi sponge set is for sushi lovers. Sold in sets of three.

Known as the Cadillac of honey, Tupelo honey is known for its sublime, balanced flavors, light gold color, and buttery notes. The honey comes from the nectar of a single type of tree found in the river basins of Georgia and Florida, and Savannah Bee Company makes some of the best. Available in 3oz, 12oz, and 20oz bottles.

For those of us with an allergy, there are bigger fish to fry than eating raw or undercooked shellfish. But for everyone else, Dirty Coast and the Louisiana Shuckers Association suggest that you ignore that menu warning and dig in to enjoy all the raw oysters you can handle.

Artist Salavat Fidai is best known for his intricate pencil tip carvings. He recently pointed his sharpened knife blade at something a little more edible than graphite, transforming an ordinary carrot into a series of connected chain links. Now how do you link multiple carrots together?

Sometimes you don’t have the time to get up and go to the kitchen to fix a sandwich. Joseph’s Machines solved that problem by building a series of silly Rube Goldberg machines to assemble and deliver a peanut butter and jelly sandwich right to his mouth. We love how he worked his dog into the jelly machine.

Parkway Bakery & Tavern makes the best authentic New Orleans po’ boys. If you’re craving that crispy french bread and delicious fillings, then head to Goldbelly, who’s offering a variety of goodies from Parkway, including Roast Beef and fried shrimp po’ boys, as well as jambalaya, and their yummy hot butter rum cake.

Grove & Vine offers its members access to exclusive extra-virgin olive oils. These special oils are blended by oleologist Nicholas Coleman with oils pressed in locations like Brazil, Italy, South Africa, Portugal, and Chile. An annual subscription includes four bottles delivered throughout the year in 375ml or 1500ml sizes.

Butter is one of those food staples that we often take for granted. But at Le Beurre Bordier, every pat of the creamy dairy product is a handmade work of art. Food Insider introduces us to this French shop dedicated to preserving 19th-century techniques, including the use of a spinning wooden wheel to knead the butter.

We’ve seen two different ways how NOT to make candy corn, now watch how the pros do it. This 2014 clip from The Washington Post takes us inside of the Jelly Belly factory in Illinois for an explanation of the “kernel” making process starting from individual ingredients until they’re bagged and show up on store shelves.

We have a hard enough time making omelets that don’t break apart on us when folding them over, but this Korean chef makes it look easy to create one with a swirled design that looks like a tornado. The best part – it gets stacked atop a dome of fried rice and surrounded with a moat of tomato sauce. Get in our bellies!