Portuguese beef stew, from the latest issue of Cook’s Illustrated. It calls for using a white wine for the braise instead of the usual red wine or beef broth. Putting onions at the bottom of the stew at the beginning is supposed to release a meat-tasting chemical that lends a mature taste, and you cook…

For the New Year, chicken thighs boiled in a bath of chicken broth. Canned tomatoes mashed together with a little salt and boiled in a separate pot to create the sauce. Boiling is, if not the easiest, at least the first kind of cooking most of us learn how to do. “The natural progression from…