Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Since there are three takeout Chinese place on my block, if I'm feeling really lazy I'll just buy a quart of brown rice at one for a dollar fifty. That's a little pricey, but sometimes it's worth it on days when you don't feel like waiting 40 minutes for a pot of rice to cook.

I find on an electric stove that throughout cooking if you just shake the pot (with the top on) to loosen anything that may be sticking to the bottom, and occasionally let the rice "breath" just cracking the top for 30 seconds or so, this gives a good result. Amen to hating electric stoves, though...I've definitely learned the hard way like you via multiple messed up batches of rice.

+1 on the America's Test Kitchen method.

This is an awesome page. My comment though is related to the DC jumbo slice. I can confirm that this is the appropriate style for this region as I have spent much time over the years in DC. Their slices at many pizzerias are the size of two average slices. They make a killing off of selling them to the college students. If a 16 inch pie normally has 8 slices, a DC pizza has 4.

Blog Pizza

I just read comment above...(tomdobb)I didn't eat pizza when i came to Columbus but in Canton, Ohio u will get authentic Italian pizza made by the best owned italian family restaurants.

There's a mouthwatering style of white pizza which seems to be peculiar to McKees Rocks, PA, just outside Pittsburgh -- I know I've never seen it prepared this way anywhere else and I eat a lot of pie, dude. I believe it originated at Mama Lena's (now Mama Mia's) and has been cloned by former employees at another shop down the street called Doughboys (which is cheaper & maybe even better, IMHO). I've never seen one prepared from start to finish, but here's my best guess as to the general idea: a medium-thickness pizza crust is brushed with olive oil & perhaps garlic or other spices and partially baked, then removed to add a light layer of some kind of white shredded cheese (don't think it's mozz), then baked again until done. The hot pie is then topped with a room-temperature prepared mixture of diced tomatoes, minced garlic, finely chopped onion & basil and olive oil and sprinkled with more shredded cheese. The pie partially melts the additional cheese and warms the topping mixture up to the perfect temperature while preserving the flavor & freshness of the ingredients. On every other white pizza I've had the tomatoes & other ingredients are baked along with the crust which dries them out. This stuff is almost like a big round bruschetta. I'm no longer in the 'burgh, but I might have just talked myself into driving 3 hours each way to get one right now -- it's that good.

@Punkin712 - As spartana notes, the steel-cut oats really bulk up the meatballs. Consider, also, that this recipe uses 8 ounces of meat to generate 4 servings - that's just 2oz per person. Now, it's clearly not vegetarian by any measure, but, in an age of 7-ounce+ hamburger patties, it's still a pretty modest quantity of meat.

"Almost Meatless" is primarily concerned with reducing, not eliminating, meat consumption, but it does contain a number of vegetarian recipes, too.

I came to Columbus Ohio from central NJ, and have long taken issue with the Pizza here. It seems to be the product of gluttony over good sense. Round pies are cut into square pieces.because you can not lard a pizza with all the cheep ingredients, low grade cheese, greasy pepperoni, fatty sausage, and rivers of sugary sauce, that are considered necessary here, and serve it any other way than two inch square bites. When I want good pizza in central Ohio, I make it myself. In summer, I use a pizza stone on a charcoal grill, in winter I use my 550 degree oven, and follow the directions for Neapolitan, above.

andy stoops - I think Vincents is gone. You're talking about the place on Penn Ave, right? Yeah, that's Spak Bros. now. It's relatively new, and I haven't been there, but I've heard good things (they do all local/organic stuff, and have vegetarian and vegan offerings).

I never realized that Pittsburgh had sweeter sauce than other parts of the country. I would like to add that it's not just sweet, but usually well seasoned (at least the good ones are), sometimes a little kick to them. There are soooo many pizza places in town, and they're all different, but I haven't encountered any that aren't good. You can always find one that's right for you - the right taste to the sauce, texture to the dough, quantity of toppings. My personal favorite is Rialto's over in Greenfield (although I haven't been there in a few years).

Mineo's seems to be our most famous, but yeah, a bit overrated. Adam, if you make it to Pittsburgh, just order a slice from Mineos, NOT the whole pie. The slices are actually twice baked, which makes them way better.

I also think this is probably fairly local - the pierogie pizza. I refuse to try it, but a lot of local places have some variance of a pierogie pizza, because Pittsburgers seem to think that they invented the pierogie. A pierogie pizza will have mashed potatoes, onions and cheese.

There are 3 kinds of pizza: Good, Better and Best. You be your own judge.

Here's a working URL to the DC jumbo slice lore article:

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=29582

For those in New England, what about Papa Gino's? Yeh it's a chain, but it's essentially the blueprint for east coast pizza - thin crust, thin layer of cheese that melds perfectly with the somewhat sweet sauce. And on a "side note", two friends and I created http://www.slicefinder.com for just these debates. Pardon the plug, but seems relevant here.

I gotta add a vote for Upstate NY Style - I grew up in Buffalo, went to school near Rochester. I now live in Florida.

Buffalo style pizza as pointed out is a thicker crust, not greasy, often a little doughy but crisp on the bottom. TONS of cheese... and almost always the peperroni is loaded on, smaller in diameter than most, but always with crisp edges on the pepperoni. Bocce is a great example of this.. but almost any roadside pizzeria in Buffalo has this formula.

Living in Florida, I am sick and tired of every kind of pizza place offering only "NY Style" pizza. Big thin floppy slices that taste like cardboard... I never understood the appeal of that. They taste especially crappy the next day cold... and cold pizza should be one of the BEST ways to eat pizza ;)

The more I think about it, I need to open a Bocce-style pizzeria in Orlando...