Ben Starr

The Ultimate Food Geek

Category: Recipes

  • Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies

    This isn’t just a way to cram sourdough starter or discard into a cookie recipe. These cookies are BETTER than the best chocolate chip cookies. Note that this recipe is PERFECTLY balanced for 100% hydration starter, meaning you feed your starter equal WEIGHTS of flour and water each time you feed it. If your cookies…

  • Sourdough English Muffins

    This is the easiest way to make sourdough English muffins that are a bit more authentic (ie, more like crumpets, which they technically are), and less like the tasteless, cardboard muffins from the grocery store. (The “Print” feature is at the bottom of the recipe.) BUTTERMILK VIDEO (a MUST-watch) HOW TO MAKE STARTER Kitchen Toys…

  • Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls

    Cinnamon rolls are a bit more involved than my usual lazy recipes, but this is absolute easiest sourdough method on YouTube, and you’ll never taste a more delicious one! (The “Print” feature is at the bottom of the recipe.) Easiest way to make sourdough starter. Buttermilk 101 Toys in the video: I am an Amazon…

  • How to make Sourdough Starter from ANY Flour (old method)

    (Printable link at the bottom of the recipe!) A proper sourdough starter can be made from ANY flour (even bleached, all-purpose flour) and filtered water. In my YouTube series, I explain in plain English, with terrible illustrations, and in exhaustive detail, the science behind what sourdough starter really is, and how it works. Endure it,…

  • Simple Sourdough (old)

    I don’t recommend this method any longer! I have devised an easier and more efficient method, so please USE THIS RECIPE. But if you like extra work, and a higher electricity or gas bill, you can use this older method. Questions? Problems? Check this out! The Dutch oven I use most often to bake this…

  • The easiest way to turn a whole pumpkin into food

    I know you. Because you’re like me. You pulled out all the stops for Halloween, but now there’s still a few uncarved pumpkins sitting in your front yard. They’re okay there for awhile. (Maybe people will think you’ve decorated for Thanksgiving. Riiiiiight.) Most pumpkin varieties will even endure sub-freezing temps for a few nights, so…

  • One-Bowl No-Mixer Pumpkin Muffins

    So it’s no secret that I’m enamored with pumpkin, and I have dozens of pumpkin recipes that get busted out in the fall.  But for many folks, the idea of setting up the stand mixer to cream butter and sugar…or having multiple bowls and measuring cups to clean up afterward…it’s just too much to contemplate…

  • Hatch Green Chile Peach Pie

    It’s that time of year again!  Grocery stores all over Texas have the unmistakable spicy-smoky aroma of roasting Hatch chiles out front, and the big chile roasters are rolling almost nonstop during open hours.  It’s my favorite culinary time of year. While most recipes for Hatch chiles are savory, I decided to post a sweet…

  • Savory Goat and Wild Mushroom Hand Pies

    Empanadas, pasties, hand pies, meat patties, clangers, sfhias, kreatopitas…little meat pockets surrounded completely in crust and small enough to fit in the hand are popular across the earth, from Natchitoches to Nigeria, and from Jamaica to Jaipur. We recently served these rustic goat hand pies at a FRANK dinner, to nearly rabid acclaim.  The flavor…

  • Cinnamon Masa Pancakes (with gluten-free option)

    So I make pancakes 2 or 3 times a week for breakfast, and that gets boring.  Yeah…you can add chocolate chips or nuts or berries.  Yeah…you can make gingered citrus syrups to pour over them.  You can top them with whatever.  But after a few years, they get boring.  So I developed a new pancake…