Expand your culinary vocabulary with this glossary of terms you'll find on restaurant menus and on TV cooking shows.

Al dente: Italian for “to the tooth,” aka when pasta is cooked until it has a pleasant bite but isn’t too crunchy or too mushy. Baste: To brush or pour juices, sauce or melted fat over a piece of meat ...

Perfectly formed patties sizzling over white-hot coals. Spatchcocked chicken so tender it almost melts in your mouth. Steak, shrimp, salmon and veggies seared with griddle marks and bursting with ...

Michael Ruhlman wants bacon for breakfast. So he trots down to his basement refrigerator and returns with a big Ziploc bag holding a slab of pork belly that has been curing for a week in thyme, garlic ...