I’ve been a fan of Samin Nosrat ever since 2021, when I scooped up her lauded first book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and made my first buttermilk-brined bird (a revelation!). Truthfully, besides paging through and appreciating the flow charts and matrices, I haven’t cooked from the book very much. While I love exploring the theory behind cooking, I honestly tend to feel more inspired by actual recipes than possibilities.
(Admitting that “out loud” makes me feel like an anomaly of a cook, but anyways.)
When I found out Nosrat was releasing her second book, Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love: A Cookbook, centered mostly on recipes, I had it on my radar immediately. I ended up buying the book when I caught wind of a sale on the Kindle version.
I knew I’d enjoy Good Things because of the author, but her introduction hooked me with her discussion of the philosophical nature of recipes:
“We’ve been trained to believe that if we just follow what’s on the page, word for word, we’ll get the same result every time. But good cooking isn’t about mindless repetition. It’s about being completely present with an experience as it unfolds. I believe it’s the job of a good recipe to guide and empower a cook to use all of her senses—including common sense—to make the best choices in the moment.”
Nosrat’s treatise on recipes as mindfulness practice and as rituals hits home for me, as someone who finds it hard to sit still and shut off my mind (and my ticker-tape to-do list) yet achieves inner peace through kitchen projects and sweaty workouts. I felt seen when I read this.
Later in the book, Nosrat states, “In the kitchen, creativity doesn’t necessarily mean innovation. Rather, it’s about being present….It’s a sense of freedom to be curious and playful that we don’t always feel when we’re busy working through our to-do lists….researchers have found that everyday creative activity, including cooking, can lead to a sense of ‘meaning, engagement, and purpose in life.’”
For me, that’s what starting this blog is all about. My kitchen is my playground, and this online space is my coloring book. I’m here to indulge in my creative side and find an outlet for the side of me that is constantly looking for purpose and meaning in my everyday activities.
So when it came time to choose a subject for my first cookbook feature, Good Things came to mind right away as a resource that feels aligned with my passion for cooking and being present.
Besides, who can’t use a little extra good in the year 2026?
lazy sugo
I’m a big fan of Italian-style red sauces, so I knew I’d be in for a treat with this hands-off Lazy Sugo.
While simple to assemble, this recipe is a half-day ordeal, so I planned it for a day when I’d be able to stay home and supervise the long cook. I de-simplified it a bit by browning the pork shoulder and beef shank at the start of the recipe; I’m sure it’s great without the extra step, but I just couldn’t help myself.
I let the sauce cook for about four hours before removing the onion, bay leaves, parmesan rinds, and meat for shredding. The flavor was spot-on when I added a tablespoon of sugar for the final simmer.
I served this with some homemade linguini I’d stashed away a couple of weeks ago in the freezer, and it was a hit. I froze two other two-person servings of sugo for later, and future me is already grateful for the delicious dinners.
piri piri chicken
First off, I couldn’t find the exact chile peppers Nosrat names in the ingredients list for Piri Piri Chicken. I got a bag of Thai red chiles in my CSA last year and had no idea what to do with them; I wish this book had been out sooner!
I used a combo of green Thai chiles and serranos in my piri piri marinade, which made my sauce more yellow than the typical orange piri piri sauce I’ve been online. It’s hard to know what kind of difference this made in flavor and heat, but I can say the sauce was quite delicious—and something you definitely didn’t want near an open cut.
This was my first time spatchcocking a chicken on my own. I’d directed my husband a few times but hadn’t actually cut the backbone out of a bird before this. I apologized to the chicken many, many times for the hack job I did on its spine, but in the end, it laid flat and looked just about as good as it could look.
I made this chicken on a weeknight, which meant I roasted it indoors instead of grilling it outdoors. I’m sure the flavor from a charcoal grill would be incredible with the piri piri marinade, but I achieved nice color at high heat in my oven.
This was actually a really easy recipe to make that yielded impressive results. It was a touch too spicy for the Minnesotan palates in my household; that could have been on me for changing up the peppers and retaining most of the seeds, though.
shaken roast potatoes
I served the Piri Piri Chicken with Shaken Roast Potatoes, which became the sleeper-hit star of the dinner!
I had some lemon chive compound butter from a previous meal hanging out in the fridge, so I used that in the roast.
Another easy dish with fantastic results! This may very well become a regular(ish) part of the rotation.
creamy sesame ginger dressing
Nosrat called her Creamy Sesame Ginger Dressing “the recipe that inspired this book,” so I couldn’t help myself but add it to the lineup for this week.
I’d absolutely make this dressing again. It came together like a flash in my mini prep food processor and, true to Nosrat’s promise, delivered tangy, spicy, yummy results.
Alongside the recipe, she provided a few suggestions for using this dressing, and I ended up combining a couple of those suggestions, the slaw and brown rice bowl, to prep lunches for the week. I prepared brown rice and tossed the cooked rice with coleslaw mix (cabbage and carrots). I topped it with Mara’s Tofu (a tasty, albeit super basic recipe in the book), chives, cilantro, dressing, sesame seeds, and roasted peanuts. These satisfying bowls packed some sneaky heat from the dressing and made me crave the leftovers right away!
calabrian chile crisp
I bought a TON of dried chiles to make this recipe; when it came time to actually make it later in the week, I kind of didn’t want to, but I also didn’t want to face three bags of chile peppers in my cupboard with the thought that I gave up on the project for which I bought them, so duty won out and I made the Calabrian Chile Crisp.
Chile crisp is a condiment that, over the past two years, has become one of the favorites in our household. I wanted to make my own mostly to see what went into it (and for more perspective why the teeny tiny store-bought jar costs ten bucks).
I’m really glad I ended up making this! Will I stop buying store-bought going forward? I don’t know yet. (Ask me when I’ve polished off this batch.) But I am really happy with the results.
I won’t sugarcoat it: This recipe was a lot of work. I had to thinly slice the cloves of four (!) heads of garlic and 5 shallots and fry them, separately, until golden brown. I had to toast and grind three types of chiles in batches, then add a variety of other ingredients and let the whole thing infuse into a bunch of avocado and olive oil.
I thought the garlic and shallot slicing would be the biggest slog, but 90 minutes of YouTube videos made it a more pleasant, meditative task (though very sticky) than I anticipated it would be.
Grinding the chiles, on the other hand, was a surprising struggle. I quickly realized my spice grinder was not cut out for the task of grinding leathery guajillo chile skin into small, red pepper flake-sized pieces (maybe I didn’t roast the chiles long enough?), so I busted out my mini prep food processor to get the job (mostly) done. I still had to discard bigger pieces that, no matter how many times I ran the puree function, did not break up. At least the Anaheim and Calabrian chiles were crispier and more apt to grind. By the end of this step, I was a sneezing, snotty mess and, in hindsight, realized how wrong I was to decide to make this recipe on a day when I was wearing glasses instead of contact lenses. Oof.
One tiny wrench in my plans: I used up all my roasted peanuts preparing the brown rice bowls with creamy sesame ginger dressing, so I had to get creative on what to substitute. Luckily, I had just the right amount of sugar-glazed roasted peanuts hiding out, and I think those added a nice caramelized dimension to the chile crisp. I may use those again if I make this a second time.
After all is said and done, the chile crisp came together beautifully, and right away, I used half a cup of it in the Chile Crisp Chicken Salad, the final recipe I made (for now) from Good Things. Who knew mayo and tahini made for such a natural pairing? Prep for the chicken salad was quite simple, and my husband commented, while eating it, that it would be a good potluck recipe to serve with buns, crackers, or other serving accompaniments.
. . . . . . .
I had a spicy and flavorful week cooking along to this book! It was fun using ingredients I don’t use very often, in preparations that are newer to me. Besides all the delicious results, I appreciate Nosrat’s philosophy of cooking and feel energized about diving into her first book, Salt Fat, Acid, Heat, again soon.
Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love: A Cookbook, by Samin Nosrat. September 16, 2025, Random House.