Bastien
CEO & Co-founderBastien is the CEO and co-founder of Fond. He's passionate about making home cooking more accessible through thoughtful technology and well-tested recipes.
Articles
Batch cooking for beginners: how to cook once and eat all week
Batch cooking means dedicating a few hours to cooking large quantities of food that you portion and store for the week ahead. It's not the same as meal prep — instead of assembling complete meals, you cook versatile building blocks (grains, proteins, sauces, roasted vegetables) that mix and match into different dishes every night. This guide covers everything you need to start: planning, cooking, storing, and scaling.
Bread baking for beginners: your first loaf, start to finish
A complete walkthrough for baking your first loaf of bread at home. Covers the four core ingredients, kneading by hand or mixer, proofing, shaping, and baking, with temperatures, times, and troubleshooting for every step.
Butter vs oil: when to use each in cooking and baking
Butter and oil each have strengths in the kitchen. Butter brings flavor, browning, and flaky pastry. Oil brings higher heat tolerance, moisture, and a longer shelf life. Knowing when to reach for each — and when to combine them — makes every dish better.
Cooking oil smoke points: the complete guide for every cooking method
Every cooking oil has a temperature limit. Push past it and you get bitter flavors, acrid smoke, and potentially harmful compounds filling your kitchen. That temperature limit is called the smoke point, and knowing it is the difference between a perfect sear and a smoking disaster.
Dutch oven recipes: 20 essential dishes to master
A Dutch oven is the most versatile pot in your kitchen. These 20 essential recipes — organized by technique — cover braised meats, soups, no-knead bread, and more, plus the temperatures, times, and tips you need to make each one well.
Egg substitutes for baking: what actually works
A practical guide to egg substitutes for baking. Covers flax eggs, applesauce, aquafaba, silken tofu, and more — with exact ratios per egg, a recipe-matching chart by bake type, scaling rules for multi-egg recipes, and honest notes on flavor impact.
Fermentation for beginners: how to start fermenting food at home
A practical guide to home fermentation covering sauerkraut, yogurt, kombucha, and more. Learn the science behind fermentation, essential equipment, safety basics, and step-by-step recipes for your first fermented foods.
The science of cooking: why your food works the way it does
A practical guide to the chemistry, physics, and biology behind everyday cooking. Covers the Maillard reaction, caramelization, emulsification, fermentation, heat transfer, protein denaturation, and common cooking myths debunked by science.
How long to boil eggs for soft, medium, and hard yolks
The difference between a runny, jammy, or fully set yolk comes down to minutes. Knowing how long to boil eggs removes the guesswork and gives you the exact result you want, every single time.
How to braise meat: the complete guide to low and slow cooking
Everything you need to braise meat at home. Covers the best cuts for braising, step-by-step technique, braising liquids, equipment, and global traditions from French daube to Korean galbi-jjim — with times, temperatures, and troubleshooting.
How to cook rice perfectly every time
Rice is the most consumed grain on the planet, yet it trips up even confident home cooks. Too sticky, too mushy, burned on the bottom. The failures are predictable, and so are the fixes. Learning how to cook rice well comes down to the right water ratio, proper heat control, and leaving it alone while it cooks.
How to make a pan sauce: deglazing 101
A pan sauce turns the browned bits stuck to your skillet into a rich, flavorful sauce in under five minutes. Learn the technique, choose your deglazing liquid, and master pan sauces for chicken, steak, pork chops, and mushrooms.
How to meal prep: a practical guide for beginners
Meal prep means dedicating about 2 hours on a Sunday to planning, cooking, and portioning complete meals for the week ahead. Unlike batch cooking, which produces versatile components you mix and match, meal prep gives you finished meals ready to grab and eat. This guide covers everything from equipment and shopping lists to a minute-by-minute prep day timeline and safe storage practices.
How to pickle vegetables: fermented and quick-pickle methods
A complete guide to pickling vegetables at home, both lacto-fermented pickles (salt brine, no vinegar) and quick vinegar pickles. Covers the best vegetables to pickle, brine ratios, spice combinations, and step-by-step recipes.
How to read a recipe: a complete guide for confident cooking
Reading a recipe well means understanding structure, decoding measurements, spotting hidden time requirements, and setting yourself up before a single burner clicks on. This guide breaks down every part of a recipe — from ingredient lists and abbreviations to doneness cues and digital tools — so you can cook with confidence every time.
How to reduce food waste at home (practical tips that work)
The average household throws away 30% of the food it buys, roughly $2,900 per year. This guide covers practical strategies to cut food waste at home: meal planning, proper food storage, the eat-me-first system, creative use of scraps and leftovers, understanding date labels, composting, and tracking your waste patterns.
How to season a cast iron skillet: the complete guide
Seasoning is what makes cast iron nonstick, rust-proof, and better with every use. Learn the oven method, stovetop method, best oils for seasoning, and how to fix common problems like sticky residue, flaking, and rust.
How to sharpen kitchen knives (the right way)
A dull knife demands three to four times more force than a sharp one, which makes it unpredictable. Learn when to hone, when to sharpen, and how to use a whetstone, electric sharpener, or honing rod to keep every blade in your kitchen performing at its best.
How to store fresh herbs so they last weeks, not days
Most fresh herbs die in 2-3 days because people store them wrong. The fix comes down to one distinction: soft herbs vs. hard herbs. This guide covers the best storage method for every common herb, how to freeze and dry herbs for long-term use, how to revive wilted ones, and how to plan meals around what's actually in your fridge.
Types of knife cuts: the complete guide for home cooks
Professional chefs learn 12+ standard knife cuts in culinary school. Home cooks usually learn zero. That gap shows up on the plate — in uneven cooking, mushy textures, and dishes that never quite look like the recipe photo.
Best meal prep containers for every budget and kitchen
A practical guide to choosing meal prep containers by material, size, and use case. Covers glass vs plastic vs stainless steel, container sizing for different meals, what features actually matter, how to organize prepped meals, and food safety storage times.
One pot meals for beginners: a guide to easy weeknight dinners
A practical guide to one pot cooking for beginners. Covers equipment, essential techniques like browning and layering, common mistakes, and 12 easy recipes organized by category: pasta, soups and stews, rice dishes, and curries. Each recipe includes difficulty level, cook time, and cost per serving.
12 pasta cooking mistakes ruining your dinner
Most pasta problems come down to technique, not ingredients. These twelve common mistakes are easy to fix once you understand the science behind them. Correct even three and your weeknight pasta will taste noticeably better.
How to make a sourdough starter from scratch
A day-by-day guide to creating and maintaining a sourdough starter at home using just flour and water. Covers feeding schedules, signs of activity, troubleshooting slow starters, and how to know when it is ready to bake with.
Sous vide for beginners: precision cooking without the guesswork
Everything you need to start cooking sous vide at home. Covers equipment, the basic process, a time and temperature chart for common proteins, your first steak cook, finishing techniques, meal prep strategies, common mistakes, and food safety basics.
Spring meal prep ideas: seasonal recipes and a weekly prep plan
A practical guide to spring meal prep built around seasonal produce like asparagus, peas, radishes, and strawberries. Includes a mix-and-match component system, a timed 2-hour Sunday prep session, storage freshness chart, and budget-friendly recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.
Types of flour for baking: a practical guide to 11 common flours
A breakdown of the most common types of flour used in baking, organized by protein content. Covers all-purpose, bread, cake, pastry, whole wheat, spelt, 00, semolina, rye, self-rising, and gluten-free flours — with substitution ratios and a quick-reference chart for matching flour to recipe.
Types of salt for cooking: a practical guide to every salt in your kitchen
Not all salt is the same. A teaspoon of table salt contains almost twice as much sodium as a teaspoon of Diamond Crystal kosher salt. Crystal size, shape, and mineral content change how salt dissolves, how it sticks to food, and how much you actually need. This guide covers every common cooking salt and when to use each one.
What is mise en place and why it matters
Mise en place is the practice of preparing and organizing every ingredient and tool before you start cooking. It's the single habit that separates chaotic, stressful cooking from calm, confident meals, and it works just as well in a home kitchen as it does in a professional one.
What is umami? The fifth taste explained for home cooks
You know the taste. That deep, savory richness in a slow-cooked broth, a chunk of aged parmesan, or a spoonful of miso stirred into soup. It's the reason tomato sauce tastes better after simmering for hours and why a dash of soy sauce transforms a stir-fry. That taste has a name: umami.