How can you ensure that the things you say are true and novel and important? Believe it or not, there is a trick for doing this. I learned it from my friend Robert Morris, who has a horror of saying anything dumb. His trick is not to say anything unless he's sure it's worth hearing. This makes it hard to get opinions out of him, but when you do, they're usually right. Translated into essay writing, what this means is that if you write a bad sentence, you don't publish it. You delete it and try again. Often you abandon whole branches of four or five paragraphs. Sometimes a whole essay. You can't ensure that every idea you have is good, but you can ensure that every one you publish is, by simply not publishing the ones that aren't. In the sciences, this is called publication bias, and is considered bad. When some hypothesis you're exploring gets inconclusive results, you're supposed to tell people about that too. But with essay writing, publication bias is the way to go. My strategy is loose, then tight. I write the first draft of an essay fast, trying out all kinds of ideas. Then I spend days rewriting it very carefully. I've never tried to count how many times I proofread essays, but I'm sure there are sentences I've read 100 times before publishing them. When I proofread an essay, there are usually passages that stick out in an annoying way, sometimes because they're clumsily written, and sometimes because I'm not sure they're true. The annoyance starts out unconscious, but after the tenth reading or so I'm saying "Ugh, that part" each time I hit it. They become like briars that catch your sleeve as you walk past. Usually I won't publish an essay till they're all gone � till I can read through the whole thing without the feeling of anything catching. I'll sometimes let through a sentence that seems clumsy, if I can't think of a way to rephrase it, but I will never knowingly let through one that doesn't seem correct. You never have to. If a sentence doesn't seem right, all you have to do is ask why it doesn't, and you've usually got the replacement right there in your head. This is where essayists have an advantage over journalists. You don't have a deadline. You can work for as long on an essay as you need to get it right. You don't have to publish the essay at all, if you can't get it right. Mistakes seem to lose courage in the face of an enemy with unlimited resources. Or that's what it feels like. What's really going on is that you have different expectations for yourself. You're like a parent saying to a child "we can sit here all night till you eat your vegetables." Except you're the child too. I'm not saying no mistake gets through. For example, I added condition (c) in after readers pointed out that I'd omitted it. But in practice you can catch nearly all of them. There's a trick for getting importance too. It's like the trick I suggest to young founders for getting startup ideas: to make something you yourself want. You can use yourself as a proxy for the reader. The reader is not completely unlike you, so if you write about topics that seem important to you, they'll probably seem important to a significant number of readers as well. Importance has two factors. It's the number of people something matters to, times how much it matters to them. Which means of course that it's not a rectangle, but a sort of ragged comb, like a Riemann sum. The way to get novelty is to write about topics you've thought about a lot. Then you can use yourself as a proxy for the reader in this department too. Anything you notice that surprises you, who've thought about the topic a lot, will probably also surprise a significant number of readers. And here, as with correctness and importance, you can use the Morris technique to ensure that you will. If you don't learn anything from writing an essay, don't publish it. You need humility to measure novelty, because acknowledging the novelty of an idea means acknowledging your previous ignorance of it. Confidence and humility are often seen as opposites, but in this case, as in many others, confidence helps you to be humble. If you know you're an expert on some topic, you can freely admit when you learn something you didn't know, because you can be confident that most other people wouldn't know it either. The fourth component of useful writing, strength, comes from two things: thinking well, and the skillful use of qualification. These two counterbalance each other, like the accelerator and clutch in a car with a manual transmission. As you try to refine the expression of an idea, you adjust the qualification accordingly. Something you're sure of, you can state baldly with no qualification at all, as I did the four components of useful writing. Whereas points that seem dubious have to be held at arm's length with perhapses. As you refine an idea, you're pushing in the direction of less qualification. But you can rarely get it down to zero. Sometimes you don't even want to, if it's a side point and a fully refined version would be too long. Some say that qualifications weaken writing. For example, that you should never begin a sentence in an essay with "I think," because if you're saying it, then of course you think it. And it's true that "I think x" is a weaker statement than simply "x." Which is exactly why you need "I think." You need it to express your degree of certainty. But qualifications are not scalars. They're not just experimental error. There must be 50 things they can express: how broadly something applies, how you know it, how happy you are it's so, even how it could be falsified. I'm not going to try to explore the structure of qualification here. It's probably more complex than the whole topic of writing usefully. Instead I'll just give you a practical tip: Don't underestimate qualification. It's an important skill in its own right, not just a sort of tax you have to pay in order to avoid saying things that are false. So learn and use its full range. It may not be fully half of having good ideas, but it's part of having them. There's one other quality I aim for in essays: to say things as simply as possible. But I don't think this is a component of usefulness. It's more a matter of consideration for the reader. And it's a practical aid in getting things right; a mistake is more obvious when expressed in simple language. But I'll admit that the main reason I write simply is not for the reader's sake or because it helps get things right, but because it bothers me to use more or fancier words than I need to. It seems inelegant, like a program that's too long. I realize florid writing works for some people. But unless you're sure you're one of them, the best advice is to write as simply as you can. I believe the formula I've given you, importance + novelty + correctness + strength, is the recipe for a good essay. But I should warn you that it's also a recipe for making people mad. The root of the problem is novelty. When you tell people something they didn't know, they don't always thank you for it. Sometimes the reason people don't know something is because they don't want to know it. Usually because it contradicts some cherished belief. And indeed, if you're looking for novel ideas, popular but mistaken beliefs are a good place to find them. Every popular mistaken belief creates a of ideas around it that are relatively unexplored because they contradict it. The strength component just makes things worse. If there's anything that annoys people more than having their cherished assumptions contradicted, it's having them flatly contradicted. Plus if you've used the Morris technique, your writing will seem quite confident. Perhaps offensively confident, to people who disagree with you. The reason you'll seem confident is that you are confident: you've cheated, by only publishing the things you're sure of. It will seem to people who try to disagree with you that you never admit you're wrong. In fact you constantly admit you're wrong. You just do it before publishing instead of after. And if your writing is as simple as possible, that just makes things worse. Brevity is the diction of command. If you watch someone delivering unwelcome news from a position of inferiority, you'll notice they tend to use lots of words, to soften the blow. Whereas to be short with someone is more or less to be rude to them. It can sometimes work to deliberately phrase statements more weakly than you mean. To put "perhaps" in front of something you're actually quite sure of. But you'll notice that when writers do this, they usually do it with a wink. I don't like to do this too much. It's cheesy to adopt an ironic tone for a whole essay. I think we just have to face the fact that elegance and curtness are two names for the same thing. You might think that if you work sufficiently hard to ensure that an essay is correct, it will be invulnerable to attack. That's sort of true. It will be invulnerable to valid attacks. But in practice that's little consolation. In fact, the strength component of useful writing will make you particularly vulnerable to misrepresentation. If you've stated an idea as strongly as you could without making it false, all anyone has to do is to exaggerate slightly what you said, and now it is false. Much of the time they're not even doing it deliberately. One of the most surprising things you'll discover, if you start writing essays, is that people who disagree with you rarely disagree with what you've actually written. Instead they make up something you said and disagree with that. For what it's worth, the countermove is to ask someone who does this to quote a specific sentence or passage you wrote that they believe is false, and explain why. I say "for what it's worth" because they never do. So although it might seem that this could get a broken discussion back on track, the truth is that it was never on track in the first place. Should you explicitly forestall likely misinterpretations? Yes, if they're misinterpretations a reasonably smart and well-intentioned person might make. In fact it's sometimes better to say something slightly misleading and then add the correction than to try to get an idea right in one shot. That can be more efficient, and can also model the way such an idea would be discovered. But I don't think you should explicitly forestall intentional misinterpretations in the body of an essay. An essay is a place to meet honest readers. You don't want to spoil your house by putting bars on the windows to protect against dishonest ones. The place to protect against intentional misinterpretations is in end-notes. But don't think you can predict them all. People are as ingenious at misrepresenting you when you say something they don't want to hear as they are at coming up with rationalizations for things they want to do but know they shouldn't. I suspect it's the same skill. As with most other things, the way to get better at writing essays is to practice. But how do you start? Now that we've examined the structure of useful writing, we can rephrase that question more precisely. Which constraint do you relax initially? The answer is, the first component of importance: the number of people who care about what you write. If you narrow the topic sufficiently, you can probably find something you're an expert on. Write about that to start with. If you only have ten readers who care, that's fine. You're helping them, and you're writing. Later you can expand the breadth of topics you write about. The other constraint you can relax is a little surprising: publication. Writing essays doesn't have to mean publishing them. That may seem strange now that the trend is to publish every random thought, but it worked for me. I wrote what amounted to essays in notebooks for about 15 years. I never published any of them and never expected to. I wrote them as a way of figuring things out. But when the web came along I'd had a lot of practice. Incidentally, did the same thing. In high school he designed computers on paper for fun. He couldn't build them because he couldn't afford the components. But when Intel launched 4K DRAMs in 1975, he was ready. How many essays are there left to write though? The answer to that question is probably the most exciting thing I've learned about essay writing. Nearly all of them are left to write. Although is an old form, it hasn't been assiduously cultivated. In the print era, publication was expensive, and there wasn't enough demand for essays to publish that many. You could publish essays if you were already well known for writing something else, like novels. Or you could write book reviews that you took over to express your own ideas. But there was not really a direct path to becoming an essayist. Which meant few essays got written, and those that did tended to be about a narrow range of subjects. Now, thanks to the internet, there's a path. Anyone can publish essays online. You start in obscurity, perhaps, but at least you can start. You don't need anyone's permission. It sometimes happens that an area of knowledge sits quietly for years, till some change makes it explode. Cryptography did this to number theory. The internet is doing it to the essay. The exciting thing is not that there's a lot left to write, but that there's a lot left to discover. There's a certain kind of idea that's best discovered by writing essays. If most essays are still unwritten, most such ideas are still undiscovered. [1] Put railings on the balconies, but don't put bars on the windows. [2] Even now I sometimes write essays that are not meant for publication. I wrote several to figure out what Y Combinator should do, and they were really helpful. to Trevor Blackwell, Daniel Gackle, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this. |
Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave “civilized” society and go back to nature.
STEM students everywhere feel the pain of writing assignments. As people who would rather spend their time working with numbers and figures, sitting down to write a paper can seem so tedious and boring. But effective communication is one of the most important skills we can learn in college, as it’ll help us stand out when we express ourselves. STEM students with writing abilities are super valuable!
Even if you are only required to take one writing class, it’s important that you use this opportunity to enhance your skills and build confidence in your own writing. With online tools like the BibMe Plus grammar and plagiarism tool , writing becomes much less intimidating.
While you’re working on your writing, approach the assignment like any other math problem you would tackle. You can work out your writing using four steps: identify the problem, show your work, cut out unnecessary steps, and check your final answer.
The most crucial part of your paper is your argument or the problem to be considered. When thinking through your thesis, go through and review several, peer-reviewed sources. Academic sources can be scary, but they contain the research you need to make your points.
After you’ve done research, craft your thesis statement to capture the essence of the problem. One trick is to rephrase the assignment as a question and then make sure your thesis answers that question. Clearly identify the problem or discussion that is of interest and communicate that you understand the problem from all angles.
Writing your paper will be so much more exciting if you can find a topic that interests you, too. You might even be able to find a subject that relates to science or math in some way.
Showing your work means that you provide clear and reasoned evidence as to how you are developing your argument while incorporating outside information. This evidence should come from outside sources and try to show various views of an argument.
This will make the stated claims clear and your writing easy to understand. Clearly point your reader in the correct direction, using logical steps that follow one another.
Also important: cite your sources so others can confirm or read more on the evidence you’ve used. If you don’t know which citation style to use, ask your professor. Commonly used citation styles include MLA format , APA format , and Chicago Manual of Style .
It’s tempting but don’t try to impress your teacher by using the biggest words or the longest, most complicated sentences you can think of. This will make the paper hard to follow. Simple and clear is always better, just like when solving an equation.
Even if you have a gigantic assignment, you still have to cut out the fluff. This means actively checking for lengthy or wordy sentences and avoiding passive voice. For example, instead of:
The cake was baked by Mary.
You’d write:
Mary baked the cake.
Writing assignments in college require active voice, which can be a tough transition from the lab reports that require passive constructions. After you’ve written your draft, read it aloud. Listen for passive voice, and circle any words that you’re not quite sure about. After that, cut out any words that are unnecessary and revise until your writing is as clear as you can make it.
Any time you solve a math problem, it is a good idea to check your work to make sure that your answer makes sense. Writing is no different!
Nailing a smooth flow and good writing transitions on the first try can be tough. Try making a flowchart with one-word descriptors of each paragraph, and rearrange them until you find the order that makes the most sense if your organization doesn’t seem right. Your topic sentences should serve as your roadmap, so ensure that these follow each other logically. Reviewing the flow of your argument is always a great last step in writing!
Being a mathematician or a scientist means that you will have to explain your work to the world, and mastering writing is the key to spreading your ideas and your accomplishments. The good thing is that there’s likely no need to drastically change or enhance your writing. Approaching your assignments like any STEM exercise is a great way to make you feel more at ease. And don’t be afraid to ask for help, whether that be from your TA, a tutor, or your campus writing center. Just take the assignment one step at a time.
Trying to remember how linking verbs work? Need a refresher on what is a prepositional phrase ? Looking for an interjection to use in your next paper? Check out our BibMe grammar guides for help with the above and more!
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Ingredients for a better essay.
December 11, 2015
A process essay on food is either an essay that tells you how to make a recipe or one that tells you how a food product is made. Both essays are written in the form of step-by-step instructions. As you research and write your essay, you'll likely learn a lot, which can benefit you as the author, as baking brownies from scratch is time-consuming, but the final product is well worth the wait. It is important to keep your directions or process steps as simple as possible. If the process is a recipe, the article should teach the reader how to make it. If the process is how a certain food product was made, like name-brand factory products, the reader should understand all the steps that went into creating that food product.
Find out everything there is to know about making the food product about which you are writing. Take notes, use legitimate sources and if possible, interview someone directly involved in the production of the food product. Consider all of the ingredients, staff and machinery necessary to make the food you are learning about. You may be writing about how a factory mass produces their brand of food, such as candy bars or toaster pastries, or how a private bakery is run. Ask questions appropriate to your topic.
Before you begin writing, first outline your essay. This will help plan everything you want to write about. Order everything in sequential order, so the reader will clearly understand how the food product is made. Next, write the body of your essay. Each paragraph should be one point or one step in the process to make the food product. Make sure the reader knows everything involved in the process you are writing about.
Finally, write the introduction and conclusion of your essay. It is best to write the introduction after the body, so you understand what you are introducing. An introduction should prepare a reader for your article and possibly give them some background information on the process. The conclusion should summarize all of your main points. Last but not least, go back over your essay and correct any grammatical or spelling errors.
Learn everything you can about the recipe you are writing about. Do some research and learn if there are different ways to make the food in the recipe. Make sure you are educated in the cooking methods required in the recipe. It's also important to cook or prepare the recipe yourself. When you have followed the steps you learned, you will understand how best to teach those steps to others, and you might pick up some new cooking skills as well.
Next, write down all of the steps to prepare the recipe. Be sure to write the recipe in chronological order. For example, for recipes that require baking, mention preheating the oven first, so it can be at the proper temperature when it's time to place your dish in the oven. Include a list of necessary ingredients.
Then, you'll be able to write an introduction to the essay. This is best done after you have written the steps, so you know exactly what you are introducing. Try to include background information on the recipe in question.
Finally, write a conclusion to the essay. In this section include any variations to the recipe. If certain ingredients can be exchanged for others, let the reader know. Also, don't forget to proofread your essay at least one more time for spelling and grammatical errors, and fix if necessary.
Check your paper for plagiarism in 10 minutes, generate your apa citations for free.
The college essay can make or break your application. It’s your chance to provide personal context, communicate your values and qualities, and set yourself apart from other students.
A standout essay has a few key ingredients:
To achieve this, it’s crucial to give yourself enough time for brainstorming, writing, revision, and feedback.
In this comprehensive guide, we walk you through every step in the process of writing a college admissions essay.
Why do you need a standout essay, start organizing early, choose a unique topic, outline your essay, start with a memorable introduction, write like an artist, craft a strong conclusion, revise and receive feedback, frequently asked questions.
While most of your application lists your academic achievements, your college admissions essay is your opportunity to share who you are and why you’d be a good addition to the university.
Your college admissions essay accounts for about 25% of your application’s total weight一and may account for even more with some colleges making the SAT and ACT tests optional. The college admissions essay may be the deciding factor in your application, especially for competitive schools where most applicants have exceptional grades, test scores, and extracurriculars.
Admissions officers want to understand your background, personality, and values to get a fuller picture of you beyond your test scores and grades. Here’s what colleges look for in an essay :
It’s a good idea to start organizing your college application timeline in the summer of your junior year to make your application process easier. This will give you ample time for essay brainstorming, writing, revision, and feedback.
While timelines will vary for each student, aim to spend at least 1–3 weeks brainstorming and writing your first draft and at least 2–4 weeks revising across multiple drafts. Remember to leave enough time for breaks in between each writing and editing stage.
If you’re applying to multiple schools, you will have to juggle writing several essays for each one. We recommend using an essay tracker spreadsheet to help you visualize and organize the following:
You can build your own essay tracker using our free Google Sheets template.
College essay tracker template
Ideally, you should start brainstorming college essay topics the summer before your senior year. Keep in mind that it’s easier to write a standout essay with a unique topic.
If you want to write about a common essay topic, such as a sports injury or volunteer work overseas, think carefully about how you can make it unique and personal. You’ll need to demonstrate deep insight and write your story in an original way to differentiate it from similar essays.
You should do a comprehensive brainstorm before choosing your topic. Here are a few questions to get started:
Here are two strategies for identifying a topic that demonstrates your values:
After choosing your topic, organize your ideas in an essay outline , which will help keep you focused while writing. Unlike a five-paragraph academic essay, there’s no set structure for a college admissions essay. You can take a more creative approach, using storytelling techniques to shape your essay.
Two common approaches are to structure your essay as a series of vignettes or as a single narrative.
The vignette, or montage, structure weaves together several stories united by a common theme. Each story should demonstrate one of your values or qualities and conclude with an insight or future outlook.
This structure gives the admissions officer glimpses into your personality, background, and identity, and shows how your qualities appear in different areas of your life.
Topic: Museum with a “five senses” exhibit of my experiences
The single story, or narrative, structure uses a chronological narrative to show a student’s character development over time. Some narrative essays detail moments in a relatively brief event, while others narrate a longer journey spanning months or years.
Single story essays are effective if you have overcome a significant challenge or want to demonstrate personal development.
Topic: Sports injury helps me learn to be a better student and person
Regardless of your essay’s structure, try to craft a surprising story arc or original insights, especially if you’re writing about a common topic.
Never exaggerate or fabricate facts about yourself to seem interesting. However, try finding connections in your life that deviate from cliché storylines and lessons.
Common insight | Unique insight |
---|---|
Making an all-state team → outstanding achievement | Making an all-state team → counting the cost of saying “no” to other interests |
Making a friend out of an enemy → finding common ground, forgiveness | Making a friend out of an enemy → confront toxic thinking and behavior in yourself |
Choir tour → a chance to see a new part of the world | Choir tour → a chance to serve in leading younger students |
Volunteering → learning to help my community and care about others | Volunteering → learning to be critical of insincere resume-building |
Turning a friend in for using drugs → choosing the moral high ground | Turning a friend in for using drugs → realizing the hypocrisy of hiding your secrets |
Admissions officers read thousands of essays each year, and they typically spend only a few minutes reading each one. To get your message across, your introduction , or hook, needs to grab the reader’s attention and compel them to read more..
Avoid starting your introduction with a famous quote, cliché, or reference to the essay itself (“While I sat down to write this essay…”).
While you can sometimes use dialogue or a meaningful quotation from a close family member or friend, make sure it encapsulates your essay’s overall theme.
Find an original, creative way of starting your essay using the following two methods.
Begin your essay with an unexpected statement to pique the reader’s curiosity and compel them to carefully read your essay. A mysterious introduction disarms the reader’s expectations and introduces questions that can only be answered by reading more.
Illustrate a clear, detailed image to immediately transport your reader into your memory. You can start in the middle of an important scene or describe an object that conveys your essay’s theme.
A college application essay allows you to be creative in your style and tone. As you draft your essay, try to use interesting language to enliven your story and stand out .
“Tell” in writing means to simply state a fact: “I am a basketball player.” “ Show ” in writing means to use details, examples, and vivid imagery to help the reader easily visualize your memory: “My heart races as I set up to shoot一two seconds, one second一and score a three-pointer!”
First, reflect on every detail of a specific image or scene to recall the most memorable aspects.
You don’t have to share a huge secret or traumatic story, but you should dig deep to express your honest feelings, thoughts, and experiences to evoke an emotional response. Showing vulnerability demonstrates humility and maturity. However, don’t exaggerate to gain sympathy.
Make sure your essay has the right style and tone by following these guidelines:
You should end your college essay with a deep insight or creative ending to leave the reader with a strong final impression. Your college admissions essay should avoid the following:
Here are two strategies to craft a strong conclusion.
The full circle, or sandwich, structure concludes the essay with an image, idea, or story mentioned in the introduction. This strategy gives the reader a strong sense of closure.
In the example below, the essay concludes by returning to the “museum” metaphor that the writer opened with.
You can use the conclusion to show the insight you gained as a result of the experiences you’ve described. Revealing your main message at the end creates suspense and keeps the takeaway at the forefront of your reader’s mind.
Revise your essay before submitting it to check its content, style, and grammar. Get feedback from no more than two or three people.
It’s normal to go through several rounds of revision, but take breaks between each editing stage.
Also check out our college essay examples to see what does and doesn’t work in an essay and the kinds of changes you can make to improve yours.
Most schools specify a word count for each essay , and you should stay within 10% of the upper limit.
Remain under the specified word count limit to show you can write concisely and follow directions. However, don’t write too little, which may imply that you are unwilling or unable to write a thoughtful and developed essay.
Get feedback from 2–3 people who know you well, have good writing skills, and are familiar with college essays.
The checklist below helps you make sure your essay ticks all the boxes.
I’ve organized my essay prompts and created an essay writing schedule.
I’ve done a comprehensive brainstorm for essay topics.
I’ve selected a topic that’s meaningful to me and reveals something different from the rest of my application.
I’ve created an outline to guide my structure.
I’ve crafted an introduction containing vivid imagery or an intriguing hook that grabs the reader’s attention.
I’ve written my essay in a way that shows instead of telling.
I’ve shown positive traits and values in my essay.
I’ve demonstrated self-reflection and insight in my essay.
I’ve used appropriate style and tone .
I’ve concluded with an insight or a creative ending.
I’ve revised my essay , checking my overall message, flow, clarity, and grammar.
I’ve respected the word count , remaining within 10% of the upper word limit.
It looks like your essay ticks all the boxes. A second pair of eyes can help you take it to the next level – Scribbr's essay coaches can help.
Colleges want to be able to differentiate students who seem similar on paper. In the college application essay , they’re looking for a way to understand each applicant’s unique personality and experiences.
Your college essay accounts for about 25% of your application’s weight. It may be the deciding factor in whether you’re accepted, especially for competitive schools where most applicants have exceptional grades, test scores, and extracurricular track records.
A standout college essay has several key ingredients:
While timelines will differ depending on the student, plan on spending at least 1–3 weeks brainstorming and writing the first draft of your college admissions essay , and at least 2–4 weeks revising across multiple drafts. Don’t forget to save enough time for breaks between each writing and editing stage.
You should already begin thinking about your essay the summer before your senior year so that you have plenty of time to try out different topics and get feedback on what works.
Most college application portals specify a word count range for your essay, and you should stay within 10% of the upper limit to write a developed and thoughtful essay.
You should aim to stay under the specified word count limit to show you can follow directions and write concisely. However, don’t write too little, as it may seem like you are unwilling or unable to write a detailed and insightful narrative about yourself.
If no word count is specified, we advise keeping your essay between 400 and 600 words.
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With a focus on ethical proteins, wholefoods, low sugar and gluten-free eating, Matilda Brown and Scott Gooding’s new The Good Farm Cookbook is a collection of everyday family recipes for a nourishing, hopeful life.
When it comes to easy family dinners , Peri Peri chicken is one of those meals that’s guaranteed to please even the pickiest of eaters — and The Good Farm’s version is both delightfully simple and delicious, making it the perfect low-effort, mid-week meal.
In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients except the chicken, lemon halves, broccolini and radicchio. Mix thoroughly. Add the chicken thighs and mix to ensure they are well coated with the sauce.
Preheat oven to 190°C. Heat a large ovenproof frying pan over medium heat and add the chicken. Cook the fillets for 3-4 minutes or until the chicken is caramelised, before turning over and cooking for another 3-4 minutes on the other side.
Transfer the pan to the oven and bake for 5-7 minutes until cooked through.
Transfer the chicken to a chopping board. Allow to rest for 3-4 minutes before roughly chopping. Drizzle with some lemon juice, season and serve with charred lemon halves, broccolini and radicchio wedges.
This is an edited extract from The Good Farm Cookbook by Scott Gooding and Matilda Brown with photography by Cath Muscat, published by Murdoch Books, $39.99.
See more of the good farm cookbook’s recipes:.
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Fall baking is about to get so much better.
Dotdash Meredith Food Studios
There are more than 7,500 types of apples grown worldwide, according to Washington State University . While orchards and grocery stores narrow down that selection, it can still feel daunting to know which kind of apple to stock up on.
The best apple for snacking is a simple choice: whichever type you enjoy the flavor and texture of most. But the choice is not quite as straightforward when you want to cook the apples . So we turned to the folks who know best to help us find the ultimate apples for baking. Below are tips from two farmers who collectively grow 43 types of apples and a produce inspector who lives in a city that some call “the apple capital of the world.”
“The classification of ‘baking’ and ‘eating’ apples is arbitrary, because literally any apple could be used for either use depending on the preferences,” says Shenot, a sixth-generation apple farmer.
Still, our expert panel agrees that two details make apples really shine in baked goods, including:
Peter Dazeley/Getty Images
Shenot concedes that choosing just one “best” apple variety for baking is challenging. Eckert echoes that sentiment, noting that “each variety brings its own unique qualities to the table.”
However, if Eckert had to pick just one “best apple for baking,” regardless of whether the fruit is destined for pies, crisps, quick breads , or other fall treats, she’d select a type of apple that Shenot is also sweet on: Jonathan .
“Jonathan apples have the right amount of tartness to complement the sweetness of desserts, and their texture holds up well but softens beautifully in the oven, providing a tender bite without losing its shape. This is an ideal choice for baked goods where you want the apple to retain some structure,” Eckert says.
Shenot recommends a blend of varieties for apple-infused baked goods , “especially when making applesauce or pies,” he tells us.
To lend a smooth texture and a little more sweetness that plays nicely with Jonathan’s tartness, Shenot and Eckert love mixing Golden Delicious with those Jonathans. Golden Delicious apples are a reliable and versatile baking apple due to their ability to maintain their shape while still softening in a pleasant way.
“As for the second best, I’d go with the Golden Delicious as the second-best baking apple,” Eckert says. “It becomes tender during baking, offering a melt-in-your-mouth texture that’s perfect for pies, cakes, and other desserts. The natural sweetness of the Golden Delicious also adds a mellow flavor to baked goods, allowing you to use less sugar in your recipes.”
If you can’t find—or don’t love those types of apples—you can build your own signature baking blend that showcases the tartness level and texture you enjoy most. Consider any of these farmer-approved baking-friendly apples, depending on your exact use and personal preference.
Firmer and more tart.
Due to their firm texture, there are certain apples that are best reserved for snacking or featuring in salads , fruit salsas , slaws , and other raw preparations, the farmers explain. These include:
And there’s one apple variety that could qualify as the worst apple for baking, if you ask Shenot: “I don’t recommend Red Delicious for anything really. I use them to balance out a tart blend of cider. Otherwise, they’re useless in my opinion.”
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Tart flavor. According to Shenot, "the most important quality for baking apples is the level of tartness." Apple desserts like pies, tarts, crisps, crumbles, and even apple butter and applesauce all call for some type of sweetener, so a naturally tart quality in baking apples is ideal. In tandem with the sugar (or honey, brown sugar, maple syrup, or other featured sweetener), "this ...
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