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Good cooks know that a bigger knife doesn’t necessarily mean a better one.

Cut Through the Confusion
While all you really need is one good chef’s knife, the modern version—combining Japanese, German, and American design—comes in a dizzying array of options. Here are three rules for chop shopping.

Size It Up: While professional chefs wield 12-inch blades with abandon, home cooks should get a knife with a blade around 8 inches in length. Residential-kitchen counters, nonindustrial cutting boards, and civilian muscles can’t handle anything much bigger than that.

Read more: The Home Chopping Network: The Best Chef’s Knives

An L.A. chain has rethought the meat, bun, and toppings to create a new ideal.

It’s half beef and half beyond belief.

I arrived in Los Angeles not much taken with umami, at least not the way true believers are. Too much mysticism, not enough science. Nor did I care much for the L.A. burger culture, not like the locals. Too many toppings, not enough meat.

Then I tasted the Umami Burger, Adam Fleischman’s cross-cultural merger of Japanese ingenuity and American know-how. And I thought to myself, This is a man among burger men, worthy of our adulation even if he’s always wearing a T-shirt with an Umami Burger logo. (These days, even the greats can’t resist self-promotion.)

Read more: Is This the Best Burger in America?

A single Fannie May Cappuccino Truffle packs 140 calories and 8 grams of fat.

Valentine’s Day: Celebration of love, or calculated plot to destroy romance?

Think about it: There’s nothing more romantic than a spontaneous outpouring of love. But that’s one thing you can’t have on V-day, when we’re all supposed to move in lockstep formation down to the jewelry/flower/stationery store. How about cozying up over an intimate dinner for two? Fugghedaboutit: Every restaurant in town is packed to the gills and about as romantic as the mosh pit at a Green Day concert. And what about being fit, healthy, and ready for lovin’? Good-bye, sexy body: There’s nothing like an enormous cardboard heart filled with carbohydrates to ruin the way your belly looks, and feels.

Read more: Best and Worst Valentine’s Day Candy

Whether you prefer it mild or superspicy, you’re sure to find a chili you’ll love at one of these spots.

Beans versus no beans, mild versus tongue-searing, ground beef versus chunks of chuck roast–let’s agree to disagree that there’s no one perfect bowl of chili. (Yes, we know: except, of course, for your own.) Here are our top ten chili joints with a range of styles from coast to coast.

Read more: America’s 10 Best Chili Places

Tasters dunk into 34 kinds of dip and decide on the best and worst.

Last week we tasted 34 different kinds of store-bought dip. It was chip-dunking madness! We lined a long conference table with numbered cups of dip, spread potato chips on one end, tortilla chips on the other, and got to work ranking our most and our least favorite.

Most of us still feel a little sick. We didn’t love any of them. Now more than ever we recommend a homemade dip for your Super Bowl Sunday.

But we know there’s game-day party time crunch. So we are pleased to present you the results of our blind taste test and we’re eager to get your feedback on our selections.

Read more: Top 10 Best and Worst Dips for the Super Bowl

Berries of all kinds are especially effective at fighting inflammation.

Oatmeal
Start your day with a steaming bowl of oats, which are full of omega-3 fatty acids, folate, and potassium. This fiber-rich superfood can lower levels of LDL (or bad) cholesterol and help keep arteries clear.

Opt for coarse or steel-cut oats over instant varieties—which contain more fiber—and top your bowl off with a banana for another 4 grams of fiber.

Salmon
Super-rich in omega-3 fatty acids, salmon can effectively reduce blood pressure and keep clotting at bay. Aim for two servings per week, which may reduce your risk of dying of a heart attack by up to one-third.

“Salmon contains the carotenoid astaxanthin, which is a very powerful antioxidant,” says cardiologist Stephen T. Sinatra, MD, the author of Lower Your Blood Pressure In Eight Weeks. But be sure to choose wild salmon over farm-raised fish, which can be packed with insecticides, pesticides, and heavy metals.

Not a fan of salmon? Other oily fish like mackerel, tuna, herring, and sardines will give your heart the same boost.

Read more: The 10 best foods for your heart

A San Francisco chocolatier serves a dark chocolate cocoa with a handmade marshmallow.

We’ve all had powdery hot cocoa—watery, only vaguely chocolaty, and occasionally crunchy with undissolved marshmallow clumps. Still, cocoa was—and is—the best thing to stir into a mug on a winter afternoon.

Today’s hot chocolate has come a long way from little packages with gritty marshmallows. From sipping chocolate flavored with secret Caribbean spices to house-roasted cocoa beans and celebrity truffle shops, America’s best hot chocolate has gone gourmet.

Read more: America’s Best Hot Chocolate

One Massachusetts institution has been called a national treasure since opening in 1986.

Exactly how far has the American food revolution come? You can measure it in baguettes. A nation reared on the presliced white stuff has succumbed to the addictive pleasures of traditional, artisanal bread. Here’s where to find the best Pullman loaves, ciabatta, and sourdough boules in the country.

Read more: America’s 10 Best Bread Bakeries

The homemade version still rules, but four boxed versions get passing marks.

We have embarked on a taste test tour of your favorite supermarket foods. We nibble, we score, and we share the results with you to help you avoid the paralysis that can come with Brand Choice Overload.

Today’s topic: macaroni and cheese.

What a bummer. We were looking forward to this taste test, reminiscing late-night binges on Annie’s or good old Kraft. Okay, maybe we don’t have the most accurate memory of those late-night binges for one reason or another. But we were still surprised when this taste test evoked a unanimous feeling: Store-bought mac and cheese just isn’t very good. Nearly all of the brands we tested were plastic-y and lacked a satisfying bite. We believe–strongly, in this case–that homemade mac and cheese is better than boxed. Still, as we’ve said a million times, it’s good to know in a pinch how things stack up in the aisles of your local grocery store.

Read more: Supermarket Standoff: Macaroni and Cheese

We love the holidays, but we know they can be a nutritional minefield. Temptations lurk everywhere. Those extra calories add up to an average weight gain of about a pound during the festivities between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, studies show. That may not sound like much, but if it becomes a yearly tradition, the years can pack on the pounds.

Don’t let that curb your merriment, though. There are plenty of good-for-you foods lurking in between the calorie bombs. Here’s our guide to good-for-you holiday dishes…and foods you’ll want to avoid.

Read more: 5 Best (and Worst) Holiday Foods