My grandmother would tell me the dough was ready, and I would ask ready how.
She would say you will know. I never knew. I just nodded and hoped, and pulled things out of the oven too early for about ten years.
She was right that cooking is mostly attention. She was wrong that you cannot explain it. My Kitchen Mates is my attempt at explaining it.
Welcome to My Kitchen Mates
I’m Eliana Carter, the founder and Editor-in-Chief. I started this site as a home cook, and over time it grew into something bigger than my own recipe box: a small editorial kitchen built around a simple idea.
My Kitchen Mates is a place for home cooks who want good food without unnecessary complication. We create approachable recipes, practical cooking guides, and useful kitchen advice for the food you actually make at home.
Cooking should not feel like a guessing game. Whether you are making dinner on a Tuesday night, trying a new technique, or wondering whether your dough is actually ready, the instructions should help you know what to look for.
How It Started
The site started in 2019 as a place to dump recipes my friends kept texting me for. I was tired of typing out the same instructions to ten different people every week, so I put them all in one place and sent a link.
It grew well past that. There are now more than 4,000 recipes, round-ups and kitchen guides here, written by eight people who each look after their own corner of the kitchen.
My grandmother’s dish is still in my cupboard. I still use it, and I still do not always get it right on the first try.
What changed is that I stopped waiting to just know. I bought a cheap oven thermometer and found out my oven runs about 25 degrees hot, which meant every timer I had ever followed had been lying to me while I quietly blamed myself. So I started writing down what I was actually looking at when things went well: the browning at the edges, the point where the surface stops looking wet, the smell that arrives about a minute before the color does.
That habit turned into this site.
What began as one person’s collection of recipes has become a team effort: writers, recipe developers, editors, photographers, and people who spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about what makes a recipe actually useful.
That is what My Kitchen Mates is today.
The Rules We Write By
I have no culinary degree and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What I can offer you is a recipe written properly, and after years of following badly written ones I have strong opinions about what that means. Those opinions became the rules every writer here works to.
As our team has grown, those standards have stayed the same. You can hold us to them, because you can check them on any page of this site.
- Describe the target, not just the timer. Fifteen minutes means nothing on your stove. Golden at the edges and smelling nutty means something on any stove.
- Never write “season to taste” and walk away. If that is genuinely the instruction, we tell you what you are tasting for.
- Use ingredients you can actually find. No specialist shopping trip just to make a Tuesday dinner.
- Say where it can go wrong. If there is a step that trips people up, the warning belongs in the recipe rather than buried in the comments.
- Be honest about time. If it says 30 minutes, that should mean something useful to a home cook.
- Write for people, not professionals. No unnecessary jargon, no filler, and no making you scroll through a life story to reach the recipe.
You can see this in our Rich, Caramelized French Onion Soup. The onions carry a time range, but the instruction is written around the color you are waiting for, because onions on a gas burner and onions on induction do not caramelize at the same rate. The clock is a guide. The color is the target.
How We Build a Recipe
A good recipe is more than a list of ingredients. It should help you understand what you are doing and what the food should look, smell, and feel like along the way.
- Start with the idea. We look for recipes and cooking questions that are genuinely useful to home cooks.
- Develop the recipe. The recipe is shaped around realistic ingredients, equipment, timing, and technique.
- Work through the details. We explain the important visual and practical cues instead of assuming you already know them.
- Edit for clarity. Instructions should be easy to follow when you are actually standing in your kitchen.
- Keep improving. When readers tell us something is confusing or doesn’t work as intended, that feedback matters.
What Is in the Recipe Box
Weeknight dinners that are done in under 45 minutes. Slower weekend cooking for when you actually want a project. Breakfasts, soups, salads, breads, handhelds, party snacks and the desserts people request by name.
Alongside the recipes there are round-ups for when options matter more than one answer, Superfoods pieces on what an ingredient actually does, and Kitchen Science for the times you want to know why a thing behaves the way it does rather than just what to do about it.
What you will not find here is copycat recipes. Working out how a restaurant gets a particular flavor and rebuilding it at home is a different job, so I keep that work on Eliana Eats.
Where to Start
- Main dishes — chicken, pasta, casseroles, bowls and the rest of the weeknight rotation.
- Desserts — cakes, cookies, cheesecakes, pies and the frozen things for summer.
- Soups — chilis, stews, creamy soups and noodle soups.
- Handhelds — tacos, sandwiches, burgers, wraps and pizza.
- Breakfast — muffins, pancakes, eggs, oats and French toast.
- Salads and sides — for the part of dinner that usually gets ignored.
- Baking — breads, rolls and sourdough, where doneness cues matter most.
- Sauces, drinks and snacks — the small things that fix a meal.
Meet the Kitchen Mates
My Kitchen Mates is written by a small team of people who care about making food easier to understand. Everyone here looks after a particular part of the kitchen, and every recipe on the site is signed by the person who wrote it.
Eliana Carter
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
Eliana sets the editorial direction and still writes the food she started with: roast and skillet chicken, chicken thighs, and the casseroles that feed a house on a weeknight.
Amelia Bennett
Recipe Writer & Developer
Amelia writes the main dishes that come together in one pan: baked pasta and mac and cheese, quick seafood, skillet beef, rice dishes and grain bowls.
Claire Morgan
Food Writer & Editor
Claire covers breakfast, along with the sauces, marinades, dips and dressings that rescue everything else. She also writes our Superfoods and Kitchen Science pieces.
Emily Johnson
Recipe Writer & Developer
Emily writes the food you eat standing up: tacos, sandwiches, burgers and wraps, plus the roasted vegetables, potatoes and snacks that go beside them.
Isabella Rivera
Recipe Writer & Food Photographer
Isabella takes the categories where the photograph does most of the explaining: layered salads, smoothies, cheesecakes, puddings and frozen desserts.
Natalie Harrison
Recipe & Kitchen Guide Writer
Natalie builds the round-ups: the collections you reach for when you need fifteen options for a party, a holiday table or a glut of zucchini.
Olivia Bennett
Baker & Recipe Writer
Olivia handles everything that goes in the oven sweet, plus the bread side of the site: yeast breads, rolls, quick breads and sourdough.
Sophie Carter
Recipe Writer & Community Editor
Sophie writes the two things readers ask about most: cookies, from chocolate chip to cut-out, and soups, from chili and stew to ramen. She also reads the comments and the inbox.
Miso
Chief Taste Tester (Unofficial)
Miso supervises from a spot near the oven that is technically in the way. She has strong opinions about roast chicken and no opinions at all about cake, which we think says something about her priorities.
About the Photos
A photo on this site is meant to answer a question, not simply decorate the page.
Does my dough look like that? Is it supposed to be this loose? Have I gone too far or not far enough?
That is why step photos exist, and why the awkward middle stages matter. A finished plate can tell you what the food should look like. Process photos can help you understand whether you are on the right track.
You should never have to stand in your kitchen guessing. It matters most in the recipes where the dough changes character as you work: our No-Knead High Hydration Sourdough Bread is loose and slack at a stage where most people assume they have ruined it, which is exactly the stage worth photographing.
A Free Gift From Our Kitchen to Yours
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Tell Us When Something Breaks
If a recipe did not work for you, we want to hear about it more than we want to hear that it did. A confusing step is something we need to know about, because it gives us a chance to make the recipe better for the next person.
Write to us at [email protected]. We read everything, even when the reply takes a while.
You can also find me here:
Frequently Asked Questions
Are your recipes hard to make?
No. Everything here is written for home cooks, not professionals. If a step is tricky, we walk you through it rather than assuming you already know the trick.
Do I need special ingredients or equipment?
Usually not. We favor regular grocery-store ingredients and the pans most people already own. If a recipe genuinely needs particular equipment, we try to make that clear before you start.
What if a recipe does not work for me?
Tell us where it fell apart. Ovens vary, pans vary, ingredients vary, and sometimes a step we thought was obvious simply is not. Reader feedback helps us find those problems and improve the instructions.
Do you have quick dinners for busy nights?
Plenty. Look for our main dishes and handhelds that come together in under 45 minutes. They are there for the evenings when you are tired and just need to feed everyone.
Can I request a recipe?
Please do. Send us the dish at [email protected] and we can add it to the list of ideas. We cannot promise every request gets made, but reader questions and requests are an important part of what we create.
Do you run any other sites?
Yes. I also write at Eliana Eats, which focuses on copycat restaurant recipes. My Kitchen Mates is focused on everyday cooking, practical recipes, and broader kitchen guidance.
Who writes the recipes?
Each writer looks after a particular part of the site: Eliana on chicken and casseroles, Amelia on pasta and other mains, Claire on breakfast and sauces, Emily on handhelds and sides, Isabella on salads, drinks and no-bake desserts, Natalie on round-ups, Olivia on baking and cakes, and Sophie on cookies and soups. Every recipe names its author and links to that writer’s page.
Who is behind My Kitchen Mates?
I’m Eliana Carter, founder and Editor-in-Chief. I lead My Kitchen Mates alongside our team of recipe writers, developers, editors, photographers, and kitchen-content contributors.
How do you make money?
The site is supported by display advertising, and some posts contain affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if you buy through one at no extra cost to you. Neither of those decides what we publish or what we say about it. Sponsored posts, on the rare occasions we run them, are labeled as sponsored at the top of the page.
Do you use AI?
We believe in being transparent about the tools we use. AI helps with parts of production: first drafts, editing passes, formatting and some image work. Which means we can publish more than we could a few years ago. It does not decide what we publish or what we say about it.
Every recipe on this site is signed by the writer responsible for it, and a named human editor checks it before it goes live. If something in an instruction is wrong, there is a person accountable for fixing it.
