Martha Stewart's Cooking School

Everyone knows the importance of eating vegetables, but many home cooks avoid cooking them simply because they don’t know how. They want to add more vegetables to their diets but lack an understanding of the basic techniques.

Steaming is one of the fastest and healthiest ways to cook—and it’s not just for vegetables. In this lesson, Martha demonstrates a variety of steaming techniques and tools that allow you to make complete meals in just minutes. She’ll show you how to cook chicken breasts in parchment paper for moist, flavorful meat, as well as how to clean and steam mussels.

This episode is devoted to roasting, a straightforward and adaptable technique that also works well for meat, fish, and chicken. Martha’s roast chicken showcases the benefits of this method,with a crisp exterior and moist interior.

Because poached meats are moist and tender yet still mild in flavor, they work well as the basis for numerous salads, soups, and light suppers. They’re also famously low in fat.

A beautifully cooked roast makes a grand centerpiece for any dinner. In this episode, Martha shares three recipes ─ a rib roast, crown roast of pork, and stuffed turkey breast ─ each a lesson in key roasting techniques.

Nothing comforts like a bowl of homemade soup, and once you master a few basic techniques, you can make a host of variations. Watch Martha as she makes a nourishing chicken soup, that's as easy as poaching a chicken. Then learn the “flavor-boosting” techniques that go into making minestrone.