About Serious Eats

Who We Are

Serious Eats is an award-winning food and drink website visited by over 7 million hungry readers every month. Our audience comes to us for rigorously tested recipes, science-driven cooking techniques, robust equipment reviews, and stories that offer cultural and historical context to the foods we love to eat.

Since it was founded in 2006, Serious Eats’s editorial staff and contributors have included recipe developers, practiced home cooks, professional chefs, scientists, historians, journalists, photographers, novelists, and more. Members of our editorial team come from publications like America’s Test Kitchen, Food & Wine, The New York Times, and Saveur; most have also worked in the restaurant industry and/or attended culinary school. Across the board, we’re a group of passionate, opinionated food enthusiasts with a drive to dive deep, get things right, and do justice to any topic we take on.

Why So Serious?

In our case, serious doesn’t mean exclusive or highbrow. Our approach to our work in the kitchen is serious, but the results are for everyone, whether you’re a hardcore food nerd making a special-occasion feast or a casual, once-a-week cook who’s just looking for your next dinner. Likewise, we take seriously our responsibility to produce only food-related features that are useful, interesting, and accurate, but we’re as open to a tale of wacky experimentation with the American Girl doll cookbooks as we are to a reported story on fraud in the seafood industry.

Whatever your interests and cooking style, we’ve got a new recipe, technique, or thought-provoking perspective on food for you. We believe food can and should be a fun and engaging topic for everyone.

Our History

Serious Eats was founded in 2006 by author and journalist Ed Levine, who envisioned Serious Eats as a haven for enthusiastic and opinionated eaters just like him. Since then, Serious Eats has evolved from its days as a blog covering food trends and the restaurant industry into a full-fledged food resource best known for its recipe and instructional cooking content. You can learn more by checking out Grub Street’s Oral History of Serious Eats or learn more about founder Ed Levine’s journey in his book Serious Eater: A Food Lover's Perilous Quest for Pizza and Redemption

Serious Eats was acquired by People Inc. in September, 2020.

Recipe Development and Testing

At Serious Eats, our mission is to give home cooks and food lovers the skill sets and knowledge to make every meal memorable—with or without a recipe. This means that whether we’re publishing a recipe or writing a story about a specific dish or ingredient, we always want to answer the same fundamental questions: Where does it come from? How is it made, and why in that way? And crucially, who are the best people to answer or otherwise inform those questions?

Each of our recipes is methodically tested and tasted, over and over again, by our dedicated recipe developers and crosstesters, all of them skilled culinary professionals. We don’t publish a new Serious Eats recipe until we’re certain it’s the tastiest version out there, and we’re constantly updating our old recipes with new techniques and improvements based on further testing and reader suggestions.

You can read more about our editorial guidelines here.

Have feedback for us? You can reach our team at [email protected].

Product and Equipment Reviews

Looking for the best coffee maker or trying to figure out which multi-cooker to buy? Our reviews and recommendations of food products and kitchen equipment are conducted by culinary experts who test each piece of equipment or food item against its competitors. If we’re recommending it, you can be sure that it’s been thoroughly vetted by knowledgeable writers and editors who have actually used and abused the equipment they’re writing about.

Learn more about our review process here.

Awards, Press, and Publications

Serious Eats has won the IACP award for Best Culinary Website in 2018, 2022, 2023, and 2024, and has received James Beard Foundation Awards for Best Food Blog and Best Video Webcast. You can usually find articles published on Serious Eats in the pages of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s annual collection The Best American Food Writing.

Meet the Team

Daniel is the editorial director of Serious Eats, where he oversees the site's editorial direction, from recipes and product reviews to deep dives into cooking techniques and food culture. He joined Serious Eats in 2014, following roles as a food editor at Food & Wine and staff restaurant writer at Time Out New York. Before working in food media, Daniel cooked in several New York City restaurants, including Beppe and Aix, after an early start at Chanterelle. He also spent time working on organic farms across Europe, gaining firsthand experience with the ingredients and techniques that continue to inform his work.He is a two-time IACP nominee in instructional food writing and a four-time winner of the IACP award for Best Culinary Website.

Daniel Gritzer

Editorial Director

Amanda Suarez is the Associate Director, Visuals at Serious Eats. A photographer for the last 10 years, she was thrilled to join Serious Eats in February 2022. Prior to Serious Eats, Amanda worked as a Photo Editor at Shutterstock on the Offset Collection, the print edition of Muscle and Fitness Magazine, and at the travel startup Culture Trip.

Amanda Suarez

Associate Director, Visuals

Megan is the Associate Editorial Director of Serious Eats. She has worked as an editor and writer for the Kitchn, EatingWell, Epicurious, Zagat, Gourmet.com, AOL, TODAY.com, Simply Recipes, Consumer Reports, and more. She is the author of the book "East Coast Scoops: Finding the Region's Best Ice Cream Parlors, Gelaterias, and Custard Stands."

Megan O. Steintrager

Associate Editorial Director

Leah is the Senior Culinary Editor at Serious Eats, and was previously a recipe developer and editor with America's Test Kitchen for almost 9 years. She has edited over 20 cookbooks ranging in topic from bread baking to plant-based eating to outdoor grilling and so much more. Before her life as a culinary editor, she cooked in 5-star and Michelin-starred fine dining establishments from coast to coast such as The Herbfarm and Aubergine Restaurant at L'Auberge Carmel; she also treasures her time flipping burgers on flattops in her teenage years, and baking and boxing cookies and pies at a wonderful family-owned German bakery in her early professional life.

Leah Colins

Senior Culinary Editor

After graduating from the International Culinary Center, Genevieve cooked at Blue Hill at Stone Barns and Per Se. Prior to joining Serious Eats, she was an editor at Epicurious. She worked on the most recent edition of The Essential New York Times Cookbook with Amanda Hesser and has contributed to Food52, Bon Appétit, and Epicurious. She grew up between Toronto and Hong Kong and is a graduate of the University of St Andrews in Scotland. She currently lives in New York with her husband and two cats. You'll often find her at the farmers market with a tote bag full of vegetables or at home burying her nose in a wrinkled copy of Nigella Lawson's How to Eat.

Genevieve Yam

Senior Editor

Kelli Solomon

Senior Social Media Editor

Riddley Gemperlein-Schirm is the Associate Editorial Director for Serious Eats. She joined the team in November of 2021, bringing with her years of experience testing and writing about kitchen equipment. Prior to joining Serious Eats, she worked as the Tools Editor for The Kitchn and an Associate Editor for ATK Reviews. She's also held staff positions at EatingWell and Food52. Riddley’s work has appeared online for Cook’s Illustrated, Cook’s Country, The Kitchn, Apartment Therapy, Food52, and in print for Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country. Riddley received her BS in magazine journalism from Syracuse University.

Riddley Gemperlein-Schirm

Associate Editorial Director

Grace Kelly has been writing for various media outlets since 2015. She joined Serious Eats in 2022. Grace has written for the likes of Taste Magazine, Bon Appetit, and America’s Test Kitchen, among others. Prior to joining Serious Eats, Grace was an assistant editor on the America’s Test Kitchen Reviews Team where she tested a variety of products.

Grace Kelly

Senior Editor

Rochelle is an editor for Serious Eats and a novelist. She is based in Vermont and was a social media manager for Bon Appétit and Cooking Light Magazines.

Rochelle Bilow

Editor

Michelle Edelbaum leads the digital content strategy, editorial and social teams for EatingWell, Food & Wine, Liquor, Serious Eats and Cooking Light. Before that, she oversaw digital editorial teams for EatingWell and Allrecipes. Under her leadership, EatingWell has grown to attract millions of followers on social media and its website.

Michelle Edelbaum

Senior Vice President/Associate Group General Manager

Eric is the senior vice president of People Inc.'s Food + Drink group. Before joining People Inc. in 2013, Eric spent 10 years working in lifestyle media at Condé Nast, where he led operations and finance for various brands including Epicurious, Gourmet, and Brides.com.Prior to Conde Nast, he worked in the business department at the New York Press, as well as in commercial and TV production.Eric is an avid home cook and lover of all things food-related. Although not professionally trained as a chef, he has taken dozens of recreational cooking classes. His current food obsession is perfecting his sourdough to get that perfect light and airy crumb with a dark and crispy crust.

Eric Handelsman

Senior Vice President, People Inc. Food + Drink

Ed founded Serious Eats in 2006 and is the creator, host, writer, and co-producer of the podcast Special Sauce with Ed Levine. In 2016 he was inducted into the James Beard Foundation's Who's Who of Food & Beverage in America. He published a memoir (one of seven books he's authored or co-authored), Serious Eater: One Man's Perilous Quest for Pizza and Redemption (Penguin Random House) in 2019. In writing the book Pizza: A Slice of Heaven, he ate 1,000 slices of pizza in one year.

Before founding Serious Eats in 2006 he was a regular contributor to the New York Times Food Section. He has also written for the NYT Magazine, GQ, and Rolling Stone, among many other publications.

Ed Levine

Founder

Kenji is the former culinary director for Serious Eats and a current culinary consultant for the site. He is also a New York Times food columnist, the author of The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science (a James Beard Award winner), the children’s book Every Night is Pizza Night, and an upcoming book all about cooking in a wok, which will be released by W. W. Norton in March of 2022. He resides in Seattle with his family.

Kenji was a senior editor at Cook’s Illustrated magazine before joining Serious Eats to develop the site’s recipe program in 2009. In 2017 he opened Wursthall, a family-friendly German-inspired beer hall on San Mateo, California. He's been a New York Times columnist since 2019 and has appeared in a range of cooking programs on TV and online. In 2020 he started a cooking show called “Kenji’s Cooking Show” on YouTube.

J. Kenji López-Alt

Culinary Consultant

Stella Parks is a CIA-trained baking nerd and pastry wizard, dubbed one of America's Best New Pastry Chefs by Food & Wine. She's also the James Beard Award–winning cookbook author of BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts, a New York Times best-seller. When not in the kitchen, Stella spends most of her time polishing Star Trek quotes, re-watching Battlestar Galactica, and playing video games. Stella served as the pastry editor at Serious Eats from 2016 to 2019.

Stella Parks

Editor Emeritus

Our Commitment to Inclusion

Serious Eats is committed to making our brand more inclusive and elevating all voices. Our goal is to provide trustworthy, inspirational, and achievable ideas for all home cooks. We believe it is important to showcase an array of perspectives and aspire to work with content creators (writers, videographers, photographers, and talent) from varied backgrounds across platforms. We regularly update our existing, highly trafficked articles, and will continue to monitor and remediate content through a lens of inclusivity.

If you have come across a recipe or an article in need of review, please reach out to us at [email protected].

Commenting Policy

Serious Eats aims to build a welcoming, inclusive community of readers and foster lively but friendly conversations about the content we publish. To help ensure that comments are useful, interesting, and respectful to other readers, the following types of content are prohibited:

Threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, or libelous material
Derogatory, hateful, or offensive statements about an individual or a group
Intentionally misleading statements or statements the commenter knows to be false
Advertisements for or offers to sell or buy any product or service, or comments that are intended primarily for self-promotion or promotion of third-party goods and services
Material that infringes copyright
Material that is in breach of the law
Any content that is irrelevant to the particular article or recipe to which the comment is being posted

If Serious Eats sees or receives notice that a comment post is not in keeping with the above terms and conditions or the intended use of our comments sections, we reserve the right to remove that comment posting. The removal of any comment shall be solely at the discretion of Serious Eats. Repeated or serious violations of these terms and conditions by a user may result in the user being banned from all comments sections on Serious Eats.

As noted above, intentionally false or misleading statements are prohibited; however, Serious Eats accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of information posted in the comments.

If you have come across comments in violation of our policy, please reach out to us at [email protected].

About People Inc.

People Inc. is the largest digital and print publisher in America. From mobile to magazines, nearly 200 million people trust us to help them make decisions, take action, and find inspiration. People Inc.'s over 50 iconic brands include PEOPLE, Better Homes & Gardens, Verywell, FOOD & WINE, The Spruce, Allrecipes, Byrdie, REAL SIMPLE, Investopedia, Southern Living and more.

People Inc. Press

Read about People Inc. and our family of brands in the news.

Meet Our Senior Management Team

Learn more about the team behind People Inc. here.

Contact Us

Have something you’d like to let us know? Whether you have a comment on a recipe or an idea to share, we welcome your feedback at [email protected].

For press inquiries, email us at [email protected].

Our Archive

We regularly review the quality of our library and periodically remove from our site articles and recipes that no longer conform to our current editorial standards. If there’s an article or recipe that you’re seeking on Serious Eats and can no longer find, please email us at [email protected] and we will do our best to track down an archival copy for you.

Work With Us

Job openings regularly become available Join our team of top-notch editors, designers, photographers, and others.

View job openings.

Write for Us

We’re always looking for new writers, recipe developers, equipment reviewers, and photographers to join our team of contributors. We’re currently accepting pitches for recipes, technique-driven service articles, and features like food science, personal essays, and food histories. Please submit pitches or inquire about potential assignments by sharing a short bio and your relevant experience in an email to [email protected]. Features pitches should follow our pitch guidelines and include any relevant clips or demonstrations of writing skill and/or expertise. You can read more about our editorial guidelines here.

We are not currently accepting pitches for restaurant reviews or dining out roundups, nor do we accept unsolicited guest posts or articles.

Advertise With Us

Serious Eats offers the highest value to advertisers through a combination of scale, credibility, and intent. Interested in advertising with us? Email us at [email protected] or check out our media kit to learn more.