What Meredith Hayden Can’t Cook Without

I received this balsamic vinegar in a gift basket a few years ago. Then I hunted it down and found out it’s actually the vinegar they use at all of my favorite Italian restaurants in New York, including Misi and Lilia. It is the most delicious balsamic vinegar I’ve ever tasted. It’s almost like a balsamic glaze, with a thicker viscosity than normal vinegar, which usually has a more waterlike consistency. This one is slightly syrupy, but it’s not quite a full glaze. It’s somewhere in between. It has become my go-to hostess gift. Instead of giving my friends a bottle of wine, I do this because it’s around the same price as a really nice bottle, but it lasts much longer and makes a bigger impact. I use it as a finishing vinegar. If I’m really feeling myself, I’ll use it for a balsamic vinaigrette, but since a vinaigrette calls for a large quantity, I typically use a middle-tier vinegar for that. However, I love to drizzle this on top of my salads as a little finishing note. I also love to drizzle it on top of roasted vegetables or burrata.

For the longest time, I had never really sat down and tasted the olive oils in my collection to decide which one I liked best; I just went on vibes. I remember one time I pulled out ten open bottles of olive oil from my cupboard and sampled all of them in a blind taste test with a little piece of bread. I was curious how different they were and which one would stand out. The Partanna olive oil wins. It doesn’t have the level of bitterness that a lot of other ones have. The grassy notes come through without being distracting. If you’ve ever made homemade aioli with 100 percent extra-virgin olive oil and tasted it, sometimes it tastes almost bitter. That’s the opposite of what I get with this. It’s just really clean on the palate while still being very flavorful. I usually buy the big tin — I believe it’s a gallon or so — and gradually pour it into a little canister on my countertop to use as an everyday olive oil. I’ll use it in dressings as well.

Just like with the olive oil, I had a day where I opened a bunch of cans of crushed tomatoes and tasted them straight. Starting with something you like the flavor of increases your odds of making a final dish you love. I just kept coming back to this brand. There are other canned tomatoes I love sourced from Italy, but I wouldn’t put those on the list because they aren’t consistently in stock. This has been my favorite reliable, any-grocery-store canned-tomato product. I always have it on hand to make pasta sauces, soups, and stews.

I love Maldon not only for its flavor, but for the texture it brings to super-simple dishes. I have a marinated Sungold-tomato recipe in my cookbook. Finishing those tomatoes with a heavy sprinkle of Maldon really gives it a crunch — almost like sprinkles on ice cream. It adds a satisfying mouthfeel. I also love what it does visually for a dish, like sprinkling it over a chocolate ganache where the flakes almost look like sparkles. It really satisfies all the senses. I’ve tried other finishing salts, but they’re too flaky, or too large, or too salty. This one has the perfect balance.

Similar to Maldon, Diamond Crystal is the perfect level of saltiness. In culinary school, we exclusively used it in all of our cooking. I’ve built up muscle memory with this particular salt. As most people know, the finer the granules, the saltier a teaspoon or tablespoon of any given salt will be. This is on the less salty side. I really like the taste, the quality, and the price point — it’s a great everyday salt. And its what most publishers and recipe developers use as their baseline. If you’re using something else, you have to adjust, but with Diamond Crystal, you can make the recipe as written.

These are my favorite pickles. I like all of Claussen’s, but my absolute favorites are the mini kosher dills. They’re a little bigger than a gherkin and a little smaller than a normal pickle, so they’re the perfect size. I think they come in the best-tasting brine. I actually saw a TikTok this week of someone giving them a shoutout, saying, “Nobody talks about how Claussen’s has the best pickle brine,” and I wholeheartedly agree. It has a clean, almost mineral finish. Some other pickle brands can taste muddy or busy, but this is a very clean, crisp, refreshing pickle. And I love that they come pre-chilled in the refrigerated section.

I wrote in my cookbook about how I know this ingredient may become a sign of the times — like truffle oil was for the ’90s and aughts — but I just love it. Traditional American food doesn’t have enough sweetness. We tend to rely on ingredients like ketchup to bring sweet notes. Incorporating sugar into my savory dishes has been a game-changer, and it really started with hot honey drizzled on pizza. That was my gateway to using this honey in other applications, like tomatoes. I love to drizzle it on tomatoes and roast them in the oven. And with the spiciness built into the honey, it automatically balances itself out.

A lot of us have that same bottle of Kikkoman soy sauce sitting in our refrigerator door that we haven’t replaced in years. Once I upgraded my soy-sauce game, I realized what a huge difference it makes. It’s good to have a fresh bottle and also a higher-quality bottle. Kikkoman tastes like it has one basic note. This has a much greater depth of flavor. It’s richer and more complex. It’s a great all-purpose marinade, especially for grilling season. I love brushing it on a steak with a little bit of brown sugar. That’s your perfect two-ingredient marinade right there.

This pasta just has the best mouthfeel. It does the best in terms of sauce-carrying capability, like it really captures much more sauce than your average pasta. But I also love the texture itself. It has such a nice bite to it, and it’s so satisfying. It’s like a combo of a spiral noodle and a rigatoni tubular noodle. There are lots of crevices. I’ve used it for pasta salad and pesto pasta, and just last week I used it for my Sungold-tomato pasta sauce. I find it works exceptionally well with pesto because that’s a thicker sauce, and you really need a sturdy noodle.