Hilary Wheelan Remley
Hilary Wheelan Remley focuses on how small tweaks and classic techniques can transform everyday dishes, using chef wisdom, pantry staples, and food nostalgia to make home cooking more satisfying. She writes food coverage for Yahoo that centers on practical upgrades to familiar recipes, often framed around one ingredient or method that makes a noticeable difference. Across her work for digital food publications, she returns to comfort foods, retro recipes, and culinary personalities, blending cooking instruction with light food history.
Secret ingredients and simple upgrades
Remley’s strongest through-line is the idea that a single, well-chosen ingredient or technique can dramatically improve a dish without complicating it. Her articles on pot roast, burgers, meatballs, and canned beans emphasize adding a spoonful, dollop, or creamy component to boost flavor and texture while keeping the recipe approachable. In pieces such as her guides to making the best pot roast with a pantry staple and giving canned refried beans “10x the flavor” with a Southern cooking ingredient, she zeroes in on small changes that deliver outsize results. Similar stories about unforgettable burgers via a savory spread or meatballs made “10x better” with a specific creamy addition follow the same pattern, highlighting one clear adjustment home cooks can adopt immediately. Even when she writes about baking, such as the impact of egg temperature on chocolate chip cookies, she maintains this focus on a single factor that shapes the outcome.
Chef-driven techniques for home cooks
Remley frequently uses well-known chefs as anchors for her advice, translating their preferences and methods into takeaways for everyday cooking. Articles on Alton Brown’s secret ingredient for pot roast, his approach to scrambled eggs, and his tip for achieving the fudgiest brownies frame chef techniques in clear, practical terms that readers can apply at home. Her coverage of Bobby Flay’s dislike of certain “fancy” burger upgrades uses his perspective to reinforce a back-to-basics philosophy, underscoring that restraint and balance can matter as much as creativity. A feature on Anne Burrell’s favorite drink shows the same interest in distilling a chef’s personal preference into a simple, reproducible recipe. Across these stories, she consistently positions culinary professionals as sources of tested tricks and philosophies, while her writing stays focused on how those ideas improve specific dishes rather than on chef profiles themselves.
Retro meals and food nostalgia
Nostalgia and retro food culture are another defining strand in Remley’s coverage. She writes about canned pineapples as the “main character” of a classic retro meal, spotlighting mid-century style cooking and the enduring appeal of convenience ingredients. Her piece on an innovative yet ultimately unsuccessful 1980s restaurant chain looks at fast-casual food concepts that were ahead of their time, tying menu ideas to broader shifts in dining habits. A story exploring how Marilyn Monroe was once named queen of an unexpected vegetable blends celebrity culture with the history of a food staple, showing her interest in the way cultural icons intersect with what people eat. These articles together suggest a consistent curiosity about how older trends, chains, and personalities shaped contemporary comfort food and the way we talk about it.
Food history, baking, and cocktails
Beyond her Yahoo work, Remley writes widely across food-focused outlets, with an emphasis on food history, baking, and cocktail crafting. Her author bios note that she began contributing to Chowhound in 2023 and that she particularly enjoys pieces that explore the stories behind recipes as well as the science and craft of baking and drinks. Baking-focused articles, such as those on brownie texture and cookie structure, align with this interest by looking at how small technical choices—like baking twice or adjusting ingredient temperature—change the final product. Cocktail-related coverage and drink features fit the same pattern, breaking down simple formulas that yield flavorful, consistent results. When combined with her nostalgic and chef-driven work, this broader portfolio points to a writer who treats recipes as entry points into technique, tradition, and taste, rather than as standalone instructions.
Taken together, Hilary Wheelan Remley’s body of work is defined by an accessible, tip-forward approach to food that centers on everyday cooking, comfort dishes, and the stories that make them memorable. She repeatedly returns to the idea that a modest change—a spoonful of a spread, a different ingredient, a slightly altered method—can elevate familiar recipes, and she uses chef insights and food history to explain why those changes matter. Her coverage spans practical guides, chef-focused pieces, and cultural food stories, but the common thread is clear: she writes to help readers get more flavor and enjoyment out of the food they already love to cook and eat.
4 more food journalists.
Al Culliton
Al Culliton is a writer and historian whose work focuses on the American cocktail as a living part of food and culture, using obscure, historic drinks to show how bars, spirits and cities change. They write reported features that trace how forgotten recipes move from old bar guides back onto modern menus, reconstructing how cocktails originally tasted and explaining how new builds reshape them. Their beat is revived classics, regional specialties and low-proof aperitifs, covered one drink at a time with close attention to specs, technique, glassware and service. They write about cocktails as cultural artifacts tied to specific communities and geographies, using single recipes to explore place, identity, regional traditions and diaspora histories. Across masthead work and recipe writing, they combine primary-source research with present-day reporting from working bars, in precise, accessible prose grounded in technical detail.
Alaina Chou
Alaina Chou stands out for rigorously testing food and kitchen products and turning those hands-on trials into clear shopping advice. She is a commerce writer at Bon Appétit and Epicurious, where she makes newsletters and shopping guides for home cooks. Her beat is food commerce, with coverage of air fryers, meal kits, protein powders, pepper grinders, electrolyte drinks, and cookbooks. She focuses on what is worth buying, how it performs, how it tastes, and how it fits daily routines and wellness. She also writes sale-driven lists and roundup pieces, and she has worked on Bon Appétit’s Feel Good Food Plan. Her reporting is practical, direct, and grounded in product testing.
Amadea Tanner
Amadea Tanner is a food journalist for Daily Meal whose distinct focus is food history, culinary nostalgia, and the way everyday dishes reveal broader cultural stories. She covers canned baked beans, boomer-era casseroles, cowboy trail food, and sailors’ rations to show how preservation, technology, labor, and survival shaped familiar staples. Her beat includes retro recipes, mid‑20th‑century home cooking, old-school ice cream flavors, and vintage cookbooks, treating them as records of household budgets and aspirations. She also reports on kitchen culture and domestic design, from breakfast alcoves and pie safes to milk doors and wall phones. Tanner investigates global dish origins and contested national claims in pieces on haggis and pavlova. Beyond Daily Meal, she has worked across food, travel, and sustainability, contributing to outlets including Atlas Obscura, Beau Monde Media, Yahoo, and Tasting Table.
Amanda Garrity
Amanda Garrity stands out for turning food, holidays, and family traditions into practical service stories that help readers plan specific celebrations. She is a lifestyle editor at TODAY.com and has more than seven years of experience as a lifestyle writer and editor, including five years on staff at Good Housekeeping, where she covered home, holidays, food, entertainment, and other lifestyle news. Her work also appears in consumer titles including Prevention, Men’s Health, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and Best Products. Her beat centers on event-based menus, holiday explainers, and classic TV and film guides, with clear, list-driven reporting that gives readers specific dates, recipes, viewing options, and simple background for family planning.