Laurel Randolph
Laurel Randolph focuses on practical, tested home cooking guidance that helps everyday cooks use their kitchens with confidence. She writes about food, appliances, and ingredients, turning specific techniques into clear, step-by-step advice. As a food writer, cookbook author, and recipe developer at Insider and across other food publications, her work combines detailed kitchen know-how with approachable recipes and tips.
Kitchen appliances and pressure-cooker know-how
Randolph’s Insider coverage includes deep, service-driven explainers on how to use electric pressure cookers and similar appliances safely and effectively. She breaks down features like the Instant Pot yogurt setting into simple actions, walking readers through what each button does and how long each stage should take. In her guide to natural versus quick release, she explains both methods in plain language and links them directly to texture, timing, and safety outcomes for common dishes.
When the appliance displays a burn warning, she offers troubleshooting steps and checks readers can perform immediately, drawing on expert advice to make the guidance precise and reliable.
Her appliance coverage stays close to the realities of everyday cooking. She focuses on what happens when things go wrong, such as food sticking to the bottom of the pot or insufficient liquid causing an error message. Instructions are practical rather than theoretical, with attention to small details like gasket placement, lid components, and how to confirm that everything is correctly assembled before cooking.
This work positions her as a go-to explainer for readers who use popular countertop appliances but want clear, calm direction when they run into problems.
Food safety, storage, and ingredient choice
Randolph regularly writes about food safety and storage, turning common kitchen questions into precise, actionable guides. In her piece on storing different types of onions, she outlines how long each variety lasts and the conditions that help them keep their quality, giving readers rules they can use when planning meals and stocking their pantry. A companion article on eggs explains how to tell whether eggs in the refrigerator are still good to eat, walking through freshness tests and shelf-life considerations in straightforward terms.
These stories show her focus on giving non-specialist readers the confidence to judge ingredient quality and safety themselves.
She also covers basic techniques that support crisp, fresh results, such as blanching green beans in a short, timed process. The instructions emphasize speed, temperature, and texture, underscoring how small technique adjustments change the final dish.
Beyond storage and safety, her work includes ingredient guidance driven by expert voices, such as a feature on the best potatoes for potato salad that gathers recommendations from chefs and ties each variety to specific texture and flavor outcomes.[Article: The Best Potatoes for Potato Salad, According to Chefs - Yahoo Lifestyle Australia] Across these pieces, she returns to simple questions - how long, which variety, what method - and answers them with careful detail rather than broad generalities.
Cookbooks, recipes, and pop culture food writing
Alongside her journalism, Randolph has authored multiple cookbooks, including work inspired by The Simpsons, and one of her titles has ranked among the top-selling cookbooks in 2017. This background informs her recipe-driven assignments, where she blends tested processes with an accessible tone. Her freelance portfolio spans food-focused outlets such as EatingWell, Food52, The Spruce Eats, Paste Magazine, Serious Eats, Eaten Magazine, and Los Angeles Magazine, as well as recipe-focused sites and brand clients. Across these venues she works as a writer, editor, and recipe developer, contributing both original dishes and editorial shaping of others’ recipes.
Randolph brings more than 15 years of freelance writing, editing, and recipe-testing experience to her work. Her own site and projects show an interest in food culture and pop culture as much as in technique, including a long-running Simpsons food blog where she recreates dishes from the show with detailed testing. She describes her expertise as spanning home cooking, food, home, shopping and products, and food culture, which aligns with the blend of practical kitchen coverage and product-oriented guidance in her assignments.
The combination of appliance know-how, safety-focused service pieces, and pop culture–inflected recipe work gives her a distinct profile within food journalism: a writer whose coverage is grounded in hands-on cooking and clear directions but open to playful, themed projects when the subject calls for it.
4 more food journalists.
Aaron Guerrero
Aaron Guerrero is head of the digital department at Miami’s Community Newspapers, where he pairs restaurant coverage with community-facing content. He focuses on how Miami-area restaurants evolve, celebrate, and experiment through new concepts, menus, and neighborhood-focused dining experiences. He reports on restaurant openings, such as an Italian food hall at Plaza Coral Gables, new executive lunch menus, and wood-fired Latin steakhouse brunches, explaining what sets each venue apart. He also covers awards, like a Wine Spectator honor for an Italian chophouse, and events that turn dining rooms into social hubs. His bylines extend to features on sports-themed gatherings, civic renamings, local visits to restaurant programs, sponsored community pieces, and official notices. His work is straightforward and descriptive, helping readers and local businesses connect around specific openings, promotions, and dining experiences.
Aarron Fleming
Aarron Fleming reports on how courts, jails and public safety systems work over time. He is a reporter at The Daily Memphian covering public safety, the local court system, suburban news and business developments in North Mississippi. His work follows trials, sentencing, appeals, plea deals and judicial decisions, including major cases tied to Tyre Nichols and rapper Young Dolph. He also covers jail conditions, inmate deaths, crime data, prosecution units, trafficking, shootings and public-order incidents. His suburban reporting examines cannabis businesses, restaurant openings and how commercial growth affects communities such as Olive Branch. Fleming previously covered education in the same newsroom. He uses clear, unadorned prose to explain legal steps, deadlines, institutional problems and the political, commercial and community effects of public-safety decisions.
Alana Al-Hatlani
Alana Al-Hatlani is a food writer and editor who treats recipes, restaurants, and food features as ways to explore culture, community, and the business of eating. She works on the food team at Southern Living, overseeing and contributing to print recipes and reported features. Her pastry-focused, restaurant-tested perspective comes from time in restaurant and bakery kitchens. She helps plan and write monthly food packages, including “The South’s Most Treasured Desserts,” and wrote “8 Summer Recipes Our Editors Make Every Year.” She also writes recipe tips, ingredient explainers, restaurant guides, and reported stories about workers, owners, and communities. Her subjects include regional specialties, dining scenes, kitchen basics, and food industries. Her work has appeared with OpenTable and Yahoo. She reports on the ground, explains techniques clearly, and connects specific dishes and places to larger stories about food and livelihood.
Alana Edgin
Alana Edgin is a business reporter whose strongest focus is food, restaurants and consumer-facing businesses. She works at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and has also had work syndicated across AOL and Yahoo News. She covers new openings, closings, expansions and franchise growth, along with retail, health, services, corporate news, data incidents, business support programs and sponsorships. Her reporting includes detailed roundups of new restaurants and businesses, coverage of El Pollo Loco’s opening, and stories on burger trucks, dessert shops, Vietnamese sandwich restaurants and gourmet markets. She also contributes to food and drink reviews, including fall coffee and jerky comparisons. Edgin reports with practical “what, when, where” details, structured comparisons and clear explanations of how offers, partnerships and business changes affect consumers and the local economy.