J. Kenji López-Alt’s Secret Ingredient

Good morning. J. Kenji López-Alt is back in our pages this week with a smart look at his favorite secret ingredient: mayonnaise. You can smear it on fish to encourage browning in the pan; you have to try it on the exterior of a grilled cheese sandwich, for similar reasons. Kenji uses mayonnaise on steaks cooked sous-vide, so that when he sautés them in a pan they develop the most marvelous crusts. And he cuts mayonnaise with all sorts of concoctions to make mighty marinades — with teriyaki sauce, curry paste, pesto, barbecue sauce. Try his mayo-marinated chicken with chimichurri (above) for dinner tonight, and you may find yourself a convert.

Or just fly blind as we do every Wednesday in this space, no-recipe style, cooking off the mere suggestion: mayonnaise and something else as a marinade, followed by high heat.

For instance, cubes of firm tofu tossed in a marinade of mayonnaise, soy sauce, gochujang, sesame oil and slivered garlic. Remove the tofu from the marinade, then brown the pieces in a nonstick pan on both sides. Add the remaining marinade, perhaps with a splash of water to thin it, to make a sauce, let it heat through, then garnish it all with sliced scallions and a two-fingered pinch of sesame seeds.

That’s really good.

Mayonnaise is a hard pass for some of our number, sadly. (There’s no need to tell anyone that it’s in the dish if you cook it — the mayonnaise doesn’t taste of mayonnaise in this application, but delivers texture and fat instead.) If that’s the case for you, maybe these citrus-glazed pork loin chops with gingery bok choy would be better.

Alternatively, you could make pressure cooker black bean soup. You could make a party board. Or sheet-pan sausage Parm with garlicky broccoli.

Is it cold now at night, where you stay? I like these five-star braises for dinner. Is it temperate and nice? Yucatán shrimp with limes and toasted bread is your answer, with an ice-flecked beer.