Amanda McClements is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance food writer and the blogger behind Metrocurean.

Sweet or salty?

Salty, all day, every day. Can you pickle your insides?

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?

Pork, mostly bacon and sausage. Garlic would be a close second. When I read a recipe, I typically double or triple whatever the amount of garlic it calls for.

What’s the cooking sound you most love?

Popcorn pushing the lid off a heavy pot.

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Nancie McDermott is a food writer and cooking teacher specializing in the cuisines of Southeast Asia. Find out more about Nancie at her website or her brand-new blog. You can find some of Nancie’s recipes online at Cookthink.com.

Sweet or salty?

Salty/Sweet. They’re friends.

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?

Fish sauce, palm sugar, cilantro, wild lime leaves, eggs, butter and vanilla (not all at once in the same dish).

What’s the cooking sound you most love?

Sizzle

What’s your favorite cooking smell?

It’s a tie between jasmine rice and bread; that little aroma-puff released when they’re just about done.

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Emily Franklin’s most recent book is Too Many Cooks: Kitchen Adventures with 1 Mom, 4 Kids, and 102 Recipes. Learn more about Emily at her website. You can find some of Emily’s recipes here.

Sweet or salty?

Sweet.

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?

Eggs, salt, sugar, olive oil.

What’s the cooking sound you most love?

The pop that indicated the jams or pickles I’ve canned have been properly sealed — my grandma Bev calls it singing.

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Jeanne Kelley is a food writer, recipe developer and food stylist based in Los Angeles and the author of Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes: Recipes from a Modern Kitchen Garden. You can find some of her recipes here. Find out more about Jeanne on her website, Jeanne Kelley Kitchen.

Sweet or salty?

Both, and at the same time.

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?

Olive oil, onions, garlic, sea salt, fresh herbs, mild chili flakes

What’s the cooking sound you most love?

Something sizzling in a skillet or on the griddle of my very old black Viking.

What’s your favorite cooking smell?

Chocolate-chip cookies, baking in the oven.

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Béatrice Peltre is the Boston-based French blogger, photographer and food stylist behind La Tartine Gourmande.

Sweet or salty?

Salty, and anything that involves dark chocolate.

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?

Olive oil, all kind of fresh herbs, lemon, zucchini, carrots — all sorts of vegetables, in fact.

What’s the cooking sound you most love?

The sound of sautéed vegetables.

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Brys Stephens is the co-founder of Cookthink.

Sweet or salty?

Salty. Not sweet.

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?

Whole wheat pasta, hearty greens like kale, all kinds of beans, sausages, parmesan, soy sauce, ginger.

What’s the cooking sound you most love?

The quiet calm (and accompanying hunger) when a dish goes onto the plate after a busy cooking session.

Brys cooking at home in Washington, D.C.

What’s your favorite cooking smell?

Garlic and cured meats/sausages gently sizzling in olive oil.

What are the qualities you most admire in a dish?

I like everyday, one-pot dishes that are proportionally mostly vegetables with a little meat or cheese, and balance of taste — sweet, salt, bitter, sour and umami — with a lean toward bitter and sour over salty and sweet.

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An Israeli chef with a small empire of celebrated London gourmet take-out shops that bear his name, Yotam Ottolenghi writes the weekly column The new vegetarian in the Guardian and is co-author with Sami Tamimi of Ottolenghi: The Cookbook. Find out more about Yotam and check out some of his recipes at www.ottolenghi.co.uk.

Sweet or salty?

Salt is an addiction. Sugar I only crave rarely.

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?

Coriander, lemon, aubergine, yogurt, pasta, the list is long.

What’s the cooking sound you most love?

A thick sauce bubbling, like béchamel or crème pâtissière.

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Lucy Vanel is an American who lives in Lyon, France and is the blogger behind Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook.

Sweet or salty?

I spend a lot more time thinking about savory things than sweet things, that’s for sure. My sweet tooth is capricious — during short times that I think might be related to body chemistry, sweets are all I can think about, but other times I ignore them. I can always appreciate a meal ending with a cheese plate and skip dessert, as long as the cheese plate’s good.

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?

Throughout the year, the main ingredients in my cooking change a lot. But when I think about my larder, the place that I refill with ingredients I use all the time, I always keep: salt, duck fat, onions, olive oil, garlic, butter, my own spice mix, sugar, wine, wild herbs that I have picked on walks in the country and dried in my kitchen, flour, eggs, lentils, bacon, crème fraîche, the list goes on.

What’s the cooking sound you most love?

I have been paying a lot of attention to sounds in the kitchen these days. I love chopping sounds, the sizzle and bubble. The sound of a sharp knife slicing through meat. The sound a dry measuring cup makes when you’re leveling off the flour, the mortar and pestle pounding garlic and herbs. Knife against cutting board. A rolling boil.

What’s your favorite cooking smell?

There’s something about fresh herbs that you’ve rubbed between your fingers that I love.

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Cathy Hong-Praslick is the blogger behind A Blithe Palate.

Sweet or salty?

Salty. I love the first few bites of a dessert but then I lose interest. Savory foods on the other hand…

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?

Onions, garlic and leeks seem to make their way into a lot of main dishes as do your standard seasonings. For desserts, bittersweet chocolate gets a big workout in our house.

What’s the cooking sound you most love?

My son playing with his whisk and bowl on the floor while I’m cooking in the kitchen.

What’s your favorite cooking smell?

Bacon frying.

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Celebrity chef Tyler Florence is a Food Network veteran of 10 years with shows Food 911, How to Boil Water and Tyler’s Ultimate. The author of three cookbooks, Tyler Florence’s Real Kitchen, Eat This Book and Tyler’s Ultimate, he’s also partnering with Macy’s for the Macy’s Keep it Cooking Sweepstakes.

Sweet or salty?

Salty

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?

Salt or olive oil.

What’s the cooking sound you most love?

The sizzle of bacon fat.

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