Now That's A Mouthful

There are lots of ways to shortcut a recipe that help you save time, and maybe even streamline your prep.  We just don’t want to sacrifice flavor or the end result by doing that.  We’ve got some ideas, tips and even ingredients to share that will help short cut recipes so you can still have those delicious meals but in less time.

This month’s group of recipes tackles some pretty tough baking recipes – long and complex with magnificent results.  We took a look at different ways to use matzo as an ingredient and then looked at cultural cuisine through two VERY different lenses. First, celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson’s Harlem melting pot of fusion flavors and blogger Robyn Stone’s quick easy spins on Southern home-cooking classics.  All of these recipes easily passed our muster, though not all without quite a bit of commentary from our testing community.

This month’s group of recipes tackles some pretty tough baking recipes – long and complex with magnificent results.  We took a look at different ways to use matzo as an ingredient and then looked at cultural cuisine through two VERY different lenses. First, celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson’s Harlem melting pot of fusion flavors and blogger Robyn Stone’s quick easy spins on Southern home-cooking classics.  All of these recipes easily passed our muster, though not all without quite a bit of commentary from our testing community.

We talk about kitchen gadgets almost every week, but what about our small electrics?  There are so many!  And, so many that do the same or similar job… or do they?  We’ll look at hand mixers and stand mixers and food processor and blenders.  Do we need them all?  Where do we store all this stuff?  And, how do they save us time?

Mise en place or “everything in its place” is the first step to any recipe – get everything out and measured and ready to go.  This helps set you up for success in the cooking process.  There are other benefits to mise en place, too.  Learn what they are what our testers have to say about working through a recipe.

Fat is the vehicle to get flavor across our taste buds.  We tested a lot of recipes with bacon and bacon fat is one of the most flavorful fats out there.  Learn what you can do with this delicious fat, how to clarify it so you can keep it on hand!

We cooked from a book designed to help ANYONE become a better cook and from a book intending to change the way we think about cooking in our homes.  Then, we tackled some small-batch desserts that had most of our testers saying… this is small batch?!  We learned a lot, asked a lot of questions and, as usual, our testers had a lot to say about what we were cooking!

There are some tastes and flavors that we seem to gravitate toward and want to include in our food whether they’re included in the recipe or not.  This episode we’ll focus on the taste of sweet:  where we miss it, where we want to add it, and how to do it to keep all the flavors in balance.

One of the most versatile pans in our kitchen is cast iron.  As much as they are versatile and functional, many of them have stories and history attached.  Do you have one?  Where did you get it?  What do you cook in it?

Who says recipes have to be long and wordy?  Some of our most delicious meals are those that don’t require a lot of ingredients or a lot of effort.  We cooked three very simple recipes from a very simple little cookbook with great results!

Miso – as an ingredient – frequently appears in recipes, and yet it seems to be an ingredient a lot of people haven’t cooked with.  Miso isn’t a new or newly popularized ingredient, though we have had trouble finding it.  Learn where to look for miso, and get some great tips and recipes on what to do with that miso once you have it.

We cooked from a range of cookbooks this round.  We learned a lot, asked a lot of questions and had a lot to say about what we were cooking!

Sauce-making is as easy as adding a little water and some herbs to a pan.  Really?  Yes, Really.  We’ve got one great recipe to share that makes its own sauce in the pot, and a couple of great ideas how to turn those brown bits in the bottom of your pan into a delicious little pan sauce.  Just like a pro.

It seems in today’s modern recipes, we’re required to make more than just one trip to more than just one grocery store or market.  What are these strange and difficult to find ingredients?  And how are we supposed to know where to find them if we don’t know what they are???

We used a lot of dough in our testing – for breads, for buns, and for dumplings, like pierogis!  Some testers had trouble, and some did not.  Whether you are a seasoned veteran or making your first attempt at a homemade dough, there’s a lot to think about.  So how do we level the playing field and give ourselves the best chance for success when our recipe calls on us to make a dough?

From bread doughs and pasta doughs to roasts and braises; to breaking down fresh ingredients so we can cook them up; slow-cooking and sous vide…, some of our recipes require a lot of our time.  What makes a cook want to invest so much time on a recipe, or for that matter, in the kitchen?  Is the investment ultimately worth it?

Time for clean, healthy eating and our testing roster was filled with 4 different salads. This got us wondering: what really makes a great salad?

Our testing community has been busy cooking from a number of cookbooks and providing insight into their cooking. Each month we recap our testing experience: find out what we are cooking from – what recipes we loved, what we learned and what sent us back into the kitchen in search of answers.

Based on the feedback we receive from our Testing Community, we’ve noticed that many of our testers are critical of the approach and voice of the recipes. In this episode we discuss who writes cookbooks these days and why they are all so different.

If we learned anything from our first round of testing it’s that we LOVE to change or tweak recipes! So we ask, what makes for a good recipe? Are there any recipes that you don’t have to change? Why change it? How do you know to change it? Why write recipes if they’re going to be changed anyway?