An Essential Guide to Spices: Origin, History, and Use in Cooking

Shallots are a popular ingredient, especially in French cooking. Cooking a recipe at home that needs a shallot that is not in your kitchen can be very frustrating.  We have a list of shallot substitutes that aren’t short on flavour and will work in your cooking. But before we look at the substitutes, let’s first …

There are so many cuts of steak out there that it can be tough to keep them all separated. How do you tell one from the other? There are a few ways you can tell the difference- which part of the cow they come from, how they are cooked, how tough or tender they are, …

As a self-proclaimed chilli enthusiast and a former chef who’s turned my experiences into a food blog, I’ve been lucky to play around with a diverse mix of ingredients.  Today, I want to talk about – Cherry Peppers. What are Cherry Peppers? First, let’s start with some facts!  Cherry Peppers aren’t grown in cherry trees …

Here I am, sitting in my kitchen, thinking of a dish I’d never thought I’d cook — Vegan Spam. And you know what? It’s pretty good. It’s not only healthy, but it’s also delicious and surprisingly easy to make. As a dedicated foodie, I always enjoy experimenting with vegan alternatives; this vegan Spam is the …

Well, hello there!  Fancy a delicious, meaty treat that makes you want to lick your fingers clean?  Then you’re talking about ribs, one of the best comfort foods.  Before we start, let’s tackle a bone of contention that often pops up in barbecue debates: Baby Back Vs Spare Ribs.  As a confessed carnivore and an Englishman hungry …

Cilantro is a herb that has immense health benefits. It has vitamins A, C, and K. It can be  used as a garnish or as an ingredient in various dishes. Cilantro has a high amount of water content. If kept outside, the warm air will absorb moisture from the cilantro. That is why cilantro wilts …

Are you looking for substitutes for coconut oil? Coconut oil is a popular choice in cooking, especially vegan baking, as a butter substitute.  Its solid state at room temperature makes it an excellent butter replacement, given their similar properties.  When Do You Need a Substitute? However, whether due to allergies, taste preferences, or not having …

Today, I’ll share how to fold a burrito with an effective technique.  Do you ever struggle with burrito tears or spillage? Well, this guide is for you. All it takes are three key pointers to remember and a little bit of practice. To kick things off, let’s chat about the tortilla.  Tortillas Selecting fresh flour tortillas …

As a staple food in pantries around the world, bananas are enjoyed in everything from cereal bowls and smoothies to breads and puddings. Like many people, I grab a bunch of bananas nearly every time I make a grocery run. However, it seems like in just a blink of an eye my bananas are already …

Pasta is the ultimate crowd pleaser. Whether you are trying to impress your dinner guests or struggling to feed your picky eater, you can count on it to win them all. It’s comforting, satisfying, and tasty. You can make an extravagant dish by serving it with a clam sauce or keep things simple with an …

The heat is on, and summer is here! Summer food trends always tend to be more experimental than most, which is why you can always count on hearing about the new “it” food of upcoming years during this time of year. So, what’s hot in the kitchen during the hottest season of the year? We …

Freezing is one of the most commonly used conventional food preservation methods domestically and in the food industry. The term “freezing” simply depicts a procedure that lowers food temperature to a level below its freezing point. Similarly, the word “frozen” refers to the state in which food is held after it has been “thawed,”; when …

Bacon stores beautifully in the freezer, staying fresh for months until you are finally ready to use it. A lot of times, I will buy bacon when I shop for groceries, with no intent of using it right away. Bacon doesn’t have much of a shelf life when it is refrigerated, but it can last …

We all know you’re supposed to thaw out large cut of meat before you try to cook it. That massive ham or full turkey won’t cook very well when it is still frozen, so you are supposed to thaw it out ahead of time rather than try to cook it from frozen. Great if you …

Spring rolls should be baked in the oven at 425°F for around 25 minutes.  Turning once during the cooking process. I like to find healthy ways to make foods that are often considered unhealthy or just make slight changes to some dishes to make them a little healthier. If you love Chinese food you can …

Hake is a simple whitefish that’s similar to cod. If you’ve had cod before, hake fish is just a little sweeter. This fish will flake easily, and when it’s cooked, it has a meaty texture, and it firms up very well. I want to share with you how to bake hake fish and give you …

I’m back with another air fryer recipe, and this time with frying frozen perogies. This potato dish is absolutely one of my favorite ways to have spuds, and I just love putting different toppings on each of my perogies when I serve them up. They offer a lot of versatility, and it’s super easy to …

If you’re looking for a tasty and simple recipe for pumpkin gnocchi, then you’ve come to the right place. This recipe is made with mashed potatoes, flour, and egg. It’s great with a sage brown butter sauce and can easily be made vegan. Read on for the recipe and a step-by-step guide! You’ll be making …

Egg noodles cook very quickly and simply and can be turned into a wide range of different pasta dishes or stir fries. As easy as egg noodles are to cook, you want to be careful about overcooking them or not cooking them long enough. If not cooked properly, egg noodles will have a bite or …

Tuna, pasta, and salad. Classic favorite picnic and mealtime staples. How about we combine them all for a bowl of downright comfort and deliciousness? Craving for a salad that is not green and bland? Let’s make a tuna pasta salad! With this recipe, you can eat healthy while still having a fresh and exciting, flavorful …

Peeling your potatoes before baking them changes up the texture considerably. Some people don’t care for the tough, fibrous skin, while others like it just fine and think it adds a little extra something to their potato dishes. When baking potatoes without the skin, you may need to adjust the cook time and prep the …

When corn is in season, you may be left with more of it than you can use right away. You don’t want the corn to go to waste, so the solution is to freeze corn until you are ready to make use of it. You can often buy big bags of corn on the cob …

When you’re looking for a dessert without a lot of flour in it, flan is an obvious choice. Delicate flan can be served hot or cold, making it a great anytime dessert for making your day just a little sweeter. Leche flan works well as a dessert for any kind of meal or as a …

Italian sausage is a juicy, flavorful sausage that can be added to rice and bean dishes as well as served up on its own as part of a robust breakfast. I like mine dry fried on the stove in a skillet, but there are lots of ways to use this meat, and I want to …

There are plenty of factors that go into creating the perfect homemade bread- the ingredients you use, the method for making the bread, and the temperature you cook the bread at. All of these determine how the bread will turn out, and the temperature may be more important than you think. If the temperature is …

You may have seen date sugar on store shelves and wondered what it’s used for and if it can make a good substitute for granulated white or brown sugar. It’s definitely more expensive than those standard sugars, but is it something you can use in your baking as a white or brown sugar substitute? What …

If you have a can of tuna and a bag of pasta and you want a simple, quick dish to make, try putting together a delicious pan of tuna pasta bake. It cooks in about 15 minutes and will probably please the entire family. How to Layer Pasta Bake This is a dish where layering …

If you are trying to be healthy and cut down on how much oil you are using in your cooking, you may be interested in trying to cook chicken without oil. Instead of fried, fattening chicken, you can prepare something that is leaner and healthier but still tasty. Let me share with you some methods …

A good chili doesn’t just contain the right kind of beans but it also has beans that are cooked properly. They shouldn’t be too soft or too hard. Beans that have been cooked too long will be oversoft and make more of a paste, giving the chili a poor texture. Beans that are not cooked …

For an easy African dish, try the Nigerian rice entree jollof rice. It’s made with a few veggies and spices, and it’s an incredibly flavorful way to make rice that goes really well with baked or fried chicken. What Is Jollof Rice? There are actually a couple different kinds of jollof rice, particularly Nigerian and …

If you’ve ever seen eel for sale in your grocery or seafood market, you may have shied away from it because you thought it was slimy and disgusting or you simply didn’t know how to cook eel. If you’ve never had to eel before, once you cook it, you’ll notice it has a taste that’s …

Making great fajitas doesn’t just take quality chicken or beef. You also need the right veggies cooked well. When you cook vegetables for fajitas, you want to make sure that they’re flavorful and not overcooked or undercooked. The vegetables should add to the dish, enhancing the flavors and textures, and I’ll show you how to …

While rhubarb is pretty tart on its own, you can season it to make it sweeter and more palatable. It’s not a vegetable you see used in dishes very often, with the most famous rhubarb dish being rhubarb pie. I will share with you my different methods to cook rhubarb some ideas of what you …

Smoked pork belly is the kind of food that you want to serve at a big get-together or feast. I found that even people who aren’t fans of pork really like it, and it’s a great food to serve as part of a large spread. No matter what you serve it with, though, smoke pork …

If you want try an intimidating meat to prepare, try to cook octopus. There are a lot of different methods available online for how to cook octopus, but the problem is that a lot of people simply don’t know how. I wouldn’t say it’s a difficult meat to work with, but you do need to …

Pickle salsa adds a little extra crunch to traditional salsa, also giving it some additional green color for a special kind of Latino condiment. What Is Pickle Salsa? It combines the crunchiness and sour flavor of dill pickles (are pickles healthy?) with the fresh, slightly spicy tomato-based salsa dip. You might never have thought about …

Have you ever eaten a slightly tough, crunchy cornbread and wondered what makes it so different from soft, fluffy traditional cornbread? You might have been enjoying what is known as hot water cornbread, and it’s a Southern United States staple that is popular throughout much of that region. What Is Hot Water Cornbread? This is …

If you want to take a traditional breakfast or dinner staple like biscuits and change things up a bit, then I have a treat for you today. Cinnamon biscuits are easy to make and taste so good. They are bursting with the flavor of butter and cinnamon and are delightfully delicious. I want to share …

Do you like to mix a little sweetness into your meals to liven them up? Do you sometimes have dessert before your meal? Met too, which is why I want to tell you about delicious molasses bread. It’s very reminiscent of whole wheat bread but sweeter and not as healthy. What Is Molasses Bread? This …

Have you ever had the Hawaiian food manapua and wanted to learn how to make it yourself? This traditional dish can we make from scratch at home, and it’s a great way to use leftover bread dough and barbecue pork. What Is Manapua? This dish is essentially a dinner roll that’s filled with steaming hot …

How do you take fresh or frozen fruit and turn it into ice cream bars, pie filling, topping and other uses? You’ll need to turn it into fruit puree first of all, and it’s a process that is more than just sticking fruit in the blender. Traditional fruit puree is made from fruit that has …

There are several ways you could grind meat, depending on what kind of equipment you have. I’ll show you a few methods for how to grind meat at home, using a food processor, a blender, or grinder. How to Grind Meat with a Grinder Probably the easiest way to grind your meat to make ground …

Focaccia bread is a soft, light bread with an airy center. It’s topped with the taste of garlic and rosemary, and the texture is really chewy and slightly crispy. It’s pretty easy to make focaccia bread at home, if you follow the recipe I have for you down below. How to Make Focaccia Bread What …

Aging beef helps to bring out its flavor, and there are two different ways you could do that. Wet aging is a relatively new process, but dry aging is the tried and true classic method. What Is Dry Age Steak? Before piece of beef is cut and trimmed down to make a steak, it may …

Lasagna is traditionally a dish served with ground beef and plenty of it. However, with a few small adjustments, it can be made into a vegetarian dish. One of the best ways to do that is by changing out the ground beef for eggplant, and you may want to make some other minor changes as …

Chorizo is a type of spicy Mexican sausage, and when combined with ground beef, it makes for a tasty burger with a little bite to it. The chorizo burger is a Mexican delicacy packed with mouthwatering flavor, and I’ll show you how to make chorizo burger at home using raw ingredients. What Is a Chorizo …

Roasted garlic can make for a lovely garnish or side dish, as it’s bursting with flavor and adds a powerful bite to your meal. Roasted garlic oil is very simple to make and can be quite versatile, so I’ll show you how to make it home for yourself. How to Make Roasted Garlic Olive Oil …

Aioli used to be a sauce made entirely from garlic, mashed up finely, mixed with olive oil, and packed with flavor. These days, it’s a mayonnaise-based sauce with lots of garlic flavor. In fact, the word aioli is often used to describe almost any kind of flavored mayonnaise. But what is aioli sauce? It can …

Is making alfredo pizza at home as simple as making up a homemade pizza crust and putting alfredo sauce on top of that, along with whatever toppings you like? It could be, but the best alfredo pizza is a careful balance between different tastes and textures. You also want to make sure you get the …

The creamy rice dish risotto pairs so well with shrimp, creating shrimp risotto- a true comfort classic. It’s a dish that seems complex on the surface and might appear to be a little over your head if you’re a novice cook. However, I’m going to share with you a method for how to make shrimp …