Everyday cooking

Everyday cooking

These apple cinnamon overnight oats are a delicious whole grain healthy breakfast! This easy make-ahead recipe combines sweet tart apples, warm cinnamon, and chewy oats for the perfect morning meal. I've been making overnight oats for years, but this apple cinnamon version has quickly become my family's obsession! The sweet tart chunks of apple add delicious texture, while the cinnamon heightens the cozy flavors. My son immediately asked me to make another batch!

If you typically reach for butter when whipping up your favorite baked goods, it might be time to switch things up. A glug of olive oil can be a transformative addition to a wide range of home-baked classics, adding moisture, richness, and a hint of fruity sharpness. In sweet treats like cakes, brownies, and cookies, olive oil can be used as a replacement for more traditional forms of fat, and it's sure to yield that same irresistibly tender texture.

Pancakes are often viewed as a vehicle for butter and syrup or chocolate sauce and fruit, but even the fanciest stack is only as good as its foundation. For perfect, pillowy flapjacks, try swapping in yeast for the baking powder found in most recipes. Yeast, which is commonly used to raise breads, produces a super fluffy, soft texture as well as a subtly tangy depth of flavor that makes your breakfast more exciting.

We've all been there. You get a flash of inspiration or a sudden late-night craving for something comforting with a creamy sauce. But a quick assessment of the fridge reveals you're missing a key ingredient: heavy cream. It might not be something you always have on hand just in case. The good news is that you can assemble a good substitute for heavy cream from a couple of more common ingredients.

A spoon of salsa can completely change a meal. From fiery tacos and cheesy enchiladas to burrito bowls and seared meats, a little goes a long way in terms of elevating flavor. This is especially true with fire-roasted salsa, which adds a distinct smokiness and new depth to dishes. However, a blend of peppers like serrano and jalapeños are often added to fire-roasted salsa that can increase its spice levels.

Many of us likely rinse our broccoli by holding its flowering crown under running water in our sinks, like we're holding a bouquet. That's considered the top of this veggie, after all. However, you actually want to hold broccoli upside down. The running water should hit the stem and make its way into all of the nooks and crannies of the head.

You can use these two pantry staples - vanilla extract and baking soda - either alone or together for an even bigger burst of freshness at a fraction of the cost, without even leaving the house to purchase a new bottle. The vanilla extract and baking soda make a simple DIY air freshener that will have you saying goodbye to the spray cans and hello to a sweet new way of sprucing things up.

Here's a fun new favorite recipe that started as a simple request from family: pumpkin oatmeal muffins! The other day my aunt Cheryl called asking if I had a pumpkin oatmeal muffin recipe on this website. I didn't, so we ended up creating this recipe together, combining elements from my popular healthy banana muffins and healthy oatmeal muffins. Everything goes right into the blender and there's no all-purpose flour: so they're naturally gluten-free, too.

It's sweet and savory. The corn gives this recipe a delicious natural sweetness. To balance it, I add celery, Old Bay seasoning, onion, garlic, thyme, and smoked paprika. I love this sweet and savory combination of ingredients!

If you let your coconut sit in the freezer overnight, it will be much easier to open up the shell. Simply hit the frozen coconut with the dull side of a cleaver a few times, and it will crack in half. Then, after you scrape out the frozen coconut water, the shell can be easily popped off the coconut meat.

Ever hastily salted a bubbling stew with Morton salt and accidentally poured in an avalanche of the white stuff? Then you may be pleased to know that there's a hack for solving that first-world problem. In fact, you may have been opening Morton salt containers wrong your entire life if you've simply been lifting the metal spout and cooking up a storm. There's actually an additional step that can turn that big container of salt into a shaker: removing the cardboard tag inside.

If you want every bite to actually taste like a good BLT, there's one bacon prep step you can't skip: Draining off the extra grease. Forget that, and the whole thing starts falling apart. This might be obvious to some people, but if you're not cooking a lot, it's not always the first thing you think about. Bacon grease left sitting there is going to soak into the bread, make it heavy, soggy, and overly greasy.

The joy of eating strawberries extends beyond their sweet and tart taste; one of their best qualities is just how effortlessly snackable they are. All you need to do is give one a simple wash and pluck out its stem before munching on it. As it turns out, however, there is merit to giving strawberries some extra prep. It may seem unnecessary to peel a strawberry, but there's a reason why you should - it improves the flavor and texture of the fruit.

Why you'll love this oatmeal: Tastes like fall: The combination of apples, maple syrup and cinnamon tastes like fall in a bowl! Fiber-filled: Rolled oats and apples together have approximately 8 grams of fiber in them, making this an ideal breakfast recipe. Vegan + gluten-free: Many oats at the grocery store are gluten free, and as long as you use dairy-free milk, this recipe is also vegan-friendly.

If you have an abundance of zucchini on hand and you're searching for a flavorful, veggie-packed baked good that's as nourishing as it is delicious, look no further than this Mediterranean Inspired Zucchini Bread. Not only is this recipe gluten-free, but it's also grain-free and refined sugar-free, making it a perfect fit for a variety of dietary needs. Even better? It highlights tiger nut flour; a nutritious ingredient that's not actually a nut at all but a root vegetable!

It would certainly increase the umami/savoriness and earthiness of the spaghetti sauce,

I couldn't decide whether I wanted to make stuffed peppers or stuffed zucchini. So, I added zucchini to my stuffed peppers!

One of the secrets to the best hot dog isn't the wiener, the toppings, or even the type of bread - it's simply steaming the bun. If you've ever gotten a hot dog from a street vendor, you've probably seen them place the buns in a covered steam tray. When it's ready, the bun is warm, soft, and perfectly chewy all the way through. There's really no comparison to a dry bun straight out of the bag.

Butter and salt aim to enhance corn's rich taste, but lemon juice is an ingredient that really makes the vegetable stand out. The citrus adds a zesty quality to corn, brightening the juicy kernels. Lemon's tart taste has an undercurrent of sweetness to it, so it doesn't reduce corn's honeyed flavor. Instead, it enhances it while providing the veggie with an acidic boost.

Choose good meat from a trusted source. Whether using beef, turkey or lamb, ideally the meat is grass-fed with enough fat to keep it moist and flavorful. Look for a ratio between 80% to 85% lean meat to 20% to 15% fat. If you're cooking with turkey, ground dark meat has more flavor and is moister than white meat. Keep it cold.

Although movie theater concessions are always shockingly overpriced, that doesn't have to stop you from enjoying your favorite snacks at home. A sumptuous bowl of popcorn may be prepared as a quick treat, sustenance for your next movie night, or as part of your game-day party offerings. Choosing from a number of different seasonings to toss with your popcorn will amp up your food with even more flavor. But, to ensure your snack is fully coated with seasonings and stays nice and crisp, spritz the popcorn with either water, vinegar, or any other complementary liquid to provide something for the seasonings to stick to.

Some people may look at classic sandwiches like the BLT and think, "Boring." But they obviously haven't tried upgraded versions of the lunchtime legend. In particular, you can boost the bacon-y sandwich with a punchy condiment straight from page 77 of Joanna Gaines' " Magnolia Table" cookbook: Easy Herb Mayo. The celebrity chef, home, and kitchen guru's mayo is the perfect blend of vibrant, finely minced herbs, citrus, and spices that balance and soften the fattiness inherent to the condiment, as well as bacon.

My mother's greatest fears are an empty fridge and underfed family and friends. At this time of year, that means courgettes, and the usual way I dispatch them is in a shaak (dry curry) or a pilau. Today's dish is a combination of the two: spiced fried courgettes, just shy of melted, tossed through rice with fresh herbs and served with a fancy salted pistachio yoghurt masquerading as a raita.

"The biggest culprit in the kitchen is moisture, and it can sneak in faster than you think," Smith says. "Never measure spices directly over a steaming pot or pan. Steam will enter the container, create condensation, and cause clumping, mold risk, or flavor loss. Instead, spoon the amount you need onto a plate or into your hand, then add it to your dish. Also, make sure your measuring spoons are completely dry before dipping into any jar."