By now you’ve mastered making a pot of grains. You know all about the freestyle route, and how to avoid common pitfalls, but are you in a flavor rut? No worries — that’s an easy problem to solve. Simply follow these small and helpful tips for bigger and better flavor in your favorite pot of grains.
I recently moved into a new house, and with it came an amazing floor-to-ceiling pantry. Unlike my last apartment — where I ended up squirreling away extra Costco purchases in the coat closet — everything is all neatly in one place, and my organization-loving brain is at ease. Seeing everything together keeps me on my toes and reminds me of ingredients that should be used up. This week, we are using the ingredients lurking in your cabinet and transforming them into meals you won’t believe came from the depths of the pantry.
If you need dinner on the table with zero delays, then a microwaved baked potato is pretty much an ideal solution. A single potato is ready in just over five minutes, and cooking a few more alongside hardly takes any longer. Topped with leftover chili or some simple steamed vegetables, this dinner staple couldn’t be quicker or easier.
Rice is a very important grain. It is the number-one staple food in dozens of countries, providing an inexpensive and readily available source of energy. In fact, 20 percent of the world’s dietary energy comes from rice. It is nutritious — but it is far from perfect due to its high starch content.
Here’s why that’s an issue — and a surprising way to actually mitigate rice’s less-healthy aspects with one simple, surprising cooking method.
When Jeff Maughan began researching quinoa in the 1980s, only diehard health nuts had heard of it. In fact, when Maughan, a plant geneticist at Brigham Young University, told people he studied the native Andean seed, they used to laugh. “They’d ask, ‘Is that some kind of dog or cat species?’” he says. “They had no idea.”
Not anymore.
We’ve all been there: You forgot to set the timer, or you stepped away from the stove and got totally distracted by something outside the kitchen. Next thing you know, that pot of grains you were planning to serve with dinner is overcooked beyond belief — like, cooked into submission, there’s no going back, definitely cut it for dinner kind of overcooked.
But don’t jump to the compost bin so fast — there’s still hope for those overcooked grains.
If you’ve ever wondered or been asked how vegetarians or vegans get enough protein, have I got a recipe for you. With quinoa, edamame, and peanuts, it’s supremely satisfying, but more importantly this is the most flavorful grain bowl I’ve ever made. The edamame mixture is a vegetarian version of kung pao chicken that’s just as sticky-salty-spicy as its inspiration.
Run – don’t walk – to your nearest contractor, cabinet maker, or handy family member and ask –nay, beg– to have one of these seriously smart solutions built into the storage around your home.
From Apartment Therapy → 10 Clever Hidden Storage Solutions You’ll Wish You Had at Home
Here’s a thing I’ve been doing since the year began that’s made me very happy in the kitchen and it’s so simple, I completely expect you to roll your eyes at how un-revolutionary it is, but it goes like this: Find a recipe that sounds good to you and make it immediately. Don’t put it in the queue; don’t save it on that to-cook-one-day list, just dive in and dig in. So far, it’s been nothing but great; there was a giant egg bake, ugly cookies, green dinner pancakes, a giant cabbage casserole we heaped on coarse mustard-slathered bread and a towering spaghetti frittata. And while all of these things have been delicious, what’s been the most fun about them is getting back to a kind of impulsivity that’s gotten pushed to the wayside in this hyper-scheduled so-called adult life. It’s also led to conversations I want more of in 2016, such as “well, if you’re around anyway, why don’t you stay for dinner and I’ll guinea pig a new recipe on you?”
Which is how it happened that I spied a photo on the Instagram account of Elisabeth Pruitt of Tartine Bakery — someone I’ve long admired for both her baking talent and her refreshingly honest talk about being a working parent — last weekend that may not have normally been the kind of thing that got me running to the kitchen (a gluten-free cake, candied citrus rings, plus didn’t I just recently make a citrus-infused ricotta cake?) but why think too hard about it? And, lo, I’m so glad we didn’t.
… Read the rest of blood orange, almond and ricotta cake on smittenkitchen.com
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It’s always the simplest foods that end up throwing you a curve ball, and grains are the quintessential example. Thanks to their versatility, they make it into most meal plans — that pot of rice you make on the weekend working its way into lunches and dinners throughout the week.
But even if you’ve made quinoa a thousand times, there’s still that one day you burn it, over-salt it, or cook it until it’s a mushy goo. Here are five mistakes to avoid so you never lose out on the perfect pot of grain.
