We love it when caramel takes the lead in sweet treats, bringing that distinct, deep sugary flavor to everything from muffins to brownies. But don’t think that means we don’t love this stuff by the spoonful. Caramel candies plus a recipe for how to make your own means you’re just a drizzle away from sweet dreams.
Who: Tucker Pecan Company
What: Southern Pecans
Where: Montgomery, Alabama
Tucker Pecan Company scouts out the best Southeastern pecans to buy, and then shells them and sells them plain. But it also roasts and salts them, smothers them in chocolate, glazes them with honey, uses them to make crunchy coatings for candies, bakes them up in pies, and more.
While the downtown area of the Camellia State’s capital has undergone revitalization in recent years, drawing new business and new people to the heart of this historic city, Tucker Pecan Company has been in its spot on one edge of downtown for decades.
When The Kitchn told me they wanted to put together a week of dinners from and inspired by The Homemade Kitchen, I couldn’t wait to see what they would choose. It’s one of my favorite parts of the book process to see which recipes call to different people, and which techniques and flavors readers are drawn to try first. The dishes the editors chose are some of my favorites. This is a week of warm and nourishing comfort food, perfect for right now.
Cooking dried beans has this funny way of feeling like a complicated, daunting task, but once you find the method that works best for you, you’ll realize it’s mostly a hands-off affair. The main thing it requires from you is time — and exactly how much time varies from just an hour up to seven or eight hours, depending on which of these four cooking methods you use. They each have their merits and it’s important to know when to use which, so you can make beans in a way that fits your needs. Let’s take a look at these four techniques.
Let’s start off with a definition, since clarity is the best place to begin when cooking for a guest with certain restrictions: Veganism is a plant-based dietary strategy that excludes any and all products that come from animals. The elimination of meat is explicit, but it’s worth saying that things vegetarians might eat — like eggs and dairy products — are completely off the list for vegans.
Just like any other diet or lifestyle, the definition of the diet is tailored even further on the individual level. Regardless of the semantics surrounding the word vegan, and regardless of how it’s interpreted on the micro level, when it comes to cooking for your vegan (and vegetarian) family and friends, chicken broth is completely off the the table. Even a little splash. Even a little whisper.
After peeling and trimming fruits and veggies, we’re left with scraps that often get tossed in the compost bin or the trash. But think twice before tossing these odds and ends — there are actually quite a few delicious uses for common kitchen scraps.
Who: Tucker Pecan Company
What: Southern Pecans
Where: Montgomery, Alabama
Got a pecan tree in your yard? Well, today you’re in luck: David Little, president of Tucker Pecan Company, is sharing a few gathering and shelling tips.
I dreamed of this cake before I ever figured out how to make it. I could taste it and see it in my mind, and I was sure there must be a recipe out there somewhere. It was, after all, just gingerbread and pears.
A few months ago, after the umpteenth time my husband ran to the store to pick up crackers and good cheese before another impromptu home dinner with friends, I had a revelation: Why were we never prepared for this? We have people over enough that we should never not be without snacks and nibbles to serve, and yet here we were, again.
Something had to change, especially with the holidays coming up, if we didn’t want to scramble for snacks every time we had dinner guests. That’s how I came to have a “For Them, Not You” box in my pantry, and here’s what it holds.
Who: Tucker Pecan Company
What: Southern pecans
Where: Montgomery, Alabama
Whether you pronounce it pee-can or puh-con, there’s a good chance you’ll be enjoying this nut, native to the South, in at least a few sweet treats as we approach the holiday season. Pecans and chocolate (or caramel, or honey) are great together. At Tucker Pecan Company, they’re a match made in heaven.
