How to Make Homemade Kitchen Staples

No more blowing money fast at the grocery store!

Is there anything Martha can't make?

Making your own creamy vegan nut milk couldn't be easier.

From start to finish, you only need five minutes.

Peanut butter, who?

You only need two ingredients.

This fun trick couldn't be easier.

Your pies will thank you.

Even at your laziest you can make homemade yogurt.

Accept no imitations: Caramelizing onions at home is easy to do. You just need a few onions, a pat of butter, a pan, and some time.

It's just two ingredients!

If you have heavy cream, you can make butter.

The iconic image on the cover of Yotam Ottolenghi's cult-classic cookbook "Plenty" is one of the easiest and best recipes from the entire collection.

In my opinion, the best store-bought veggie cream cheese comes from the deli (not the dairy case), where the veggies are freshly added and the bright flavors prove it. This homemade riff takes a strong stance on fresh herbs and vegetables too, while dirtying just a single food processor bowl. The resulting cream cheese is onion-forward with a carrot-rich sweetness and just a touch of fresh dill.

Ghee is butter which has been clarified to remove water and milk solids, which imparts a toasty aroma and flavor in the finished butter. Even better? Turning butter into ghee makes it last even longer and makes it suitable for high-heat cooking and roasting, and it even renders it lactose-free for those avoiding it. Ghee is simply butter made even better by a long, slow cook.

Nut milks are nothing new. In fact, Emma gave us the play-by-play on making our own almond milk at home a few years ago here. But as the variety of nut milks, nut milk blends, and hybrid almond-coconut-hemp milk creamers continue to fill the shelves, we wondered if we could make every kind of nut milk at home. The answer is a resounding “Oh heck yes!

Turn sweet pineapple into a crispy, chewy, sweet, tart, next-level garnish for cakes and cupcakes (or hey, even a cocktail!).

As a general rule, I typically don’t eat items that are meant to impersonate other items — the wanna-be foods never taste as good as the real thing. (I’m looking at you, gluten-free pizza dough that tastes like sweet cardboard). But every now and then, a recipe proves me wrong. This vegan ricotta cheese is one of them. Made with cashews, coconut cream, lemon juice, miso paste, and roasted garlic, this vegan ricotta is thick, creamy, and flavorful — just like the real one.

While the idea of churning my own butter appeals to the part of me that obsessed over the Little House on the Prairie books as kid, I think that if Laura Ingalls Wilder landed in the present day, she’d ditch that butter churn for a blender in a heartbeat. In a blender, making your own butter becomes a practical, everyday affair for us modern-day home cooks. Find a sale on your favorite heavy cream? Have half a carton left over from the weekend? Treat yourself to some homemade butter.

Making creamy nut butter at home sounds as easy as throwing some nuts in a food processor or blender, and for the most part it is! But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some smart technique involved to ensure success. This process works for cashews, almonds, or peanuts, and results in slightly different textures depending on the nut or combination of nuts used. No matter what nut you use, get ready for a final product that delivers the toasty, creamy bite you crave.

Q: I recently traveled to China and had several meals that featured tofu. I’d never really enjoyed tofu before, but what I ate in China was a revelation: crispy outside, creamy and custardy inside, and sometimes served in broth or with a sauce. How can I recreate this amazing texture at home? I’m a pretty skilled cook, but have never cooked with tofu before so I don’t even know where to begin. Sent by Marcella Editor: I’m with you.

Nut-free? These tasty alternatives will make you forget all about peanut butter.

Q: I made some vanilla extract last year using bourbon instead of vodka — super yummy. I just noticed yesterday that I need to add more alcohol to the bottle (I’m getting low, oh no!), and I have plenty of vodka on hand, but no bourbon. Would it be horrible to add vodka instead? Thanks! Sent by Corinne Editor: While the flavor would be slightly different, adding vodka to your extract will be just fine!

Baking powder and baking soda are both baking essentials, and depending on the specific recipe you may need one or the other (or both). But did you know that you can make baking powder? The other ingredient you need is cream of tartar, which is a less-used baking staple. I always seem to have half a bottle of this around (since I don’t use it often!). The cream of tartar adds acidity to the baking soda to create baking powder.

You could even make a batch tonight and have homemade yogurt for breakfast by tomorrow morning!

If you like store-bought tempeh, just wait until you try fresh nutty-tasting homemade tempeh. You might never go back! Plus, when you make it yourself, you can go way beyond soybeans and customize your tempeh with whatever kinds of legumes and grains you want. To make tempeh at home, you just need some beans, a spoonful of tempeh starter, and a warm spot in your house. Today we’ll walk you through each step of the process, from preparing the beans to cooking it for dinner.

Milk kefir is an easy sell for anyone who loves yogurt, which I most definitely do. Kefir is tangy, about as thick (and creamy!) as a smoothie, and full of those good-for-you probiotics we hear so much about. Think of milk kefir as drinkable, pourable yogurt. Even better, you can skip the grocery store and make it yourself right on your kitchen counter. Milk kefir is a fermented dairy product similar in many ways to yogurt and buttermilk.

Paneer is the star ingredient in some of my most favorite Indian dishes — and probably yours too! I often find myself scooping just one more nibble of chewy, milky-tasting paneer from the dish long after I’m officially full. Sure, you can buy this firm cheese at the store to make your own homemade curries, but where’s the fun in that?! If you have a pot, a strainer, and some cheesecloth, you can have fresh homemade paneer cheese in about 30 minutes.

It's truly, incredibly, ridiculously easy to make.

Homemade vanilla extract takes just two ingredients — vanilla beans and alcohol — and you can be as straightforward or creative as you like. Though it does take a bit of patience as you wait for the alcohol to extract the flavor from the beans, the delicious results are well worth it. You can use any vanilla beans, bearing in mind that different varieties and grades will have unique properties.

Milk, lemon juice, and about a half-hour of your time — that's all you need to make a batch of fresh, creamy homemade ricotta.

Once you learn how easy it is to make, you may never return to the store-bought stuff again.

“Begin by cooking the onions …” is perhaps the most common phrases in savory recipes the world over. But what does this mean exactly, and what if you have to ‘sweat’ your onions instead, or cook them ‘until translucent’? Read on for our handy guide (with pictures!) on how to cook an onion. Onions are the backbone of most savory dishes but they can produce a wide range of flavors depending on how you cook the onions.

At any moment, should the desire present itself, you can whip up your very own ball of creamy mozzarella, still warm from the whey whence it came.

I’ll admit it, I’m a coconut fiend. I eat or drink from this luscious fruit daily. I sip on coconut water and sprinkle generous handfuls of the unsweetened, dried variety all over my morning bowl of oatmeal. But all that is kiddie stuff compared to this coconut butter. It’s a sure-fire way to get the maximum concentration of rich, velvety coconut flavor and texture in each bite. Coconut butter is unlike coconut oil; it’s an entirely different animal.

Have you ever made warm, silky, cinnamon-spiked applesauce? It’s the simplest thing in the world, and it’s a good way to use up windfall apples, or ones with brown spots on the edge of going bad. If you’ve never tried this simple cooking DIY, then why not celebrate fall with a little pot of applesauce this week? You only need apples, water, a bit of citrus peel (if you want) and cinnamon (if you’re so inclined).

Do you know where your honey comes from? Food Safety News reports that as much as a third of honey (and likely more) sold in the United States has been imported from China. So what? Much of this imported honey has been banned in Europe and likely contains potentially harmful additives. How can you avoid it?One sure way to avoid imported honey is by buying it locally. Buy from farmers’ markets and other suppliers that can guarantee its source.

It’s really surprising how few recipes are out there for homemade bouillon. Stock, yes. Court bouillon, sure. But a concentrated bouillon paste that we can use to whip up a quick vegetable broth or add flavor to a pilaf? Not so much. In fact, we only found one recipe that fits what we’re looking for.

That’s right, you don’t actually need a yogurt maker to make homemade yogurt. People were turning leftover milk into yogurt for years before these little machines came along, after all! Here are three ways you can make fantastic yogurt using equipment you already own.In order to thicken and set properly, yogurt needs to be kept at around 110°F for 4-6 hours. That’s why yogurt makers, which hold a steady temperature, are so handy.

Making your own soy milk is fast, easy and most importantly delicious. We’ve found dried organic soy beans on sale for as little as $.99 a pound so it makes a lot of economic sense too.The hardest part when making your own soy milk is knowing at least 8 hours before you want it. Otherwise, it’s simply a matter of soaking the beans, tossing them in a blender with boiling water, and separating the okara (Japanese for bean curd) from the filtrate (this is the soy milk).

This is definitely one of those “now why didn’t we think of that?!” kind of moments!Over at A Year in Bread, the Kitchen Mage has been obsessed with making her own oat flour. How? Simply grind a scoop or two of rolled oats in a food processor until you reach a flour-like consistency.Read on for ideas on using oat flour to bump up the flavor and nutritional content in our favorite recipes!

With its signature tangy bite and milky richness, crème fraîche brightens many of our favorite dishes. It has a custard consistency that exists somewhere between heavy cream and sour cream, and we love adding a dollop alongside tacos and even a fresh bowl of berries.Sure, you can buy it in the store, but where’s the fun in that?! Especially when it’s just as easy–and most certainly cheaper–to make it at home.

Try it once to see how you like it!

We love Greek yogurt – the extra-thick, creamy yogurt found in Greek or Lebanese groceries. We like it dolloped on soups or as dessert with a little honey and fruit. We can’t always find it, however, and sometimes we just don’t remember to keep it around. So when we want to get that extra-thick texture, sometimes we resort to the old technique of draining plain low-fat yogurt overnight. This method slowly drains away the extra water, giving us a richer, thicker yogurt.

D.I.Y. Butter about 1/2 cup 1 cup heavy whipping cream 1 tablespoon sour cream 1/8 teaspoon salt (optional) Whir the cream and sour cream in a food processor for about five minutes. (Alternately: shake energetically in a Mason jar for about 15-30 minutes.) After the cream becomes thick and clotted like whipped cream it will suddenly start spattering against the top again as it clumps into yellow butter. Whip until the butter has formed a solid yet grainy mass.

Almond flour and almond meal, its coarser counterpart, are made just from almonds skinned and ground fine to be used in cakes, macarons, or meringues. It is time-consuming to make almond meal at home, but since whole almonds can be had for a fraction of the cost of almond flour, sometimes this is worth it. These instructions include a step for blanching and skinning almonds, which is useful for more purposes than almond meal.