How to Make Homemade Kitchen Staples

Homemade vanilla extract takes just two ingredients — vanilla beans and alcohol (like vodka) — 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. It’s super easy to make and you only need two ingredients! Homemade vanilla extract is the perfect gift for friends and family who love to bake.

Tastes as good as it smells.

On some level, you probably already know that, sure, it’s pretty easy to make your own peanut butter. But if you’ve never actually made homemade peanut butter, I don’t know if you quite understand how truly, incredibly, ridiculously easy it really is. To make easy, delicious peanut butter at home, use your food processor. Then go make Kelli’s 3-Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies. (Trust us on this one.

So rich, so savory.

Two ingredients will solve your baking emergency in a pinch.

You probably have all the ingredients you need to make it already.

Every baker needs this.

Tomato purée is a cooking essential you might be missing. Simpler and a bit thicker than its flavorful cousin, tomato sauce, tomato purée is a fast way to quickly prepare and freeze a bushel of fresh tomatoes for future cooking. Plum or Roma tomatoes are best for purée because they are generally grown for preserving. Paste, oven-dried tomatoes, and sauce are all made from these varieties — they are low in water content and rich in flavor.

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

Milk kefir is an easy sell for anyone who loves yogurt, which I most definitely do. KefirsmoothieprobioticsAll you need is a teaspoon of active kefir grains and a cup of whole milk. Milk kefir is a fermented dairy product similar in many ways to yogurt and buttermilk. It’s how kefir is cultured that makes it really unique — instead of heating the milk, adding a culture, and keeping it warm as you do with yogurt, all you need to make milk kefir are kefir grains.

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.

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.

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 leftover from the weekend? Treat yourself to some homemade 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.

This fun trick couldn't be easier.

Baking powder and baking soda are both baking essentials. Depending on the specific recipe, you may need one or the other (or both). They are often used in making cakes, muffins, cupcakes, or any baked goods. In case you run out of it, did you know that you can make baking powder? Just combine 1 tablespoon baking soda and 2 tablespoons cream of tartar, and voila – you already have a homemade baking powder.

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

Your pies will thank you.

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.

“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.

It's perfect for your morning bagel.

It's an easy process that is 100% worth it.

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.

If you have heavy cream, you can make butter.

You only need two ingredients.

The secret to better biscuits, faster pancakes, and simpler baking.

If you haven't made it yet, you're missing out.

You only need two ingredients!

No fancy tools required.

No more blowing money fast at the grocery store!

Ditch the store-bought option for this easy-to-make at-home version.

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?

Even at your laziest you can make homemade yogurt.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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).

Since going gluten-free, I’ve had lots of fun expanding my arsenal of flours. My latest discovery? DIY sunflower seed flour. I discovered “sun-flour” while developing my recipe for Fruit Crumble with Oats & Dates and have started using this wonderful ingredient in other baked goods, too. Rich in protein and fiber, sunflower seed flour is mildly sweet and nutty, yet neutral enough to use in many baked goods.

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.

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.

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

Cashew milk, almond milk, hazelnut milk! All of these mylks use the same simple technique.

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.

Have pancake plans this weekend? You’ll probably need buttermilk — especially if you’re making Dana’s completely amazing and wonderful Lofty Buttermilk Pancakes (truly the best pancake recipe I have ever tried). Don’t let a lack of proper buttermilk stop you from pancake bliss, however. Our contributing editor Kelli shows you how to make buttermilk from plain milk — it’s so easy! Super simple, right?

Q: I am searching for a recipe for corn vinegar. Have you heard of it? I have made pineapple vinegar with great success. Sent by Joe Editor: Readers, any ideas on this?

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.

We polished off another small bottle of maple syrup with a post Thanksgiving brunch and I just had a feeling I’d need more sooner rather than later. If I had only listened to myself and picked up a bottle I could have whipped up a bit of maple cream tonight! Read on for the surprisingly simple (only one key ingredient!) recipe.Doesn’t the thought of thick maple cream spread on freshly baked pound cake sound like something worth trying?

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).