Rice & Grains

We certainly do love our pasta around here and we’re always on the lookout for new ways to jazz up our humble dishes. This pipette-shaped pasta recently appeared on our grocery store shelves, and we’ve quickly decided it’s our top choice for the coming cold season dishes!Their shape is somewhat similar to macaroni, but the tube is wider and actually dips down in the middle like the pipe it’s named after.

Chopping chocolate for things like brownies and fudge was always one of our least favorite kitchen tasks. That is, until a pastry chef friend suggested we try using a serrated bread knife!Chocolate is naturally quite brittle and will fragment under pressure. The grooved “teeth” on a serrated knife are like many tiny wedges pushing into the chocolate and getting it to fragment in several places at once.

This weekend, we made a big batch of sugar cane syrup for some candy-making experiments. We used some of it right away without problems, but the leftovers crystallized into the cloudy, gritty mass you see in the jar above. Any hope of rescuing it?Sugar is notoriously fussy to work with and prone to re-crystallizing at the least provocation. We followed all the proper procedures for handling sugar (at least we think we did!

Al Dente; adjective, Italian: Literally, “to the tooth.” In practice, this means cooked just enough to still be firm, where the center still remains a bit under-cooked and the pasta still offers resistance when chewed.In medieval times, pasta was cooked for an hour or more until it was soft, mushy, and offered no resistance. This was typical of all cooking at the time (ie, cooking food to death!

While we’re talking about leaving things out on the counter, here’s another ingredient that sits on ours: Kosher salt and pepper in little dishes next to the stovetop. This is one of the first things we did when we started cooking regularly- a tip we learned from watching the Food Network many years ago…We tend to use up these little amounts quickly enough that they don’t get dirty or stale.

Pepper makes its way into just about every dish that passes through the kitchen so make sure you’re using good quality pepper. After all, the good stuff doesn’t cost more than lesser pepper. You don’t use pre-ground black pepper, do you? Ground black pepper really isn’t worth buying.

As we mentioned in our post on crystallized sugar syrup, candy-making is a brand new culinary adventure for us. We’re teaching ourselves the basics and look forward to sharing our triumphs and pitfalls with you. We certainly hope you’ll chime in with advice and questions! First up, we have some basic tips for working with sugar…Dealing with sugar and all it’s quirks is pretty much par for the course when it comes to making candy.

I got really into using fennel pollen a few years ago when I got addicted to Mario Batali’s Goat Cheese Tortelloni with Dried Orange and Fennel Pollen. The first time I made it I didn’t have fennel pollen sitting around in my pantry, so I used Batali’s suggested alternative: ground up fennel seeds. The pollen, I quickly found, makes a difference. And so I started using it on everything. A pinch of this stuff, makes magic happen.

When cooking with whole spices, toasting them before grinding amps up their flavor and aroma in the final dish. Here’s how!Most of the time, we prefer to toast our spices on the stove top. Put your spices in a small skillet over medium-low heat, and shake the pan occasionally to prevent burning. The spices are toasted when you can smell their aroma. Transfer them immediately to a spice grinder or mortar for grinding.

We have a big bag of buckwheat groats in our pantry, and we’re looking for a good way to use up those delicious grains. Buckwheat is one of the healthiest, nuttiest, most versatile whole grains. And despite its name, it’s really not related to wheat at all.All about buckwheatBuckwheat is actually the seed of a flowering fruit that is related to rhubarb and sorrel. It’s completely gluten-free and unrelated to wheat and all the grasses in the wheat family.

Let’s just say you were unable to resist the temptation of the bulk bin aisle, and you’ve arrived home with a half-dozen baggies filled with everything from quinoa flour to einkorn. These things happen, but not to worry, because you have plans — big plans! — for baking all sorts of wondrous things in the coming weeks. Okay, you eager-beaver baker, you — do you know where you should be storing all your lovely bags of whole-grain flour until your schedule clears?

Pomegranate molasses (or pomegranate syrup) is a thick, sweet, sticky syrup that’s used to flavor Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisine. It’s used as a marinade, an ingredient in sauces and dips, and a beverage sweetener. It’s basically a reduction of pomegranate juice that’s been boiled down with sugar and lemon juice. Pomegranate molasses is not the same as grenadine syrup, which is a sweet pomegranate-based syrup used to flavor and add color to cocktails.

Have you ever tried Castelvetrano olives? We first had a sample at a farmers market. They were giant olives, bright green, with a crunchy bite and a clean, fruity flavor that actually – get this! – tasted like olive oil.These olives are very different from the salty, pungent cured olives that we also love. They are delicate and light in flavor, with a crisp bite. They are hard to find, though, and even when we find them they are of varying quality.

We made an apple crumble over the weekend (is there anything easier and more satisfying than a crumble this time of year?) and the recipe had us mixing the topping in a way we’ve never done it before. Find out how—plus two other ways to pull together a crumble topping, below. Which one works for you?Making a crumble topping is a simple thing: It involves stirring together flour, sugar, and spices (maybe some oats, too) and then cutting in chunks of COLD butter.

While you’re busy dreaming up delicious pies to serve at your holiday dinners – or submit to our Best Pie Bake Off! – we thought we’d give you a tour of the part of the pie that sometimes gives us trouble (or nightmares): the crust!At its most basic, pie crust is nothing more than flour, fat, and liquid. But if that’s all it is, why is pie crust so notoriously difficult to make by hand?

Instant coffee starts off as, well, coffee! But how does it get from freshly-brewed cuppa to powdery flake? Therein lies the science…There are actually two methods for making instant coffee. In the first, liquid coffee is sprayed in a fine mist through very hot, very dry air. By the time the coffee droplets land, they have dried into a powder.The second method is freeze-drying, where the liquid is forced from the frozen coffee through chemical sublimation.

When first learning to work with sugar back in culinary school, we were taught to only use a clean metal spoon to prevent crystallization while the sugar was melting. This and the vision of our chef punctuating each word with a wave of said spoon will be forever lodged in our memories.

I know, I know. You’re thinking: “Canned duck? Are you kidding me?” But trust me on this one, really. I love keeping a can of duck confit in my pantry, and unlike other foods in cans, it’s actually really delicious!If there’s a night when I am really busy and want to eat something tasty, or I have a surprise dinner guest (gasp!) these cans of canard goodness are a lifesaver!

As the star ingredient in cookies, cakes, and other holiday baking, molasses really gets its heyday this time of year! But not all kinds can be used interchangeably, particularly blackstrap molasses…Molasses is the dark, sticky syrup left behind after the sugar has been boiled out of cane and beet juices. This is done in several stages, which yield light, dark, and eventually blackstrap molasses as all the sugar is gradually extracted and the syrup is cooked down.

We’ve become enamored of whole grains this past year, especially chewy, nutty grains like spelt. These aren’t as common as barley, oats, and corn, but we love their texture and versatility in grain salads. We had some confusion, though, about whether farro and spelt were the same thing. Turns out – nope! In Heidi Julavits’ piece for the New York Times Sunday Magazine last weekend she explained how she tried to substitute spelt for farro, with unpleasant results.

Quick meals are a must during the busy holiday season, and we definitely turn to the grocery store for some help. Having a jar of pre-made tomato sauce on hand to pour over a bowl of pasta can be a life-saver when we’re tired and cranky! Here are a few tips on adding more flavor to this simple meal:For doctoring purposes, we recommend heating up the tomato sauce in a pan on the stove.

This time of year, we often come across recipes that call for sugars we don’t normally use or remember to keep stocked, like superfine or confectioner sugars. What to do if you find yourself short? The good folks from Cook’s Illustrated have a few ideas…Here are the suggestions from Cook’s Illustrated for sugar substitutes using regular granulated sugar:For Superfine Sugar – Run one cup plus 2 teaspoons of white sugar in the food processor for 30 seconds.

This is a question that has bugged us for quite some time! What is cream of tartar? Is it natural? What does it do? And please tell us it has nothing to do with the tartar that dentists talk about…Ok, the good news first: cream of tartar is completely unrelated to teeth. Whew!In fact, it’s an acidic by-product from the process of making wine.

A good, slow-cooked brown roux is the cornerstone of many Cajun and Creole dishes. Cooking it so that the roux browns slowly without burning is half patience and half practice-makes-perfect. Here are two methods for making your own:Because it’s cooked for such a long time, most recipes for dark roux will have you use oil or lard instead of butter, which is prone to burning.

If you make bread every weekend or have an obsession with cakes, it makes sense to keep specific flours for those recipes on hand. But what about the rest of us? Is there such a big difference between these flours or can all-purpose flour really be used for all purposes? First, what’s actually the same about all these flours is that they are made from wheat.

For years, we’ve gotten the skins off garlic by smashing the clove with the flat of our knives, but we recently learned a gentler technique. This one involves “pinching” the skin off using your bare hands…Hold the garlic clove between your thumb and the knuckles of your first finger with the flatter edge of the clove facing you. Pinch your thumb and first finger together, bending the top and bottom of the garlic clove together.

We’ve been keeping an eye out for good products to recommend for folks wanting to tackle baking this year. The idea of self-rising flour seemed promising at first, but it didn’t end up being quite what we thought…As it turns out, flour being marketed as “self-rising” (or “self-raising,” as it is called in the UK) is simply regular flour with baking powder added. The ratio of ingredients is usually about 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder per cup of flour.

Rachel, one of our readers, has been getting into baking and is hoping for some help with one of her recipes:Hi, Kitchn! Lately I’ve been attempting to cook more at home, and I’m also making my first attempts at baking from scratch. Today was an easy start – banana muffins. The recipe I used is as follows…Banana Muffins Mix:3 mashed bananas1 beaten egg3/4 c. sugar Then add:1 tsp baking soda1 tsp baking powder1/2 tsp salt1 1/2 c.

Marcona almonds have been enjoying a steady rise in popularity over the past several years. They receive prominent displays at gourmet markets, get name-dropped on fancy restaurant menus, and are frequently lauded as the best almonds ever by those in the know. Just what makes these almonds so special?Marcona almonds are a special product of Spain, akin to San Marzano tomatoes from Italy or caviar from Russia.

No matter how many times we do it, whipping cream from a liquid into a solid always seems like kitchen magic to us. Just what’s going on in that cup of cream? Let’s take a look!When you first begin whipping cream, millions of tiny air bubbles get whisked into the liquid. The cream becomes frothy and lightens. If you stopped whisking now, the bubbles would eventually work their way out and the cream would become a uniform liquid again.But if you keep whipping, something more happens.

As you clean out your pantry, fridge, and freezer during the Kitchen Spring Cure, you’re bound to find extra ingredients here and there that you’d rather use up now than throw away or donate. Sometimes these ingredients are somewhat puzzling and hard to use up all at once. So our Good Questions the rest of this week will focus on a few of these ingredients you’re having a hard time with. Here’s one from reader Nathan.

Other the fact that it’s a great Van Morrison song… a lot. We recently read an article about Tupelo honey that opened our eyes to what a rare, seasonal, and utterly unique thing it is. For example, did you know that Tupelo honey is the only honey that will not crystallize? And the because of the specific ratio of different sugars, it’s the only honey diabetics can eat? Right this minute, some very busy honeybees The production of Tupelo honey is not easy.

With just a few teaspoons of any starch, we can thicken soups, sauces, and puddings to exactly the consistency we want. They go from loose and watery to thick and creamy right before our eyes! Here’s how what’s going on in your pan…All starches work by absorbing water (or other cooking liquid) into individual starch grains.

As we passed a jar of vinaigrette around the table at a recent dinner party, one of the other guests asked if we knew why homemade vinaigrettes separated while most store-bought vinaigrettes didn’t. This is what we replied…Homemade oil and vinegar salad dressings – vinaigrettes – are technically called temporary emulsions.

Last week, we talked about how starches are used to thicken sauces, puddings, pie fillings, and soups like the one above. This week, we’ll check out the different kinds of starches that get used in cooking and why you might choose to use one over the other…Starches can vary widely in terms of how quickly they thicken, how much they thicken, the quality of the thickening, and their flavor after thickening.

Every once in a while in our baking, we come across a recipe that calls for a tablespoon or two of vital wheat gluten. Since it’s almost always listed as “optional” and since the ingredient was hard to find, it took us a while to catch on to what we were missing!Vital wheat gluten is like a super-powered flour that is all gluten and very little starch.

Here’s an interesting question from Victoria. I love to use real butter in my baking, and when I shop I usually buy one salted butter, and one unsalted. But, as unsalted butter isn’t as common in ingredients as salted butter, I’m left with a bunch of sticks of unsalted butter cluttering up my freezer. How much salt do I need to add to make up the difference? Victoria, we are going to answer your question in a roundabout way.

Susan is looking for some clarification on types of cornmeal. Can we help her out?I have a burning question! What is the difference between corn meal and polenta? Can I use regular corn meal (the stuff I use to make corn bread) to make polenta? Or do I have to track down a box that is specifically labeled “polenta”? And for the trifecta, what is masa harina? Could I use that to make polenta, or just tortillas?Susan, this is a great question and a tough one to answer.

You’ve heard us say it again and again: always cook pasta in a large amount of well-salted boiling water until al dente. But when it comes to pasta saladsFor pasta destined for a picnic salad, we like to do two things:1. Cook it in even more heavily salted water.2. Cook it just a little beyond al dente. When cooking pasta for salad, we usually double the amount of salt we normally put in the pasta water, adding roughly 4 tablespoons of salt for 4 quarts of water.

We’ve seen this phrase “a three-fingered pinch” popping up in a lot of recipes recently, and we think it’s a great way to describe a rather indeterminate amount of seasoning. We’re being told to add more than a spare pinch, but not so much that we need to break out the measuring spoons. It’s perfect!

The first time we bought a bottle of rose water, we had no idea what we were going to do with it. It just sounded so lovely! Now the fragrant rose water is a staple in our pantry, infusing everything from cakes to rice.Made from the distillation of rose petals, rose water has a long culinary history, originating with the Persians and spreading across the medieval Islamic world.

In last week’s post about MSGI grew up with Maggi; my father added the dark brown soy sauce-like seasoning to various Chinese and Vietnamese dishes from noodles to tofu. (Meanwhile, my mother blanched at the thought of all that MSG and sodium.) Maggi sauce is often associated with Asian cooking, but it was actually developed in Switzerland in the late 19th century. It is still popular in German-speaking countries, where it is known as Maggi-Würze.

Peppercorns come in different colors and tastes. Which one is best for which recipes? I’ll talk about that in this post. Learn more about peppercorns behind the jump … Pink peppercorns are not a true peppercorns (genus Piper), but are the ripe berries of the Brazilian pepper tree. Since they are the same shape and size as true peppercorns, they are marketed under the name “pink peppercorn.” They are used as a spice and have a lighter pepper-like taste.

For a long time, we were intimidated by that innocent little phrase at the end of the recipe: “Adjust seasonings to taste.” If we don’t know what the dish is supposed to taste like, how are we supposed to season it? Well, here’s what we’ve learned to do!When we are almost finished cooking and it comes time to check the seasonings, we always follow this checklist:1. Does It Need Salt? – Nine times out of ten, it does.

Have you ever had a batch of ice cream that stays soft and slushy no matter how long you leave it in the freezer? Or the other extreme, an ice cream that freezes so hard that you can hardly dig your spoon in for a taste? Sugar just might be the culprit behind both situations!As ice cream freezes, ice crystals separate from the liquid cream base. These crystals would normally join together into a solid mass (like a cream ice cube), but sugar molecules dissolved in the cream get in the way.

Here’s a pungent ingredient we recently picked up from a Thai market. Have you ever cooked with it?This is a sprig of green peppercorns preserved in salt and vinegar. Green peppercorns are the unripe berries of the pepper plant; when dried and oxidized, they turn into the more familiar black peppercorns. Green peppercorns are quite perishable, so they are usually freeze-dried or, like these, packed in brine.

I was at my boyfriend’s mother’s house the other day when she eagerly showed us a huge, heavy box of noodles she had purchased at her Korean church. These special noodles resembled buckwheat soba, but they contained an unusual ingredient – acorns!Korean acorn noodles, or dotori guksu, are made from a mixture of acorn flour, buckwheat or wheat flour, and salt. The acorn flour is ground from red or white acorns, which have been eaten in Korea since Neolithic times.

Confession: we’re trying valiantly to overcome an aversion to wheat bran. Thanks to one-too-many encounters with dense tasteless homemade bran muffins in our younger years, this is definitely an uphill battle (sorry, Mom!).But we’re intrepid cooks and willing to be convinced! How do you use wheat bran in your cooking?Wheat bran comes from the dense, outer hull of the wheat grain and is a by-product of making wheat flour.

Oats! They are a powerhouse of nutrition and awesomely delicious breakfast goodness. Here are five ways to eat healthy, scrumptious, nutty oats — and none of them involve mush. Rolled oats, flattened under extreme pressure, on the left. Steel-cut (or Irish) oats on the right. They are the whole oat groat, chopped into pieces.We love oats so much! Here are some of our favorite ways to eat oats. What about you? What are your favorite nutritious ways to your oatmeal? Steel-cut!

Many years ago I was invited to a friend’s house for tea. His father is Indian, his mother is French, and my friend was born in England, so their house was this great multicultural mix of traditions. As we sat down for tea, his father slid me a plate of Indian sweets called burfi, and poured me a cup of almond tea. Instead of the usual milk, the creamer contained condensed milk, which he gestured to me to try in my tea. And it was wonderful. Rich, sweet, and milky.

Okay, we know the phrase “lima beans” might send some of you running, but we hope even the most ardent hatersChristmasDespite their popularity in the South in the mid- to late-19th century, Christmas lima beans, like many crops, were largely replaced by a few commercial varieties in the 20th century.

Flax seeds are a magical health food that we hear a lot about but don’t always know what to do with. Do you eat flax seeds? They’re extremely high in omega-3 fatty acids, and they also have a deliciously nutty and toasty flavor. Here are five ways to get them in your diet. There are two sorts of flax seed: golden yellow (as pictured above), and a russet brown. Both have the same nutritional profile, and they are both from the flax plant, which is also used to produce linen.

During a recent pantry excavation, we unearthed two practically full bottles of almond extract, both of which had been purchased for some specific cake or cookie recipe and then forgotten. Clearly it was time to put it to use! Almond extract will never be an everyday flavoring, but we did come up with some ways to enjoy it more often.• Oatmeal: We usually add vanilla to our oatmeal, so a drop of almond extract is a nice change of pace.

We stocked up on nuts this past weekend in anticipation of all the holiday baking we have planned in the next two months. A while back, we learned that the best place to keep nuts for long-term storage like this is actually the freezer, not the pantry. Here’s why!All nuts have a super high in oil content. This is what makes them so delicious, after all! But because they’re so high in oil, nuts can easily go rancid from light and heat exposure.

Barley is a grain that you may only know from beef barley soup. Well, there are many more ways than just soup to enjoy barley, and it has a fabulous taste all on its own. Here are a few ways to eat barley. In soup – Look past beef barley soup! Barley is a great addition to many soups. Here’s an Armenian-inspired recipe for a warm yogurt barley soup with paprika. Drink it! – Barley has been used in many drinks. Here’s a nutty Korean tea of barley, called boricha.

These were labeled “bay leaves” at our local Indian market, but we knew they weren’t exactly the same as the standard bay laurel leaves in our spice cupboard. The intensely sweet cinnamon aroma convinced us to take a bag home. But what were they?According to our Indian cookbooks and spice guides, these are known as Indian bay leaves, cinnamon leaves, cassia leaves, or tejpat/tej patta in Hindi.

Unless you do a lot of gluten-free baking, you might not have come across xanthan gum — at least not in a recipe. Flip over a jar of salad dressing or a carton of ice cream to read the ingredients, and you’ll likely find xanthan gum listed there, too!So, is this a safe ingredient for a gluten-free diet — or an industrial additive to be avoided?Xanthan gum is produced from a certain strain of bacteria (Xanthomonas campestris, according to Wikipedia) reacting with carbohydrates.

Garlic is the flavor backbone of almost everything we cook. Have you ever been curious why some recipes call for whole garlic, some for minced garlic, and some for garlic paste instead of something else? Here’s what we think!Garlic bulbs contain a sulfuric compound just like onions, shallots, and other members of the tasty allium family. In the wild, this acts as a defense to ward away animals.

Q: On a whim, I purchased a 1/3 lb. bag of organic cacao nibs. They smell delicious; almost savory.I’ve had them in chocolates before, but other than making my own, what can I use them for?Sent by PepperReedEditor: Cacao nibs (sometimes called cocoa nibs) are one of our favorite little extras for the baking cupboard. They are a great substitute (in moderation) for nuts or sweet mix-ins like chocolate chips, adding a grown-up bitterness and savory crunch to cookies and cakes.

Personally, we can’t get enough garlic. If the recipe calls for a clove or two, we’re bound to put in three or four. But not everyone has the same opinion and not every dish needs the same kind of garlic flavor. Here’s how to change its flavor and intensity in any dish you make!One of the things we love about garlic is its versatility. Depending on how you cut it or cook it, garlic can be sweet and smoky, sharp and pungent, or simply mellow.

Fresh pomegranate season may have ended, but it’s still possible to cook with these fruits in their dried, spice form. Dried pomegranate seeds, also known as anardana, are a fairly new ingredient for us, but here are some of the things we have learned.Dried in the sun or with a dehydrator, the pomegranate seeds may be left whole or ground into a powder. The anardana we bought (pictured) was crushed until crumbly and slightly sticky.

Do you drink V8? We like it in savory smoothies, the occasional bloody mary, and lately, soup! Thanks to a tip in a recent issue of Cook’s Illustrated, we’ve started substituting a cup or two of this all-vegetable juice to the broth in our soups, stews, and braises this winter.Unsatisfied with the weak tomato flavor they were getting from supermarket tomatoes this time of year, the cooks of Cook’s Illustrated thought to add a dose of V8 to their recipe for Hearty Minestrone.

There are a million and one tips out there for how to make a hard-boiled egg easier to peel, but far fewer on why eggs are so hard to peel in the first place. Let’s take a look, shall we?One of the most frequently quoted peeling tips is that old eggs are easier to peel than fresh ones. It turns out this particular tip has some truth!Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking explains that the white albumen in a fresh eggs has a low relatively low (ie, acidic) pH level.

Can mashed potatoes really qualify as a meal by themselves? If you mix in enough other ingredients, we think they certainly can! Mashed potatoes are really just like polenta, rice, or any other starchy side, and they make the perfect foil for just about anything we have in the fridge. Here are a few of our favorites extras!We realized mashed potatoes could be a meal unto themselves when we got hungry while making a batch of Twice Baked Potatoes.

Mincing several cloves at once is one thing, but if you only need one or two cloves, you can leave your knife in the drawer. Mincing garlic with a fork makes the job quick and easy. Take a look!All we do is peel the garlic clove and then press it with the tines of a fork. Scrape off the fork and press the clove again in the other direction. Repeat as many times as necessary until the cloves is as minced as you’d like it, and then pick out the hard stem-nub.

Q: I started the Kitchen Cure last weekend, and I somehow forgot that I canned pints and pints of pickled peaches over the summer! Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. And while pickled peaches are OK swirled into some yogurt, I’m hoping I can find something new or different to use them for.Any suggestions? I’m trying to cut down on desserts, so something savory would probably better.

Q: I have been clearing out my fridge along with the Cure-ees and am perplexed by my jar of mint jelly. We roasted a beautiful leg of lamb at Christmas and made the Brit relatives very happy by having mint jelly for them, but what else can I do with it? We don’t eat a ton of meat but I would guess it would go well with things like ham or pork chops.Any other suggestions? It’s not a big jar but I don’t want it to go to waste!

Q: This past week I grabbed something I’d never even heard of before: A jar of adobo paste.I looked at the ingredients, but that didn’t do much to clue me in. I gather it’s used for Southwestern and Latin American cooking, but I’m super unfamiliar with that type of cuisine. I’m always up for the challenge of learning a new family of dishes, though. Are there any simple or basic recipes to get me used to the flavor and usage?Sent by Bailey P.Editor: Bailey P.

Have you tried guava paste? We first encountered this sweet concoction in an empanada at our favorite Cuban restaurant. Guava, cheese and fried dough in one bite? Yes, please! But there are lots of ways to use guava paste. We’ve got 10 ideas for you below. Guava paste – also known as guayabate or goiabada – is a very thick puree of guava fruit and sugar, often with added pectin. The consistency is similar to membrillo, or quince paste.

Sifting is a way to lighten flour that’s gotten packed down in a bag during storage and shipping. It’s also useful for mixing dry ingredients together and making sure there aren’t any stubborn clumps. You don’t need a fancy sifter (though they’re great fun!), but a few basic kitchen tools you probably already have.The simplest way we know to sift flour is to dump it into a strainer over our mixing bowl.

When it comes to snacking, we are devout popcorn fans. It’s quick to make, travels wellWe always toss the popcorn with melted butter or a drizzle of olive oil before adding any of the toppings. It helps the spices and herbs to stick to the individual kernels. In all cases, we use around a tablespoon of spice mix for a 6 cup batch of popped corn.

Wasabi peas are a favorite afternoon snack in our house. They’re crunchy and light, and they pack a nice balance of sweet and sinus-clearing punch. Don’t those peas up there look tasty? Ok, now take a look at our homemade attempt below!Yeah, these peas weren’t quite what we were going for!