herbs

How to Make a Bouquet Garni

How do you make a bouquet garni and what do you use it for? This little fresh herb packet is all part of the flavor building game for soups, stews, stocks and more.

A bouquet garni is literally a bunch (or bouquet) of fresh herbs and spices wrapped in a piece of cheesecloth and tied with twine to make into a little purse or bag.

Used as a flavoring for soups, stews, stocks, and roasts, bouquet garnis are used for recipe you want to add fresh herbs and/or spices for flavor but don’t want to fish the spent herbs out of the finished dish one by one once the cooking is done. These herb purses keep your spices all in one place and can be added to a recipe whole so no extra work of chopping, mincing, or grating involved.

It’s really as easy as 1, 2, 3, 4 :).

Here’s how to make a bouquet garni.continue to the recipe… about How to Make a Bouquet Garni

The Best Crispy Oven Roasted Potatoes

Crispy oven roast potatoes are an easy, healthy side dish for breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner, because no matter what time of year, they fit every meal.

The Best Crispy Oven Roast Potatoes

Forget feeling all the feels, lately I’ve been feeling all the sides.

Maybe it’s because when I make up my weekly not-a-plan-flexible-meal-plan (subscribe to my newsletter and I’ll send it to you each Saturday for FREE) I realize there are so many easy side dishes I make that I haven’t yet shared here on the blog.

Or maybe it’s because if I had my druthers, my plate would be composed of a taste of this and a bite of that. Variety is my friend.

These crispy oven roasted potatoes will also add variety to your plate, with a variety of herbs, and served at a variety of times, these taters are at the top of my easy side dish list. And now, they are about to shoot to the top of yours. continue to the recipe… about The Best Crispy Oven Roasted Potatoes

The Best Dry Rub for Ribs

The best seasoning to put on ribs to achieve flavorful, fall-off-the-bone tender bites isn’t a liquid sauce or a marinade. It’s all in the rub baby, a homemade dry rub made from spices and herbs you probably have sitting in your pantry right now.

When I was a novice rib cooker, I thought you cooked ribs just like a steak or a hamburger—you simply put the uncooked ribs in the oven or on the grill, then slathered them with bbq sauce to cook until they were just cooked through. What resulted from that bonehead technique was ribs that were flavorlesss, tough, and in the end were scorched to a burnt crisp thanks to the sugars in the barbecue sauce.

What I didn’t know is ribs need time…low and slow cooking time in the oven or in the smoker to break down those tough fibers and tenderize. I also learned (and as any award winning rib pit master knows) the key to great ribs is a generous rub of seasonings that soak into and permeate the meat, drawing out the moisture to tenderize and add flavor over several hours—or even days—of refrigerated marinating time.

Dry rub recipes created by those pit masters are more closely guarded than their social security numbers. My husband came up with this dry rub combination years ago and dubbed it his “magic dust”. While he’s no pit master, it is his secret to the best barbecue baby back ribs and seasoning chicken, pork chops, steaks or other cuts of beef.

He’s never been good at keeping secrets, so now his magic dust recipe is about to become your secret ingredient, too.

continue to the recipe… about The Best Dry Rub for Ribs

Marinated Flank Steak with Asian Chimichurri Sauce

Thanks to a simple soy sauce, orange, and garlic-spiked marinade, this easy flank steak recipe can be ready to grill in 30 minutes, or left in the fridge over night for a deeper flavor that’s topped with a fresh, garlicky chimichurri sauce with an Asian spin.

It’s Wednesday night at 5:00 p.m., and while you’d much prefer to be cheers-ing friends at happy hour and announcing, “It’s 5:00 somewhere!”, instead, you’re face-palming your forehead and exclaiming, “Oh crap! I forgot to get dinner started!”

Yep, this is the picture of the food blogger (me) and any other meal-maker with the best of intentions to make meal planning goals stick (you?), who has lost track of time and been foiled by the ticking clock.

Are you feeling it too?

Luckily, having a few simple, time-saving recipes like this quick-to-marinate, Asian-flavored grilled steak recipe in our back pockets can always be dinner-prep’s saving grace.

I’ve been making one version or another of this Asian-flavored marinated flank steak for years. In fact, it’s likely one of the first recipes my man and I ever cooked together, proving that it’s a recipe that’s perfect for beginning cooks to jump right into.continue to the recipe… about Marinated Flank Steak with Asian Chimichurri Sauce

Green Goddess Cream Cheese Veggie Sandwich

Garlic and herb-infused cream cheese flavor a bounty of green vegetables to make a healthy sandwich with loads of flavor.

This post is brought to you by Arla USA

It’s back to school and that means I’m back in the sandwich-making game.

When I was a young whipper snapper going to school, I ate school lunch every day. Flying Saucers were a favorite—fried bologna with a dollop of mashed potatoes and topped with melted American cheese served in the tray that didn’t let anything touch.

There were maybe a handful of kids that took their lunch to school, showing off their Scooby Doo or Barbie lunchboxes with boring peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But not me. PB&J’s were never on my lunch bucket list, and they’ve never been popular with my Smudge either.

I mean, why would Smudge even be tempted by a peanut butter sand when instead she gets layered beauties of freshness like this packed in her lunch every day.

My girl…she’s got it good. And I’m MORE than happy to provide them to her because it sets my mind at ease knowing she’s eating a healthy meal to keep that brainpower powered.continue to the recipe… about Green Goddess Cream Cheese Veggie Sandwich

Greek-Style Panzanella Bread Salad Recipe

This simple, healthy Tuscan bread salad recipe gets a Mediterranean makeover with the addition of kalamata olives, roasted red bell pepper, capers and feta cheese.

This post is in partnership with McCormick.

The first time I heard the word “panzanella”, I thought it was a dessert.

I mean, doesn’t it sound like something fabulously decadent you could only find in a European bakery with those cute little tables sitting outside on the sidewalk? Made by a chef in a white toque (fyi, that’s what they call those Chef Boyardee hats) with mounds of sugar, the sweetest butter and the flakiest crust, intended to be nibbled slowly through the afternoon side by side to a steaming cup of the most perfectly poured espresso?

Yeah, I was so wrong.

Panzanella is a traditional Tuscan salad made with the summer’s juiciest tomatoes, and get this: day-old, definitely-not-soft, hearty bread. Since our family is a family of bread dippers, the addition of bread in this salad makes it really popular—no additional dipping required.

To switch things up from the traditional Tuscan way this salad is prepared, I added a few Mediterranean-inspired flavors to our usual bread salad mix.

Yeah, and this time, I am so right.continue to the recipe… about Greek-Style Panzanella Bread Salad Recipe

Grilled Teriyaki Cauliflower Steaks with Asian Gremolata

Cauliflower is cut into steaks and marinated in a sweet and spicy teriyaki glaze, grilled and topped with a sweet herby sauce for a healthy vegetarian dinner even carnivores will love!

I’m happy to share a little twist on the traditional BBQ fare with this recipe, sponsored by McCormick, because who knows better how to spice up summer than them?

At this stage of the cooking game we’re all familiar with the 4th of July grilling drill. Burgers, chicken, and beefy steaks are all summertime standards. So when McCormick asked me to create a recipe that breaks my grilling habits out of the summer grilling slump I was all for it.

Wait. Steak? Did someone say steak? That’s a great idea. Let’s make it veggie!

In just the past year or two my cauliflower game has come into full bloom. Prior to that, my taste for cauliflower ended with the last serving of cheesy draped cauliflower florets that my mom served us for dinner as a kid. Since then, I’ve been on a cauliflower sabbatical. There were so many more interesting things to eat.

But a few years ago I dove back into the cauli game with this Thai coconut-infused cauliflower side dish that was so good I wanted more. Roasted cauliflower pasta, quinoa and cauliflower chowder and cauliflower mashed potatoes and even eating (and enjoying) raw cauli florets soon followed suit.

Here, we’re moving our cauli to the main meal with this Grilled Teriyaki Cauliflower topped with a sweet and savory herby Asian drizzle.

continue to the recipe… about Grilled Teriyaki Cauliflower Steaks with Asian Gremolata

5 Ingredients That Make Boring Food Taste Good

If your food doesn’t show off the wow factor you wish it would, these 5 toppings can put a flavorful spin on an otherwise boring dish.

Chicken. Popcorn. Plain old white rice or steamed vegetables.

Too often some of our mealtime staples can put us into a serious flavor rut. They may be on our weekly meal planning lists, but end up being, simply…boring.

If you’re baking, cooking, or plating and feel that your food doesn’t show off the wow factor you wish it would, sometimes just changing up the accoutrements and toppings puts a fantastical spin on an otherwise normal (aka, boring) dish.continue to the recipe… about 5 Ingredients That Make Boring Food Taste Good

Baked Turkey Meatballs with Creamy Polenta and Marinara

These heathy, easy to make meatballs are made lighter with lean ground turkey, spinach, and fresh herbs, then baked up and served with creamy polenta and zesty marinara for a restaurant-worthy meal at home!

Bikini season is right around the corner. Make that tankini season for this girl. I’m smart enough to realize I’m no Demi Moore and my bikini days are over.

Making small changes for a little healthier eating and working toward a bit of scale tipping in the opposite direction of up is what’s on my agenda. And easy. I want easy meals whenever I can get them but not at the expense of freshness and taste.

This year I’m pleased to be working again with DeLallo Foods whose products I purchased even before our partnership began, making it all the easier to profess my fondness for them and show how I use some of their favorite products.

This recipe for Baked Turkey Meatballs is a mash up of store bought and homemade, with herb filled, from-scratch meatballs that are finished off with DeLallo Foods’ jarred Pomodoro Fresco Marinara and their Instant Polenta. The combo makes for an incredibly easy, fresh and fast weeknight dinner.

And simply because you won’t be able to tell the difference, it’s on the healthy side too.

continue to the recipe… about Baked Turkey Meatballs with Creamy Polenta and Marinara

Grilled Vegetable Sandwich with Herbed Ricotta

It’s mid-summer and I am soaking it in. Even my numbed-by-pain-killers-broken-wrist can’t dull the memories in my post-week-at-the-beach-where-did-the-humidity-go-summer-lovin-skin. It’s what summer’s all about and I have the tan to prove it.

With just 2 more weeks of July we’re narrowing down to the final 2 recipes for FoodieCrush Grilling Month. Break out the ticker tape because this week it’s a parade of a veggies on the grill.

So far this month we’ve sharpened our grilling skills with recipes for Grilled Pork Chops with Spicy Balsamic Grilled Peaches and headed to the sea for a bite of Grilled Swordfish with Smoked Paprika and Herbed Fruit Salsa. This week we’re circling back to dry land and the farmer’s market to take advantage of summer’s opulence.

Too often we get caught in our tried and true methods of steaming, baking and sautéeing when it comes to cooking veggies. But it’s summer, time to shake things up by biking rather than driving, wearing short shorts instead of maxi skirts and smiling extra sweetly at the cute barrista who always gets your name right…just because you know you can.

And when it comes to cooking, it’s time to break out of the expected because it’s summer and the grill is where the flavor. is. at.

continue to the recipe… about Grilled Vegetable Sandwich with Herbed Ricotta

Whiskey Lemonade Recipe with Honey Simple Syrup

I left my heart in Utah. Which makes it convenient since that’s where I’ve returned to roost.

This great state had some pretty great visitors this past weekend thanks to the bloggers who visited Park City for the third annual Evo Conference aka The Evolution of Women in Social Media. Plenty of bloggers, lots of info and some great sponsor suites.

Which is where I fell in love with this little baby.

The ultimate attraction: it’s ingredients were all Utah locals. And I love local.continue to the recipe… about Whiskey Lemonade Recipe with Honey Simple Syrup

Brined and Grilled Pork Loin Roast with Balsamic and Raspberry Chili Glaze

This week has definitely been one for the record books.

Thank you, thank you for all of your amazing support of—and eyeballs on—the launch of the Summer 2012 issue of FoodieCrush magazine. Your comments through the blog, on Twitter and Facebook reinforce my belief that there IS an audience that loves food bloggers, their recipes and photography and you too want to know more about these talents beyond their blogs.

Please don’t stop learning about these bloggers after you click close on the magazine. Visit their blogs and let them know you’re there with a simple comment, a wave or a shout and let them know you like them and their work.

One of the articles I was most excited to share is the Boys of Summer feature, featuring some of the best boy bloggers on the web aka Verses From My Kitchen, The Sophisticated Gourmet, SippitySup, Closet Cooking, A Thought for Food and Eat the Love, to give them some man-love-food props and strut their boy food stuff. I keep thinking they would make an amazing boy band, I’d be a groupie for sure.

There are so many amazing food bloggers on the www. I swear I have enough content to publish a new issue every week. Hey, that might be something to aspire to right?

So getting another issue of FoodieCrush out the door. Whew. That was a big deal.

And another big deal happened for me too, something some of you may have seen a mention of on Twitter or Facebook.continue to the recipe… about Brined and Grilled Pork Loin Roast with Balsamic and Raspberry Chili Glaze