Now That's A Mouthful

Miso – as an ingredient – frequently appears in recipes, and yet it seems to be an ingredient a lot of people haven’t cooked with.  Miso isn’t a new or newly popularized ingredient, though we have had trouble finding it.  Learn where to look for miso, and get some great tips and recipes on what to do with that miso once you have it.

We cooked from a range of cookbooks this round.  We learned a lot, asked a lot of questions and had a lot to say about what we were cooking!

Sauce-making is as easy as adding a little water and some herbs to a pan.  Really?  Yes, Really.  We’ve got one great recipe to share that makes its own sauce in the pot, and a couple of great ideas how to turn those brown bits in the bottom of your pan into a delicious little pan sauce.  Just like a pro.

It seems in today’s modern recipes, we’re required to make more than just one trip to more than just one grocery store or market.  What are these strange and difficult to find ingredients?  And how are we supposed to know where to find them if we don’t know what they are???

From bread doughs and pasta doughs to roasts and braises; to breaking down fresh ingredients so we can cook them up; slow-cooking and sous vide…, some of our recipes require a lot of our time.  What makes a cook want to invest so much time on a recipe, or for that matter, in the kitchen?  Is the investment ultimately worth it?

We used a lot of dough in our testing – for breads, for buns, and for dumplings, like pierogis!  Some testers had trouble, and some did not.  Whether you are a seasoned veteran or making your first attempt at a homemade dough, there’s a lot to think about.  So how do we level the playing field and give ourselves the best chance for success when our recipe calls on us to make a dough?

Time for clean, healthy eating and our testing roster was filled with 4 different salads. This got us wondering: what really makes a great salad?

Our testing community has been busy cooking from a number of cookbooks and providing insight into their cooking. Each month we recap our testing experience: find out what we are cooking from – what recipes we loved, what we learned and what sent us back into the kitchen in search of answers.

Based on the feedback we receive from our Testing Community, we’ve noticed that many of our testers are critical of the approach and voice of the recipes. In this episode we discuss who writes cookbooks these days and why they are all so different.

If we learned anything from our first round of testing it’s that we LOVE to change or tweak recipes! So we ask, what makes for a good recipe? Are there any recipes that you don’t have to change? Why change it? How do you know to change it? Why write recipes if they’re going to be changed anyway?