Why, hello! Leite's Culinaria is the James Beard Award-winning site that helps home cooks and bakers put dinner on the table and laughs in the kitchen. Hungry for more? Join more than 30,000 food lovers and subscribe.
Small Jars, Big Personality 🍅
|
Hi Reader, Open my refrigerator on any given day and you’ll find two things: (1) far too many jars, and (2) Alan sighing dramatically every time he can’t find the milk behind them. But here’s the thing—those jars are my secret weapons. Your Pantry’s Power Players
WHAT'S INSIDE...
Homemade Tomato Paste⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.73 from 48 votes
Making tomato paste at home is surprisingly easy and a great way to use up lots of fresh tomatoes. All you need are tomatoes, salt, olive oil, a food mill, and a flair for classic Italian goodness.☞ Try this recipeHomemade Yellow Mustard⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.68 from 81 votes
Homemade yellow mustard is deceptively simple to make from mustard powder, vinegar, and a couple other basic pantry staples. You just may never go back to store-bought! Here's how to make it from scratch.☞ Try this recipeCheddar Cheese Sauce⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.85 from 66 votes
This quick and easy cheese sauce recipe is a versatile homemade go-to to stash in your recipe repertoire. Use it to top veggies, burgers, pasta or as a stand-in for nacho cheese sauce. Here's how to make it.☞ Try this recipeHomemade Old Bay Seasoning⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.79 from 52 votes
This copycat Old Bay seasoning recipe is a blend of celery salt, paprika, black pepper, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, ginger, and other spices that are exactly what you want to sprinkle on shrimp, crab boil, fish, fries, chicken. Anything, really.☞ Try this recipeHomemade Sriracha Sauce⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.85 from 63 votes
This homemade Sriracha sauce, made with everyday ingredients including hot peppers, vinegar, garlic, and salt, is easy to make, incendiary in taste, and less salty than the traditional version.☞ Try this recipeSweet Pickle Relish⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.64 from 111 votes
This sweet pickle relish, made with cucumbers, sugar, onion, salt, mustard seeds, celery seeds, and cider vinegar, is perfect for hamburgers and hot dogs and potato salad, and anything else. So long, storebought.☞ Try this recipePortuguese Piri-Piri Hot Sauce⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.77 from 13 votes
This Portuguese piri-piri hot sauce is made with bird's eye chiles, which can be used on chicken, shrimp, pork, or just about any dish in Portugal.☞ Try this recipeBacon Jam⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.98 from 35 votes
This bacon jam, made with bacon, maple syrup, and coffee, is a sweet condiment slathered on burgers at the Skillet diner in Seattle--and just about everywhere else these days.☞ Try this recipeHow To Make Maple Sugar
Learn how to make maple sugar at home by drying out maple syrup in a pan and you'll never again wonder where to find maple sugar. Did we mention it's paleo-friendly?☞ Try this recipeCheater's Gochujang⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 from 12 votes
Got gochujang? If not, then you need to drop everything and try this quick cheater's version from Da-Hae West that makes for an impressive stand-in for traditional homemade Korean chile paste. It's got a sweet heat as well as some serious umami. Here's how to make it.☞ Try this recipe |
Leite's Culinaria
Why, hello! Leite's Culinaria is the James Beard Award-winning site that helps home cooks and bakers put dinner on the table and laughs in the kitchen. Hungry for more? Join more than 30,000 food lovers and subscribe.
Hi Reader, I’ve always thought chicken gets a bad rap. People talk about it the way they talk about wallpaper—necessary, but boring. Ever since The One came on the scene, though, chicken has never been bland. There's his quick weekday roast he makes when he has three minutes and an attitude, the jug-cooked chicken from my cookbook that he swears could cure heartbreak, and a simple and simply superb Sunday supper: his brined roasted chicken that sits on a raft of carrots, onions, and potatoes...
Hi Reader, When I was a kid, beans were not optional. Ho-no! They appeared with the regularity of my godfather's Saturday-night stock car race. White beans with pork, black-eyed peas with tuna, lentils simmered until they slumped into submission. My mother insisted they were “good for you,” which, in childhood, was code for “culinary punishment.” This is what AI thinks I looked like as a child, sifting through a pan of chickpeas. But somewhere along the way, I stopped sulking and started...
Hi Reader, Every year when the first chill sneaks into the air, I’m hit with the same scent—apples and cinnamon—and suddenly I’m thirty-something again, standing in my postage-stamp-size kitchen trying to impress a man I’d met only weeks before. (Spoiler: I succeeded. He’s still here, three decades later, eating the evidence.) The One in my impossibly small kitchen in Brooklyn, tucked under a staircase. That first autumn, way back in 1993, was our season of Love Food. We knew nothing about...