The Cook’s Kitchen

Over the last few years, I have heard raves about Penzey’s spices.  I am not fortunate enough to have one located near me.  However, on a recent trip to visit family in Arizona, I was able to visit their store in Scottsdale.  As soon as I entered the store, I was in spice heaven!  For each […]

Well what do you know, there’s a Penzey’s within a couple miles of where I work.  I’m so in trouble!  Walking in for the first time was like sensory over load.  There were six different paprikas, several curries from around the world, and so many custom blends that the combinations were endless.  Each spice is […]

After a long Easter binge of milk chocolate rabbits, the family that was looking for something different, delicious, and a little more healthy. Now I said a little more healthy, so don’t confuse this with text book diet food. We’ve got some green stuff there and turkey instead of red meat for a […]

This dish was inspired by Rick Stein’s recipe. A co-worker who lives on and operates a small family farm, offered me some fresh ground lamb. The lamb was organic and free range. It was wonderfully fresh, flavorful, and tender. Kefta is known throughout the Middle East as spiced meatballs. The meatballs, tomatoes and onion were […]

I teased about this awesome package that I got and asked for several testers to help out with product testing. Thank you to the 15 testers to responded! I sent each of them 1-3 samples of tsp spices, and they each cooked with the spice and gave me a short 2 sentence review.
You guys […]

“Bacon! You want to know how good it is?
To improve other food they wrap it in bacon.”
Jim Gaffigan makes the statement above during his hilarious stand-up routine about bacon. I know it’s comedy but it’s really true. Isn’t it?
But in today’s health conscious society, how do we get the taste of bacon without always […]

One of the problems with buying fresh herbs is that before you know it, they’re wilting and can’t be used anymore. Yes, there are ways to freeze them, which is good as long as you remember to do that before they expire on you. But now there may be another solution… the Herb […]

The Cook’s Kitchen welcomes Larry Gaian, who is also a writer for GetYourGrillOn.net and Larry’s own site, TheBBQGrail.com. –Editor

I love using chipotles in adobo sauce. They provide a nice robust flavor to many different types of dishes, however, because of my families intolerance to “heat,” I don’t get to use them as often as I’d […]

Cream of Tartar is one of those ingredients that, while I tend to keep it on hand, I don’t use it very often.  That means by the time I usually get around to needing it, I might have run out of it without even knowing it, or it might be rock hard and unusable. 
That’s why […]

Bò Kho is a Vietnamese beef stew that my mother made for us all the time growing up. Not as thick as American beef stew, it’s more like a hearty soup with carrots and spices. My husband says it tastes like Asian-y boeuf bourguignon. It’s quite possible to me that this dish has its origins […]