Cooked - quick and easy recipes - page 114

A mint-flavored simple syrup made with leftover holiday candy canes. Use it as a topping for ice cream, or as a cocktail mixer.

Sweet pickle relish on a hot dog? Not for me: I want heat! Essentially a salsa, this relish works on a whole range of casual foods besides franks—nachos, burgers, tacos, you name it. Since this recipe makes a lot, you’ll be able to extend your condiment adventure into next season, slightly perspiring all through the cold months.

This bacon compote is versatile. Spoon some onto pizza along with jalapeños and red onions or try it as a meaty nacho topping, even toast a bagel and top with cream cheese and bacon compote—it’s fantastic.

Mexican mole sauce can be intimidating. There’s chocolate, chiles, and spices. It’s rich, full of flavor, and not too sweet, despite the chocolate. And it’s typically a labor-intensive process. But this recipe, based on Martha Stewart’s, takes little effort, thanks to the slow cooker. With an entire can of chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, along with ancho chiles and almonds, this mole is nicely spicy without being overbearing.

Crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside, the waffles for this bacon, cheese, and fried egg breakfast sandwich are a cool transformation of ramen noodles. Just boil the noodles, drain, and incorporate them into a straight-up waffle batter (chicken flavoring packet added for a savory boost).

Using the slow cooker allows you to get baby back pork ribs incredibly tender, but you’ll need to cook them in a sauce with tons of flavor so they’re not boring. For these easy, tasty ribs, you make a bacon-bourbon barbecue sauce for marinating and simmering the ribs. After 4 or 5 hours, when the ribs are tender, you brush them with more sauce and give them a quick turn in the broiler.

A five-minute turn in a stovetop smoker gives instant ramen noodles a depth of flavor that tastes like it took hours. You start by steaming eggs in the shell, before placing them in the smoker with the noodles. Then make the instant ramen in the usual way, and serve the smoked egg on top. It’s simple, comfortingly complex, and satisfying all at once. Special equipment: You’ll need a stovetop smoker for this recipe—our favorite is the compact and affordable model from Camerons.

In this adaptation of a classic coffee-table snack, the usual mix of almonds, cheese crackers, cereal squares, and oyster crackers turns extra-crisp and savory as it slowly cooks in a smoky soy-sauce-and-paprika seasoning blend. It takes a bit of minding, but once it’s done, you’re good for hours of party snacking.

We got the idea for these impromptu gnocchi from our Home Cooking community discussion board. All you need is half a pound of pizza dough, a pot of boiling salted water, and a sauce (marinara is perfect). Enlist your kids to help with the shaping, then let them watch you poaching the dough and tossing it in the sauce. What to buy: Premade pizza dough is available bagged in 14- or 16-ounce portions at well-stocked groceries.

Since Sriracha as we know and love it is fermented, tagging this bold-tasting hot sauce made with red Fresno chiles as such is technically a misnomer. Still, giving the chiles a 15-minute session in the stovetop smoker gives the finished sauce enough grounding and complexity to be worthy of the name. Special equipment: You’ll need a stovetop smoker.

This easy recipe yields a rich, smoky-tasting chili, perfect for laid-back Sundays. Made with chicken thighs, canned cannellini beans, and a handful of other ingredients, it tastes more complicated than it is. Bonus: You’ll have leftovers for the week.

Stuffed peppers were one of the first things I cooked for my wife when we started dating. They were completely undercooked, burnt yet crunchy. The couscous I packed inside turned into a semolina puck, anchored to the pepper bottom by cheese cement. This recipe is none of those things. The peppers end up perfectly cooked, and the outer skin peels right off. The quinoa keeps it healthy, the feta makes it taste rich, and the beans make it substantial. In short, the perfect healthy Sunday dinner.

Chicken breasts easily turn dry unless you use fattening things like cream or cheese as accessories for flavor and texture. That became the jumping-off point for this recipe: how to get juicy, mouth-watering chicken breasts while keeping things healthy. Poblano peppers turned out to be the answer: They’re mild, but infuse everything they touch with a rich green-chile flavor.

This easy recipe teaches how to make the best homemade Thai beef noodle salad. Don't miss it!