Rachael Ray

“Supermarket Score!” is all about taking a look at the great deals and delicious meals that are hidden in lesser-known yet commonly found supermarket items. Often when reading through food magazines and watching cooking shows on TV, I hear people talk about how much they love adding the flavors of their favorite cocktail to their dinner. Zingers like “Margarita Chicken” or “Bloody Mary BBQ” are cheeky and all, but I’d personally rather save my alcohol for drinking rather than cook it all away. That’s why, for this week’s Supermarket Score, I’m encouraging you to take a look - not at cocktails, per se - but at what flavors them. This week is all about bitters. In a world long [...]...

OK, I know what you're thinking: "he's supposed to be helping me out with lesser-known grocery store items. I buy cauliflower all the time!". And you make a fair point. But I'm taking the chance this week to taste my way through a "Supermarket Score" that always gets one-trick-pony status. ...

OK, so full disclosure: what I should have said is “Dinner at Home with an Almost Master Chef”. An old culinary school friend, Amanda, is crashing at our house this week as she’s shadowing professional chefs at our alma mater, The Culinary Institute of America, to prepare herself for taking the acclaimed (and incredibly, arduously challenging) Certified Master Chef exam. Leaps and bounds beyond the awards given to contestants in cooking reality series, Certified Master Chef (or “CMC” as chefs call it in the biz) is a title earned (to date) by only 63 people in the world. As an aside, Amanda, if she successfully passes next year, would be only the second woman to have ever earned the CMC [...]...

A few posts back, I shared with y'all 6 swap-outs that will save you in a pinch. You know, that make or break moment when dinner is in full swing and you realize you're out of poultry seasoning? How about getting your favorite biscuit recipe going and staring down an empty bag of self-rising flour? Luckily, disaster can be avoided! Stash these kitchen pinch hitters away in your culinary memory bank and the kitchen safety net is all yours. ...

What’s the first thing to come to mind when someone brings up “cottage cheese”?  Retro diet food surfing through a buffet atop leaf lettuce or cantaloupe?  Bodybuilding “go-to” snack?  Or, worst of all, “boring”?  Cottage cheese has endured all of these stereotypes and lived to tell the tale because - above all else - it’s gallons of kitchen versatility packed into 1-quart containers. Cottage cheese, as we all know it, is a mixture of cheese curds that are not fully strained, so some of the whey is left behind.  Available in a flavorful array of nonfat to full-fat varieties, this Supermarket Score is packed full of calcium, protein, and Vitamins A & D.  In fact, when paired against its other dairy [...]...

The allure of fresh cherries is undeniable. I’ll be hard-pressed to forget the first time I actually went cherry picking. Akin to apples, pears, peaches, and the like, cherries grow on trees in orchards. Beautiful, sweeping orchards with vistas the stuff that postcard dreamscapes are made of. So I embarked, armed with two 10-gallon buckets, a 4-footish-tall ladder, and the determination to hand-pick some cherries. The bonus smells of summer and sounds of ailing bird calls (a clever deterrent to “warn” hungry invaders of false danger, thus keeping them far away from the succulent ripe fruit) were the perfect Hollywood set-up on my quest to bring home one of nature’s most delicious creations. Be not mislead, [...]...

I love to entertain.  I’ll totally own it.  I get such pleasure from opening my home (and a bottle of wine or three) up to great people for a mellow evening in on the couch.  Sure dining out at a fancy restaurant is fun, but when was the last time you could do that under your favorite blanket with no shoes on?  My point exactly. Since the backbone of entertaining is to enjoy your company, I think it an essential part of my exercise as “host” to keep the food as fuss-free as possible.  Until the much-anticipated day comes when my new dream kitchen is fabulous enough to spend the whole night in, I’d rather be in our comfy living room [...]...

You ever feel like you’re staring into a blank abyss when the week reaches Thursday night and the tug-of-war between work fatigue and the weekend overwhelms your motor functions…and it’s time to make dinner? It’s often in these moments of great desperation that the “Fridge Raider” in all of us does his/her best work - such was the case for me last night. Having opened the refrigerator this week in a desperate attempt to scrape together dinner at 7:30 on Thursday night, my early-week pork roast found itself into a quick (and very satisfying, I might add) weeknight “Fridge Raider” supper. Taking a cue from the delicious Dark German Wheat Bread we picked up last weekend, a few thin [...]...

We’ve all been there before.  That sinking feeling that strikes when you’re knee-deep in putting together a cake and open the cupboard to find that you’re out of brown sugar.  Or when company is 20 minutes away and, because you’re all out of it, your buttermilk mashed potatoes will be reduced to simply “mashed potatoes”. I think we’re all in agreement that using the real thing 100% of the time is the best way to go.  But sometimes, life just doesn’t work out that way.  That’s why keeping a cache of “swap-outs” in your back pocket can turn potential culinary ruin into a quick fix that keeps everyone none-the-wiser.  Check these out: BUTTERMILK Buttermilk’s origins are just as its name says - it [...]...