Cooking at home can be a rewarding experience for you and your family. It usually saves money, can help bring families together and can even be a great expression of your creativity. If cooking at home just feels like a chore to you right now, consider these 3 ways to put some fun back into it.

Use Seasonal Ingredients

Sometimes the busyness of life can keep you from stopping to smell the roses and really enjoying the present. One great way to do so is to look up what fresh ingredients are in season and incorporating those in your cooking. Some meals and snacks are also tied to seasons by tradition, so consider how making certain things might play to the nostalgia of the season you’re in (such as making pumpkin ravioli in the fall or a piña colada in the summer).

Source Local Ingredients

Another great way to change things up and get creative is to source local ingredients. For example, you can hit up a local farmer’s market or meat market Rankin County MS to enhance your homecooked meals with fresh fruit, vegetables or cuts of meat (and support local business while you’re at it). Who doesn’t like the idea of a locally-sourced fresh slab of bacon for breakfast?

Make Something New

If you’re used to making certain things, if can be easy to fall back on them time and time again. But if you can find the time and energy to make it happen, try making something you’ve never made before to test (and enhance) your cooking abilities. You might even consider making something you normally don’t like and challenge yourself to change your own mind about it!

Whether you’re enjoying some alone time at home or spending quality time with family or friends, cooking can be a great way to take a step back from your crazy schedule and soak up the present, and these 3 ideas can help you get back in the kitchen with a fresh sense of creativity.…

Do you ever feel like your food is bland? Do you wish you knew how to jazz things up and knock your meals out of the park? Sometimes adding one ingredient or changing the cooking method can be enough to lift the flavors of the entire dish. Here are some ways you can help make your food taste better.

Balance Fat and Acid

If you’ve ever made spaghetti sauce from scratch, you know that sometimes tomatoes can be extremely acidic. When this happens, add some fat to the dish to help mellow out the acid, You could do like the Italians do and add a healthy portion of olive oil or some cream to help develop an even richer sauce.

On the flip side, when you feel that your food is a bit too fatty, then add an acid to it. You could perhaps use a drizzle of balsamic vinegar on a piece of meat or a squeeze of lemon juice on a fatty piece of salmon. When using acids, remember that a little goes a long way, so start slowly.

Add Aromatics

The best dishes are the ones that layer flavors. Even if you’re making a quick 15-minute recipe, you want to start with aromatics. Onions, garlic, and dried herbs can be cooked in oil to help bring out their flavors and aromas and inject their flavor into every part of the dish. They help create a base for the dish that helps make the finished dish taste better.

Brown Your Meat

Whether you’re putting meat in your slow cooker or making a steak, you want to brown the meat. When caramelizing the outside of the meat, you help create a deeper, richer, meaty flavor in your dish.

If you’re doing a slow cooker meal, turn the slow cooker on high and sear the meat before turning the temp down and adding the rest of the ingredients. That way, you have the bits of meat that are stuck to the bottom of the pan and are often looked at as flavor bombs.…

Whether you gather with your family or friends, spending time together is an excellent way to catch up and bond with each other. While dinner is often a good way to spend that quality time together, you should consider taking your meal to the next level. Instead of a traditional dinner of roast beef and potatoes, why not do a crab boil? It’s a fun way to eat and not something that is done all the time, so it will help create lasting memories for your guests. Here’s how you can have an amazing crab boil.

Prepare the Food

When choosing what food to serve for your boil, you need to decide what type of crab to include. You could include whole blue crab Plano, or you could choose frozen pre-cooked crab claws and legs.

After you know what crab you want to use, decide what else you want to have. Traditionally, crab boils also have corn on the cob, potatoes, sausage, onions and sometimes even eggs.

To cook the food, you simply bring a large pot of water to a boil with a seasoning packet and toss in your food. You want to start the potatoes first because they take the longest to cook. Then add everything else in according to their cook time.

When the food is done, simply drain the water, and enjoy the meal.

Prepare the Table

The best way to eat a crab boil is straight off the table outside. Line your table with butcher paper or newspaper, and simply dump the cooked food onto the table. Try to arrange the food so that everyone can easily reach each type of food.

While you could use plates if you wanted to, you don’t have to. The paper on the table can be used as the guest’s plate. You will want to make sure that you have buckets or bowls for guests to throw their finished corn cobs or crab shells. Additionally, don’t forget to include nutcrackers or crab mallets to make eating the crab a bit easier.…