Category: Recipes

One-Pot Cooking: Exotic Dishes and Desserts Ring in the New Year

Part II: Slow Cooker Soups and Desserts

If you work in foodservice and are looking for decadent recipes for one-pot slow cooker dishes such as casseroles, stews, soups, and even desserts, you have come to the right place! Guaranteed to please your customers’ palates, you can create a winning restaurant menu with easy-to-make recipes where all the ingredients are simply combined in a single pot, pan, skillet, or slow cooker. Not only do these all-in-one dishes and desserts require few utensils and cleanup, but they take minimal time to prepare, include ingredients that are on hand and easy to substitute, are often large enough to feed large groups, and can be kept for use as leftovers or stored in the freezer.

For one-pot cooking tips and tricks using a slow cooker, and to learn how your chefs can maximize the wonders of a slow cooker or crock-pot, be sure to read Part I: Slow Cookers and Crock Pots.

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One-Pot Cooking and Meals Reign in Restaurants in 2022

Part I: Slow Cookers and Crock Pots

Restaurants feature one-pot dishes, often made in a slow cooker or crock pot.

If you’re looking for a business forecast for the 2022 restaurant industry, the recipe to success may lie in one-pot cooking. As restaurateurs and caterers struggle to get back on their feet in the aftermath of COVID-19, many are turning to the food and beverages that became best-sellers during the corona crisis and which have remained popular among consumers ever since.

Front-and-center on restaurant menus for the New Year, expect to see wholesome one-pot dishes where all the ingredients cook together in a single pot, skillet, or cooker. These one-dish meals tend to contain all the elements of a healthy breakfast, lunch, or dinner – and then some. Combine your choice of protein, starch, vegetables, sauces, syrups, salt and pepper, then add herbs and spices, for a dish that takes the taste buds over the top. While these recipes were once geared primarily for family dining, single-serving one-pot creations for individual diners are now also rising in the rankings.

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Shining the Limelight on Lemons

Cater to lemon-lovers with lemon-flavored dishes and desserts that steal the show

Attention lemon lovers around the world: If lemon is your favorite flavor, you have come to the right place! Similarly, if you are a seasoned chef, professional baker, budding culinary student, or restaurant owner, this Comprehensive Guide to Cooking and Baking with Lemons is the perfect recipe for success to keep your customers coming back for more.

So pucker up and prepare to learn all about lemons, one of Mother Nature’s most underestimated flavorful ingredients…

Tapping into the Taste of Lemon

Lemons are best known for their slightly sour or tart taste. Typically used to enhance the flavor of other foods (rather than be consumed alone), their pungent quality becomes citrusy, light, and refreshing when added to sweet and savory recipes alike. During the cooking or baking process, all parts of a lemon can be used: the juice, the pulp, and the peel/rind. Note: In recipes, grated lemon rind is often referred to as ‘lemon zest’. Continue reading Shining the Limelight on Lemons

Winning Ways to Update Your Restaurant’s Fall Menu

Update your restaurant's fall menu with seasonal ingredients and recipes

With summer over and the back-to-school season fading, restaurants fall menus have kicked into high gear. Once again, the autumn presents foodservice providers with a host of fruits, vegetables, and spices that are the hallmark of this pre-Winter period. Whether you are a caterer, restaurateur, run a coffee shop, pizza store, or even a smoothie stand, now is the time to cash in on the bounty and indulge your customers with seasonal favorites and new fall-inspired recipes.

Fall Produce Flourishing

The abundance of fresh produce available at affordable prices is reason enough for chefs to get excited as they conjure up their next Instagram-worthy pièce de résistance to attract consumers and entice the masses to sample their wares.

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Gazpacho Takes the Lead on Summer Soup Menus

Summer soup season is here, and the cold soup selections are (ironically) selling like hot cakes. Leading the pack, however, is gazpacho, the quintessential tomato-based chilled soup, appearing on restaurant menus everywhere. Featuring the aromas, flavors, and colors of the season’s top produce, fresh, cold gazpacho is a customer favorite.

With its origins in Spain, there is a famous Spanish saying: “De gazpacho no hay empacho” — there’s never too much gazpacho. If you work in foodservice and want to boost business this summer, it’s time to learn more about what has kept this dish so popular and what’s new in gazpacho recipes today.

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Add Fenugreek to Your Restaurant’s Menu

Restaurants spice things up by adding fenugreek to their menu

If you are a chef or restaurant owner looking for a new spice to infuse life into your customers’ favorite dishes, it’s time to add fenugreek to your list of ingredients! A long-time staple in Indian cuisine with a rich history in traditional Chinese medicine, fenugreek is an aromatic plant that is both an herb and a spice. It is available year-round as a seed (popularly known as methi), in whole or powdered form (with the former including the root and twigs), and as dry leaves that are especially popular in Middle Eastern cooking.

Fenugreek Quick Facts

The fenugreek plant is largely grown in South Asia and parts of the Mediterranean. It features small round leaves with long pods that contain distinctive bitter-tasting seeds. Its taste is described as sweet yet bitter with a hint of burnt sugar and a maple syrup aroma when cooked. In addition to packing a tasteful punch, fenugreek seeds provide some significant health benefits, including anti-inflammatory properties and antioxidant activities that are good for the body.

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Carob Makes a Comeback

Carob-flavored recipes on the rise in 2021

The all-natural sweetener that gained fame as a healthy chocolate substitute at the turn of the millennium is popular once again and being featured prominently in restaurant recipes in 2021. Most used to prepare sweet treats and desserts such as brownies, fudge, and milkshakes, there are so many good reasons why adding carob-flavored dishes to your menu is a sure-fire recipe for success.

Carob Benefits

If you are new to carob, it is a sweet, edible pulp that comes from the pods of a tropical carob tree. Dried and roasted, the pulp is ground into a powder for consumption or transformed into carob chips, syrup, or extract. In an age when wellness tops consumers’ minds, carob steps up to the plate with its multiple health benefits. These include the facts that carob is: Continue reading Carob Makes a Comeback

Restaurants Ring in the New Year with Kombucha

Add popular kombucha to your New Year takeout menu and cater to demand

Kombucha, the fizzy, fermented tea with a distinct tangy flavor, is in high demand. Restaurateurs seeking to upgrade their beverage menu for the New Year would do well to cater to customers’ clamors for more Kombucha.

So, what is it that has the cold tea flying off grocery store shelves, appearing in home and workplace refrigerators, and making the top-four list on consumer recipe searches?

We’ll answer these questions and more as we delve into the unusual world of Kombucha. Continue reading Restaurants Ring in the New Year with Kombucha

Casseroles Making a Comeback on Restaurant Menus

Restaurant casserole sales rise during corona.

Attention restaurant owners: If you are looking the latest recipes to add to your menu, think casseroles! The quintessential oven-baked creation is making a comeback, and for good reason. Budget-friendly and family friendly, casseroles can be as rich or as simple as your customers’ palates desire. They are easy to prepare, nutritious, delicious, and are typically made from many of the staples you already have in your pantry. Think cost-effective ingredients such as pasta, rice, flour, canned or frozen vegetables, canned soup, beans, and a choice of meat, cheese, fish, or vegetarian options. Moreover, casseroles make plenty of servings and are easy to freeze and store.

Many Types of Casseroles

Boost restaurant revenues with comforting casserole dishes during corona.

Here’s more good news for restaurateurs: With a trove of tried-and-true casserole recipes available, and with an endless variety of dishes your chefs can concoct on their own, it is no wonder the casserole has become the “go-to” dish for many restaurants these days. Continue reading Casseroles Making a Comeback on Restaurant Menus

Non-Alcoholic Drinks Revolution and Evolution

Discover the allure of non-alcoholic zero-proof spirits and how to add to your menu.

The soaring popularity of non-alcoholic drinks continues to revolutionize the brewery world as industry titans, esteemed bars, and well-respected bartenders board the booze-free train. Various formulations of the newcomers include terms such as mocktails, faux spirits, alt-gin, and zero-proof drinks and beverages. Yet while the cocktails might be ‘mock,’ they are bringing in real bucks – and big bucks to boot.

The non-alcoholic (NA) beer industry, in particular, has proliferated with sales expected to surpass $25 billion by 2024, according to research firm Global Market Insights. The year 2019 also witnessed the astronomical rise to success of the first non-alcoholic gin and whisky products from company Ritual Zero Proof. Its six-month startup inventory sold out in a mere six weeks, necessitating a 400% increase in production to meet demand. The company’s success has since garnered the attention of Diaego, the industry giant whose brands include Smirnoff, Crown Royal, Johnnie Walker, and Don Julio. It now has a small ownership stake and major cash investment in the company, enabling Ritual to expand significantly.

Sober Bars

And it’s not just non-alcoholic drinks which are experiencing an upheaval: sober bars, an oxymoron within itself, are popping up nationwide, along with the newly-coined term “sober curious population.” This refers to the growing population who are decreasing or altogether ceasing their alcohol intake and questioning everything about their relationship with alcohol and the societal pressures that have always caused them to consume alcohol.
The bottom line? If you own a bar, or if your restaurant or catering service provides alcohol, your business can no longer afford not to sell mock drinks and zero-proof beverages.

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