Easy Recipes, Cooking Tips & More!
Welcome to I Want To Cook. I’m thrilled you are here.
This site complements my YouTube channel, where you’ll find video tutorials on all things cooking. On this site you’ll find more detailed posts that include recipe instructions, cooking tips, and more.
I Want To Cook was created by Matt Degen, a longtime food writer and professionally trained chef. His goal is to help you be a better cook, no matter your skill level.
Think of grilling on a barbecue and you’re likely to imagine a lot of meat. Sure, there might be a token vegetable thrown in, but usually grillin’ is about burgers, hot dogs, steak, chicken, and the like. But one of the best things you might just ever eat off a grill is a vegetable, and an unusual one at that: Radicchio.
Radicchio might be mistaken for purple cabbage because it looks quite similar to it. They are both leafy vegetables in a round shape (or, oblong, in the case of radicchio treviso), and can’t help but stand out in the produce section with their purple color.
You can easily tell radicchio apart by its white striations, beautiful lines that remind me of a tiger.
Continue reading “Grilled Radicchio Is Totally Rad”
Rice pudding. It’s a tasty, sensible, inexpensive, and non-daring dessert. But one small change to the top transforms it from simply tasty to surprisingly wonderful. And that top involves sugar and fire.
Before diving into how to make my special take on rice pudding, a quick background.
Rice pudding is a mixture of rice, milk, eggs, and other ingredients such as sugar and flavorings like vanilla extract and cinnamon. It is highly customizable. While short- or medium-grain white rice is the traditional stuff used for the main component, there’s no reason you can’t use long-grain white rice, jasmine rice, brown rice, etc.
Continue reading “Rice Pudding Brulee Is an Easy Yet Amazing Dessert”
I’m a fan of recipes whose results have family and friends thinking you’ve spent hours slaving away to create the delicious meal they’re so eagerly eating, but which in reality was a snap to make.
One such example are enchiladas, a Mexican dish that you can think of as burritos smothered in spicy sauce and then baked until soft and hot – a bubbly bit of cheese heaven. Like their tortilla-clothed brethren, enchiladas can be filled with any manner of goodies, from just cheese at their simplest to chicken, carnitas, or even lobster at the other end of the spectrum.
But making traditional enchiladas has its downsides, namely getting the tortillas pliable enough to roll in the first place, not to mention the messiness involved when it comes to rolling the things.
Enter the enchilada casserole. You get all the delicious benefits of a regular enchilada, but in an easier-to-make, easier-to-serve format. The dish is made by simply layering tortillas with cheese, sauce and your favorite ingredients (a perfect way to use leftover meat, chicken, veggies, etc.).
Continue reading “Enchilada Casserole Is Amazingly Easy”
When it comes to chile peppers, you might fall into one of two camps: You either love them or you fear them. If you know me, you know that I am firmly in group one. Like, cemented in. I absolutely love the heat, flavor, and rush I get from eating spicy foods, chiles key among them.
My daily drivers are often serranos and jalapenos, habaneros, and specialty peppers like Hatch chiles when they’re in season. Oh, and I’ve been either brave or dumb enough (likely both) to gobble a ghost pepper and try Da Bomb Beyond Insanity hot sauce, the infamous widow-maker from Hot Ones.
But chiles aren’t just about tongue-searing heat. A good one should prioritize flavor and, heck, maybe even fun. And here we get to the star of this post: shishito peppers, which pack a whallop of both.
Continue reading “Shishito Peppers Only Get Better With Char”
We usually think of pasta as something to be drenched in a rich marinara or a heavy, cream-based alfredo sauce. We also usually think of it as something that comes in long ribbons or strands.
Orzo is a type of pasta that turns that latter notion on its head, and used in the recipe here, does the same for the sauce that it’s served with.
Upon first glance, you might mistake orzo for rice. That’s because it is shaped just like those little grains. But orzo is indeed pasta, and is made from the same kind of wheat used for more familiar shapes like fettuccine, spaghetti, and angel hair.
Continue reading “Orzo Salad Ain’t Your Average Pasta”
Really, I have nothing against oatmeal. I’ve been known to cook up a batch several times a week. Heck, I even regularly incorporate it into my homemade dog food.
But let’s be honest: Oatmeal can be boring. It can be mushy. It can be bland. Nutritious, yes. But something you look forward to come breakfast time? Probably not.
Baked oatmeal, however, changes the game. Baked oatmeal uses the same main ingredient as oatmeal — oats, of course — but has a totally different texture. Instead of being mushy like porridge, baked oatmeal has a delightful firmness to it.
The oats on top get golden and delicious, while the interior remains soft. And it can be tailored to your specific tastes with the addition of nuts, fruits, and spices. Here is my baked oatmeal recipe that will make breakfast anything but boring.
Continue reading “Baked Oatmeal Is Way Better Than Mush”
Bechamel is one of those fancy-sounding culinary words. It might bring up connotations of a French restaurant or perhaps a snooty waiter derisively explaining the ingredients in today’s special.
And bechamel is indeed important. So important, in fact, that it’s among the five “mother sauces.” The other four are hollandaise, sauce tomate (tomato), espagnole, and veloute. They’re called mother sauces because they are foundational to others. Think of them as the parent to another sauce.
But here’s the good news: Bechamel is stunningly simple in both its ingredients and how it’s made. If you’ve got a pot, a whisk, and less than 10 minutes, you can make bechamel.
Continue reading “Homemade Bechamel Is Your Gateway Sauce”
Here it is upon us once again and all too soon: Thanksgiving.
You know what that means? Well of course it signals several helpings of turkey and a tryptophan-induced coma in front of the television soon after. It also means that those other holidays — Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Chrismukkah — are just a blink away.
As things in the kitchen move into high gear, it’s good to slow down and remember to enjoy the process. If you can think of what you are doing as an expression of love instead of a load of work, it will make the day that much more enjoyable.
It’s also a good time to remind about basic kitchen safety of the fowl variety. Undercooked turkey, as we all know, does not make for good eats or safe eats. Here are some tips and facts to remember if you are cooking the bird yourself in the oven.
Continue reading “Last-Minute Thanksgiving Survival Guide”
Tapenade: It’s a recipe that has a fancy name and one that you may think is hard to prepare, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. If you have a can opener, a food processer, and 10 minutes, you can make tapenade.
Tapenade is an olive-based dish that can be served on top of crusty bread, as a dip for vegetables, or even as a spread on sandwiches in place of mayonnaise.
Most tapenades are made with regular black olives like those commonly found in cans, but by all means, if you love green olives, give it a whirl. Kalamata olives could also make a delightful version. You can also combine different types of olives for more pizzazz.
Continue reading “Tapenade Is Totally Easy To Make”
There are some things that one can’t help but bristle at upon the notion of eating. Sure, we’ve all heard about the “delicacies” involving insects and offal in other countries, but what I bring to the table here is much simpler in nature yet can be just as confounding for the uninitiated: Cactus.
That’s right — those desert-loving plants known for their sharp spines can actually be eaten.
Two of the most popular edible portions of cacti are the pads, called “nopales,” and the pears, cactus fruit that in Spanish are known as “tuna.” The former are the flat, broad portions that look like paddles. Once their needles are removed, they can be grilled, baked, or simmered.
Cactus pears, also called prickly pears, can be peeled and eaten as is. Their delicious fruit is surprisingly sweet, with a texture that’s a cross between a kiwi and a pear. Fresh cactus pads and cactus pears can be found at Hispanic markets as well as some well-stocked mainstream grocers. Thankfully, the work of removing the needles has usually already been done.
Continue reading “Yes, You Can Cook and Eat Cactus!”