Posted on December 13, 2016 by Kate Halsall
Ahhhhh Winter…..the time for different kinds of stews, soups and chilli’s. But sometimes it’s hard to find the motivation to simply make yet another type of soup. So here’s the trick, I have a few secret ingredients up my sleeve to add a new lease of life to your food. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll share these secrets with you – but here’s a warning, food may never be the same again!!
Chipotle Chilli
If you like a little kick to your food, try chipotle instead of your normal chilli. Whether it’s paste or powder, this will add a lovely smoky heat to your food. I personally buy paste, but you need to be careful as a lot of the pastes have added sugar to them. And I don’t just add it to chilli! After an amazing bowl of spicy rice noodle soup in Iceland, I recreated it last night using the chipotle chilli. You can make your own paste with tomato, chipotle chilli powder, lime juice and coriander.
Fajita Mix
I currently have to stop myself adding this to EVERYTHING! It occurred to me the other day that fajita’s without the wraps are simply a posh stir fry……think about it…….it has changed the way I view stir fries forever. Don’t buy the seasoning from the shops – they generally have sugar AND salt added to them. It’s so easy to make your own: I use chili powder (oooooo I could use chipotle chilli powder!), cumin, paprika, and cayenne pepper.
Dried Mushrooms
This is going back to my lovely bowl of rice noodle soup…..whilst I use miso too as my stock, it can be quite salty. The water you rehydrate the mushrooms with can be used as stock, sauces or cooking liquid; and then the mushrooms added to the dish.
The problem with food blogs, is that they always make me hungry…..hopefully these secret ingredients will give you some inspiration to try new things!