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Season The Spinach: This is How it Tastes Best

You don’t always have to season spinach with nutmeg, salt and pepper. With our spice combinations, you can vary the healthy spinach with herbs and various extras.

Spinach provides many vitamins and provides you with protein, and it also tastes good. It doesn’t matter whether you use the leafy greens fresh or use frozen spinach – we’ll show you how you can season it deliciously. Because with salt, pepper and nutmeg – anyone can do that. With our variations, spinach becomes a culinary highlight…

Seasoning spinach: 7 delicious flavors

You only need to warm up spinach from the freezer before you can season it with delicious spices. But fresh spinach is even better because it contains the most vitamins and nutrients. In addition, the CO2 balance is better with fresh spinach from the region, since refrigeration and long transport routes are no longer necessary. We recommend organic spinach to avoid unnecessary pesticides.

You can season spinach in seven flavors:

Classic: Spinach is most commonly served with sautéed onion and seasoned with grated nutmeg, salt and pepper.
Cream: Creamed spinach is another classic in the kitchen. Add some garlic and (whipped) cream. You can find the whole recipe for creamed spinach in a detailed guide.
Curry: Prepare the spinach with coconut milk and a good curry powder or homemade curry paste, season with a little salt and pepper and you have a delicious curry spinach.
Hearty: Translucent steamed onions, blanched spinach and season with (rosy)hot paprika powder, ground cumin, black pepper, salt and some dried or fresh marjoram. This makes the spinach aromatic and spicy with a slightly sweet note.
Italian: Fry finely chopped garlic in a pan, add the spinach and one or two chopped tomatoes. Season with salt, pepper and freshly squeezed lemon juice and your spinach dish with an Italian touch is ready. If you like, you can also add some gorgonzola, feta or parmesan and toasted sunflower or pine nuts.
Arabic: Fry finely chopped garlic with a little oil, add spinach, coriander and dill, season with pepper and salt. At the very end, add yoghurt or a vegan alternative and the Arabic-style spinach is ready.
Indian: In addition to onions and lots of garlic, the Indian version also includes chopped ginger and a bit of coconut oil in the spinach. The whole thing is then seasoned with coriander powder, garam masala, ground cumin and turmeric. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and if necessary add some Indian cream cheese Panir – et voilà, the spinach dish is ready and will bring variety to the kitchen.

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Cooking Tips

Season The Sauerkraut: This is How it Tastes Best

If sauerkraut is a bit too bland for you with just salt, you can season it and vary it so deliciously. We present you with different variants.

Whether from a jar, a can or homemade: For sauerkraut, the fermented white cabbage is usually only seasoned with salt. The delicious herb can do a lot more – as our spice mixtures show you.

Seasoning sauerkraut – 7 delicious variants

With the right spices, sauerkraut can be surprisingly versatile. The following spice combinations go particularly well with lactic acid-fermented white cabbage:
Classic: Pepper, caraway, juniper berries and bay leaf are the spices of choice in traditional Bavarian cuisine. Optionally, a few whole cloves go well with it.
Fiery: With ginger and chilli powder you create a fiery sauerkraut variant. You can also finely grate fresh ginger and add finely chopped chili peppers.
Exotic: curry powder or curry paste as well as cinnamon and star anise give sauerkraut an Indian touch with a Christmas flair. Again, whole cloves go well with it.
Fruity and sweet: sauerkraut and sweet? Yes, that fits too! Simply cook or heat the sauerkraut with a grated apple. Alternatively, applesauce or apple juice also work. You can still round it off with salt, pepper and a few juniper or bay berries.
Hearty: The sauerkraut is particularly hearty if you add fried onions and caraway seeds and heat the sauerkraut in vegetable broth. Optionally, you can also add some medium-hot mustard.
Creamy: Quite unusual, but definitely worth a try – sauerkraut with almond butter or tahini. Add a few yeast flakes and the whole thing gets a cheesy touch.
Asian: Add a good sip of soy sauce and some sesame oil to the sauerkraut and you’ll give the dish an Asian touch.

As always, all ingredients including the spices should be organic. This is how you do what is best for you and the environment.

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Food

Cucumber Tastes Bitter: When to Stop Eating it

If the cucumber tastes bitter, caution is advised. We explain to you how long the vegetables can be kept, where the bitter taste can come from and when you should stop eating cucumbers.

That’s why cucumbers sometimes taste bitter

Originally, cucumbers were rich in harmful bitter substances, the cucurbitacins, which are typical of the pumpkin family. Modern breeds now contain very few of these bitter substances. That’s a good thing, because according to the Federal Center for Nutrition (BZfE) they can be toxic to humans in higher concentrations.

Cucumbers from the supermarket are usually not bitter. If you grow cucumbers in your own garden, they may develop bitter substances, for example due to incorrect fertilization. The cucumbers then taste bitter.
This can also be the case if you buy home-grown cucumbers that have been incorrectly fertilized at an organic farmer’s market or in an organic store.
If a cucumber tastes bitter, you should stop eating it. Symptoms such as stomach cramps or diarrhea can occur if you consume too many of the harmful bitter substances.

Shelf life and storage of cucumbers

Cucumbers are sensitive to cold. It is therefore best not to store them below ten degrees Celsius, otherwise they can become watery and soft.

If you want to store cucumbers in the fridge, use the crisper drawers. It is usually not as cold there as in the rest of the refrigerator. Otherwise, store the cucumbers in a cool room with high humidity.
It is best to eat the cucumbers fresh. If you can’t use them fresh, you should only store them for a few days before using them.
Cucumbers are not suitable for freezing. They lose their structure in the process and become mushy when they thaw again.
Cucumbers are sensitive to ethylene. Therefore, do not keep them with fruits like apples that emit ethylene or they will spoil faster.
When buying cucumbers, make sure they aren’t bruised or damaged if you don’t want to use them right away.
In principle, as long as the cucumbers don’t taste bitter, are too mushy or moldy, you shouldn’t throw them away. You can also roast or stew slightly older cucumbers as a side dish or use them in a cucumber salad.

Cucumbers belong to the gourd family and originally come from northern India. They have about 97 percent water content and are very low in calories at twelve kilocalories per 100 grams.
Healthy ingredients such as provitamin A and various minerals are located directly under the skin of the cucumber.
You should therefore not peel cucumbers, just wash them thoroughly. When buying cucumbers, also pay attention to organic quality so that no synthetic pesticides and other pollutants get into your body.

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Cooking Tips

Warm Up Pizza: This is How it Tastes Like Fresh Out of The Oven

Reheating pizza is actually quite simple. We’ll show you how to prepare a fresh and delicious meal from the “leftovers” from the day before.

Are you also a fan of cold pizza that you bought the day before? According to chemist Maureen Cooper of Sterling University in Scotland, the cold pizza still tastes good because the tomato sauce keeps the cheese from seeping through to the pizza crust and making it mushy.

Nevertheless, not everyone is enthusiastic about the taste of a cold pizza. With our methods you can get the taste pretty close to that of the day before. And at the same time you are doing something against food waste.

Reheat and spice up pizza

To make your pizza taste a little more “like new”, you can add herbs, vegetables or fresh cheese before or after heating it up:

Herbs and salad: Fresh basil, rocket, thyme or rosemary spice up any pizza. However, be careful not to put basil or arugula in the oven or pan, or they will lose their strong flavor and burn. With the other two herbs this is fine.
Pickled and dried foods: You can halve or cut olives, chili peppers or dried tomatoes into small pieces and spread them on the pizza. You can even put them in the oven, as they develop their flavor well when warm.
Fresh: Garlic and onions give your pizza a very special freshness. If you would like to add some vegetables, for example peppers or mushrooms are suitable.
Mediterranean cheeses: You can even enhance the cheese flavor of your pizza with feta, mozzarella or parmesan. Together with the herbs, olives or tomatoes mentioned above, your pizza will have a particularly Mediterranean flair. All types of cheese can be reheated or put on top afterwards, depending on whether you prefer a melted or fresher taste. Vegan cheese is also suitable.
Extravagant: Many people will have their hair stand on end at this recommendation, but for some, pineapple gives the pizza a very special, exotic sweetness. Canned fruit or vegetables are ready prepared from the tin or rather from the jar and can be processed immediately. Corn or beetroot are also recommended.

Warm up pizza the right way: in the pan or in the oven

Note: If you reheat the pizza in the microwave, it will get pretty mushy.

Reheat pizza in pan:
Heat your pan to medium-high without adding oil.
Add the pizza and cook until the dough is no longer “wobbly”.
Now turn the heat down, add half a teaspoon of water to the bottom of the pan and place a pan lid on top.
After a minute or two, when the cheese melts, your pizza should be ready.
Reheat pizza in the oven:
Place your pizza on a baking sheet. Instead of baking paper, use a more sustainable baking paper substitute.
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees.
Spray the pizza lightly with water and drizzle some olive oil on top so it tastes fresher and crunchier at the end.
Bake them for about five minutes.

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Food

Defrost Bread: With These Tips, it Tastes Fresh Again

Defrosting bread without it becoming hard right away – not that easy. But with our tricks, the frozen bread tastes fresh again quickly. This works best if you take precautions when freezing.

In order for the frozen bread to taste fresh after defrosting, you have to consider a few things:

The first thing that matters is how you froze the bread. It is important that it was packed airtight.
If possible, freeze rolls in portions and bread in slices. Then you can always defrost exactly as much as you need.

Defrosting bread: tips & tricks

Take the portion out of the freezer early. The bread should be thawed for at least 1-3 hours before you eat or bake it.
If it only thaws for a short time, it becomes watery.
It is best to take the bread out of the freezer the evening before consumption. This allows the bread to defrost overnight.
Then make sure to cover it or thaw it in a cotton bag.

Bake thawed bread

If you briefly bake bread the next morning, it tastes (almost) like fresh bread. A few minutes in the oven and it’s crispy again. This is the best way to do it:

Set the oven to 125 degrees.
Brush the bread or bread slices with some water.
You can then bake the bread on a rack in the oven for about ten minutes. Once it’s crispy, it’s done.
Tip: You can also easily bake slices of bread in the toaster. This saves energy, because the toaster usually uses significantly less electricity than an oven.

For something quick: Defrost bread directly in the oven

If you need your bread quickly and don’t want to wait for it to defrost, you can defrost it directly in the oven. However, it won’t be quite as crispy.

Preheat the oven to about 180 degrees and put the bread in the oven for about 25 to 30 minutes. The time also depends on the size of the bread. You can eat slices of bread after 10 to 15 minutes.
Then let the bread rest at room temperature for a quarter of an hour. A few minutes is enough for slices of bread.
Frozen rolls should be taken out of the oven after 10 minutes.

Defrost bread in the microwave

You can also defrost individual slices of bread in the microwave:

Place the bread slices on a plate.
Set the microwave to the highest setting.
Heat the slices in short intervals of about 10 seconds.
Check from time to time whether your bread has already defrosted.
If it’s still cold, reheat it for a few seconds. As a rule, the bread slices are defrosted after 15 to 25 seconds.
You can store bread slices in the refrigerator for up to three months and then defrost them. Whole loaves of bread and rolls can be frozen for up to six months. Make sure you only get what you need from the freezer: the more often you freeze bread, the harder it gets.

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Food

Make Matcha Tea: It Tastes Best with this Technique

Make matcha tea perfectly is considered a high art in Asia. Because green tea is very healthy and is becoming more and more popular with us. Here’s how to brew it properly.

Making matcha tea: This is how the powdered tea succeeds

Brewing Matcha tea is a little more complex than with conventional teas. In order for the tea to be nice and creamy, there are a few things to consider. Because to be able to prepare it, you need a bamboo spatula, a bamboo whisk and a matcha bowl (a set is available from **Amazon, for example).

For the matcha tea you also need:

two to four bamboo spatulas or one to two heaped teaspoons of matcha tea powder
75 ml hot water (about 80 degrees Celsius)
1. Soak bamboo whisk

The bamboo broom, called “chasen” by professionals, should be placed in warm water for a few minutes. This makes it smoother and the tea can be whipped better.

2. Matcha powder sift

Matcha tea is only available as a powder. So that no annoying lumps form during the preparation, you should first pass the powder through a fine sieve. This way you can be sure that the tea will have a nice consistency and an even taste.

3. Mix the paste

Now put the powder in the bowl. The more tea you use, the thicker and creamier the matcha tea will be in the end. Pour in some of the hot water. With the Chasen you start beating the tea into a paste.

4. Brew tea

You don’t stir the matcha tea, but open it in a W-shape. To do this, draw a W in the matcha bowl in short, quick movements. Keep your wrist as loose as possible. Gradually add the rest of the water.

5. Enjoy

The matcha tea is ready when the consistency is even and the surface is creamy. Finally, carefully guide the chasen along the inside of the bowl. Now you can enjoy the tea.

That’s why matcha tea is so healthy

Unlike classic green tea, matcha tea uses the entire leaf. During production, the tea leaf is ground and pulverized. In this way, important nutrients are retained that are lost in conventional tea during production.

Matcha tea is particularly rich in antioxidants that protect cells from free radicals. It also contains a variety of vitamins. These include vitamin B1, B2 and B3, but also vitamin C, E and K. Nutrients such as calcium, potassium and beta-carotene also make it so healthy.

Matcha tea has a distinctive green color that can vary somewhat depending on the variety. You can recognize high-quality tea by the fact that it does not taste bitter, but rather has a slight sweetness.

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Food

Nettle Recipes: This is How the Plant Tastes Best

The stinging nettle is very popular again today because of its healthy nutrients. With these five recipes you can conjure up delicious dishes from the “weed”.

Nettle recipes – you should know that in advance

There are many reasons to cook more recipes with stinging nettles: The garden herb contains an active ingredient that inhibits the growth of bacteria. Stinging nettles also provide a lot of nutrients: In addition to minerals such as iron, magnesium and potassium, they even contain more vitamin C than citrus fruits!

In order to be able to enjoy the stinging nettle in your mouth without irritation, you must first break off the stinging hairs. For that there are different possibilities:

Briefly boil the nettle. This destroys the plant structure so much that the stinging hairs no longer work.
Roll the collected nettle parts with a rolling pin. This is how you break off the stinging hairs.
Puree or mix your nettle harvest: Here, too, the hair is broken off mechanically.
After you have pre-processed your nettle harvest in this way, you can overcook it without hesitation. Try the following recipes:

Recipe: Nettle as a spinach substitute

Cooked nettle leaves are an excellent substitute for spinach and can be used in the same way.

Ingredients for 4 persons:

500g nettle leaves
1 onion
olive oil
Salt pepper
Preparation:

Remove the stalks (with gloves) from the nettle leaves.
In a covered pot, boil the nettle leaves in a little water for about 10 minutes. It is enough if the water fills the pot by about 1 – 2 cm. Any overlying leaves are cooked by the steam.
Drain the cooking water, but don’t throw it away. It is rich in nutrients and can be used in a soup, for example, or drunk as is.
Finely dice the onion and sweat it in a pan with the oil.
Mix nettle, onion and spices and puree everything.
Tip: The cooked nettle leaves also taste good as “spinach” on pizza or with pasta.

Recipe: nettle pesto

Nettle leaves are also ideal for a tasty, healthy pesto. You can use our basic recipe for homemade pesto as a guide, or try the following recipe idea:

Ingredients for a jar of pesto:

100 ml olive oil
approx. a muesli bowl of nettle leaves
1 large clove of garlic
30 grams of walnuts
20 grams of pine or sunflower seeds
1 dash of balsamic vinegar
juice of half a lemon
1 tsp salt
Black pepper to taste
Preparation:

Briefly roast the nuts and seeds in the pan without fat.
Place the nuts and any other ingredients in a suitable container.
Blend everything with a hand blender until you get the consistency of pesto you want. Alternatively, you can use a mortar and pestle to complete this step. However, this is significantly more time-consuming.

Recipe: Refine the salad with stinging nettles

You can also add nettle leaves raw to any salad. Make sure to break off the stinging hairs first, as explained above. If possible, you should only use young plants or the top leaves of older nettles, especially for the salad. These are particularly tasty.

You can add just a few leaves to your salad or use the nettle leaves as the main ingredient. You can’t go wrong with one of our delicious salad dressing ideas.

Recipe: Nettle Soup

Nettle leaves are also a great side dish for soups. There are practically no limits to your creativity: You can, for example, cook one of our vegan soups and simply add one or two handfuls of nettle leaves.

Nettle soup is often prepared with potatoes and carrots. You can orientate yourself on an ordinary potato soup by adding the nettle leaves about ten minutes before the end.

Recipe: Nettle in a smoothie

Smoothies are popular, versatile and can be really healthy with the right ingredients. So it makes sense to also use the healthy nettle leaves for a delicious green smoothie.

For example, you can use our recipes for green smoothies as a guide – or just get creative yourself. Bananas, strawberries or raspberries, for example, go well with nettles, but also other wild herbs such as dandelion. In any case, a handful of nettle leaves will give you a delicious health boost.

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Speculaas Cake: This Recipe Tastes Good Before and After Christmas

For the speculoos cake you can use old speculoos cookies. Even after Christmas, the creamy cake tastes irresistible. We show you a simple recipe with a vegan version.

The speculoos cake enchants with a fresh note of lemon and Christmas spices. Making speculoos yourself is very easy – so you can use your homemade speculoos cookies for the cake. Alternatively, you can use store-bought speculoos.

Tip: Use old speculaas for the cake to avoid wasting food.

In addition to the speculoos biscuits, the cake lives from the aromatic speculoos spice. Together with a little lemon and subtle sweetness, an irresistible cream is created that makes the cake special.

Serve the speculoos cake during the Advent season, on the Christmas holidays or in the following wintry weeks. Here you can find out how to do it safely.

Speculaas Cake: A simple recipe

When buying your ingredients, pay attention to organic quality. Organic seals such as Demeter, Naturland or Bioland assure products that are free from harmful substances such as synthetic chemical pesticides. This is how you protect the environment and your health. If possible, also buy products from regional production in order to avoid long transport routes with increased CO2 emissions.

Ingredients:

100 g butter
200 g speculoos
20 ml espresso
400 g vanilla yoghurt
200 g sour cream
2 tsp speculoos spice
2 ELA horn syrup
1Organic lemon: peel zest
1 tablespoon cinnamon, ground
1 handful of speculoos

Directions:

Put the butter in a small saucepan and let it melt over medium heat.
Meanwhile, crumble the speculaas biscuits into small pieces.
Mix the crumbly speculoos with the melted butter and espresso in a bowl.
Cover the bottom of the springform pan (diameter 23 centimeters) with the speculoos batter.
Tip: You don’t need to grease the base beforehand as the cookie mixture already contains butter.
Put the yoghurt and sour cream in another bowl. Mix them with the speculoos spice, the maple syrup and the zest of the lemon.
Spread the yoghurt mixture on the speculoos base and spread the cream evenly.
Place the speculaas cake in the fridge for two hours.
Decorate the speculoos cake with some cinnamon and crushed speculoos cookies before serving.

The vegan version

If you want to avoid animal products in your diet, swap out the following ingredients for a vegan alternative:

Speculatius: When buying speculoos, make sure that the biscuits are suitable for vegans.
Butter: Replace with vegan margarine or vegan butter. Coconut oil is also suitable, but changes the taste with its subtle coconut note.
Vanilla yogurt and sour cream: Instead of yogurt and sour cream, buy plant-based products like vegan yogurt. You can get a wide range of vegan alternatives to these dairy products in health food stores and well-stocked supermarkets.
You can keep the cake in the fridge for a few days. The speculoos cake tastes particularly good with hot chocolate or Christmas coffee.

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Vegan Tastes Bland? You Should Definitely Pay Attention to That

Did the vegan dish taste like nothing the other day? It doesn’t have to be! Vegan cuisine can be creative and tasty – if you follow a few tips.

Regardless of whether you have just started eating vegan, have been a fan of vegan cuisine for a long time, or just cook vegan every now and then – sometimes you may have the problem that vegan food tastes bland.

We will explain how you can prevent this and how you can use small tricks to cook particularly delicious vegan food.

Spices add flavor to your vegan food

Whether vegan or not: If you don’t season your food, it will taste bland. You can bring your vegan dishes into very different worlds of flavor if you use different spices.

Get to know spices

In addition to salt and pepper, you can use fresh or dried herbs, individual spices such as turmeric and chillies or ready-made spice mixtures, such as curry powder. Over time you will figure out how to use the spices properly. For example, you should sauté curry powder so that it develops its full aroma. You can use other spices to marinate ingredients before cooking. For example, it is worth marinating tofu. If you want to add a smoky flavor to your dishes, you can use smoked salt or smoked paprika. It tastes very good in a vegan goulash, for example.

See if you can find a weekly market near you that offers spices so you can smell them or taste them too. This is how you find out what you like best. If possible, look for organic spices to avoid contaminating the environment with chemical-synthetic pesticides.

So there is more umami

Yeast flakes, soy sauce or miso paste are very suitable for a more intense umami taste in vegan cuisine. You can also make your own umami spice, which you can use to add a hearty, meaty note to vegan dishes.

Vegetable broth instead of water

When cooking, it’s also a good idea to use vegetable broth instead of water. That gives it more flavor. If you cook vegetables in it, you can turn the broth over afterwards and make a soup out of it.

Sauces for extra taste

You can also serve delicious sauces with your dishes. In addition to classics such as mustard or ketchup, you can also serve chimichurri, a herb sauce, or BBQ sauce with the vegan dishes.

Certain ingredients provide more flavor

Don’t cut out fat when cooking. While you shouldn’t use a ton of it, it’s an important flavor carrier. Fat can bind flavoring substances that are fat-soluble and that only become noticeable when they are absorbed by the fat during cooking. Without any fat, your dishes just taste a bit bland. You can use a wide variety of products for the fat content. Cooking oils, margarine or vegan cream are ideal. But tahini, nut butter or avocados are also good. Depending on what you choose, you can use the products directly in cooking or add them to serve.

Another trick for a particularly intense aroma is using dried or pickled ingredients. For example, dried mushrooms, algae or tomatoes bring a much more concentrated taste to your vegan food. If you soak them before using them, you can use the leftover liquid as well. There is also a lot of flavor in it. Pickled vegetables add more flavors. Try it with olives in the tomato sauce, pickled dried tomatoes with aubergines or pickled peppers as a topping.

If you like onions and garlic, these are also very good for adding more flavor to your vegan cooking. Depending on whether you fry them vigorously, sauté them briefly until translucent or add them raw, they provide different flavors. Just give it a try.

Searing, freshness and a pinch of courage

Another trick for more flavor is to fry ingredients instead of boiling them. Frying also lets you caramelize vegetables slightly, giving them a more complex flavor and texture. Even if you want to make a soup or sauce from it afterwards, it can be particularly tasty to fry onions in a little oil beforehand, for example.

Use as many fresh products as possible when cooking. In an emergency, you can of course also use canned vegetables, but fresh and, above all, seasonal vegetables are usually more aromatic and also ensure a crunchy chewing experience.

And last but not least, you are welcome to experiment with vegan cuisine. Dare unusual combinations of foods and new ingredients. This gives you the opportunity to learn more and find out what you particularly like.

Conclusion: This is not how vegan food tastes boring

Here is an overview of all the tips with which your vegan food will no longer taste bland in the future:

  • Use spices, herbs and salt.
  • You can get more umami with yeast flakes, soy sauce or miso paste.
  • Serve sauce with your dishes.
  • Use vegetable broth instead of water.
  • Don’t forget the fat as a flavor carrier.
  • Use dried or pickled products for an intense aroma.
  • Onions and garlic add heartiness.
  • Fry instead of cooking.
  • Use fresh produce.
  • Be brave and try new things.
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