May 26, 2026

Coleslaw

Was planning to grill some chicken and corn for dinner tonight, so I thought I’d also make some Coleslaw to go with it.

I started by taking two heads of cabbage, one red and one green, both about 2.5lbs and slicing half each into thin slices. I put all the slices in a colander and put what I thought were some heavy pinches of salt on them, then mixed it up and repeated with the salt. I did this two or three times, then put the colander in the fridge for two hours. The recipe says to do it for 3 hours, but I didn’t have that much time.

After two hours, the cabbage was shiny from the released moisture, but there wasn’t any water pooled in the bowl under the colander. Kind of like the marinated slaw that I made a while back.

Next I made up the dressing using the remaining ingredients, and was ready to mix. First though, I soaked the cabbage for a bit and then spun it in my salad spinner. The cabbage was crunchy but not “raw” which I think is the whole point of the salting.

After mixing I put the slaw in the fridge while I prepared the rest of dinner. About 30m later I took it out of the fridge and served.

The slaw went really well with the grilled jerk chicken thighs and corn. We usually don’t eat or enjoy coleslaw but this was good! It’s definitely a “mild” coleslaw – missing that “tang” you get from traditional additions of vinegar and sugar. However, the mildness works for its purpose. I think next time I’d try adding some celery salt or celery seeds, like someone in the recipe comments mentioned.

Coleslaw

• Crowd: 4/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used half of a ~2.5lb red and green cabbage (weighed before cutting off stem and core)
• Used two medium carrots shredded on the box grater

May 26, 2026

Froyo

Continuing on with season six, I set out to make the Lemon-Ginger Frozen Yogurt this weekend. It started with making some Yogurt Cheese to use as the base of the froyo. To begin, I poured two containers of store-bought low fat (1.5% yogurt) in a colander over two bowls.

I got it into the fridge around 8pm, and it immediately started draining. I checked it around midnight and there was already a cup or so of liquid. The next day around 1pm I removed it from the fridge and there was another ~2 cups of liquid in the bowl. That means 3/8 of the total original yogurt was liquid.

It tasted fine. I mean, it was plain yogurt, so it wasn’t fantastic. But it was definitely a creamy consistency much like Greek yogurt. I then broke out all of the frozen yogurt ingredients and got everything mixed together in a bowl.

Note that I grated the ginger with the microplane (just like I did with the lemon zest) rather than mincing it with a knife like the recipe suggests. Once everything was mixed, into the icecream maker it went.

I gave it about 25 minutes to churn, then transferred it to a plastic quart container and put it into the freezer overnight. Oh yeah, I did not add the crystallized ginger to the churned froyo because it’s kind of spicy and I wanted this to have wider appeal.

The next evening after dinner we tried it. I put a sprinkle of the crystallized ginger on top of mine because I enjoy the spice.

The frozen yogurt was delightful. It’s tart, tangy, sour, and sweet all at once. The comments on the Food Network recipe say it’s “summer in a bowl” and I can totally see eating this on a hot day. Gemma gave it a 5 and I gave it a 4, so I’ll take the 5 when we get them. We also really liked the crystallized ginger. Next time, I would definitely mix it into the froyo, as well as try using monk fruit or Swerve to reduce the sugar content.

Yogurt Cheese

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used two containers of store bought 1.5% low fat plain yogurt
• A little more than 3 cups of liquid drained out

Lemon-Ginger Frozen Yogurt

• Crowd: 5/5
• Ease: 2/5
• Grated the ginger (rather than minced which is what the recipe says)
• Did not mix the crystallized ginger into the yogurt, instead used it as a topping. But next time I would add it in, because it adds a great little kick which is tempered by the coolness of the yogurt.
• Used three light quarter cups of sugar, next time would use the full measure, or would try substituting monk fruit sweetener or Swerve to try and cut down on sugar content.

May 22, 2026

Homebrew!

In the past I’ve done a lot of home brewing, so I’ve been looking forward to brewing Season Six’s Good Brew.

In the show Alton understandably takes a bare-bones, limited equipment approach to brewing, which is certainly the best way to make it approachable to someone who’s never brewed before. I have a lot more equipment and experience, so rather than trying to replicate his exact process I set out to brew his recipe using my own brewing approach that I have honed over a few dozen batches.

Recipe

So, here’s what I used to recreate Alton’s Good Brew recipe:

• 1/2 pound 60L crystal malt
• 5.75 pounds Light DME
• Wyeast 1098 (British Ale Yeast)
• 1.75oz East Kent Goldings hops
• 1oz Cascade hops

Note that I used dry malt extract instead of the liquid extract that he used in the show. This is just a preference – one I’ve developed over time. To go from a LME to a DME measurement, you can use any number of converters online.

Now let’s get into the brew!

Yeast Starter

Prep started about 24 hours before brew day. I began by creating a yeast starter with the yeast pack.

He didn’t do this in the show, but again I have the equipment and I’ve found that starting the yeast before the pitch makes for more vigorous fermentation (less “lag” period) which helps protect against things like infection.

Brew Day

The following afternoon was brew day. I cut out of work a little early and started brewing at about 3:30pm. First I pulled out all my equipment and inspected, cleaned, and sanitized it.

In the show, AB steeps his specialty grains in the brew kettle itself. I’ve found that doing this in a smaller pot with a grain bag helps with temperature control and reduces mess.

After the grains steeped for 30m at 150 degrees (I needed to kick on the heat two or three times to keep the water temp up), I sparged the grains in a colander over the brew kettle, using 1/2 gallon of 150 degree water.

I then topped off the kettle to 3 gallons and kicked on the heat. While the kettle was heating, I added all of the remaining dry malt extract (DME). It was a touch more than the 5.75lb, but I had that little extra so I figured I’d use it. It took about 35m, but then I had a nice rolling boil.

At the boil, I added 1oz of cascade hops, and 0.75oz of the UK Kent Goldings. Here’s another departure from the show – Alton only boils for 10 or 15 minutes, which is sort of out of the ordinary. Common wisdom is that a longer boil results in better hop utilization. So, I did the “normal” thing here, and boiled for 45m.

Meanwhile, I mixed up some sanitizer (rather than water plus bleach like they do in the show) and got to work sanitizing everything: the fermenter, its lid, the airlock, thermowell, strainer – everything that could come into contact with the wort after it comes off the stove.

After 45 minutes, I added some whirlfloc. In the show, he uses Irish Moss, which is similar. I let the boil go for another 15m, then added the remaining 1oz of Kent Goldings and killed the heat. (Side note: in the show he calls this dry hopping, which isn’t correct – this is just flameout hopping.) I then let the hops steep for 10m (called a “hop stand”) before getting started with the cooling process.

In the show, Alton dumps the wort into the ice-filled fermenter at this point. In my case, I wanted to use my wort chiller and pump setup. So I brought the kettle over to my sink, dumped a cold gallon of water into it, and started the pump.

It took about 30m and two 7 pound bags of ice in addition to all the ice in my freezer (I should have gotten a third bag of ice) but I got the wort down to about 70 degrees. Once it was cool I could then strain it into the sanitized fermenter.

From there, I tossed in my sanitized Tilt hydrometer. This is another departure from the show, where he didn’t bother to do a gravity reading (or tell you the final ABV %). But I have the device, and at the very least it’s helpful for knowing exactly when fermentation is complete. It also monitors temperature, which is huge – good homebrew is all about temperature control. My original gravity (OG) was 1.044.

Fermentation

After straining, tossing in the hydrometer, and pitching the yeast, I was ready to close it up and put it into my fermentation chamber. The chamber is just a chest freezer with the addition of a temperature controller.

The temperature controller is hooked to the freezer on the cold side, and a little space heater on the hot side. I put the probe into the thermowell and set the target temperature to 66 degrees – the controller will then keep the wort between 64 and 68, which is a great range for this yeast strain. I then sat back and waited for fermentation to begin. The next morning I saw some great activity on the airlock:

Fermentation was in full force. Over the next couple days I monitored the temperature and the specific gravity using the Tilt. By Monday morning, approximately 65 hours after pitching the yeast, the airlock activity was very slight (maybe one bubble every 45-60s) and the gravity reading from the Tilt had been constant for 12 hours or so. The next move was to kick the beer temperature up to 71 degrees for a diacetyl rest to help clean up any off flavors.

I set the new temp on Monday afternoon, and let it go for a few days at 71 degrees. By Friday afternoon, the diacetyl rest was done, so I moved it back to about 68 degrees. There the beer sat for another seven days to condition. My planned bottling date was Monday April 27th, so on Saturday April 25th, I started to bring the beer’s temperature down to 40 degrees for a cold crash. By Sunday morning it was at 40 so I didn’t touch the temperature again.

Bottling

Monday was bottling day (well, bottling night). Before work I set about making sure all of my bottles were clean. I first went to the garage and grabbed my tub of bottles.

In previous brews, I would meticulously rinse out every bottle after pouring it, so I wasn’t too worried about caked-on crud. I grabbed 16 22oz bottles, and 24 12oz bottles, mixed up some PBW, and then sent each through the bottle rinser just to make extra sure there’s no gunk in them. After that, I loaded all the bottles up into the dishwasher and sent them through the “sanitize” cycle. This does a few things: rinses out any leftover detergent, gets the bottles hot enough to kill off any lingering nasties, and (since they sit upside down all day) dries them out inside.

In the evening, it was time to bottle. The first thing I did was take the bottles out of the dish washer, where they’d been sitting all day to dry/cool, and run them through the rinser one more time, this time with Star San, and put them on the bottle tree. I then used a priming sugar calculator to figure out that I wanted to boil 4.5oz of dextrose (corn sugar) in 2 cups of water in order to prime the beer for carbonation.

Once the sugar was boiled and the bottling bucket was sanitized, I dumped the primer into the bottling bucket, and then transferred the beer from the fermenter into it.

It was then time to bottle! One great thing about bottling day is that you get to taste your “finished” beer for the first time. Before I started in on filling bottles, I grabbed a sample and tried it – it was delicious. Crisp, dry, clear, nicely malty without being too hoppy, just like an English Pub Ale should be. It’s going to get even better in the next couple weeks while it bottle conditions and carbonates, too.

The other thing you do on bottling day is take your final gravity (FG) reading, which you can use to compare with the original gravity (OG) reading in order to find your total alcohol by volume (ABV) using an online calculator. My FG was 1.006, and plugging that in gives me a final ABV of 4.99%, a nice target for this style of beer.

Bottling was then just a matter of using my filling wand over the open dishwasher, filling the bottles, and capping them. This didn’t take too long, and soon I had 34 bottles full. Between the fermenter and the bottling bucket, there was about a 6-pack left behind, but getting at it would have required tipping the buckets, which would have pulled sediment along with the beer, so I didn’t mind leaving it behind.

Conditioning

After filling the bottles, I put them all into a tub in a closet that stays about 68-72 degrees to bottle condition for the next two weeks. Two Mondays later, on the 11th of May, I put one of the 12oz bottles in the fridge and tried it in the evening.

The flavor of the beer was great, but the carbonation wasn’t enough. It was bubbly but it flattened out really fast, with little to no head. This is OK though, sometimes bottle conditioning takes more than two weeks, especially after cold crashing and taking a bunch of yeast out of suspension. So, I went bottle by bottle and carefully tipped each one over and then back to get any settled yeast back into suspension and wake them up. This is called “rousing” the yeast.

Final Tasting

I gave it about another two weeks and then on the morning of May 22nd, I put another couple of bottles into the fridge. In the evening, I popped one open and saw/heard what I wanted – that tiny pop of the bottle opening, and the little vapor cloud you see due to the drop in pressure that comes with opening the bottle. Both of those signs told me that these were carbonated and ready to drink. So I poured a glass.

The beer is, in a word, delicious. It’s crisp and light, with a mouth feel on the thin side. There is a pop of bitterness at the beginning and it goes down smooth on the finish. The hops are present but not overwhelming. And at just under 5% ABV it’s completely crushable. In my opinion it’s a mighty fine example of an English bitter, or a pub ale as some may call it, kind of on the same page as a Fuller’s.

Home brewing is really fun, and I’d encourage anyone to give it a try. There are plenty of rabbit holes one can go down in this hobby, which keeps it always interesting. I hadn’t brewed for a really long time before this, and I was reminded how fun I find it. Hopefully this will motivate me to get a couple more brews done this year.

Cheers!

Good Brew

• Crowd: 5/5
• Ease: 1/5
• This makes a wonderful English style bitter (pub ale)
• Used Alton's recipe, but also used my homebrew equipment and techniques

May 18, 2026

Tarragon Sauce

Was planning on pan roasting some salmon tonight for dinner so I thought they would go well with some Tarragon Yogurt Sauce. I started by getting my onions and garlic sweating in some olive oil. The online recipe says to then add 2Tb of stock + 2Tb of cornstarch, but in the episode he mixes the cornstarch in a jar with the full cup of stock, so that is what I did. Another difference from the online recipe is that in the show he adds the tarragon at this point, too, which is also what I did. After adding the slurry, I let it cook until it was thickened.

Then, another difference between the two – in the show he makes a big deal about tempering the yogurt while the online recipe says to just add it. I did the show version and slowly tempered the yogurt in a separate bowl before adding it all back to the pan with some salt and pepper.

After turning the heat back on (low) and stirring the sauce for a bit, I plated the salmon and spooned on the sauce.

Of course, we added a bit of sauce on the side, too. It was delicious – creamy, herby, and a little bit cool. Would definitely make this sauce again, especially if I am trying to impress some dinner guests.

Tarragon Yogurt Sauce

• Crowd: 4/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used Fage 2% plain greek yogurt, but I think any yogurt would work here

April 26, 2026

Some Weekend Entertaining

Lots of people coming over this weekend between Friday night and Sunday afternoon, so I thought it’d be a good chance to try out a few more recipes from season six.

On Friday evening I made some Hot Spinach and Artichoke Dip to serve to the family coming over to celebrate Vivian’s birthday. Reading through the comments on the Food Network site, lots of folks pointed out that it was a bit too mayonnaise-y, so I halved the mayo, only using 2Tb instead of the 4 that recipe called for.

I think that was a good call, since the dip came out wonderfully. Even folks that don’t normally like that dip really like it. Great reviews all around, I will definitely be making this one again.

Now let’s back up to Friday afternoon, when I started to prep some Fresh Yogurt. I collected all the ingredients, including some Fage Total 2% plain yogurt to use for its live cultures.

Many of the comments, and most sites found by Googling for yogurt making, say that 120 degrees is not enough for the initial heating of the milk. Most commenters and other recipes say 180 is correct, so that’s what I did.

After heating to 180, I took everything off the heat, moved a half cup into another container, and then waited maybe 30m for things to come down to about 115 before mixing the starter into the cooled half cup. When the larger portion was cool, I mixed it all together and put together my fermentation contraption.

I had to keep my heating pad on high for this, and it was still only able to get the milk to about 110 degrees tops. Plus, the safety controls kept turning it off so I’d come back and the yogurt would be like 95-100 when I turned it back on. This went on for about 12 hours, but over that time it got noticeably thicker and around 1am I put the container in the fridge.

On Saturday morning I opened it up and lo and behold we had a quart+ of fresh plain yogurt. Now, plain yogurt is very… plain. We don’t prefer the taste of it by itself, but of course we tried it and as far as plain yogurt goes it was pretty good.

The first thing I decided to do with the my new yogurt windfall was to make some Herb Spread. I started by roasting a head of garlic, picking some thyme leaves, and mixing them into some of the plain yogurt.

Two interesting things about this one, first he never actually makes it in the show, just shows the end result. Second, the recipe in the show is completely different from the online recipe, which I didn’t catch until after I had made it – in the show he gives the cumin/parsley recipe, which online is listed as an alternative to try. Oh well, so then I mixed everything together and let it drain overnight in the fridge.

On Sunday, I took it out of the fridge and moved to a container to try.

I thought it was alright, but like one of the commenters said, I probably could have doubled the garlic and made it a really good garlic spread. As it was, it was just kind of… plain. My guests didn’t really eat it either. So I’d call this one a bust, which is too bad because I had high hopes for a flavorful, lower calorie spread/dip.

Hot Spinach and Artichoke Dip

• Crowd: 4/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used a jar and a half of Pastene baby artichokes in water (not marinated)
• Only used 2Tb mayo instead of the 4 that the recipe calls for

Fresh Yogurt

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 2/5
• Did first heat up to 180 degrees instead of the 120 in the recipe
• Used Fage Total 2% for the starter culture
• Couldn't get fermentation to 115, it hovered around 100 bur still came out fine

Herb Spread

• Crowd: 2/5
• Ease: 2/5
• Could have used twice the amount of garlic

April 20, 2026

Artichokes

Had the day to myself today, so I decided I’d look down the recipe list and pick something to try. I discovered that artichokes are actually in season, so I decided I’d go through the various recipes in the season six episode “The Choke’s on You”.

Essentially, Alton builds up to making marinated artichokes to use in a pasta salad. It begins by creating some Herb Oil to use for marinating. Making it couldn’t be easier. First, I gathered up the ingredients.

Then, after stuffing all the herbs in the jar (side note, I used lemon zest instead of orange zest) and heating up the oil, you just pour it all together and let it sit overnight.

Then it was on to prepping some Broiled Chokes. I started by gathering up all of the artichokes, some lemonized water, and a few tools.

I then set off on removing all the leaves, splitting the hearts in half, cutting out the choke, and scraping out all of the little nettles inside. In the episode, Alton uses a peeler but I found that a paring knife worked way better for me. Even so, preparing six artichokes for broiling was very labor intensive, not to mention incredibly messy. I am not sure I really would ever do that again. Also, even with the lemon water, dipping my tools, and so forth, I could not for the life of me keep them from browning.

I then tossed the artichokes in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and put them under the broiler. The comments on the recipe say they come out very tough, so I decided I’d really roast them up good. I left them for 10 minutes cut side up, then turned them and gave them another 5 minutes under high broil. They came out looking like they were grilled, but they were for sure cooked and tender.

We tried a few, and they were fine. Nice and tender, tasted like your average grilled or roasted veggie. I then cut the rest up and put them into another jar, ready to receive some herb oil marinade tomorrow morning.

In the morning, I strained the jar of herb oil into the jar of cut up chokes, and left that to sit all day. I had plenty of herb oil, enough to marinate the broiled chokes and leave another little jar left over.

Six or seven hours later, I turned to using them in Artichoke Pasta Salad. Preparing it was simple. Rather than farfale, I used Kaizen pasta because it’s gluten free, and high in fiber/protein.

Side note, rather than cut up and mix in some chicken, I served this as a side dish to some grilled chicken thighs. It was delicious, the herb oil dressing was a fantastic, earthy background, the marinated artichokes were a tasty addition, and it complimented the chicken perfectly.

Herb Oil

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 5/5
• Substituted lemon zest for the orange zest

Broiled Chokes

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 2/5
• Used a paring knife rather than a peeler to trim the heart and choke

Artichoke Pasta Salad

• Crowd: 4/5
• Ease: 4/5
• Used Kaizen lupini bean fusilli
• While I did marinate the artichoke stems, I left them out of the salad because they were very chewy
• Left out the chicken, served as a side dish with grilled chicken

April 04, 2026

Onion Dip

We were going up to a game night on Saturday, so Friday night I decided to prep some Onion Dip from Scratch to bring along with us. I started by dicing up a cup and a half of onion real fine and getting into a pan with some olive oil to caramelize.

By the way, a cup and a half of diced onion turned out to be just under 8oz. It took about 30 minutes to caramelize, versus the 20m that recipe says.

I then mixed it all up with the sour cream, mayo, etc. as the recipe says. I put it in the fridge overnight for the flavors to meld, which from the recipe comments sounds like a really important step.

The next morning I tried it and thought it could use a little more onion flavor, so I added a quarter teaspoon of onion powder. We then opened it up at game night, served with some crinkle cut chips.

The dip was alright. In my opinion, and consistent with the comments, it was a bit too mayo-y. Next time, I’d back the mayo out by a quarter cup and replace that with with an extra quarter cup of sour cream. I’d also use more onion. Probably 10-12oz total, because the onion is the real star of the show. I’d keep the extra quarter teaspoon of onion powder, and maybe even try a shake of Worcestershire, like people in the comments suggest.

Onion Dip from Scratch

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used 7.75oz of onion, next time would bump that up to 10-12oz.
• Added a quarter teaspoon of onion powder.
• Next time would swap a quarter cup of mayo with another quarter cup of sour cream.

March 31, 2026

Marinated Slaw

Saw a napa cabbage at the supermarket this morning so I decided to use it make some Marinated Slaw. I started by halving the ~4lb cabbage, cutting out the core, and thinly slicing it. In the episode, AB used a box grater contraption for this, but a sharp knife and thin slices seemed to do the trick. After thinly slicing a large green and red bell pepper, I put everything in a colander to drain.

There’s a difference between the episode and the online recipe here – in the episode, he specifically calls out not salting the veggies, and in the online recipe it says to salt them. After sitting for two hours unsalted, I got zero liquid in the bowl, so I tried a pinch of salt and left it for another couple hours. After that I only had like a teaspoon of liquid in the bowl.

Meanwhile, I made the brine. Another difference from the episode recipe, the online recipe does not add salt to the brine, whereas in the episode AB adds 2Tb of salt. So, for mine I split the difference and added 1Tb of salt. I then packed all of the cabbage and bell pepper into a jar and filled it with the brine.

I was able to get all of the veggies and all of the brine into the jar. Then I popped it into the fridge for three days.

Fast forward to Saturday April 4. We were going up to Gemma’s sisters so I figured I’d bring this up for folks to try. The recipe and the episode were kind of unclear about how to actually eat this, so I just kind of winged it. I started by draining it in a colander.

Then I used tongs to put a bit in bowls.

Overall, the slaw was crunchy and flavorful. The flavor was very much in the “bread and butter” pickles arena, which many people did not like. Not that it was bad, I just think that’s a flavor profile that folks in my family aren’t terribly fond of. For that reason, plus because it’s got SO much salt and sugar in it, I probably won’t make this again. But, I can totally see using this to top BBQ sliders or something of that nature.

Marinated Slaw

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used half of a 4lb napa cabbage, one large green pepper and one large red pepper
• Did not salt the veggies, but added 1Tb salt to the brine

March 29, 2026

Beets, Part 1

Lots of the Season 6 recipes depend on fresh produce, so for those I really want to wait until they’re in season. That won’t be long from now, so until then it looks like you can get beets pretty much year round. So, this is what I decided to tackle this weekend.

I bought a few bunches of smallish beets. Not baby ones, I didn’t see anything like that, but these ones were definitely way smaller than normal.

I started out by cutting the stems off, leaving just the beets and the greens. I set the beet roots aside for now, then sauteed up the greens along with some mushrooms to start the Beet Green Gratin The recipe was a little confusing, it said to use a pound of greens but a pound is a lot of greens. I wonder if he included the stems with that measure? I’m not sure, so I used 6.5oz of just the greens (after coarse stems were removed) and I roughly chopped them instead of keeping them whole (something else I wasn’t clear on via the recipe and episode). Since I used just 6.5oz of greens, I halved the recipe and put it all in a 1.5 quart baking dish.

I then covered it with crushed up gluten free crackers and baked for 30m, with the first 15 covered. I completely forgot to get a photo of the finished product, though. Anyway, reviews on this were mixed. Some of our guests (I know, as a general rule I don’t serve a recipe to guests that I’ve never done) completely loved it. One said that on a scale from 1 to 5 it was a 7! Personally, I thought it was just alright. I did have seconds though. Gemma didn’t like it at all. So, I took all of those ratings into consideration and called it a 3.

The next day, I turned to the roots to make some Glazed Baby Beets. I started by scrubbing them and trimming them down.

You can see that I didn’t really have baby beets, more like toddlers I guess. They were definitely way smaller than the huge beets you usually see, though. I put them into a large sauce pot in a single layer, then added the apricot juice. After 10m I added the honey and white balsamic. Ten minutes later some were done, but not all, so I gave it another ten minutes, which did the trick. At that point, there was still a ton of liquid in the pot, so I pulled the beets into a bowl and let the liquid cook down until it became a glaze-like consistency. I let them cool a bit and we ate them cut up in bowls, with a little extra glaze drizzled on top.

The first taste was good, but something was a little “weird” as Gemma described it. We decided to put them in a container and let them chill overnight so all the flavors could meld and get to know each other. The second day we pulled some out of the fridge, gave them about 30s in the microwave to take the chill off, and this time they were much better! Sweet and tangy, just how you’d expect beets to be.

Beet Green Gratin

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Halved the recipe, used 6.5oz of greens after cutting the stems

Glazed Baby Beets

• Crowd: 4/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used some beets that were small but not "baby"
• Needed to add another 10 minutes of cook time, then pulled the beets and cooked_on down the glaze for another 5 minutes or so

February 21, 2026

Season Six Begins

We had this Saturday afternoon/evening free so what better opportunity to jump right into Season Six?

The first recipe I wanted to try was the Curry Chicken Pot Pie. I love chicken pot pie, and I’ve been wanting to try out some gluten free puff pastry.

Reading the comments on the recipe, folks said it helps to use more liquid, so given that the recipe calls for 12oz of chicken broth, I figured I’d just use a whole 14.5oz can, and then add another 9.5oz of milk for a total of 3 cups liquid. I used 2% milk, and I adjusted the flour and butter up by 1 Tb each. That finished up the prep for all my ingredients.

For the flour, I used Bob’s Red Mill measure-for-measure flour. I followed the recipe from here exactly, and I put it all in a glass 9x13 baking dish.

Once that was done I set it aside, and turned my focus to dessert – chocolate eclairs. Now, these obviously rely on gluten and I needed to figure out how to adapt the recipe. Turns out that King Arthur has a recipe for gluten free pate a choux on their web site. Looking at that recipe, it’s pretty close to the Sweet or Savory Pate a Choux that Alton does in the episode. So, after reading it, I decided I’d just go for the Good Eats version but just substituting the King Arthur 1:1 flour. I did the boil and then added the result to the mixing bowl to cool.

It actually took about 20min to cool. The King Arthur recipe helpfully says that the dough ball should be about 125 degrees before adding the eggs. So I waited, then added egg by egg. When it was done I put it in the piping bag and then… attempted to pipe them into eclair shapes.

So you can see they did not turn out very well. I figured out later that the piping set I have doesn’t have a big enough tip for this. I should have just used the set without a tip, and it would have turned out way better. Oh well. Another difference that King Arthur has in their recipe is cooking time, which I figured may have something to do with the lack of gluten, so I followed their timing: 15 min at 400 then another 25 at 325. When they were done, I turned back to the pot pie. I have been looking forward to using this gluten free puff pastry for a while.

I rolled it out and cut 6 circles out, placed them on top of the casserole, and got it all in the oven.

It took about 30m to cook.

The puff pastry didn’t puff as much as I’d hoped it would, but it was cooked and the whole dish was really good. We all agreed, though, that the curry powder was a bit too present, and while it does add a really good dimension to the dish, perhaps halving it would be a better way. We also lamented the small amount of pastry crust. Next time I do this, I’ll probably just put a whole sheet over the top and let it be the crust.

Once the pot pie was done and eaten, I turned my attention to finishing off the eclairs for dessert. I started off by making some Ganache to top them off with. Then, I grabbed the Jello vanilla pudding I had made earlier from the fridge. I put the pudding in a piping bag, and filled a few of the pate a choux shells. Finally, I covered them with the ganache and we had beautiful looking eclairs.

Just kidding. That picture was, uh, enhanced. The eclairs actually looked like this.

Yeah, not winning any beauty contests. Actually the photo makes them look kind of gross. But, I’ll tell you, they were pretty darn good. Not as light and fluffy as gluten eclairs, but they were definitely passable. I think next time I make pate a choux I’ll do them as little dumplings and make profiteroles – that would be a perfect application for this gluten free adaptation.

All in all, a great way to begin Season Six!

A note on gluten free modifications

This will be the first season where we start out with the mission of trying to make every recipe gluten free. We need to be real about this, though – modifying recipes to remove gluten many times results in something very different from the original. Therefore, the ratings for some of those recipes may be skewed a bit by how the results of modification turn out. This is especially true for stuff like pastries, desserts, and breads.

So starting now, I’ll be tagging recipes where we made significant modifications for gluten removal. Significant modifications would be substituting gluten free flour for baked goods, for example. An insignificant modification might be using gluten free breadcrumbs as a topping. Beware if we rate one of those recipes low – it might be due to fact that gluten free recipes sometimes just don’t translate well. For example, I suspect that the pate a choux might have been a 4 if we were able to use regular gluten flour. If we ever rate a GF recipe a 1 or 2, I’ll probably try the full gluten version just to be sure.

A little Season Six preview

There’s a lot to look forward to and be excited about in Season Six. I’m looking forward to artichokes, which I’ve never cooked before, and doing the chimney starter tuna loin. Lots of good dips, a cheese souffle, and making home made yogurt. I’m also looking forward to a return to home brewing, something I haven’t done in a long time.

There’s a few in this season giving me a bit of a pause, though. Ravioli and tortellini will be interesting to try out gluten free. There’s the funnel cake and golden cake, too. We’ll give our best GF efforts on those, though I may need to adjust the recipes a bit to account for it.

Anyway, it took me almost 3 years to get through season five, let’s hope it’s way less for season six!

Curry Chicken Pot Pie

• Crowd: 4/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used a whole can of chicken broth, then topped off to 3C total liquid with milk
• Adjusted based on the liquid content by adding another Tbs of flour and butter
• Used the white meat from a fresh supermarket rotisserie chicken
• Next time would halve the curry powder
• Next time would just put the whole sheet of puff pastry on top

Sweet or Savory Pate a Choux [GF]

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used 155g King Arthur Gluten Free 1:1 flour, and an extra Tbs butter
• Made Jello vanilla pudding using 1.5C milk instead of 2C as eclair filling

Ganache

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used 50% cacao dark chocolate, it was still very chocolatey