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% dark cacao dark chocolate, it was still very chocolatey

February 14, 2026

Season Five Grand Finale

Since we were having some friends over on Saturday, which is Valentine’s Day, I figured why not do a special dinner that also wraps up Season Five?

Let’s start with dessert

It hasn’t happened for a while that my first attempt at a Good Eats recipe was a total, throw-it-away-and-try-again disaster, but it happened on Sunday. I’ve never made a cheesecake before, but I thought I had been doing a good job on it – my crust looked good and blind baked, my batter was smooth and not chunky, I had the water bath perfect. Well, I followed the Sour Cream Cheesecake recipe to a T, and when I finally turned the cake out onto a plate, it basically fell apart, looking more like cheesecake pudding than an actual cake. The flavor was really good though – we each had a piece (or two!) but I threw the rest away and vowed to come back and figure out what I did wrong.

I spent the rest of that evening scrolling through the 200+ comments on the recipe. Come to find out, what most likely went wrong was the cooking time – on the web, it says to cook it for 1 hour and then let it sit in the oven for another hour. Most folks who did that ended up in the same situation as me. Well, if you then go and look in the Good Eats: The Early Years book, it says to cook it for two hours, and then let it rest in the “off” oven for another hour and a half. People in the comments who did this all reported great success. So. This is what I did on my second attempt.

On Friday night, I prepared the cheesecake second attempt. I began like I did the last one, with a blind baked crust:

In the episode he used “33 graham cracker squares” but as you know we do things gluten free around here, so I used two 7oz boxes of Pamela’s Honey Grahams. I then got all my ingredients laid out for mixing.

Once the batter was finished and the crust was cool to the touch, I poured it into the pan and put it in a roasting pan to make a water bath.

This time, I cooked it for two hours, then turned the oven off after opening the door for a minute, and left it there for another hour before moving into the fridge to set overnight.

And now for the beef

I had always planned to make the Dry Aged Standing Rib Roast with Sage Jus my last recipe of Season Five, and it just so happened that it was perfect timing that we were planning to have 10 people here. I have to say this one made me nervous – rib roasts are very expensive so I did not want to screw this up like I did with the first cheesecake attempt. This time, I sat down and read almost all of the comments in the online recipe to see if there’s any gotchas I needed to look out for. More on that later.

I started by going out and buying an 8.75 pound three-bone prime rib roast.

This was on Monday. After unwrapping it I dried it off, wrapped it up in some cheese cloth, then popped it into the fridge to dry age.

There I left it until Saturday morning. A few times during the week I unwrapped it and changed the cheese cloth out, just to keep things as dry as possible. Saturday morning I took the roast out of the fridge around 9:30am, to let it start getting to room temp.

It had gotten much darker as it aged, but I didn’t really see any of the “gross” looking parts that folks often talk about on dry aged beef. So I didn’t bother trimming or cutting anything off of it.

Now, this recipe’s episode makes a big deal about oven cleanliness and AB uses a huge terra cotta planter as a safety mechanism to guard against dirty or inefficient ovens. I did try and find one at my local Lowe’s and Home Depot, but they had nothing like the one he uses in the episode. Going back to the comments on the online recipe, I saw that most people didn’t use the planter, instead opting for a roasting pan with a rack, lightly tented with foil. So, that’s what I did too. But first, I oiled the roast with canola oil, mixed up some salt and pepper (0.5 tsp salt per bone is what he said in the episode), rubbed it all over the roast, then put in my probe thermometers. I put the roast in the rack – bone side up – and was ready to go.

I figured I’d use two probes both because I had them, and because I wanted a bit of insurance in case I put one too close to a bone and got wild readings – it looks like there’s more than a few folks in the comments that did this, pulling their roast out when it looked done only to find it extremely rare. I’m going for a perfect medium rare here.

Again from the comments, on average people reported it takes about 45min per pound at 200 degrees. Figuring after dry aging that it was about 8 pounds (I wish I had thought to weigh it), that means it would take 6 hours to get to the ~124 degrees that folks recommend cooking it to. Again, this is another little difference from the original recipe – in the episode he cooks it to 118 and it carries over to 130, but folks observed that it doesn’t carry over anywhere close to 12 degrees, more like 5 or 6. Hence, the 124 target.

Back to the cheesecake

Once I got the roast situated, I turned my attention to the cheesecake, which had been in the fridge all night. I took it out, pulled the parchment from the sides, then put it in a shallow bath of hot water to help loosen up the bottom. Once I did that, I put a piece of parchment on top of the cake, put a sheet pan over it, and flipped it over. It took a few whacks to get to going, but the cake then fell right out of the pan, upside down, onto the parchment. I put a big glass plate on the bottom of the cake (currently on top) and flipped it one more time. It worked WAY better this time than it did on Sunday – perfectly set, a bit springy, and it all stayed together nicely. Finally, I grabbed the left over graham cracker crumbs and spread them over the sides of the cake. This part was a bit of a pain, and if I did it again I would crush up the ones for the cake sides way finer – the large chunks might be good for the bottom, but they don’t work well for the sides, and it would look way better with smaller pieces there.

Once that was done, we had to cut a slice to test it, then it was back in the fridge to wait for tonight.

Cooking the roast

I put the roast in the oven at exactly 11:45am, meaning my calculated finish time to 124 would be about 5:45pm, leaving enough time for resting and searing to get us to my 6:30pm dinner time target. During the cook I wanted to watch the meat’s temperature carefully, as some folks reported that they needed to bump the oven to 225 or even 250 in order to get it cooked in a reasonable time. So I checked both temperature probes every hour. Here’s the log.

So you can see a few things here. First, about 4 hours into the cook I decided it was going a bit too slowly, and I pushed the oven up to 225. This is something that was suggested in the recipe comments, so I felt OK doing that.

Second, you see that one of my probes kicked the bucket in the middle of the cook. That was unfortunate, but also it was lucky I had the second one in there. The second probe was always behind the first, so when I pulled the meat out, I waited until it showed 127, because the second probe would have been about 122. The other thing you can see is that I was about 30m off – I had originally thought it would take 6 hours, but it was more like 6.5 hours. It’s funny because if you take the original weight of the roast (8.75) and figure 45min per pound, you ger 6.5 hours.

I rested the roast while the oven was heating to 500, and it peaked at 133, which is one degree above the top of medium rare. The second probe probably would have peaked at about 128, so I feel like I hit my target. Once the oven was 500, I put the roast back in, this time uncovered, and let it go for another 10 minutes to crust up. The result was a beautiful crusty prime rib.

I let that rest while I made the sage au jus that is part of the recipe. Also, AB notes in the episode that you can add a few pats of butter to thicken it up, so I did that, too. While it rested I also finished up some roasted carrots and some instant pot baby potatoes, and once those were done I got to slicing.

The meat was perfectly medium rare. The au jus was amazing. This recipe was a huge winner, and I was so relieved because of the time and expense put into it. After the steak we then had cheesecake for dessert, and that was a huge crowd pleaser as well.

All in all, this was an awesome way of wrapping up season five, and I was so happy to be able to share that with some close friends. Now, on to season six! I love the start of a new season – the world is wide open with the recipe choices, and I really enjoy planning out when and where to make them.

Sour Cream Cheesecake

• Crowd: 4/5
• Ease: 2/5
• Used two 7oz boxes of Pamela's Honey Grahams
• Next time I'd make the leftover crumbs for the cake sides way smaller
• Cook this for TWO hours, not one. Cooking only one hour results in pudding.

Dry Aged Standing Rib Roast with Sage Jus

• Crowd: 5/5
• Ease: 2/5
• Used a three-bone, 8.75 pound pre-aging weight prime rib roast
• Dry aged about 5 days in the fridge, wrapped in cheesecloth
• Did not use the terra cotta planter. Cooked in a roasting pan with a rack, lightly covered in foil.
• Took 6.5 hours with the first four hours at 200, and the next two and a half at 225.
• Added a few pats of butter to the au jus after taking it off the heat

February 07, 2026

Squid Stir Fry

What better thing to do on a snowed-in day than try out some Good Eats recipes?

Today I decided for a late lunch we’d have some squid stir fry aka. Squid Vicious. It started with some frozen squid that I ran under the tap to thaw. I took the bodies apart, cut, scraped, scored, and quartered them.

It’s worth noting that the online recipe leaves out the scraping part, so I don’t know how important that actually is. After prepping the bodies, I then got all the rest of the ingredients prepped and ready for a very quick cook.

I went back and watched the episode, and I realized that it’s very much about using a wok, and even a turkey fryer burner to get it tremendously hot. Well, I have a turkey fryer but I don’t have a wok, so this would have to be done in a pan, at the highest heat my stove could put out.

After a quick cook, we plated it over some sushi rice and sat down to lunch.

This recipe was surprisingly delicious. The squid was perfect. It rolled up into little ribbons, and it was tender, flavorful, and not in the least bit rubbery. The flavor of the stir fry itself was fantastic, my guess due in no small part to the miso broth stir fry sauce. This is one of the Good Eats recipes I’d been dreading and putting off because I thought it’d be bleh. But fortunately, I was wrong.

My hunch is that this recipe would be great for just any general stir fry. Using shrimp or chicken marinated the same way in soy sauce and corn starch would make any protein perfect for this. Will most likely reach for this recipe any time I want to make a stir fry. Maybe next time I’ll even try a wok!

Squid Vicious

• Crowd: 5/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Scraped the inside of the squid bodies, like he did in the episode
• Didn't have a wok, so just did this in a regular frying pan over the hottest heat my stove could go
• Five rating based mostly on the fact that it's a great general stir-fry, which would be great with shrimp, chicken, etc.

December 23, 2025

Eggplant Pasta

Between holiday parties and entertaining I thought I’d slip in a dinner of Eggplant Pasta. I started by purging a couple of eggplants.

Then sliced them up thin to look like strands of pasta.

Finally, I finished off the recipe in the pan as instructed.

The result was underwhelming. We really though it’d be better, but it’s still just sort of bland eggplant. The sauce was great though, and I’d use this again along with some actual pasta, and then some protein like grilled chicken or shrimp.

Probably won’t do this one again.

Eggplant Pasta

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 3/5
• This sauce would be great with regular pasta, plus a protein like chicken or shrimp

December 12, 2025

Crepe Quiche

This morning I started my day by making some savory crepes so later I could make Crepe Quiche Lorraine for lunch. I’ve made crepes a couple of times already for Season 5, and I think this time I really had it dialed in.

I discovered that the heat on the pan should be much lower than I’d usually think. I used a quarter tablespoon of unsalted butter per crepe in my 8” nonstick pan, and 1.5oz of batter per crepe.

After making the crepes, sauteing the onions, crumbling the bacon, and shredding the cheese, I was ready to put them together.

Then I poured them:

And it was into the oven. I had a ton of left over eggs and cheese so I took the rest of it and made a little frittata. The recipe said to cook at 350 for 15m until the egg is set, but I found that it needed more like 25m.

The quiches were OK. It’s funny because you’d think that because each individual ingredient is great, that the combination of them all would be fantastic, but they were basically underwhelming. With the amount of work it took to put this recipe together, I probably won’t make this one again.

Crepe Quiche Lorraine

• Crowd: 2/5
• Ease: 2/5
• Quiches took 25m to set rather than 15m the recipe says
• Would not use equal portions of salt and pepper -- way less pepper next time

December 12, 2025

Raw Clams

Figured I’d go buy some fresh littlenecks this afternoon to have a bit of an appetizer of Clams on the Half Shell with Fresh Mayonnaise. Earlier in the day, though, I broke out the stick blender and some avocado oil to make some homemade mayo using a recipe I found online. It was super easy and the mayo is delicious.

Then it was time to get into the clams.

I tried using my oyster knife and then a butter knife but both were way too big to get into the shell. So, instead I used an old paring knife while wearing an anti-cut glove.

This was the way, and soon I had about a dozen clams open.

To accompany them, I took the mayo from earlier and divided it up. One third was the original mayo. Another third I added a finely minced garlic clove, some pepper, and a bit more lemon juice to make an aioli. The last third I mixed in some Sambal Olek to make a spicy mayo.

All in all, the clams were fine. We absolutely love oysters on the half shell, but clams on the half shell are simply OK. The mayos as an accoutrement is an amazing idea. Can’t wait to try the spicy mayo on some oysters.

Clams on the Half Shell with Fresh Mayonnaise

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 4/5
• Made fresh mayo with avocado oil and a stick blender

November 22, 2025

Butternut Squash Dumplings

For a Sunday afternoon project I decided to tackle the first half of Butternut Dumplings with Brown Butter and Sage by making the dumplings and freezing them for later. I had been sort of dreading this one, because reading through the comments on the Food Network recipe page, I saw that tons of people had a lot of trouble with it and ended up with wet, sticky dough that couldn’t be worked. So, I figured I’d halve the recipe and see what I could come up with.

The recipe on the site leaves a lot to be desired, especially because it doesn’t give any weights to the ingredients. It calls for one and half butternut squashes, and four russet potatoes. After weighing a few squashes and potatoes at the supermarket, I determined that half of this recipe would be 1.5 pounds of butternut squash, and 1.5 pounds of potato. So, equal proportions.

I went ahead and roasted the butternut squash (oh, by the way I used pre-cubed pieces, which makes it so much easier) and the potatoes for about an hour at 375. When they came out I mashed them all together and mixed in an egg (I didn’t halve that part of the recipe) plus 2 teaspoons of kosher salt and a pinch of nutmeg.

Since we’re halving the recipe I then added 3/4 cups of Bob’s Red Mill All Purpose Gluten Free Flour and mixed it with a spoon. The dough looked like it was coming together but it wasn’t quite the consistency I thought I was looking for, so I added another quarter cup of flour for a total of 1 cup altogether, plus a quarter teaspoon of xanthan gum. At this point, the dough was the consistency of the cookie dough you buy in the tube at the grocery store, which seemed exactly right to me.

Rolling it out on the counter, I used only a little more flour. This part was time consuming but not terribly difficult. As I made rope after rope, I cut them up with a butter knife and put them on parchment-lined sheet pans.

Then it was into the freezer. A few hours later I took all of them out and put them into a plastic bag for cooking later.

The next Saturday was when I decided to give these a try for lunch. I started by boiling a large stock pot full of water, then dumping 2 cups of dumplings into the water. The recipe said they’d float when they were done, but I didn’t find tha to be true. I checked them frequently and when they were thawed through and cooked to al dente I removed them from the water and added them to an ice batch (a strainer in a bowl of ice water). I then drained them, tossed them in a little olive oil, and added them to a pan with some butter and sage.

When they started to get a nice browned crust I plated them and grated some fresh Parmesan cheese on top, plus a pinch of sea salt.

Then we ate! They were good. Not mind-blowing, but a really nice snack. The texture was very light, and the flavor mild. They were a little dry and we concluded that a bit of a light cream sauce or brown butter sauce would really take them up a notch. I might try that with the ones I still have in the fridge. Overall, though, this was a decent project with a pretty delicious result.

Butternut Dumplings with Brown Butter and Sage

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 2/5
• Substituted Bob's Red Mill 1-to-1 Gluten Free flour, plus a quarter teaspoon of xanthan gum
• Added an extra quarter cup of flour
• Would benefit from a cream or butter sauce