What secret/special ingredient do you add to certain food/dishes?

wheredoesitallgo

Just thought of another one... a sprinkle of dried chilli flakes in pasta salad (esp tuna pasta salad!) yum yum!x

BusyGirl

I add worcestershire sauce to bol, chilli, stews and lots of other things and I always add sugar to my bol sauce.
Garlic salt, garlic puree and onion salt/granules are also handy things to have in the cupboard.

squeekymoo

i always add a couple of tablespoons (ish) of boiling water to sponge mixture right at the very end rather than milk as I find it makes the sponge much lighter.

I buy bunch of corriander from the asian grocers and put the whole bunch straight in the freezer - just chop from frozen - the stalks go into sous, chilli and curry at the begining and the leaves can be crumbled rather than choping from frozen towards the end of cooking

I gave my son the recpie for banana choc chip muffins and he forgot the eggs but they turned out fine (dont know if they would kee though - we ate them over the weekend)

pinch of ground ginger or nutmeg with butter and pepper in mashed swede

fry chopped onion or leek in butter to make your cheese sauce - dont forget the mustard though

leeks fryed in butter either added to mash or just spooned over

quick crumble topping - melted butter (or oil) with sugar and half flour half porridge oats (not reddy brek) just needs a quick stir to mix

springheeledjack

add a little malt vinegar your portion of Shepherds / Cottage pie.

beachbeth

gingin wrote: »

I sometimes add custard powder to fairy cake mixture but add a little less sugar and flour, to make up for it.

In March's Good Food magazine there is a fairy cake recipe with custard as an ingredient that Im going to try:

100g custard powder
200g softened butter
2 eggs
4 tbsp milk
140g castor sugar
100g self raising flour, sifted

Beat the custard powder with the butter, eggs and milk, then stir in the sugar and fold in the flour. Spoon into cases and cook for about 20 minutes on Gas 4/160c. Once cooked and cooled, ice as normal.

Sounds yummy!

Androcles

If you can't be bothered to make a proper egg yolk based custard for ice cream, use Ambrosia ready made Custard with some cream - to my amazement, it works!

clouds21

Great ideas! I used the one about using brown sauce in my texmex chilli last night, really enhanced the taste!

Ok, here are mine:
- cheese on toast: add a few drops of Worcestershire Sauce
- Lazy garlic or ginger work for soups and stir-fries
- Mash: spring onions and whole-grain mustard or nutmeg or horseradish sauce, depends on what I'm serving up
- Paprika: in dips, on quiches, in sauces
- salt & pepper are a good one!
- use a French Onion Knorr packet soup to make a dip with part yoghurt and part Quark (or cream cheese) - only add the dried soup to your tasting!

Oh, not sure whether this fits in here but a money-saving tip:
buy 1 kg of whole almonds for £3.99 at Tesco and use a food processor to grind for ground almonds - saves a packet!

Also, buy spices like turmeric from the ethnic section at Asda (if you haven't got an Indian spice merchant near you) - compared turmeric at the weekend... Asda own brand: £0.68 for 45g, Ethnic one (I think Raj, not sure) £0.45 for 100g!!!

Hope this helps.

clouds21

Mellika

My 'secret' ingredients are not secret at all!
-Onions are the base for most of my casseroles/sauces (you'd be surprised how many people don't use onions...!)
-Paprika goes into most dishes, esp. those with meat/tomato...

kitschy

I put a big (and I mean big) squeeze of brown sauce into the mince/onion/carrot/whatever veg is around mix for my shepherd's pie. Yum!

mannews

I put brown sauce in my shepherd pie aswell, I think it was from Ainsley Harriets recipe. I have always got worcester sauce and oxo cubes though they go into almost all my mince dishes and stew then I just change the herbs