How to Cook

Sauces and dressings are essential for elevating your meals with bold flavors and the potential for additional nutrition. While store-bought options often come loaded with additives and hidden ingredients, making your own plant-based sauces allows for a healthier, more flavorful experience. In this article, we’ll explore how to create plant-based sauces and dressings, with tips on essential ingredients, storage, and versatile uses to transform your dishes into gourmet delights.

Juicing is a fantastic way to blend a variety of fruits and vegetables into a single beverage, offering a concentrated source of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. It’s also a refreshing method to stay hydrated, given the high water content of many fruits and veggies. In this article and video, we’ll explore everything you need to know about juicing, from health benefits to tips on ingredient selection to how to effectively use a juicer or blender to make freshly squeezed juice. Plus, we’ll share some delicious juice recipes focused on hydration, nutrition, and digestive wellness.

Creating your own grain bowl at home will not only enhance your culinary skills but also allow you to create a highly nutritious and well-balanced meal that’s adaptable to any cuisine. Get tips on how to make a grain bowl from Food Revolution Network’s lead dietitian and recipe developer, Nichole Dandrea-Russert, RDN. Follow along with the video below!

During the holiday season, the amount of food wasted increases by 25%, according to the USDA. That translates into a lot of money that ends up in landfills, contributing to climate issues. The good news is that you can do something about that percentage by knowing how to minimize waste. Learn how to use leftovers from your holiday dishes and ingredients in new, creative, and tasty ways.

If making homemade vegetable broth is new to you, get ready for a few perks! From a culinary perspective, making your own vegetable broth is fun and flavorful, and it allows you to experiment with a variety of vegetables (and vegetable parts!). From an environmental standpoint, you avoid food waste and unnecessary packaging that comes with store-bought brands. And, from a cost-savings mindset, you’ll save money. Check out this article on how making homemade vegetable broth can be easy and versatile in a variety of plant-based recipes.

If you don’t have a solid plan to use up produce or know how to properly store it, your vibrant, nutritious, and flavorful fruits and vegetables can quickly transform into mush. And wasted food is wasted time, money, and resources. It can also put a wrench in your meal plans. And food waste has a detrimental impact on the planet. This article and video provide tips on how to extend the shelf life of and use up, fruits, veggies, and herbs in a variety of culinary applications to avoid waste and get the most out of your food.

Reading a recipe may seem pretty straightforward. However, there can be foreign ingredients (looking at you kala namak), unfamiliar measurements (how much is a pinch, exactly?), and prep instructions (don’t forget to soak the cashews!) that you’ll want to know before starting a recipe. And understanding how to read a recipe can set you up for success in the kitchen. In this article, you learn how to follow recipes from start to finish and create knockout dishes every time.

Have you been curious about plant-based eating but unsure where to start? Or perhaps you have successfully made some plant-based meals, but haven’t yet ventured beyond what you know. In this How to Cook series article, we review our top ten tips (plus a bonus tip!) to getting started — or progressing — in a plant-based kitchen.

Beans are one of those foods that you either love or loathe. If you’re in the latter camp it’s probably because you had an experience where you tried to love them, but they didn’t love you back. In this article, we will make our best attempt to show you that beans are a food to love due to their nutritional value, culinary versatility, and economic benefit. And, of course, we will also discuss the various ways of preparing beans so that they love you back by being kind to your belly.

In this episode of our How to Cook video series, you’ll explore the delicious and nutritious world of whole grains with Food Revolution Network’s Dietitian and Recipe Developer, Nichole Dandrea-Russert, RDN. Learn why you may want to embrace and enjoy a variety of whole grains if you want optimal health. And watch Nichole’s video to learn how to prepare three different types of healthy whole grains — quinoa, brown rice, and Kamut.

People around the world love Chinese food, especially stir-fried dishes served over noodles or rice. As traditional Chinese cuisine was adapted to appeal to Western tastes, however, many Chinese restaurants in the US ended up serving stir-fried dishes high in animal products, oil, sugar, and salt. The good news is, you can quickly and easily create stir-fries in your kitchen that are not only healthier than most takeout, but are also more delicious.

If we played a word association game and I said “vegetable,” chances are your response wouldn’t be “artichoke.” That’s a pity because the beautiful globes are not only glamorous but delicious and very healthy as well. Once you get to know artichokes and discover how easy they are to prepare, you might just wonder how you ever got along without them.