4 Star Ingredients To Make Your Recipes Shine

Among all the star ingredients that we can buy to flavor, change textures and prepare special recipes, for me there are 4 that can drastically change your kitchen, making it healthier, more creative and more nutritious.

They are easy to find and use ingredients, they cost little and go a long way. These are my 4 basic and essential ingredients and their uses to make recipes shine:

1. Debittered Brewer’s Yeast or Nutritional Yeast

The debittered yeast or nutritional yeast is the one used to make bread or beers, but deactivated. It is usually a by-product of beer production and / or undergoes a drying process that gives rise to a kind of tan-colored flakes. As it tastes very bitter, so it is processed again to debitter it. That is, it is a form of yeast that is inactive, it does not serve to rise anything, but it has an interesting nutritional profile due to its protein content.

Nutritional yeast also has vitamins (such as B12) added.

Debittered brewer’s yeast can be found in health food stores, health food stores, and vegan stores and has a very cheese-like aroma, which is why it is used as a condiment similar to grated cheese (it just doesn’t melt). These are the uses you can give to debittered brewer’s yeast:

• Top your vegetable creams with a tablespoon or two .
• Sprinkle it on your breakfast toasts.
• Make sauces, such as béchamel, with a few tablespoons of debittered yeast for added flavor.
• Use it as a condiment for salads, popcorn, chips, and other snacks.
• Sprinkle it over your roasted vegetables.

2. Chickpea flour

Chickpea flour is ground chickpea, with nothing else. It is an ingredient that has become very popular in recent years due to its versatility, which is why we can already find it in any supermarket. Chickpea flour serves as a binder or substitute for the egg to make batters, breaded, veggie burgers, pancakes, flatbreads, etc. And also to make super simple Indian dishes and thicken curry broths and similar preparations.

It is an ingredient that has become very popular in recent years due to its versatility, which is why we can already find it in any supermarket.

Chickpea flour, once cooked, has part of the dry legume flavor, but we can remove that flavor by adding a tablespoon or two of vinegar or lemon juice. These are the most interesting uses in the kitchen of chickpea flour:

• Make vegan potato omelettes with chickpea flour mixed with water in place of the egg.
• Add chickpea flour to your pancake batters for extra creaminess and color.
• Add a tablespoon or two of chickpea flour when you want to thicken the curries, stews and stews, and let it cook all together.
• Instead of egg, mix chickpea flour with water to make batters.
• Try making new recipes like socca, fritatta, pizza bases, chickpea tortillas, pakoras, etc.

3. Vegetable yogurt

One of the advantages of using vegetable yogurt is that it can substitute less healthy ingredients like mayonnaise and sauces bought with unhealthy fats. It also provides proteins and probiotics.

In any supermarket you can find 100% vegetable yogurts, so take advantage of it!

Choose vegetable yogurts made of soy, oatmeal, coconut or whatever you want, but that are unsweetened and without flavors so you can use them in both salty and sweet recipes. I’ll tell you how to use vegetable yogurt in your recipes:

• Make super creamy dressings by adding a few tablespoons of vegetable yogurt
• Any vegetable pate you make will be creamier and silkier if you add a tablespoon or two of vegetable yogurt.
• Improve the texture of your flatbreads by substituting part of the liquid for vegetable yogurt
• Have yogurt with cut fruit for breakfast if you like a sweet breakfast. Of course you can also add granola, seeds and nuts.
• Make creams and sauces by adding yogurt, or serve your stews and stews with a good spoonful on top.

4. Soy sauce

Soy sauce is very present in the cuisines of East Asia. It is used in the kitchen for a lot of things. We can learn from its uses and improve our preparations using this sauce.

There are Japanese soy sauces, such as shoyu and tamari, Chinese, Philippine, Korean soy sauces, etc. I recommend that you buy a Japanese soy sauce, which will serve you in many dishes as it is neither very salty nor sweet. There are also gluten-free soy sauces if you need them. These are the most interesting uses of soy sauce in the kitchen:

• Sauté your vegetables with soy sauce to give them a lot of flavor.
• Add a tablespoon or two to your broths and soups while they cook.
• Add flavor to your meatballs and vegetable burger doughs by adding a few tablespoons of soy sauce.
• Serve your steamed vegetables with a bowl of soy sauce to accompany and dunk.
• Hydrate the textured soybeans with a little soy sauce in addition to water.
• Add soy sauce to your marinades for extra flavor.