Party Food Archives - Page 7 of 13

Crispy AF, Oven-Fried Sriracha-Honey Wings

June 13, 2024January 23, 2017 by Emily

Seriously crispy and coated with a sweet and spicy Sriracha-honey glaze, these oven-baked wings rival fried ones any day. This is game day food done right.

I’m pretty sure you haven’t come to a site called “Nerds with Knives” expecting sports talk because we are not sporty people. Any yelling and screaming you might hear from our house on a late Sunday afternoon is more likely to be about the crossword puzzle than the N.F.L. – and, just an aside to Will Shortz at the New York Times, there had better not be too many sports related questions or these two bespectacled nerds will not be happy.

But just because we don’t know a touchdown from a layup doesn’t mean we don’t know game day snacks. That, we have covered.

We got your spicy meatballs, your savory meatballs, your mini shrimp cakes, your spiced and candied peanuts. And now… these wings.

Truly crispy wings with a sticky, sweet and spicy glaze. And the best part? They’re baked, not fried.

Hoisin-Glazed Cocktail Meatballs

June 13, 2024December 26, 2016 by Emily

These sticky, sweet and savory Hoisin-glazed Cocktail Meatballs are the ultimate party snack.

There’s a reason why cocktail meatballs have been a perennial party favorite since the 1960s. They’re incredibly tasty and exactly the kind of snack you want to munch on while holding a martini glass in one hand.

Warm and savory, these little meatballs are pretty much always the first things we run out of at every holiday party we’ve ever hosted.

Mini Thai Shrimp Cakes with Sweet Chili Dipping Sauce

June 13, 2024December 22, 2016 by Emily

Make our mini Thai Shrimp Cakes and be a hit at your family or office party. A fantastic and healthy way to cook fresh shrimp.

Note: This recipe is part of our series for Serious Eats. You can also find the recipe and many others on their site.

‘Tis the season… for cocktail parties, family get-togethers, work shindigs, and any other number of opportunities for you to hone your party-food skills. You want options that can be easily passed around, grabbed with one hand, and finished in a few bites; you also want a recipe that’s so memorably tasty people will demand you make it again and again.

Shrimp cakes, made by chopping shrimp in the food processor, are great as a dinner option, but they’re one of our favorite dishes to make for parties, too. Not only are they a cinch to make, they’re incredibly tasty and, frankly, much less expensive than crab. (We love crab cakes! We do! But their price feels like you have to make them for An Occasion, with capital letters, and if you’re not wearing a tuxedo, you’re just wasting everybody’s time.) The best part about shrimp cakes is that you can flavor them any way you like.

Lemon-Garlic Chicken and Tomato Skewers with Basil Chimichurri

July 2, 2024September 2, 2016 by Matt

Lemon-Garlic Tomato and Chicken Skewers with Basil Chimichurri

Grilled chicken doesn’t always need a long marinade to be full of flavor. These spend just a few minutes in a lemony-garlicky mix before they’re grilled to charred perfection. The hot chicken absorbs the flavor of the fresh basil chimichurri, and the grilled cherry tomatoes bring sweetness and acid.

(This recipe appeared earlier on Serious Eats.)

We need only the slightest of excuses to cook outside in the peak of heat-wave summer. Turn the stove on? Ah, no, thank you. Making a quick-marinated chicken dish that we can throw on the grill is an ideal solution. And, if we can use the Mediterranean heroes of the summer vegetable garden—tomatoes and basil—so much the better. Not only do tomatoes and basil taste great together, they also have a symbiotic relationship in the garden; companion gardening with the two plants in proximity improves their resistance to pests.

Lemon-Garlic Chicken and Tomato Kebabs with Basil Chimichurri — Prepping basil and parsley for the chimichurri

Chorizo Quesadillas With Radish and Fennel Salsa

July 5, 2024August 23, 2016 by Emily

Chorizo Quesadillas With Radish and Fennel Salsa

There are days when you absolutely crave a quesadilla that is, in food-marketing parlance, “fully loaded.” But the more ingredients you put in your quesadilla, the more prep work and cooking you have to do, and some nights you just don’t have time for that. To keep this version under 20 minutes, we limited ourselves to two main ingredients in the tortilla itself, and paired it with a tart, crunchy chopped salsa that balances the richness of the quesadilla and elevates it from standard sports-TV fare. It may not be fully loaded with ingredients, but it’s definitely fully loaded with flavor.

Pulled-Pork Sandwich with Pickled Onions and Radishes

July 2, 2024July 1, 2016 by Emily

Happy July 4th weekend, readers! We’re taking this week off from posting brand new articles while we organize our recipe boxes for the summer, but we thought you might appreciate this post from a couple of years ago. We make pulled-pork every year around this time, and made this way it is DAMN TASTY.

I’m not going to tell you that slow-roasting a pork shoulder is the quickest path to dinner – far from it – but, for a weekend cooking project, it definitely pays off in spades.

There are actually two different cuts that get called pork shoulder: “Boston butt” and “picnic shoulder.” Either is fine for this, but do get bone-in and if possible, pasture-raised. Boston butt is easier to find but I tend to look for picnic because it’s usually sold skin-on and I like to make crackling.

True, there is a bit of planning involved here but most of the time is inactive and the end result is so worth it. It’s perfect for a relaxed kind of party (the best kind, in my opinion) where people don’t mind getting messy or sparring over bits of crunchy pork skin. Because of the way it’s cooked, pulled-pork should stay pretty juicy, so it’s great in this kind of sandwich.

I combined two recipes here, one is Momofuko-style with a sweet/tart glaze from Bon Appétit (I love the flavors but it didn’t include crackling). The other is a Jamie Oliver recipe which I used mainly as a technique to get crispy skin.

What you wind up with is a huge pile of delicious pulled-pork with a tart vinegary glaze and a sheet of crackling that you can cut up and distribute as you like (or eat by yourself when no one’s looking). This would be perfect on its own or in tacos, quesadillas, grilled-cheese sandwiches (try one with bleu cheese!). I definitely recommend making something pickled to go along-side (we made both Quick-Pickled Red Onions and Sweet & Sour Pickled Radishes). We also made a version of this Asian Cabbage Salad, but without fennel since we didn’t have any.

We meant to take a picture of the pork coming out of the oven, but Game of Thrones Season 4 Episode 1 [2016 update: feel free to replace with GoT Season 6 / Outlander Series 2 finales as applicable] was just starting and … well, there are some things you just don’t trust your DVR with.

We also meant to take a picture of the crackling … but we ate it.