Healthy Archives - Page 8 of 20

Stir Fried Lo Mein Noodles with Pork and Vegetables

June 10, 2024April 27, 2017 by Emily

This fast and delicious pork lo mein is loaded with noodles, meat, and plenty of vegetables—a complete meal in one wok (or skillet).

Preparing a stir-fry for us has become a game of time-shaving. A dish that’s already designed for the quick, hot pan treatment is made even more satisfying when you can snip a minute of prep here and there, or improve the efficiency of the cooking stage using that one weird trick (“Chinese restaurants hate them!”). Well, we’re using that one weird trick here, and here’s the essence of it: we soak the pork strips beforehand, for just 15 minutes, in a baking soda solution. This helps the pork stay really tender. More on this below.

Note: This recipe is part of our on-going series with Serious Eats. You can also find this recipe, and other great ones, on their site.

Swedish Cucumber Salad with Red Onion and Dill

July 5, 2024March 27, 2017 by Emily

Swedish Cucumber with Dill is fresh, light and full of sweet, tart flavor. We added quick pickled red onions to ours for color and flavor. Make it alongside Swedish meatballs, or anytime you need a quick, delicious salad.

Cucumbers are one of our favorite vegetables and we make some form of quick pickles at least once a week, if not more. I love them Asian-style, with rice vinegar and toasted sesame oil, especially along with Vietnamese-style Baked Chicken or any roasted meat.

When we decided to make Swedish Meatballs, I knew we had to also make the traditional side dish, a sweet and sour quick-pickled Swedish cucumber salad flavored with dill. We added red onions, because they add great flavor and color to the dish. If onions are not your thing, feel free to leave them out and just serve the cucumbers on their own.

Vietnamese-Style Baked Chicken

June 13, 2024March 20, 2017 by Emily

Vietnamese-style baked chicken; Chicken thighs (or breasts) marinated in a mixture of fish sauce, sugar, herbs and lime juice and then oven-baked to create a dish infused with flavor and browned to perfection.

Baked marinated chicken is one of our favorite weeknight dinners. What’s that – just mix up some spices, soak chicken thighs in it for a half hour, and then stick it in the oven? Sign me up. The more interesting the flavors, the more it’s a miracle that such a straightforward process can result in a delicious dinner. And so it is with this Vietnamese-style baked chicken.

There’s a lot going on in the marinade, but one of the standouts – possibly even the key ingredient – is the anchovy-based Vietnamese fish sauce, or nuoc mam. If you’ve never encountered it, you’ve got a treat ahead of you. This sauce is used as a dressing or dip (for example, as an accompaniment to spring rolls) but we actually use it all the time, even in non-Asian recipes, where we want to add a little salt and that distinctive fishy, savory note. Along with rice vinegar and sesame oil, it’s a great condiment to have as part of a simple Asian pantry.

Vietnamese spices — Lime, ginger, palm sugar, chile sauce, cilantro and fish sauce.

Note: This recipe is part of our on-going series with Serious Eats. You can also find this recipe, and other great ones, on their site.

Crispy Pan-Seared Salmon with Creamy Lemon Rice

June 13, 2024January 9, 2017 by Emily

Flaky, moist salmon with perfectly crisp skin, sitting on a bed of creamy lemon rice. It might look fancy but it’s a cinch to make, even on a weeknight.

Hey, you! Our old buddy! You made it out of 2016! Us too – and look, Nerds with Knives is exactly where you left it, a little battered, a little bruised perhaps, but we made it to the other side of the timeline mostly intact. Now, don’t get alarmed, but we’ve moved a few things around. We’re on new hosting, which won’t affect your NWK experience too much (perhaps a little faster, do you think?), we have a new ad partner, and we are now Pinteresting like never before. You can visit and follow us here. Other than that, it’s still just the two of us wombling along making things to eat and hoping you like them.

I know that the food trends in the beginning of January are all about salads and smoothies (and salad smoothies and smoothie salad bowls, etc), but we decided to go in a different direction. It’s 19 degrees and snowing tonight and while I like a good smoothie as much as the next food blogger, I want something warm and comforting as well as healthy for dinner.

Roasted Miso-butter and Maple Sweet Potatoes

June 13, 2024December 12, 2016 by Emily

We’ve taken a classic fall sweet potato recipe and shaken it up a bit. Ginger and miso flavors add depth and spice to the baked dish, and even holiday traditionalists will be impressed.

Like many people, we have a Holiday cooking meal plan – I call it our WHAT WORKS list. The great thing about the WHAT WORKS list is that you don’t have to think about it too much – you’ve already got a dozen people to feed and a dining room to rearrange, and knowing ahead of time that Sunday is when you make stock, and Tuesday is when you make gravy, and this bowl will hold this much rutabaga, and the dog will need this many chew sticks to keep her occupied while you cook, is valuable currency in a stressful week. The trouble with the WHAT WORKS list is that, of course, you can get complacent. So it’s good to mix things up a little from time to time, and that’s where this sweet potato recipe comes in handy.

One-Pan Baked Chicken, Sausage and Brussels Sprouts

June 13, 2024December 5, 2016 by Emily

Who wants to juggle three pans on the stove for a hearty fall or winter evening meal? This crispy chicken, sausage and brussels sprouts dish bakes in a bed of spiced flavors and best of all, it uses a single skillet.

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

If there’s one single food that universally divides childhood from adulthood, it has to be the poor old Brussels sprout. If you weren’t commanded as a kid to “eat your sprouts!” you were either very lucky, or you had good family recipes and were able to learn early on that the sprout can be one of the most delicious vegetables imaginable. Our formative years had more “ugh” moments than “mmm” when it came to sprouts, so we’ve had to rethink our approach. Fortunately, it’s not hard to come up with a recipe that highlights the strengths of the smallest brassica.