Ina Garten loves Brussels sprouts and has recipes for different ways to prepare this nutritious vegetable. She likes to roast them, sauté them, and even use them in salads. She's also the host of “The Barefoot Contessa” and loves to make cooking easy and delicious. Part of her success depends on finding useful shortcuts to reduce the prep time required to make her dishes. So how does Garten speed up the process? She's not afraid to pull out the right kitchen gadgets, like a food processor.
Food processors come with a variety of attachments, and Garten likes to use a slicing disc to finely chop the Brussels sprouts. These shreds make working with this vegetable faster and easier. One of her favorite cooking methods is simply sautéing in a skillet with butter and oil to bring out the natural flavors. Sometimes she twists this dish up a bit by adding diced pancetta, giving it a salty, smoky twist.
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Ina Garten loves slicing sprouts in the food processor
Ina Garten recommends using a food processor's slicing disc to sauté Brussels sprouts, but sometimes you can skip this handy tool and use a humble knife, as in this winter coleslaw recipe. . However, a food processor's slicing disc makes it easy to shred brussels for coleslaw or chop the radicchio and kale for recipes. You can also shred Brussels sprouts and serve them in a delicious Brussels sprout salad with pear and pomegranate.
Garten is a fan of Cuisinart food processors and recommends them on her website. These processors come in different sizes. The smallest can hold less than 3 cups of food, while the largest can handle up to 14 cups. Garten is a fan of her version of Cuisinart and her custom Pro 11 Cup. This model costs around $170, so it's an investment in your kitchen. It comes with 3 discs that allow you to shred or slice food to different thicknesses. Food processors also have special attachments for kneading dough.
Food processors help speed up meal preparation
The food processor's shredding and slicing discs can speed up all kinds of food preparation tasks. Thinly slice zucchini or eggplant to make ratatouille, or turn potatoes into scalloped potatoes or tortillas. The shredding feature can handle everything from carrots and cabbage for coleslaw to grated cheese for lasagna and nachos. Perfect for hard vegetables and hard cheeses, they won't fall apart easily.
In addition to using a slicing disc, Ina Garten likes to use the chopping blade on her food processor to quickly make tart dough. It allows you to combine butter, ice water, and flour without overworking the dough or overcooking the butter. The food processor blade is also Garten's go-to tool for making hummus quickly. The food processor also replaces another of Garten's favorite kitchen tools: a food mill. But as she explains on her website, you need to be careful when processing vegetables: “You don't want it to end up looking like baby food!”
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