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Grain Bowls

We love to make grain bowls - they're delicious, beautiful, and endlessly adaptable. In this course, we'll cover a variety of different grains and how to cook them to build a hearty base for bowls. But a grain bowl is not built on grain alone. We'll share guidelines to prep and store various other elements - proteins, vegetables, and both creamy and crunchy toppings - as well as tips for how to arrange them, to make your grain bowls as beautiful as they are delicious. You'll learn how to make our Chimichurri Couscous Bowl, Skillet Burrito Bowl, and Italian Harvest Bowl, as well as how to mix and match ingredients to build your own bowls.

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More Main-Course Salads

Salads—once relegated to the side of the plate—have moved to the center. A hearty, protein-packed salad makes a great meal any time of day, and it’s a great way to increase your intake of vegetables and leafy greens, as well as pack a nutrient-dense set of ingredients onto your plate. In this course, you will see that these salads aren’t just about the vegetables: you’ll learn how to prepare ingredients like chicken, steak, and plant-based proteins to add heft to your meal, plus you’ll see how we layer ingredients to add complex flavor and texture. You’ll also learn how to make your salads more interesting by incorporating bright, complex dressings and crisp or crunchy toppings. You will prepare recipes for Steak Salad with Carrot-Ginger Vinaigrette, Hearty Salad with Chickpeas and Halloumi, and Lemony Salmon and Roasted Beet Salad. With a combination of flavors, textures, and colors, you’ll find that salads never looked or tasted so good!

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New Ways with Salmon Fillets

In this online cooking class, you'll learn how to identify the different varieties of salmon, purchase fillets from the supermarket, prepare them for cooking (say goodbye to pinbones and buckled fish), and consistently cook perfect fish. We'll then put your knowledge to use with four recipes that flips a common technique on its head. That includes a sesame-coated salmon fillet where the seeds stay on the fish instead of in the pan, a poached salmon with real flavor, and a pan-roasted salmon recipe that doesn't use any additional oil.

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Oven-Fried Chicken

The first thing that comes to mind when we think of fried chicken is the shatteringly crisp, ultra-crunchy coating. But one serving of this American classic can with in at over 700 calories and 40 grams of fat. To lighten this dish, we ditched the deep-fryer and turned to the oven instead. In order to get that crunchy, craggy golden exterior, we tried everything from Melba toast crumbs to crushed potato and pita chips. To preserve the chicken’s crunchy coating, we baked it in a moderately hot oven, which also allowed the chicken to cook through perfectly in 40 minutes and remain moist and tender.

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Lighter Macaroni and Cheese

When it comes to comfort foods, mac and cheese sits squarely at the top of the food chain. There’s nothing quite like tender, bite-size pasta coated in a warm, gooey, cheesy sauce and baked with a crunchy topping of buttery bread crumbs. But with over 700 calories and a whopping 40 grams of fat per serving, the standard homemade mac and cheese is less than comforting to our waistlines. Keeping all the cheesy flavor and creamy texture but losing a significant amount of fat and calories came down to a classic recipe makeover tactic: choosing the right selection of milk and cheese. Our lighter version does this all—and doesn’t sacrifice any of the flavor or the buttery, crunchy topping.

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Modern Poached Salmon

Poaching has a reputation for producing dishes that are healthful and wholesome, but not necessarily big on flavor. Our approach to poaching fish fillets fixes this flavor problem. To recap: The reason that these poached salmon fillets are so rich and flavorful is that as they cook, only their bottoms make contact with the poaching liquid—the flesh retains its flavor compounds instead of releasing them into surrounding liquid. In addition, a layer of lemon slices lifts the fillets off the bottom of the pan to protect them from overcooking. After the fillets are removed from the pan, the poaching liquid is made into a sauce to accompany the fish. The poached salmon is rounded out with vegetables that are steamed until perfectly tender-crisp. Note that we cook the salmon to medium-rare in this recipe. If you prefer rare salmon (with a large translucent area in the middle of each fillet), shorten the cooking time by 2 minutes, or remove the salmon when the internal temperature reaches 110 degrees.

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Sesame-Crusted Salmon with Lemon and Ginger

For a lively dish in which the salmon is cooked perfectly and it and the sesame are offset with bolder, brighter flavors, we brine our fillets to ensure that each piece is seasoned and remains moist after cooking. The sesame seeds themselves are brined and toasted to bring out their flavor. Then we use a tahini paste that has been “thickened” with citrus juice to glue the citrus zest, scallions, ginger, and spice to the fillet. The resulting dish has the rich flavors of salmon and sesame seeds along with pops of ginger, citrus, and spice. In this recipe, the contrasting flavors shine through—and the last bite is as interesting as the first.

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Comfort Food Makeovers

Can comfort food be healthy? Everyone seeks out a favorite comfort food every now and then, but the reality is many of our favorite comfort foods are loaded with fat and calories. Learn how to transform favorite dishes like Meatloaf, Macaroni and Cheese, Chicken Pot Pie, and Fried Chicken into their best versions in this online cooking school course. See how healthy foods high in glutamates make dishes taste richer and meatier, even meat-free dishes. Discover which grocery store staples have healthier versions and find those that taste the best. Know which meats are leanest but have the most flavor so that you can have your comfort foods and eat them too – guilt free! And finally, a handy dos and don’ts guide will make this process so easy you can take any comfort food and transform it yourself.

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Lighter Meatloaf

Most low-fat meatloaf recipes start by using healthier, leaner meats like chicken or turkey, but we wanted a tender, flavorful low-fat meatloaf recipe with beef as the only meat. For a lightened all-beef meatloaf that is tender and flavorful—not dry and grainy—we came up with a slew of recipe-makeover tricks. Ground beef can contain considerable fat which causes it to cook up greasy, both of which we wanted to avoid. We swapped the usual dry bread crumbs for a slice of white bread and added a few secret ingredients to amp up the moisture and flavor of our meatloaf with minimal fat and calories.

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