5 INGREDIENT FIX: COMFORT FOOD

There are hundreds of 5 ingredient recipes that you can find whether from cook books or online recipes. Even so, 5 ingredient recipes don’t count water, oil and seasoning. But for the mean time, we should think about how we can apply one or two of the 5 ingredient recipes in our favorite comfort food to celebrate Mother’s Day! 

Comfort food is a type of family food prepared traditionally where when you eat it, it brings back nostalgic memories about your childhood when your mother or grandmother prepares an easy-to-make family’s favorite dish. It can be soup, casserole, buffalo wings or even desserts when it comes to comfort food. 

One of American’s favorite comfort food is mac and cheese. Not only it is simple to make, it has only 5 ingredients in it. Funny thing is, it tastes different in every family.

All you need is macaroni pasta, your favorite type of cheese, unsalted butter, flour, milk and some seasoning (salt and pepper) to taste. Firstly, cook the macaroni pasta until tender about 10-15 minutes in boiling salt water then strain it in the colander. For the cheese sauce, melt the butter over a gentle heat then add flour and mix until a smooth paste is formed. Slowly add a cup of milk and stir with a whisk to avoid sticking. Finally, add cubes of your favorite type of cheese and keep stirring until you get your delicious cheese sauce. Don’t forget to taste and season with some salt and pepper if you think they need some. You can now mix the cooled macaroni pasta together with the cheese sauce and enjoy a bowl of mac and cheese with your family. 

For Asians, the famous dumpling is one of our favorite comfort food. There are two different ways of cooking dumplings. One is to broil them in boiling water and the other is to pan fry them. Dumplings are actually quite simple to make but are a little time consuming to prepare.

Chinese dumpling is also known as jiaozi in Mandarin, gau gee or gow gee in Cantonese, or gyoza in Japanese.

The most important ingredient to make dumplings is the skin. It is a thin layer of flour dough about 1-2mm thick, cut in squares or circles. Then, you’ll need to wrap the fillings inside the skin and they are ready to cook. There is no fixed amount of ingredients to make dumplings but it surely is one of the recipes that uses only 5, less or even more ingredients depending how you want it to turn out. One of the most famous 5 ingredients dumplings recipes is the baked apple dumplings which includes apples, crescent rolls, brown sugar, walnuts and cinnamon.

You don’t have to limit yourself to 5 ingredients only. Add others you think would be good and when you make those changes, remember to jot them down as it is easy sometimes to forget how delicious you made the dish. So go home and surprise your family with your family’s favorite home-cooked comfort food!

The famous baked apple dumpling.