"appetizers" news and stories

With all the menu items at family-friendly restaurants, wouldn't it be great if someone you trusted would give you the low-down on the best choices? Our Slashfood and KitchenDaily team is doing just that in our new Best of the Menu column. We're tasting our way through appetizers, drinks, entrées, and desserts from the most popular chain restaurants, and putting our heads (and taste buds) together to recommend the tastiest offerings. First up? Applebee's.

Menu Overview: Thirteen appetizers graced our local Applebee's menu, ranging from straight-on tortilla chips with a chipotle-lime salsa (chips were too thin and tasteless; salsa tasted like it came from a jar) to Dynamite Shrimp (flavorful but greasy and heavily breaded). Potato Twisters turned out to be thin, crisp, nicely salted chips, but the accompanying Queso Blanco dip tasted, one editor said, "like cheese soup from a can." Cheeseburger Sliders got the "way too much bread" thumb's down, but the fries that came with them were just right.

Find out our Appetizer Winner, Runner-up, and Loser after the jump.

Stuffed mushrooms are another classic appetizer to love; you can make them a million different ways. This recipe combines shrimp (or crabmeat) with bread crumbs, sherry, onion, garlic, and herbs for a delicate, very sophisticated filling for the 'shroom.

Recipe for Shrimp-stuffed Mushrooms

Watch this Video on How to Make Stuffed Mushrooms

More Stuffed-Mushroom Recipes

Fresh oysters in a Champagne sauce with a healthy dose of coarse ground pepper (mignonette) are a very French way to begin a holiday meal. Lucky us, oysters are in season in December. So whether you live in Normandy or in New Orleans (where oystermen are still very much in business), it's the perfect time for a meal on the half shell, starting with this recipe.

Also see today's post about Louisiana oysters.


Gallery of French Christmas recipes at KitchenDaily.

Thanksgiving is the day you might want to put the smart-phone apps on the shelf and dive into a few real apps. You know, the edible kind that were around way before the invention of the iPhone. Kitchen Daily's five appetizers, from a roasted red pepper and walnut dip to a pesto and sun-dried tomato terrine, have robust flavor that belies how light they really are. And with these recipes, your crew will still have plenty of room for the big bird (or the tofurkey, if you swing that way) and the pumpkin pie. (By the way, throw a little mascarpone in this year's pie. Here's the recipe.)

And . . . if you don't know what to pour with all those appetizers, here are beer and wine recommendations.

An appetizer that's lush, combines four food groups, and that you can dip? Sold! As fig season intersects with the height of steamy-weather cocktail-party season, this is one cool customer you want at your shindig. Blogger eddybles blankets the figs with mint and prosciutto, and serves them on bamboo skewers for easy picking. Get the recipe here. The rich dip is made with goat cheese, star anise, white wine, shallots and cream. If you feel the dip is overkill, just skip it and the figs stand beautifully alone.

And because it's the season, try this Kitchen Daily recipe for figs stuffed with gorgonzola.

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