Root Vegetable

Antioxidant-rich kale is sure to become a staple in your kitchen after you taste it paired with onion-and-garlic bread crumbs.

Here’s a new twist on chicken salad. Serve this one with baked tortilla chips on lettuce-lined plates, garnished with jalapeño rings.

The light, sweet glaze on these carrots is sure to please.

Flavors of the Mediterranean are blended in this simple, easy-to-love salad. Serve it as is or on lettuce.

Make this creamy potato salad wild or mild, depending on your family’s preference. Starting with already-cooked Roasted Red and White Potatoes (page 278) cuts your time in the kitchen to almost nothing!

Making potato salad is a great way to use leftover Roasted Red and White Potatoes (page 278). This version uses caraway seeds and hot mustard for a German slant.

Zesty, tangy, and naturally sweet—this salad is all those rolled into one.

Unlike many other poppy seed dressings, the one used in this fresh vegetable salad is sweet and sour.

This versatile Asian-flavored slaw can be as mild or as spicy as you like. Use it as a salad, or add chicken and serve over rice for a main dish (recipe on page 65).

This sweet-hot slaw gets its “attitude” from a combination of several highly flavored ingredients.

Use leftover turkey from the holidays for this festive soup, or for a grilled turkey version, use leftover turkey from the Grilled Turkey Cutlets with Pineapple—without the pineapple (page 162).

With their slightly caramelized flavor, roasted vegetables make a wonderful spread. Serve with pieces of toasted whole-grain pita rounds or baked tortilla chips.

Caramelized onions are a great accompaniment to many dishes, but I never order them out because they’re almost guaranteed to be doused in oil or butter. Here, I make them much lighter but still get that to-die-for flavor I love so much (and you likely will too).

You’ll notice the cooking time of the mushrooms may be as short as 5 minutes or as long as 10 minutes, depending on the thickness of the sliced mushrooms you buy. If your mushrooms are thinner, they’ll take less time. Thicker slices will obviously take a bit longer. However, thick or thin, this recipe will cooperate nicely. Just make sure to pay attention to the cooking time.

After The Biggest Loser Season 6 finale, I went to dinner at a steakhouse with some of the contestants and Alison Sweeney’s husband, Dave. We were all, of course, trying to order healthy, but it was definitely a challenge. I wound up getting a grilled chicken breast with salsa and “potato smashers.” I was expecting lumpy mashed potatoes. Instead, I was served something similar to this yummy potato . . . only it was doused in more butter than all of us combined had probably eaten in years. But it was so simple, and even tastier with just a small amount of light butter, that I knew I had to include it here.

Most mashed potatoes are full of butter, cream, and other added fats. But this dish pairs wing sauce with blue cheese, packing tons of flavor and thus eliminating the need for added fats or butter.

If you can’t find 6-ounce potatoes or don’t have them on hand, you can simply use one 12-ounce potato. Add 1 minute to the microwave cook time if the potato isn’t tender after the 5 to 6 minutes, or an additional 10 to 15 minutes in the oven, and use all of the butter and brown sugar for the one large potato. A 12-ounce potato will make two servings, so the recommendation is to eat only half.

Potatoes have gotten a bad rap in recent years, but the hype is just that—hype. A 5-ounce potato with skin has only 110 calories and more potassium than a medium banana. It also contains 45 percent of the daily recommended value of vitamin C and is a significant source of dietary fiber. It’s the toppings that are the problem, not the potatoes themselves. If you don’t love steak fries as much as I do, feel free to make your fries any size—just be sure to watch them carefully, as the cooking time will vary.

I was at a restaurant while on the road for an appearance when I glanced at a menu and saw “Old Bay Potato Wedges.” Though the idea seemed perfect, I knew they’d be fried. So instead of ordering them, I immediately texted Stephanie, my Test Kitchen Goddess, and told her we needed to make them. Within days, we created our version, which makes me way happier and more satisfied than any fried version ever could.

This is another recipe where caramelized onions work well. Though they’re not actually moist, they ensure you’re not eating a dry, bland dish. And if you make them ahead (see page 225), you can reheat them in a flash to turn what would otherwise be an ordinary meal into a restaurant-quality one.