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With these recipes on hand, you can put a party together in no time.
Key Points
- Alex Guarnaschelli shares five quick, flavorful appetizers perfect for summer gatherings.
- Recipes like crispy prosciutto with melon and tomato soup emphasize simple, fresh ingredients.
- These five-minute dishes balance ease, taste and creativity for stress-free entertaining.
Chef, author and Food Network personality Alex Guarnaschelli knows what the people need: speed. During the summer, no one wants to be cooped up in a hot kitchen when you could be enjoying time with friends or family. To help us all get out of the kitchen and into the summer sun, Guarnaschelli shared five appetizers you can make in five minutes on YouTube, and we can’t wait to try them all.
First up is crispy prosciutto with sweet melon, a classic summer dish that, when done well, feels like a vacation in one bite. To get this flavorful starter going, Guarnaschelli heats olive oil in a pan, adding just enough to coat the pan. If you’re following along at home, you’ll add thin slices of prosciutto to the hot oil one at a time. Just make sure you keep the prosciutto in a single layer.
“The olive oil is getting perfumed with the prosciutto,” she explains. Guarnaschelli suggests saving the oil for an omelet, if you like. Fry the meat until it’s very crispy—it should look like “bacon’s version of a potato chip,” as Guarnaschelli describes it. Remember that the meat won’t feel crispy until it cools, so remove the slices and let them cool in a bowl.
To finish the recipe off, pick some fresh basil leaves and wilt them in the oil from the prosciutto. As they wilt, slice a cantaloupe into thin slices—quartering it and scraping out the seeds first, if you have a whole melon. Drizzle some olive oil onto a plate and squeeze on half a lemon. Fan out the melon slices, top with more olive oil and lemon, plus a pinch of salt. Place your crispy prosciutto and basil on top. After putting together the appetizer, it can go in the fridge until it’s time to serve. The finished product looks like a pretty pizza and the mix of salty and sweet is so satisfying.
Next up, Guarnaschelli makes tomato soup in under five minutes—while Alex says this feat is “no problem,” we were definitely surprised to see soup on a five-minute recipe list. To begin, start with the garlic. She uses chopped, fresh garlic (but says the chopped garlic from the grocery store will work for this recipe). Add the garlic to a pan with oil, then add some tomato paste. Add water to the pan—it’ll steam—and cook for two minutes.
For the next step, Guarnaschelli uses two pounds of fresh vine-ripened tomatoes, but a can of whole, peeled tomatoes works as well, she said. Blend the tomatoes with a small pinch of sugar until smooth, then add the puree to the hot pan. Sprinkle on a pinch of salt and another pinch of sugar “for grandma,” Guaraschelli says. Add some cream to the pan.
Before serving, Guarnaschelli adds small mozzarella balls and fresh basil to the bottom of her serving bowl. Pour the soup over the cheese and enjoy right away—while the soup won’t melt the cheese entirely, it will warm it and create a cheesy surprise at the bottom of the bowl.
The chef’s next classic appetizer is prosciutto-wrapped dates. Cut small incisions into pitted dates, then spread in some tangy goat cheese, herb cheese spread or, for a more pungent final product, blue cheese. Close the date back up and let the cheese work like glue to keep it together. Wrap each date in a slice of prosciutto and make sure to leave a little extra prosciutto hanging off the date. Fry each date in an olive-oil lined pan with a couple sprigs of rosemary, making sure to move them around to prevent sticking. You want the meat crispy and the cheese gooey. You can prep these dates and then fry them up when your guests arrive.
The penultimate appetizer is a homemade shrimp cocktail. First, heat water, four bay leaves, red wine vinegar and peppercorns in a pan. Remove the vein from the shrimp with a knife, then submerge the shrimp into the water once it’s at a simmer, not boiling. The shrimp will be done when they’re pink but not translucent. (You could also grab some chilled, cooked shrimp at the store for this recipe, though shrimp does cook very quickly.)
To make the cocktail sauce, add a dash each of Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce and paprika, plus a splash of red wine vinegar, a pinch of salt, a touch of garlic powder and some creamed horseradish into a cup of ketchup. Whisk everything together and squeeze in half a lemon for acidity. Serve everything cold—to get it ready in five minutes, Guarnaschelli puts the shrimp in an ice bath for a minute. Once you dunk the shrimp in the sauce, the effect will be “an umami bomb,” the chef says.
Last but not least, Guarnaschelli makes a sour cream-onion dip. First she chopped up some of the white part of some scallions and cooked them for 30 seconds on the stovetop with olive oil and salt. While that cooks, chop the green part of your scallions and leave them raw. Mix the cooked scallions with a mixture of sour cream and mayonnaise. Then add the raw green onion with onion powder and some garlic powder.
For an especially fun presentation, Guarnaschelli recommends serving this dip in a bread bowl. Serve with crunchy fresh vegetables like celery and radishes as well as sour cream and onion potato chips.
While you probably don’t need all of these appetizers for your next shindig, it’s always good to have some last minute options. We’re pretty excited to try all of these recipes—now we just need to decide where to start!
Read the original article on EatingWell
