New Year, new ideas, and new food trends! We chose the most interesting, tasty, and inspiring trends in food for 2017 and we absolutely want you to try them. This year we see trends being influenced by the rise in conscientious consumerism, the search for authenticity and exploring for food that tastes great and makes us feel good. What is most exciting to see in the trends this year is that we are finally gaining some balance between flavor and nutrition in our food preparation and it’s giving us meals that are both healthy and great tasting!
This New Year satisfy your taste buds, be inspired, and get healthy with these innovative and creative developments in the cooking and food world!
Bowls are the new plate!
Bowls, a more casual and easy way to assemble and enjoy our meals. There’s no denying it with popular trends from the past couple of years that Acai bowls and Buddha bowls are taking up permanent residence on restaurant menus, in our kitchens, and with upcoming trends such as the Poke Bowl and Smoothie bowl creating buzz. Bowls are becoming a regular staple not only in nutrition and health guru diets, but with everyday foodies who are simply looking to try something new and delicious! All you need to do is make sure you have a big enough bowl! And we have lots of them with whimsical patterns that go perfectly with this playful trend.
Our favorite right now is the Poke Bowl. A traditional Hawaiian dish which consists of fresh raw fish, shredded veggies, edamame beans, avocado, sesame seeds and soy sauce… it is refreshing and healthy. Sushi lovers rejoice: Poke bowls have all the tastiness of your favorite Asian style meal without the heavy carb-filled rice. Check out the poke bowl recipe next week we are doing in collaboration with one of our favorite food bloggers!
Hello alternative pasta options!
A creative way to bring flavor and innovation to a classic staple in our North American diets is using alternatives to pasta. Chefs and home-cooks alike are swapping out doughy noodles for more nutrition enriched alternatives. Whether it’s trying out vegetable replacements, or using a blender to infuse pasta dough with pureed veggies, or sticking with carb based alternatives like quinoa, chickpeas, lentils, barley or chia seeds that offer us more nutrition, pasta lovers are looking to add a healthy and palatable twist to their experience.
One of the easiest ways to try this one out is to spiralize some zucchini! Once, you have the ribbon all you need to do is cook it up in a bit of oil for 5 min and you can season it however you want! Check out how we tried out this trend with our Asparagus and Feta Tagliatelle recipe – with a healthy twist!
Vegetable Revolution
We’ve started giving our vegetables the time and attention they’ve always deserved! Vegetables have taken over the plate. Food bloggers and amateur home cooks play an important role in this trend by getting more creative and innovating the way we prepare our veggies. Their recipes prove vegetables can be the main part of our meal, taste great, and satisfy our appetite. This year, the experimentation that we’ve been doing with adding vegetables to meals and recipes they are not traditionally included in will become common practice and restaurateurs will be incorporating these ideas into their menus.
Whether it’s a sweet potato patty in your burger, replacing pasta and noodles with spaghetti squash, or adding kale or spinach into your morning smoothie, no meal will be considered complete without a vegetable making an appearance! So get out your mandoline, food processor or juicer and join the revolution! Try out our Green Juice and our Post Work Out juice recipes!
Serious Snacking
Eating smaller and more frequent meals is becoming more habitual for the average person, and we’re not talking about the snacks we had as kids, or the late night covert trips to the fridge. From foodies to your average Joe or Jane, the way people want to eat is changing. We want to be able to try new things, taste more and have variety without overdoing it. Sharing appetizers, ordering Tapas, and charcuterie boards are ways that this trend materializes. What’s more is that there may well be some nutritional perks to this new form snacking! At all times of day, dehydrated or baked vegetables, rather than oily chips, and exotic dried fruit for sweet offer us new tastes from around the world and are healthier!
For an example of how you can prepare yourself a healthy snack at home, check out our veggie chips recipe on our blog.
Craving Authentic Cuisine
In North America, we are a melee of cultures and this has always been reflected in our food! After years of combining, mixing, sharing and borrowing from here and there to invent our own fusion creations, there is a turn towards more traditional takes on the recipes from our roots. Whether it be genuine Korean Bashan, or “new-ish jew-ish cuisine”, third and fourth generation chefs are looking back to their heritage for inspiration, and we love the authenticity of it.
Check out our blog for authentic cuisine from Spain, a Catalan Fideua dish which is similar to paella, and a traditional pork dish from Vietnam, a THIT Kho Trung recipe.
Keeping you up to date in all the latest cooking innovations and food trends,
