Six To Cook: The Food Trends Broadsheet Editors Actually Follow at Home

It’s a great time to be a home cook. We’ve got more access than ever to recipes, cooking hacks and chef-approved kitchen tools. And, of course, the endless stream of food trends sweeping social media. With so many food-fluencers and new dishes vying for your attention, it’s hard to know which ones are worth pulling from the feed and into your kitchen.

Money-wise, trying them all out can quickly add up. That’s where Aldify  comes in handy. The recipe platform shares trending recipes worth trying out and turns them into straightforward Aldi shopping lists. You can easily test the dishes that are breaking the internet without breaking the bank, like spicy peanut butter ramen  or tuna pasta bake. Plus, new recipes drop each month, so there’s always something new to cook.

We tapped six Broadsheet editors for the trends that actually stuck with them. These six staples are now baked (sometimes literally) into their regular rotation, including a butter bean bonanza, a sweet ginger hack, next-level cookies and more.

Brown butter cookies

I love making brown butter cookies. I like the nuttiness of the brown butter way more than a basic choc-chip cookie. I like my cookies thin and chewy, so I freeze the dough for at least 30 minutes before baking (I don’t have the patience to do it overnight).

My most recent batch swapped the usual choc-chip for macadamias and white chocolate, and that extra crunch works so well against the chocolate base. For the browned butter I always use unsalted, and I use good quality chocolate where I can. As for the recipe itself, I mix it up between a random one I found on Tiktok and other recipes online. – Pauline De Leon, creative solutions manager

Cottage cheese

The high-protein praises of cottage cheese continue to be sung. I may be late to the trend, but I’ve finally started blending the soft, lumpy staple into pasta sauce for a creamy, protein-packed alternative to heavy cream or vodka sauce. Simply combine equal parts marinara and cottage cheese, along with garlic, parmesan and a splash of hot pasta water, then blitz until smooth. – Gitika Garg, assistant editor – art, design and style

Cinnamon scrolls

I’ve lined up for cinnamon rolls from Melbourne to Perth and Tokyo. But that era might finally be over, because I’ve finally started making the sweet bread staple myself. Okay, I can’t take full credit (my bread maker works its magic for the dough), but I fill them with a classic combo of butter, ground cinnamon, ground cardamom and vanilla essence. And once they’re done, I’ve been wrapping them up and taking them to the office, to dinner dates and more. Suddenly, everyone wants to hang out with me? – Holly Bodeker-Smith, newsletter editor

Butter beans

I didn’t realise how many ways there were to cook butter beans until the soft legume exploded onto my feed. It’s been replacing meat in dishes like marry me butter beans and traditional carbs like pasta in cacio e pepe beans or “car-bean-ara”. Yes, it’s carbonara. But with butter beans instead of spaghetti. My part-Italian boyfriend was sceptical, but he came around. There’s so much potential in the humble butter bean – grab a can on your next shop and pick an easy recipe so you can say “bean there, done that”. – Chynna Santos, branded content editor

Ginger cubes

Adding more ginger to your diet has a heap of health benefits. It supports immunity, helps with digestion and has anti-inflammatory properties. I’m always looking for ways to incorporate more into my food, particularly in winter when there’s colds, flu and all sorts of illnesses flying around. I stopped myself short of eating raw ginger nubs (mostly for the looks I’d get), but an equally effective and surprisingly easy-to-make alternative is homemade ginger cubes. Sure it’s a grandma snack, but I bet ginger cubes are part of the reason your nan has been around long enough to get stuck into them. You just peel a knuckle of ginger, cut it into bite-sized pieces, boil it, then boil it again in the same water with some sugar added, dust with sugar and let them dry. You can even save the leftover ginger syrup for tea or sauces. I’ve never felt better. – Scott Renton, Hot List editor

Sourdough

I don’t cook, so my partner is very much the home chef and sourdough is his thing. He created his own starter after the first lockdown sourdough wave, and he’s been obsessive about it ever since. He can’t just make one loaf: it’s always eight, delivered to friends who now call up and request their “order”. Even his parents ring for their bread delivery.

I’ve been the lucky beneficiary. Every weekend I wake up to the smell of fresh bread, and it’s become our ritual to eat it warm with eggs, manuka honey or avocado. The trade-off is the starter itself, which he treats like our firstborn, feeding it every couple of days and messaging me with step-by-step instructions if he’s away to make sure it’s still alive (we’ve had a few close calls). It smells a bit funky, if I’m honest. But we do what we can for the people we love. – Simone Richardson, shopping editor

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Aldi.