8 New Ways To Brighten Up Your Month

Try something new this month with our round-up of ingredients, trends and green solutions

- Anna Lawson

1 FANCY CHARCUTERIE PLATTERS

In their latest trends report, Pinterest predicted that charcuterie boards would be big in 2021 after noticing a spike in searches on their site. According to Google Trends, UK searches for ‘charcuterie board’ were up by 130% on the previous year, while the term ‘charcuterie board ideas’was up by more than 5000% and ‘charcuterie delivery’ up by 650%. And we can see why. Platters lavishly arrayed with quality cheese and cured meats look and taste impressive but require minimal prep and no cooking – they’re a dinner party host’s dream starter. Turn to page 15 to read about a self-assembly charcuterie and cheese platter we tried recently.

2 HOT SAUCES AND CHILLI OILS

It seems 2020 was the year that we really spiced things up in the kitchen. Perhaps it was down to the fact that more of us were cooking from home and needed easy ways to add flavour to our food, but we noticed a huge rise in the popularity of hot sauces, chilli oils and spice pastes. Not only did we see many new hot sauces launch in the last six months, but online grocer Sous Chef reported a huge increase in sales of existing chilli oils and sauces such as sriracha (up by 700% on the previous year) and LGM Crispy Chilli in Oil (up by 1600% on the previous year). And with several new spicy sauces and chilli oils launching this year, things are only set to get hotter.

3 FOODIE SUBSCRIPTIONS