Friday, January 1, 2016

What Will The New Year's Bring?

What are going to be the trends and tastes of the new year? Will we be beset by another year of Middle Eastern spicing? Will a new gadget spark our interest? What will 2016 bring? 

One trend is getting back to our culinary roots. In other words that General Tso's chicken and buffalo wing pizza will be foods of the past. Foodies want authentic food not Americanized versions. You'll see more regional dishes in restaurants of all ethnicities. This may also lead to discovering one's culinary roots and a push to delve into  family cookbooks for the real thing.This may have lead to the next trend -less processed food.TV dinners and microwave snacks will no longer have artificial coloring or flavors nor will they have preservatives.This will lead to another predicted trend of the new year - organic fast food. Amy's has already opened up their first fast food joint, enlisting local farmers to help them out .Hopefully the big guns, McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King will also follow suit.The big flavor of the year - pineapple. The tropics are coming back and in a big way.

Another trend is baby chefs. We're going to be inundated by new waves of Junior Master Chefs. Foodie babies have come of age and they're hot on the trails of their elders to slice  dice , and inherit the family sous vide. That said, there may be a rush to enroll's one's to, not in tetherball but  in baking and grilling classes.They'll probably be going gaga for gadgets like their home chef folks however there's a twist in this.The thingamabobs are not brand new. They're what our grannies and great-grans used to create delicious dinners and desserts. Get ready to swoon over (again) for baking sheets and broilers. More dinners will be cooked on a baking sheet than in any pot or pan. This makes sense because you can roast the main and the sides together for an evenly cooked meal.

These are just some of the predictions for the new year. We'll never really know until the trend is literally on fire. New ideas and recipes come along all the time. The trick is will they be the spark that lights up the foodie world in 2016?