Top 3 Gourmet Foods to Try

When most people think of gourmet food, they picture caviar and truffles spread out over golden platters.  Although this imagery isn’t wrong, there’s a lot more out there for food lovers than fish and mushrooms.  Dulce de leche, courgette flowers, and bacon jam are some of the most underutilized gourmet foods out there.  They’re affordable and don’t break the bank but offer enough unique and irresistible flavor that anyone’s life could be improved by including them.  Here’s why they’re incredibly gourmet: and why you should rush out to try some of these soon.

Homemade Dulce De Leche

Although everyone has seen those famous white cans of dulce de leche that line the baking aisle of nearly every grocery store, don’t be fooled into thinking it’s lowbrow food!  Dulce de leche takes hours upon hours of simmering and cooking down milk and sugar.  The milk and sugar create a spreadable sweet and soft caramel that you can enjoy on anything.  When this sweet comes to mind, it’s most popular stirred into coffee, spread onto toast, or enjoyed drizzled on icecream.

Store-bought is fine if you don’t want to invest the hours into something you’re not sure if you’ll like, but this is one of the most delicious toppings you can get!  You’ll want a scoop with almost every meal.

Courgette flowers

The idea of eating flowers may seem bizarre to most people, but they’re something every home cook and pro chef should become acquainted with.

These aren’t readily stocked at grocery stores for endless reasons ranging from how short their shelf life is to the fact that plucking these flowers means the squash won’t grow in its place.  

If you grow squash, cut these flowers off just on the stem, and rinse them out.  You can stuff these flowers with ricotta or bread and fry them for a crispy texture.  Courgette flowers aren’t floral tasting and give off more of a savory herbal flavor.

Bacon Jam

If there’s one food that’s caught the public’s imaginations and tongues for the last fifteen years, it’s bacon.  Fatty, salty, crispy and savory, bacon fills many people with contentment and is a pinnacle of breakfast foods.  Unfortunately, it has its limits.  Bacon takes time to cook, can be a crumbly mess, and is a pain to clean up after cooking. 

Many are turning to try bacon jam instead.  Just as savory and tasty, bacon jam has the perks of being spread on anything you want, from sandwiches to bagels, and offers a lot of flavor in a small scoop.  You can give yourself the full breakfast feeling with a smear of it or spice up a snack by having some with pretzels.  Some even have it on their burgers to give them a little more smoky flavor!  There’s no cleanup or mess, and the taste buds get to revel in the most popular flavor known to humankind.