Rich Onion Dip and Jerk Seasoning Recipes, Spotlight on Caramelized Onion Powder and Marash Red Chili Flakes, Replacing Salt with Spices, New Research on Memory and the MIND Diet and Easing Back Pain
Whether you’re scooping with potato chips or veggie sticks, onion dip is a crowd-pleaser. And when it’s made with my high-quality spices, your guests will be clamoring for more! I’m also sharing my recipe for jerk seasoning, a Caribbean spice mix most famous in Jamaican cuisine—it’s a dry rub you can use on any protein or hearty vegetable like cauliflower. These are just two of the recipes included in the brand-new set of herbs and spices from the T. J. Robinson Curated Culinary selections, and they show how well the choices I included work together. Also in this newsletter are findings from a recent study on the benefits of the MIND diet and one on keeping back pain from getting worse.
Rich Onion Dip
Rich Onion DipNo need for a dried onion soup packet to create a zesty chip-and-veggie dip. The shallots add just the right amount of sweetness. For a large crowd, double or triple quantities.
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 2 shallots, peeled and thinly sliced
- 1 cup sour cream
- 2 teaspoons Caramelized Onion Powder
- 1/2 teaspoon Purple Garlic Powder
- 1/2 teaspoon Marash Red Chili Flakes
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground Vine-Ripened Black Peppercorns
- 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
Directions
Step 1
Heat a small sauté pan. When hot, add the olive oil and shallots. Lower the heat to medium and let the shallots cook until brown and slightly crispy. Remove from heat.
Step 2
In a medium bowl, fold together the sour cream, onion and garlic powders, chili flakes, salt, and pepper. Stir in the lemon juice, then the reserved shallots. Let the flavors meld for 20 minutes before serving.
Yields 1 generous cup
Jerk Seasoning
Jerk SeasoningThis Caribbean-inspired blend favorite is a highly spiced dry rub that’s ideal for chicken and salmon but works with any protein. To impart the greatest flavor, rub it in well and let the food marinate overnight before cooking. Grilling is traditional, but you can use any method you like. Store any extra in the fridge for up to a month.
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon Purple Garlic Powder
- 1 tablespoon Caramelized Onion Powder
- 2 teaspoons Ground Buffalo Ginger Root
- 1-1/2 teaspoons Marash Red Chili Flakes
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground Vine-Ripened Black Peppercorns
- 1-1/2 teaspoons Heirloom Vietnamese cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
- 2 teaspoons dried thyme
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
Directions
Place all the ingredients in a large bowl and whisk until thoroughly combined.
Yields about 1/2 cup
Healthy Ingredient Spotlight
Caramelized Onion Powder and Marash Red Chili Flakes
Onions have been part of our diet for more than 5,000 years. Though the exact origins of the onion aren’t clear, many historians believe this culinary mainstay came from central Asia. More than a staple in our ancestors’ kitchens, onions were also used as medicine and even played a cultural role. For instance, Egyptians believed the concentric rings symbolized eternal life. Onion powder dates back centuries, if not longer—it was the perfect way to preserve onions and impart their intense flavor to foods. Today, it’s found in so many American kitchens.
The onions for my Caramelized Onion Powder are grown in the province of Vĩnh Phúc in Vietnam’s Red River Delta, one of the country’s main agricultural areas, thanks to its rich soil. The onions are then sun-dried and ground, using a technique that imparts a sweet, toasty flavor unlike any you’ve experienced—think confectioners’ sugar meets onions! This silken powder is so rich that just a pinch will enhance any fresh onions in a recipe. It also has so many layers of flavor that you’ll find you need less salt, if any, when you use it.
Use it to elevate onion-based recipes, like puff pastry hors d’oeuvres, onion soup, and dips. It adds sweetness and a hint of pungency to a wide variety of dishes: vinaigrettes, eight-ingredient dry rub and other rubs, breading blends (it’s perfect for fried calamari!), BBQ and other tomato-based sauces, compound butters, deviled eggs, grilled fish, seared scallops, burger patties, pot roast, taco fillings, frittatas, roasted vegetables, zesty rice pilaf, and spiced nuts. (You’ll get recipes for the bolded dishes and more in the Spice Report that comes with my collection.)
When using it in place of onions in sautés and stir-fries, after heating your pan, add fresh-pressed olive oil and a teaspoon of onion powder, then wait a few seconds for the powder to “bloom” in the oil before adding the next ingredients.
Onions are rich in healthful sulfur compounds, the source of their pungent aroma and taste. While onion powder doesn’t convey the same level of nutrients as whole onions, a teaspoon does have small amounts of potassium, magnesium, calcium, and the B vitamin folate, along with antioxidants like quercetin and anti-inflammatory compounds.
Western Turkey teems with Mediterranean influences. The city and province known as Kahramanmaras (formerly Marash) is a few miles inland from the Mediterranean Sea, with just the right climate for growing one of the world’s most tantalizing chiles, the Marash pepper. The peppers are sun-dried, seeded, and ground in a special process that creates tiny, silky flakes.
The history of peppers began in Central and South America thousands of years ago. A few hundred years ago, European explorers brought seeds back home, and spice merchants introduced peppers to the rest of the world. Turkey’s unique terroir,with hot, dry summers and potassium-rich soil, is excellent for growing peppers, notably varieties such as Marash and Urfa, which I included in my previous Spice Collection.
Marash Red Chili Flakes have a layered flavor profile: smoky and sweet, medium yet pronounced heat, and bright red fruity notes. They’re especially palate-pleasing because, unlike typical crushed red pepper flakes, they don’t have any seeds. They contain just a bit of salt and sunflower seed oil to preserve their unique texture.
These chili flakes add depth to many Middle Eastern and Mediterranean recipes as well as American and Mexican dishes, from cucumber salad, Cincinnati-style chili, tomato-cashew salsa, and pico de gallo, to the Greek feta dip htipiti. Sprinkle them on pasta, pizza, eggs, rice, sweet potatoes and other roasted vegetables, and avocado toast. Add them to recipes that use tahini, to honey for hot honey, to batters for calamari and other fried foods, and to ginger glaze for holiday hams. Make a marinade for olives, grilled lamb, and other meats by adding them to olive oil and lemon zest; add yogurt to that mix for a quick dip. Let these chili flakes impart a hint of heat to desserts like homemade chocolate bark and truffles, brownies, and even a scoop of chocolate ice cream.
Peppers have among the highest levels of antioxidants of any vegetable, including compounds like vitamin C, phenolics, and carotenoids, all strong disease fighters. All peppers get their spiciness from capsaicin, which has anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties, so they may help protect against infection, improve digestion, and possibly one day have a role in anti-cancer therapies. While the amount of these important nutrients in a pinch of the flakes is small, those pinches can add up to help meet nutritional needs.
Quick Kitchen Nugget
Let Spices Replace Salt
Spices aren’t just for cooking—they’re also great for boosting flavor at the table. Enliven takeout food like pizza or rotisserie chicken with a sprinkling of my Caramelized Onion Powder or Purple Garlic Powder. Create new habits with your new spices: When you set the table, bring out the Marash Red Chili Flakes along with Vine-Ripened Black Peppercorns. You won’t reach for the salt shaker as often, and that’s great for your health.
For Your Best Health
New Research on Memory and the MIND Diet
If you haven’t yet heard about the MIND diet, it’s a combination of the Mediterranean diet and the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet, which was first introduced in 1997 to help lower high blood pressure. MIND was developed with the hope of helping ward off dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, and slowing cognitive decline. It includes green leafy vegetables like spinach, kale, and collard greens along with other vegetables; recommends whole grains, olive oil, poultry, fish, beans, and nuts; and prioritizes berries over other fruits.
Various studies have looked at whether and at how well it works, some with very promising results and others less so. Recent research published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, focused on people with an average age of 64.About 30% of the14,145 participants were African American, a population group often underrepresented in health studies in general.
“With the number of people with dementia increasing with the aging population, it’s critical to find changes that we can make to delay or slow down the development of cognitive problems,” said study author Russell P. Sawyer, MD, of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio and member of the American Academy of Neurology. “We were especially interested to see whether diet affects the risk of cognitive impairment in both Black and white study participants.”
Participants filled out a questionnaire on their diet over the past year, and researchers looked at how closely the foods they ate matched the MIND diet. One point was given for each of the following: three or more daily servings of whole grains; six or more weekly servings of green leafy vegetables; one or more daily servings of other vegetables; two or more weekly servings of berries; one or more weekly servings of fish; two or more weekly servings of poultry; three weekly servings of beans; five weekly servings of nuts; one or more weekly servings of olive oil; four or fewer weekly servings of red meat; one or fewer weekly servings of fast or fried foods; one or fewer tablespoons of butter or margarine daily; five or fewer weekly servings of pastries and sweets; and one glass per day of wine. The total possible score was 12.
Researchers then divided participants into three groups. The low group had an average diet score of five, the middle group had an average score of seven, and the high group had an average score of nine. Thinking and memory skills were measured at the beginning and end of the study (participants were followed for an average of 10 years).
During the study, cognitive impairment developed in 532 people or 12% of 4,456 people in the low diet group; in 617 people or 11% of 5,602 people in the middle group; and in 402 people or 10% of the 4,086 people in the high group. After adjusting for factors such as age, high blood pressure, and diabetes, researchers found that people in the high group had a 4% decreased risk of cognitive impairment compared to those in the low group.
However, when the researchers looked at the male and female participants separately, they found a 6% decreased risk of cognitive impairment in women who most closely followed the diet but no decreased risk for the men. Researchers also looked at how quickly people’s thinking skills declined as they developed problems. They found that these skills declined more slowly among people who more closely followed the MIND diet and that this association was stronger in African American participants than in white participants.
“These findings warrant further study, especially to examine these varying impacts among men and women and Black and white people, but it’s exciting to consider that people could make some simple changes to their diet and potentially reduce or delay their risk of cognitive issues,” said Dr. Sawyer.
The researchers pointed out that these results don’t prove that the MIND diet prevents cognitive impairment, but only that there’s an association, and because the study included only older people, results may not be the same for other populations. The study was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the National Institute on Aging.
Fitness Flash
A Simple Change to Ease Back Pain
A study from the University of Turku in Finland examined whether reducing daily sitting could prevent or relieve back pain among adults who spend most of their days sitting—a simple concept with surprisingly scarce research.
“Our participants were quite normal middle-aged adults who sat a great deal, exercised little, and had gained some extra weight. These factors increase not only the risk for cardiovascular disease but also for back pain,” said doctoral researcher and physiotherapist Jooa Norha, MSc, PT, of the University of Turku. Previous results from this and other research groups have suggested that sitting may be detrimental to back health, but the data had been preliminary.
The participants in this study reduced their sitting by 40 minutes a day, on average, during its six-month period. This small change, the researchers found, prevented their back pain from worsening over that timeframe. The finding strengthens the current understanding of the link between activity and back pain as well as the mechanisms related to back pain, said the researchers.
“If you have a tendency for back pain or excessive sitting and are concerned for your back health, try to figure out ways for reducing sitting at work or during leisure time. However, it is important to note that physical activity, such as walking or more brisk exercise, is better than simply standing up,” Norha pointed out.
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