Breakfast Tacos Recipe - Elizabeth Karmel Hill Country

The Breakfast Taco

Hill Country's Elizabeth Karmel shows us how it's done

Sometimes you wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy. Other times you open your eyes just wide enough to watch Game of Thrones in bed for seven hours.

Either way, breakfast tacos fuel your daily goals. In today’s In the Kitchen video, Hill Country’s Elizabeth Karmel shows us how to make them.

Using ingredients like avocado, pimiento cheese (which we also have the recipe for), and hot sauce, it’s obvious Karmel is in the right business. If you’ve never been to her Texas-inspired restaurants in NYC, they are, in a word, amazebrilldelishawesome.

Karmel’s taking a brisket version of her masterpiece on the road this Saturday night as part of the Austin Food & Wine Festival’s Rock Your Taco Celebrity Chef Showdown. If you’re in ATX, you. must. go.

Just don’t brush your teeth with a bottle of Jack beforehand.

For more information on Karmel, go to hillcountryny.com. Hungry for more? Check out our videos on fish tacos with Sam Talbot, burgers with Daniel Boulud, and ginger cookies with Michael Chernow. Learn more about the fest online at austinfoodandwinefestival.com.

Next Video: How to Make Thai Coconut Soup

How to Make Thai Coconut Soup

Delicious Soups from Sarah Simmons

If Old Man Winter were a real person, we’d have to defriend and unfollow him. Dude needs to chill with the snow and ice.

His one redeeming quality: Giving us an excuse to eat tomato soup and grilled cheese all the time (got to get warm somehow).

To help us retain body heat, we asked home chef Sarah Simmons for her best tomato soup recipe. Instead, she gave us five — all starting with the same mirepoix base, and ranging from a Thai coconut version (demo’ed in the video above) to a spicy, fire-roasted bisque. Visit our gallery for pictures, full recipes, and more videos.

The recipes are so easy and good we’re almost sad to think about winter ending. Almost.

For more recipes and information on Simmons, go to sarahmcsimmons.com.

Special thanks: The Brooklyn Kitchen

How to Make Root Vegetable Soup

A Soup Recipe from Sarah Simmons

If you’re sick (or just tired of being cold), this hearty, filling soup will provide some comfort. Though chef Sarah Simmons uses sweet potato and turnip in the video, feel free to substitute your favorite root veggies. And visit our gallery for the full recipe and more drool-inducing video demos.

For more recipes and information on Simmons, go to sarahmcsimmons.com.

Special thanks: The Brooklyn Kitchen

How to Make Fire-Roasted Tomato Bisque

A Soup Recipe from Sarah Simmons

When the wind chill is five below, any recipe with the word “fire” in it sounds like a plan. This spicy, smoky soup lives up to its name by warming you up (plus, it’ll clear your sinuses right out). Visit our gallery for the full recipe and more video demos.

For more recipes and information on Simmons, go to sarahmcsimmons.com.

Special thanks: The Brooklyn Kitchen

Rum Fustian Cocktail Recipe

Michael Cirino's Easy Instructions

According to the always-reliable Internet, rum fustians were the go-to drink for thirsty pirates. Strangely enough, there’s actually no rum in the warm, frothy cocktail. But don’t worry: There’s enough sherry, dark ale, and gin to help channel your inner swashbuckler.

Thirsty for more? Watch Michael Cirino make an absinthe cocktail and some perfect winter nogs. For more information about A Razor, a Shiny Knife, go to arazorashinyknife.com.

Grocery Shopping Tips

An Expert Shows You How to Eat Healthier

Somehow, in just five days, your New Year’s resolution devolved from work out every day to do leg lifts during Hoarders commercials.

Don’t give up. Dr. Frank Lipman, the integrative doc behind NYC’s Eleven Eleven Wellness Center, showed us how easy it is to get back — and stay — on track in these exclusive new how-to videos.

1. Go healthy at the grocery store (above).
2. Restore overall balance with a tennis ball foot massage.
3. Banish the blues with a restorative yoga pose.
4. De-stress with guided meditation.

And if you really want to get a leg up, try Lipman’s two-week detox program, Remove. No, seriously. Even our staff’s resident “cleanses are for crazy people” skeptic is a believer, mainly because you can have two meals a day of your choosing — plus the provided shakes and vitamins.

Which you can ingest from the convenience of your sofa.

Remove, available online at elevenelevenwellness.com, $199. Want more? Check out the amazing playlist Lipman made us for optimum relaxation.

Special thanks: Jefferson Market, NYC

Two Easy Holiday Nogs

Easy Holiday Cocktail Recipes from A Razor, a Shiny Knife

Nothing gets us in the holiday spirit like spiked eggnog (enough down the hatch and we’ll believe in Santa again).

So, our gift to you: recipes for two simple-as-they-are-delicious nogs. Helping us out is Michael Cirino, handsome co-founder of NYC-based dinner party extraordinaires A Razor, a Shiny Knife.

The drinks are easily made in individual servings — which Cirino demos in the video — or big batches for a party. Just keep the ratios the same and your guests will be ho-ho-hoing in no time.

Though if you see an overweight bearded man come down your chimney, we still suggest calling 911.

Thirsty for more? Watch Cirino make an absinthe cocktail that’ll get the party started. For more information about A Razor, a Shiny Knife, go to arazorashinyknife.com.

The Green Beast Recipe

An Easy Absinthe Cocktail

If you want to start a party — fast — an absinthe cocktail is just the ticket. (Who knew it was even legal, much less so tasty?)

In this video, Michael Cirino, co-founder of NYC-based dinner partiers A Razor, a Shiny Knife, walks us through the recipe for a Green Beast (as coined by the Pernod mixologist who invented it). All it takes is a tiny bit of the green liquor, simple syrup, lime juice, and water.

Just be careful: It’s dangerously delicious.

For more information on A Razor, a Shiny Knife, go to arazorashinyknife.com.

Next Video: How to Make Thai Coconut Soup

How to Open a Bottle of Champagne

How to Open Champagne

You know what could really spoil your NYE celebration? Accidentally hitting someone in the face with the cork as you open a bottle of bubbly.

Don’t spend your first hours of 2011 in an ER. Instead, watch our video tutorial starring Patrick Watson, owner of Brooklyn Wine Exchange in New York. We estimate he’s popped at least 10,000 corks in his lifetime.

And we’ll drink to that. Happy New Year!

For more imbibing tips and tricks, watch our videos on drinking wine like a pro, decanting it, and opening it without getting cork in the bottle.

Photo: E_calamar / Flickr

Next Video: How to Make Root Vegetable Soup

Dannielle's Pumpkin Pudding

Our Editor Shares an Old Family Recipe

Sometimes in life there are desserts so wonderful and decadent we dream and talk about them constantly. Friends, this is one of those moments.

In today’s video, our own editor-at-large and Top Chef: Just Desserts judge Dannielle Kyrillos shares her mom Patti’s tried-and-true recipe for pumpkin pudding — or, as we affectionately call it, pumpkin fluff. Her family ate it every Thanksgiving when Kyrillos was growing up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

The best part: It’s inexpensive (no fancy ingredients) and really easy. The total cooking time is about ten minutes if you have everything prepped. Even our editors who can’t boil water aced it.

You can thank us later.

For a printable version of the recipe, click here. Then check out our other editors’ recipes for champagne fruit salad, stuffed artichokes, and mac ’n’ cheese.

To see Kyrillos in action, watch tonight’s Top Chef: Just Desserts as the five remaining chefs do things with sugar you won’t believe. In the meantime, tide yourself over with sweets from our favorite mom-and-pop candy shops.

Next Video: How to Make Fire-Roasted Tomato Bisque

Aja's Mac 'n' Cheese

Our Editor Shares an Old Family Recipe

We’ll be the first to tell you our market editor Aja Mangum’s mac ’n’ cheese could be a dieter’s downfall. We even thought about not publishing it, so as not to tempt the virtuous.

But for years, Mangum’s family’s been whipping it up for naysayers — from college roommates to Thanksgiving dinner attendees — who’ve all promptly asked for seconds with their tails between their legs. Us included.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

For a printable version of the recipe, click here. Then check out our other editors’ recipes for pumpkin pudding, champagne fruit salad, and stuffed artichokes.

Next Video: Rum Fustian Cocktail Recipe

Jordan's Champagne Fruit Salad

Our Editor Shares an Old Family Recipe

You do realize women of a certain age can’t have kids, yes? Wow, you’re eating a lot for a lady. BTW, your childhood friend, Jane, just got a job that pays one billion dollars.

If you’re going home for the holidays, chances are you’re going to want an adult beverage or two. Keep it classy with assistant editor Jordan Blumberg’s recipe for champagne fruit salad. All it takes is a little bubbly, fruit, sugar, and minimal cooking skills.

Should take the edge off.

For a printable version of the recipe, click here. Then check out other editors’ recipes for pumpkin pudding, stuffed artichokes, and mac ’n’ cheese.

Next Video: Grocery Shopping Tips

Jeralyn's Stuffed Artichokes

Our Editor Shares an Old Family Recipe

We won’t lie: Artichokes are intimidating. Forget about how to cook them; how do you even eat them?

To help answer both questions, senior features editor Jeralyn Gerba offers her big Italian family’s treasured stuffed artichokes recipe. The prickly veggies are a mainstay at the Gerba Thanksgiving — and, after we saw how easy and tasty they are, we predict they’ll be at our table, too.

For a printable version of the recipe, click here. Then check out our other editors’ recipes for champagne fruit salad, mac ’n’ cheese, and pumpkin pudding.

Next Video: Two Easy Holiday Nogs