5 Quick Snacks To Make For Your Next Party

I'm obsessed with these.

These are my friends.

[upbeat music]

You are hosting people for dinner,

they are coming over soon

and you realize the roast chicken that you planned,

that long braze, the lasagna in the oven,

it's not gonna be ready for like two,

two and a half more hours.

What are they going to eat before then?

I have the solution for you.

It is a quick snack.

And all of these snacks, not altogether,

but one by one can be done in about 15 minutes or less.

So this is our Old Bay potato chips with lemon aioli.

Basically if what you have is a bag of potato chips

you can amp it up into a snack that is worthy of company,

worthy of a party.

We're gonna use Old Bay, which is a tried and true classic,

and we're gonna amp up those flavors

and give you a little dipper on the side

and it's gonna be great.

First thing is we are gonna dump our chips onto a sheet pan

because the best way to imbue your potato chips

with flavor is to heat them up.

If you toast them in the oven a little bit

you not only get slightly more crispy and darker in color,

but they also are like primed to take on more flavors.

Just a little bit of Old Bay to start, just a teaspoon.

And you don't have to be too special about it.

So we're gonna put it on both before and after,

a little bit before just helps lay the base level of flavor.

If you just do it at the end, if you just do it before,

it's like not as sort of like full

or punchy as if you do it in stages.

So we're gonna toss this in the oven

for just about four minutes.

So while that's happening,

we're gonna make our seasoning mix

for when they come out of the oven.

And that is gonna be a mix

of Old Bay and, twist, powdered sugar.

It just like sort of elevates the flavor of the Old Bay,

and makes it be less like just pungent,

just like the spice flavor, it feels really balanced.

And then what we're also gonna do is make a little dipper

on the side.

I love mayo as a dipper for french fries.

I think it's like a perfect side,

because it's creamy and rich

and it goes really nicely with a salty, crunchy snack.

So we're gonna grate in garlic

and add a little bit of lemon juice.

Okay, time to get the chips.

All right, this is perfect.

So you can see wherever so slightly darkened in color.

So now that they're nice and hot

we're gonna sprinkle on our mixture.

I'm gonna just gently toss

and you'll see like it's not like I have a bunch

of the seasoning sitting like falling off.

It's sticking to the chips

which the heat is what helps make that happen.

And then we're gonna cut these into your serving dish.

So now that we're all piled up, we'll zest our lemon.

And this just provides a little bit of brightness,

a little bit of freshness.

Now we can squeeze some lemon juice into our aioli.

Just a little bit of lemon juice in there.

We'll stir that up.

And then we're just gonna chop a little bit of parsley

as our finishing touch on our chips.

A little bit more added freshness.

It's chips, but it's chips done up.

It's so much fancier than just dumping out the bag.

The longest portion of this was four minutes

that it spent in the oven.

Old Bay chips with lemon aioli,

a little bit of lemon zest on there,

a little bit of parsley.

So fancy, so fun.

We can't snack on it yet,

'cause we're gonna have all the food together.

I'm so excited.

Okay, here we go, next thing.

Now we're gonna be making our za'atar firecrackers.

If you have saltine crackers lying around,

this is a great way to make use of it.

And what you do is you make this like oily spiced mixture

in a Ziploc bag.

You dump in a bunch of salt saltine crackers

and then you let them sit overnight.

So this one does require a little bit of forethought,

but on the day of your big event, all you have to do

is dump everything from the bag onto a sheet pan,

stick it in the oven for 10 minutes and you're done.

First we're gonna make our oily mixture

and it's half and half olive oil and vegetable oil.

So you're gonna feel

like you're using a lot of oil and you are.

But the saltines, we're gonna use two full sleeves of it,

they can really take it and they need a lot of oil

to get that glossy burnish finished on the outside.

To use a full cup of olive oil is frankly expensive.

You don't need it to all be that,

some of it can just be doing the like fattiness

without all of the flavor,

and that's where you're gonna like sort of even it out

with a little bit of the vegetable oils.

So you have all this happening in your Ziploc bag.

And then we're gonna add a little bit of garlic powder

and a little bit of za'atar.

Za'atar is a spice blend that's

the Middle Eastern pantry staple,

and it's usually sesame seeds, sumac,

and like a margarine or thyme.

And then we're gonna do our garlic powder.

And then we're gonna seal up our bag and zhuzh that around.

And then this is this like incredibly flavorful,

super delicious oil that you've got going on here.

All right, so saltines going in the bag.

So now we're gonna seal all that up,

get most of the air out of there, and then zhuzh all over.

Gently so that you're not breaking them.

Movie magic.

These guys have been sitting overnight.

Okay, look at this.

This is sitting in liquid.

You can see all of this oil that's at the bottom of the bag

and overnight, there's none left.

It has soaked up every last drop.

And we're just gonna line these bad boys up

and give them a quick bake in the oven.

So it basically all fits on one sheet pan

plus a little spillover on my quarter sheet.

So we're just gonna throw these in the oven for 15 minutes.

The oven is at 250, so quite low.

It doesn't take much time at all and you're just

sort of sealing all of that goodness on each cracker.

Oh my gosh, they're so perfect.

So we're just gonna arrange them on a little plate.

Using the za'atar is great

because it is like a built-in flavor mixture.

So if you have a favorite spice blend to use,

this is a great place to do that.

You might be surprised just how quickly

these crackers disappear.

Okay, this snack is called boquerones

with olives and orange.

It is an elevated take on a tinned fish product

or a packaged fish product.

These are boquerones, white anchovies.

So these boquerones filets are in a little bit

of vinegar and oil.

They're beautiful.

And I'm just gonna lay a bunch of them out on this plate.

I'm gonna move them around after I pour everything on top,

so that we can be sure to see each of the filets.

Now we're gonna get to our olive oil,

in your pot we're gonna use a couple of cloves of garlic,

and then just tear it into these large pieces.

Doesn't have to be nice,

just like letting it sort of fall apart

as it would after you smash it.

So we're gonna get a couple of olives.

What you're gonna do is smash them

to get that pit out, no problem.

And then just tear your olive

along the smash lines basically into a couple pieces,

and toss that into the pot as well.

I love Castelvetrano olives.

They're super buttery and delicious,

very rich for an olive and not so briny,

like unlike a kalamata which I feel like is like,

Have you heard of vinegar?

Castelvetranos are a little bit more like mellow and fun,

and to me the perfect addition to this spread.

And then the last thing we're gonna add to our oil

before we go heat it up is a few peels of orange.

So you're just gonna take your Y peeler

and peel your orange from top to bottom,

and then you're gonna have a nice little piece.

And you can go like kind of around the corner

if you want it to be a little bit longer.

We're going to half our orange as well.

And then we're gonna cut a little bit of red onion.

And this is gonna be a non-cooked element

that is just gonna add a little bit of freshness

and a little bit of bite to the finished product.

So now we're gonna go pop this over to the stove

and heat it really gently for eight to 10-ish minutes.

So we've got this gentle sizzle going,

and the edges of the orange are curling up,

and that's how you know it is good to go.

And we can head back to the prep stand.

Okay, so just to make sure

that we're highlighting all the flavors in here

and making sure they're as brought to the floor as possible,

you're just gonna do a pinch of salt and toss that around.

We're just gonna dump this over the top,

and then you're gonna get all the bits and bobs.

Get in there with your fork, spread everything around,

make sure there's a little bit of everything everywhere.

You kind of wanna arrange things

so that you've got nice like accessibility to boquerones,

nobody has to dig too deep to get to a fish.

We're gonna squeeze our other half of our orange over it,

so we just get a little bit more of that sweetness.

And then we're going to take a little bit

of sherry vinegar just for some added sharpness.

We're gonna finish with our red onion.

So just a couple pieces here and there.

And so now we're just gonna finish this

with a little bit of flaky salt.

Nobody was ever mad at flaky salt.

A little bit of pepper.

Sorry, I forgot the pepper.

So there you have it,

these are the boquerones with olives and orange.

We are now making marinated mozzarella

and peppadew peppers with chili and thyme.

This is a really great recipe that takes literally

two minutes to make, almost no time at all,

and it gets better as it sits.

First we're gonna put our mozzarella pearls,

I'm sure you've seen them like all of our fodder as well.

So cute.

These guys and these guys, peppadew peppers are often both

in like an olive bar pepper bar portion

of your grocery store.

We're gonna arrange them both in this little serving dish.

So now what we're gonna do is that we're gonna

make our flavor full marinade,

which is just red wine vinegar.

So we're gonna go to the stove.

All right, so we're warming our vinegar.

So now we're gonna grate in garlic.

We're gonna add a couple sprigs of thyme.

We're gonna add a little bit of aleppo pepper,

and then just a big pinch of salt.

And we're gonna let that heat

through for just about a minute.

We're gonna run that back to our cheese and our peppers.

So what I'm gonna do is take our time,

and I'm gonna put that on our cheese.

You can see it's got like little bits

of garlic in there too, that's so flavorful and fun.

And then we're gonna dump all this flavorful liquid

over the cheese and the peppers.

We're just gonna finish it again

with a little bit of black pepper.

A nice drizzle of olive oil,

because right now it's just vinegar

so you kind of want that added glove of the oil.

And then flaky salt, of course.

Is it a fancy party snack

if it doesn't have flaky salt on it?

And that's that.

That is our marinated mozzarella

and peppadews with chili and thyme.

We are now making some sizzled rosemary

with salami, pecans, and dates.

This is like charcuterie board plus one.

I like a spicy salami here,

because it just adds a little more heat

to the finished product.

So now we're gonna slice our salami

about a quarter-inch thick,

make these really nice fatty spicy coins.

Then we're gonna pit some dates.

And you can just rip them open and tear them in half.

Dates are great and they play off salty fatty meatiness,

and also nuttiness really well.

The pecans we're just going to use

straight from the bag raw.

So no need to do anything here.

And now let's head to the stove.

So what we're gonna do is place our salami in a cold pan.

We're starting it cold, because that will render out

the most fat from the salami.

We want the meat itself to crisp up a little bit.

And we also want that fat that cooks out

to be in the bottom of the pan,

because that's gonna be our cooking fat for everything else.

So we're gonna give it three minutes without touching,

and then give it the most time

to really render out as much as possible.

If you disturb it, it sort of like interrupts that process.

So now we're gonna toss for about a minute.

And salami, obviously you can-

It's cured, you can eat it right away.

So it's not, we're not cooking anything here,

we're just crisping it up.

Okay, so now what we're gonna do is use our slotted spoon

to leave all the fat still in the pan

and transfer our salami to this bowl.

Now we're gonna reduce the heat on our stove

and throw in a couple sprigs of rosemary.

They're just gonna sizzle for like 30 seconds.

So we're gonna get a little bit

of that rosemary flavor into the fat itself.

All right, so right when you see

the leaves starting to crisp,

you can tilt those to the side,

make sure you leave all the fat you can back in the pan.

And then you can just transfer your rosemary to your bowl.

And now we're gonna do pecans.

You wanna definitely get that roasty-toasty, nutty flavor.

And then a big pinch of salt here.

The fat is salty as well,

but you really want the salt to be on the nuts itself.

And then you're just gonna start toss it

every couple 30 seconds, every 20 seconds

for about two minutes.

We're pretty toasty here.

We can almost turn off our heat.

The residual heat that's here will heat through your dates,

and you can add back everybody else.

And give those dates a couple seconds to just heat through,

get nice and warm and caramelly.

This is like, Are you joking me?

Everything in here is so alluring and delightful

and I just wanna dive in there.

It's just like a combination of textures and flavors.

It's so fun.

All right, and now we're just gonna dump this bad boy

right into a serving dish,

making sure we can see that gorgeous rosemary sprigs.

And we're gonna finish it with a little flaky,

because why not?

The salami's obviously salty,

but the dates and the pecans can take it.

They're all here, they're all done.

All five quick snacks are ready to party.

Friends.

Come to the party.

Okay, let's dig in.

I'm going in on a date. Me too.

[Friend] Oh, sorry. Go for it.

Just a little bit crispy.

If I had a favorite.

It's some hybrid between these three.

Like, you start here.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

We're building up.

Put a little meat on top.

Yeah, sandwich.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, it's a s'more.

It's a s'more.

We're gonna be here snacking on the rest of these.

But if you are in need for quick recipe to feed company

or just yourself, these are the recipes for you,

and they're available on bonappetit.com.

Cheers.

We gotta look at each other.

Is that a joke?