16 secret recipes

Quick and easy to prepare. Crispy veggies, perfectly cooked shrimp with a nicely balanced sweet and sour glaze that highlight the flavor of the tender shrimp.

Molasses sandwich cookies with a hidden strawberry preserves filling, spiced with cinnamon and ginger, and topped with a vanilla powdered sugar glaze. The secret is inside.

Tongue-in-cheek eggplant recipe where the real secret is ditching the eggplant entirely and reaching for Kentucky bourbon instead. A classic joke recipe for eggplant haters everywhere.

Grilled Thai shrimp marinated in spicy Thai dressing then barbecued in their shells. A 2-ingredient grilled shrimp recipe that lets the marinade do all the talking.

Hickory-smoked pork ribs marinated in cider vinegar and garlic salt, grilled over charcoal, then dunked in a warm BBQ-and-steak sauce with molasses. Backyard classic.

Had some leftover pulled pork and wanted something a little different than your standard barbeque sauce. Why "Chauvinist Pig"? Secret's in the sauce!

Cracker Barrel-style biscuits use just Bisquick and buttermilk for tender, easy-split biscuits that taste like the restaurant. The double-stack trick is the secret to perfect splits.

Skinny chocolate cupcakes: deep, fudgy cocoa cupcakes made with pureed prunes instead of butter. Weight Watchers-friendly, lightning fast, and surprisingly rich. No one will guess the secret.

My copycat version of the top secret famous A1 Steak Sauce.

Orange sweet potatoes whipped with fresh orange juice, zest, brown sugar, and a secret splash of Angostura bitters. A lighter, butterless holiday side dish.

The secret to making the cucumbers crunchy is to salt them first and let the salt draw out excess moisture before use.

Irish cream fudge uses mashed potato as the secret binder, giving a smooth, silky chocolate fudge spiked with Bailey's-style liqueur and crowned with a walnut on each square. A quirky candy-shop classic.

Halloween veggie platter with a deliberately lumpy, yellowish cottage cheese dip that looks horrifying but tastes like a savory onion dip. Gross-out party food that's secretly healthy.

Vegetable pasta sauce loaded with zucchini, mushrooms, carrot and a secret of blended chickpeas that add body and protein to a red-wine tomato base. A hearty, vegan sauce that eats like a meaty ragu.

This old-fashioned yellow squash pie sneaks garden-fresh squash into a sweet custard filling with coconut and lemon. A Southern secret that turns summer squash into the most unexpected dessert your family will ever fight over.

DASHI STOCK is Japanese clear soup stock. There are four types made from kelp, dried bonito, shitake mushroom, or dried fish. Dashi stock is the secret of Japanese cooking. To keep this strictly vegetarian, I omit the dried bonito flakes and substitute with soy bean sprouts and or mushrooms.