Healthy Homemade Homestead Snacks

Sometimes, you just get a hankering for something salty and crunchy. Usually, that itch is scratched with a snack from a shiny, throwaway bag that has more multisyllabic chemical ingredients than there should be. But on a homestead seeking both a healthier lifestyle and a less wasteful existence, those Bag O’Salt crunchies really shouldn’t have a place on the pantry shelf.

So what to do? The same answer for most everything on the homestead — do it yourself! I contend that satisfying snack-making should be an important tool in anyone’s culinary bag of tricks. Because as good as homegrown tomatoes or zucchini may be, they’re not snacking material for most of us, especially if we’re in the middle of a workday and need a quick boost.

In this article, I want to share three easy-to-make, crowd-pleasing, and homestead-approved snacks that store well, scratch that snacky itch, and are made with real food.

Waste-Free Popcorn

爆米花是一种简单而美味的食物。至少过去是这样的。如果你拿着一个可微波炉加热的袋子，配料表上本该写着“爆米花粒、油和盐”，却读起来像科幻恐怖片花名册。让我们停止这种基本零食不必要的现代化，把玻璃纸、化学涂层袋从货架上拿下来。要做出最好的爆米花，你只需要一个有盖的平底锅和一点技巧。然后看看你是否能在品尝完真正的棒棒糖后再吞下一袋人造黄油棒棒糖。

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup of popping kernels (we order ours from Azure Standard)
• 1 tablespoon of oil
• Salt
• Flavoring spices (more on that in a minute)

Steps

在一个大炖锅中，放入油和5到10粒玉米粒。盖上盖子，用中火加热，听好。一旦第一个玉米粒爆开，加入剩下的，盖上盖子。通过前后摇晃平底锅，你很快就会听到蓬松、爆炸的玉米粒欢快的敲击声。一旦断拍慢下来，就关火，盖上盖子，直到锅安静下来(如果你打开太快，一些会飞出来)。在这一步，技巧就派上了用场。如果在火上烤太久，玉米粒就会烧焦。如果太早把锅从火上拿下来，锅底就会有一层没炸开的机会。继续做爆米花，你很快就会成为专业人士。

Dress with a drizzle of olive oil or melted butter and salt, and then flavor to your heart’s content.

Here are some of our favorite combinations.

• Smoked paprika, salt, pepper, garlic powder
• Cinnamon, cocoa powder, cayenne, salt, and a sprinkle of sugar
• Ground cumin, pepper, ground coriander, cinnamon, turmeric, and cayenne

Crunchy Beans

“Crunchy beans” is an underwhelming name that doesn’t do justice to these endlessly pop-able bits of tasty goodness, but it’s the name that stuck in our kitchen. The crazy part is, you don’t need to cook the beans — merely soak them, and they’re ready to transform into an amazing snack. Who knew the humble garbanzo bean could pack such a satisfying punch?

Ingredients

• 1 cup dried garbanzo beans, soaked for 24 hours
• 2 tablespoons oil of your choice
• Salt
• Spices of your choosing

Steps

Toss the soaked garbanzo beans with oil, salt, and whatever spices suit your fancy. Bake in a 375-degree Fahrenheit oven for an hour or so, tossing ever so often to make sure they’re toasting properly. They’re done when toasted a nice light brown, shiny, and perfectly crunchy.

As a side note, if you decide to flavor these sweetly (and yes, nutty garbanzo beans do handle being sweetened amazingly well), add your sprinkle of sugar AFTER the roasting process so they don’t turn to burned caramel and glue the beans to the pan.

Related Post:High Fat, High Protein Vegan Snacks

Infinitely Customizeable Crackers

With the recipe for these crackers up your sleeve, you can turn out a satisfying snack that won’t leave you with orange fingers, more garbage in your bin, or that I-ate-the-whole-dang-bag feeling of regret. As a bonus, if you keep sourdough starter, they’re a great way to use up extra starter when you need to reduce and feed it but aren’t planning on making a whole loaf of bread. These crackers are a more involved snack to prepare than the first two, but they’re worth it if you make a huge batch.

Basic Dough Ingredients

• 3 cups whole grain flour — if you grind your own flour, a tasty mix is 1/2 wheat, 1/4 rye, and 1/4 cornmeal
• 1 tablespoon unrefined sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 tablespoons butter or oil of your preference
• Whatever extra sourdough starter you’ve got (no more than a cup, though)
• 1/2 cup of yogurt (if not using sourdough starter)
• Water

Additional Flavoring Ideas

• Seedy Option (my favorite): 1 cup of combined millet, sesame, flax, and nigella/kalonji seeds
• Sweet Option: 3 additional tablespoons of sugar, 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg, and a drizzle of honey during the last five minutes of baking
• Cheese Option: 1/2 cup of shredded cheese of your choice, plus parmesan for sprinkling on top
• Herbed Option: 2 teaspoons each of your favorite herbs like black pepper, rosemary, and oregano, or a different combination of cumin, red pepper flakes, and dill (seeds or leaves)

Steps

1. Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl and mix well.
2. Crumble butter or oil into the flour mixture, and blend with your fingers until it looks like fine sand.
3. Add wet ingredients, mix well.
4. 如果有必要，一次加一点水，直到面团粘在一起成为一个柔软而结实的团。它根本不应该有粘性。拿不准的时候，宁可穿得太干，也不要穿得太湿。
5. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
6. VERY IMPORTANT: Now, allow the dough to rest for 10 to 15 minutes. This resting step makes the all difference between an easy to work, easy to roll thin dough, and an annoying, fall apart mass of frustration. Don’t skip it.
7. Sprinkle flour or cornmeal over a work surface, and roll half the dough out as thin as possible. I like to mix whole millet seed in my crackers for both the flavor and their surprise utility at this step — the ideal dough thickness is the width of a millet seed. When you roll the dough thin enough, the rolling pin will start making gritty sounds against the millet.
8. Roll the thin sheet around your rolling pin and carefully transfer to a dry baking sheet.
9. Using a butter knife, score the dough sheet into square cracker shapes (you can use cookie cutters to make these crackers in whatever shape you want, of course, but I find that far too fiddly. Square crackers taste the same and take far less time to roll out and bake).
10. Prick each cracker in the dough sheet with a fork
11. Follow the same process for the other half of the dough, and pop it all in the hot oven.
12. Bake the crackers for 8 minutes, then start checking them for doneness every few minutes after that. The speed at which they cook is dependent on your oven and how thin you were able to roll them, so it’s hard to give an exact time for this step. Basically, you want them to be bone-dry, but not browning. Once they start changing color, they start tasting burned. And they cookfast (!) so don’t walk away for too long. I find that my nose is my best guide. As soon as I start smelling that nice, toasted bread aroma, I pull them out and check to see if they fracture easily. If they shatter, they’re good to go.

Note: If you find that the edges are cooking faster than the center, rotate the sheet halfway through cooking to help speed up the process,

13. Once you remove the crackers from the oven, transfer the sheet to a drying rack to let it cool enough to handle. Then, merrily crack it into individual crackers. If any don’t break along the scores you made, and if you feel they’re too ugly to serve, it’s your right to snack on them right then and there.
14. Serve in basket lined with a nice cloth napkin, or store in an airtight container. Pair them with soup, salads, cheeses and pickles, dips, or eat them on their own. They’ll last pretty much indefinitely, but you’ll never know that because they’ll get eaten well before then.

Now, those are just three of my family’s favorites. What are yours? Let us know in the comments below!