Our favorite of the five, Chex PB and Chocolate Blast, did not grab the gold. But here’s the recipe, made with Reese’s Pieces and white chocolate.

Karen Fisher’s winning Chex Cajun Kick snack mix recipe includes Creole seasoning and hot sauce.

(Future contestants please note: The 2009 winner was Buffalo Chex Mix with hot sauce. The recipe voters seem to like heat.)

You’ve got 15 minutes: Make some Chex mix. It can be made up to 2 weeks in advance.

CHEX CAJUN KICK RECIPE

Ingredients

• 2 cups Corn Chex cereal
• 2 cups Rice Chex cereal
• 2 cups Wheat Chex cereal
• 2 cups bite-size pretzel twists
• 2 cups mixed nuts
• 1/3 cup butter
• 2 tablespoons Creole seasoning
• 1 teaspoon hot sauce (like Tabasco)

The winning Chex mix recipe adds spice
to football night or movie night. Photo
courtesy Chex.

You can start mixing now: It’s nine days to Super Bowl Sunday.

Turkey chili saves calories and fat.
Get the recipe from McCormick.

The choice is yours, but you can feast just as well on better-for-you food with the same amount of prep time. And no one will notice the difference.

We have suggestions from Carl Germano, RD, CDN, a Board-certified clinical nutritionist and the Chief Science Officer of Inergetics, makers of SURGEX, a muscle- and power-generating shake. As someone who spends his days focusing on nutrition, Germano recommends these switches.

Standard: Beef Sliders with Cheese
Smarter: Turkey Sliders with sliced tomato

Standard: Franks in Blankets
Smarter: Chicken Teriyaki Skewers

Standard: Fried Cheese Bread Sticks
Smarter: Sourdough Bread Bowl with Low Fat Spinach Dip (use nonfat Greek yogurt) and Crudités (raw vegetables)

Standard: French Fries, Onion Rings
Smarter: Baked Potato Skins with Tomato/Basil Bruschetta

Standard: Beef Chili with Shredded Cheese and Sour Cream
Smarter: Low Fat Turkey Chili with Black Beans, Corn & Salsa and Nonfat Greek Yogurt

Standard: Fried Buffalo Wings with Ranch Dip
Smarter: Baked Chicken Wings with Hot Sauce Dip

Standard: Regular Pizza with Pepperoni
Smarter: Whole Wheat Margarita Pizza

Standard: Chips
Smarter: Air Popped Popcorn, Whole Wheat Pretzels or Oat Pretzels

Standard: Cookie & Brownie Platter
Smarter: Fresh Fruit Platter

Standard: Beer, Soda, Juice
Smarter: Light Beer, Diet Soda, Flavored Seltzer, Mineral Water

You can have your cake and eat it too, thanks to Holey Donuts!. The secret is in the process: they use a method that takes 22 steps to make and avoids deep fat frying.

You can order donuts in just about type you can imagine, including filled donuts (our favorite and the best sellers) and filled donut holes.

What are you waiting for? Stock up!

• Read the full review.
• Who invented the donut?
• See many different types of pastry in our beautiful
  Pastry Glossary.

Low fat and delicious. Photo by River
Soma | THE NIBBLE.

America’s chocolatiers celebrate The Year
Of The Rabbit. Photo courtesy
Charles Chocolates.

Some of America’s chocolatiers have joined the festivities, creating special confections for the holiday: this year, celebrated on February 3rd.*

*Chinese New Year begins according to the Chinese calendar, which consists of both Gregorian and lunar-solar calendar systems. Because the track of the new moon changes from year to year, Chinese New Year can begin anytime between late January and mid-February.

To celebrate the Year Of The Rabbit, Charles Chocolates offers a gift set that includes a box of 10 orange ganache rabbits and a box of 20 tea-infused truffles, each topped with a Chinese character that indicates the type of tea inside. (If you don’t read Chinese, a guide explains which are baochong, jasmine, lichee, osmanthus and oolong.)

Purchase both boxes for $45.00 (a $5.00 savings) or the rabbits only for $20.00, at CharlesChocolates.com.

For Chinese New Year, the box is filled with five chocolate rabbits and eight honey and lemon pepper truffles. The milk chocolate rabbits are filled with a spicy almond ganache; the dark chocolate rabbits with tangerine ganache.

The box is stamped with a gold “Good Luck” wax seal and tied with a red-and-gold ribbon imprinted with “Gung Hay Fat Choy” in Chinese characters (which means “wishing you great happiness and prosperity”).

The box is $25.00 at BurdickChocolate.com.

Celebrate with either or both. Just be sure to get your order in now so the rabbits arrive in time for the Year Of The Rabbit.

Rabbits and truffles with elegant flavors.
Photo courtesy Burdick Chocolate.

You’ve added too much salt. Now what?
Salt server available on Amazon.com. We
use this one in THE NIBBLE test kitchen.

• With a liquid dish like soup, you can dilute it with more liquid (unsalted broth or water, for example)—essentially creating 125% of the amount of the original recipe. You can add more ingredients—or rice or noodles cooked without salt, plus herbs and nonsalt seasonings, to round out the dish.
• A trick from our Nana: Cook some white rice without salt. Purée (use water as necessary to thin the purée) and add to the soup or stew as a salt-free thickener.
• You can also try adjusting the recipe with cider vinegar and brown sugar. Both of these ingredients will add a complexity of seasoning, reducing the impact of the salt.
• Similarly, a salty sauce can often be softened with the addition some cream or vinegar.
• Since the opposite of salt is sugar, brown or white sugar (brown sugar adds more flavor), honey or agave nectar can help to diminish the saltiness in certain dishes.

• If the dish is only moderately oversalted, toss in a peeled raw potato or two, quartered or in thick slices. Potato can help to absorb the extra salt. In the case of soup or stew, the potato can enhance the recipe. In a recipe like chili, you can remove the potato at the end of cooking, or present a new take on the dish.

Whichever technique you try (except for adding potatoes), use a bit at a time, tasting along the way.

And remember next time: the longer food cooks and reduces, the more the salt intensifies. Consider adding half the amount of salt and adjusting it at the end of cooking.

Do you have a favorite salt-minimizing technique? Share it here!