Our 5 Favorite Party Appetizers

Today in the test kitchen.

We have the best way to start a party.

We have appetizers.

They're fun, they're flavorful,

they're make-ahead friendly.

Creamy, salty.

A little crunchy.

[Shilpa] Has an irresistible quality.

And totally delicious.

[upbeat drum music]

Mm.

[upbeat drum music]

This is buffalo crab dip with a crispy Ritz cracker topping.

I'm looking for this dip to be creamy,

spicy, textural, and totally delicious.

For me, a hot dip is one of those things

that might seem a little bit retro,

but everybody frigging loves.

So first things first,

I wanna throw a little bit of cream cheese into bowl,

let it start to temper, soften,

[spoon taps]

little bit of hot sauce, lemon zest, Calabrian chile.

I want to embrace the earthy, intense,

spicy nature of Calabrian chile.

It's like so intense.

It's kind of wild.

I love it.

[spoon taps]

I'm going to do a little bit of lemon

for a little bit of overt acidity.

[spoon taps]

This is coming together really nicely.

We'll definitely need some salt here, but heat's there.

That Calabrian chile is not messing around.

So you've got a lot of different types

of crab meat out there.

The vast majority you're going to find is pasteurized,

but it's still a refrigerated product.

Point being, it may not be blue crab or peekytoe crab,

or it could just be a blend of different types of crab.

It's all good.

Just look at the expiration date.

One thing we're going to do,

go through it really carefully and just feel

and look for any shell.

This is like what restaurants do,

just to have a fast double check.

Honestly, this is like incredibly clean crab.

I think we'll be good to just add that into our mixture.

[packaging cracks]

And as buttery and magical as these crackers are,

I want even more butter and even more magic on them.

So I'm going to crush them up.

This is going to become part of our topper.

I've got some of the butter is going to go

in our crushed crackers here.

You don't want it to be totally soaked,

but I do want everything to have enough fat on it.

So it's going to toast evenly.

[spoon clinks]

A little pinch of salt, little dash hot sauce,

just a little seasoning.

And then I want a little bit of butter in the dip itself.

It's a pretty tight mixture

and I think it'll benefit from being thinned out,

just ever so slightly. [skillet scrapes]

So I'm going to bake it in this cute little skillet,

could be a little ceramic dish,

whatever you got that's oven safe.

There's something about hot dip.

It's never going to be better

than when you just pulled it out of the oven

and it's bubbling.

See how everything just kind of just slightly liquified.

You're getting that bubbling around the edges.

Crackers are crisp, golden.

I just have some thinly sliced chives, little contrast.

So you've got some little toasted crostini here.

Oh my gosh.

[crostini crunches]

It has this slow driving pulse of heat.

It's just unbelievable.

There's a depth of flavor there

that we really owe a lot to the Calabrian chile

and the hot sauce kind of coming together,

but the butteriness, the richness and the crab,

we were able to pack a lot of flavor

and such an easy thing to make for your next party.

Hot dip is where it's at.

Make it.

[upbeat drum music]

Pigs in a blanket are the GOAT of party appetizers.

And today's version is Chicago-style pigs in a blanket.

Savory, has an irresistible quality

and has you going back for another bite.

You really need to start

with the canned crescent roll dough.

If you have like guests who are a little bit early

[packaging pops] and they want to help you,

okay, you heard the pop.

Or if you have kids and they want to help, put them to work.

And whatever you think the yield is, double it,

because you cannot have too many pigs in a blanket

from my experience.

They're usually eight triangles

and each triangle will yield three blankets, if you will.

Don't be alarmed if some of them tear,

you can just patch them together.

So each big triangle, you're just dividing them into thirds.

So you have three long isosceles triangles.

I was just talking to Mal about isosceles triangles

and the last time you heard about them.

It's triggering. Yes.

Is it triggering? Yes.

I love geometry.

They look very skinny and small

and you'll wonder if you did the math wrong.

They're supposed to be small.

They're just little bites.

My favorite Chicago dogs always have yellow mustard,

but more importantly, the mustard acts as the glue.

Celery salt is a key component of a Chicago-style dog.

It is very salty though.

Just sprinkling a little bit drives home

that Chicago-style dog flavor.

All right, here are our Lit'l Smokies.

The slightly artificial smoky flavor is critical

to this appetizer.

Cornichon, this is stepping in as the pickle element

and they offer that nice pickly fresh punch.

As you roll,

you're pulling the little triangle towards you as well.

We've rolled all of our little piggies up.

They're so cute.

Don't worry if the mustard is peeking out

because we're going to egg wash them

and you just want to brush the tops a little bit,

both to give them a sheen

and to act as the glue for the poppy seeds to come.

So the poppy seed bun is an integral part

of the Chicago-style dog, but also they add a nice crunch.

And then before you bake them off,

just a little bit more of the celery salt

to really drive home that flavor.

They're going to go in a 375 oven

for about 15 to 18 minutes.

[oven door bumps]

So the piggies are out of the oven.

One canister yields 24.

They're so cute, deeply golden.

Watch them disappear in a flash.

I'm telling you, whatever amount you think is good,

just double it because they will all be gone

in a matter of minutes.

Oh, Jesse.

Jesse is our resident Midwesterner.

He's our sensitivity check. [Hana laughs]

Sensitivity editor.

Yeah. [Hana laughs]

You're on track already.

Yes, oh, great, okay, good.

The neon green relish.

It's just a quirk of Chicago, it's sweet.

Tastes like Chicago.

You've passed the sensitivity edit.

Thank you so much.

These must be eaten in one bite.

Don't try to do two because something will fall out.

No, I like the one bite, yeah.

The one bite.

The Cornichon is doing so much,

that like cold, pickly counterpart

to the smoky, salty wiener.

Make these Chicago-style pigs in a blanket.

These will fly off of your table.

[upbeat drum music]

I've declared 2026 my year of hot honey.

This is the flavor

that I've pitched for every single recipe.

The one that I'm most excited about, it's a party meatball.

It has a lot of flavor because of the hot honey glaze.

It's this blast of flavor that just wakes everyone up

and says, Hey, you're at a party.

I'm going to start the meatballs by making my panade,

which is essentially a mixture

of breadcrumbs, eggs, and some sort of liquid.

I'm going to use water in mine,

adding a panade breaks up all of the meat protein

and provides moisture.

And after it bakes,

the meatball still stays very juicy and tender.

I think adding a little bit of lemon zest

relieves the fatty nature of the meat.

People always say that I have a weird way of microplaning.

It almost looks like I'm doing my nails.

I guess, I love doing it this way

because then you get a very nice evenly microplaned lemon.

I could do garlic powder and I have done that sometimes,

but I like fresh garlic in this one.

Freshly chopped parsley, I think it's lovely and refreshing.

And I'm going to mix the breadcrumbs in here.

Mixing this before you add the meat sort of helps

everything distribute much more evenly than

if I were to just dump the meat in here.

I'm going to add my ground beef mixture in,

and this is the part that I think surprises a lot of people

because I'm going to mix this really vigorously

and still make extremely tender and juicy meatballs

because of the panade and the amount of water.

When you put enough water,

the proteins have something to sort of cling onto

and form a really good network,

which makes a very springy meatball.

So this is how I want my final meatball mixture to look.

You see that it's mostly cleaned the sides of the bowl

and when I plop it down,

it stays together without falling apart.

I am trying to visually divide this into 24 portions.

So I'm going to divide it into four portions

and then try to divide each into six portions.

And once that's done,

I'm going to pop them in the oven at 425

where I can get them baking.

And once that's done, we're ready to glaze the meatballs.

While my meatballs are in the oven,

I'm going to make my signature hot honey glaze.

It starts with vinegar.

It needs this little bit of acid

to sort of cut through everything.

Then I'm going to use a hot sauce.

I like Sriracha.

It's like a classic at this point, you know?

And then I'm going to do equal parts honey to vinegar.

The honey makes everything shiny and sticky

and it glazes the meatball really, really well.

I like to add a little bit of soy sauce.

It has this depth of flavor,

which is hard to recreate with just plain salt.

I'm going to add a few crushed garlic cloves.

As the mixture heats up, it releases some of that flavor

and just perfumes it just the littlest bit.

I'm going to bring this over to the stove and start cooking.

Time to pull my meatballs out because they are ready.

What I am looking for is like a nice bit of color.

The color is a good indicator

that it's also a tiny bit crispy

and we want that little contrasting texture.

And add the meatballs in now

so they can also absorb the sauce into their very core.

You kind of have to be careful at this stage

because as it reduces and the honey mixture becomes thicker,

it is more likely to burn and scorch.

The bigger and slower the bubbles,

the closer it's to being ready because

that means more of the moisture is being driven off

and the bubbles tend to be much more lazy.

This looks great.

There's still a little bit of sauce,

like there's a pool of glaze at the bottom,

which to me is perfect because that's going to be enough

to drizzle all over the meatballs

once they're on the platter.

If I was a guest at a party

and somebody gave me this platter of meatballs,

bruh, I would never leave.

I would be like, you need to host every single time.

Does this look suitably deranged?

[Fellow Cook] They look cute though.

That's the vibe I'm going for though.

Oh my God, the glaze does so much for these meatballs.

It just wakes everything up.

Party meatballs aren't anything new,

but I think it's hot honey flavor profile just tips it into

that little bit of excitement,

which everybody will be so happy to eat.

[upbeat drum music]

So today I'm making phyllo-baked brie.

So instead of puff pastry, you know how you see that often,

you are swapping that out

for these thin golden crackly sheets of phyllo

that are like kind of a bit wild.

It's cheesy, it's gooey, it's just a lot of fun.

So what we're going to need, shocker, brie.

It's pretty.

So you'll leave the rind on.

And then for the phyllo, this comes frozen,

so thaw this overnight.

Olive oil is kind of the name of the game.

Go crazy, you want a lot

so they like tan into a beautiful golden color.

I like to take maybe two sheets and tuck this in tightly.

This is a barrier that really just keeps all the cheese

in there once it gets oozy.

So you want to get a vessel that is kind of roughly the size

of your brie, a few inches larger.

And then from there, I create all these various ruffles

and just keep dousing as you go.

You want to create these like peaks and valleys,

kind of like little bed sheets.

This is like silly and it's architectural and that's that.

We're going to pop this into a 350 oven

for probably about an hour.

[pan scrapes]

It looks beautiful, it's nice and golden.

If you have some blonde spots, don't worry

because we're going to gussy it up with some stuff

so you won't see that.

So I'm going to top this with honey.

I'm going to add nice sweetness.

It's kind of shellac it a bit.

And then the za'atar is just delicious.

It's going to add texture and herbal super savoriness.

So this looks beautiful.

At this point, you just have to destroy it.

[pastry crunches]

See how the cheese is like perfectly molten in the middle?

We're doing the impossible.

We're creating a cheese-pull with brie.

I like to eat it just like this

because I feel like it's almost like a little chip

and cheese, all in one.

It's delicious.

The honey is so nice with the salty cheese

and because it's in cast iron,

it's going to stay hot for quite some time.

So when you strike into this, it's very dramatic sound,

so I feel like we should get the ASMR for this one.

Let's get the mic in.

[pastry crunches]

I think this is so fun.

It's crazy easy and makes people destroy something

which I love doing.

[upbeat drum music]

So this is seared dates with feta and nuts.

Warm dates are one of life's greatest pleasures.

It's fancy, it's luxe,

but honestly, this could not be more easy.

These are Medjool dates.

They're tender, they're so sweet.

This is one of my favorite products.

[packaging rustles]

It is a shelled, toasted and salty pistachio.

Just give the nuts a rough crush.

Hold for grabbing the feta out in an elegant way.

I like to cut it at an angle, have a little fun with it

because then we're going to tear it

into different sized pieces.

I really love feta for this.

It's like really salty and creamy, but it's not overly rich.

I'm like trying to save room for dinner usually,

so I like something a little bit brighter

and more tangy like a feta.

I could stand here for like 45 minutes arranging the cheese,

but let's move on.

So I like to saute dates in olive oil,

about a quarter of a cup.

And I don't know how many of you are sauteing dates at home.

It was not something I grew up doing.

I learned about it from the chef Renee Erickson.

They're wonderful on ice cream.

They're wonderful on yogurt for breakfast.

We are looking for them

to just basically get a nice caramelization

because the more caramelization they get,

the more sweetness you're going to bring out of them.

I know it like maybe looks burnt,

but this is all like deep rich caramelized sugar.

Hey, this is looking great.

The best part about this is

that when the hot dates hit the cheese,

they kind of melt the cheese a little bit.

Pistachios, lemon zest.

This adds just like a little pop of freshness.

And if you have like a super fancy, expensive,

extra virgin olive oil that you like to finish things with,

you could use that here as well.

But I just kind of like spooning the warm oil

over everything, melts the cheese a little bit.

Had to grab a little wedge of lemon here

because I really think we need

just a little more floral acidity

and a little black pepper on top.

This is so yummy, honestly.

It's like sweet, savory, little bit crunchy, looks so chic,

but you saw how easy it was.

We were there for like five minutes.

[upbeat drum music]

Come and have one. It's my birthday.

Oh my God.

It's Nina's birthday.

Happy birthday, Nina.

[lighter clicks]

Your party meatballs. [everyone claps]

Happy party meatballs day Nina.

Oh.

Oh Nina.