The 3 Best Bruschetta Recipes

This is three bruschettas, starting with our most traditional, not so traditional, and then a little bit more of a fancier one featuring some burrata and colorful and vibrant ingredients. They're all easy to make. Let's jump straight in. Starting out with our most traditional bruschetta, we're going to need four large tomatoes. Make sure that they are ripe. All we're going to do with these is cut them into quarters. Once you have that done, we're then going to remove the pulp and that core. You don't have to do this if you don't want to, but it's going to make our bruschetta mix a lot less wet and it's easier to consume that way. All we're going to do with this is just slice out that core and that pip, and don't throw this away because there is uses for it. You can use it in sauces. Don't usually recommend putting tomato in stock, but you can do it if you really wanted to. Just put it in the freezer and then get it out when you need it. Once you have that all cleaned up, slice these into strips. Do so with the skin facing down. The knife's going to glide through it a lot easier. Rotate at 90 degrees and then dice into small pieces. Now you can cut this any size you want. I prefer a smaller dice, but if you like a larger chunk, go for it. That choice is all yours. Next is 15 grams or 0.5 ounces of fresh basil leaves. Pick them from the stem and then stack them up together. Lightly roll them so they're scrunched and then go through and slice them into thin strips. This is also known as chiffonade or cutting them into ribbons. There's plenty of different ways you can cut this if you want. If you don't want to cut it all, you can just chuck whole basil leaves through there or just lightly tear them. With that done, we are going to add the basil into the tomato mix. Make sure you get it all in there. Grate in one clove of garlic. Just run it along a microplane to create a paste. You can also roughly chop it, but paste is way better for this type of recipe. Scrape that all in there, making sure to get it all out of those little cracks. Add in roughly one and a half tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Season it with a little bit of salt and of course some cracked black pepper, 15 cracks worth. Then all we're going to do is just give this mix around with a spatula. And that really is all there is to it. This one is a super simple recipe, but really all that takes the cake on this one is just the simplicity and the freshness of the ingredients. Once you have that done and you have something that looks like this, we can then place this in the fridge. And I recommend letting this sit for about 30 minutes just for those flavors to infuse, but you can use it straight away if you wanted to. Now for our not so traditional bruschetta, I'm using mushrooms, 250 grams or 8.8 ounces, and any variety you can do. You can have a mix or just use one. It's completely up to you. I'm using a mix of Swiss browns and oyster mushrooms. With the Swiss browns, I'm only slicing these into quarters. And as for the oyster mushrooms, because they are quite small already, I'm gonna leave them whole. You can chop them up if you want to. And you can cut them differently. You don't have to quarter them. You can slice them as well. Also with the mushrooms, we're going to need three cloves of garlic. Run this along a microplane to create a paste. You can also slice it or chop it. That choice is all yours. Paste always gets the best flavor because it breaks down the allicin compound a lot more. But that choice, again, is completely up to you. Lastly, we need eight sprigs of fresh thyme. You can use dried if you want to, and I'll have the conversions in the description along with the full written recipe for all of these recipes that I'm doing. For this, if your stems are quite woody, just pick off the leaves. Other than that, just scrunch this together and then give it a rough chop. If you have picked off the leaves, the leaves are small enough you don't even have to worry about chopping it up. We are also going to need a little bit of lemon juice, but we'll do this at the end and I'll run you through all of that. For the mushrooms, place a large pan over a medium high heat. Once that's nice and hot, add in one tablespoon of olive oil and one and a half tablespoons of unsalted butter. Allow the butter to melt, then add in the mushrooms. Spread them out so they're not sitting on top of one another. Season to taste with salt and cracked black pepper. 10 cracks worth. Then start mixing around and saute these for about four to five minutes until they're golden brown. Get the mix through that butter, let all of those flavors become friends, and we're looking for that nice nutty brown color on the mushrooms. Once that's achieved and you have that beautiful color, we can then introduce the garlic as well as the chopped up thyme or the thyme leaves. Mix it around again. Make sure you break up that garlic because it can clump up and stick to the bottom of the pan regardless of what pan you're using. Make sure you mix it all through, coating all of the mushrooms and cook this for only one more minute just to get that fragrance in there. What you should end up with is something that looks like this that we can then remove from the stovetop. With the mushrooms now off the stove, we're just going to cut a small piece off of the lemon. Squeeze in the juice, roughly about a teaspoon's worth. Just make sure there's no seeds in there. And just give this a quick mix through. Try not to spill any. And that acidity is just really going to help balance the flavors. I just want to quickly jump in and say there's only seven days left on the limited edition knife. Less than 100 remain as well, so get in quick, don't miss out. It will arrive before Christmas, so gift yourself, gift somebody else. It's a beautiful knife, extremely well made. You can see all of the breakdown of how it's made as well on the Kickstarter, which is the link which I'll have in the description as well as the top comment. Go grab one, don't miss out, and it's going to be there before Christmas. Now for the last bruschetta, I'd like to say that this one's a little bit more fancier, but it is still incredibly easy to make. Prep for this is all laid out in front of me. It is really, really simple. What we're going to need is one long red chili. I've cut it two different ways. Take off the stem and then discard it, and then slice that chili in half. Now with one of the halves, we're going to slice this into thin rounds the whole way across. If you want the seeds removed, go for it. If you don't, keep them in, that's completely fine. And a chili like this isn't actually that spicy anyway. But of course, this is optional if you don't like heat at all. Now with the remaining half, we're going to slice this in half lengthways. Remove the seeds and any remaining pith that might be in there. You can use a knife or a spoon. Just do whatever's easiest for you. Once you have that cleaned up, we're going to slice this into thin matchstick cuts, also known as julienne. And try and get this as thin as possible. Both chilies are going to be used as a garnish as well as in the little mix. We're then going to need one or two red radishes, depending on size. I've probably used about one and a half here. Take off a little bit of the end just so we have a flat edge to work with, and then run this along a mandolin on the smallest setting to get these nice and thin. If you don't have a mandolin, slice them as thin as possible, but just be careful of your fingers. I do recommend taking off a little bit on the bottom just so you have a flat edge to sit on as well so it doesn't wobble around. What we can then do is place the saucepan onto our stovetop filled about halfway with water and bring this up to a boil. With the water at a boil, just lightly season with salt. Add in 30 grams of peas and about 70 grams of edamame beans. All we're doing with these is blanching them for about 30 to 40 seconds just to get some heat through them and soften them up a little bit. Don't need to cook them for too long, and we definitely don't want these to be completely mushy. When that is done, just carefully strain them out, and we're going to place them into ice-cold water to shock them. Drain them off, and then what you have is some nice, lightly blanched peas and some edamame beans. Now, in a bowl, we'll add those blanched peas and beans. Add in the julienne chili that we did at the beginning. Add in half of those red radishes. Add in five grams, or 0.2 ounces, of flat-leaf parsley and the same weight of fresh mint. Add in about two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. The amount here is completely up to you. Just start off small. And about three teaspoons, or equivalent to 15 milliliters, of red wine vinegar. Hit it up with just a little bit of salt as well as some cracked black pepper. Five cracks worth. Then just start mixing everything together, making sure that those radishes are broken up and all of the ingredients are coated in that vinegar and oil solution. With that all done, what you'll have is this nice, fresh mix that we can pop aside for the time being. With a bread of choice, just drizzle over a small amount of olive oil. Hit it up with a little bit of salt. Flip it over and do the same thing again with the oil and salt. And you don't need to see me do this twice. I'm using a griddle pan or a griddle sheet like this one here. If you don't have one of these, you can toast the bread in the oven or just use a regular toaster. That is completely fine. But I'm looking for those nice little char marks on either side. After a couple of minutes, you'll get that nice marking. We can then start flipping this over. Don't wanna get these too dark and obviously not overly toasted. And because that burner at the back is a lot hotter, just going to start swapping them around. Once that's done, just carefully remove them, place them onto a clean tray, and then make sure you turn that off the heat. Definitely do not touch that. The last thing to do before we assemble is get half of a garlic clove and then just rub this over that toasted bread. This really changes the game and creates the most amazing flavor as well. Definitely do try this if you haven't tried it before. And usually one half of a clove of garlic will be enough for all of this amount of bread. Starting off in the order that we made them in, we'll use our traditional bruschetta mix first, which is the tomato and basil. Just stack this up nice and high. Next is our mushroom mix. Just get that on there. Also, if this has gone cold, you can just slightly warm it back up. It is better to eat it slightly warm rather than cold. Last but not least, we've got our more fancy one. What I have here is about a quarter of a bowl of burrata. We're just going to put a quarter on each piece of bread. Lightly push it in with a fork, just spread it out a little bit, making sure that that surface is covered. Go through with that bean mix and just top these off, trying your best to make it not completely fall apart. As for garnishes, just using some very small, fresh basil leaves. For the mushrooms, I'm just going over with a small amount of thyme sprigs. And for the fancy one, just adding over a touch of those sliced chilies that we did at the beginning. Of course, you don't have to do this if you don't want to. Then with that done, we have our three bruschettas. Easy, medium, and a little bit more advanced. They all smell and look incredible, and I cannot wait for you to try them. With everything said and done, there is only one thing left to do, and that is, of course, we can then dig in. All three of these are completely different, but they taste absolutely incredible and all have different characteristics which make them stand out from one another. Traditional one, obviously the tomato and the basil, it is absolutely delicious. The freshness of the ingredients really makes it stand out. Mushrooms and the garlic, it is beautiful. Such a great combination. Then the freshness on the last one, you just get that nice little pop of texture from the beans as well, that burrata on the bottom, and the garlic spread on that bread as well. Absolutely delicious.