Many recipes call for olive oil, from dressings to marinades to stir-fry. While olive oil is flavorful and high in healthy fats, it can be expensive. Trying your favorite recipes with other healthful oils may save you money and can add different flavors to your favorite dishes.

The sear burner included on many higher-end gas grills is a powerful cooking tool. It uses a large number of small flames to heat a ceramic plate to very high temperatures. The superheated ceramic element emits infrared radiation, which rapidly sears and browns the food -- usually meats -- cooked over it.

Using a pressure cooker to prepare London broil, also called flank steak, means you won't have to slave over a stove or sweat in a kitchen with the oven on. Instead, you can prepare this cut of meat in less than 20 minutes in a pressure cooker.

The brownie is America's favorite bar cookie. In the late 19th century, the Sears and Roebuck catalog reportedly published the first brownie recipe. The basic brownie ingredients include flour, sugar, eggs and butter base, with chocolate, which gives them their characteristic brown flavor.

Natural bee honey has been suggested as an alternative treatment for hay fever and other allergies. Not all honey is the same, however, since bees make honey by gathering nectar from the flowers common in their vicinity.

Oodles of Noodles, which are ramen noodles packaged with a variety of seasonings and sold by Nissin Foods, provide a quick, easy and inexpensive meal. Oodles of Noodles are precooked and sold in a block, so cooking them involves nothing more than rehydrating with boiling water.

The cornerstone of the Japanese diet, Nishiki rice is a Japonica medium-grained, slightly sticky rice that begs to be eaten with chopsticks and molded into sushi rolls. If you don't know how to make Japanese rice, it can be quite tricky.

More than 90 percent of households in the U.S. are equipped with a microwave oven, which converts electricity into an electromagnetic field to cook your food.

Rice is, according to the USA Rice Federation, the most commonly used grain in the world. Found in nearly every culture, rice is low in fat and calories and in its brown variety, a nutritionally dense food.

SweetLeaf brand liquid stevia is a natural sweetener made from the leaves of a South American plant. The extract has been used in South America for hundreds of years as a way to sweeten foods and beverages without adding calories or altering blood sugar levels.

Plantains resemble bananas but typically are referred to as cooking bananas. Often used in African meals, they tend to grow longer than bananas and have thicker peels and starchier fruit. In fact, the flavor of a plantain is closer to that of a potato than the usual sweetness of a banana.

Chicken drumsticks are flavorful, fairly fatty cuts that stand up well to grilling, and remain moist when cooked over high heat. Cooking drumsticks on the grill at a moderately high temperature is the best grilling method because the meat stays tender and moist while the outside is crisp and golden brown.