Cheeses

-The iconic cheese ball I remember growing up was the port-wine and cheddar ball. I'm gonna show you how to make a quick and elegant version at home. Start with a bottle of Ruby port and some chopped cranberries. We're gonna add the cranberries to the port so they soak up all that flavor. You also need some room-temperature cream cheese and some sharp cheddar. I'm using white, but you can use either. First, we're gonna make our port-soaked cranberries. In a small saucepan, combine half a cup chopped cranberries and about a quarter of a cup of the port-wine. Just heat that over low heat for about five minutes and remove it and let it cool. In the meantime, make the cheese spread. This is really easy in a food processor. Just add about 8 ounces room-temperature cream cheese and the same amount of cheddar. Give that a quick pulse until it's smooth and creamy. It will take about a minute. Now, back to our port-soaked cranberries, to strain them and then pat them dry with paper towels. Then, stir them right into the cheese mixer. Now comes the fun part. Rolling it all together. So, to make this super easy and keep your hands clean, use an ice cream scoop. Grab a heaping scoop of the cheese mixer then drop it right into the bowl of chopped trail mix or whatever topping you're using. Use the palm of your

like this with your thumbs, and I got ready prepared and chilled cream cheese , blue cheese , and parsley. That's a really nice mixture. Pop a disk right in the middle like that. Fold the meat over it so

with Rachel Ray Magazine. Today we're doing an instant appetizer using goat cheese . If you've never tried goat cheese before, this is a really great way to try it. Now I'm gonna do 3 different flavors on top of the goat cheese . So I'm gonna cut the goat cheese into 6 equal pieces. You don't need any special tools for this. Just a knife and a cutting board and some of your favorite flavored things. I'm cutting the cheese into 3 pairs of rounds. You'll be amazed how pretty this looks when it's done and it takes seconds. We're gonna add a sprinkling of delicious extra virgin olive oil. The olive oil flavors the cheese and also helps the toppings stick. First, I'm gonna use Herbes de Provence. These are dried herb blend that you can get

this time, this is when I usually stick the buns and the cheese on top because you want the cheese to melt during the last minute of cooking. When flipping the burger patties, be sure to use a new spatula especially when working with poultry like chicken or turkey. You don't want to cross-contaminate the patties. And so I started with this one for the turkey patties. I'm using this guide actually to flip them. I'm going to remove the onions from the grill and then add the cheese and buns. So, let's take these guys off. Another thing that's tempting to do when you're grilling burgers is sort of to

so that you don't char them on the outside. Add slices of cheese . If you're worried about the cheese sort of dripping off the burger patties, you can always cut them a little bit smaller than the patties. And again, be sure to add this in the last minute of cooking as you don't want them to actually melt off the patty. I am going to close up the grill and just let it go for about another 1 minute. And here is a great tip that I was talking about warming up the buns. As the cheese starts to melt, I'm going to add the top part of the bun to a few of these guys. And then, invert the bottom part of the bun on top and this will just warm them through. So for those of you that don't like toasted buns, do not stick with the toasted bun. And just close this up again for just a few more seconds like 30 seconds or so. So, we've grilled the onions. We've added the cheese . We're toasting the buns. We're warming the buns. And the patties should be done. So, I'm going to check on everything and