The Trendiest Ingredients to Cook With in 2023, According to Professional Chefs

A new year brings new food trends, and many of them can be enjoyed in your home kitchen. And who better to predict the upcoming hot and trending ingredients than professional chefs? We tapped into professional kitchens to see what condiments, vegetables, proteins, and more you’ll want to try out as we enter 2023—and how to easily use them! Your kitchen has never been cooler. 

Flavored Butters and Cheeses

“During the coming year, I see artisanal butters and infusing butters, along with different cheeses like feta and goat cheese, being on the rise,” says Gee Cuyugan, executive chef of Mercat a la Planxa, a Catalan-inspired tapas restaurant in Chicago. This natural (and more practical) evolution from the butter board makes a lot of sense—compound butters and goat cheeses are aesthetically pleasing and offer a flavor boost without a ton of effort or additional ingredients. Spread your flavored butters and cheeses on toasts, add a pat on top of a freshly cooked steak, or just decorate with a butter candle.

Ube

Ube, a purple yam common in Filipino cuisine, is also on the rise, thanks in part to its camera-friendly color. Trader Joe’s even sells an ube spread! Chef Cuyugan has noticed a rise in Southeast Asian ingredients used cross-culturally in recipes, and suggests using ube in pastry recipes and mochi. It’s also a great ice cream addition for a purple scoop!

Kombu

Kombu, or dried kelp, is a Japanese ingredient becoming increasingly popular—there’s a whole shop in Brooklyn dedicated to kombu and the dashi (broths) it’s used in, Dashi Okume, so you know it’s on the rise! Chef Angeline Chiang, executive chef at Graduate Nashville uses kombu to add a meaty texture to various dishes. Aaron Israel and Sawako Okochi, chefs and owners of Brooklyn’s Shalom Japan, are also big kombu proponents as well. “Use two square inches for every quart of broth,” they recommend. “It provides soup with a bit more body and textural mouthfeel.” 

And speaking of sea vegetables, kelp and seaweed are also predicted to be huge in 2023. “There's also so many different types of seaweeds to cook and eat,” says Joel Boettcher, executive sous chef for the Islamorada Resort Collection. “A lot of ingredients and vitamins also are extracted from seaweed.” Try chopping up nori to add to Caesar dressing, or thinly shredding it to top avocado toast.

Sunchokes

Prepare to see sunchokes, also called Jerusalem artichokes, in more grocery stores and CSA boxes. "We are going to see a lot more sunchokes than we have in prior years,” says Chris dos Rois, chef at Town House in New Rochelle, New York. “The big factor here is market-driven trends that are having a good farming year. Potatoes didn't do so well this year and went up in price, so they kept a back seat. But sunchokes are going strong at [the Union Square Green] market, and have decreased in price because the yield was great, which also means chefs and home cooks will gravitate towards them.” At Town House, chef dos Reis prepares a surf and turf with sunchokes in different textures—they can be fried, pureed, roasted, and treated like other tubers.

Sun-Dried Tomatoes

Yep, those icons of 1990s home entertaining are back, just like so many trends from that legendary decade. "I believe that ingredients with a lot of umami will be the secret weapon of many home cooks,” says Francesco Bonsinetto of Cucina Migrante in San Diego. Using ingredients like sun-dried tomatoes, anchovies, sardines, and capers amps up flavor, plus they’re super versatile, so you can keep them in the pantry and whip up an elegant meal at a moment’s notice. For a quick tapenade, Bonsinetto recommends blending anchovies with sun-dried tomatoes, oregano, and balsamic. Try making a Sun-Dried Tomato Romesco Chicken, or toss a jar of Rao’s sun-dried tomato pesto with pasta. 

Dates

Several chefs predict dates to be a big ingredient in 2023. Chef Boettcher predicts they’ll be “huge.” Dates are versatile and can be used in everything from appetizers to desserts. Chef Bonsinetto suggests trying them sauteed with some fresh garlic and lemon. Medjool dates are also packed with nutrients and can be enjoyed as a snack with no prep. Dates are also on the rise as a popular sugar substitute and sweetener, used in treats like a Creamy Date Shake. Date syrup, also called silan, will be on the rise too, try using it instead of honey or sugar. Joolie’s offers individual organic date syrup packets to bring everywhere and drip into everything. 

Hyper-Local Ingredients

Big-box stores aren’t as tempting when inflation prices are intimidating. “I think some of the most trendy ingredients to cook with will be local farm ingredients.” says Chef Donald Young, owner of Duck Sel, in Chicago. “As inflation has affected all of the country severely, prices have skyrocketed for our basic everyday things. With the rise of these prices, the more they start to match what your local farmer is charging at the farmers market. Mixed with their expansions into more grocery stores, we will start seeing chefs use the higher quality ingredients because the prices will be already close, if not better.” Subscribing to a CSA, or local farm share, can be a way to enjoy local, organic ingredients at a fare rate. Some CSAs also offer volunteer discounts.

Andean Mint

Peruvian chef Virgilio Martínez is another believer in using local ingredients, and he sees existing relationships between chefs and farmers, fishermen, and other suppliers as part of the backbone of Peruvian cuisine. “We still have communication with producers. If I go 30 minutes from my house, I see a guy farming sweet potatoes, and two blocks from me there is a fisherman who tells me what’s going on with the ocean.” So for his latest restaurant, Estero, which strives to blend Peruvian and Mexican cuisines with plenty of nature thrown in, it’s no surprise that Martínez uses several ingredients that are native to Peru and the surrounding areas. One of those ingredients is Andean mint—also called muña—which was used by the Incas and is believed to possess healing properties. Steep Andean mint in boiling water to make a soothing tea, or use it to garnish fresh fruit or fruit-focused desserts to add a touch of brightness. At Estero, Martínez pairs Andean mint with fresh mango for a refreshing dessert.

Pepper Galore

Every chef seems to have a jarred chili crisp these days, and Kale Walch of The Herbivorous Butcher sees several more types of peppers making their way into home recipes. “I've always been a fan of making small tweaks to recipes I've been making for years, and lately I've been experimenting with switching peppers,” he says. “Try replacing black pepper with white pepper in your table shaker for a month—the complexity of ground white pepper serves to enhance the flavors of a dish more than the black pepper, which brings a lot of its own flavor.” Walch also predicts Habanada will be big for an extra kick, and sees Sichuan peppercorns making their way into Western cuisine more.