A collection of the best top appetizer recipes posted in 2017.

Best Appetizers of 2017

By Sue Lau | Palatable Pastime

Bloggers  are sharing their crème de la crème of recipes  from 2017!

Click on the hop link button to be transported to the other recipes:

And so winds down another bloody blogging year. And I just happened to come across the linkup for the Countdown to 2018, where each day of the week, bloggers will be sharing their top recipes in certain categories, all hosted by Sarah at Fantastical Sharing. I would never have thought to do this, being a combination of being both too busy and too lazy, depending which angle you take a peek at me, or perhaps which time of day. So thanks, Sarah.

First up is best apps and snacks for the year. I could have gone into statistics and seen which recipes had the most hits, but to be truthful, that isn’t always telling of what is the best. Those are the fans just strolling past, and they haven’t even tasted the food yet.

But I have.

I eat every single thing you see on  the blog, and it looks the way you see it (although usually better since I am not a pro photographer…) So instead of recipes with most hits, I am showing you which ones I think are particularly magnifique. Ones I wish someone would come prepare for me every single day or that I could order takeout and sit on my butt and eat. But you don’t usually find takeout like this. At least, nowhere near me.

People ask me “Sue, why don’t you open a restaurant?” Because I BLOG. There’s the recipe, now you go cook it. Save me a bite, K?

Grilled Hoisin Chicken and Asparagus Summer Rolls

This one is a riff off a recipe I made for a Ready Set Cook contest when I was hanging out at the old Recipezaar. Has that been about 15 years now? Cheesh. I don’t know where time goes. But anyway, you can put most things in a rice paper wrapper and have a good time. My sauce is not bad either. But I can’t help you with ideas there. Just use my recipe. I excel at sauces. I don’t know why. I just do. Maybe I have stirred one too many for my own good. 😉

One of the things that might help is to know what inspires me as I cook. Music always inspires, and I listen to so  many kinds. But as “Best of” posts go, these five songs are pretty awesome, in no particular order. But I listen to them a lot.  If you don’t happen to like one, just keep walking by. Same thing with recipes. No one will like everything, but surely there is hope in finding you a keeper recipe.

Crab Cakes with Tartar Sauce

One of my cousins had been asking me for a crab cakes recipe and I was a long time in posting it. I couldn’t find what I did with the photos. In the meantime of that I had written out my  recipe for tartar sauce. And then I managed to get them both on the menu with pics together. You don’t have to eat these together. The tartar sauce is pretty smashing. Maybe I am arrogant about my tartar sauce. I did tell you I excel at sauces. I’d face off this tartar sauce against anyone’s recipe. This is the only tartar sauce recipe I’ll use.

This song comes from Kill Bill, one of my favorite movies. Marie Antoinette is also one of my favorite movies. I did tell you I like music, so if a movie is to be a favorite, I am going to have to be wild about the music.

It’s sort of like when I cook. I need to be wild about the ingredients. And ingredients don’t have to necessarily be fancy. Sometimes they are just a simple spud.

And this recipe is fantastic, but I gotta’ warn you. If you get those potatoes cut to the right thinness, be careful—just one potato makes a LOT  of chips. And they take a bit to fry since you can only do so many at a time without messing them up.

Saratoga Chips

You’re probably going to wonder how far out of left field the next song comes from.  But I do listen to just about all kinds of music, although increasingly, I listen to older music and also classical, particularly baroque. There is a lot of music behind us, so if you are seeking out something new, try going back and discovering something old (sort of like this bunch of recipes from the past year). But hey. If I was as lazy as I dream of being, sitting on a sunny beach somewhere with a drink in hand, I might not have posted them before today. In that case, consider them new. 😉

Jalapeno Popper Wontons

This is a twist off poppers and wontons. You know, like rice paper wrappers, you can pretty much put anything inside of a wonton wrapper  and fry it too. This one uses melted jalapeno pepper jelly as a dipper. I was served that with poppers many moons ago and always felt it was an easy and delicious idea.

Oh yes. Speaking of the fusion cuisine of jalapeno poppers and wontons, a musical fusion would likely be the classical piano of George Winston mixed with the tuneage of the Doors. When I first bought this music on disk, this was the first song. I played this song five times over before moving to the second song. It’s brilliant. Just brilliant.

This wing recipe is one I really love. You know I have to drive about ten miles to get to the restaurant that makes wings like this. And they are a bit more pricey than what I can make at home. I did bring a box of wings home from the restaurant to compare my sauce to. Oh, I did eat a LOT of wings that day, but my DIY sauce is dead on.  This is one of the few restaurant recipes I crave (Besides Eli’s BBQ) but I can make this at home now. And hey. So can you.

Spicy Korean Chicken Wings

And so we come to the end of things here. For today. I’ll try to join in the linkup again this week. I have a lot of good recipes I can share, which puts a bright end on a very trying year. 2017 is not a year I will  remember with love, for many reasons, one being that all of  my brothers have now passed away. I feel like I am on the endangered species list. Life has a new light and eerie glow, sort of  like the sun on an overcast day. Where is the sun when you need it????

The end is….yeah. Whatever.

2018,  bring it on.