Hasty Hots have been a Sunset favorite ever since Gene Kay submitted the original recipe in 1948. They make an easy party appetizer you c…

#TBT to the Original Hasty Hots Recipe—a Sunset Classic
A spread of Hasty Hots (photography by Thomas J. Story)
 
 

A spread with Hasty Hots, at left (photography by Thomas J. Story)

Hasty Hots have been a Sunset favorite ever since Gene Kay submitted the original recipe in 1948. They make an easy party appetizer you can whip up in just a few minutes, and you probably already have the four simple ingredients in your kitchen: parmesan cheese, green onions, mayo, and a baguette.

Hasty Hots have reappeared in countless collections of favorite recipes over the decades, truly engraining the recipe in Sunset history. (P.S. you can find it on page 28 of The Sunset Cookbook, a compilation of more than 1,000 time-tested recipes published in 2010.) However, it made its debut 66 years ago in Chefs of the West, a section of the magazine that was devoted to the art of cooking by men, for men. Male readers submitted recipes, and the best were published—along with some seriously sassy rhetoric. “Experimenters should never be permitted to prepare hors d’oeuvres,” the intro text reads. “Liberties taken by some people in striving for variety lead to gastronomic crimes against which the receiver has no defense.”  

The original recipe in our 1948 issue.

Given that we have remade Hasty Hots many times in our test kitchen, you can trust that our updated recipe is bound to please—and unlikely to commit any sort of gastronomic crime (whatever that means).

In fact, our very own Senior Food Editor Elaine Johnson grew up on Hasty Hots—they were her mother’s go-to appetizer.

Comment below with your favorite Sunset recipes from years past. Bonus points if you can find a Hasty Hots reappearance in your own collection.
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