American Recipes
2885 recipes found
Baked Alfredo Pasta With Broccoli Rabe and Lemon
One of the great things about baked pastas is that you can get two different textures in one dish. Take the typical pasta Alfredo that's prepared in a skillet: It’s delightfully creamy and lush, but the same, bite after bite. But add a green vegetable to that Alfredo pasta, pile it into a dish, top it with melty cheese and a crunchy bread crumbs, then bake it, and you get a vegetarian dinner that's got it all. If broccoli rabe isn't your thing, you can substitute cut asparagus or broccoli florets.
Ember-Roasted Slaw With Mint
Inspired by what is undoubtedly the world’s most ancient method of cooking, ember-roasted cabbage is turning up everywhere, from the charred cabbage with muhammara and hazelnuts at the new Safta restaurant in Denver to the cabbage roasted in the embers and served with yogurt, sumac and lemon zest at Charcoal Venice in Los Angeles. This one features a sweet-sour dressing of sugar, vinegar and caraway seeds, with mint leaves stirred in at the end for freshness. Savoy cabbage is an excellent cabbage for grilling: The smoke circulates freely through its crinkled leaves.
Lasagna With Roasted Kabocha Squash and Béchamel
This rich-tasting lasagna is inspired by my favorite northern Italian pumpkin-filled ravioli. It would make a terrific vegetarian item on a Thanksgiving buffet. Making the lasagna is not time-consuming if you use no-boil lasagna noodles. Be sure to season the squash well as you assemble this
Hawaiian Buns
Pineapple juice and a bit of sugar give these soft, golden buns a slight sweetness that makes them irresistible: They're as nice with butter and jam as they are hugging a burger or a turkey sandwich. Keep an eye on the dough rather than the clock when assessing the rise. The additional sugar, eggs and butter can slow things down. Give the yeast plenty of time to work, and you’ll be handsomely rewarded with light, pillowy rolls.
Wild Rice and Mushroom Casserole
This hearty mix of wild rice, creamy white beans and aromatic vegetables (spinach, leeks, fennel and mushrooms) makes a satisfying meatless main course or a very substantial side dish for Thanksgiving — and beyond. If you want to go all out, use some exotic mushrooms such as chanterelles, maitake (hen of the woods) or black trumpet, but a basic combination of cremini and shiitake mushrooms also works perfectly.
White Bean and Avocado Salad With Garlic Oil
Buttery avocado and creamy cannellini beans are a natural combination in this easy salad, and a quick garlic oil provides punch. The ingredient list is fairly simple, but here are a couple of tips that take it from good to great: First, make sure to remove the sliced garlic from the oil just as it starts to turn golden, so it doesn’t burn. Second, when working with ripe avocados, bypass the standard way of scooping the flesh out of the skin. Instead, achieve immaculate edges by quartering the avocado lengthwise, then gently peeling back the skin to remove the flesh.
Old-Fashioned Chocolate Pudding Pie
This is your grandma’s puddin’ pie, only it’s vegan — a smooth, cool and creamy pudding in a classic graham cracker shell. To make life even easier, you can use a store-bought crust. For added grandma love, serve with vegan whipped cream and shaved chocolate. (This recipe is an adaptation of one found in “Vegan Pie in the Sky: 75 Out-of-This-World Recipes for Pies, Tarts, Cobblers and More” by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.)
Vanilla-Honey Soft Serve Ice Cream
You don’t need an ice cream maker for rich, custardy ice cream. With the help of an electric mixer and food processor, you can create ice cream with the texture of soft serve. One of the keys to a silky texture without the ice crystals that plague other no-churn ice cream recipes is using cream cheese (a trick picked up from Jeni Britton Bauer of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams). This helps hold the custard's emulsification even during freezing. This ice cream is best served right out of the food processor or blender, but if you want to make it entirely ahead, take it out of the freezer 20 minutes before serving. If you would like to make this recipe with an ice cream maker, freeze the custard according to manufacturer’s directions after cooling it completely.
One-Pan Pork Chops With Feta, Snap Peas and Mint
Brawny and golden brown, these seared pork chops make a hearty one-pan dinner that’s rounded out by sweet sugar snap peas and loads of fresh mint. The feta, added at the end, melts into the pork and peas, spiking the sauce with its brininess. Be generous with the fresh lemon juice at the end; this rich dish gains a lot from the tang.
Creamy Spinach-Artichoke Chicken Stew
This creamy chicken stew is spinach-artichoke dip reimagined as a simple stovetop braise. It comes together quickly, thanks to frozen spinach and jarred artichoke hearts, though if you have time, there is also a slow-cooker version of this recipe. Fresh dill and scallions are added just before serving, and provide bright, herbal flavor that offsets the richness of the finished dish.
Grilled Chicken and Corn With Tartar Butter
This entire meal is cooked on the grill and celebrates summer’s sweet corn and earthy okra, which pick up a light charred flavor. (Be sure to choose okra that are firm and unblemished.) The tartar butter — inspired by tartar sauce and spiked with tangy pickles, zesty capers and fresh parsley — brightens the smoky grilled chicken and vegetables. Should you have any leftover butter, refrigerate or freeze it for later use: It makes a great topping for baked potatoes, steamed vegetables or roasted cod.
One-Pot BBQ Pork and Beans
Two beloved barbecue staples are cooked together in one pot (or a slow cooker) for mutually beneficial results. As the pork shoulder braises, the pork juices flavor the barbecue sauce and the sauce tenderizes the pork. Beans are then added to soak up the deeply concentrated sauce. The recipe uses store-bought barbecue sauce enhanced with the smoky heat of canned chipotles in adobo and brown sugar, which helps glaze the pork. Because every barbecue sauce is different, taste and adjust yours as needed. (To mimic a North Carolina-style sauce, add apple cider vinegar with the beans, or yellow mustard for a South Carolina-style sauce, or even gochujang and soy sauce for a Korean-inspired take.) To serve, slice the pork or shred it into pulled pork. Cornbread, biscuits or Texas toast are great additions.
Mulled Cider With Cardamom, Black Pepper and Ginger
Traditional mulled cider is cozy and fragrant, but sometimes tastes a little too much like potpourri. In this version, toasted cardamom, allspice berries and black peppercorns provide sophisticated spiciness, while fresh ginger and citrus add fresh zing. It’s a subtle but noticeable makeover, resulting in cider that’s tangy and aromatic with a savory edge. If you want to spike it, don’t pour the whiskey into the pot with the cider; the alcohol will burn off over the course of an hour or so. Instead, let guests add whiskey to their own mugs. If you've got a slow-cooker, this recipe is for you.
Eastern North Carolina-Style BBQ Sauce
Chris Schlesinger is the chef and an owner of the East Coast Grill in Cambridge, Mass., which he opened in 1985. He is also the author, with John Willoughby, of six cookbooks that relate somehow to the pleasures of fire. This is an adaptation of his recipe for barbecue sauce meant to be served with his pulled pork.
Grilled Baby Back Ribs
We think of ribs as an all-day affair, the meat cooked in smoke and low heat until it begins to pull from the bone. But baby backs are quicker and can be grilled as well, and the result is delicious. This recipe benefits from a basting technique used by the chef and barbecue madman Adam Perry Lang, who thins out his barbecue sauce with water, then paints it onto the meat he’s cooking in coat after coat, allowing it to reduce and intensify rather than seize up and burn.
Smoked Chicken Wings
If you have an offset smoker, even a leaky old fellow with rust spots and broken wheels, this recipe will provide one of its finest uses. Smoking chicken wings for 15 minutes or so before grilling or roasting them under thin bastings of barbecue sauce yields meat that is smoky but not aggressively so, deeply flavorful, with a marvelous crust. But you don’t need a smoker! Simply set up your grill for indirect cooking, with a fairly small fire, and use soaked wood chips to create a plume of smoke. Put the wings on the cool side of the grill, then cover it and allow the smoke to perform its magic. You’ll get wings that are pale gold, the color of chamois that you can cook into perfection over the direct heat of the fire.
Bacon-Wrapped Grilled Chicken Salad With Avocado and Lime
Wrap your chicken with bacon, grill it and drizzle it with this nearly green goddess, almost-guacamole dressing and you might even convert burger eaters into salad fiends. Covering the butterflied breasts in bacon helps baste the lean chicken and accelerates char as fat melts onto the coals. Flare-ups are inevitable, but don’t be alarmed: They will ensure rich color on the bacon while protecting the breast from overcooking. When assembling the salad, avoid weighing down the leaves with hot and heavy toppings: Dollop plenty of the dressing on the plate first, and layer most of the chicken and fudgy eggs below the lightly dressed leaves. There should be a little leftover dressing to satisfy the people that will want to dip each bite of chicken into the herby, lime-laced avocado.
Pulled Lamb Shoulder
This pulled lamb is an homage to the barbecued mutton of Western Kentucky. Smoke the meat over charcoal and wood, not gas. It’s bonkers delicious. Or at least make the dry rub that covers the meat and use it to cook something else.
Tuna Mushroom Burgers
I have always had a weakness for tuna burgers, and I like these even more than the classic all-fish burger because the mushrooms assure a moist texture. They are inspired by a recipe by Clifford Pleau, which was presented at the 2015 Worlds of Healthy Flavors conference. If you use sushi-grade tuna for these burgers you might want to just sear them on each side to get a rare, sushi-like interior. If you use ahi tuna, you could still cook them rare, or cook them for about 2 minutes on each side. This will produce a burger that is more well done but still nice and moist. The burgers are delicious either way. Don’t use a food processor to chop the tuna; finely chop with a knife or a cleaver. The texture will be too pasty if you use a food processor. I found that the punch of the wasabi paste dissipated when the burgers were cooked, so add more if desired.
Smoked Turkey
There are countless advantages to smoke-roasting (also known barbecuing) your turkey, as in this recipe from the barbecue expert Steven Raichlen. Smoking produces a bird of incomparable succulence, especially when combined with another traditional American barbecue technique, brining. There is the rich, evocative flavor of wood smoke, and the burnished mahogany sheen it gives the bird. Then there's the simplicity of the method: once you put the bird in the smoker or on the grill, you pretty much leave it there until it is done, while the kitchen and oven are freed up for side dishes and desserts. Last but certainly not least, you get an excuse to spend a fall afternoon outdoors, maybe with beer in hand.
Grilled Chicken Skewers
Zuni Café’s Hamburger
Made to exacting standards, the hamburger at Zuni Café, in San Francisco, is legendary. First, grass-fed beef is salted well in advance of grinding, which gives the meat its succulence. Grilled over coals and flipped three times to prevent it from overcharring or becoming tough, the patty is rested, like a roast. It is then served on a toasted square of rosemary focaccia, smeared with handmade aioli and accompanied by Zuni’s acclaimed house pickles: fuchsia-red onion rings and turmeric-tinged sliced zucchini. It is wonderful on its own, but toppings like Shelburne Farms Cheddar, Bayley Hazen blue cheese, grilled onions or portobello mushroom are also available, and most customers can’t resist a heaping plate of shoestring potatoes alongside. It’s perfectly possible to make these burgers at home, but know that the full project involves several recipes, so it’s probably best to spread the work out over a few days.
BBQ Country-Style Pork Ribs
This basic barbecue has big flavor and no ketchup or Coca-Cola (no disrespect meant to those who favor that type of seasoning). There’s no fire involved; you use a standard oven. The spicing trends toward Caribbean, with plenty of sweet spice and as much Scotch bonnet or habanero chile heat as you wish. County-style ribs are meaty bone-in pork chops cut from the shoulder end of the loin, so use those or a whole bone-in pork shoulder roast. Cooked until it’s ultratender, it can be cut in chunky pieces and served in its juices with beans, rice and cornbread. Or shred the cooked meat to make pulled pork sandwiches or tacos. It’s quite good accompanied with a crisp slawlike cabbage salad or your favorite version of coleslaw.
Publican Chicken
This quick, easy-to-put-together chicken comes from Paul Kahan of The Publican, a restaurant in Chicago. The ingredient list is short, and may include much of what you already have on hand. But the flavor it yields is paramount: Serve it with wedge fries and a frosty beer for a meal that will lift the most flagging spirits.