American Recipes
2884 recipes found
Candied Sweet Potatoes
When Fred Harvey opened his first Harvey House restaurant in 1876 on the railway line in Topeka, Kan., his idea was radical for the time: Railroad passengers would be fed good food in a pleasant environment. His concept was so successful that it spawned 84 restaurants, a Hollywood movie and an official cookbook. And it was in “The Harvey House Cookbook” that we found this excellent recipe for sweet potatoes candied with confectioners’ sugar and butter. It is best served warm rather than piping hot, which makes it convenient for big meals like Thanksgiving. Bake it before you roast your turkey, then reheat it briefly just before serving.
Sweet Potato Soup
This sweet potato soup could take on several roles at Thanksgiving. It may be your first course, one that’s deeply flavored but not dense and heavy. Or you could ladle it into small cups for guests to sip as an hors d’oeuvre before they are seated. The garnish of lightly toasted mini-marshmallows is a shout-out to classic holiday sweet potato casserole.
Roasted Sweet Potatoes With Yogurt And Sesame Seeds
You can live happily now and feel prudent enough to live tomorrow if you cautiously employ your seeds on the last of last autumn’s sweet potatoes. This is my favorite of all the dishes my brother has ever served at the very seasonal Franny’s, the restaurant in Brooklyn where he is the chef. It disappears from his menu the instant the plants that grow from seeds begin to sprout, making it, like the plants themselves, available for only a few months each year.
Sweet Potato and Onion Dip
George Washington Carver, the botanist, educator and inventor, was known as “the peanut man,” but he geeked out over sweet potatoes as much as peanuts. He recorded recipes for sweet potato flour, sweet potato starch and commercial canning. “The delicate flavor of a sweet potato is lost if it is not cooked properly,” he wrote in his 1936 Bulletin No. 38. (His paper booklets were distributed to rural farmers to assist with crop rotation and provide instructions for added-value products.) Dr. Carver considered baking the best way to cook sweet potatoes while preserving the most flavor. Use varieties like Covington, Vardaman or jewel; the sugary notes balance the alliums and warming spices. Raw vegetables or tortilla chips make practical dipping utensils for this spread, or lather the dip over toasted thick-cut bread.
Warm Sweet Potato-Apple Pone
Sweet potato pone is a baked custard pudding-like dish that’s something like a crustless sweet potato pie. This version is made with whole shreds of sweet potato, which is how it’s often served during the holidays throughout the Caribbean and parts of the American South. It’s a versatile dessert that can be made with other warming spices like ginger, nutmeg or clove, a little orange zest, or even rum-soaked raisins. This is a simplified version that replaces half of the sweet potatoes with shredded apple, which adds natural sweetness and a bit of creaminess as it cooks down. Choose from baking varieties like Honeycrisp, Fuji or Gala. Serve the pone warm from the oven with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Brown Butter Lentil and Sweet Potato Salad
This simple lentil salad has a little secret: a toasty, brown butter vinaigrette perfumed with sage. The dish has as much texture as it does flavor. French green lentils or black lentils are the ideal choice, as they hold their shape well after cooking, but brown lentils will work too, though they’ll be a bit softer. Start testing your lentils for doneness after about 15 minutes of cooking; you want them cooked through but not mushy, and they’re best if they retain some bite. Roasted until tender, the sweet potatoes add richness, but feel free to substitute just about any roasted vegetables. Carrots, beets or red bell peppers would all be delicious in their stead.
Sweet Potato Hash Browns
A riff on Josh Ozersky’s famous minimalist hash browns, these are made by sprinkling grated sweet potato over hot butter in a very thin layer, then waiting patiently for the starch to work its magic. Crisp, salty, buttery and addictive, these hash browns are so good, you could probably eat the entire batch in one sitting (or force yourself to be generous and share with a friend). Serve with a fried or over-easy egg for a complete breakfast.
Sweet Potato Tea Cake With Meringue
This beautiful tea cake from the San Francisco chef Elisabeth Prueitt has all the fall flavors of pumpkin spice channeled into a moist, spicy loaf with a base of sweet potato purée. It also has a delicious unusual addition: meringue, baked right into the top of the cake. Ms. Prueitt’s head of pastry at Tartine Manufactory, Michelle Lee, came up with the idea of swirling it over the top of the cake before baking. Use a spoon or toothpick to reach down into the cake batter and pull it up, creating beautiful peaks of batter-streaked meringue that bake up golden brown and crisp on the edges.
Sweet Potato Cinnamon Swirl Bread
Roasted, puréed sweet potatoes lend moisture, flavor and a rich golden color to this hybrid breakfast bread and pastry. Here, a batter-like layer added to the yeasted dough, referred to as a wine loaf, helps prevent those gaps that often form in swirled breads. This recipe bakes beautifully in a small Pullman loaf pan, but any 1 1/2-pound-capacity loaf pan will do. If you can spare a slice, it makes a beautiful overnight French toast.
Roasted Salmon With Asparagus, Lemon and Brown Butter
Ready in just 15 minutes, this fast dinner combines silky salmon with a vibrant green medley of asparagus and peas. While the fish roasts, the vegetables and sauce come together in one pan on the stovetop. Thinly slicing the asparagus is the trick to maintaining a crisp texture that complements the tender salmon, while bright lemon juice and zingy capers balance the nutty brown butter sauce. Parsley is used here to finish, but dill or tarragon would also be lovely. Leftover vegetables make a fantastic omelet filling the next day.
Pickled Green Tomatoes
This recipe is an adaptation of a recipe in Fred Dubose’s wonderful cookbook from a bygone era, “Four Great Southern Cooks.” It is sort of a cross between a pickle and a relish. Do not worry about the salt; most of it will go out when the tomatoes are drained.
Easy Spaghetti With Meat Sauce
The secret ingredient in this ultrafast sauce based on long-cooking Bolognese is Worcestershire sauce. The vinegar, molasses and anchovies in the condiment season the ground beef mixture with salt, acid, sweetness and funk in one shot. Once the sauce has simmered, use tongs to transfer the pasta directly from the pot to the skillet, then toss in some of the starchy pasta cooking liquid for a glossy, saucy finish.
Tomato Alphabet Soup
A taste of nostalgia can be comforting. Inspired by the childhood favorite, canned tomato soup, this homemade version yields a lush and satisfying meal culled from kitchen staples. The process of separating your canned tomatoes from their juices, cooking them until caramelized and enhancing their strength with concentrated tomato paste helps develop deep roasted tomato flavor. If you can’t find alphabet pasta, any other small pasta will be delicious.
Caramelized Brussels Sprouts Pasta With Toasted Chickpeas
This fast and satisfying vegetarian weeknight pasta packs in a whole pound of brussels sprouts. The mountain of shredded sprouts may seem like a lot, but like spinach, it will cook down. As the sprouts soften, they caramelize and naturally sweeten, losing any hints of bitterness. Chickpeas are toasted in olive oil until deep golden brown, crispy in spots and super toasty. They bring a nutty, earthy flavor to the dish, complementing the tangy capers and lemony sauce. Leftovers are tasty enjoyed cold like pasta salad, added to a frittata, or sautéed in olive oil until golden and topped with a fried egg.
One-Pan Spicy Meatballs With Lentils and Fennel
In this one-pan meal, you get spicy meatballs, savory lentils and sweet fennel that are all perked up with vinegar and parsley. For the speediest meatballs, use uncased bulk Italian sausage, which comes fully seasoned. When cooked at high heat and partly submerged in the chicken stock, the meatballs brown on top and stay moist on the inside — and the lentils soak up the flavorful pork juices. The roasted fennel provides sweetness and echoes the fennel seed in the meatballs, but feel free to use another vegetable that cooks at the same rate, like thinly sliced carrots.
Excellent White Bread
This straightforward loaf is the white bread of your dreams, and its fluffy slices make for evenly browned toast. The 1/3-cup of sugar makes this mildly sweet and perfect for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but you can cut it down to 2 tablespoons if you’d rather have something more neutral in flavor. You do need some sugar, however, to feed the yeast and ensure a lofty rise. This recipe makes two loaves, one for now, and one for the freezer or to share with a lucky friend.
Gluten-Free Apple, Pear and Cranberry Pecan Crumble
This has moved to the top of my favorite crumbles list. I have made apple crumbles before, but I hadn’t cooked the apples first in my other recipes. It makes a huge difference in the sweetness and comfort level of the dish. The pear also contributes to the overall sweetness of the dessert and I love the tangy flavor of the dried cranberries. I have used a gluten-free mix of certified oats (produced in a gluten-free facility) and millet flour, which makes a crumble topping that is truly crumbly. Both tender apples like McIntosh, Gala, Macoun and Cortland, as well as firmer apples like Braeburns and Fujis work well in this dish
Wild Rice and Quinoa Stuffing
Call this savory mix of wild rice, quinoa, mushrooms, walnuts and greens a stuffing or a pilaf. It’s not meant to go inside a turkey but it's imbued with the definitive flavors of Thanksgiving. Kale or chard add some color; if you’re trying to find a place for greens at the table but don’t want to deal with massive amounts to stem and cook for a crowd, this is a great place for them. The result is substantial, and will satisfy everybody at the table – vegetarians and vegans, and those who avoid gluten. If you're feeding omnivores and wish to add even more flavor, crumble browned Italian sausage into the pan alongside the grains and greens.
Chocolate-Cherry Sourdough Bread
This recipe for sourdough bread comes from Francisco Migoya and Nathan Myhrvold, who wrote "Modernist Bread" (The Cooking Lab, 2017). It requires an active sourdough starter and plenty of time (about 20 hours) to allow the dough to develop and proof, though very little of that time is hands-on. Rich with tart dried cherries and dark chocolate chips, and gently bitter from the coffee and cocoa powder, the complex, tangy bread is somewhere between sweet and savory, ideal as is or spread with a little salted butter. Since the dough is dark to begin with, use a thermometer to test if it's done, and make sure you allow it to cool completely before slicing it open.
Low-Knead Sandwich Bread
With a little extra shaping and a loaf pan, basic low-knead bread dough can make great sandwich bread. (The low-knead loaf is itself inspired by Jim Lahey's influential no-knead bread recipe.) For a softer, richer loaf, replace up to 100 grams of water with 100 grams of whole milk. For a glossy brown crust, whisk 1 egg with a couple tablespoons of water and brush it over the top of the proofed loaf with a pastry brush just before placing it in the oven. You can sprinkle the loaf with coarse sea salt, spices like caraway or cumin, or seeds, such as sunflower, sesame or pepitas, after brushing on the egg wash.
Cheddar Beer Bread Rolls
These cheesy rolls pack a lot of flavor considering their short ingredient list. Thanks to the beer, they’re also especially light and fluffy, taking any meal to the next level. But they're also perfect all on their own, slathered with butter.
Brothy Cod With Peas and Mushrooms
In this recipe, tender, flaky cod is poached in a light, flavorful broth that optimizes bottled clam juice, a versatile yet underused ingredient. The juice is perfect for weeknight cooking, when shortcuts to big flavor are key, and it adds a subtle, briny backbone to any broth. This broth is also infused with rich shiitake mushrooms, aromatic garlic and a generous boost of bright ginger. Pearl couscous gets toasted before boiling, adding nutty notes to the soup. It also contributes delightful chewiness, but other small pastas like ditalini or orzo are also good substitutes, though cook time may need to be adjusted accordingly.
Salt-Rising Bread
Salt-rising bread is an American technique with deep roots: Home bakers who developed the bread in Appalachia didn’t have access to yeast, but found a way to bake without it when they noticed that their milk starters bubbled up overnight. It’s much easier and far more consistent to get a good rise with yeast — even bakers who make salt-rising bread regularly have failures with the finicky technique. But those who continue the tradition are rewarded with light, tender, airy crumbed bread that makes a particularly delicious toast. Be sure to maintain the starter at an even temperature, as directed, or it won’t take.
Cheesy Beer Bread
This easy bread recipe uses beer and baking powder to leaven instead of yeast, producing a loaf with a lightly crisp crust and a beautifully soft interior. A strongly flavored cheese, like sharp Cheddar or Gruyère, complements the flavors of the beer. The brown sugar isn’t absolutely necessary, but it extends the bread’s shelf life, keeping the interior soft even after it’s been sliced. This bread is especially lovely served warm, but is also delicious at room temperature.