American Recipes
2884 recipes found
Spicy Caramelized Squash With Lemon and Hazelnuts
This ultimate sweet-and-salty squash recipe can be done with most hearty orange vegetables, like sweet potatoes or even carrots (no need to peel any of these). The vegetables are tossed simply with olive oil and something sticky, like maple syrup or honey, and roasted until tender and caramelized. To add some texture back into the mix, the vegetables are finished with toasted nuts and plenty of fresh lemon zest for some perkiness.
Grilled Corn on the Cob
You can grill corn on the cob with the husks on. You can strip the husks partly off, remove the silks and re-wrap the ears, then grill. You can soak the corn in cool water before grilling. Or blanch it in hot. I blanch, occasionally following the lead of the celebrity chef Bobby Flay, who adds one cup of milk to his blanching liquid. “I have no idea why I do it,” he said. “It’s like adding corks to the liquid when you’re poaching octopus. Who knows if it works?” Serve with butter, as in this recipe, or dab with mayonnaise and sprinkle with cotija cheese.
Baked Potatoes
Recipes for baked potatoes exist across the archives of The Times. This is the battle-tested best. Adorn the result with toppings: sour cream, minced chives, crumbled bacon, chopped jalapeño, cauliflower florets, crab meat dressed in lemon juice. The potatoes are a blank canvas, though delicious on their own.
Dry-Brined Turkey With Sheet-Pan Gravy
For those who want to let the side dishes do the talking, this is the bird for you. Delightfully simple, it’s dry-brined (meaning highly seasoned) with only salt, pepper, some thyme and a little brown sugar, which helps with that golden-brown skin. It’s roasted on a sheet pan, and cut-up onions, garlic, lemon and herbs are scattered in and around the turkey to cook at the same time. They’re excellent served alongside the turkey, and are instrumental in flavoring the sheet-pan gravy.
Plum Graham Cracker Crumble
As plums bake, their tartness mellows and their juices jelly — just a couple reasons why they do so well in pies, cobblers and this crumble, which is essentially an upside-down graham cracker-crusted pie. If you don’t have graham crackers on hand, vanilla wafers will work nicely too, but you’ll need to cook a little longer. Be sure to press the graham crackers into a single layer instead of scattering clumps of it over the plums; doing so creates a sturdy but delicate topping that won’t drown in a sea of plum juice. Keep this plum crumble simple, or add extra spices like ground ginger, cinnamon or nutmeg.
Pecan Crunch Cream Cheese Poundcake
This is an exceptionally velvety and tender cake, reminiscent (in the best possible way) of the frozen pound cake you might buy at the supermarket. Perfected over many years by the expert baker Rose Levy Beranbaum (and published in her book “Rose’s Baking Basics’), its fine texture comes from cake flour and superfine sugar. A caramelized pecan and graham cracker coating lines the pan and provides delicious crunch, but it is optional.
Blackberry-Stuffed French Toast
Whenever you have a little extra time to simmer berries into a simple compote, do — then try stuffing it into hearty French toasts and dusting them with confectioners’ sugar. They’ll almost remind you of a jelly doughnut, even more so if you use brioche hamburger buns as your bread of choice. (But regular white sandwich bread, challah or any other enriched bread works, too.) You can adjust the sugar in the berries, depending on how sweet they are, and, if you prefer a smoother compote, press the cooked fruit through a mesh sieve once cooled to remove any seeds.
Cherry Coconut Ice Cream Sandwiches
Who doesn’t like ice cream sandwiches? These are miniature, just 3 inches in diameter. Bright pink fresh cherry ice cream (there’s a little coconut milk in the custard) is sandwiched between lemony butter cookies, with a dash of grated coconut. This is a bit of a project, but it only requires about 2 hours of active cooking time over the course of 2 days.
Chocolate-Stuffed Oatmeal Cookies
These big, chewy oatmeal cookies filled with soft chocolate ganache are perfect for sharing. To make the process a little simpler, you can prep and refrigerate the dough and the filling up to three days in advance. (You could also freeze them for even longer; just let them warm up a bit at room temperature to make them easier to work with.) The assembly is easy: Simply enrobe the truffled filling by stacking it between two pieces of dough and pressing the edges to seal. The stuffed cookie balls can be frozen for up to a month. Bake off a few at a time for warm, gooey cookies whenever the mood strikes.
Earl Grey Tea Cake With Dark Chocolate and Orange Zest
Loose Earl Grey tea stirred into buttery cake batter adds a sweet, floral essence that’s subtle but lovely. A little dark chocolate and orange zest makes this cake extra special. While you could use chocolate chips, using chocolate chopped from a bar produces the best result: The varying sizes of chopped chocolate blend in nicely without overpowering the delicate tea flavor.
Yogurt and Jam Pops
Reminiscent of breakfast but masquerading as dessert, these pops are made with Greek yogurt or Icelandic skyr, which are thicker and creamier than regular plain yogurt. Pick whichever you enjoy the most, but make sure it’s plain and unsweetened.
Strawberry Drop Biscuits
Somewhat of a cross between a muffin top and a biscuit, these sweet breakfast treats are foolproof and easy: No rolling or cutting is required, and everything is mixed in a single bowl. They bake up craggy and crunchy on the outside, but are tender once you break them open. The heavy cream adds richness, and the additional water creates just the right amount of steam while baking to keep the biscuits light and fluffy. Salted butter works nicely here, but if you’re using unsalted butter, just add 1/4 teaspoon or so of fine salt to the dry ingredients. If you don’t have strawberries, feel free to swap in the same amount of fresh blueberries, raspberries or diced stone fruit.
Double Ranch Mozzarella Sticks
This is a dream recipe for ranch-dressing superfans (you probably know one, or maybe you are one). Creamy, peppery ranch dressing became hugely popular in the 1990s, and now it often shows up on chicken wings, burgers, tacos, pizza and even mozzarella sticks. In this recipe, the bread-crumb coating is spiked with ranch seasoning, and then the crunchy nuggets of melted cheese get dipped into cooling ranch. Or you could go back to the classic dip for these: marinara sauce.
Salted-Caramel Rice Pudding
Rice pudding is pure dessert magic. Simple ingredients like jasmine rice, whole milk and sugar cook together to make a luscious treat, and the bittersweet salted caramel swirled throughout makes it even more irresistible. This pudding is flavored with vanilla, but a little orange zest, some instant espresso powder or a few smashed green cardamom pods would take it in another delicious direction.
Puréed Potatoes With Lemon
Lemon isn’t a classic seasoning for mashed potatoes, but butter makes an excellent go-between. This variation on French pommes purée is just the kind of dish that Ina Garten, who shared this recipe from her book “Modern Comfort Food” with The Times, likes to perfect for home cooks. Cooking the potatoes in less water than usual and gradually mashing in bits of chilled butter are the details that make the recipe special.
Wright Flyer
The Wright Flyer is an adaptation of the classic Paper Plane cocktail, with a nod to North Carolina from its creator. Drew Furlough, a restaurant manager in Asheville, set out to build a citrusy winter cocktail on a base of apple brandy, a traditional spirit that’s enjoying a comeback in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where apples have been a major crop since the 1700s.
Ina Garten’s Make-Ahead Roast Turkey and Gravy With Onions and Sage
One of the most stressful things about Thanksgiving is the turkey: timing it, carving it, keeping it hot. As I mentioned in my book “Make It Ahead” (Clarkson Potter, 2014), I discovered that I could roast the turkey early in the day, carve it and arrange it on a layer of gravy on an oven-to-table platter. It changed my Thanksgiving game plan. I prepare the platter, set it aside at room temperature, then reheat it all before dinner. Delicious turkey without the stress!
Salmon With Agrodolce Blueberries
Here, I paired fillets with a seasonal treat: fresh local blueberries. The berries would have been cloying with the fish by themselves, so I simmered them with white wine and vinegar, creating a sweet-and-sour sauce inspired by Italian agrodolce. The bracing blueberry agrodolce would have worked wonderfully on other fish, especially oily ones like mackerel and swordfish. I could also see spooning it over boneless chicken thighs before roasting, or pairing it with meaty pork tenderloin or chops that have just come off the grill in all their smoky glory.
Madeira Gravy
Maderia, a fortified wine, brings wonderful flavor to this Thanksgiving pan gravy, quickly whisked together after the bird emerges from the oven. As with any gravy, the flavor of the stock is essential here, so it's absolutely worth the time to make your own.
Cranberry Martinis
For a delicious and festive holiday drink you can make quickly, simply combine the ingredients in advance and shake them up when guests arrive.
Red Wine Cranberry Sauce With Honey
What does a chef in Napa Valley do to jazz up her cranberry sauce? Add wine, of course. This recipe was inspired by Cindy Pawlcyn, the Napa Valley chef and cookbook author, and includes smashed fresh ginger for extra verve. It’s more tart than most cranberry sauce recipes, so if you like yours sweeter, feel free to add more sugar or a little more honey.
Vegetarian Mushroom Wellington
Classic beef Wellington is a technical feat in which a tenderloin is topped with foie gras or mushroom duxelles, then wrapped in puff pastry and baked. This vegetarian version is less exacting yet just as impressive. Seared portobello mushrooms are layered with apple cider-caramelized onions and sautéed mushrooms, which are seasoned with soy sauce for flavor and bolstered with walnuts for texture. The rich mushroom filling is vegan, and the entire dish can easily be made vegan, too. Swap in vegan puff pastry, a butter substitute in the port reduction and caramelized onions, and an egg substitute for brushing the puff pastry. You can assemble and refrigerate the dish up to 1 day before baking it. Prepare the port reduction as the Wellington bakes, or skip it entirely and serve with cranberry sauce for a touch of tangy sweetness.
Buttercream Frosting
American buttercream is simpler to make than its Swiss and Italian counterparts, which require cooking some of the ingredients, but it's no less tasty. Butter and confectioners’ sugar are beaten until fluffy; heavy cream softens the texture and vanilla extract gives it dimension. It’s leaner than other buttercreams, as it requires much less butter, but it’s still luscious. You’ll want to choose a flavorful butter to start, and make sure it’s at the correct temperature. Room temperature butter should be soft enough to press into with a finger without seeming greasy. It will whip up nicely with the confectioners’ sugar to create a fluffy, silky frosting.
Make-Ahead Gravy
You need gravy on Thanksgiving to aid the turkey, moisten the potatoes, douse the stuffing. But traditionally it's made at the last minute, after the turkey has been removed from the roasting pan. Here’s a secret: There's no need to make gravy right before serving. You can make it up to five days ahead. Then, as you reheat it, whisk in the turkey pan drippings for extra flavor. The result is every bit as good as last-minute gravy — and far less crazy-making.