American Recipes
2885 recipes found
Herby Three-Bean Salad
Ready for picnics and potlucks, this zippy take on a classically American three-bean salad features crunchy green beans, creamy chickpeas and cannellini beans (and is vegan, too). The marinated vegetables (fennel, celery and onions) add texture and a vinegary kick, while a mix of herbs lend complexity and freshness. Feel free to use whatever combination of canned beans you like; kidney beans are classic, black beans velvety, black-eyed peas earthy. You can prepare this salad up to four hours ahead and keep it at room temperature, or you can make it the day before and refrigerate it. Toss well and add more salt and vinegar, if needed, just before serving.
Buffalo Cauliflower
Cauliflower is a blank canvas that can take on flavors that pack a punch, like Buffalo sauce. It also has lots of craggy edges that the sauce can cling to for maximum flavor. For crisp-edged buffalo cauliflower without a fryer, turn on the broiler. Once the tender florets are roasted, broil them a few minutes so the silky, spicy sauce caramelizes and chars in spots. (A finish under the broiler can also elevate chicken wings coated in Buffalo sauce.) Stir together a quick Ranch-style yogurt sauce for dipping, and get on with the game (or lunch).
Egg Salad Sandwiches With Green Olive, Celery and Parsley
This zesty egg salad has no mayonnaise (but a dab of homemade mayonnaise would be permissible). Use picholine or other tasty green olives (not the bland canned supermarket type) or substitute Italian-style marinated artichoke hearts. You could add a little chopped anchovy and a few capers, too, if so inclined. Served open-face as appetizers, these sandwiches are very pretty, but there’s no reason not to use the filling for a conventional sandwich.
Tuna-Salad Sandwich, Julia Child Style
This was one of Julia Child’s favorite dishes for a working lunch. For decades, Julia was on the road more than she was home and, when she returned to her beloved kitchen, she craved simple foods. For Julia, the important ingredients for this sandwich were the tuna (it had to be packed in oil) and the mayo (she preferred Hellmann’s). Her longtime assistant, Stephanie Hersh, said, “The rest was up for grabs.” Make it with capers, cornichons and chopped onion, a squirt of lemon juice and some herbs, serve it open-face on an English muffin or between slices of white bread, and you’ll have Julia’s midday signature.
Potato and Leek Focaccia
Tender Yukon Gold potato slices and crispy leeks top a fluffy slab of long-risen, dimpled focaccia for a substantial vegetarian meal or a side to roast chicken. To ensure that the potatoes cook through in the same amount of time as the leeks and focaccia, they need to be sliced very thinly, so use a mandoline or slice them meticulously using a sharp knife. Like most focaccia, this one is best enjoyed fresh from the oven, but leftovers are great warmed in a toaster oven.
Veal Chops in Cherry-Pepper Sauce
You can use this sauce — spicy and fragrant and slightly syrupy, what the Italians call agrodolce — on veal chops as I call for here, or on pork chops, on steaks, on chicken. I bet it’d be good on grilled seitan or drizzled over tofu. The recipe is reminiscent of the cooking at red-sauce emporia like Bamonte’s in Brooklyn, Rao’s in Manhattan, Dominick’s in the Bronx and, I hope, Carbone in Greenwich Village, where I first learned how to put it together at the elbow of the chef Mario Carbone. Serve with spaghetti dressed in butter and Parmesan, with garlic bread, with a spoon so you can slurp what’s left on the plate. “It’s a flavor that’s purely Italian-American,” Carbone told me. “You won’t find it in Italy, no way.”
Five-Spice Roasted Carrots With Toasted Almonds
A complex combination of fennel seeds, anise, clove, cinnamon and Szechuan peppercorns, five-spice powder is a crucial ingredient in the Chinese pantry that also happens to be deeply versatile. It can be used as a dry rub for roast chicken, tossed with sautéed vegetables or sprinkled over toasted nuts. Here, five-spice powder, along with a bright splash of vinegar and ginger, dresses up simple roasted carrots. Preheating your baking sheet in the oven will help caramelize and crisp your vegetables, and will also speed up cooking time.
Buttermilk Blue Cheese Dressing
This is an excellent dressing for wedge salads, and for ones of grilled romaine. I love it drizzled over a pile of really, really ripe tomatoes. It's a great dip for spicy chicken wings. And it is also good with steak. The amounts listed below are merely starting points. Adjust them as you like, to achieve the flavors you like.
Fried Fish Sandwich
This fried fish sandwich doesn’t stray far from the classic fast-food staple: breaded fish, a soft bun, a slice of cheese and tangy tartar sauce. The best part is you can put it together in just about the amount of time it would take to stand in line and order it at the counter. Capers, shallots and fresh dill make this tartar sauce feel a little fancy, but a splash of soy sauce adds the umami that takes it to a very familiar place. Flounder is an affordable choice for the recipe, but if you can’t find it, substitute with sole or any mild flat fish.
BBQ Shrimp
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. In New Orleans, barbecued shrimp aren’t cooked on a grill. They’re sautéed with salt and pepper, then tossed in butter-mounted Worcestershire sauce with lemon, sometimes with a splash of cream. I crank the oven to 450 degrees and make the sauce on the stovetop: diced shallots sautéed in butter, a healthy quarter-cup or so of Worcestershire, a little thyme, paprika and cayenne, some salt and then a whole lot more butter, cut into the pan a knob at a time and whisked into velvet. I add to that a splash of cream and a few more healthy cranks of black pepper. Then I roast the shrimp on a greased pan in the oven under a shower of salt and yet more pepper, and serve it on a warm platter with the sauce spooned over the top. Rice, green beans and plenty of good, crusty bread for mopping up make it an ambrosial meal. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
Creamed Spinach Sauce
Playing steakhouse chef means dreaming up the sauces and side dishes that you would most like to see on the table. Creamed spinach gives you a classic steakhouse experience in sauce form, and makes the perfect accompaniment to a grilled rib-eye.
Macaroni With Ham and Cheese
Bobby Flay’s Double-Chocolate Pancakes
Few adults would want this meal for breakfast, but it is an excellent recipe for parents to make the morning after a sleepover that had the children and their friends up late watching horror films and unfathomable YouTube comedy. I adapted it slightly from Bobby Flay’s “Brunch at Bobby’s” cookbook, released in 2015. Watching the effect of the sugar and chocolate on a sleepy child is its own sort of joy – and you can hustle the guests home before the inevitable crash. Serve with raspberries for reasons of taste and elegance (though strawberries or bananas would do in a pinch), and salted caramel sauce. Yes, you could insist on eating muesli and almond milk instead. But in Mr. Flay’s words, “If you’re going to cave, you might as well go all out.”
Buffalo Corn on the Cob
This recipe delivers a hot wings moment minus the meat: Melt some blue cheese into warm Buffalo sauce and slather it on corn, then sprinkle with even more blue cheese crumbles. There are people in this world who think Buffalo sauce pairs better with ranch dressing than blue cheese, and even some people who detest blue cheese. For them, leave out the blue cheese altogether and drizzle ranch (or our recipe for yogurt ranch sauce) over the Buffalo’d cobs.
Earlonne’s Chicken and Brown Rice
Layered with savory, satisfying flavors, this one-pan recipe was inspired by a dish Earlonne Woods regularly prepared for himself while incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison. Mr. Woods, a co-host of the popular Ear Hustle podcast, generally relied on kitchen connections to secure a raw chicken hindquarter. He’d boil it in a hot pot with whatever seasonings he had available, then use the resulting broth to rehydrate some instant brown rice. Offered as a cooking lesson to Mr. Woods, who is now an amateur home cook, this version instead relies on chicken legs browned in butter, a vibrant mix of spices and aromatics, and rich, homemade broth to pack in flavor. And just as the dish did when Mr. Woods served it, it may prompt your diner to compliment the meal: “You put your foot in it!”
Orange-Cardamom Pancakes
It’s no wonder pancakes are a weekend staple: Their batter comes together in just 5 minutes using ingredients you’re likely to have on hand. Here, ground cardamom and fresh orange zest provide an aromatic boost that is sweet and addictive, but subtle enough that you can still pair your pancakes with any typical accompaniments. The recipe is plentiful enough for 12 full-size pancakes, or twice the number of mini pancakes if preparing brunch for a crowd. (As a bonus, the pancake base also doubles as a waffle batter.) A drizzle of maple syrup and a pat of butter are mandatory; a dollop of warmed orange marmalade or chopped Medjool dates would be rousing.
Chile-Oil Fried Eggs With Greens and Yogurt
This recipe, adapted from a dish served at MeMe’s Diner in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, is a brunch power move. Eggs sit atop wilted greens on a bed of yogurt, all surrounded by seeded chile oil. The fresh yogurt cuts through the chile oil’s heat, and the seed mix adds layers of flavor and crunch. If you’re feeling lazy — it is brunch after all — skip the greens, or use everything spice mix and peanuts, for the seed mix. But don’t skimp on the chile oil: It’s the best part. Scale it up to have extra on hand for future use, or use store-bought if you like. (You’ll need about 1 cup for four servings.) Serve with toast, to sop up the extra oil.
Double-Buckwheat Blueberry Pancakes
I call these double-buckwheat pancakes because I use both buckwheat flour and cooked buckwheat (kasha) in the batter. Cooked whole grains always contribute moisture and great texture to pancakes, and kasha has such a wonderful nutty flavor as well. I use half buckwheat flour and half whole wheat flour in the batter; if you don’t eat gluten you could substitute a gluten-free all-purpose flour for the whole wheat flour. The buckwheat is already gluten-free but an all-buckwheat flour batter would be difficult to work with, a bit too heavy and sticky. This batter is already dense and a bit sticky (that’s the buckwheat flour), but the pancakes are not heavy.
English Muffin Breakfast Casserole
This easy, make-ahead casserole makes creative use of classic breakfast ingredients like eggs, sausage, Cheddar cheese and English muffins. It’s a perfect no-stress centerpiece for a special-occasion breakfast: Simply assemble the casserole the night before and pop it in the oven before breakfast. Just remember to make sure to toast the English muffins until they’ve dried out a bit, which will help them absorb the egg mixture. For a vegetarian version, use vegetarian sausage or omit it altogether.
Fruit-Filled Scuffins
The scuffin is a frankenpastry — part scone, part muffin and, like a doughnut, filled with jam — but despite its complex genetics, it is very easy to make. It is even somewhat healthy (for a pastry, that is), using whole grain flour and flaxseeds, and keeping the butter minimal. If you are more of a butter maximalist, feel free to indulge by making a crumb topping for the scuffins: Measure 3 ounces cool butter (instead of 2 ounces melted butter) and use your fingers to rub it into the dry ingredients until coarse crumbs form. The spices can be varied (swap in nutmeg, ginger or allspice for the cinnamon or cardamom), and so can the jams. Do not use jelly, though — only jams, conserves, preserves or fruit butter will do.
Sausage Sage Biscuits
For an easy, savory breakfast treat, browned sausage and sage are folded into biscuit dough that’s cut into squares. A generous grinding of black pepper in the mix and on top adds a bit of kick. The flaky biscuits are delicious on their own or stuffed with eggs: Scrambled, fried or poached are all great, but so is egg salad. If you’d like, you can garnish the biscuits with whole sage leaves. Simply brush the unbaked squares with a little melted butter, gently press on a sage leaf, and brush the leaf with a little more butter before baking.
Chez Ma Tante’s Pancakes
At the Brooklyn restaurant Chez Ma Tante, the brunch pancakes come two to an order, big as dessert plates and almost burnt. “I knew I wanted them to be really, really crispy,” said the chef de cuisine Jake Leiber. He was inspired by a fairly straightforward pancake recipe made with bacon fat he found in “How America Eats,” the seminal cookbook by Clementine Paddleford, an American food historian. Mr. Leiber swaps the lard for butter, adds an extra egg yolk to his batter, cranks up the heat on his vintage cast-iron skillet, then pours in an outrageous amount of melted clarified butter. Fried in shallow pools of hot fat, each pancake gets fritter-like crisped edges. Mr. Leiber serves them with more butter, and glugs of maple syrup.
Roasted Radishes With Anchovies
Crisp radishes turn sweet and juicy when briefly roasted at high heat. Here, the chef Bryan Hunt from Riverpark restaurant in Manhattan coats them in a pungent anchovy-rich bagna cauda sauce. This is best served warm rather than piping hot. You can make the anchovy mixture up to 3 days ahead. Store it in the fridge and bring it to room temperature before using.
Morning Glory Muffins
Glory may be a big goal for the morning, but it is attainable. These nourishing muffins are packed with vegetables, fruit, nuts and coconut to keep everyone singing your praises well past breakfast. A bit of spice, brown sugar and whole-wheat flour round out the flavor and make them irresistible. If you’re striving for even more accolades, try topping them with a swirl of cream frosting, which turns them into sweet and satisfying cupcakes.