Appetizer
65 recipes found
Spinach, Artichoke and Yogurt Dip
The essential features of a spinach and artichoke dip are fixed: tender spinach, textural artichokes plus something rich and creamy to unite the two. In this take, full-fat Greek yogurt is the binder, supported by an extra boost from shallots, garlic and scallions. The preparation is uncomplicated, especially if opting for store-bought chopped frozen spinach, which eliminates the need to wash and chop the greens. The dip is best served chilled or at room temperature, allowing the cool tang of the yogurt to shine. Eat with foods strong enough to support the weight of the dip, like crunchy vegetables, seeded crackers or slices of crusty bread.
Everything Bagel Cottage-Cheese Dip
Creamy, tangy and full of pep, this quick snack brings new life to your cottage cheese. Scallions, capers and everything bagel seasoning are stirred into cottage cheese, then torn arugula is scattered on top for a peppery crunch. Scoop into it with any combination of crackers, pretzels, toast and raw vegetables like cucumbers or celery — or eat it on a toasted bagel or English muffin. A batch, minus the arugula, keeps for up to two days in the fridge, so keep it on hand for anytime you need a pick-me-up.
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The Creamy, Spiced Dip I Make for All My Fall Parties
Smoky, creamy, and rich, this roasted sweet potato dip is the one everyone will hover around at your next party.
Smoked Salmon Without a Smoker
Cold-smoking salmon is a time-honored tradition in Indigenous communities in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, as well as other cold regions where wild salmon runs. The days-long process of infusing the fish with wood smoke without heating it is a tricky one that requires a smokehouse. To replicate the subtle smokiness and tender chew, this recipe cures the fish using a dry brine seasoned with coffee beans, smoked paprika and mezcal, ingredients that bear the scent of fire. A fillet of uniform thickness will yield a consistent firmness, while a tapered one will have thin ends that become like jerky. If you’re concerned about uncooked salmon, you can start with flash-frozen fish, thawing it thoroughly and patting it dry before curing, or you can cook the salmon after it’s been cured.
Beef Chops (Meat-Stuffed Potato Cutlets)
Also known as potato chops, these treats trace their roots to the kitchens of Christian communities across India, Pakistan and Iraq, where they became a celebratory staple at weddings, holidays and family feasts. Golden and crisp on the outside, soft and savory within, potato chops are the ultimate comforting classic. Beloved as both a snack and a centerpiece dish, these shallow-fried patties are made by encasing a spiced ground meat filling — often beef or lamb — in a smooth, seasoned layer of mashed potatoes, then pan-frying until golden brown. (The spices often vary depending on the cook’s background or preferences.) The result is a satisfying contrast of textures: creamy potatoes that give way to a fragrant, spiced ground meat center. Making them is a labor of love: There’s some peeling, mashing and filling involved, and you’ll use more than one pan, but the reward is undeniable.
California Rolls
The California roll at Yanagi Sushi in Honolulu has individual grains of soft rice; a fresh, fat hunk of perfectly ripe avocado; just a sliver of cucumber for aroma and freshness; and cooked snow crab, a sweet flurry of tender filaments bound by mayonnaise. This recipe, with its pristine proportions, comes from one of Yanagi’s founding sushi chefs, Tsutomu Nakayama, whose brother, Haruo, opened the restaurant in 1978, the same decade the California roll was invented.
Chorizo, Egg and Cheese Tostadas
These breakfast tostadas are stacked with porky beans, funky cheese and runny eggs. It’s a dish with a lot of contrasting textures — the crunchy tostada, creamy chorizo beans and a jammy egg — that blend together cohesively. This recipe speeds things up by starting with canned beans, making it perfect for busy mornings. The beans are fried in the rendered chorizo fat to soften them and infuse them with warm spices, then mashed with chicken broth until smooth and spreadable. This recipe calls for raw Mexican pork chorizo rather than the cured Spanish variety. A squeeze of lime and a spoonful of salsa (such as salsa fresca or salsa macha) provide acidity to balance the rich elements of the dish, while the serranos and cilantro add a hit of freshness. You can have a single tostada for a light breakfast or a couple for a complete meal.
Condimento alla Papalina (Creamy Cheese Sauce for the Pope)
Ask anyone in Italy if they know “The Talisman of Happiness” and odds are they’ll say yes. Ada Boni wrote the first edition of the essential cookbook in 1929 and updated it over the years as Italy’s culture and cooking changed. This recipe is adapted from the latest edition (Voracious, 2025). Condimento alla papalina, which loosely translates to “sauce for the pope,” was created in honor of Pope Pius XII, who became head of the Catholic Church in 1939. It’s a testament to how only a few ingredients you probably have on hand can create a delicious, incredibly satisfying dish in about 15 minutes. She calls it a lighter alternative to carbonara, although the amount of butter and cheese is quite generous. Ms. Boni says the sauce is best tossed with fettuccine.
Sautéed Shrimp With Lemon-Caper Dressing
This light and easy dish improves as the shrimp marinates in a bright and briny dressing that uses both the rind and pulp of a lemon. The recipe calls for just a couple of thin slices of lemon for verve; they provide vibrant acidity and subtle bitterness that create a harmonious balance. Enjoy the shrimp with a light salad with butter lettuce, served in lightly toasted rolls as sandwiches, or tossed with cooked pasta to make a quick pasta salad. It’s equally delicious with bread.
Baked Chard Salad With Cranberries
What’s the difference between a baked salad and a regular old bowl of roasted vegetables? The easiest answer is that the leafy green ratio in a baked salad is high, and I only hope that makes the satisfaction factor high, too. Now the difference between a baked salad and your typical salad is that instead of crunching through the raw stuff in a typical salad, you dress the greens (and in this case, cabbage) in a bit of olive oil and salt before roasting them down into tender, softened bites. Roasting the vegetables is a precursor to coating them with dressing, giving them their first coat of olive oil before a highly acidic vinaigrette rounds it all out. I usually say you can skip herbs if they aren’t in your fridge, but the parsley is really helpful here: It freshens up the salad so you don’t get any flavor fatigue.
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These French Onion Melting Potatoes Might Outshine the Soup
French onion melting potatoes with caramelized onions, melted cheese, and Yukon Golds are cooked in stock for a rich, comforting side dish.
Grilled Little Gems With Creamy Tarragon Dressing
Dense, crisp Little Gem lettuce (also known as baby romaine) gets kissed on the grill to char on one side and soften up slightly, while tarragon’s unique grassy, sweet anise flavor infuses a simple yogurt dressing. Grilling the lettuce not only adds a deeper flavor, it also changes the texture of the lettuce, making this dish surprisingly rich and satisfying (especially with that creamy dressing). Add some crunchy breadcrumbs and a tin of seafood to make this a main, or serve alongside other grilled delights. The Little Gem lettuce can also be swapped out for romaine or a wedge of iceberg.
Miso-Labneh Onion Dip
A few small tweaks to the classic sour cream and onion number yield this truly exceptional dip, adapted from my cookbook, “Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share With People You Love” (Random House, 2025). A little miso paste and vinegar take caramelized onions — already rich in character — to a whole new level. The salt, sweetness, umami and acid balance out the onions’ earthiness and dark caramel notes. Labneh offers a welcome tangy counterpoint to the robustly flavorful onion mixture without sacrificing creaminess. And though it’s best served with potato chips, this dip also works beautifully as a sandwich spread or alongside steak, roast chicken and roasted vegetables.
Spicy Gazpacho
This bright and vegetal gazpacho is a cooling summertime soup or even a refreshing drink, straight from a glass. Red Fresno chile imparts lively heat (remove some or all of the seeds for a milder soup) along with nice fruity notes that complement the other veggies. Olive oil is simply whisked in at the end to ensure a velvety texture that eats silkier than fully blended gazpacho, which is more aerated and frothy. This gazpacho is best served cold, so make it a few hours ahead and keep chilled, or try this speedy solution: Serve it over ice.
Avocado-Black Bean Tostadas
Great for a snack or served as an appetizer with drinks, tostadas can be dainty, made with small tortillas and a dab of savory mashed beans and queso fresco, or they can be hefty, like an over-stuffed sandwich. Though you can buy tostada shells in packages, homemade ones are more delicious, and making them is as simple as rubbing tortillas with oil and crisping them in the oven. The better the tortilla, the better the tostada shell. This recipe calls for canned refried beans, seasoned to taste, but by all means use homemade if you are able. Avocados that are ripe but still firm, dressed with lime juice and salt, are key. If you wish, make the pickled vegetables a day in advance.
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This French Vegetable Soup Is Summer’s Coziest Goodbye
Pistou, a French pesto-like sauce, turns a simple summer soup into something special.
Tomato and Burrata Salad With Chile Crisp
Tomato and burrata couple up nicely for a light summer meal, and they get an instant makeover with the addition of chile crisp. A powerful weeknight tool, the condiment is made with a heady mix of spices suspended in a fiery red oil, brimming with complexity and umami. In this recipe, the chile crisp both seasons and dresses the salad. Every brand of chile crisp will vary in spice, heat and saltiness, so vary the amount accordingly. The spicy oil is tamed by the milky, buttery burrata, though you could also substitute with fresh mozzarella or ricotta. Be generous with the cilantro, as it brings a bright, floral note to the tomatoes. This makes an excellent main-meal salad served with bread, or can be enjoyed with noodles or pasta.
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The Quick, Creamy Dip I Make for All My Parties
This creamy labneh dip, swirled with herb oil and finished with honey, chili crisp, and scallions, is tangy, vibrant, and ready in minutes.
Chicken Soup With Corn and Spinners
This recipe is a more streamlined take on a Jamaican Saturday soup, a simmered-until-tender marriage of beef or chicken and starchy vegetables. Thanks to a few strategic moves, this recipe takes only one hour but tastes like the result of an hours-long endeavor. Simmering bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs in chicken stock fortifies the soup, coaxing out gelatin from the bones and releasing fat from the skin to create a rich foundation. Instead of cutting corn kernels off the cob, the corn cobs are cut into pieces, which are less fussy to prepare, and more fun to eat — with hands, as nature intended! Handmade dumplings called spinners thicken the soup further and add a chewy bite.
Kenai Dip (Smoky Jalapeño Cheese Dip)
Slathered on burgers and sold by the tub in grocery store delis across Alaska, this cold, smoky jalapeño-cheese dip is most authentically consumed within earshot of a 4-stroke outboard motor while fishing for salmon on the Kenai (keen-EYE) River. The original dip, also known simply as jalapeño cheese dip, has been sold by Echo Lake Meats, a butcher shop in the fishing town of Kenai south of Anchorage, since the 1970s. Its recipe remains a closely guarded secret, but copycat dips abound. This tasty, quick-to-make version for home cooks was adapted from the chef and recipe developer Maya Wilson’s recipe in “The Alaska From Scratch Cookbook” (Rodale, 2018). It’s important to use freshly grated cheese to get the correct texture.
Aguachile Shrimp Salad
Aguachile, the fiery dish from Mexico’s Pacific coast, means “chile water,” a reference to the bold sauce, which blends lime juice, dried chiles, fresh serranos, cilantro and cucumbers. Fresh raw shellfish, such as shrimp or scallops, are marinated and lightly cooked by the acid. Here, the aguachile sauce is swirled into sour cream with just a touch of mayo to turn it into a silky and electric dressing for quickly boiled shrimp, and thinly sliced tomatillos add a crisp, gooseberry-like freshness. Since the shrimp is cooked, the dish travels well, making it the perfect centerpiece for a picnic or a summer get-together. Feel free to use shell-on shrimp if you prefer and peel them after cooking.
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These Crispy Golden Corn Fritters Are a Southern Summer Favorite
Golden corn fritters made from fresh kernels are crisp on the outside, tender inside, and packed with the flavor of summer corn.
Cucumber-Tomato Salad With Sesame Whipped Tofu
Silken tofu can be an incredible creamy base for sauces, dips and even soups. It’s packed with protein and is a great way to enhance a simple light salad. The neutral flavor of silken tofu makes it a flexible blank canvas to highlight strong flavors like toasted sesame oil. Here, whipped tofu is a pedestal for simple peak summer tomatoes and cucumbers that are roughly chopped and salted. The simplicity of this salad means that everything needs to be well seasoned. Serve the salad with some crusty sourdough bread, creating a DIY tomato toast situation.
Grilled Shrimp Ceviche With Corn and Coconut
Though technically not a ceviche, as the shrimp are grilled first, this dish is deeply inspired by the ceviche variations that span across Latin America, the Caribbean and the South Pacific Islands. Marinated in rich limey coconut milk, this lively, refreshing dish feels quintessentially summery — perfect for outdoor dining — while grilled corn and shrimp add depth and a subtle smokiness. Serve as a salad or with tortillas, plantain chips or saltines. It’s best to not overcook the shrimp on the grill and let it continue to “cook” in the marinade.