Appetizer
3523 recipes found
One-Pot French Onion Soup With Porcini Mushrooms
This version of the classic French soup simmers and bakes in a Dutch oven, while the toast broils right on top. Dried porcini mushrooms, fresh fennel and leeks provide deep umami flavor. Unless you have homemade beef stock on hand, go with a good chicken stock rather than boxed beef stock, which tastes mostly of salt. You could opt for vegetable stock for a vegetarian version, but skip the demi-glace, in that case. The preparation of this soup is time-consuming, but the flavor is well worth the effort. You can make the soup through Step 5 up to two days ahead of time. When ready to serve, reheat on the stove then continue with the final baking step for a hearty communal feast.
Spicy Crab Dip
This style of crab dip, often referred to as Maryland crab dip because of its Chesapeake Bay origins, makes for a festive appetizer. Here, it’s served hot out of the oven and is extra creamy thanks to the combination of cream cheese and a little mayonnaise. Though crabs are plentiful this time of year — and you can certainly make this with freshly steamed and picked meat if you’d like — canned lump crabmeat makes this dish simple to assemble. Just be careful to leave the clumps of meat as intact as possible when mixing. A sprinkle of cayenne pepper and a generous douse of hot sauce add heat to this flavorful dish.
Bean Confit
Creamy Pine Island Onion Soup
2006: Gazpacho With Cucumber Granita
Savory Mixed-Nut Shortbread
Inspired by the cocktail nuts served at Union Square Cafe in New York City — butter-rich, toasty warm and fragrant with rosemary and cayenne — this no-mixer press-in cookie is a joy to make. You simply melt butter with rosemary and black pepper, stir that into dry ingredients, and then press the dough into a pan. Salted nuts and more fresh rosemary go on top before the whole thing is baked and broken into ragged pieces. Persnickety cookie, this is not. Enjoy on a cheese board, with cocktails or after dinner with tea and dark chocolate. Or pack these in a cellophane bag and tie it with a bow to share as a gift. (The cookies will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a week.)
Balinese Tomato And Lemongrass Broth
Jerusalem Artichoke Fritters
The fritters in this recipe are almost better cold than hot, making them ideal to prepare ahead of time. Jerusalem artichokes — a knobby, sweetly versatile vegetable — require no peeling, only a good scrub with a stiff vegetable brush, cutting down on prep time. You’ll grate them into a bowl with the rest of your ingredients, season to taste and fry over medium heat until they’re golden brown. Serve them with a sour cream dipping sauce, and your guests will clamor for more.
Beet Dip With Labneh
This recipe for a delicious raw beet dip comes from Botanica, a vegetable-focused restaurant in Los Angeles run by Emily Fiffer and Heather Sperling. The recipe is easy — throw everything into the blender raw — though it requires a little time for the blades to break down the beets with walnuts, olive oil and a few other aromatics. Fiffer and Sperling cleverly adapted the dip from muhammara, the Middle Eastern spread made from red peppers. Using beets creates another dish altogether, but one that tastes bright, sweet and earthy. Serve it with a dollop of labneh, as well as warm pita and quartered Persian cucumbers for dipping, and generously drizzle everything with olive oil and crunchy salt.
Karaage (Japanese Fried Chicken)
At Kunyan, a ramen shop in a mountain hot-spring town near the Sea of Japan, fried chicken is served until 2 a.m., or whenever the last customer leaves. The flesh is firm and flavorful with sweetened soy and garlic, coated in a fox-colored crust of potato starch that stays crisp on the table through a second round of highballs. Kunyan’s “mama,” who presides over pan-frying gyoza and pouring frothy Super Dry beer, would never give up her recipe, but the flavors in this version are awfully similar. To approximate the best Japanese chicken — meatier, fattier, and more flavorful than American supermarket meat — buy your chicken from a farmers' market, and debone it yourself or ask a butcher. Don’t feel pressure to do it perfectly: The pieces will be encrusted in a crisp coating, and the leftover bones make great stock.
Scallops With Artichokes And Jerusalem Artichokes
Fried Pickles With Pickled Ranch Dip
Fried pickles come in many shapes and sizes, but this recipe approaches them in a way that maximizes their crunch: First, it calls for pickle chips, which yield a better coating-to-filling ratio than pickle spears. Next, the pickles are patted dry to remove extra moisture, ensuring that the breading adheres to every nook and cranny. Finally, breading the pickles in a flour-buttermilk-bread-crumb sequence creates a robust crust. When frying breaded ingredients, be mindful of residual cooking: Remove your cooked items from the hot oil just before they reach their desired shade of golden brown, as they’ll continue to cook — and darken — after being removed from the heat. Frying the pickles mutes their acidity, but adding chopped pickles to the dill-flecked creamy dip bumps up the brightness.
Sweet Potato Soufflé
This soufflé is not too sweet to serve as a starter at your Thanksgiving table, but it also makes an impressive dessert and it’s easier than pie to make. You can make individual soufflés or one large one.
Spinach Dip With Garlic, Yogurt and Dill
Lemony, garlic-laden and full of chopped herbs and Greek yogurt, this ultra-creamy spinach dip is a fresher, tangier take on the retro kind made with dehydrated soup mix. It’s best to take the cream cheese out of the fridge at least an hour ahead so it can soften; otherwise you can heat it in the microwave for a few seconds to soften it up. Firm, cold cream cheese won’t mix into the dip as easily. Serve this with any combination of cut-up vegetables, crackers, toast and sturdy chips.
Borani-yeh Esfenaj (Spinach Yogurt Dip)
There are many types of Iranian borani, or yogurt-based dishes, and spinach borani is a classic. What sets borani-yeh esfenaj apart from a simple mix of wilted spinach and yogurt is that the spinach is first cooked down with flavorful golden onions, garlic and turmeric. The preparation of the onion is the backbone of the dish and not to be overlooked. Rather than cooking the onion low and slow, as is done when caramelizing, it’s cooked quickly over a higher heat to draw out its sweet and sharp flavors. Creamy Greek yogurt is mixed with thinner regular yogurt for a balanced consistency. Use more or less of either depending on your preference: You can serve the borani thicker as a dip with pita crackers or flat breads, or thinner as a light lunch or snack alongside rice.
Baked Camembert Salad
Cheese encased in pastry and baked until brown might seem like an old-fashioned dish, but it’s one of the most reliable ways to please a small group of omnivorous people. Flaky pastry, warm, runny cheese, what’s not to like? Baking is also a great way to turn a mediocre wheel of cheese into something great. Cut the wheel in half, sandwich it with something savory and something sweet and wrap it up tightly with pastry. If you want to replace it with Brie, or another soft cheese with an edible rind, feel free — just make sure there aren’t gaps in the sides of the pastry, or the cheese will leak out in the oven.
Fig-Olive Tapenade With Prosciutto and Persimmon
Adding chopped dried figs to tapenade lends a fruity note that contrasts with the briny Kalamata olives in this thick, garlic-spiked spread. Here, it’s served alongside silky slices of prosciutto and juicy persimmon to echo and round out those sweet-salty flavors. If you’re starting with soft, plump dried figs, you don’t need to soak them first. Just chop them up and add to the food processor with the olives. Leftover tapenade will keep for at least a week or two in the fridge, and makes a terrific condiment for sandwiches, or serve it with roasted chicken or meats.
French Fries
The effort is worth it for these perfect homemade fast-food-style French fries! By soaking the raw fries in cold water, you remove some of the starch, a technique I recommend for other interesting preparations in which you want the vegetal rather than the starchy component of the potato. (Try soaking potatoes in several turns of fresh, cold water and then stir-frying in a blistering wok with Sichuan peppercorns someday. Massively addictive!) Once destarched, the perfect French fry concept is straightforward, if laborious. As with making the best home fries, you want to start with an already-cooked potato. The interesting deviation here is that you parcook the potatoes in acidulated water first, give them a second blanching in hot oil and then freeze the fries at this stage. Once frozen, they are yours to cherish for months at whim — ready your clean, hot fry oil and sizzle away.
Real Sour Cream Onion Dip
Why make this classic dip with dried onion soup mix when it's almost as easy, and far more delicious, to make it from scratch?
Garlicky Caesar Dip
This dip is inspired by classic Caesar dressing, with plenty of garlic and anchovy to wake things up. (You can even make it dairy-free, if you like, by using vegan cream cheese, substituting 1/3 cup nutritional yeast for the Parmesan, and adding an additional 1/4 teaspoon salt.) Serve it with a platter of raw or lightly blanched vegetables sprinkled with sea salt and dig in. Leftovers make a killer spread on a turkey sandwich, or a stellar accompaniment to grilled steak.
Southern-Fried Sweet Onion Rings
Thin enough to flash-fry but thick enough to let the sweet onion flavor shine through, these onion rings work well as a side dish but also are great as a stand-alone snack. Less is more when dipping the rings in the buttermilk mixture and then the flour mixture. Be delicate in the coating process, and make sure to let as much liquid and then as much flour fall off as possible. Less breading means less grease absorption and a crisper finished product. The flour should be as fine as possible, so reserve half of the flour mixture. When the first batch starts to get wet and gummy, replace it with the remaining half. The oil temperature matters, too. Heat the oil to at least 360 degrees, and fry the rings in batches. They cook so quickly it is easy to get through the frying in 10 minutes. Keep them warm in a 200 degree oven until all the frying is done.
Everything Bagel Dip
Think of this as a deconstructed everything bagel with extra schmear. A little tangy from sour cream, this spread can be used as a dip for pretzels, potato chips, raw vegetables and, yes, bagel chips. But it's just as good on a sandwich — or even a bagel, if you're crazy for everything spice. One thing to note: If you're making it by hand, make sure to keep your cream cheese quite soft. It'll make things a lot easier.
Bacon-Wrapped Dates
A bacon-wrapped date is sweet, smoky, squidgy and crisp, all in one bite-size package. The trick is getting the bacon to cook before the date burns, and you can do that by starting in a cold oven so that the bacon slowly renders its fat and evenly crisps. While this appetizer was en vogue in the 1970s and 1980s, it has never gone out of style. In fact, it dates back to Victorian England, when bacon-wrapped oysters or prunes (also known as angels or devils on horseback) were eaten before or after a meal. (“Horseback” referred to their being served on toast.) Sometimes the prunes were soaked in tea or liqueur, and stuffed with chutney, cheese, or nuts. You can do the same if you like.
Queso Fundido With Chorizo, Jalapeño and Cilantro
Here is a magical recipe that works as well for a family dinner as for a football-watching spread: a pound of Monterey Jack melted over chorizo, jalapeño and cilantro, served with chips and lime. You’re welcome.