Brunch
940 recipes found
Grapefruit with Olive Oil and Sea Salt
At Marco’s, the chef Danny Amend takes the brunch cliché of a broiled grapefruit half and turns it on its head. In his version, fresh grapefruit are sliced into rounds and very simply dressed with superb olive oil and flaky sea salt. The result is a juicy salad that works particularly well when served with sausages, eggs, and other rich brunch favorites. Or offer it for dinner with grilled or roasted meats. If you can’t get good grapefruit, try it with oranges, tangerines and other citrus.
Spicy Big Tray Chicken
At Spicy Village in in Manhattan’s Chinatown, the Spicy Big Tray Chicken arrives on an aluminum tray. You eat it on a foam plate with a plastic fork or chopsticks. It’s a mound of chicken nearly afloat in a bath of dark, spicy sauce that contains star anise, Sichuan peppercorns, chile, garlic, cilantro, a few mystery ingredients and potatoes. Those of you who live in or visit New York should eat this dish whenever you can, but it can absolutely be prepared at home. It’s not precisely a simple recipe. But it’s an excellent project one. And you can improve on the ingredients. The restaurant uses both MSG and Budweiser in the recipe. We subbed in Modelo Negra and omitted the MSG, but you certainly don't need to.
Cheese Grits
There’s very little simpler than cooking grits. A few ingredients come together into something comforting, good for a cold morning and just as good for Sunday dinner. Use the best ingredients, pull out that pepper mill and season well. Make sure you pay attention to the details. The trick to good grits is cooking out the grittiness. The extra cream and frequent stirring here give it a consistency that’s not too dense and not too liquidy. Don’t leave it alone too long: If you stir it frequently, giving it love, it will love you back.
Skillet Poached Eggs
There’s a little trick here that makes poaching eggs easy and prevents them from spreading into flat, floppy disks: rolling the eggs in the boiling water in their shells before cracking them into the pan. This technique helps them maintain their shape when they’re cracked into the boiling water. Because the whites don’t spread, six eggs can fit in a skillet comfortably without running into one another, and you can serve a crowd with little effort. You can use this move to poach fewer eggs, too, of course. No matter how many you cook, you’ll end up with silky eggs for toast, a breakfast sandwich or as an accompaniment to bacon, sausage, waffles or pancakes.
Cherry Tomato and White Bean Salad
This simple salad makes a bright, tangy companion to grilled meat or fish. Marinating the red onions and garlic in the vinaigrette for 15 minutes not only diffuses their flavor but also softens their bite. This salad travels well and would be an excellent choice for a potluck or picnic. It’s also supremely versatile, and can be dressed up with any soft herb like basil, tarragon or mint, and chile, in almost any form.
Berry-Jam Fried Chicken
The name sounds like a sweet-tooth parade, but this recipe makes sense when you pair it with a spicy scallion cornmeal waffle. Wells’ Restaurant, a popular 1930s Harlem supper club, cemented the chicken and waffle combination in American culinary history; Amy Ruth’s in Harlem, Beans & Cornbread in suburban Detroit and Hotville in Los Angeles continue that tradition. Almost any summer-fruit jam can be substituted in the marinade, and if you don't have peanut oil, use another oil with a high smoke point.
Seared Lamb Chops With Lemon and Butter-Braised Potatoes
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Cut some yellow potatoes into chunks and put them in a deep skillet set over medium-high heat, along with some chopped onions and a few tablespoons of butter. Season with salt and pepper. Cook for around 10 minutes, stirring often, then add enough chicken stock, water or wine so that the potatoes are almost covered. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 30 minutes until the potatoes are tender. Meanwhile, massage as many lamb chops as you need with minced garlic, salt, pepper and a little oil, then sear them in a hot cast-iron pan, finishing them in a 425-degree oven with rosemary and some thinly sliced lemons until the lamb is just pink inside, about 10 minutes, maybe fewer. Garnish with thyme or rosemary if you have it and serve alongside the potatoes. A fine midweek 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.
Rock-Shrimp Roll
Rock shrimp are meaty and firm, like lobster tail, and have a mild, bland flavor that can really use the help of seasoning at several stages. So we salt them before cooking and during cooking. Once the shrimp are mixed with onion and celery and mayonnaise, taste the shrimp salad as a whole to decide if it could stand even another pinch of salt or grind of pepper. But use unsalted butter on the bun when griddling, to get the perfect play between the sweet and the saline.
Perfect Boiled Eggs
If your goal is perfectly smooth, blemish-free boiled eggs that jump out of their shells every single time, I’ve got bad news: No technique in the world can promise that level of perfection. But armed with data from scientific tests done with more than 90 testers and more than 700 boiled eggs, this technique for boiled eggs — technically steamed, as they cook in just an inch of water — will maximize your odds. Fresher eggs will take slightly longer to peel, but they should peel just as cleanly as older eggs. The eggs in this recipe should be cooked straight from the refrigerator; reduce cooking times by 1 minute if using room-temperature eggs.
French Onion Grilled Cheese
Grilled cheese is a near-perfect food on its own, but adding bacon, kimchi or, in this case, heaps of caramelized onions really makes it special. Caramelizing onions takes a good half-hour, so save this recipe for when you have a little extra time and company (this recipe serves two). If time permits, you could even prep them ahead in a slow cooker. Rather than layer the grated Gruyère and the warm caramelized onions in the sandwich, you should stir them together before assembling, which guarantees that the cheese will melt evenly throughout and that each bite will contain the perfect ratio of fragrant cheese to jammy onions. A splash of sherry, red-wine or white-wine vinegar added to the onions balances out the buttery flavors, but a side salad dressed with a tangy mustard vinaigrette would do the trick, too. (Watch the video of Ali Slagle making French onion grilled cheese here.)
Filipino-Style Breakfast Sandwiches
Breakfast is hugely important in Filipino culture, a legacy of the country’s rich agricultural past, when farmworkers ate large morning meals to get through the day. Accordingly, the morning after Thanksgiving, the brothers Chad and Chase Valencia — who own the Filipino restaurant Lasa in Los Angeles's Chinatown — make breakfast sandwiches for their family out of leftover asado (a salty-sour pork dish), ham or turkey. The sandwiches are endlessly customizable: Chase mixes the asado and its accompanying sauce into the eggs, like a scramble, to become the base of the sandwich, while Chad crowns his with a fried egg. But the constants are the queso de bola, a nutty Filipino cheese (similar to Edam cheese) served during the holidays that melts elegantly atop the meat, and pan de sal, a slightly squishy, yeasted roll whose sweetness stands up to all the savory components of the sandwich. Both the cheese and the pan de sal are readily available at many Asian grocery stores, and well worth getting to make superior sandwiches.
Fruit Sandwich
The origins of the fruit sandwich are believed to go back to Japan’s luxury fruit stores and the fruit parlors attached to them. This version comes from Yudai Kanayama, a native of Hokkaido who runs the restaurants the Izakaya NYC and Dr Clark in New York. Fresh fruit — fat strawberries, golden mango, kiwi with black ellipses of seeds, or whatever you like — is engulfed in whipped cream mixed with mascarpone, which makes it implausibly airy yet dense. (In Japanese, the texture is called fuwa-fuwa: fluffy like a cloud.) Pressed on either side are crustless slices of shokupan, milk bread that agreeably springs back. The sandwich looks like dessert but isn’t, or not exactly; it makes for a lovely little meal that feels slightly illicit, as if for a moment there are no rules.
Eggs in Purgatory
It’s unclear whether "purgatory" refers to the bubbling red tomato sauce used to poach the eggs in this easy skillet meal or the fire of the red-pepper flakes that the sauce is spiked with. In either case, this speedy Southern Italian dish, whipped up from pantry staples, makes for a heavenly brunch, lunch or light supper. Note that the anchovies are not traditional, but they add a subtle fishy richness to the tomatoes. However, feel free to leave them out.
Classic Kouign-Amann
A yeast-risen pastry with soft layers, deep buttery flavor and a chewy, caramelized top, this recipe, adapted from Nicolas Henry of the Montreal patisserie Au Kouign-Amann, celebrates the classic Breton kouign-amann, traditionally made as a round skillet cake and served as slices. There’s no shortcut and no substitute for the repetition needed to perfect this pastry. But you are in good hands: The process is a series of simple steps, with plenty of opportunities to make ahead. And the results of your efforts are sure to please, whether it accompanies your morning coffee, serves as a delightful afternoon snack or stunningly ends a meal. You’ll need an oven-safe nonstick skillet for this cake. A cast-iron skillet will work, but will produce a deeper, more caramelized result.
Almond Croissants
Rum simple syrup and toasted almond cream — both quick and easy to assemble — are all you need to transform stale homemade or store-bought croissants into deliciously sweet and fragrant pastries. The amount of syrup might feel excessive, but it’s needed to replace the moisture lost in the croissants as they become stale, so be generous when soaking them.
Turmeric Fried Eggs With Tamarind and Pickled Shallots
These fried eggs, as good enough to eat as they are to admire, get their wonderfully eccentric appearance from turmeric and chile. You can serve this easy, punchy breakfast as is, or with some hash browns if you’re having them for brunch. Feel free to make this dish your own by swapping out the spinach for another leafy green, using red onion in place of the shallot, or by leaving out the chile for a milder, more kid-friendly version.
Dutch Baby
This large, fluffy pancake is excellent for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dessert any time of year. And it comes together in about five blessed minutes. Just dump all of the ingredients into a blender, give it a good whirl, pour it into a heated skillet sizzling with butter, and pop it into the oven. Twenty-five minutes later? Bliss. It's wonderful simply with sugar, syrup or preserves, but you also can serve it with fresh berries and whipped cream, apple slices cooked in butter and sugar or banana slices lightly cooked then dusted with brown sugar.
Liège Waffles
These rich Belgian yeast waffles take a bit of planning (an overnight rise), but one bite and you'll forgive the extra time they take and the giant mess they leave on your waffle iron. With their buttery brioche consistency and pockets of sweet sticky sugar throughout, they're decidedly more dessert than breakfast. Don’t worry if you can’t find pearl sugar. Granulated sugar and water are all you need for a D.I.Y. version that yields excellent results.
Spinach and Chermoula Pie
This pie is a great way to use up your freezer staples: that one bag of frozen spinach and that packet of puff pastry sitting in the back. Feel free to make this pie your own by playing around with the herbs and spices. You can also veganize it by leaving out the feta and using a vegan-friendly puff pastry. Typically used as a marinade or condiment, chermoula is a North African spice paste with a multitude of variations. Here, it is used twice, once to flavor the base and then again as a sauce to drizzle alongside.
Leek and Cod Tortilla
Inspired by tortilla Española, this version of the classic Spanish dish uses mild, sweet leeks instead of onions. The addition of paprika-seasoned cod adds unexpected bites of smoky flavor, and cutting the potatoes into small cubes allows the tortilla to cook faster. The leek- and garlic-infused cooking oil is used to make a flavorful aioli to accompany the omelet. Store leftover flavored oil in the fridge and use it to make salad dressings, to sauté greens or fry eggs.
Salmon Croquettes
These croquettes have what may just be the perfect texture combination: crispy outsides and tender insides. Made from simple ingredients, they’re also a great use of leftovers, putting to work those halves of onion and bell pepper from last night’s dinner, and any remaining salmon, though you can also use canned (boneless works best). The filling may be a little delicate when you put it together, but a quick pop in the fridge or freezer makes it easier to work with. Serve the croquettes alone as an appetizer with tartar sauce or hot sauce, or make them a bigger meal alongside grits.
Blueberry-Cinnamon Coffee Cake
Studded with bright, juicy blueberries, this spiced coffee cake has a hefty dose of cinnamon in the cake and the crumble, and a cinnamon ribbon running through the center. You can use blackberries or raspberries in place of the blueberries, or even chocolate chips for an extra-sweet treat. Serve warm slices of cake with a cup of coffee for the perfect weekend brunch or afternoon pick-me-up.
Mushroom Toast With Pea Purée
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Take a bag of frozen organic peas and heat them in a little bit of boiling water for a couple of minutes to get them warm and cooked through, then drain them off and whiz them in a food processor with a hit of olive oil, some lemon juice and, if you have any, some tarragon leaves, until it resembles a thickish purée. Next, sauté a bunch of thick-sliced portobellos (count on about two mushrooms per person) in a lot of butter with a little bit of garlic. Really cook those down. Finally, make toast from hefty slices of your favorite bread, spread them with the pea purée, top with the mushrooms and — dinner! 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.
Sour Cream and Fruit Scones
The benefit of using frozen fruit in these tangy scones is in how it keeps the butter cold. Cold butter melts slowly in the oven, creating steam and tender pockets in the scones. The frozen fruit also doesn’t get smashed the way fresh fruit does. You can freeze the scones before baking for up to a month, just add a few minutes to the baking time. They are delicious on their own or with a bit of butter, but, for extra credit, split and toast the scones, then mix a spoonful of sour cream with some freshly whipped cream and sandwich inside.