Brunch
940 recipes found

Scrapple
Most recipes for scrapple, a dish popular at diners in eastern Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic, call for offal rather than cooked pork. But ours, first published in December 1953 and later in the Food News Department’s booklet “Encore for the Roast,” was devised as a way to use up leftover pork loin. You can substitute in 1 1/2 cups puréed pork loin or start from scratch with ground pork. You’ll need a food processor and a double boiler for this recipe. The latter will save you 45 minutes active stirring time.

Baked Eggs With Kale, Bacon and Cornbread Crumbs
This Southern riff on bacon and eggs comes together quickly and with just a few ingredients. Using a store-bought corn muffin to make the toasted cornbread crumbs is a quick shortcut that gives this dish its star power. (Try using these crumbs as croutons in a kale Caesar salad, too!) Curly kale, collard greens, Swiss chard or a combination may be used in place of the Tuscan kale. For a vegetarian-friendly version, this recipe can be made without the bacon: Just sauté the garlic, onion and greens in 3 tablespoons olive oil, and add an additional 1/2 teaspoon salt.

Blueberry, Almond and Lemon Cake
A slice of this berry-dotted cake is perfect late in the morning, for afternoon tea or after dinner, with coffee. It keeps for up to three days in a sealed container, but is at its absolute best on the day it's made.

Dooymaaj Salad
Dooymaaj is a nostalgic Iranian childhood snack of dried, days-old bread — it’s an effort to not waste a single crumb — combined with fresh herbs, cheese and walnuts. The ingredients are bound with a splash of milk and a drizzle of butter, then rolled into balls and enjoyed as an afternoon treat. This refreshing, zesty, herb-filled bread salad is an homage to the beloved snack. Use any flatbread you like, but crisp lavash bread holds up particularly well against the creamy and tangy buttermilk dressing. This is hearty enough to be served on its own as a light meal or alongside grilled chicken or fish, such as chicken or salmon kababs.

Watermelon and Grapefruit Salad With Tahini
This fruit salad is simple to make but thrilling to eat because it hits all the marks of a good salad in surprising ways. The base is crunchy-sweet watermelon and tangy-tart grapefruit. (If you can’t eat grapefruit, substitute orange sprinkled with lemon or lime juice.) These two fruits look similar, but taste different, and that is part of the fun of eating them together. Tahini is used like a nuttier, richer oil, and honey mellows the mix. The balance really depends on the quality of your ingredients, though, so adjust to taste until each bite races between sweet, savory, juicy and creamy.

Avocado Toast
It may seem silly to give a recipe for avocado toast, but there is an art to it, as with most things that are both simple and perfect. Here, you want to make sure of a few things: that the bread you use is sturdy and has some taste; that there's enough salt and citrus to bring out the avocado's flavor; and that you use a good olive oil to bring it all together. These garnishes, from the Australian café Two Hands in Manhattan, are tasty but unnecessary.

Stone Fruit Caprese
A standout caprese starts with great fruit. You need ripe tomatoes to weep juices, which then mingle with grassy olive oil and milky cheese to make your dressing. Basil adds freshness, black pepper and flakes of sea salt add crunch, and that’s it, a perfect combination. But if the stone fruit options are looking better than the tomatoes at the market, you can use them instead. They’re similar in flavor to tomatoes, but need cajoling to relinquish their juices. By letting sliced fruit macerate with salt, sugar and lemon juice, their fruitiness becomes more electric and their juices pool on the plate. Start with fruit you can smell and pair it with equally quality ingredients. Caprese is more about shopping than cooking.

Frittata With Kasha, Leeks and Spinach
I like adding cooked grains to a frittata, but you have to choose just the right one; it should be soft, not too chewy. Rice works, and so does bulgur. But if you want to add a grain that will contribute a lot of flavor to a frittata, kasha is your grain. It is wonderfully nutty, and a cup of cooked kasha contributes just the right amount of bulk to make this frittata substantial but not at all heavy. Leeks, cooked down until sweet and tender, a small amount of baby spinach, which always partners well with kasha whether raw or cooked, lots of fresh dill and a little bit of feta are the other components. Serve this for dinner and take leftovers to work for lunch.

Farro and Green Bean Salad With Walnuts and Dill
Farro is a perfect vehicle to showcase summer produce. With its nutty flavor and toothsome texture, the whole grain is a great counterbalance to snappy, sweet green beans. The farro cooks while you prepare the rest of the salad, allowing for an easy-to-assemble meal. Dill and walnuts, a nod to Middle Eastern flavors, are used in the gremolata, but pistachios and mint or hazelnuts and parsley would also work. Feta cheese or ricotta salata tossed in at the end would also be a nice addition. This hearty salad works well on its own, but would also be a fine companion to grilled fish or any other protein. Add the acid just before serving; it makes every ingredient sing.

Breakfast Wheat Berries
Wheat berries sweetened with honey and perfumed with rose water and spices make a delicious breakfast on their own or stirred into yogurt (that’s the way I prefer to serve this). Whether you use farro, kamut, spelt or wheat berries (and whether you are cooking them for breakfast or for dinner) the trick here is to cook the grains for as long as it takes for them to really soften and to splay (that is, to burst at one end).

Vegan Catalan-Style Radicchio and White Beans

Savory French Toast With Cherry Tomatoes and Basil
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. You know a stash of leftover bread makes the best French toast for breakfast, so it stands to reason that a savory version would be equally satisfying for the crew around your dinner table. At least that’s true in my house. Whisk the eggs as you usually would, but omit the sugar and cinnamon, hitting it instead with black pepper, chopped basil and a dash of hot sauce. Slide some slices of old bread in there to soak, then fry the toasts up in butter just as you would at breakfast. Scattering a few handfuls of halved cherry tomatoes into the pan as the bread cooks will yield a fine topping. Those who have doubted will doubt no more. 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.

Breakfast Salad
From the same trend that brought us avocado toast, the breakfasts served in Australian cafes often include bright vegetables arranged in eye-catching ways. Salad is definitely not part of the traditional American breakfast menu, but on a sunny morning the combination of chilled, crunchy greens; protein-rich cheese and eggs; and an eye-opening dressing is hugely appealing. This one was created at Carthage Must Be Destroyed, an airy (and slightly eccentric) Australian-style cafe hidden behind an unmarked entrance in Brooklyn. The chef and owner Amanda Bechara likes to leave the lettuce leaves whole to make it easier to eat with your fingers. (You can prepare the vegetables the day before, and skip marinating the feta if you must.) This would also make a lovely lunch.

Cardamom-Scented Oatmeal Pancakes With Apricots and Almonds
Oatmeal, always underrated, is the foundation of this pancake. But the ingredient that really makes this recipe shine is the cardamom, a spice that has been treasured in Europe for centuries and has been subtly employed since then in pastries throughout the northern part of the continent. These pancakes are incredibly tender, with a little chew from the grain and the dried fruit, but beyond that they’re exotic. Here are flavors and textures that ordinary pancakes could never approach.

Spring Onion and Cheese Potato Cake, Two Ways
This potato cake is a great recipe to build on when seeking to feed a hungry crowd resourcefully, pulling whatever cheese, vegetables or spices might need using up. Here, I’ve included two variations, one using frozen peas and thyme, and the other using jarred peppers and harissa. You can get as thrifty as you like by making use of what you have: frozen spinach instead of the peas, for example, or some shredded mozzarella to replace the Parmesan. The recipe is yours: Make what you want of it! Serve this potato cake warm with crème fraîche, a squeeze of lemon and a side salad, if you like.

Kuku Sabzi (Persian Herb Frittata)
Kuku, which is like a Persian frittata, comes in many forms, but this one, packed to the brim with herbs, is my favorite. Washing and picking through the piles of herbs can be overwhelming if you’re not used to staring down a mountain of produce, so feel free to prepare them in advance. I particularly love kuku sabzi for the contrast between its vivid-green herbaceous interior and its dark, sweet crust. Kuku is traditionally served with flatbread and a selection of crunchy and acidic condiments to balance the sweetness of the herbs; my favorites are fresh radishes, the chopped eggplant pickles called liteh and chunks of soft, salty feta cheese. Leftover kuku slathered with mast-o khiar makes for a wonderful sandwich.

Oatmeal and Teff With Cinnamon and Dried Fruit
I wanted to make a porridge with teff alone, but I just didn’t like the flavor enough. So I added some of those tiny high-protein, high-calcium, gluten-free seeds to oatmeal, along with chopped dried apricots, golden raisins and cinnamon. Chopped toasted hazelnuts are my first choice for topping.

Simple Marinara Sauce
Recipes hardly come easier. This marinara sauce is similar to our fresh tomato sauce recipe, but canned tomatoes stand in for the fresh ones so you won’t have to peel the tomatoes or put them through a food mill. If you buy chopped tomatoes in juice, you won’t even have to dice them.

Grilled Corn and Tomato Salsa Salad
At our farmers’ market we picked up a dozen ears of corn for a weekend barbecue. With several ears left over, I repurposed the corn as the starting point for two salads. One emphasized cherry tomatoes, the other Italian parsley, both in plentiful supply at the farmers’ market.

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.”

Whole-Grain Pancakes
Using a combination of different grains, these hearty pancakes have a deeper, more interesting flavor, along with more fiber and nutrients, than those made from only white flour. If you want to add fruit, like blueberries or sliced peaches, or chocolate chips, sprinkle them on top of the pancakes just before flipping. Serve these straight out of the pan; pancakes don’t like to wait.

Bulgur-Ricotta Pancakes

Pasta With Cherry Tomatoes and Arugula
This simple, glorious dish, popular in the southern Italian region of Puglia, is an argument for keeping cherry tomato plants in your garden or on your fire escape. Uncooked tomato sauce is juicy and cool on a summer evening. The recipe asks only that you halve the tomatoes (quarter them if they are particularly large), then combine them with garlic, salt, balsamic vinegar, arugula, basil and olive oil. Toss that with cooked pasta, and shower with salty, firm shavings of ricotta salata. Arugula adds wonderful flavor (all the more if you can find peppery wild arugula) and a nutritional punch.

Quinoa Pancakes
The addition of cooked quinoa to my regular buttermilk pancake batter results in a thick, moist pancake that’s hefty but not heavy.