Dinner
8856 recipes found
Pan-Roasted Chicken With Chiles de Árbol
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Here is a riff on a recipe from the Los Angeles chef Suzanne Goin, whose book “Sunday Suppers at Lucques” is an exacting and delicious guide to restaurant cooking at home. Simply brown some chicken thighs in olive oil and butter over medium heat in an oven-safe skillet, adding lots of fresh thyme leaves and a couple of crumbled chiles de árbol. Then apply a thin smear of mustard to each thigh, shower with buttered bread crumbs and transfer the pan to the broiler to crisp the chicken into succulence. Serve alongside or on top of a pile of baby greens lightly dressed in lemon juice and olive oil, with some bread to mop up the juices. That’s fine. 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.
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.
Speedy Fish Chowder
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. This one calls for something in the neighborhood of a quarter- to half-pound of fish fillets per person and works as well in the heat of South Florida as it does on the frozen Northern Plains. Dice a strip or two of bacon if you’re a meat eater, or grab some butter if you are not (or use both if you are reckless). Add it to a Dutch oven set over medium-high heat and sauté with a few handfuls of diced onions, carrots and potatoes until the onions have gone translucent. Hit the mixture with some salt and pepper and a flash of smoked paprika if you have it. If you can find good corn on the cob, that would be a fine addition. So would a cup of frozen corn. Do you have any fish stock? No? White wine? Surely you have water. Add enough liquid (of any combination of the above) so that the potatoes are almost swimming, then add a bay leaf and reduce the heat to a simmer. Allow the chowder to bubble along until the liquid has reduced by a third and the potatoes are tender. Add a splash or two of milk or cream and allow it to heat and thicken slightly. Now cut the fillets into chunks and stir them in gently. Five minutes later: chowder. Serve with crusty bread. 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.
Vegetable Noodle Salad With Sesame Vinaigrette
This pasta salad is bursting with more than two pounds of sweet summer vegetables and brightened by a rich, tangy sesame-ginger vinaigrette. The angel hair pasta is broken into pieces for easy scooping, making it perfect for picnics and potlucks. It’s a great make-ahead meal that travels well — and develops even more flavor as it sits. You can prepare it a few hours ahead and keep it at room temperature.
Baked Beans
Proper Boston baked beans would have salt pork instead of the bacon. James Beard cooked them with ribs. The key is to use the little white pea beans known as navy beans, and to allow time to do most of the work. (Or to cheat: Canned white beans make fantastic baked beans in about an hour. If you use them, you'll need four 15-ounce cans. Drain and then follow the directions from step 2 on to the end. Please understand that you’ll need much less water and much less time to get them where you want them to be.) The combination of molasses and dry mustard is a taste as old as America itself, and takes well to both ham and soft brown bread.
Grilled Romaine
Lettuces do nicely on the grill, softening slightly at their centers and charring beautifully at their tips. Their bitterness is a fine counterpart to the sweet spiciness of a lot of grilled foods. In this recipe, the dressing is Caesar-like. Mustard and mayonnaise serve as emulsifiers, while anchovies, garlic and vinegar provide a welcome kick. Make sure to paint the dressing into the crevices between the leaves, so that while the lettuce caramelizes slightly on the exterior, there is still warm creaminess within.
Wonton Soup
Wonton soup and wonton noodle soup are two mainstays of Cantonese cuisine available in restaurants across the world. They’re great slurped when dining out and even more comforting when prepared and eaten at home. Here, bok choy stands in for the usual dark green gai lan or choy sum vegetables to lend its natural sweetness to the soup. How you season the soup is up to you. If you’re starting with an intensely flavorful homemade broth, you may not need to add anything.
Grilled Mushroom Skewers in Red Chile Paste
Fire up the grill and let the aromas of vegetables and chile-marinated mushrooms charred over an open flame permeate the neighborhood. This simple recipe is fun to assemble, and a crowd pleaser, making it ideal for cookouts. Meaty king oyster mushrooms are smothered in a guajillo chile sauce that includes earthy achiote, which stains the mushrooms red. Liquid aminos or soy sauce add saltiness and umami, and maple syrup brings a touch of sweetness. If you don’t have the vegetables below on hand, you can easily swap them out for others that will cook in the same time frame. Serve this as a main dish with your favorite cooked grains or salad, or as a side dish to just about anything.
Roasted Potato Salad With BBQ Dressing
If barbecue potato chips were a salad, then this would be it. It’s hard to pick which component of this picnic dish is the greater star: the crispy roasted potatoes or the smoky, paprika-tinged barbecue sauce dressing. Bejeweled with crunchy red onions, which are soaked in water to mellow their bite, and showered with fresh dill, this colorful side dish is the savory crowd-pleaser you’ll want to bring to any cookout or potluck.
Grilled Figs With Pomegranate Molasses
These are wonderful. First you toss them in a mix of balsamic vinegar and olive oil, then you grill them on both sides just until they soften and grill marks appear (at which point they are warm all the way through and just beginning to become jammy), then you remove from the grill and brush with pomegranate molasses. It’s a match made in heaven. Serve while the figs are still warm, as a first course with goat cheese, or as a dessert with ricotta or yogurt.
Pork Chops With Onion Gravy
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredient list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Start with the pork chops, as many as you need, on the bone if possible. Dredge them in flour that you’ve mixed with chile powder, salt, black pepper, smoked paprika and red-pepper flakes, or with Lawry’s seasoned salt or Old Bay seasoning or any spice you like, really. (Save what’s left of the flour; you’ll use it later.) Then sear the chops, in batches if you have to, in an oil-slicked Dutch oven or heavy cast-iron pan, over fairly high heat. You want a big, flavorful crust on the meat before you braise it with the onions, to enhance the taste of the sauce and provide a little texture. Set the seared chops on a platter. Throw away what oil is left in the pot, and wipe out the pot. Return it to the stove, and set over medium heat. Add some butter, and when it melts and foams, use it to sauté an enormous number of sliced onions, allowing them to wilt and soften and almost start to go brown. Sprinkle a scant handful of the leftover dredging flour over the onions, then keep stirring for a few minutes to dampen the rawness of the flour. Add about half an inch of chicken stock (or water) to the pot, along with a bay leaf, perhaps, then stir to thicken. If the sauce is too thick for your liking, add a little more liquid. Nestle the pork chops into the sauce, remove from heat, cover the pot and put it into a 350-degree oven for 45 minutes to an hour. While the pork cooks, make the mashed potatoes, with hot milk, melted butter, plenty of salt and enough lemon zest to give them a real brightness. So: pork, gravy, potatoes. I like some hearty sautéed greens moistened with chicken stock. Maybe a drizzle of red-wine vinegar too? You’ll know what to do when you get there. This is not a recipe. It’s your dinner. Make it however you like. 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.
Seared Fish With Creamed Kale and Leeks
This satisfying weeknight meal involves three simple components — fish, kale and rice — and builds flavor from just one versatile element requiring a little labor: leek-infused cream. Sauté leeks, garlic and thyme in butter until softened, then simmer with heavy cream until thickened. Strain the mixture, saving the leeks to add flavor to cooked rice, polenta or pearl couscous, then combine the fragrant cream with blanched kale and a little mustard. Season the skin of your fillets early to help them develop a particularly crisp, crackly crust. If you can’t find fresh char, any mild fish fillets will work well in their place.
Mushroom-Beef Burgers
These burgers use half the meat of all-beef burgers but have double the juiciness, thanks to finely chopped cremini mushrooms. The raw mushrooms lend earthy, meaty flavor and texture, both of which become more accentuated as they cook, caramelize and crisp along the edges while charring on the grill. Form the patties when ready to cook, since the mushrooms start to release water once mixed with the beef, and don't be afraid to mix the chopped mushrooms with the beef until well incorporated. (Thanks to the moisture the mushrooms provide, it is impossible to overwork the patties.) Their flavors shine on the grill, but the burgers can also be cooked in a lightly greased nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until golden brown, 3 to 4 minutes per side.
Oxtail Stew in Peanut Sauce (Kare-Kare)
Kare-kare is a nutty-sweet stew, traditionally made in the Philippines with oxtail, bok choy, string beans and eggplants, simmered with ground peanuts and achuete oil; peanut butter, a modern substitute, lends voluptuousness. This recipe is adapted from Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad’s forthcoming cookbook “I Am a Filipino” and their restaurant Maharlika in New York, where the dish is always served with rice and bagoong, a fermented seafood paste that brings a depth of flavor akin to aged cheese or steak.
Carrot Risotto With Chile Crisp
Simple yet surprising, this pantry risotto is a study in contrasts: Luscious, creamy risotto is topped with caramelized carrots that are roasted with spicy chile crisp while you make the rice. The risotto base — a classic approach using shallots, garlic and white wine — is the foundation for a cheap though lush meal that can be cobbled together with pantry ingredients. This one is subtly sweetened with freshly grated carrots, then topped with a pile of smoky roasted carrots. Don’t underestimate the versatility of chile crisp: This tingly, crunchy condiment can animate any number of rich dishes like risotto, pizza and macaroni and cheese with a robust dose of heat. In recipes, as in life, opposites attract.
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.
Juicy Lucy Burger
This Minneapolis staple is smart and simple: Sealing a slice of cheese inside two thin burger patties allows the burger to develop a serious char while the inside stays moist thanks to its molten core. There’s debate over whether the burger originated at 5-8 Club or Matt’s Bar; both have drawn locals and tourists alike since the 1950s. The Juicy Lucy method takes some practice — you’ll need to make sure the edges of the stacked patties are properly sealed so that the melted cheese gushes out with every bite instead of making a mess in the skillet — but the results far outweigh the challenge. Because the ingredient list is short (an unassuming bun, a smattering of pickles and a pile of caramelized onions), you’ll need to season with abandon. You may be tempted to use an expensive craft cheese, but sliced American cheese is the only way to go for tradition and meltability.
Spicy Won Tons With Chile Oil
Sichuan won tons are typically doused with hot, numbing chile sauce, but this less fiery version, adapted from “Hong Kong: Food City” by Tony Tan, is more like what you’d find at Cantonese restaurants. These delicate won tons are subtly sweet, ginger-scented and filled with a tender combination of pork, egg, stock, soy sauce and Shaoxing rice wine. Eat a couple of the won tons on their own to appreciate their delicate flavor before surrounding them with chile oil sauce, which will inevitably dominate them. Scale the amount of chile oil to suit your tolerance.
Thai-Inspired Coconut Curry Soup With Vegetables
There are dozens of types of curries in Thailand, but most can be categorized as red, green or yellow; this is a streamlined vegetarian version of a red curry, named after the color of chile found in the curry paste. This one is spicy, sweet, creamy and adaptable. When the red curry paste is cooked in oil, the blend of chiles and aromatics like galangal and lemongrass come alive and become the curry’s backbone. Because store-bought pastes vary in intensity, this recipe also uses fresh garlic and ginger to ensure a zingy final result. Use any vegetables you like, but it’s nice to have one hearty vegetable (like sweet potato) and one crisp one (like snow peas) for a mix of textures. If you find your curry too spicy, stir in a bit of brown sugar. If it’s feeling a bit flat, squeeze in a little lime juice or add a dash of soy or fish sauce.
Vegan Bolognese With Mushrooms and Walnuts
Some may balk at this version of Bolognese, the classic Italian ragù, because it bypasses the meat and dairy that are traditionally integral to the dish. But this recipe is equally rich, robust and complex, owing to seared mushrooms and toasted walnuts, which are bolstered by balsamic vinegar, tomato paste, soy sauce and Marmite. A popular British sandwich spread made from concentrated yeast extract, Marmite brings salty, bitter notes to the sauce, but you can substitute a vegetable bouillon concentrate paste — or skip it entirely. Enjoy the sauce over cooked pasta or employ it in this vegetarian lasagna Bolognese.
Crispy Baked Fish With Tartar Sauce
Charming fish shacks and salty sea air aren’t a weeknight possibility for most of us, but thankfully, this recipe is. It features a clever technique from recipe developer Molly Kreuger: Creamy tartar sauce is spread on the fish to add flavor, keep the fillets moist during cooking and help the bread crumbs adhere to the fish. (Feel free to use your favorite tartar sauce in place of the one below.) The fish is baked until nearly cooked through, then broiled to toast the breadcrumb topping. The end result is crispy, creamy, tangy and moist, all of which is achieved without having to deal with a big pot of oil. Eat with more tartar sauce and a squeeze of lemon.
Roasted Turkey Ramen
On Thanksgiving night, with dinner pillaged and in ruins, Joshua Mangerson picks off the remaining meat from the turkey carcass, submerges it in chicken stock and lets it simmer. The next day, turkey leftovers are transformed into turkey ramen, with mushrooms, scallions and a six-minute egg in each bowl. The rich, cloudy broth is an ode to the Strongbow Inn, the turkey restaurant that Mr. Mangerson’s great-grandmother opened in 1940 on the family turkey farm in Valparaiso, Ind. Mr. Mangerson, who worked summers at Strongbow as a teenager, makes his own chicken stock first, with chicken backs and necks collected over a summer of grilling, but you can use store-bought stock and still get a strong boost of flavor. The recipe may look labor-intensive, but “I wouldn’t want anyone to be scared away,” he says. “It’s not difficult to do. It just takes time, and you have to care.”
Charred Broccoli Rabe With Ajo Blanco Sauce
Inspired by Spanish ajo blanco soup — at its essence a creamy, dairy-free blend of almonds, bread, garlic, olive oil, vinegar and water or stock that is also known as white gazpacho — this recipe from Nina Compton, the chef of Compère Lapin in New Orleans, glorifies garlic. Rather than creating a chilled soup, she replaces the traditional almonds with cashews and boosts the flavor profile of ajo blanco with a hefty pile of blanched garlic cloves, for a surprisingly sweet, nutty sauce that softens the smoky, bitter notes of the charred broccoli rabe. This vegetarian side pairs with just about any protein, but it’s got enough complexity to work as a main alongside some toasted bread and perhaps some beans. Its garlic flavor will linger, but you won’t mind. —Alexa Weibel