Herbs & Spices
481 recipes found
Barbecue Vegetable Salad
This knife-and-fork dinner salad is full of char and crunch, topped off with a festive dressing to incorporate into your summer repertoire. It’s also an ideal way to use up any grillable vegetables. On a verdant bed of Romaine lettuce, kale and cilantro, pile on grilled summer vegetables and peaches and a shower of corn chips. Beans add protein, though you could also top with quinoa, grilled tempeh bacon or another protein. While barbecue sauce doesn’t often coat lettuce, here it becomes a tangy, thick and pleasantly sweet salad dressing with the addition of a little lime juice to loosen and brighten. If you have some ranch in the fridge, drizzle zig-zags of it on top, too; the duo tastes like an herb-flecked Thousand Island dressing. Eat this big salad solo or with a side of cornbread.
Corn Grits With Charred Peppers and Broccoli
For a cozy and produce-packed dinner, top cheesy, corn-studded grits with grilled peppers and broccoli. To pull it off without racing between the outdoor grill and the indoor stove, build a two-zone grill — with one side heated, one not — and think of the unheated side as a back burner. Its gentle heat will gradually cook the grits while the vegetables soften and char over the flames. A squeeze of grilled lemon lifts the smoky flavors, but feel free to also add chopped parsley or basil, or a shake of hot sauce for spice. For pot recommendations, see Tip.
Salt and Pepper Shrimp
Temptingly seasoned salt and pepper shrimp is a Cantonese dish that takes little effort to prepare and is a joy to eat. Jiao yan is the salt and pepper mixture that livens up the fried shrimp with a quick jolt of flavor. It is typically prepared with white pepper, or, for a fiery heat, with Sichuan peppercorns, but you can also use black pepper (if using Sichuan peppercorns, use 1 part peppercorns to 3 parts salt). Toasting whole peppercorns and then grinding them draws out even more flavor. This recipe makes more of the seasoning than you may need, but you can store the mixture and use it on tofu, chicken, pork chops or vegetables. Coating the shrimp in cornstarch and then shallow-frying makes for an irresistibly crunchy exterior and juicy interior. For the classic restaurant-style preparation, use head-on, shell-on shrimp (the shell is edible when fried), but use peeled shrimp if that’s easier, and don’t be shy with the salt and pepper mix. Serve either as an appetizer with a cooling drink, or with rice as a main dish.
Pasta Primavera
This vegetarian pasta is a great way to use all of your fresh vegetables from the farmer’s market (or even the ones still hanging on in your fridge). The vegetables are cooked until they are just tender and still crisp, then coated in a delicate, lemony cream sauce and sprinkled with fresh Parmesan and herbs. Originally, this recipe was made with spaghetti, but a shorter pasta shape that’s the same size as the vegetable pieces provides a more enjoyable bite. “Primavera” means spring, but any vegetable from the spring and summer season is welcome in this dish. Feel free to add asparagus, cherry tomatoes, carrots and more — just note which vegetables cook faster than others and adjust as needed.
Angel Hair Pasta Salad
Light, bouncy angel hair makes for a surprisingly stellar pasta salad. Dressed in a simple mayonnaise and vinegar dressing, a rainbow confetti of raw vegetables shines in this chill, endlessly adaptable recipe. Salting the vegetables in advance, allowing them to sweat their excess moisture and then patting them dry, leads to crunchier, longer-lasting results. This salad keeps for up to 3 days in the refrigerator, covered; as it sits, the vegetables give off their flavor and fragrance to the blank-canvas pasta. Simply stir before serving to redistribute any dressing that has collected on the bottom of the bowl.
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Burnt Eggplant and Bell Pepper Dip
This roasted eggplant and red bell pepper dip is rich and bright with distinct smoky notes. It's a party-pleaser that vegetarians, vegans, and meat eaters will love.
Stuffed Peppers With Chickpeas and Cheese
Cozy, cheesy stuffed peppers are made vegetarian by using chickpeas instead of the usual ground meat. The cumin, tomato paste and chili powder give the filling its depth and heat, and plenty of scallions and herbs keep it bright and fresh. If you’d like to assemble the peppers ahead, you can. They’ll keep in the fridge overnight. Just pop them in the oven and add a few minutes to the baking time. Or bake them ahead and savor them later; these peppers are equally good served hot, warm or at room temperature.
Grain Bowl With Sardines and Sauce Moyo
A satisfying grain bowl doesn’t need to take a lot of time, especially if you start with a quick-cooking grain like fonio. Fonio, tinier than even couscous or quinoa, takes five minutes to cook and delivers a deep nutty taste. This ancient whole grain, which is also gluten-free, is prepared throughout West Africa, as is sauce moyo, a sauce of crisp onion and pepper, juicy tomatoes, chile and lime. Here, that sauce adds crunch to the tender, sandy grains, and tinned smoked fish delivers a savory richness. You can assemble the whole thing to enjoy at home or pack up to eat as a fresh and filling desk lunch.
Curry Roasted Half Chicken and Peppers
A half chicken, cut right between the breasts and back, is sold in most supermarkets and just what you want when cooking for one, offering both light and dark meat, and the juiciness that comes with all the bones. After it cooks — quickly, relative to a whole bird — it leaves you with two meals or one very hearty dinner. Here, this curry-rubbed chicken roasts over peppers and onion, which release their natural sweetness into the pan juices. It’s great over rice or with bread, and leftovers can be simmered with coconut milk for a stewed curry, or chopped and mixed with mayonnaise for a chicken salad sandwich.
Pink Peppercorn-Marinated Goat Cheese
This simple recipe from “Le Sud: Recipes From Provence-Alpes-Côte D’Azur” recalls mornings in Antibes, a charming seaside peninsula between Cannes and Nice. If you find yourself there, wandering the market on Cours Masséna, make your way to the cheese stall and order the tomette à l’huile, a round of bright white chèvre in olive oil. Or ask for the freshest chèvre and make it yourself, as in this recipe. With a baguette, your afternoon is set.
Clams Casino
The word “casino” in Italian translates to “mess.” In the world of baked stuffed clam dishes, this makes sense, as clams casino has a bit more going on than, say, the more understated clams oreganata. That bit, in fact, is mostly made up of bacon, cooked bell peppers and onions. They are joined by Parmesan, fresh parsley, dried oregano, garlic and plenty of butter. With so many delicious flavors involved, this mess of a dish is hardly a gamble.
Pad Woon Sen
As textural as it is colorful, Thai pad woon sen (stir-fried glass noodles) builds deep, nuanced flavor, one component at a time, but comes together quickly enough for a weeknight. Delicate, springy glass noodles get stir-fried with garlic, eggs and vegetables, and readily absorb the punchy flavors of this simple sauce (oyster sauce, fish sauce, soy sauce and a pinch of sugar). Though you’ll often find meat or seafood variations, this recipe omits the meat and focuses on the vegetables. (If you want to add meat, cube whatever you use into small chunks, stir fry them until golden brown and cooked through, then incorporate into the noodles with the vegetables.) The convenience of this dish is that it can be eaten at any temperature: hot, room temperature or cold, straight out of the fridge. For authenticity, be sure to source a glass noodle where the main ingredient is mung bean; check the ingredient list on the package to be sure.
Pepper-Crusted Flank Steak
Coarse crushed black peppercorns coat this flank steak for a zesty burst of flavor, complementing the rare grilled meat. It’s best to crush your own, in a mortar and pestle or spice mill. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Taverna Salad
This colorful, meal-of-a-salad from Lidey Heuck’s cookbook, “Cooking in Real Life” (S&S/Simon Element, 2024), is inspired by two dishes: classic Greek salad (also known as horiatiki) and fattoush, the Lebanese salad of vegetables and pieces of fried pita. The ingredient list may look long at first, but each ingredient contributes to the harmony of the salad: bell pepper and cucumbers for crunch; shallot, olives and capers for a bit of tang; chopped tomatoes for sweetness. Pan-fried halloumi adds richness and heft, but you can skip the searing process and instead opt for a 6-ounce block of feta, if desired. To save even more time, you can add a large handful of crumbled pita chips instead of making your own.
Hilib Suqaar (Beef and Vegetable Sauté)
A staple in Somali cuisine, this hearty beef and vegetable dish is found in restaurants and homes alike. Suqaar comes in several variations, all involving little pieces of meat. This recipe uses boneless beef stew meat, but there is also camel, lamb and chicken suqaar. While everyone has their own spin on suqaar, substituting in their favorite vegetables or additional spices of choice, the foundational ingredients are typically small cuts of meat, aromatic xawaash spice and vibrantly colored peppers. The peppers are the last ingredient added to the suqaar, so cook to your desired level of doneness. Hilib suqaar pairs well with a flatbread like muufo, or spooned over plain white rice or Somali-style spiced rice. If you’d like some heat, make a little basbaas cagaar, a fiery green hot sauce that can be served on the side.
Smoked Mackerel Rundown
Rundown is only one of many names for this earthy Jamaican stew of fish and vegetables simmered in coconut milk. It's “an easy dish with big rewards,” says Melissa Thompson, a British writer and the author of the “Motherland” cookbook (Interlink Books, 2022). She begins by slackening onions in a pan, followed by garlic, yellow yam, tomatoes and red bell peppers. Spices are half the transformation: ginger, allspice and cumin, built to warm; thyme, with its kiss of camphor; bay leaves for a piney depth. Coconut milk is poured over, and the heat is left to do its work. When the yam turns tender, the fish goes in — in Ms. Thompson’s version, adapted for life in England, smoked mackerel takes the place of more classic salted mackerel — and then the coconut milk gets another 10 minutes to “run down” and thicken to near cream. This dish is also known as dip-dip, because diners traditionally scoop up the stew with the likes of boiled dumplings and, here, green bananas, not yet sweet.
Sheet-Pan Japchae
Though readily available at restaurants today, japchae — the royal Korean stir-fried glass noodle dish — is traditionally a banquet affair, eaten just a few times a year at holidays and special occasions because the labor to produce it is so high. Each vegetable, among a rainbowed array, is ordinarily stir-fried individually, but in this variation, all of the vegetables roast together on the same sheet pan in color-blocked sections for ease and deliciousness. The roasted vegetables caramelize with less effort, and then need only to be tossed with the noodles and sauce, making japchae a dish within reach for any night of the week. The spinach, mushrooms and bell pepper recall key flavors of typical japchae, but you can use whatever vegetables you have on hand or prefer. Frozen spinach might not be a conventional ingredient, but it roasts beautifully and ends up tasting almost like umami-rich kale chips or roasted seaweed. You can add a drop of toasted sesame oil, if you’d like, but the toasted sesame seeds here lend enough of that quintessential aromatic nuttiness that makes japchae taste so regal.
Chicken Perloo
The supremely comforting one-pot rice dish, perloo (pronounced every which way, including PER-low, PER-la and per-LOO), is a Lowcountry staple with roots in West Africa. This Charleston version from “Rodney Scott’s World of BBQ” by Rodney Scott and Lolis Eric Elie (Clarkson Potter, 2021) calls for two key ingredients: Charleston Gold rice, an heirloom grain, and leftover smoked chicken. Feel free to use arborio rice or another short-grain variety if you can’t get Charleston Gold; and you can buy the smoked chicken from your local smoke shop or BBQ restaurant, or in a pinch, use grocery store rotisserie chicken. You’ll just want to compensate for the absence of smokiness by adding a pinch of smoked paprika, a whisper of fire.
Jocón (Chicken and Tomatillo Stew)
Jocón — whose name comes from jok’, meaning to grind or mash in Mayan K’iche’ — is a fresh chicken and tomatillo stew that is popular throughout Guatemala. The stew stems from Maya culture but some of its ingredients today, like sesame seeds and chicken, were likely introduced by Spanish colonizers. Some Maya groups also made theirs more spicy, or with red tomatoes rather than tomatillos, depending on in which part of the country they lived. This bright recipe is from Jorge Cárdenas, an owner of Ix Restaurant in Brooklyn, who was taught by his Maya grandmother to make it. This soup base is blended until creamy, but there can be some variety in texture, depending on how someone grinds the seed mixture and purées the soup itself. Though the tomatillos, peppers, onions and jalapeño are typically scorched on a comal or pan, this recipe makes the process easier by broiling them in a sheet pan.
Cajun-Style Shrimp Alfredo
Fettuccine Alfredo is an Italian classic. Its luscious sauce is traditionally created using only two primary ingredients: butter and Parmesan. When stirring a large quantity of cheese into pasta, the key to achieving a fully emulsified sauce — a creamy consistency — is making sure to save and utilize some of the pasta cooking water. This recipe gives the dish a Cajun spin by adding spiced shrimp, celery, bell pepper, onion, garlic and jalapeño, finishing it with a sharp hit of Creole mustard. If you can’t find Creole mustard, a mix of Dijon and whole-grain mustards works well.
Sausage Smash Burgers
The delightful characteristics of a beef smash burger — thin, quick-cooking patties with a superbly caramelized ragged edge — are applied here to Italian-style sausage. (The stress relief from smashing food is yet another smash burger perk.) Mayo smeared on soft brioche buns along with a tangle of sautéed sweet peppers and onions top the patties, making this a bit like the sausage and peppers of the burger world. Optional oregano adds a fresh herbal accent. Each bite is savory, rich, sweet and smashingly craveable. These sandwiches are delicious all by themselves, but if you’d like a side, serve with a green salad or French fries.
Chicken Spaghetti
This comforting casserole is a staple at picnics and potlucks across the American South, and it’s no wonder why. Creamy, cheesy noodles are tossed with tender bits of chicken, tomatoes and chiles, then topped with even more cheese and baked until bubbly. There have been many iterations of this dish over the years: Some recipes call for Velveeta and condensed cream of mushroom soup, while Craig Claiborne’s childhood recipe calls for a quarter pound of ground beef and pork in addition to a whole chicken. In this version, a flavorful combination of Cheddar and Parmesan are used, and milk and chicken stock thickened with a roux stand in for the canned soup. Feel free to use whatever kind of cooked chicken you like — leftover roast chicken, rotisserie chicken or a couple chicken breasts you baked just for the occasion. Chicken spaghetti is the perfect casserole to prepare ahead of time and freeze, making it ideal for large gatherings or for stocking a loved one’s freezer (see Tip).
Pastelitos
When my mother, Rosa Fernandez, immigrated from the Dominican Republic to New York to be with my father, she brought her grandmother’s recipe for pastelitos along with her. Most Latin American countries have their own versions of a savory pie; stuffed with spiced meat and deep-fried, pastelitos are the Dominican Republic’s take. Variations on the filling exist throughout the island, the most common of which is ground beef (but you can swap in any ground meat of your choice). Street vendors and restaurants in the Dominican Republic and New York sell these savory pies year-round, but many home cooks save them for special occasions. Though dough is traditionally made from scratch, this recipe uses store-bought dough disks instead, for convenience and ease. Usually, one disk is folded to create half-moon shapes, but in this recipe the disks are cut in half and folded to create small triangles, which makes them the perfect bite to serve to guests.
Chicken Vindaloo
Tangy and tongue tingling from Kashmiri red chiles, vinegar and garlic, chicken vindaloo is spicy enough to make you take notice, but not so much that it overpowers the sweet and sour flavors or the subtle warmth of the cloves, cumin and cinnamon. Vindaloo is a Goan recipe adapted from carne de vinha d’alhos, a Portuguese dish in which meat is marinated in garlic and wine or vinegar. In Goa, vindaloo is prepared with pork, while the Western version is typically made with chicken, as it is here. Toasting and grinding whole spices will yield the most traditional and vibrant vindaloo, but if you don’t have a spice grinder or a mortar and pestle, don’t fret — we’ve also provided the amounts of ground spices to use. The optional tomato paste, while not conventional, helps temper the chiles’ heat, but leave it out if you like your food fiery. Serve with basmati rice or yellow rice and naan.