Labor Day

306 recipes found

Fruit Salad
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Jul 11, 2023

Fruit Salad

A bit of sugar and lime makes a standout fruit salad: The duo accentuates fruit’s flavors and sweetness while creating a syrup to gloss the fruit. Massage lime zest into the sugar so its oils release, then stir mixed fruit with the lime sugar and some lime juice. Taste and tweak until the result is electric. You could also add chopped mint or basil, ground cinnamon or coriander, vanilla bean seeds, chile flakes or grated fresh ginger.

20m4 to 6 servings
Lemon-Blackberry Shortcakes
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Jul 6, 2023

Lemon-Blackberry Shortcakes

Berry season is the time for shortcakes, a classic dessert with berries, whipped cream and freshly baked sconelike biscuits. Here, a bit of sweet-tart lemon curd, prepared up to a week in advance and perfect with blackberries, makes these particularly special. Serve these assembled, on individual dessert plates, or, if you prefer, set out all the elements for guests to build their own.

1h 15m6 servings
Paprika-Rubbed Pork Chops
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Jul 6, 2023

Paprika-Rubbed Pork Chops

A marinade based on salt, sugar, ground coriander and various red-pepper powders infuses these easily pan-cooked chops. Double or triple the marinade for use on any fish, fowl, meat or vegetables (eggplant is especially nice). These chops can also be prepared on the grill. They cook quickly – 2 minutes on each side – over medium-high heat. Take care, though: Loin chops are quite lean and become tough and dry when cooked over high heat.

1h 20m6 servings
Turmeric Potato Salad
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Jul 6, 2023

Turmeric Potato Salad

This French-style vinaigrette potato salad, infused with Indian flavors and finished with a tadka built on cumin and mustard seeds in oil, is a delicious picnic side, with or without the lettuce cups. Choose small, yellow-fleshed potatoes, such as Yukon, and top them with cherry tomatoes, sliced scallions, chiles and cilantro for a bright, perky and robust accompaniment to summer.

35m6 servings
7Up Sheet Cake
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Jun 13, 2023

7Up Sheet Cake

This old-fashioned Southern dessert, commonly seen at potlucks, church picnics and family barbecues, is a true center-of-the-table cake. Part lemon cake, part sheet cake, it uses 7Up in two ways: first, for moisture and, second, for leavening, replacing traditional leaveners, such as baking soda or baking powder. The carbonation in the soda helps the cake rise and keeps it tender. (If you don’t have 7Up, you can also use Sprite.) While this cake is traditionally made in a Bundt pan, this recipe uses a half sheet tray, which is perfect for feeding a crowd.

1h 15m12 to 16 servings
Pimento Cheese Dip
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Jun 6, 2023

Pimento Cheese Dip

This take on pimento cheese dip, a Southern favorite, brings together three cheeses (cream cheese, Cheddar and Colby Jack), mildly sweet pimentos and spicy hot sauce, then goes into the oven until deeply creamy. You could pair it with some crostini, but buttery Ritz crackers are especially good for scooping. They double down on this spread’s richness and make the dip irresistible enough to be a conversation piece for generations to come. 

35m8 to 12 servings
Oven BBQ Ribs
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May 26, 2023

Oven BBQ Ribs

Oven-baked ribs are a great way to enjoy barbecue flavor without stepping outside. This is a foolproof, supersimple recipe, using seasonings you probably already have in your pantry, plus store-bought barbecue sauce that caramelizes into a sticky-sweet, smoky finish. Instead of using traditional pork ribs, this recipe uses beef back ribs, which are juicier. If you can only find them in chunks, rather than a whole rack, that’s more than OK: Wrap the pieces in aluminum foil, which creates a moist environment that yields fall-off-the-bone meat, and start checking them early. When they start to shrink down and the meat pulls away from the bone with the gentlest tug of a fork, they’re ready.

3h 15m4 to 6 servings
Grilled Chicken Legs
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May 25, 2023

Grilled Chicken Legs

The best grilled chicken smells like summer. To achieve that charred aroma, you want to crisp the skin while cooking the meat through and keeping it juicy. Setting oil-slicked meat over direct, moderate heat and covering the grill prevents flare-ups, which can burn the skin before the meat loses its rawness. Because fire lends its own flavor, the chicken really doesn’t need anything more than salt and pepper, but if you want a little sweetness, savoriness and spice, you can brush on the simple soy glaze toward the end of cooking. As it heats, it caramelizes onto the skin and seeps into the meat. A final swipe of sauce over the chicken after it’s off the grill gives it a sticky shine.

35m8 to 10 servings
Pulled Pork
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Oct 5, 2022

Pulled Pork

This is party eating — and still easy enough to pull off for dinner whenever you want. Saucy and satisfying, it’s the type of dish that feels festive. Pulled pork from the American South ranges in styles, but usually balances the natural sweetness of the meat, slowly cooked until it slouches into tenderness, with tanginess and spice. Here, ground and whole dried chiles season the meat and blend into a sauce with fruity complexity and mild heat. The preparation is as inspired by barbecue pulled pork as it is by carne con chile rojo. That means that the glossy hunks and slivers of meat taste as good piled into buns as they do over rice or stuffed into tortillas.

4h 30m8 to 12 servings
Salted Margarita Bars
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Jul 1, 2021

Salted Margarita Bars

This edible cocktail is an ideal party dessert, mingling all the fun of a margarita — and its salted rim — with the efficiency of a slab pie. Key lime pie’s boozier, saltier cousin, it comes together quickly and maintains its consistency when frozen, making it a great make-ahead treat for a barbecue or a trip to the beach. Any tequila will work, but blanco is preferred for its milder taste. Don’t make the curd more than 10 minutes in advance, as the lime juice will start to thicken it, which could affect the bake.

2h 45m16 bars
Speculoos Cookie Butter Pie
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Mar 28, 2019

Speculoos Cookie Butter Pie

Traditionally served on St. Nicholas Day in Belgium and the Netherlands, crisp, gingerbread-like speculoos cookies have risen in popularity after airlines began offering them as mid-flight snacks. Cookie butter, a creamy spread, incorporate that cookie’s flavors. This easy pie uses crumbled speculoos (also known as speculaas) in its crust and the cookie butter in its filling, doubling up on the flavor of warm spices like cinnamon and ginger. The whole thing comes together in about 30 minutes. The pie is perfect all on its own, but if you want to dress it up, add some unsweetened whipped cream and a sprinkle of cookie crumbs. Avoid sweetened whipped cream, which would take this pie from sweet to cloying.

30m8 to 10 servings
Nigel Slater’s Raspberry Ripple Sandwich
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Aug 15, 2018

Nigel Slater’s Raspberry Ripple Sandwich

This sandwich is a joyously messy experience and nostalgic even if you didn’t grow up in England eating raspberry ripple ice cream (which is vanilla with a raspberry swirl, for the rest of us). The recipe originally comes from Eat, Slater’s book full of simple, narrative recipe ideas, leaving the amounts to your taste and imagination. This mini recipe is adapted slightly from Genius Desserts (Ten Speed Press, September 2018), one of 7 ways to turn a loaf of bread into dessert.

10mServes you, or people you love
Chocolate Cream Pie With Oreo Crust
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Aug 9, 2018

Chocolate Cream Pie With Oreo Crust

Chocolate wafers may be standard, but a buttery Oreo crumb crust is an even better base for this chocolate cream pie. A store-bought cookie crust filled with from-scratch custard is the perfect combination of simple and sophisticated, with a bit of nostalgia for good measure. Depending on the size of your pie plate, you may have some custard left over after filling the crust: It’s a perfect baker’s treat.

35m8 to 10 servings
Estela's Candied Sesame Seeds
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Jun 26, 2018

Estela's Candied Sesame Seeds

This is one of the more rewarding ways to spend 10 minutes. As you stir sesame seeds in a sticky syrup, suddenly the water disappears and a dry crystalline layer of sugar pops to the surface. At Estela, chef Ignacio Mattos’s curve-shattering restaurant in New York City, they roll scoops of caramelized white chocolate in the candied seeds, but the seeds are also just as good sprinkled over ice cream or paletas, or topping a brownie or a slice of cheesecake—anywhere you want a little crunchy sesame-flavored twinkle. Recipe from Genius Desserts: 100 Recipes That Will Change the Way You Bake (Ten Speed Press, September 2018). To read the whole story, go here, and to get the recipe for Dori Sanders' No-Churn Fresh Lemon Ice Cream, go here.

15mMakes about 1 pint (250g)
Dori Sanders’ No-Churn Fresh Lemon Ice Cream
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Jun 26, 2018

Dori Sanders’ No-Churn Fresh Lemon Ice Cream

When it’s too hot to make a custard, it’s nice to know that you can still have sweet-tart, bracing no churn lemon ice cream all the same. This recipe is perfect!

3h 10mMakes 3 cups (710ml)
Classic Lasagna
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Nov 2, 2017

Classic Lasagna

While not a 30-minute meal, this lasagna is quicker and more straightforward than most. If you’re in a real time crunch, use your favorite jarred red sauce. For greater success with the lasagna noodles, which have a tendency to stick together, boil them in the largest pot possible or work in batches — they need as much water as possible to move freely so they don’t clump. This lasagna can be assembled, baked and refrigerated up to five days ahead, or frozen up to a month ahead if wrapped tightly.

2h6 to 8 servings
Best Lemon Bars
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Jun 21, 2017

Best Lemon Bars

Lemon bars are all about contrast: sour lemon and sweet sugar, crumbly base and creamy topping, buttery crust and tart filling. Two common ingredients lift this recipe above the pack: baking powder for a fluffy filling and shredded coconut for a rich, round-tasting crust. (Once baked, the coconut flavor almost disappears.)  Bakers who avoid preservatives will find an easy version of homemade sweetened coconut in the tip below the recipe.) For thicker lemon squares, use the square baking pan; for thinner ones, the large rectangle. For an easy lemon tart, simply cut the recipe in half and bake it in an 8-inch round tart pan, pressing the crust up the sides.

1hAbout 2 to 3 dozen bars, depending on size
Ratatouille
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Feb 13, 2017

Ratatouille

In this classic Provençal dish, summer vegetables, like eggplant, onions, peppers, tomatoes and zucchini, are covered in olive oil and roasted separately, then all together, until they become a soft, harmonious stew. This recipe calls for seeding and peeling the tomatoes, which is a bit of work. But it’s worth it for the intensity of flavor and the velvety texture. Ratatouille takes some time to make, and tastes better the next day, so plan ahead. The upside is that it’s a perfect make-ahead dish for a party. You can store it in the refrigerator for up to 5 days, then gently reheat it, or bring it to room temperature before serving. This recipe is part of The New Essentials of French Cooking, a guide to definitive dishes every modern cook should master.

3h8 to 10 servings
Kristin Donnelly's Watermelon Agua Fresca
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Aug 31, 2016

Kristin Donnelly's Watermelon Agua Fresca

Bitters are an ingredient you can apply much more widely than you probably realize, because they won't beach themselves on top of everything else. They wriggle in and help existing flavors bloom, much like a subtle jolt of salt or acid or heat can. If you want to know if this riff really makes a difference, taste a little cup before and after adding the bitters. The drink will become fuller-flavored and more inviting, but in a hard to pin down way. Though the "before" cup will be good, it will likely taste two-dimensional by comparison. Adapted slightly from Modern Potluck (Random House, 2016).

Makes about 6 drinks
Simplest Grilled Shrimp
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May 27, 2016

Simplest Grilled Shrimp

Here is the easiest way to grill shrimp. It can be done on a gas or charcoal grill, with skewers or a grill basket or without. Whichever method you use, remember that shrimp cook quickly, particularly when they’re peeled. Larger shrimp are better for the grill.

20m4 servings
Grilled Roast Chicken With Spinach-Ricotta Crostini
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May 25, 2016

Grilled Roast Chicken With Spinach-Ricotta Crostini

This whole chicken cooked on the grill is truly a best-of-both-worlds recipe: You get the incredibly succulent meat and brittle-crisp, burnished skin of a roast chicken, combined with the deep smoky flavor of the grill. To make it, you essentially use your grill like an outdoor oven, cooking a whole splayed chicken in a skillet instead of directly on the grill grate. Splaying the bird first — that is, flattening the legs so they lay flat in the skillet — helps the dark meat cook quickly and evenly. The skillet helps to distribute the heat and captures the juices, which would otherwise incinerate in the fire. Those juices are then put to good use as a cooking medium for dill-flecked, garlicky spinach. The greens absorb all of the chicken drippings before being heaped upon ricotta-smeared crostini. Added bonus: You don’t have to worry about setting off your smoke detector. Here, the smoke stays in the grill with the bird, which is exactly where you want it.

5h 30m4 servings
Perfect Peach Pie
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Jul 7, 2015

Perfect Peach Pie

Eat a perfect peach under the summer sun and you'll experience the fruit at its messy, dripping, sugar-bright best. Rinse your chin and understand that no melon, apricot or blackberry can compete. But how often does this happen? For most of us, a great and truly perfect peach is a rare event. We can expect but one or two a season, for all our trying. Enter the pie. A peach pie can elevate good peaches to excellence and great ones to the sublime. Even a peach pie made with frozen fruit is a terrific thing. The addition of sugar helps; so, too, do a dash of lemon juice and a light sprinkle of nutmeg, which offers a slight bitterness to offset the sweet. Add a crown of vanilla ice cream for a perfect diner-style à la mode effect.

2h6 to 8 servings
Grilled Branzino with "Greek-Style Fish Sauce"
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Jun 15, 2015

Grilled Branzino with "Greek-Style Fish Sauce"

A whole grilled branzino is the perfect outdoor party centerpiece, and this recipe shines bright with a Greek-style vinaigrette and fresh oregano.

20mMakes one branzino (usually serves 2 people)
Strawberry Margarita on the Rocks
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Apr 6, 2015

Strawberry Margarita on the Rocks

We love a fruit cocktail made with real fresh fruit. This recipe for a strawberry margarita on the rocks uses real strawberries and no sweet and sour mix.

5mServes 2