Labor Day
306 recipes found
Tom Collins
This classic Tom Collins cocktail is an easy-to-make refresher. A pared-down garnish of a lemon wheel and cherry keeps the focus on the citrusy gin.
The Perfect Negroni
This Perfect Negroni recipe is a classic Italian cocktail worth knowing. The Negroni's ingredients are gin, Campari, and vermouth—but its flavor is complex.
Basil Vodka Gimlet Cocktail
This simple, refreshing gimlet cocktail is a pitch-perfect blend of basil, fresh lime juice, and vodka that was made for sipping outside with friends.
Blackberry Caipirinha
This blackberry caipirinha has a bold hue and complex fruity flavor for a cocktail sure to brighten your happy hour. Grab your muddler and enjoy!
Turkey Burgers
Turkey burgers are much leaner than hamburgers, but they can be dry and dull. Moisten them by adding ketchup and a bit of grated onion to the ground turkey — or mayonnaise and a bit of mustard. The idea is to emphasize condiments, and keep the turkey moist.
Grilled Chicken Wings With Provençal Flavors
Like most chicken parts, wings are best grilled in two stages. Start them over indirect heat, away from the hottest part of the grill. Cook them there, more or less undisturbed, until most of their fat is rendered and they’re just about cooked through. This takes only 10 or 15 minutes, especially if you cut the wings into sections first (more on this in a second). At this point they’ll be pale and not especially appetizing, but move them over to the hot part of the grill, brown them under a watchful eye, and they’ll turn gorgeous.
Southern Pan-Fried Chicken
In this recipe, Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock call for an overnight brine for the chicken and a further buttermilk bath that should last for 8 to 12 hours. That’s a lot of unattended prep time before you get around to frying them in a slurry of lard and butter flavored with country ham. This is a time commitment, but the result — cooked in a cast-iron pan — is food to impress, and impress deeply, a dish made of humble ingredients that would be welcome on the finest china. Even better? It’s just as good cold as it is hot.
Crostini of Rabbit With Mache and Green Almonds
Lamb Meatballs with Mint
The Brasserie's Gazpacho
Best Peach Cobbler
Everyone has a different idea about what a cobbler should be. Biscuit-topped? Double-crusted? Cakelike? We’re not here to cast a vote, merely to present a simple Southern cake-style cobbler that makes the most of ripe summer peaches (or the frozen ones languishing in the back of your freezer). All you really need is a bowl, a saucepan, a baking pan and a spoon. This recipe is all about showcasing the fruit, so when you transfer the batter to the pan, it will not completely cover the bottom, nor will it cover the top of the peaches. As it bakes, the batter will rise up along the sides of the pan and through the peaches, developing a crisp exterior and tender interior. If you'd like a taller cobbler with a higher cake-to-fruit ratio, do as many readers do, and double the batter.
Coleslaw With Red Pepper
John Egerton's Roasted Corn
Macaroni Salad With Lemon and Herbs
Consider this a macaroni salad for the 21st century: Like the original, it’s a welcome accompaniment to picnic fare and pairs with virtually anything off the grill. But this version also happens to be bright, acidic and herbaceous. The traditional elements have been preserved — elbow macaroni, mayonnaise and a pinch of sugar are mandatory — but they’ve been bolstered by bright flavors: lemon zest, tangy capers and pickles, crunchy celery and tons of fresh herbs. It goes lighter on mayonnaise than the original, swapping in tangy buttermilk for a dressing that is more glossy than gloopy. It can be served straight from the fridge or at room temperature. A splash of water stirred in restores its silky sheen.
Green Goddess Pasta Salad
Cheese-filled tortellini serve as a soft, plush base for this comforting pasta salad, which is studded with sweet sugar-snap peas and sliced fennel. The herb-flecked green goddess dressing is creamy and rich, with a tartly pungent edge from garlic and lemon juice. Like all pasta salads, this benefits from being made a few hours ahead, so the pasta can absorb most flavor from the dressing. But don’t add the vegetables until just before serving so they maintain their crunch.
Classic Pasta Salad With Mozzarella, Avocado and Basil
With its colorful jumble of tomatoes, avocado, olives, mozzarella and cucumber, this has everything you’ve ever wanted in a pasta salad. But feel free to customize the ingredients to suit your own tastes (see Tip), and to add lemon and salt to the dressing to taste. As long as you don’t overcook the pasta, and add it while still hot to the dressing, you really can’t go wrong. Make this a few hours ahead so the flavors have a chance to meld, but be sure not to add the avocado until just before serving.
Strawberry Cheesecake Bars
Great for picnics or potlucks, these portable cheesecake bars incorporate cooked berries directly into the custard, which means they take on a rosy hue. You can even add a few drops of red food coloring if you want to make up for out-of-season berries, which are less vibrantly colored, or if you just want a livelier result. Feel free to use frozen berries in place of fresh, though you’ll need to thaw them fully before beginning the process.
Strawberry Spoon Cake
This unfussy cake with a top layer of jammy strawberries is so gooey it’s best to serve the whole thing with a spoon. The batter comes together quickly with minimal effort, using basic pantry ingredients and a small handful of berries — frozen or fresh. If you’re using frozen, be sure to defrost them in the microwave first. Extract as much juice as possible from the fruit by macerating and mashing it, so that it lends the cake additional moisture while baking. Add a dash of freshly ground cardamom or ground ginger on top before baking it off, if you like, or some ribbons of fresh basil once it’s hot out of the oven. Whatever embellishments you decide on, burrowing warm spoonfuls of this cake beside scoops of vanilla ice cream is the most important thing.
Salted Apricot-Honey Cobbler
Unlike most cobblers, which ask you to chop or slice the fruit, this one is meant to preserve the integrity of the apricots, which bake until totally tender, jammy and saucy, while still maintaining their shape and texture. The idea is to spoon out one of the barely sweetened, oaty shortcakes from the pan and then top it with the roasted, honey-sweetened fruit. Ice cream is optional but recommended.
Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Cake
With just a 9-by-13 pan, a spoon and four store-bought ingredients, you can make an ice cream cake that’s creamy, crunchy and fudgy in every bite. It starts with crushed chocolate-mint cookies that are covered with mint chocolate chip ice cream. Next, it’s topped with a layer of ice cream sandwiches, with their cakey cookies and vanilla ice cream. Follow that with more mint chip ice cream, and you’ve made a six-layer cake without breaking a sweat. Feel free to experiment here: Swap out the mint cookies for snickerdoodles, pretzels or broken waffle cones, and the mint-chip ice cream for coffee, peanut butter or strawberry ice cream — or any combination that sounds good to you. Slice the cake into pieces big or small, then drizzle them with hot fudge or Magic Shell. This cake serves a crowd, but you can halve the ingredients and build it in an 8-by-8-inch pan for a smaller group.
Plum Cobbler Bars
What's not to love about a juicy plum filling surrounded by plenty of buttery streusel? In this simple recipe, you have to cook down the plums to be thick enough, but the process is relatively hands off, and the flavor of the slow-simmered fruit is well worth it. You can cut the cobbler easily into bars, as the name implies, but the filling stays a bit soft, so you may prefer to eat them with a fork. They're excellent with ice cream, but many like them best topped with a drizzle of cold heavy cream.
Rocky Road Ice Cream Bars
This recipe takes the classic American ice cream and turns it into simple, festive bars. They start with a no-bake chocolate cookie crust that gets topped with chocolate ice cream, salty toasted nuts and, of course, mini marshmallows, making this a treat everyone will love. Using a rich, dense ice cream is key to these bars, so buy a premium ice cream for this recipe if you can, since some supermarket versions may have a lot of air incorporated. Serve the bars straight from the freezer (with napkins!) or on dessert plates with a drizzle of hot fudge sauce, and watch them disappear.
No-Bake Chocolate Mousse Bars
Ethereal and ready to melt in your mouth, chocolate mousse bars are easy to make and even easier to eat. With so few ingredients, it’s important to use a chocolate you would be perfectly happy to snack out of hand. The instant espresso powder is optional but adds depth to this simple dessert. To cut beautiful, neat slices, use a long sharp knife warmed in hot water and wiped clean before each cut.
Yellow Sheet Cake With Chocolate Frosting
This is the kind of dessert worth dreaming about: a buttery yellow cake topped with a chocolate-sour cream frosting, made doubly rich with cocoa powder and melted chocolate. The batter may seem thin when you spread it in the pan, but, once baked, it rises to perfection. It’s not a towering, lofty cake — it’s not meant to be — but when it’s covered with a generous layer of frosting, it makes for the ideal cake-to-icing ratio. For a perfect cake, make sure designated “room temperature” ingredients truly are; this helps ensure that the batter is fully incorporated so the cake bakes evenly.