Lunch
2782 recipes found
Pasta With Feta and Green Olives
Bold, briny and tangy, this 15-minute pasta is full of personality. Olives are first slightly blistered in oil, drawing out their brininess, then crumbled feta is stirred into the pasta at the end until melty. Keep the feta chunky when breaking it apart so that the squares become soft and creamy, tasting almost baked. Castelvetrano olives are best here for their meaty texture and gentle flavor, but you can also use your preferred olive. Smash them with the flat side of a chef’s knife — or even the heel of your palm in a pinch — then use your fingers to pluck the olive flesh off the pit. Any stubborn meat clinging to the pit is fair game to be eaten then and there.
Spaghetti all'Assassina (Spicy Singed Tomato Pasta)
This spicy one-pot pasta dish is common on menus in Bari, Italy, but can easily be prepared at home. Like many classic dishes, there are a couple versions of its origin story. According to one, a distracted chef accidentally left his pasta cooking until the sauce burned, while another attributes the recipe title to the dish’s killer spiciness. The method involves treating spaghetti as you would risotto: Heat some garlic, red-pepper flakes and tomato paste in oil, then add the pasta and cook it gently, slowly adding tomato broth little by little. Once the pasta soaks up the flavorful liquid, it starts to char. Bari is famous for serving this dish extra “piccante,” but at home, you can make it as mild or spicy as you wish.
Pressure Cooker Chipotle Chicken Pozole
A pressure cooker is the perfect tool for making a quick pozole that tastes like it has simmered for a long time. Traditional red pozole usually requires toasting and puréeing dried chiles for a flavorful broth, but this one relies on canned chipotles for smoky complexity. Chipotles can be fiery, so feel free to use fewer peppers if you’re concerned about the heat, but don’t skimp on the adobo sauce: It’s milder than the peppers and is packed with loads of smoky, garlicky flavor. Serve the soup in bowls with plenty of crumbled cheese, diced avocado and crushed chips, for topping. The slow-cooker version of this dish uses bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, carrots and celery, is available here.
Spaghetti With Burrata and Garlic-Chile Oil
Burrata — a cousin of mozzarella with a creamy core — is a splurge, but it does all the heavy lifting in this simple dish, adding a rich finish that renders a basic bowl of whole-wheat noodles sophisticated. A spicy-sweet seasoned oil made by sautéing fennel, garlic and red-pepper flakes in good-quality olive oil over low heat is drizzled over the top, complementing the velvety texture of the cheese and the nuttiness of the noodles.
Sausage and Peppers Pasta With Broccoli
The classic Italian combination of sausage and peppers creates a satisfying and easy weeknight meal when combined with pasta. Broccoli is a fantastic nutritious addition that adds texture and cooks up quickly, or you can opt for broccolini or broccoli rabe if you want a more assertive vegetable. Sweet Italian pork sausage is used here, but there's no need to feel tied to the recipe: Substitute with spicy Italian sausage for extra heat, use chicken-apple sausage for a healthier take, or swap in fresh chorizo or breakfast sausage to turn this dinner into brunch.
Creamy Avocado Pesto Pasta
The addition of avocado lends a lovely creamy texture to this pesto. The ripe fruit imparts richness to the sauce, while nutty roasted pepitas add a deep toasty flavor. If you can only find raw pepitas, simply toss them with olive oil and salt, then toast in a skillet over medium-low heat, stirring, until they start to pop and turn golden brown. Shower the dressed pasta with more crunchy pepitas for a nice contrast to the velvety sauce. Leftover pesto can be refrigerated for two days; press the surface with plastic wrap to avoid discoloration (any browned areas on top should be scraped off before using). The pesto also makes a tasty avocado toast, sandwich spread or crudité dip.
Cheesy White Bean-Tomato Bake
For those of you who love lasagna's edges, where sticky tomato meets crisp cheese, this whole dish is for you — even the middle. A tube of tomato paste here mimics the deep flavors of sun-dried tomato. Frying a few generous squeezes caramelizes the tomato's sugars and saturates the olive oil, making a mixture that's ready to glom onto anything you stir through it. Here, it’s white beans, though you could add in kale, noodles, even roasted vegetables. Then, all that’s left to do is dot it with cheese and bake until it’s as molten or singed as you like. Serve with bread and a bitter-green salad.
Soy Sauce Noodles With Cabbage and Fried Eggs
This version of soy sauce noodles, an iconic Cantonese dish commonly enjoyed for breakfast or lunch at dim sum, is hearty enough for dinner, too. While the traditional dish features bean sprouts and often garlic chives, this recipe uses cabbage, which provides a lovely textural crunch, and plenty of scallions for an aromatic punch. The soy sauce seasoning is a simple mix of regular and dark soy sauce (or lăochōu in Cantonese). It gives the noodles its signature deep color. If you can’t find dark soy sauce, tamari works well, too. This dish is traditionally made with thin egg noodles, but in a pinch, any dried wheat noodles will do the job.
Green Bean and Tofu Salad With Peanut Dressing
Inspired by the combination of peanut sauce with vegetables in southeast Asia, found in dishes such as gado gado in Indonesia and summer rolls in Vietnam, this streamlined salad would work just as well as a vegetarian main dish to eat with rice or noodles. The green beans are cooked for only a short while so that they stay crunchy. If you prefer floppy beans, you can cook them longer. And if you want something more refreshing and don’t want to turn on the stove, you can skip the beans altogether and use cut-up cucumbers and tomatoes instead.
Air-Fryer Tofu
Much like air-fryer French fries, tofu becomes perfectly crunchy in the air fryer without the need for deep-frying or an abundance of oil. This recipe takes a cue from Eric Kim’s crispy tofu nuggets, using potato starch to create a crackly exterior. The potato starch and salt coating, as well as the circulating high heat, helps evenly draw out the moisture. Similar to many air fryer recipes, the tofu benefits from being tossed or shaken halfway through to ensure even cooking. If using a smaller air fryer, cooking spray helps prevent the cubes from clumping when piled into the basket. For a full meal, serve with rice and a squeeze of lime for an extra shot of brightness.
Miso-Butter Mushrooms With Silky Eggs
This dish brings all-day breakfast vibes. The earthy, robust flavors of mushrooms are intensified with an unapologetically savory miso butter. (Tip: Make extra and store in the fridge to season roasted veggies or noodles.) Leaving the mushrooms whole saves preparation time and also ensures that they remain plump and juicy inside. The silky eggs are made like Australian cafe-style scrambled eggs, where they are barely cooked, for only seconds, resulting in a custardy finish. If you are looking for some greenery, stir spinach leaves through the hot mushrooms and let the residual heat wilt them.
Crunchy Greens With Carrot-Ginger Dressing
This recipe draws inspiration from the sunny-orange flavor of green salads with carrot-ginger dressing at Japanese American restaurants. The pulpy, aromatic dressing may be the star, but a salad is only as good as its lettuce. After washing and thoroughly spin-drying the greens in a salad spinner (alternatively, you can pat them dry in a clean kitchen towel), one way to maximize their crunch before adding the dressing is to refrigerate them, covered, for at least 30 minutes. Little Gem has a sweet, juicy sturdiness, but regular packaged mixed greens, baby spinach and chopped romaine hearts work, too.
Tabbouleh
We think of tabbouleh as a bulgur salad with lots of parsley and mint. But real Lebanese tabbouleh is a lemony herb salad with a little bit of fine bulgur, an edible garden that you can scoop up with romaine lettuce heart leaves or simply eat with a fork. This will keep for a day in the refrigerator, though the bright green color will fade because of the lemon juice.
Masala Black-Eyed Peas
Tender, creamy, earthy black-eyed peas spruced up with ginger, garlic, chiles and hefty spices like Kashmiri red chile powder, cumin seeds and garam masala result in a comforting, piquant main. This dish is equally suitable for solo dining — the simple preparation results in versatile leftovers that can be had on toast, with eggs or cooked shredded meats — or for feeding a crowd. The cooking method is typical for beans and peas across South Asia, and the recipe works just as well with any cooked beans from chickpeas, kidney beans, peas or whatever cooked or canned variety may be handy.
Pasta With Fresh Tomatoes and Goat Cheese
This pasta’s sauce comes together using the same trifecta found in lemon-ricotta pasta: a juicy fruit, a creamy cheese and a salty cheese. This recipe makes good use of those summer tomatoes with juices just barely contained by their thin skins. The creamy cheese is goat cheese, whose tang balances the sweetness of the tomatoes. Parmesan adds salty depth, while herbs and red-pepper flakes complete the dish. For a more filling pasta, feel free to add shrimp, corn or green beans to the boiling pasta in the last few minutes of cooking.
Chile-Crisp Chickpea Rice Bowls
These rice bowls are both a comfort and a thrill to eat. They star chickpeas sizzled in chile crisp, a Chinese condiment made of oil, chiles and a variety of textural and umami-packed ingredients, such as fried shallots and garlic, sesame seeds, and preserved black beans. You could snack on the electrifyingly tingly chickpeas solo, or make them into a meal with rice and a juicy mixture of tomatoes, celery, cilantro and soy sauce. You can swap out the celery for other crunchy vegetables, like bok choy, cucumbers or snap peas, but keep the tomatoes; their sweetness provides reprieve from the spicy chickpeas.
Silken Tofu With Spicy Soy Dressing
This recipe is inspired by the many cold silken tofu dishes from East Asia, like Japanese hiyayakko and Chinese liangban tofu. This no-cook dish is a handy one to have up your sleeve, especially for warm evenings when the desire to cook is nonexistent. Silky soft tofu is draped in a punchy soy dressing, creating a lively dish with little effort. The tofu is ideally served cold, but 10 minutes at room temperature can take the edge off. Make it your own with other fresh herbs such as Thai basil, mint or shiso leaves, or add crunch with fried shallots or roasted peanuts. A salty, fermented element like kimchi, pickled radish or ja choi, also known as zha cai, a Sichuan pickled mustard root, would work well, too. One block of silken tofu is usually enough to feed two people, but for a more substantial meal, serve it with hot rice or noodles to create a pleasing contrast of temperatures. To get vegetarian recipes like this one delivered to your inbox, sign up for The Veggie newsletter .
Cheesy French Toast With Kimchi
When French toast meets kimchi grilled cheese, we arrive at a surprising and joyous union. While any bread can be used here, choosing a soft, plump variety like brioche or milk bread will ensure that the center of the sandwich becomes super custardy. The trickiest part of this recipe is getting the cheese to melt before the toast gets too golden; American cheese melts faster, but other firm cheeses like Cheddar or Monterey Jack work, too. Combining grated cheese with the kimchi encourages faster, even melting, while cooking on low heat and covering with a lid slows browning. If you do find that the outside of your toast is getting too dark before your cheese has melted, simply place the sandwich in a 300-degree oven. (You can also do this to keep your sandwich warm if you are making more than one.)
One-Pan Creamed Spinach With Eggs
This pantry-powered dish brings together the decadence of creamed spinach with the comfort of baked eggs. Big flavor with little effort, this recipe requires no chopping and just a handful of staple ingredients: Frozen spinach is combined with cream cheese and garlic powder to create a wonderfully aromatic and silky base for the eggs to nestle and steam within. Covering the eggs while they cook will give you irresistibly soft whites and gooey yolks. If you’d like a little spice, finish with some red-pepper flakes or chile oil.
Harissa and White Bean Chili
The key to achieving depth of flavor in this fresh, nontraditional, 30-minute chili recipe is layering ingredients with bold condiments that do most of the work for you. Here, soy sauce and harissa are used to provide umami, spice and heat. Finish the chili as you’d like, topping it with all of the suggestions below, or skipping the yogurt and feta to keep it vegan. The chili will thicken as it sits, so add a little water when reheating. If you don’t like tomato skins or don’t want to buy fresh tomatoes, substitute 2 tablespoons of tomato paste for the tomatoes, adding it with the harissa. For a more substantial meal, serve with rice or bread, or double the recipe for leftovers.
Breakfast Tofu Scramble
This tofu scramble is as good for breakfast with coffee and pancakes as it is for dinner with rice and roasted vegetables. And it’s a cinch to make, even with just one eye open: Sear large slabs of tofu, then break them into irregular pieces. The craggy edges of the tofu absorb a seasoning mixture that’s reminiscent of breakfast sausage: sweet from maple syrup, herbaceous from sage, and spicy from hot sauce and black pepper. Feel free to add vegetables that are already cooked, or that cook in 2 minutes, along with the maple-sage mixture, but if you do so, you may want to increase the seasoning accordingly.
Gilgeori Toast (Korean Street Toast With Cabbage and Egg)
Gilgeori toast, which literally means “street toast” in Korean, is a popular salty-sweet egg sandwich sold by many street-food vendors in Korea. For many who grew up there, it's a nostalgic snack, reminiscent of childhood. Eaten for breakfast or lunch, it’s quick, easy and adaptable. If you don’t have cabbage on hand, toss in any vegetables you have that would add crunch and flavor, such as sliced scallions or julienned zucchini. For a modern twist, try substituting the sugar with different flavors of jam, or dress the sandwich up with your favorite condiments and sandwich fixings.
Bombay Frittata
The writer Nik Sharma reimagines the spiced Indian omelettes his mother used to make him in his Mumbai childhood with this frittata, drawn from his first cookbook, “Season.” It incorporates garam masala, red-pepper flakes, onions and fresh herbs into the egg mixture, which is sprinkled with paneer and stuck in the oven for about 25 minutes. The pop of garam masala and the red-pepper flakes give each bite a nice jolt. This one is even better the next day.
Buffalo White Beans
This spicy-tangy vegetarian skillet comes together quickly, helped along by pantry ingredients and a few hardy vegetables. Don’t skimp on the butter! Classic Buffalo flavor depends on not just the vinegary hot sauce but also a rich butter base. Celery leaves make a fresh herbal topping; if your stalks don’t have leaves, grab some extras from the middle of the bunch.