Lunch
2842 recipes found
One-Pot Bean and Tomato Stew With Cod
This hearty white bean stew comes together super-quickly thanks to canned beans, a true pantry hero. Onion, carrots and sweet bell peppers sizzle in olive oil with garlic and anchovies to start the rich sauce. Evanescent but memorable, the anchovies disappear as they cook but lend their prized saltiness and savory depth. There’s a double dose of tomatoes from the use of tomato paste, which cooks until caramelized, and fresh sweet cherry tomatoes. Cod fillets are added on top of the thickened stew and steam gently until flaky and juicy. The meal comes together in one pot; it’s low-effort but full of layered flavor.
Creamy Artichoke and Charred Scallion Pasta
For a comforting, veg-forward meal, this one-pot recipe transforms dozens and dozens of charred scallions into a cheesy pasta dish. Through charring, fresh scallions transition from sharp and savory to smoky, mild and sweet, creating the perfect flavor foundation for a pasta sauce. To speed up the charring process, start with a smoking-hot pan, oil-coated scallions and a grill press or skillet to weigh down the scallions and increase surface contact. For additional body and texture, meaty canned artichokes are stirred with the pasta, along with fresh lemon zest and juice to brighten. A shower of Parmesan at the end will lead to an irresistibly silky, creamy sauce.
Sizzled Scallion Rice With Sardines
This sardine rice recipe unites some likely kitchen inhabitants, such as onions, garlic and leftover rice, to make a quick, allium-perfumed weeknight dinner. Since fat is an excellent courier for flavor, giving the olive oil time with the aromatics and sardines ensures a satisfying amount of each ingredient's fragrance and flavor throughout the rice. Is it fried rice? Technically, yes, but the taste drifts toward the Caribbean. The dish stands alone, as any seafood fried rice can, but would also welcome a soft-boiled egg on top, if you’re up for getting another pot involved.
White Bean, Feta and Quick-Pickled Celery Salad
Pickling celery for just fifteen minutes is a game changer: The acid tames its grassy notes, brings out savoriness and transforms its texture from simply crunchy to crisp-tender. Here, celery is quickly pickled with red onion to create a sweet-and-sour foundation for this hearty cannellini bean salad. The cumin seeds are optional, but they add a deeply earthy and aromatic edge to the pickles; feel free to substitute or experiment with other whole spices such as caraway, coriander, fennel or star anise. Creamy and salty feta balances the sharpness of the pickles. This is a great no-cook dish for easy weeknight eating, but it also improves with age, so can be made ahead for potlucks, picnics or other gatherings.
Ginger Chicken and Rice Soup With Zucchini
A simple base of aromatic garlic, ginger, bay leaf and turmeric flavors this cozy and nourishing chicken soup. Tender chicken, zucchini and chewy brown rice provide bite and substance, and simmer together at the same pace. The rice will swell and soften in the broth as the soup sits, and you can cook it longer than called for to give this soup more of a stewy or even porridge-like texture, depending on your preference. Add more water or stock to thin the broth as needed if reheating. Serve with a drizzle of chile crisp or a squeeze of lemon and sprinkle of fresh cilantro.
Spiced Couscous With Fragrant Steamed Fish
Like any carb cooked in a tomato sauce, this dish is deeply comforting. Pearl couscous simmers in a spiced tomato base, absorbing its rich flavors while developing a lightly golden, crispy bottom, much like a tahdig. Just before the couscous finishes cooking, sea bass fillets are gently steamed on top, staying tender as they soak up the fragrant sauce. A final flourish of hot garlic oil, inspired by Cantonese steamed fish, adds warmth and depth. This meal is easy enough for a weeknight, but special enough for a celebration.
Chilled Tofu with Peanut Sauce
This no-cook recipe loosely follows the Chinese traditions of liangban tofu and bang bang sauce by topping cold, silken tofu with a fiery, tangy peanut sauce and raw celery. Eaten together, it is creamy and crunchy, hot and cold, intense and mild all at once. (The combination of peanut butter and celery might happily remind you of ants on a log, the childhood snack.) Eat with hot, steamed rice alongside, if you like.
Curried Red Bean Soup With Kale
This riff on classic Italian minestrone draws inspiration from rajma and maharage nu shaak, two red kidney bean curries with spiced, aromatic gravies, typically made with tomatoes (rajma is Hindi for kidney beans, and maharage is Swahili for beans). This version offers a perfect use case for black mustard seeds, which bloom in the oil to add a sharp, earthy flavor before the onions and garlic are added. This, along with a few other warming spices, helps create an aromatic tomato base for the kidney beans, pasta and greens. Using whole peeled tomatoes (preferably San Marzano) is key to achieving a brothy soup that still has body, but crushed tomatoes will work in a pinch.
Pork Laab
The magic of pork laab (also known as moo larb or laap) lies in the simple yet strikingly effective combo of fresh herbs and toasted rice to season this ground meat salad. Cilantro, scallions and mint balance the richness of the meat, while the nutty flavor of the ground rice — an essential component of laab — complements the zingy lime juice. Many Thai recipes call for ingredients that can be tough to find in the U.S., but this northern Thai salad is an outlier. You can opt for dried Thai chiles, if you’ve got them, or you can achieve your desired heat level by grinding up crushed red pepper.
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Cheesy, Crunchy, and Retro: Japan’s Iconic Pizza Toast
With toasted slices of thick shokupan—Japanese milk bread—slathered in a sweet, tangy tomato sauce and stacked high with pizza fixings, pizza toast is crunchy, cheesy, savory, and fantastically comforting.
Crispy Potato Quesadillas
Despite what many people think, quesadillas don’t always have cheese. In Mexico City, you can order a “quesadilla sin queso” with a variety of fillings, highlighting the regional debate around what constitutes a true quesadilla. This version embraces both worlds: It contains cheese, but it’s melted into a hearty potato and pea filling that makes these quesadillas more satisfying as a complete meal. The quick slaw on top, inspired by curtido (a vinegary cabbage salad popular throughout Central America), balances the richness of the quesadillas and provides a nice spicy crunch. If you have any slaw left over, it keeps for up to four days in the refrigerator and is versatile enough to serve with plain rice or grilled meat or fish throughout the week.
Shami Kebab (Crispy Beef and Chickpea Patties)
Widely considered the Rolls-Royce of Desi kebabs, shami kebabs have a silky smooth, almost creamy texture, with a thin outer shell that forms at the time of frying, giving the kebabs structure. The key to achieving the crisp exterior and creamy interior is cooking well-marbled chunks of beef with spices and chana dal until tender, then running the mix through a food processor. This paste-like mixture is used to form round patties, slightly smaller than hockey pucks. You can dip them in egg and shallow-fry right away, or freeze them, uncooked, to enjoy later. Like samosas, they freeze well, so are often found side by side at tea time, quickly fried up as a snack for unexpected guests. They also make for excellent sides at lunch or dinner, especially on special occasions. Sandwich a leftover kebab or two in a potato roll, add ketchup and a fried egg for bun kebab, the ubiquitous Pakistani street food.
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Taco Bell Who? This Taco Rice Bowl Is the Cheesy Fix You Need
The iconic flavors of Tex-Mex-style taco filling—all piled on top of Japanese short-grain rice. Despite its Tex-Mex appearance, the dish is a signature Okinawan meal that tells a deeper story of how war and the US military have influenced local cuisine.
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Step Aside Steak, This Grilled Peach and Burrata Salad Is Dominating My Summer Cookouts
This smoky-sweet grilled peach salad—with creamy burrata, salty prosciutto, and a fish sauce–spiked vinaigrette—proves fruit belongs on the grill and on your dinner plate.
Dak Bulgogi (Korean BBQ Chicken)
One great joy of bulgogi, marinated grilled beef that translates to “fire meat,” is that you can prepare it in advance and, when you’re ready to eat, have dinner on the table in under 10 minutes. This stovetop chicken variation, dak bulgogi, provides the same workday convenience and savory-sweet flavors, thanks to soju, an alcohol which tenderizes the meat, and maple syrup, which caramelizes beautifully without burning. Apple juice extends those ingredients and allows room for the subtle umami — known in Korean as gamchil mat — from garlic, ginger and scallions to gently season the chicken. Don’t skip the salt, pepper and lemon at the end; they complete this deliciously brisk dish.
Easy Chicken Torta
This hearty sandwich, based on a classic Mexican torta, strikes a perfect balance between crunchy toasted bread, flavorful chile-seasoned chicken cutlets pressed thin and pan-fried, and creamy avocado, mayo and refried beans with brightness from a squeeze of lime. This recipe is designed to be simple and uses an egg-free cornstarch coating instead of traditional breading, allowing the flavor and texture of the chicken to shine through. While bollilo rolls are traditional and worth seeking out at a Mexican bakery or supermarket, Portuguese or French rolls make a fine substitute. Serve with your favorite salsa on the side for an extra punch of flavor and don’t skimp on the pickled jalapeños!
Easy Chickpea Salad
A bright zesty salad with crisp cucumbers and tender chickpeas inspired by the Levant, where chickpeas have been cultivated for millennia. Ready in a flash, this salad combines lemon and fresh aromatic herbs with a crunch and flavor that improves over time in the refrigerator, making it a great salad to bring to a picnic or potluck. Serve with warm pita bread, or spoon over rice. Instead of discarding the chickpea liquid (aquafaba), try making homemade vegan mayonnaise or even meringues. Leftovers keep beautifully for up to a week, and try this: mix in a touch of that homemade mayo for a delicious chickpea salad sandwich the next day.
Cilantro-Mint Chicken Lettuce Wraps
A Desi cilantro-mint chutney adds verdant, fiery flavors to tender shredded chicken in these herbaceous, tangy lettuce cups. The heat from the green chiles, warmth from the cumin and cooling sourness from lemon juice and Greek yogurt are stellar supporting acts for the otherwise everyday chicken breast, creating a chicken salad of sorts. Make the green chutney in advance and use any extra as an accent for other meals; it’s especially good with samosas, kebabs, fritters, on sandwiches, in yogurt and with any meal that includes rice and curry. Any leftover chicken salad is excellent for sandwiches or on its own.
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This 15-Minute Salad is Half Falafel, Half Hummus, and 100% Delicious
This creamy chickpea salad with tahini, lemon, herbs, and spices is perfect for sandwiches, pitas, or salads. A fast, plant-based lunch with falafel flair.
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The Best Way to Use Up Leftover Pork Is This Easy One-Pan Meal
Crispy pork and potatoes combine for a meal that's good any time of day.
Adana Meatballs
These meatballs are a take on classic Turkish kebabs in which the ground meat mixture is usually skewered and grilled. Here, the mixture is bulked up with bell peppers and onions — which keeps the meatballs plump and moist — and spiced with cumin, then formed into orbs and baked for a quick weeknight or even party-night meal. The ground meat option is flexible: Using all beef is a great option, rather than using half beef and half lamb. (But don’t swap in ground chicken or turkey, because both have added water and the mixture will be too wet to form meatballs.) You can serve the spread of meatballs, garlicky yogurt and herb salad alongside warm pita bread for guests to make their own sandwiches, or with fluffy rice.
Caramelized Carrot and Halloumi Salad
Salty bites of crisp, golden-brown halloumi play well with sweet and tender caramelized carrots and red onion in this warm salad that takes inspiration from fattoush. Here, kale and crunchy toasted pita add enough bulk to ensure this dish is satisfying enough for dinner. It’s all tied together with a simple vinaigrette that’s both earthy and herbaceous, thanks to the blend of herbs, sesame and sumac found in za’atar. If you’d like to make this salad vegan, feel free to skip the cheese.
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The Simple Lemony Pasta Salad You’ll Make on Repeat
This easy orzo pasta salad delivers bold flavor with minimal effort, thanks to a lemony vinaigrette, creamy chickpeas, and just the right amount of bitterness from radicchio.
Herby Pearl Couscous and Sugar Snap Pea Salad
The earthy and tangy flavors of tabbouleh serve as the loose inspiration for this lemony and herbaceous salad. Fresh parsley and mint are bright and grassy, offering a lovely textural contrast to the silky pearl couscous; dried mint adds depth. Juicy and sweet sugar snap peas supply a fresh crunch, with just a rough chop needed to release the inner peas. Allspice brings a moment of intrigue, both warm and complex, but you could substitute with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves or a little of each. This salad can be prepared up to several hours in advance (kept at room temperature); the flavors will meld and improve over time.