Lunch
2782 recipes found
Party Board
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. You don’t need a recipe for a party board, which is a fine dinner for a Wednesday night. You don’t even need a no-recipe recipe. You need only what cheese is in the refrigerator, sliced or wedged or cubed, along with cured meats — I like rolled mortadella, spread inside with a little mayonnaise and dotted with pickled jalapeño — and a little bread or pile of crackers. Maybe add to the board some cherry tomatoes, halved and tossed in olive oil and good vinegar with salt and pepper? You could stuff them with mozzarella, if you have the time. Or celery, cut into batons? Carrots, likewise? Raw or roasted peppers, sliced? The chef Gabrielle Hamilton calls the assemblage a snack tray. In the name of romance, she once stacked Pringles on one, with a ramekin of Castelvetrano olives. Her swain, now her wife, Ashley Merriman, responded with “pepperoni cut as thin as fish scales and shingled just as neatly.” You could go with Jarlsberg, Triscuits and vodka sodas. Or smoked salmon, shaved asparagus, some crème fraîche with chives, dill and tarragon. A party board is what you make of it. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
Corn Salad With Tomatoes, Feta and Mint
Fresh raw corn shucked from the cob is ideal here. The juice from the tomatoes delivers just the right amount of acidity, so there’s no need for vinegar. Eat this as is, by the bowl, or toss it with cooked rice or beans for a more filling meal — you’ll want to add oil and vinegar accordingly. In midsummer, with peak-season produce, there is nothing better.
Kale Salad With Cranberries, Pecans and Blue Cheese
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. How about a kale salad? (Stick with me, please.) Just make a mustardy vinaigrette that’ll stand up to the greens — mustard, olive oil, a splash of lemon juice, salt and pepper — then drizzle it over clean, chopped kale with a host of big-flavored mix-ins that wink at whatever season you’re in without being dorky about it: dried cranberries or currants, say; pecans toasted with maple syrup and a pinch of cayenne; some crumbled blue cheese; a spray of croutons. Sweet, salty, spicy, sour. That and a chilled glass of red wine? Why don’t we eat salads for dinner more often? Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
Rice and Beans With Extras
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Maybe tonight is calling for simple rice and beans, with limes to squeeze over the plate, warm tortillas to scoop up the food? First, rinse a cup or two of rice and cook as you usually do. As it steams away, dice an onion and sweat it in a saucepan with a drizzle or two of olive oil set over medium-high heat. When the onion begins to go translucent, add a few cloves of garlic and, if you’d like, some crumbled sausage, ground beef or lamb, then cook until it has started to crisp and the onion has started to caramelize. Add a healthy dusting of cumin, some salt and pepper to taste, and allow it all to go muddy and fragrant. Splash the mixture with the orange juice, maybe half a cup, and allow it to cook down, almost to syrup. Then add a big can of black beans (drained, please) and stir to combine, turning down the heat and allowing the flavors to come together, perhaps using a spoon to mash some of the beans as they cook. Serve it all on top of the finished rice, adorned with wedges of lime and accompanied by warmed tortillas or buttered toast. I like some pickled jalapeños, cilantro and hot sauce on there, too. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
Italian Broccoli Salad
This adaptable make-ahead salad is a great instant lunch or side dish. It starts with raw broccoli florets and stems, thinly sliced into irregular shapes to create many textures. As the broccoli sits with salt and vinegar, it softens and becomes slaw. Its mellow flavor is contrasted by the loud ingredients typically found in an Italian sub or chopped salad, like shallots, pickled peppers, olives and provolone. Feel free to add more protein in the form of cured meats, chickpeas, lentils or mozzarella; vegetables like sweet tomatoes or iceberg lettuce; or basil.
Empanadas de Chipilín
These empanadas are very common in the food stalls of the mercados and tianguis (open-air market) in the southern state of Chiapas. A plant native to Mexico, chipilín lends its leaves to stews and salsas, and is mixed into corn masa to make tortillas, tamales and empanadas in the country’s center and south. Adding chipilín to masa lends a subtle herbaceousness that complements the earthiness of the corn. If you can’t find it, spinach, chard or kale makes a great substitute.
Corn Salad With Tomatoes, Basil and Cilantro
High summer produce comes together in this simple mix, tangy with lime juice and full of fresh herbs. Even in the height of the season, corn gets a touch sweeter when heated, and the easiest way to do it is in the microwave. It takes just a few minutes to zap the corn cobs in their husks, which makes them easy to shuck. The silks will slip right off the sweeter and still-crisp corn. Picking basil and cilantro leaves by hand then tearing them right over the salad keeps their delicate fragrance intact. Serve this with anything off the grill or alongside tacos or sandwiches.
Pan-Roasted Chicken With Chiles de Árbol
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Here is a riff on a recipe from the Los Angeles chef Suzanne Goin, whose book “Sunday Suppers at Lucques” is an exacting and delicious guide to restaurant cooking at home. Simply brown some chicken thighs in olive oil and butter over medium heat in an oven-safe skillet, adding lots of fresh thyme leaves and a couple of crumbled chiles de árbol. Then apply a thin smear of mustard to each thigh, shower with buttered bread crumbs and transfer the pan to the broiler to crisp the chicken into succulence. Serve alongside or on top of a pile of baby greens lightly dressed in lemon juice and olive oil, with some bread to mop up the juices. That’s fine. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
Rock-Shrimp Roll
Rock shrimp are meaty and firm, like lobster tail, and have a mild, bland flavor that can really use the help of seasoning at several stages. So we salt them before cooking and during cooking. Once the shrimp are mixed with onion and celery and mayonnaise, taste the shrimp salad as a whole to decide if it could stand even another pinch of salt or grind of pepper. But use unsalted butter on the bun when griddling, to get the perfect play between the sweet and the saline.
Vegetable Noodle Salad With Sesame Vinaigrette
This pasta salad is bursting with more than two pounds of sweet summer vegetables and brightened by a rich, tangy sesame-ginger vinaigrette. The angel hair pasta is broken into pieces for easy scooping, making it perfect for picnics and potlucks. It’s a great make-ahead meal that travels well — and develops even more flavor as it sits. You can prepare it a few hours ahead and keep it at room temperature.
Baked Beans
Proper Boston baked beans would have salt pork instead of the bacon. James Beard cooked them with ribs. The key is to use the little white pea beans known as navy beans, and to allow time to do most of the work. (Or to cheat: Canned white beans make fantastic baked beans in about an hour. If you use them, you'll need four 15-ounce cans. Drain and then follow the directions from step 2 on to the end. Please understand that you’ll need much less water and much less time to get them where you want them to be.) The combination of molasses and dry mustard is a taste as old as America itself, and takes well to both ham and soft brown bread.
Grilled Romaine
Lettuces do nicely on the grill, softening slightly at their centers and charring beautifully at their tips. Their bitterness is a fine counterpart to the sweet spiciness of a lot of grilled foods. In this recipe, the dressing is Caesar-like. Mustard and mayonnaise serve as emulsifiers, while anchovies, garlic and vinegar provide a welcome kick. Make sure to paint the dressing into the crevices between the leaves, so that while the lettuce caramelizes slightly on the exterior, there is still warm creaminess within.
Wonton Soup
Wonton soup and wonton noodle soup are two mainstays of Cantonese cuisine available in restaurants across the world. They’re great slurped when dining out and even more comforting when prepared and eaten at home. Here, bok choy stands in for the usual dark green gai lan or choy sum vegetables to lend its natural sweetness to the soup. How you season the soup is up to you. If you’re starting with an intensely flavorful homemade broth, you may not need to add anything.
Grilled Mushroom Skewers in Red Chile Paste
Fire up the grill and let the aromas of vegetables and chile-marinated mushrooms charred over an open flame permeate the neighborhood. This simple recipe is fun to assemble, and a crowd pleaser, making it ideal for cookouts. Meaty king oyster mushrooms are smothered in a guajillo chile sauce that includes earthy achiote, which stains the mushrooms red. Liquid aminos or soy sauce add saltiness and umami, and maple syrup brings a touch of sweetness. If you don’t have the vegetables below on hand, you can easily swap them out for others that will cook in the same time frame. Serve this as a main dish with your favorite cooked grains or salad, or as a side dish to just about anything.
Roasted Potato Salad With BBQ Dressing
If barbecue potato chips were a salad, then this would be it. It’s hard to pick which component of this picnic dish is the greater star: the crispy roasted potatoes or the smoky, paprika-tinged barbecue sauce dressing. Bejeweled with crunchy red onions, which are soaked in water to mellow their bite, and showered with fresh dill, this colorful side dish is the savory crowd-pleaser you’ll want to bring to any cookout or potluck.
Mushroom-Beef Burgers
These burgers use half the meat of all-beef burgers but have double the juiciness, thanks to finely chopped cremini mushrooms. The raw mushrooms lend earthy, meaty flavor and texture, both of which become more accentuated as they cook, caramelize and crisp along the edges while charring on the grill. Form the patties when ready to cook, since the mushrooms start to release water once mixed with the beef, and don't be afraid to mix the chopped mushrooms with the beef until well incorporated. (Thanks to the moisture the mushrooms provide, it is impossible to overwork the patties.) Their flavors shine on the grill, but the burgers can also be cooked in a lightly greased nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until golden brown, 3 to 4 minutes per side.
Juicy Lucy Burger
This Minneapolis staple is smart and simple: Sealing a slice of cheese inside two thin burger patties allows the burger to develop a serious char while the inside stays moist thanks to its molten core. There’s debate over whether the burger originated at 5-8 Club or Matt’s Bar; both have drawn locals and tourists alike since the 1950s. The Juicy Lucy method takes some practice — you’ll need to make sure the edges of the stacked patties are properly sealed so that the melted cheese gushes out with every bite instead of making a mess in the skillet — but the results far outweigh the challenge. Because the ingredient list is short (an unassuming bun, a smattering of pickles and a pile of caramelized onions), you’ll need to season with abandon. You may be tempted to use an expensive craft cheese, but sliced American cheese is the only way to go for tradition and meltability.
Roasted Turkey Ramen
On Thanksgiving night, with dinner pillaged and in ruins, Joshua Mangerson picks off the remaining meat from the turkey carcass, submerges it in chicken stock and lets it simmer. The next day, turkey leftovers are transformed into turkey ramen, with mushrooms, scallions and a six-minute egg in each bowl. The rich, cloudy broth is an ode to the Strongbow Inn, the turkey restaurant that Mr. Mangerson’s great-grandmother opened in 1940 on the family turkey farm in Valparaiso, Ind. Mr. Mangerson, who worked summers at Strongbow as a teenager, makes his own chicken stock first, with chicken backs and necks collected over a summer of grilling, but you can use store-bought stock and still get a strong boost of flavor. The recipe may look labor-intensive, but “I wouldn’t want anyone to be scared away,” he says. “It’s not difficult to do. It just takes time, and you have to care.”
Vegetable Pulao
Pulao is a weeknight staple in many Desi households, as it can be made in one pot, has a flexible ingredient list and makes no sacrifices on flavor. Whole spices, which give the pulao its intense, complex flavor, are key in this recipe. But the beauty of pulao is that it can be easily adjusted according to your preferences and what you have around. You can swap the carrots for cauliflower, or the potatoes for sweet potatoes. In a pinch, a frozen bag of carrots, peas and corn will work just fine. And if you don’t have one of the spices, fret not and carry on. Pulao is often served with achaar, or pickle, yogurt and papad — but it’s also wonderful by itself.
French Onion Grilled Cheese
Grilled cheese is a near-perfect food on its own, but adding bacon, kimchi or, in this case, heaps of caramelized onions really makes it special. Caramelizing onions takes a good half-hour, so save this recipe for when you have a little extra time and company (this recipe serves two). If time permits, you could even prep them ahead in a slow cooker. Rather than layer the grated Gruyère and the warm caramelized onions in the sandwich, you should stir them together before assembling, which guarantees that the cheese will melt evenly throughout and that each bite will contain the perfect ratio of fragrant cheese to jammy onions. A splash of sherry, red-wine or white-wine vinegar added to the onions balances out the buttery flavors, but a side salad dressed with a tangy mustard vinaigrette would do the trick, too. (Watch the video of Ali Slagle making French onion grilled cheese here.)
Fruit Sandwich
The origins of the fruit sandwich are believed to go back to Japan’s luxury fruit stores and the fruit parlors attached to them. This version comes from Yudai Kanayama, a native of Hokkaido who runs the restaurants the Izakaya NYC and Dr Clark in New York. Fresh fruit — fat strawberries, golden mango, kiwi with black ellipses of seeds, or whatever you like — is engulfed in whipped cream mixed with mascarpone, which makes it implausibly airy yet dense. (In Japanese, the texture is called fuwa-fuwa: fluffy like a cloud.) Pressed on either side are crustless slices of shokupan, milk bread that agreeably springs back. The sandwich looks like dessert but isn’t, or not exactly; it makes for a lovely little meal that feels slightly illicit, as if for a moment there are no rules.
Pan Con Tomate
Some version of tomatoes on toast — a juicy American B.L.T. or Italian tomato-topped bruschetta — is always a good idea, but that's especially true during high summer, when tomatoes are at their peak. One superior combination comes from Barcelona, where a slice of toast is rubbed with garlic and juicy ripe tomatoes, then anointed with olive oil. Most Catalan cooks simply cut the tomato crosswise and vigorously massage the toasted bread with the cut side. Others grate the tomato flesh and spoon it over the bread. This version adds tomato slices and a scattering of cherry tomatoes for a substantial first course.
Eggs in Purgatory
It’s unclear whether "purgatory" refers to the bubbling red tomato sauce used to poach the eggs in this easy skillet meal or the fire of the red-pepper flakes that the sauce is spiked with. In either case, this speedy Southern Italian dish, whipped up from pantry staples, makes for a heavenly brunch, lunch or light supper. Note that the anchovies are not traditional, but they add a subtle fishy richness to the tomatoes. However, feel free to leave them out.
Fried Shallot Caesar Salad
The dressing here is great on this salad, but it can find a second (and third, and fourth) life in so many other simple meals. Use it as a dip for grilled asparagus and broccolini; slather it on burgers and BLTs; or combine it 50-50 with Greek yogurt and add chopped dill and black pepper to make a fried shallot Ranch dressing for dipping crudités (or chicken wings). Add it to a roast beef sandwich (or just serve it with the roast beef). It’s a great party dip for chips (or anything you’d serve French onion dip with). This recipe calls for making the mayo from scratch, but you can use store-bought mayo as the base to make it even easier.