Main Course
8665 recipes found
Sheet-Pan Roasted Chicken With Pears and Arugula
In this hearty sheet-pan meal, thick pear wedges and chicken thighs seasoned with earthy, warming spices are roasted until soft and tender. During the last five minutes, crunchy sunflower seeds are scattered on the pan to sizzle in the pan juices, gaining a salty flavor that balances out the sweetness of the pears. A final topping of arugula soaks up any lingering juices and turns this into a full-on meal. Using firm, not-quite-ripe pears prevents them from becoming mushy and falling apart during the cooking process. Swap baby spinach for the arugula and sherry vinegar for the lemon juice, depending on what you have on hand. Serve any leftovers on a bed of fresh arugula, dressed with lemon and olive oil.
Braised Lemon-Saffron Chicken and Potatoes
In this comforting braise, bone-in chicken and potatoes slowly cook in a lively lemon-saffron bath until the meat is fall-off-the-bone tender and the potatoes are soft and full of flavor. Most of the work in this one-pot dinner happens in the oven, so you can rest or multitask as it cooks. Serve it with rice and spoon the pan juices over top, or with toasted pita to soak up the rich, lemony broth. The whole peppercorns taste delicious and soften in both texture and flavor during the cooking process, but if they are too strong for you, leave them out or crack them before cooking. Leftovers are even better the next day, on top of a salad or tucked into a sandwich.
New Crab Louis
Crab Louis is a rather perfect meal for a summer night, particularly in this slimmed down, very homemade, ketchup-less version. With nothing processed or sweetened, an updated Crab Louis is simply good American crab, Little Gem- or Boston Bibb-lettuce, and pickle- and caper-studded mayonnaise whisked from olive oil and the best, richest-yolked eggs you can find. The effect is as straightforward as the original's, but the details are resolutely contemporary.
Tacos al Pastor
Tacos al pastor, a Mexican street-food staple, are a perfect synthesis of local flavors (pineapple, chiles, annatto), Spanish influence (pork, adobo), and Middle Eastern technique (a spinning, shawarma-style vertical rotisserie). The synthesis comes from Mexico’s history, but perfection comes from the combination of sweet pineapple, spicy meat and fragrant corn. This recipe, from the chef Gabriela Cámara, provides an easy way to make it at home; try boneless chicken thighs if you don’t want pork. Either way, make sure to blot the meat until very dry before cooking it so you get a hard sear that mimics the char of a grill.
Texas Chili
Chili tastes are highly personal, often inflexible and loaded with preconceptions — the political party of culinary offerings. “I don’t disagree with anyone’s chili,” Robb Walsh, a Texas food historian, the author of “The Tex-Mex Cookbook” and a restaurateur, told The Times. “If you are making a one-pot meal and you want to put beans in it, that’s fine. If chili is part of your cuisine, like Tex-Mex, there are other things you will want to do." This recipe is an amalgam of styles, with coffee and chocolate for complexity, hot sauce for kick and beans just because.
Baked Rajma (Punjabi-Style Red Beans With Cream)
Punjabi-style rajma, or red beans, in a thick, spicy tomato gravy is comforting, quick and comes together with what you have in the pantry. This one-pan baked version is inspired by it, but deviates from tradition in several ways. First, it lets the oven do the work of reducing the sauce. When the dish comes out, scatter with cilantro, if you’ve got it, and some quick-pickled onion. The key is to take your time with the base, letting the onion mixture cook out properly, so the final sauce is mellow and deeply flavored. But you can try the same technique with different beans, from chickpeas to cannellini. Eating the dish with a side of yogurt or a glug of cream is common, but it’s also a treat with a little melted cheese, the edges browned in the pan. Use what you’ve got. Serve the rajma over rice, ideally, but if you’re in a pinch, a side of hot flour tortillas or even buttered toast will make it into a delicious meal.
Twice-Cooked Mock Tandoori Chicken
The chicken recipe here, a kind of mock tandoori chicken, mitigates the bane of chicken grilling (or, for that matter, broiling), the roaring flame-up. By braising the chicken first, you effectively remove just about all the surface fat, practically eliminating the risk of setting the pieces on fire. This same treatment would work nicely with fatty lamb, like chunks of shoulder or even shanks, which without the initial braising would be just about impossible to grill.
Green Goddess Salmon With Potatoes and Snap Peas
A sheet pan and a broiler are the secret to many easy weeknight meals. In this particularly vibrant dish, they impart a complex grill-like flavor to salmon and potatoes, which are broiled simultaneously on the same sheet pan. While they cook, you’ll blend together a lively green goddess dressing of fresh herbs, yogurt, mayonnaise, garlic and anchovies. When the oven timer chimes, toss the roasted potatoes with raw cucumbers and snap peas. Serve alongside the just-flaky salmon and dollop with the verdant dressing. The crunchy vegetables, warm potatoes, tender fish and creamy dressing make for an unexpected though delightful combination. (For the dressing, tarragon, dill, parsley or cilantro will provide a familiar flavor to this classic sauce, but mint or arugula will work, too.)
Grilled Chicken Skewers With Tarragon and Yogurt
These grilled chicken skewers are gently spiced with a ginger-and-cumin yogurt marinade, which makes the meat exceedingly tender and cooks to fragrant curds. As they grill, the skewers are gilded with a tarragon-mint baste that tastes distinctly Persian. Restraint and a very hot grill are both key to getting a good char: Don’t move the skewers until the yogurt is burnished and the meat releases from the grates. Color is flavor. Catch any juices that run out of the cooked skewers with warm pita bread. Leftovers make excellent chicken salad.
Soy-Butter Basted Scallops With Wilted Greens and Sesame
This simple dish was inspired by a recipe for steamed scallop and butter rice found in “Donabe: Classic and Modern Japanese Clay Pot Cooking” (Ten Speed, 2015) by Naoko Takei Moore and Kyle Connaughton. Here, sweet sea scallops are seared in a hot pan and basted with melted butter and soy sauce to finish cooking. Tender greens are sautéed in garlic oil, then the scallops are placed on top and everything is drizzled with the remaining soy-butter and a bit of sesame oil. Finish the dish with a good squeeze of lime, thinly sliced scallions and a smattering of sesame seeds. It’s wonderful served over steamed white rice, so be sure to get that on the stove before you begin cooking the scallops, as the rest of the meal comes together in no time at all.
One-Pot Orzo With Shrimp, Tomato and Feta
Inspired by a Greek appetizer, shrimp saganaki, this one-pot recipe adds orzo and grape tomatoes to make a complete meal. Blistering the grape tomatoes coaxes out their natural sweetness, which pairs well with the salty feta. For a vegetarian version, skip the shrimp and stir in some spinach or arugula at the end. Warm up leftovers by adding a splash of water to loosen the sauce, then drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with crumbled feta.
Turkey Breast Roulade With Garlic and Rosemary
Ina Garten has been known as the Barefoot Contessa since she opened a gourmet store by that name in East Hampton, N.Y., in 1985. She shared this recipe from her book “Modern Comfort Food” with The Times for Thanksgiving in 2020, when many cooks were looking for alternatives to whole turkey. If you don’t like fennel seeds, leave them out: Garlic, sage and rosemary give this roast the flavors of Italian porchetta, and it will still be fragrant, juicy and delicious without them.
Cannellini-Bean Pasta With Beurre Blanc
This recipe, like so many great straightforward, inexpensive go-tos, starts with little more than a can of beans — then transforms it into a luxurious meal. Jack Monroe, the British food writer, uses a classic beurre blanc to do that work, simmering a splash of wine, vinegar and butter together, then tipping it into a pot of boiling beans and pasta, letting the liquid reduce to a starchy, nearly creamy consistency. If you think of beurre blanc as fancy and fussy, this simple, unexpected use for it may change your mind. You can also build on the basic recipe, adding a bunch of chopped chard or mustard greens in with the sauce, or covering the top with torn herbs.
Farro With Mushrooms
Farro is chewier than Italian rice and doesn’t release starch when it’s cooked, so there’s no need to stir it the way you’d stir a risotto. This hearty dish has a rich, earthy flavor. Although it takes about twice as long as a risotto to cook, it doesn’t require tending.
The Silver Palate’s Chicken Marbella
If there’s such a thing as boomer cuisine, it can be found in the pages of “The Silver Palate Cookbook” by Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso. With its chirpy tone and “Moosewood”-in-the-city illustrations, the book, published in time for Mother’s Day in 1982, gave millions of home cooks who hadn’t mastered the art of French cooking the courage to try sophisticated dishes like escabeche, wild mushroom soup and that new thing called pesto. This recipe, also in the book, came to The Times in a 2007 article celebrating the 25th anniversary edition. The briny-sweet combination once seemed as risky (capers! prunes!) as the East Village, but now it's considered as classic as Grand Central.
Braised Pork With Prunes and Orange
This tart-sweet braise is inspired by porc aux pruneaux, a classic French dish, which usually involves soaking prunes in tawny port before adding them to a sauce for pork. Here, the prunes are soaked in a mix of vinegar and brown sugar, a more economical way to amplify their mellow sweet-sour flavor. (But by all means use tawny port instead of the vinegar-sugar combo if you like!) This one-pot version is fragrant with orange and contains an assertive amount of sherry vinegar to balance the richness of the pork and dried fruit. Serve the pork and sauce over polenta or with seeded bread.
Pasta e Fagioli
This is a classic Italian bean and pasta soup. If you have already made a pot of beans using a pound of beans, and want to use it for this soup, just use half the beans but all of the broth as directed in Step 1.
Reuben Sandwich
Like many classic dishes, the Reuben sandwich has multiple origin stories: Some accounts trace its origins to the since-shuttered Reuben’s delicatessen in New York City, where Arthur Reuben created a special for one of Charlie Chaplin’s leading ladies in 1914, using ham, turkey, Swiss cheese and coleslaw on rye. Another origin story points to a customer, Reuben Kulakofsky, who was said to have ordered a corned beef and sauerkraut sandwich at Blackstone Hotel, in Omaha, where Bernard Schimmel obliged by rounding it out with Thousand Island dressing, Swiss cheese, rye bread and a hot grill. Today’s Reuben sandwiches feature corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and a healthy smear of Russian dressing between toasted, buttered rye. Homemade dressing has a brighter, fresher flavor than the bottled variety, and comes together in just a few turns of a whisk. To achieve the prized crispy crust and gooey cheese, keep the heat low enough to allow the buttered bread to toast while the cheese melts.
Scallion Egg Wrap
This is a common Chinese-American adaptation of a breakfast dish served throughout northern China and Taiwan. Street vendors start peddling jian bing as the sun rises, spreading a wheat flour and mung bean batter on a large griddle until thin, then cracking an egg or two on top. They scatter on scallions, cilantro and pickled mustard greens, and scramble and spread the mix before squirting on hoisin sauce and chile paste. Sometimes, they add sliced lettuce or wonton crisps for crunch. Making jian bing is a specialized skill and not easily recreated, but this approximation delivers the pleasure and convenience of an omelet cooked onto a thin pancake, the pancake here being store-bought flour tortillas. When warmed, they share the comforting chewiness of the original. This version uses a few essential condiments: Pickled mustard greens, hoisin and chile paste can be found in Chinese or Asian markets or online. But you can, of course, leave them out. In fact, kids often prefer just the egg and tortilla.
Pad Thai-Style Rice Salad
My basic technique works like this: Cook the rice as you would pasta, in abundant salted water, tasting as you go; the cooking time will range from around 15 minutes for white rice to as long as 45 minutes for the most stubborn brown varieties (almost all will be done in 30 minutes or so). Drain and rinse; you want to get any remaining surface starch off so the salad isn’t too clumpy. When the rice is cool enough to handle, dress it; it will absorb a bit of the dressing. Add herbs and garnishes just before serving.
Hainanese Chicken With Rice
While this is the most basic version of Hainanese chicken, the best one is the provenance of devotees, who save the stock they don’t need for the rice, freeze it, and use it as a starting point for the next time they cook chicken this way. If you do this repeatedly, the stock will become stronger and stronger, as will the flavors of both chicken and rice. If you do this hundreds of times, the way restaurants do, the flavors will be quite intense. But even if you do it once, the dish is a total winner.
Lasagna With Collard Greens
Collard greens are so big and flat that they fill in for a layer of noodles in this easy, satisfying lasagna. When you make lasagna, be careful not to use up your ingredients on the first layers. You should have enough for three layers here.
Thanksgiving Leftovers Enchilada Pie
This recipe was developed for a special kids’ edition of The New York Times, but we’ve found that people of all ages love it. It sounds a little strange, but we promise you, it’s surprisingly delicious. It’s easy to make, and anything you don't already have on hand can be picked up from the corner store. We used leftover turkey, braised greens and mashed sweet potatoes, but feel free to experiment with savory dishes like sautéed brussels sprouts, cornbread stuffing or mashed potatoes. Top your slice with cranberry sauce salsa, a dollop of sour cream and a scattering of roasted pumpkin seeds. (We used a mix of Velveeta, Cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses because the Velveeta helps prevent clumping, but, if processed cheese bothers you, leave it out and add a half-cup more Cheddar or Monterey Jack.)
Vegan Broccoli Soup With Cashew Cream
This nourishing, three-vegetable soup is thick and creamy, even without dairy. It takes very little skill and only 25 minutes to make, but success lies in proper blending: Use a high-powered blender for the creamiest soup, or let it go a few minutes longer in a standard blender. Fennel and celery provide welcome depth, and the quick cashew cream feels luxurious spooned over the top or stirred right in. Save any extra to drizzle on other blended soups or even roasted vegetables. Finish this vibrant bowl with celery leaves, parsley or dill, and two basic but crucial ingredients: an extra drizzle of olive oil and a dusting of freshly ground pepper.