Main Course
8665 recipes found
Zuni Café Chicken
You don’t need a brick oven for this perfect roast chicken from the legendary chef Judy Rodgers — but you do need a hot one, and a day or so to dry-brine the bird before using it. If you don't have the time to dry-brine, don't. You'll still end up with one of the best roast chickens you've ever had. Just dry the bird really well with paper towels before seasoning and dab it again before putting it into the sizzling pan. Rodgers’s technique, which involves drying and seasoning the chicken, then flipping it while cooking, results in a wonderfully browned bird, with crackling skin and moist meat. Serve it over a bread salad, as she did, or with well-dressed greens and a baguette. You win either way.
Red Wine-Braised Short Ribs With Lemongrass and Soy
This is the dish that the chef Marcus Samuelsson made for President Obama when he visited the restaurant Red Rooster Harlem. This is an easy braise with wonderful flavors — plum sauce, lemongrass, soy sauce — and as it is pointed out in "The Red Rooster Cookbook," short ribs taste more expensive than they actually are, making them ideal for guests. Make it earlier in the day, then simply reheat when you're ready to serve dinner. The book suggests freezing the extra braising liquid in ice cube trays, so you can slip it into pan sauces or pasta for oomph.
Grilled Lamb Kebabs With Smoky Peaches
Taking a cue from the hot-weather regions of the world, John Willoughby and Chris Schlesinger go heavy with the seasoning here, but the key is when that happens. Instead of a marinade, or a spice rub, they grill the lamb and season it after with garlic, basil, vinegar and Tabasco sauce. It’s a great way to add big flavor without spending all day in the kitchen.
Grilled Garlicky Lamb Shoulder Chops with Sherry Vinegar and Radicchio
Striped Bass in Grape Leaves
Backyard Flank Steak Teriyaki
This sweet-and-salty steak comes from the writer Jeff Gordinier’s mother, who cooked it on a grill on their patio in California, under the grapefruit tree, after having soaked for hours in her teriyaki marinade. But marinated flank steak is such a foolproof crowd-pleaser that it can translate to any American topography. Serve in high summer as the sun goes down and the temperature drops.
Lemony White Beans With Anchovy and Parmesan
These white beans, adapted from Alison Roman's cookbook "Nothing Fancy" (Clarkson Potter, 2019), could potentially be a whole meal, but they are also great alongside another protein since they pull double duty as both starch and salad. While this dish is beautifully seasonally agnostic, it is a summery dream with grilled whole trout or lamb shoulder, and lots of cold red or white wine, preferably in the sunny outdoors.
Braised Veal Flank
Lessons Worth Savoring Spinach Timbales
Grilled Rosemary Pork Tenderloin
This easy recipe was brought to The Times in a 1994 article about winter grilling, but many readers love this dish year round. Marian Burros called for cutting the pork tenderloin into slices before marinating it in a simple mixture of garlic, red wine and fresh rosemary before grilling, but it works just as well with whole tenderloins and dried rosemary.
Grilled Pork Chops With Peanuts, Sesame and Cilantro
Smoke has been called the umami of barbecue, and these pork chops, which the chef Curtis Stone cooks over wood fire at his restaurant Gwen in Los Angeles, possess it in spades. Fish sauce and soy sauce provide the salt in the marinade; hoisin sauce and honey the sweetness. The peanuts and sesame seeds in the topping reinforce the nuttiness of the sesame oil in the marinade. You can use charcoal if wood is not an option, or cook over gas if necessary.
Chicken Birria
Birria, a classic Mexican stew from Jalisco, is traditionally made with goat but also enjoyed with lamb or beef. This weeknight version features juicy chicken thighs for faster cooking. A quick blender sauce of dried chiles, garlic and tomatoes creates a smoky and rich base for the stew, which deepens in flavor as the chicken simmers. Here, the birria is enjoyed as a stew, but it also makes terrific tacos: Simply dip tortillas in the warm broth, fill them with shredded chicken and top with chopped white onion and cilantro, then fold in half and pan-fry until golden and crispy.
Simple Grilled Lamb Chops
Sweet and Salty Grilled Pork With Citrus and Herbs
Typically prepared as a long-cooked stew or braise, pork shoulder is remarkably (and perhaps surprisingly) fantastic when treated like a steak. This means cooked hot and fast so it’s charred on the outside and medium-rare on the inside. While a grill is ideal here, it can also be prepared on the stovetop in a very hot cast-iron skillet. The garlicky, salty, sweet marinade also doubles as a dressing to be poured over crunchy leaves of lettuce, fresh herbs and, if you’re looking for something more substantial, some sort of rice noodle or plain cooked rice.
Braised Chicken With Lemon and Olives
A good cook needs an assortment of chicken dishes to fall back on. Aside from roasting or frying (and in addition to grilling), braising chicken is a simple technique to master. Chicken thighs make the best braises; use skin-on bone-in thighs for the best flavor. Though it could be done on the stovetop, this dish is oven-braised. Here are more recipes using chicken thighs.
Chicken and Apricot Masala
I love curry, but on the whole I am not interested in cooking that involves too much spice-grinding or many-layered processes. Thus this chicken masala is my version of a curry: it demands little effort and delivers a huge amount of flavor.
Rum and Chile Roasted Chicken Thighs With Pineapple
This dish, inspired by jerk chicken, uses amber rum to moisten the rub. The resulting dish is complex, mouth tingling but not searing, and softened by the golden cubes of succulent roasted pineapple. It's not quite recognizable as a jerk, but it is no less pleasing.
Fillet of Salmon With Vegetable Bouillon And Littleneck Clams
Shanghai-Style Vegetable Noodles
Kuku Paka (Chicken With Coconut)
This rich dish of chicken in a spiced coconut sauce comes from Kenya's coast, though creative cooks now produce variations of it all over the country. This simple version was adapted from many of them, including Kirti Patel, Agnes Kalyonge and the author Madhur Jaffrey. It requires slowly grilling the marinated chicken, ideally over charcoal — a little extra work that lends the finished kuku paka a wonderful smoky flavor — though in a pinch, you can use a grill pan on the stove. Note: The coconut sauce should be creamy but not flat, so be sure to spike it at the end with enough lemon juice to give it the edge of sourness that is one of this great dish's defining characteristics.
Chicken Soup With Leeks and Lemon
This is inspired by both the classic Greek soup avgolemono and Scottish cockaleekee. Start with a flavorful chicken or turkey broth, simmer leeks and rice or bulgur in the soup until tender, then enrich with eggs and lemon. The trick here is to begin with a flavorful stock and not to allow the eggs to curdle when you combine the soup and the avgolemono sauce. You can make a vegetarian version of this using a garlic broth or by making a robust vegetable stock using the dark leafy parts of the leeks.
Leek and Potato Soufflé With Ham and Fontina
Contain your skepticism: A soufflé made with mashed potatoes doesn’t have to be heavy, as David Tanis revealed in 2012. “The two textures can complement each other, resulting in a dish that tastes light but has an underlying heartiness,” he says. This one gets added flavor from leeks and ham. If you’re new to soufflé-making, this is a good place to start. The potatoes provide a structure that a regular butter and flour roux don’t, he wrote, so it’s less likely to fall.
Turmeric Chicken
This chicken marinated in a deeply golden curry sauce with ginger and scallions is one of the essential components of arroz gordo, a dish from Macau. The marinade suits thighs with skin and bones, and does wonders for wings. Let them sizzle in the oven so the skin starts to crisp and brown, and you have an excellent accompaniment for drinks. They do not need any condiment, though a yogurt-based raita made with fresh mint would dress them nicely.
Coq au Vin Blanc
Just as Oregon borrows from Burgundy in vineyards planted with pinot noirs and chardonnays, that region also inspires dinner. The iconic boeuf bourguignon would not be the best choice with chardonnay, but this version of coq au vin, replacing Chambertin with chardonnay, couldn’t be better. I went light with it, omitting the bacon lardons. And I gave a nod to Oregon’s truffle crop by finishing the sauce with a gloss of black truffle butter. It’s a modest investment that elevates the dish. A generous slab of unsalted butter (especially if it’s high-fat European-style) could also bolster the sauce, though with less foxy intrigue.