Main Course
8665 recipes found
Roasted Carrot, Parsnip and Potato Soup
This is a creamy, comforting winter soup that is incredibly simple to make. All you need to do is blend together broth and roasted vegetables and heat through. You can make the soup with other roasted vegetables as well, but I love the sweet combination of the carrots and parsnips. If you’ve got roasted vegetables on hand, you’ll need about 4 cups.
Maple Chicken ‘n’ Ribs
If meat is involved, you can find me covering it in flavor-enhancing tenderizing liquids before grilling, broiling, baking or roasting it. The more you do to the meat before you cook it, the less you have to do during or after. In this case apple juice or cider gives tang and wards off stringiness, a small amount of oil keeps things juicy and maple syrup, soy, star anise, cinnamon and garlic impart deep, luscious flavor. These two meats work well in conjunction: the relatively lean chicken is enhanced in taste and texture by the pork ribs, which give off flavorsome fat as they roast. You can use whatever ribs you like; meaty ones are best, but as long as the ribs are separated, rather than in a slab, they'll do just fine. As for the chicken, I implore you to use thighs, bone-in, skin-on because the meat is more tender and the taste infinitely better. (Make sure you use a large enough roasting pan so you don't have to crowd the pan. If the pan is crowded, the meat will steam, not brown.)
Turkey Waldorf Salad
This is not your classic Waldorf salad, which is traditionally a mélange of apples, celery, raisins, walnuts and grapes in a thick mayonnaise-based dressing. Here, the dressing, thinned out and lightened with yogurt, is spiced with curry and cumin, and the salad mix includes a generous amount of chopped radicchio or endive, which bring a bitter dimension into the mix. This salad is also an excellent home for leftover Thanksgiving turkey.
Fresh Corn and Tomato Soup
Rabbit and Vegetable Pot Pie
Fettuccine With Asparagus And Shiitake Mushrooms
Roasted Squash and Ginger Noodle Soup With Winter Vegetables
Eprax (Kurdish Stuffed Vegetables and Lamb)
This recipe for eprax, a multilayered casserole of Kurdish-style stuffed vegetables and lamb chops, comes from Parwin Tayyar in Nashville. To make the dish, sometimes called dolmas, Ms. Tayyar prepares a gently spiced lamb and rice filling, and uses it to stuff a mixture of vegetables, such as squash, tomatoes, potatoes and cabbage. Carefully layered in a pot with a little liquid, the vegetables simmer and steam together on the stove until they're tender. Then the whole dish is tipped out into a messy, delicious pile to be eaten with flatbread, pickles, hummus or a cucumber sauce. It may seem like a complex process, but once all the vegetables are prepped and the filling is ready, things go quickly. The dish is flexible, and what Ms. Tayyar provides is a blueprint: You can stuff any vegetables you have on hand, as long as you remember to stuff them loosely.
Purée of Winter Vegetable Soup
Living in France, I was always impressed by the bags of mixed vegetables, called soupe, sold in farmers’ markets and supermarkets alike. The bags usually included an onion, carrots and celery, a leek, a turnip or two and a bouquet garni consisting of a bay leaf, a sprig of thyme and another of parsley. I’ve added root vegetables to this ginger-scented soup, which is inspired by the many simple suppers I enjoyed in the homes of French friends.
Light Lentil Soup With Smoked Trout
This is inspired by a traditional French combination of lentils and fresh salmon. I decided to make something a little simpler: a very basic lentil soup garnished with smoked trout, either canned or packaged. I use the Parmesan rind in the bouquet garni to add some umami flavor to the lentils, which would traditionally be paired with sausage or cured pork.
Saffron Sweet Potato and Red Pepper Soup
Yogurt or Buttermilk Soup With Toasted Barley
I was cleaning out the refrigerator as well as my pantry when I put together this refreshing summer soup. If you can’t get organic or Greek yogurt, free of gums and stabilizers, use buttermilk.
Spinach Soup With Coriander, Cinnamon and Allspice
This soup was inspired by a Syrian recipe, a spice-laced pan-cooked spinach that is served with yogurt and walnuts on top. This recipe uses the same spices in a puréed spinach soup. It works beautifully. Half of the yogurt is stirred into the soup, contributing a tart flavor that’s a great finishing dimension to the soup. The rest is drizzled onto each serving.
Chicken and Sausage Gumbo
This recipe came to The Times in 1983 from the influential New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme. It is a hearty, rich Creole stew generously seasoned with black and white pepper, cayenne, paprika and filé powder, a spice made from the leaves of the sassafras tree. Filé powder is readily available in most grocery stores and online, and while it's not 100 percent necessary, it lends a distinctive, earthy quality to the dish. Mr. Prudhomme intended this to be made with chicken, but we've had excellent results using leftover turkey from Thanksgiving, too.
Pureed White Bean and Winter Squash Soup
This savory pale orange potage makes a comforting winter meal. White beans (and beans in general) are one of the best sources of fiber you can find, and they’re a great source of protein as well.
Potato, Salmon and Spinach Patties With Garlicky Dill Cream
These patties were inspired by a trip to a Southern diner with a memorable salmon patty on the menu. The secret to their soft and creamy texture? Mashed potatoes, of course. So here is a graceful dish that gives you a way to use leftover mashed potatoes by combining them with salmon and spinach and giving them a bread-crumb coating. They end up golden and crunchy and absolutely bursting with salmon.
Puréed White Bean Soup With Pistou
White beans and pesto or pistou (pesto without the pine nuts) always make a nice marriage. Thin the pistou with a little extra olive oil so that you can drizzle it over the rich-tasting purée.
Valencian Chickpea and Chard Soup
This is adapted from a recipe in “A Mediterranean Harvest,” by Jon Cohen and Paola Scaravelli. I find the soup delicious with or without the lemon and egg enrichment, so I’m making that optional.
Veracruzana Crab Soup
This is an elegant soup that I’ve served at dinner parties as well as family dinners. It has a spicy depth of flavor, resulting from the combination of pickled capers, pickled jalapeños (don’t substitute fresh for canned here) and olives.
Turkey Hash With Brussels Sprouts and Parsnips
Though it’s derived from a French word that means chopped, hash is quintessentially American. It’s most often made with roasted or boiled meat (sometimes corned beef) and potatoes, cut into cubes and fried into a crisp-bottomed cake. Invariably, it’s then topped with an egg, poached or fried. This one, made with roast turkey, makes good use of holiday leftovers. Scallions and jalapeño lend it brightness.
Butternut Squash, Pecans and Currants
This recipe, from the restaurant Balaboosta in New York, came to The Times in 2010 as part of a roundup of restaurant Thanksgiving dinners, but it can be served any time, even as a weeknight main alongside a hearty salad or starch. The currants and candied pecans play off the butternut squash’s sweetness, while a vinaigrette stops it all from being too cloying. It’s a delightful vegetarian main for when you want the essence of the restaurant meal, without too much work.
Red Onion Soup With Cheese Toasts
Onion soup is an excellent antidote to blustery, cold weather. Jacques Pépin showed me his way when I first met him years ago in California. His admonishments: Don’t overcrowd the pan or the onions won’t brown. Keep the heat high but not too high, so the onions don’t cook too fast and burn. Be generous with the salt and pepper. Bay leaf and thyme are essential, everything else is negotiable. A little red wine is nice, a splash of Cognac couldn’t hurt. A welcome all-purpose remedy, especially at this time of year.
Cheese Pumpkin Soup With Sage and Apple
For cooking, forget the giant pumpkins that are meant for life as jack o’lanterns. The flat, lesser known heirloom variety called the Long Island cheese pumpkin is the prizewinner. This sweet, beige pumpkin gets its name from its resemblance to a wheel of cheese. Making pumpkin soup is a go-to way to prepare the fruit. As with any soup, the key is the quality of stock used. It should add flavor, but not too much or it will eclipse the taste of the pumpkin. Vegetable stock is the best choice here. Roasting the pumpkin with the seeds intact (except for a handful to be used as garnish) intensifies the flavor and adds a slight nuttiness to the soup. Adding sage and some raw apple brings aroma and acidity to the recipe. Finish with pumpkin oil for added richness.
Hot Yogurt Soup with Barley and Cilantro
In the Middle East, yogurt is used in hot dishes as well as cold. To stabilize the yogurt so that it doesn’t curdle when it cooks, you stir in a little cornstarch. This simple soup is both comforting and light, and it’s good at any time of year. At this time of year I’d serve it warm but not simmering hot.