Main Course
8665 recipes found
Chicken Ragù Hand Pies
Leftover chicken ragù — or really any savory filling that is not too liquid — can be tucked inside this tender dough to make baked hand pies. They can be frozen before or after baking, then tucked into lunches and eaten at room temperature. A couple of rounds of prepared pie dough from the grocery store would make a quick and easy substitution.
Skillet Chicken With Black Beans, Rice and Chiles
Adapted from Diana Henry’s “From the Oven to the Table: Simple Dishes That Look After Themselves,” this true one-pot wonder of chicken, black beans, rice, tomatoes and chiles will make everyone at the table happy. As the chicken thighs roast, the cumin-scented rice soaks up all of the delicious juices. When the timer chimes, the rice and chicken emerge from the oven perfectly cooked. Be sure to use a 12-inch skillet here; a smaller or larger pan might result in under- or overcooked chicken or rice. Leftovers, if you have any, are great in tacos or enchiladas.
Tagliatelle With Prosciutto and Butter
Like cacio e pepe, this prosciutto-studded pasta — coated in emulsified butter, starchy pasta cooking water and Parmesan — requires repetition to master, but it's not at all difficult. Adapted from Evan Funke’s pasta cookbook, “American Sfoglino,” this dish comes together with just a few ingredients, but you’ll need to work fast: Add the pasta, pasta water and cheese to the butter and prosciutto quickly, then stir vigorously while gently jostling the pan back and forth with the other hand. Serve immediately, as the pasta can lose its luster within minutes as it soaks up the sauce.
Pan-Seared Gyoza
Gyoza are plump, Japanese dumplings typically filled with a mixture of ground pork, cabbage, chives, ginger and garlic. They originated as a spin-off of Chinese jiaozi, but they differ in many ways, particularly in how they are wrapped: Gyoza have very thin wrappers sealed with signature pleats, while Chinese jiaozi have thick wrappers that vary in how they are sealed. Throughout Japan, you can find gyoza steamed, pan-fried and deep-fried, and in recent years, lattice-edged dumplings have become popular. Made by pouring a slurry of flour and water into the pan with the dumplings, the water evaporates and the batter creates a crisp, lacy net. This pan-fried version is adapted from “The Gaijin Cookbook: Japanese Recipes from a Chef, Father, Eater, and Lifelong Outsider,” a collection of Japanese recipes from the chef Ivan Orkin, an owner of two ramen shops in New York. (Instructions for creating a lattice are below the recipe.)
Corn, Bacon and Cheddar Pie With Pickled Jalapeños
Corn kernels make this quiche-like pie juicy-sweet. Bacon, jalapeño and quick-pickled onions make it deeply savory, and a custard of sour cream, eggs and Cheddar adds a delightfully gooey texture. A touch of cornmeal in the dough makes the crust extra crunchy, and its corn flavor echoes the filling. You can bake this in the height of corn season with fresh kernels, or in the depths of winter with frozen. It will be just as richly satisfying any time of the year.
Bavette Steak With Tahini-Vegetable Salad
Searing a boneless steak in plenty of fat gives the meat crisp edges while keeping it juicy. While you can use any cut of boneless steak in this recipe (which is adapted from Kate Kavanaugh, the owner of Western Daughters Butcher Shoppe in Denver), bavette steak, also called flap meat or sirloin tip, is a particularly flavorful and tender choice. Ms. Kavanaugh likes to serve it alongside a crunchy vegetable salad that is layered with thinly sliced strawberries and tart rhubarb and tossed with a lime-tahini dressing, but any tangy salad will work well with the richness of the meat.
Lemony Pasta With Asparagus and White Beans
Marinating canned white beans in lemon juice and zest, along with red-pepper flakes and shallots, imbues them with brightness and a touch of heat, adding so much flavor to this warm-weather pasta. It’s dead simple to make: While the pasta cooks and the beans marinate, sauté the asparagus in olive oil, then use that pan to finish the dish. There’s enough asparagus in the mix to make this a one-pan meal, but serving it with a crisp green salad on the side will add a little crunch and freshness.
New Shrimp Louie (Poached Shrimp Salad)
In this spirit of classics like shrimp Louie or niçoise salad, this is a fairly basic, highly customizable salad-for-dinner deal, in which the nonnegotiables are fresh seafood (shrimp or salmon), crunchy lettuce (romaine or Little Gems) and tons of lemon (which comes in a tangy vinaigrette made with shallot and tarragon). From there, you can add any number of raw or lightly blanched vegetables, like shaved radish, sliced avocado or blanched green beans. To make things easy and efficient, the shrimp, eggs and green beans can all be cooked in the same pot of boiling water, so it’s not much of a fuss.
Takeout-Style Sesame Noodles
Noodles dressed with sesame are popular in many parts of China, but this particular style, made with peanut butter and served cold, became a Chinese-American staple in the United States in the 1970s. The family of Shorty Tang — an ambitious restaurateur who emigrated from Sichuan to Taipei to New York — firmly believes that he invented the dish and still serve it at Hwa Yuan, the restaurant he opened in 1967 in Manhattan’s Chinatown. They have never divulged the exact recipe; this is our own lush but refreshing version.
Spiced Chickpea Salad With Tahini and Pita Chips
This main-course salad has all the fresh flavors of a great falafel sandwich — tahini, mint, paprika, cucumber, cumin, garlic — plus the crunch of pita and the satisfying heft of chickpeas. The vegetarian cookbook writer Hetty McKinnon created this recipe, and the amount of olive oil she calls for might seem excessive. Don’t hold back: After cooking the chickpeas, the oil becomes part of the garlicky, paprika-warmed dressing for the finished dish. You could make her recipe even easier by using salad greens instead of cooked greens as the base.
Black Rice Bowl With Bok Choy and Mushrooms
A bowl of rice with vegetables makes a healthy and delicious meal, especially if the rice is whole grain. Whole-grain rice comes in many colors, from golden amber to rusty red to purplish black. This recipe calls for Thai black sticky rice (also called sweet or glutinous rice), which is pleasantly chewy. In Thailand, black sticky rice is most often used to make sweet rice pudding with coconut milk, but it tastes very good in combination with savory ingredients. If sticky rice is not your thing, you could use Chinese black “forbidden rice,” or any other whole-grain rice. With stir-fried greens and shiitake mushrooms, this visually stunning dish is full of goodness, kissed with ginger, garlic and sesame.
Loco Moco
This classic Hawaiian dish is similar to Japanese hambagu, a ground beef patty topped with a ketchup-based sauce, but loco moco is heartier, served atop a pile of white rice, smothered with caramelized onion gravy and topped with a fried egg. People in Hawaii enjoy it for breakfast, lunch, dinner or any time in between. This version is adapted from “Aloha Kitchen: Recipes From Hawai‘i,” by Alana Kysar, a cookbook of Hawaiian classics.
Coconut-Miso Salmon Curry
This light, delicate weeknight curry comes together in less than 30 minutes and is defined by its deep miso flavor. Miso is typically whisked into soups toward the end of the recipe, but sweating it directly in the pot with ginger, garlic and a little oil early on helps the paste caramelize, intensifying its earthy sweetness. Adding coconut milk creates a rich broth that works with a wide range of seafood. Salmon is used here, but flaky white fish, shrimp or scallops would all benefit from this quick poaching method. A squeeze of lime and a flurry of fresh herbs keep this curry bright and citrusy. For a hit of heat, garnish with sliced fresh jalapeño or serrano chile peppers.
Grouper Fillets With Ginger and Coconut Curry
The chef Patrick Jamon applies French cooking techniques to tropical ingredients grown, caught or gathered near his restaurant, Villa Deevena in Los Pargos, Costa Rica. He is particularly fond of grouper, which is often caught by his son Dean and served at the restaurant, but you could substitute red snapper, cod or mahi-mahi. When reducing the coconut milk, be sure to keep it at a simmer rather than a boil, so it doesn’t curdle. Red curry paste can vary in its intensity by brand, so you'll want to adjust the amount to taste.
Somen Noodle Soup With Mushrooms
The perfect salve for cold winter days, this vegetarian noodle soup can be cobbled together in an instant from the contents of a well-stocked kitchen. It takes its flavor from a quick bouillon using just four ingredients: soy sauce, sesame oil, scallions and shiitakes, which deliver a hefty, flavorful dose of glutamate. Poached eggs add richness to the clean and comforting broth. Fresh eggs have stronger, firmer albumen (egg whites) and will thus hold their shape better than older eggs, which have a tendency to unfurl. The main key to achieving that teardrop shape during poaching is allowing the eggs to simmer without disturbance until cooked.
Almond and Dried Fruit Pilaf With Rotisserie Chicken
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Here's a free-form rice pilaf, made with onions, dried fruit and slivered almonds. First, melt a knob of butter in a pot, then sauté a sliced onion in it until translucent. Add rice, as much as you want to cook, and stir it around, then add water in its usual ratio to the rice, and cook as you always do. At the end, add some chopped prunes, or currants, or raisins, or all three, along with a handful of slivered almonds and salt and pepper. Fluff the rice to mix everything together. Put the top back on the pot, and let the rice and mix-ins mellow out for a few minutes. Serve alongside a store-bought roast chicken, the legs and thighs separated and the breasts cut on the bias and fanned out for show. 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.
Baked Barley Risotto With Mushrooms and Carrots
Wholesome and nutty, barley is a superb alternative to arborio rice in this risotto, since it’s naturally plump and chewy when cooked. The grated Parmesan and butter stirred in at the end release the barley’s starches, creating a silky, creamy texture. Make sure to use pearl barley, not hulled, since it cooks much faster and is more tender. As for the mushrooms, white button, cremini and earthy shiitakes are a tasty, accessible mix, though any combination of oyster, king trumpet and maitake would raise the bar. Still, the best thing about this risotto, which is a satisfying vegetarian weeknight dinner (or side to any large roast or fish) is that it’s baked, taking away the pressure of constant stirring at the stove.
Konbi’s Egg Salad Sandwich
This famous egg salad sandwich comes from Konbi, the tiny Los Angeles cafe run by the co-chefs Akira Akuto and Nick Montgomery. It’s not always the case that sensational, Instagram-famous dishes are carefully calibrated to taste so good, but this one breaks the mold: It’s as pretty as it is delicious. The egg salad is brightened with a touch of rice wine vinegar and mustard and bound with Kewpie mayonnaise. When making it at home, be careful not to undercook the eggs or you’ll cross that fine line between jammy and runny. At the heart of the sandwich is a perfect hard-boiled egg, and we suggest cooking a couple extra in case they break or you have trouble peeling them. Extra eggs, still warm, with a touch of salt and pepper, make for a great snack while you're assembling.
Ginger-Cauliflower Soup
This simple soup, steeped with ginger and lemongrass, features a bright relish of lime zest, fresh ginger and scallions. The topping offsets the subtle, sensible cauliflower, and the soup is deceptively luxurious thanks to the addition of potato, which adds a natural creaminess. Serve with a crusty sourdough loaf or some thick slices of buttered toast.
Overnight Oats
Overnight oats are, of course, a healthy breakfast and they’re easy to make, but they also feel like a special treat, sweet with dried fruit. Unlike oatmeal, uncooked but softened oats retain a fresh flavor and taste delicious cold. Top it with nuts just before eating for an irresistible crunch against the creamy oats. Keys to This Recipe How to Make Overnight Oats: Simply mix oats and milk in a 1 to 2 ratio and add sweeteners, salt or other add-ins, such as dried or fresh fruit, nuts or seeds, according to your tastes. For one breakfast serving of overnight oats, start with 1/4 cup oats and 1/2 cup milk. The Best Oats for Overnight Oats: Old-fashioned oats, also known as rolled oats, become tender and creamy when soaked. Quick-cooking oats, which are smaller, can end up pasty and steel-cut oats, which are sturdier, stay quite firm even after soaking. Milk Options for Overnight Oats: Dairy and non-dairy milks work well for overnight oats. Coconut, soy and oat milk yield thicker mixtures, which you can thin with more milk before serving if you’d like. If you use sweetened non-dairy milk, taste the soaked oats before adding more sweetener. Sweeteners for Overnight Oats: Soaking dried fruit — use your favorite — alongside the oats sweetens the mixture nicely, but you can stir in additional sugar, maple syrup or honey to taste just before eating.
Classic Baked Macaroni and Cheese
Think Stouffer's without the freezer. While it can be enjoyed straight from the pot, this macaroni and cheese has a slightly looser sauce than the stovetop variety to allow for thickening in the oven. Bread crumbs, while optional, make it truly spectacular.
Fabrizia Lanza’s Sicilian Pizza (Sfincione)
Palermo, the capital of Sicily, is street-food paradise, and among its many offerings is sfincione, a hearty pizza that’s baked in a rimmed sheet pan, allowing the dough to rise to a chewy thickness, and cut into large square slices. Sfincione is smeared with a frugal tomato sauce enhanced with umami from sheep’s milk cheese, onions and anchovy, along with olive oil and a handful of bread crumbs to make the cheese go further. When baked, the top is juicy, while the bottom is crisp from the generously oiled pan. Despite its origins as a street food, it is the perfect pizza to make at home. This easy and authentic recipe is from Fabrizia Lanza, proprietor of the Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking School, on the family’s country estate near Palermo.
Baked Eggs for a Crowd
The French long ago mastered eggs en cocotte —slightly coddled eggs baked at high heat with butter and cream, which thicken to a gravy as it cooks. There’s no finer way to enjoy an egg. To pull this off for a crowd, a large casserole dish coated with butter and partly filled with heavy cream acts as a bath in which to gently cook the eggs. To dress them up, add smoked salmon, a handful of kale or spinach leaves, thinly sliced ham, halved cherry tomatoes or sliced, cooked mushrooms to the mix before you crack in the eggs. Really anything goes here, but keep the accoutrements light and let the eggs take center stage. Finish with flaky sea salt (those large crystals melt on your tongue in just the right way) and any fresh herb you love.
Roast Turkey With Garlic and Anchovies
In this flavorful recipe, a whole roasted turkey is seasoned like a Provençal leg of lamb, with rosemary, anchovies and plenty of garlic. Cutting tiny slits into the turkey’s legs helps distribute the garlic-anchovy paste, which perfumes the meat. You’ll need to start marinating the turkey at least a day ahead, although, if you have the space in your refrigerator and the time, starting two or three days ahead is even better. Chilling the turkey uncovered helps dry out the skin, yielding a particularly crisp and golden bird.