Main Course
8665 recipes found
Salmon With Thyme, Lemon Butter and Almonds
Even seasoned cooks can be anxious about cooking fish, but nothing could be simpler than oiling a large piece of foil, setting the fish on it and then pressing a few scallions and some thyme into the cavity. Wrap it all into a tightly sealed parcel, put it on a baking sheet and roast it. In truth, any fish can be cooked like this, and you can play around with the herbs, depending on what is available. This is a very good-natured recipe.
Huevos Rancheros in Tortilla Cups
Roast Spatchcock Turkey
In 2002, Mark Bittman published this revolutionary approach to roasting the Thanksgiving turkey, which allows you to cut the cooking time of the average turkey by about 75 percent while still presenting an attractive bird. Simply cut out the backbone — or ask your butcher to do it for you — and spread the bird out flat before roasting, a technique known as spatchcocking that is commonly used with chickens. Roasted at 450 degrees, a 10-pound bird will be done in about 45 minutes. Really. It will also be more evenly browned (all of the skin is exposed to the heat), more evenly cooked, and moister than birds cooked conventionally.
Chris Gesualdi’s Sloppy Joes
Some foods are memory triggers, meals that send you back to long-forgotten moments in your life. The sloppy Joe sandwich is one such time machine. This version is an adaptation of one developed by Chris Gesualdi, the chef at TriBakery in Manhattan. It's a tribute to the one his mother, Rose, used to make for him as a child, and it is perfect: a sweet and spicy hill of thick sautéed ground beef spilling out of a toasted homemade kaiser roll. He tops his with melted cheddar, and that can't be a bad thing. All in all, it is a terrific antidote to adulthood.
Cold Soba Noodles With Dipping Sauce
In Japan, where it gets plenty hot in the summer, cold soba noodles, served with a dipping sauce, are a common snack or light meal. Soba are brown noodles, made from wheat and buckwheat, and the sauce is based on dashi, the omnipresent Japanese stock. You would recognize the smell of dashi in an instant, even if you have never knowingly eaten it. It's a brilliant concoction based on kelp, a seaweed, and dried bonito flakes. It is also among the fastest and easiest stocks you can make, and its two main ingredients – which you can buy in any store specializing in Asian foods – keep indefinitely in your pantry. I would encourage you to try making it, though you can also use chicken stock (or instant dashi, which is sold in the same stores).
L'Espinasse's Gazpacho
Green Chicken Enchiladas
You could poach chicken breasts for these enchiladas, as Amanda Hesser did when she first published this recipe in The Times in 2002, or you could use store-bought rotisserie chicken. After reading several comments from readers who felt the sauce needed to be doubled, we retested the recipe and agreed. We've updated the amounts accordingly.
Rigatoni With White Bolognese
White Bolognese, a meat sauce made without tomato, is a variation you rarely see in America.
Aunt Nora's Mock Lobster
Macaroni and Cheese With Ham
Lasagna
In 2001, Regina Schrambling went on a week long odyssey in search of the best lasagna recipe. Her ideal here has an intensely flavored sauce, cheeses melted into creaminess as if they were bechamel, meat that’s just chunky enough and noodles that put up no resistance to the fork. Keys to This Recipe How to Make Lasagna: To prepare lasagna from scratch, you start by making sauce, then layer it with wide, flat lasagna noodles and cheese before baking. The sauces can vary from tomato-based sauce, with or without meat, to creamy bechamel sauce, which works well with a wide variety of vegetables. How to Layer Lasagna: The basic building formula for lasagna is sauce, noodles, more sauce, then cheese. Repeat the noodle-sauce-cheese order until the pan is nearly filled, then end with sauce and cheese on top. Make-Ahead Tips for Lasagna: Both tomato and cream-based sauces for lasagna can be made and refrigerated for up to 3 days before assembling the lasagna. Once baked, the lasagna can be refrigerated for up to 4 days. To freeze, bake 30 minutes but do not brown, then cool, and freeze for up to 4 weeks. We do not recommend assembling and refrigerating or freezing an unbaked lasagna. This will adversely affect the texture. How to Reheat Lasagna: To reheat frozen lasagna, defrost, then sprinkle with mozzarella and bake uncovered at 400 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes until golden brown and bubbling on the surface. Refrigerated lasagna also can be reheated in a 400-degree oven until heated through. Chilled small individual servings can be microwaved. The Best Pan for Making Lasagna: Wirecutter has recommendations for casserole dishes, including one specifically designed for lasagna.
Gnocchi
There are a number of tricks in this basic recipe from Laura Sbrana, the mother of the chef Marco Canora: Start with baking potatoes and get rid of as much moisture as you can. Use less flour than you would expect. For a light and airy gnocchi, work the dough as little as possible so that it doesn't become glutinous which would result in a heavy and chewy result.
Southeast Asian Shrimp And Grapefruit Salad
Spicy Grilled Shrimp
This Mark Bittman recipe from 1999 is big on flavor, but not too much effort. The hardest part is preparing the grill. It calls for just a few spices — garlic, lemon, paprika and cayenne — to yield an intense flavor. Feel free to adjust the cayenne to taste, and pay close attention to your paprika: For best results, make sure it’s fresh. If it doesn’t taste vibrant and smoky, it’s time to buy more.
Stuffed Peppers With Paprika and Sour Cream
Cold Spiced Chicken And Zebra-Tomato Salad
Cheddar-Colby Macaroni and Cheese
Easy Chicken and Rice
You can make a big deal out of chicken with rice -- at its zenith, it becomes paella -- but it is a dish that takes well to short cuts. And even at its simplest, it's a crowd-pleaser. For fast weeknight meals, I strip chicken and rice to its essentials: oil, onion, chicken and rice. Stock makes the best cooking liquid, but water works almost as well, because as it simmers with the chicken they combine to produce a flavorful broth. To reduce greasiness, I remove the skin from the chicken before cooking it. (In a moist dish like this one, the skin is not especially appetizing anyway.) You can easily vary this dish by using any stock instead of water; by substituting another grain, like pearled barley, for the rice; by sautéing or roasting the chicken separately and combining it with the rice at the last minute; by adding sausage or shellfish, like shrimp, along with the chicken, or, most excitingly, by adding strips of red pepper, pitted olives, capers, chopped tomatoes or shelled peas to the initial onion mix.
Polenta With Bay Leaves
Hearty Sausage Soup
Lima Bean Soup
Fairly Classic Gefilte Fish
Easy Shrimp Pad Thai
Old-Fashioned Beef Stew
This classic stick-to-your-ribs stew is the ideal project for a chilly weekend. Beef, onion, carrots, potatoes and red wine come together in cozy harmony. If you are feeding a crowd, good news: It doubles (or triples) beautifully. For additional variations on the recipe, you might also enjoy this video. Keys to This Recipe How to Make Beef Stew: Beef stew is made in different ways across cultures, but at its core, it is simply tough cuts of meat slowly cooked with vegetables in liquid. Over hours of simmering, all the flavors meld together and the ingredients soften to tenderness. How to Thicken Beef Stew: Starches, like the flour and potato in this recipe, thicken beef stew. Here, beef cubes are coated in flour, then browned, leaving flour in the pan while sealing flour to the meat. When the meat is later simmered, that flour thickens the liquid as do potatoes, which release their starches as they cook. How to Make Beef Stew on the Stove: It's important to cook stew slowly over low heat. High heat will cause the meat to tighten and toughen, while low heat allows the meat to become fall-apart tender. Simply cover the pot and keep the heat as low as it goes. What to Serve With Beef Stew: The best accompaniments to beef stew can soak up the sauce. A crusty baguette works well, as does rice. A beef stew is hearty enough to be a one-pot meal, but you can make a salad with some crisp, fresh vegetables.