Snack
975 recipes found

Ham and Jam Sandwich
Nothing can compare to jambon-beurre, the iconic Parisian sandwich, which is really just a baguette with salted European butter and unsmoked ham. This rendition expands on that perfect trinity with a few additional pantry ingredients: Jam plays well with ham (like in a Monte Cristo), and Dijon and black pepper bring spice and spirit. Smoked ham adds yet another layer of savoriness, but any thinly sliced ham will work. The result is a hearty, complex but still delicate meal, appetizer or pick-me-up. While ham and jam sandwich doesn’t roll off the tongue quite like jambon-beurre, you have permission to call it a ham-jam-sam, if you like.

Crispy-Edged Quesadilla
This straightforward quesadilla has an unexpected twist: a border of salty, crispy cheese surrounding the tortilla. Achieving it couldn’t be easier; just press down on the folded tortilla as it heats up in the pan so the cheese spills out and turns golden. A nonstick pan is key here, otherwise the melted cheese will glue itself onto the cooking surface. Medium heat is just the right temperature for a quesadilla: It’s hot enough to crisp up the cheese but low enough to prevent the cheese from burning.

Chaat Party
The beauty of chaat — a category of tangy, sweet, fiery and crunchy Indian snacks — is that it’s built for customization. The only common denominator is that alchemy of flavor sensations, often driven by a combination of sweet-and-sour tamarind chutney, a bright herb chutney (like this cilantro-mint chutney or this green chile chutney) and cooling raita. Otherwise, base ingredients and toppings (and even those chutneys!) can all be interchanged. This spirit is the driving force behind Maneet Chauhan’s chaat party, from her cookbook, “Chaat” (Clarkson Potter, 2020), a choose-your-own-adventure spread that allows eaters to build a chaat suited to their tastes: More crunch! Less spicy! More sweet! More herbs! It’s entirely up to you. This is a great way to entertain, and also a quick, no-cook dinner. Use this list as a starting point for ingredients, but feel free to get creative. If you are able to get banana leaves, spread them out over the table before arranging everything else on top for a bright pop of color.

Tuna Salad With Hot and Sweet Peppers
Inspired by the oil-and-vinegar tuna salads of the Mediterranean, this version includes new-world peppers. Letting thin slices of hot and sweet peppers sit with vinegar and salt for a few minutes gives them a pickled taste without taking away their crispness. It also makes for a sharp dressing when mixed with the olive oil from oil-packed tuna. Celery and parsley bring freshness to this blend, which is wonderful on its own and versatile enough to be spooned over toast or tossed with lettuce or pasta.

Sardine Toasts With Tomato and Sweet Onion
A classic pantry meal, sardine toasts are just the thing to eat when you’re starving and there’s nothing in the house for dinner. If you don’t have tomatoes, just leave them out. With their saline flavor and buttery texture, all sardines need is some good bread and a little crunchy onion to set them off.

5-Minute Hummus
Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook of the Philadelphia restaurant Zahav found success with their hummus recipe, but in their second book, “Israeli Soul,” the two came up with this smart version, done in a fraction of the time of the original. It’s just as satisfying, and packed with tahini flavor, a given since it calls for a whole 16-ounce jar. The end result is nutty and smooth, and topped with roasted vegetables, a worthy weeknight meal.

Chickpea Salad With Gim
The salty, nutty and gloriously savory flavors of gim — the Korean roasted and seasoned seaweed — anchor this easy chickpea salad. Packed with umami, sheets of crisp gim are finely chopped into onyx-black confetti, speckling the sesame oil and mayonnaise-bound chickpeas. (Note that Japanese nori, the unseasoned sheets of seaweed used for sushi, are too dry and will not work in this recipe.) As it sits, the salad absorbs the dressing and the raw red onion mellows out beautifully, which means this is an ideal contender for making ahead and lugging to picnics whenever.

Cheddar Scallion Dip
A cousin to pimento cheese but without those potentially child-deflecting red peppers, this cream cheese based dip is mild and slightly sweet from a splash of fresh orange juice. Pack it in a lunchbox with celery and crackers for your kids. Or, zip it up with a dash or two of Tabasco and some mashed garlic, spoon it into a bowl surrounded by good potato chips and serve it with cocktails to the adults. It will keep for at least five days in the fridge.

The Store’s Green Dip
Bert Greene was one of the owners of the Store in Amagansett, a gourmet shop and catering outfit on the eastern end of Long Island, N.Y., that was in the early 1970s a kind of lodestar of casual-elegant cooking and entertaining — expensive and, to those with the money to spend it, worth it. (He was like a cross between Ina Garten and Anna Pump, of Loaves & Fishes in Sagaponack.) This is his recipe for a tart, abrasive and wildly delicious dip to serve, garnished with watercress, with an enormous quantity of iced, slivered vegetables. (It’s also great on fish, sandwiches, or even as a dip for slices of delivery pizza.)

Hummingbird Cake
This super-simple tropical cake contains a hefty amount of mashed bananas and crushed pineapple. Often associated with the American South, where it is believed to have adopted a cream cheese frosting, it most likely originated in Jamaica, where it was called a Doctor Bird Cake. (“Doctor bird” is the nickname of Jamaica’s national bird, the red-billed streamertail hummingbird.) Some say this cake is sweet enough to attract even hummingbirds, while others say the name derives from how bananas, a key ingredient in the cake, resemble the bird’s beak. The end result tastes similar to banana bread, but with the moistness and flavor of a spice-filled carrot cake.

Labneh Dip With Sizzled Scallions and Chile
In this very high-brow version of ranch dressing, adapted from "Nothing Fancy" by Alison Roman (Clarkson Potter, 2019), scalliony chile oil gets sizzled with cilantro stems (or chives) and swirled into thick, lemony labneh. If you can find green garlic, which tends to be hyperseasonal, use that or even ramps in place of the scallions. Serve with raw vegetables for dipping, as a spread with crackers or flatbread, or alongside roasted lamb or vegetables.

S’mores
The perfect campfire s’more is perfect because it’s a reflection of you: Maybe you reach for dark chocolate rather than stick to milky bars or swap in cookies or saltines for the graham crackers. But there are a few best practices, including tool and setup tips from the camp-cooking experts Megan McDuffie, Michael van Vliet and Kena Peay that ensure the marshmallow roasts to gooey, charred excellence and the chocolate surrenders to the heat of the marshmallow, melting but not liquifying. While delicious s’mores can be achieved indoors with a microwave, broiler, gas stovetop or even a candle with some fight in it, a campfire or fire pit imparts a nostalgic woodsy smokiness. Add-ons like jam, peanut butter, chile flakes or fresh berries are fun to try out. What’s nonnegotiable is that you enjoy s’mores with friends, fellow campers, grandchildren or whomever you love.

Lemon-Almond Butter Cake
This buttery almond cake with lemon curd baked inside is like the ultimate citrus tart, without the heartbreak of pie crust. It's fancy enough to be served as a dinner party dessert, yet substantial enough to be served with Sunday brunch. (Bonus: you'll have several tablespoons of lemon curd left over. It's delicious on toast or pancakes.)

New Classic Brownies
For a brownie almost as dark and dense as a chocolate truffle, there is Alice Medrich’s innovative method for New Classic Brownies: the pan goes directly from a high-heat oven to a bath of ice water, and the just-baked batter slumps, becoming concentrated and intense.

Strawberry Eton Mess
Eton mess is a classic British dessert made of a mixture of fresh fruit, cream and crushed baked meringue. It’s deliciously simple and perfect for lazy summer days when berries are in season and the less time spent in the kitchen the better. Of course, you could make meringue cookies from scratch, but if you choose to buy them, there will be very little work to do. A little lime zest and juice gives this simple dessert an essential sweet-tart edge, though lemon would do the trick as well.

Frozen Fudge Pops
These easy fudge pops, with a mix of cream and milk, combine the fun of an ice cream truck Popsicle with the sophistication of a rich chocolate ice cream touched with salt. The key is making sure the ingredients are well emulsified in a blender. These will melt quickly so enjoy them right out of the freezer.

S’mores Crispy Treats
This smile-inducing mash-up of crispy rice treats and s’mores combines the best qualities of both popular sweets. Toasty graham crackers and roasted marshmallows balance the overall sweetness, while melted butter and gooey marshmallows soften the dry graham crackers and brittle chocolate. To make these newfangled sweets, broil the marshmallows until they just start to smoke. Brown the butter to double down on the toastiness, then toss with the marshmallows, graham cereal and chocolate chips, which melt in streaks. After pressing the mixture into a pan, broil the top to get that toasted-over-the-campfire taste.

Date Bars
Native to North Africa and the Middle East, dates were planted in the Coachella Valley in the late 1890s and are now a California crop, with the state growing 90 percent of America’s dates, particularly the medjool variety. “The intense sweetness of dates makes them a great substitute for honey or sugar,” writes Tanya Holland, the chef and author of “Tanya Holland’s California Soul: Recipes From a Culinary Journey West” (Ten Speed Press, 2022). Her date bars from this cookbook feature a gorgeous strip of the beautiful fruit and make a great caky snack to serve alongside coffee or tea.

Buffalo Chicken Dip
Sour cream and onion, spinach-artichoke, queso and fondue are warm dips you know and love, but we'd urge you to get to know Buffalo chicken dip a little better. It’s a quick, one-pan snack, spicy from a heavy pour of hot sauce, luscious from sour cream and cream cheese and a little funky from the blue cheese. With just the right amount of acid and salt, it'll keep people coming back for more. It also plays well with beer, but that you already knew.

Sticky Harissa Chicken Wings
This seemingly simple chicken wing recipe from Mansour Arem, a co-founder of Zwïta, a Tunisian food company, has genius moments throughout the cooking process, resulting in sticky, stellar results. Dry-roasting the wings ensures thin, crackly skin that’s at once crispy and airy under the spicy, sweet and immensely savory sauce, which requires no cooking, just stirring. Adding the hot wings to the cool sauce awakens the flavors of the harissa and lets it shine bright. This recipe calls for chicken, but the glossy sauce works well on many things, including salmon, tofu and chickpeas. Mr. Arem recommends enjoying this dish with beer, such as a pilsner, hefeweizen or amber lager.

Vegan Onion Dip
For the creamiest, dreamiest vegan onion dip, use a high-speed blender, if you have one. There is some down time in this recipe — soaking the cashews and letting the dip rest — but don’t be tempted to skip those steps. The cashews need to soak so they blend as smoothly as possible, and the finished dip benefits greatly from some time to let the flavors come together. Prepare it a day in advance and refrigerate overnight for best results.

Sinasir (Fermented Rice Skillet Cakes)
A flat skillet cake made from a batter of fermented rice, sinasir is a recipe from Northern Nigeria similar in texture to Somali cambaabur and Ethiopian injera. Its spongy texture makes it an excellent vehicle for sopping up soups, stews or chunks of beef suya. It is also quite lovely when eaten as a snack, drizzled lightly with honey. This version gets a bit of nuttiness from the short-grain brown rice, and the scent of toasted rice will waft through your kitchen as you cook. The fermentation step in the beginning is crucial, as it gives the finished cakes a slight sourness. For a more intense tang, ferment slowly in the refrigerator using the directions below.

Yaki Onigiri (Grilled Japanese Rice Balls) With Pickled Shiitakes
Onigiri, also known as omusube, are portable snacks, often sold in Japanese convenience stores, which are traditionally stuffed with salty, tangy fillings, then wrapped in seaweed. When grilled, glazed or cooked, they become yaki onigiri. In this version, adapted from “Vegan JapanEasy: Classic and Modern Vegan Japanese Recipes to Cook at Home” by Tim Anderson (Hardie Grant, 2020), a little bit of the pickled shiitake filling goes a long way. (The recipe makes extra, which you can keep refrigerated to add to stir-fries, ramen or even omelets.) You could also stuff these with finely chopped kimchi, Japanese pickles, sautéed greens or nothing at all. Available online or at most Japanese supermarkets, an onigiri mold makes for sleek shaping, but, with a little practice, you could also form the shape by hand, or simply roll the rice between your palms into balls. For hot yaki onigiri, brush them with the miso glaze, which will form a delightful crackly, caramelized crust when broiled.

Cinnamon Babka
This dairy-free babka, enriched with olive oil and flavored with a ribbon of almond flour, brown sugar and cinnamon, starts with a classic challah bread dough. In the oven, the oil and sugar mingle to create a chewy, caramelized coating. You can omit the almond flour to make this nut-free, but the cinnamon ribbon will not be as pronounced. Be sure to let the babkas proof fully before baking, which will ensure a light, supple texture. (Watch Claire make this recipe on YouTube.)