Weeknight
3434 recipes found
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Slow-Cooker Beef Stew
This super-simple beef stew features spoon-tender chunks of beef and a sauce that gets a deep, dark flavor from stout beer and maple syrup. The recipe calls for carrots, parsnips and potatoes, but feel free to swap in similar quantities of other root vegetables, like turnips and rutabaga, cut into large pieces. But do make sure to avoid precut stew meat from the grocery store, which is often unreliable and cut too small. A chuck roast that you cut yourself is a far better option. You can also make this on the stovetop or in the oven: Season the meat with salt, then sear it in 2 tablespoons vegetable oil over high heat in a Dutch oven. Add the rest of the ingredients, stir to combine, cover and simmer on low (or in a 325-degree oven) for 2 to 3 hours until the meat is very tender and move on to step 2.
Roasted Cauliflower With Feta, Almonds and Olives
Roasted cauliflower is a pure delight, but tossing it with feta, toasted almonds and olives makes it even better. The additions come together while the cauliflower roasts, allowing you to assemble this side in no time. If almonds aren't available, walnuts or hazelnuts are good substitutions. This dish works well served warm, but it's equally good at room temperature if you want to make it ahead. Serve with grilled pork chops or pan-seared chicken thighs with lemon and herbs, or fold it into cooked grains, such farro or rice, for a hearty grain salad.
Migas Breakfast Tacos
Tortilla chips in tacos may seem like overkill, but they’re not. Set into scrambled eggs that are loaded with onions and poblanos, they soften and enrich the mix while keeping some crispiness. A slice of avocado on top — along with melted cheese — adds a nice creaminess to the mix. These tacos work well with red or green salsa, so use your favorite. While these would impress at a weekend brunch, they also come together quickly on weekday mornings, and can be wrapped in foil to be eaten out of hand.
Scarlett’s Tuna Salad
For when it’s too hot to cook, there's the chef Scarlett Lindeman’s tuna salad — the same one she serves at her Mexico City restaurant, Cicatriz. Made with high-quality, oil-packed tuna, the salad is fresh, juicy, bright and summery, composed with cucumbers, avocado, pickled onion and lots of herbs. Don’t be afraid to season the cucumbers generously with salt at the start, and to season more as you build the layers of the salad. The dish is so simple that seasoning it well is key.
Herby Pork Laab With Chile
In this take on the classic Thai dish laab (also spelled larb) moo, ground pork is pan-cooked, then stirred together with a combination of funky fish sauce, fresh and dried chiles, shallots, lime juice and an abundance of fresh herbs for brightness. If you don't eat pork, ground chicken or turkey will work well in its place. Making the toasted rice powder is a little fussy, but it gives the dish an authentic nutty flavor and crunch. That said, if you skip it, it will still be delicious. If you have the time, top this dish with crispy shallots: It takes the whole thing to the next level, as does a flurry of chive blossoms when in season. Serve this spicy dish with sticky rice, and grilled or roasted wedges of cabbage squeezed with lime, but for a low-key weeknight, plain white rice and lettuce leaves work just as well.
Ginger-Scallion Chicken
In this easy chicken stir-fry, adapted from Lan Hing Riggin, a home cook from Virginia who grew up cooking with her family in Hong Kong, slivers of ginger and scallions turn golden, adding their sweetness and pungency to the oil. A dash of soy sauce provides saltiness and depth, while a full cup of cilantro leaves, used as garnish, makes the dish a bit lighter and fresher. Fire seekers can add a sliced chile or two along with the ginger.
Creamy Weeknight Macaroni and Cheese
Just as quick as the boxed variety, this creamy macaroni and cheese skirts the traditional butter and flour roux with assistance from cream cheese. While the cream cheese adds an important lusciousness, it doesn’t do the macaroni and cheese any favors when it comes to its flavor, so it’s important to use the sharpest, tangiest Cheddar you can get your hands on. For perfectly coated noodles, make sure to cook the pasta in the sauce for a minute or two.
Salmon en Papillote (Salmon in Parchment)
Salmon cooked en papillote, which means wrapped in a packet of parchment (or foil), is a dramatic way to procure perfectly cooked salmon, but it isn’t difficult. Fold a fillet into a cut piece of parchment, and then layer it with seasonings or perhaps vegetables or citrus fruit. Then simply bake the packets until done. The steam created by the parchment produces reliably moist salmon, and opening the individual packets at the table makes for a fun way to start dinner.
Peruvian Roasted Chicken With Spicy Cilantro Sauce
Burnished-skinned, deeply flavored and more than just a little spicy, it’s no wonder that Peruvian chicken has become something of an obsession here in the United States. There are dozens of way to make this dish, but most recipes call for two different kinds of Peruvian chile pastes — aji amarillo and aji panca — to add the necessary complexity and heat. You can find them at South American markets and online. But in a pinch, you can substitute a red chile paste (like sriracha or sambal) for the aji amarillo, and ground pasilla chile powder for the aji panca. The flavors won’t be traditional, but the chicken will still be tasty — especially when slathered with the irresistibly creamy, spicy cilantro sauce that goes alongside.
Grilled Steak Tacos With Cherry Tomato-Avocado Salsa
In this supremely summery taco recipe, chile-rubbed grilled steak is topped with a spicy tomato-avocado salsa before being rolled into warm corn tortillas. Grilling the onions, garlic and jalapeño for the salsa adds a concentrated sweetness, while lime zest keeps everything sharp and bright. If you don’t have access to a grill, feel free to use your broiler.
Cobb Salad
While the origins of a Cobb salad are still up for debate, what goes into one is fairly absolute: tender chicken breast, tangy tomatoes, perfectly hard-boiled egg and, perhaps most important, crispy bacon. This classic version relies on crumbled blue cheese and ripe avocado for creaminess, rather than a cheese or buttermilk-based dressing, making way for a mustardy shallot vinaigrette. The way each of the ingredients is prepared will depend on personal preference: Are you a chunky, chopped salad kind of person? Or do you prefer your lettuce torn and tomatoes sliced? Here, the torn and sliced approach is taken for a more elegant visual, but feel free to make it your own. It also halves nicely if you're cooking for two.