Weeknight
3491 recipes found
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.
Eggs Kejriwal
This spicy egg-and-cheese on toast has its roots in the social-club circuit of Mumbai, though chefs in London, New York and Oakland have riffed on it recently, too. The dish is quick and simple, ideal for breakfast or a hearty snack between meals, and can be customized with a variety of cheeses and toppings. To make this updated Eggs Kejriwal, toast good bread and smear it with mustard, then pile on some grated cheese mixed up with chopped up green chiles, red onion and cilantro leaves. Once the cheese is bubbling under the broiler, just slide on a fried egg.
Sautéed Brussels Sprouts
This is sort of a no-recipe recipe for brussels sprouts that will have you wanting to make them every day of the week. Once you memorize the proportions, you can vary the fat and seasonings any which way you like. One important tip: Having a large enough skillet is key, so the sprouts have a chance to brown on one side before steaming and turning to mush.
Omelet
This recipe is for a basic French omelet with three eggs: enough for a hearty breakfast or brunch, or a light supper for one. The key to mastering this recipe is controlling the heat so the eggs do not brown, and whisking the eggs in the skillet so they set on the exterior but remain fluffy inside. A good nonstick or well-seasoned carbon-steel skillet is central to cooking the ideal omelet, which should be tender and slightly runny. Once you’ve got the technique down, you can play around with your seasonings, adding minced herbs, grated cheese, diced ham or sautéed vegetables. This recipe is part of The New Essentials of French Cooking, a guide to definitive dishes every modern cook should master.
Farro With Roasted Squash, Feta and Mint
Falling somewhere between a grain bowl and a warm grain salad, this colorful dish is substantial enough to be a meatless main course, or it makes a hearty side dish to simple roasted meat or fish. You can use whatever kind of squash you like here, either peeled or unpeeled. Squash skin is perfectly edible; let anyone who objects cut theirs away at the table (though see if you can get them to try it first). If you don’t have farro, you can substitute brown rice. Just increase the cooking time by about 20 minutes.
One-Pot Spaghetti With Cherry Tomatoes and Kale
In this simple recipe, raw pasta and cherry tomatoes are simmered together in a single pan, cooking the pasta and forming a thick, starchy sauce at the same time. The efficient technique is internet famous, but this is the British cookbook author Anna Jones’s vegetarian take on the phenomenon, adapted from her book “A Modern Way to Cook.” The technique is easy to master and endlessly adaptable: When you add the kale, you could also toss in a couple of anchovies and a generous pinch of red-pepper flakes. When you season and top with cheese, you could add a pile of fresh chopped herbs, like mint, basil or oregano.
Simplest Grilled Salmon
For those who love seafood but don’t like to cook it, fearing that the scent will overpower their kitchens, the grill is among the greatest of gifts. And cooking salmon on the grill couldn't be easier. You can use a charcoal or a gas grill, and you only need olive oil, salt and pepper to bring out the salmon's rich flavor. A clean grill is crucial for cooking fish, which doesn’t have a lot of fat, meaning it’s more liable to stick to the grate. Scrape and oil, always.
Springtime Spaghetti Carbonara
This lighter, brighter version of the classic Italian pasta dish is adapted from one found in “Almost Meatless: Recipes That Are Better for Your Health and the Planet” by Joy Manning and Tara Mataraza Desmond. It is incredibly simple – if you can chop vegetables, boil water and whisk eggs, you can make this dish – but it's also indubitably luxurious. Everyone will think you slaved for hours when, really, you slaved for about 20 minutes. Timing is everything in this recipe, so be sure to bring your eggs to room temperature before you start, and have all of the ingredients ready before you toss the pasta in the water.
Winter Citrus Salad With Belgian Endive
Late winter really is the time for the best citrus. Produce markets have piles of blood oranges, as well as navel and cara cara oranges and grapefruit, the flesh of each in different vivid brilliant colors. For this salad, use as many kinds of citrus as possible. If you can find pomelos, they add their own kind of sweet tanginess. The combined flavor of sweet and sour citrus, fruity olive oil and coarse salt is seductive.
Mushroom Soup Gratinée
This hearty soup takes its cue from the classic soupe à l’oignon gratinée. I swapped out the onions for mushrooms and served the hearty soup paved with a layer of toast and cheese as a cold-weather first course. For an informal supper, it could be the main event, especially with additions like potatoes or other root vegetables, shredded cabbage, cooked lentils, buckwheat pasta or even chunks of duck confit, sausage or boneless short ribs or veal shank. As for the finishing glaze of cheese, I suggest Gruyère, though the Bitto of the region, a firm cow’s milk cheese made with a funky touch of goat milk, would be lovely if you can find it.
Salt-and-Pepper Roast Chicken
Calling for just four ingredients – chicken, salt, pepper and whatever herbs you have around – this is a recipe for roast chicken at its simplest and best. The method is fairly straightforward. You season the bird, then roast it at high heat until the skin is bronzed and crisp and the flesh juicy. If you have time to season the chicken ahead, you should; it makes a difference in flavor. And bear in mind, if you have the kind of oven that starts smoking at high heat, you can cook your bird at 400 degrees instead of 450, though you’ll need an extra 5 to 20 minutes to get it done.
Miso Chicken
Making a compound of unsalted butter and the salty, fungal deliciousness of Japanese miso paste is a surefire way of adding immense flavor to a simple weeknight meal. Here the mixture is spread over chicken thighs, which are then roasted to golden perfection. But you could easily use it on salmon or flounder, on corn or potatoes. The recipe calls for white miso, which is more mild than the aged version known as red miso. But you could certainly use red for a more intense result.
Meatballs With Any Meat
Making great meatballs is all about memorizing a basic ratio that you can adjust to suit your taste. Start with a pound of ground meat — any kind will work, even fish if you want to take it in that direction. Add 1/2 cup bread crumbs for lightness, a teaspoon of salt, and an egg to bind it together. That’s all you need. Pepper and other spices, chopped herbs and minced allium (garlic, onion, scallions or shallot) can be added to taste. Then broil or fry as you like. Why You Should Trust This Recipe Melissa Clark, a food writer for more than 25 years, creates her fresh takes on classic recipes by trying at least half a dozen different approaches. A professional recipe tester then makes her recipe a minimum of three times (and sometimes more than 12) to ensure it’ll come out perfectly for all home cooks. For these meatballs, Melissa tinkered with ratios of seasonings to breadcrumbs to ensure the formula works with any type of ground meat.
Best Gazpacho
More of a drink than a soup, served in frosted glasses or chilled tumblers, gazpacho is perfect when it is too hot to eat but you need cold, salt and lunch all at the same time. Gazpacho is everywhere in Seville, Spain, where this recipe comes from, but it's not the watered-down salsa or grainy vegetable purée often served in the United States. This version has no bread and is a creamy orange-pink rather than a lipstick red. That is because a large quantity of olive oil is required for making delicious gazpacho, rather than take-it-or-leave it gazpacho. The emulsion of red tomato juice, palest green cucumber juice and golden olive oil produces the right color and a smooth, almost fluffy texture.
Sheet-Pan Chicken With Potatoes, Arugula and Garlic Yogurt
Your typical sheet-pan chicken recipe roasts everything together on a pan at once. This version pairs potatoes with the poultry, and tops everything off with fresh herbs and arugula, making it a true one-pan meal, salad included. A savory yogurt sauce adds a creamy touch, but it’s optional if you’re not a yogurt sauce fan. Feel free to double the recipe if you’re feeding a crowd, though make sure to use two sheet pans so that everything is spread out in one layer, which is critical for browning.
Cacio e Pepe
It is among the most basic, simplest pastas there is, and one of the darlings of Rome, appearing on nearly every menu. Why? Because when made right, it is incredible. The secret, as it turns out, is to stir the mostly cooked pasta quite vigorously so that its starch emulsifies with the seasonings and added water.
Roasted Salmon Glazed With Brown Sugar and Mustard
This is what we call around here a no-recipe recipe, the sort of meal you can cook once off a card and you'll know it by heart: salmon glazed with brown sugar and mustard. The preparation could not be simpler. Heat your oven to 400. Make a mixture of Dijon mustard and brown sugar to the degree of spicy-sweetness that pleases you. Salt and pepper the salmon fillets. Place them skin-side down on a lightly oiled, foil-lined baking sheet, slather the tops with the mustard and brown sugar glaze and slide them into the top half of your oven. They ought to be done in 12 minutes or so, and they pair beautifully with simple braised greens.
Craig Claiborne’s Smothered Chicken
Craig Claiborne was a child of Mississippi who started as food editor of The Times in 1957 and did as much as anyone to help bring home cooking into the spotlight. The dish “belongs in the ‘comfort’ category,” he wrote in 1983, “a food that gives solace to the spirit when you dine on it.” You could give your smothered chicken some European flair with mushrooms and small onions in the gravy, as Claiborne did in his experiments with Pierre Franey, then his kitchen co-pilot. Or you could send yourself south to the Creole tastes of the Delta, with a blend of tomatoes, chopped celery, onion and green peppers added to the sauce. But sometimes the easiest way is the best. Try it.
Diner-Style Burgers
This is the traditional, griddled hamburger of diners and takeaway spots, smashed thin and cooked crisp on its edges. It is best to cook in a heavy, cast-iron skillet slicked with oil or fat, and not on a grill. For meat, ask a butcher for coarse-ground chuck steak, with at least a 20 percent fat content, or grind your own. Keep it in the refrigerator until you are ready to cook, and try not to handle it with your fingers — use an ice-cream scoop or spoon instead. Plop down a few ounces in the pan, smash it with a spatula, salt it, let it go crisp and flip. Add cheese and get your bun toasted. The process moves quickly.
Sherried Lentil Soup With Sausage and Croutons
