Bon Appétit

Save your over-the-top machinations for the pie–cranberry sauce is meant to be simple.

A bowl of ice water stops the blanched vegetables from cooking and ensures they stay tender-crisp. The salt in the ice water seasons the veggies and chills them even further.

The secret to this flavorful soba noodle recipe is adding a paste made from chiles and garlic to a fresh and lively basil-cilantro pesto. The heat doesn’t overpower the palate, but it wakes up the other elements of salt, acid, fat, and freshness.

If time is of the essence, a skin-on fish fillet is your best friend. Not only does this black bass crisp up beautifully when pressed down on a hot pan—it also absorbs the flavors of its dressing beautifully.

Use this master formula as your guide—but feel free to get creative with the add-ins. A dried chile? Sure! A few sprigs of herbs from your windowsill? Why not?

This fairly classic gumbo recipe is made with okra and, optionally, filé powder. Chicken, andouille sausage, and a dark roux add savory depth.

Delicious sweet potato with marshmallows recipe made using brown sugar, almonds, and spices.

Cooking cabbage wedges until very tender is one of the easiest, most delicious things we can think of. If the spiced tomato broth has reduced to the point where the pan starts getting dry and dark before the cabbage is ready, just add a splash of water to loosen it and keep going.

In this recipe, every single grain of rice gets coated in egg yolk and fries up perfectly distinct and chewy. Think of this method as a canvas for mixing in different ingredients and flavors—just don't skip the furikake.

This super-flexible, all-purpose salad turns cabbage into luscious tangles of crisp leaves generously coated in a rich and bright dressing.

These beans cook with a combination of herbs, alliums, and chiles—and salt is added right from the start. No pre-soaking means this just might be the easiest pot of beans you'll ever make.

Precooked, compact, and way more flavorful than store-bought frozen spinach, these portioned greens are ready to be thrown into soups and stews straight from the freezer or thawed in the fridge and tossed into omelets and pastas. Even simple side dishes of garlicky greens become infinitely faster when virtually all the prep work is done ahead of time.

Traditionally these banana fritters are sweetened with a syrup made from gur or jaggery, which gives them a musky aroma and a dark brown color. This version uses maple syrup, which hits many of the same notes as those sweeteners. These fritters are fluffy and tender on the inside, crispy and craggy on the outside.

This dough is optimized for getting portioned, frozen, and baked right from the freezer, so you are never more than 25 minutes away from a warm, gooey cookie.

This pungent, spicy, and garlicky broth is a riff on rasam, a South Indian soup. Tamarind juice typically acts as the base for the dish, but here tomato paste and lime juice add fruity acidity to balance the intense flavors.

This is the cake you bake on the weekend and then eat a slice of every evening (or morning) throughout the week. It’s called meal prep.

You’ll find Korean rice cakes in all kinds of shapes and sizes—from long cylinders to thin, oblong rounds. While their flavor does not change according to shape, textures do. Thin rice cakes work well for this stir-fry, as they quickly absorb flavors and soften into crispy, chewy coins.

Whole wheat flour and miso make this crumb cake a little sweet, a little savory, and entirely delicious.

This isn’t your average Caesar salad. Here, the chicken gets smothered in Caesar dressing then roasts until the garlic, anchovies, and mustard become deeply caramelized and flavorful.