If you ask me about comfort food, I will answer promptly: slow-cooked brisket. This old-fashioned pot roast, cooked quietly in the slow cooker all day with just a handful of ingredients and a mess of caramelized onions, makes a rich broth and meat that melts in your mouth. Sunday dinner, weeknight supper — whenever you eat it, this is a classic dish both convenient and comforting.
Classic buttermilk biscuits are a staple in my household. Quick, easy, and light as a feather, they can be served for breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner and even dessert! The technique is simple (hint: freeze the butter and use a light touch) but the results are spectacular.
Are you roasting a whole turkey for the holidays for the first time this year? Want the easiest, simplest method? Or perhaps you've done this many times before, but you want a quick refresher to brush up on the basics? We'll help you make your mama proud with these step-by-step instructions for roasting a whole turkey.
Here is our super basic, super simple, super easy recipe for roasting a super beautiful turkey this Thanksgiving.
Deviled eggs are ingenious. They take hard-cooked eggs — already one of the world's most perfect foods — and elevate them into an elegant bite that's worthy of any appetizer plate. From summer picnics and Easter brunch, to afternoon snack time and Sunday supper, deviled eggs are more than up for the occasion.
Deviled eggs are also one of the easiest appetizers we know how to make. Today, we'll show you the easiest, most basic method for these irresistible treats, with plenty of ideas for making them your own.
Mornings are made for cinnamon rolls. Yeasty, tender dough swirled with a fragrant cinnamon filling and smeared with sweet icing — what's not to like? I love smelling the yeast as it perks up in a warm bath of milk and sugar; feeling the dough come together between my hands; sprinkling sweetened cinnamon over the top, always knowing that I'll add a little more than what is necessary; and rolling the soft dough and watching that elegant swirl form.
With a few swipes of a knife, generously-sized rolls are ready for the oven. Run to the kitchen, friends, because these easy-to-make gluten-free cinnamon buns deliver on every desire, craving, and expectation you've ever had for a truly delicious homemade cinnamon roll.
Three cheers for a brightly flavored breakfast smoothie that will energize those little people right out the door! The silly name says it all — the Coco Loco smoothie has a coconut base, a handful of cauliflower (trust us on this one!), and a silky-smooth texture from frozen mango. It's a super-simple kid-friendly breakfast that's a nice change of pace from banana-based smoothies.
With a base of frozen banana and fresh kiwi, this playful smoothie — let's call it the Green Monster — is rich in fiber to keep your kids' little systems in good working order. It can also help ensure that the kids start the day with a dose of nutrition, which can be reassuring if they are sometimes reluctant to eat their fruits and veggies in other forms. The healthy fats from the avocado also fuels brain development, which is especially important in younger kids and toddlers.
Greek Tsoureki, a sweet, egg-rich bread usually prepared around Easter, is a showy, sweet loaf that is just as delicious as it is beautiful. But good looks aren't even this loaf's best asset. Just wait until you cut it open to oohs and ahhs of family and guests, taste the sweet dough, and inhale the citrusy, cinnamon scent. Whether you grew up eating this bread around the Easter holiday or are looking for an afternoon of baking, this sweet and yeasty bread is a good place to start.
This play on classic cream biscuits gets a fresh upgrade with help from sunny citrus and a finishing touch of coarse sugar. They skew slightly sweet, making for tender, pillowy biscuits that instantly feel a little bit more fancy. I love them with a spread of jam in the morning, or piled high with fruit and cream for dessert.
Do you have ham on your Easter menu? Of course you do! Ham is one of the the essential centerpieces for an Easter table full of deviled eggs, roasted asparagus, and hot crossed buns. What we think of as "Easter ham" is actually a spiral-cut city ham and many of them are sold packaged with their own glaze. But you can — and should — make your own brown sugar glaze for your city ham.
This glaze isn't sugary-sweet but the most delicious balance of brown sugar, honey, Dijon, and just a splash of vinegar. It will transform your Easter ham from basic to the most=talked=about dish at your celebration.
Most Eastern European households have an Easter tradition of sweet eggy bread. This is my family's — an enormous braided loaf, scented with nutmeg and lemon, peppered with almonds and plump golden raisins. It originated on my maternal grandfather's Czech side of the family tree, and all my life I've known it as houska. As in, "Uncle Ed is doing the houska this Easter." Or, "I burned the top of the houska." "Tell me again, who's bringing the houska?" It's a treasured Easter treat, the taste and scent of it mixed with holiday memories.
But you know what? My family has it all wrong. This bread isn't houska at all. We've been using the wrong name for at least 70 years. Does it matter?
Are you hosting a smaller get together for Easter, Thanksgiving, or Christmas this year? Don't bother with a whole turkey — just roast a turkey breast! One half-breast or even a whole turkey breast makes more than enough for a small party of four to six. (And yes, you'll still have plenty of pan drippings to make gravy.)
Turkey breasts are also a cinch to roast — no flipping, no basting, no fuss. Here's a recipe to show you how to do it, step by step.
If you're looking for a show-stopping dish to serve at Easter or your next dinner party, look no further than this carrot soufflé. It has everything you love about soufflés: an airy, delicate texture that almost melts in your mouth, the creamy richness of milk and cheese set with eggs, and, of course, the sweetness and vivid color of carrots.
Pair it with baked ham or lamb for lunch or dinner, or serve it alongside a green salad for brunch. And trust me when I say this soufflé is easy — there's absolutely no whipping of egg whites.
Frozen pizzas have their time and place, like when we need a backup meal when we don't have time to shop or an easy heat-and-serve dinner for babysitters. There's nothing wrong with a good store-bought frozen pizza in these situations, but making your own homemade frozen pizzas from scratch will probably save you some pennies — plus, you get exactly the toppings you want!
It's also easy to do. With just two little tricks you can fill your freezer with all the made-ahead frozen pizzas you could ever want.
We like to put Swiss chard on the table as the meal's vegetable because, like other leafy greens, it has lots of nutritional benefits. However, it can be a little bland so we add a few other ingredients like pancetta, shallot, and garbanzo beans to give it a lift. As the beans cook, they break down a little to thicken the cooking juices. We also like this heaped onto bruschetta as an antipasto or light lunch.
I firmly believe that at the center of every Easter brunch spread there should be a savory, eggy casserole that's served up in slabs and washed down with mimosas. Make this number your celebratory casserole this year. It's filled with leeks, as an ode to the spring season, and is packed full of crowd-pleasing bacon and cheese.
Oh, and it can be made ahead of time, which really just seals the deal here.
Hot cross buns are lightly sweetened, mildly spiced rolls with a distinct image of a cross that runs across the top. They are specifically associated with Good Friday, and have been for almost a millennium. Over time, hot cross buns in the U.S. became extremely sweet, and today are often criss-crossed with a sugary icing, but that isn't the recipe of yore; the original crossing mixture was more of a paste.
Classic hot cross buns hold genuine symbolic value that can stand deliciously and proudly alongside any holiday baked treat.
Kugel is, at its essence, a baked casserole. It can be sweet or savory, and perhaps the best-loved savory kugel of all is a potato kugel. In this dish, earthy potatoes mingle with mellow yellow onions and golden, savory chicken schmaltz in a casserole as light and fluffy as a perfectly tender baked spud. Basically, potato kugel is potatoes, onions, and eggs at their very best.
My father in-law is not a big fan of turkey and makes his love of ham at the holidays well-known. Honestly, I can relate. After spending much of the summer and fall testing turkey recipes, I'm ready for something different come November. So we started adding a ham to the family Thanksgiving menu about five years ago, but as the host (and cook), I ran into a problem: How can I season and heat a ham while the turkey is hogging all the oven time? Slow cooker ham is the solution!
Since most holiday hams come fully baked, all I have to do is load it into the slow cooker in the morning to have ham in time for lunch. As another bonus? The slow cooker can be set to warm, so the ham stays moist while we wait for that one sister-in-law who is always late.
If you're following Whole30 this month, you'll want to add this quick and easy skillet supper to your meal plan immediately. And even if Whole30 isn't for you, you'll still want to get this weeknight-friendly recipe in your dinner rotation sooner than later. With crumbled sausage and creamy potatoes at the helm, it's rooted in hearty, wholesome comfort and balanced by a light, bright twist from a handful of fresh herbs and a generous squeeze of lemon.
Instead of picking up pastries or a coffee cake at the grocery store or bakery, add these lemony blueberry scones to your Easter brunch menu. Loaded with plump blueberries and lemon zest, these tender, golden-brown scones use buttermilk instead of heavy cream and are drizzled with a lemony glaze at the end for an extra hit of citrus flavor. Best of all, the scone dough can be made, frozen, and baked so they can be served fresh without any fuss or stress.
It feels like money in the bank when you've got this herb salt in your freezer. It's a great way to put stray herbs to use — adapt the quantities of each to whatever's available in your fridge or garden — and you can use it to deliver fresh herb flavor to everything from salad to roasted vegetables to meat.
While fried rice is Asian in its history, at its core it's an easy technique that turns a handful of leftover ingredients into something comforting and fresh-tasting. There are no hard-and-fast rules — all you need is some cooked rice and some imagination. That's where this breakfast-inspired fried rice comes in. Some of our favorite breakfast ingredients — breakfast sausage, eggs, and, yes, cheese — make their way into this rich and hearty fried rice that you can have any time of day.
If you haven't had quiche lately, it is time to remedy that situation. I could eat quiche for breakfast, lunch, and dinner without ever growing tired of it, but quiche is an especially good dish for a big brunch or other casual gathering. You make it the day ahead, slice it just before serving, and then pass out the plates. This foolproof recipe has yet to disappoint.
Chili mac is as retro a dish as it sounds. It was Tuesday lunch served by hairnetted lunch ladies in the school cafeteria, a satisfying meal at the neighborhood potluck, and a quick dinner for the babysitter to make when mom and dad took the night off.
Every spoonful offers tender noodles and spiced meat and beans dressed in a rich, cheesy tomato sauce. This hearty combination of meaty tomato chili and creamy mac and cheese has been filling empty bellies for decades, making chili mac a #MiracleMeal before hashtags were a thing.
