Sausage and Leek Soup

Caramelized onions, melty Gruyère, and a deeply savory broth deliver the kind of comfort that doesn’t need improving.

This traditional dish of beef, sour cream, and mustard may have originated in Russia, but it’s about time for a version with ramen noodles, don’t you think?

Rather than breaded and fried as you might expect croquettes to be, these are something more akin to a seared chicken salad patty.

This is what I call a fridge-eater recipe. The key here is getting a nice sear on the sausage and cooking the tomato down until it coats the sausage and vegetables well.

This sauce is slightly magical. The texture cloaks pasta much like a traditional meat sauce does, and the flavors are deep and rich, but it’s actually vegan!

Salmoriglio is a Mediterranean sauce with herbs, garlic, and olive oil. In this version, kelp is used as the base of the sauce.

An ex-boyfriend’s mom—who emigrated from Colombia—made the best meat sauce—she would fry sofrito for the base and simply add cooked ground beef, sazón, and jarred tomato sauce. My version is a bit more bougie—it calls for caramelized tomato paste and white wine—but the result is just as good.

This grandma-inspired soup is equal parts cozy and bright.