Simple Cooking

For the clearest caramel and smoothest custard, ceramic or glass baking dishes work best for cooking this Filipino-American–style dessert.

This dough recipe produces a finely textured, surprisingly flavorful cookie that holds its shape well. Use it for our Honey-Vanilla Linzer Cookies and Pistachio Thumbprints.

Make your dough balls as even as possible so the cookies match up when stacked.

These meringue-like cookies have all our favorite granola ingredients. You can swap in equal amounts of other nuts and seeds, such as hazelnuts, peanuts, or sunflower seeds.

Chef Jody Williams serves this truffle mixture family-style at holiday parties, with spoons, so guests can scrape off shavings of ganache and toss them through cocoa powder or sandwich between wedges of clementine.

The orange zest and nutmeg say holiday, but you can switch up the spices as long as you keep the butter and salt.

The beauty of this mix is that it can be deployed lots of ways. Eat it out of hand as an upgrade to the usual cocktail nut or pretzel offering, or spoon it over plain yogurt as a savory topping. It can also be tossed into a bowl of salad greens or as a stir-in for a puréed soup.

The peas may bring good luck, but the bacon definitely brings good flavor.

Traditionally made with ube (Filipino sweet potato), this recipe will work with any purple or orange sweet potato or yam.

Three tricks for flawless weeknight chicken: remove the bones from a skin-on breast, weight it down for faster cooking and crisper skin, and toss some lime halves into the hot pan for an instant smoky, tangy sauce.

Hey Lillet fans, keep open bottles in the fridge as you would with any other wine. Even though Lillet is fortified, it will still oxidize and lose flavor over time.

Korean rice cakes can be found frozen or vacuum-packed. They’re delicious in soups (of course) but also seared or lightly grilled.

Packed with flavor from curry powder and fresh ginger, this fragrant soup is wonderfully filling, but won’t weigh you down.

This classic technique gets a modern punch of flavor from briny olives and capers, sweet raisins, a splash of rum, and a squeeze of bright lime juice.

This is not the bland, boring steak and onions you might have seen before—instead, bay leaves, lemon juice, and soy sauce lend fragrant, bright, umami-rich flavor to a succulent rib-eye.

Don’t waste any of the paprika-tinted delicious juices remaining in the pan—sop them up with rice instead.

Yes, you can cook lentils and quinoa together. And now your life will become exponentially easier.

No pressure cooker? Cook it the old-fashioned way.

This classy appetizer is just as delicious as deviled eggs, but a whole lot easier to make.

Rubbed with garlic, rosemary, and allspice, this bacon-wrapped roast is rich with holiday flavor. The impressive but quick-cooking recipe can easily be halved to serve a smaller crowd.