Simple Cooking

This easy chile-spiked cooked tomato salsa pairs well with the beet-topped tostadas but is a great sauce all on its own.

The herbed sauce in this grain dish gets a double hit of punchy dairy: Not as sharp as other acidic ingredients, buttermilk lends a unique tang and yogurt brings body and richness.

Using a sliced whole lemon gives you unbeatable fresh aroma from the skin, bitter complexity from the pith, and tart, puckery juice from the flesh. Thin slices soften evenly and ensure that the lemon plays nicely with the pasta, butter, and Parmesan.

We took loose inspiration from Hainanese chicken rice to create this weeknight-friendly dish that retains the comforting and fragrant qualities of the beloved original.

All of the satisfaction of a hearty, rich, bean-based cassoulet without the painstaking hours of prepping and cooking.

You need a bigger bowl and more water than you might think to rehydrate wood ear mushrooms—they nearly triple in size.

This pickle brine–inspired dry rub turns potatoes and carrots crispy-creamy with pleasantly sharp vinegary tang. Toss them, still warm, with leftover shredded chicken and crunchy raw celery, onion, and yes, sliced pickles for a double-the-pickle, double-the-fun dinner salad.

Dried barberries are incredibly tart, more so than any other dried fruit you’ll encounter. Look for them at Middle Eastern markets or specialty foods stores, or order them online. 

The layer of streusel in this marbled loaf cake gets a complex punch of flavor from a coffee spice blend that includes dried orange peel, cardamom, and fennel seeds.

The transformative power of our new favorite seedy, spicy, crunchy, garlicky oil is on full display in this dinner of simply seared scallops. A couple of drizzles adds a spice drawer’s worth of flavor in seconds.

Coconut milk and lots of aromatics bring life into this fish chowder. And just when you thought oyster crackers couldn’t get better, you’ll cook them in butter and smother them in paprika.

Slowly rendering the pancetta, gently toasting the garlic, and concentrating the tomatoes puts three pots’ worth of flavor in just one.

Juicy pork al pastor and oozy Oaxacan cheese make a brilliant combo. Thinly slicing the pork and cooking it in a hot skillet with plenty of marinade still clinging to the meat yields the charred edges and deep flavor of traditional spit-roasted pastor.

Birria is usually served with a side of consomé, the rich pan juices from the roasted meat. This recipe takes things a step further by puréeing those juices with roasted vegetables and dried chiles.

The power of a tangy, vinegary brine, but in powdered form. This spice rub brightens and invigorates roasted chicken, seared fish and shines when sprinkled over vegetables before roasting. The cornstarch in the vinegar powder helps form an extra-crispy, extra-tart crust on anything you put it on.

This chile oil combines tons of texture from toasted whole spices and seeds with a just-spicy-enough heat level. Drizzle it over any, literally any, savory food you can think of.

Use this coffee spice mix as a dry rub on chicken, steak, pork chops, or carrots for dinner, or fold into chocolate chip cookies, coffee cake, ice cream, and more for dessert—it plays happily on both sides of the field.

It’s really satisfying to make chicken stock on the grill. The pot can sit in a corner of the grill as long as the grill is fired up, and the stock will only get better with each hour.

Thyme goes beautifully with sweet and citrus flavors, making it perfect for cocktails. This recipe multiplies easily for large groups.

The salad works best with strips of Persian flatbread, but plain tortillas work just as well. The addition of golpar, with its citrusy aroma, really lifts this dish, accentuating the sweetness of the pomegranates and adding a wonderful depth of flavor, so try and track some down if you can.