253 American recipes. Page 2 of 11. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Broccoli Cranberry Salad, Cheese Arepa (Venezuelan Griddled Cornmeal Cheese Pocket).
Broccoli blanched for just 30 seconds loses its raw edge but keeps a real crunch. Tart dried cranberries, nutty sunflower seeds, and finely minced red onion are bound by a Greek yogurt dressing brightened with lemon. The salad is served chilled, so it can be made ahead and kept in the fridge.
In Venezuela and Colombia, arepas play the role of everyday bread: griddled discs of pre-cooked cornmeal dough with a golden crust and a soft center. They trace back to pre-Columbian peoples who ground maize on stone, and street vendors in Caracas and Bogota still sell them around the clock. This version splits each one into a pocket and fills it with mozzarella that melts against the warm corn. The dough uses only masarepa, water, salt, and butter, with no yeast, so the flavor stays toasty and lightly sweet from the corn. Dough that cracks needs a little more water, and edges smoothed with wet hands are less likely to split on the griddle.
In American Chinese cooking, egg mixed with vegetables is fried into small patties, and a brown gravy made separately is spooned over just before eating. This version has no meat, only mushrooms, bean sprouts, onion and scallion, and it is pan-fried instead of deep-fried, which leaves the edges brown and the middle soft.
Five firm, cookie-like layers are stacked with dried-apple filling and then left in the refrigerator for 48 hours, during which they draw moisture from the apples and turn sliceable. Freshly baked layers are not supposed to look spongy. Boiled cider is reduced apple juice syrup, not vinegar or a fizzy drink.
Canned corn kernels end up loosely bound in a milk and cream sauce, thick enough to eat with a spoon but neither set like a casserole nor brothy like chowder. Instead of more flour, part of the corn is mashed and stirred back in to thicken it, and the heat comes off while the sauce still flows, since it firms up as it cools.
Black-eyed peas are not black beans or kidney beans; they are pale, each with a single dark spot. They simmer with smoky ham, green pepper and scallions, while the rice cooks in a separate pot. Dried peas that have been stored a while soften unevenly, and keeping the rice apart lets them cook as long as they need without it turning to paste. Plan on a twelve-hour soak in the fridge.
Brennan's Restaurant in New Orleans created this dessert in the 1950s, and there the rum is poured into the pan and set alight. This version skips the flame. Bananas cook in a butter, brown sugar and cinnamon sauce, then go hot onto cold vanilla ice cream and reach the table still steaming. Start to finish, about ten minutes.
Thin lemon slices are tucked between the ice, then fresh lemon juice, simple syrup and a tiny pinch of salt go into the glass before the sparkling water. The sparkling water comes last and is barely stirred.
Broccoli cooks in a butter-and-flour roux loosened with milk and chicken stock, then the heat drops to its lowest setting and the cheddar melts in a handful at a time. Served as is, the florets stay chunky; blend half and small bits remain in the cream. It also goes into hollowed-out bread bowls.
A roux-and-milk cheddar sauce made on the stovetop, with the macaroni stirred straight in, keeps this loose and creamy rather than baked and set. Well-fermented kimchi brings sourness and heat, crisped bacon adds salt, and together they cut through the weight of the cheese. The kimchi is fried with the bacon first so its moisture cooks off before it meets the sauce.
Mayonnaise forms the base of this dressing, and lemon juice lifts its heaviness so a thick coat on the romaine never turns cloying. The anchovy is optional. Minced fine, it melts into the mayo and reads as savory depth rather than fish.
Ribs rubbed with paprika, brown sugar and garlic powder cook low and slow sealed in foil, then get a thick coat of barbecue sauce and a hot finish until sticky and dark. Peeling off the thin membrane on the bone side matters: left on, it turns chewy and blocks the rub. The meat is ready for saucing when it has shrunk back enough to slip a fingertip between bone and meat. An overnight rest in the rub seasons the meat all the way through, so starting the day before pays off.
Diced apple is scattered over the brown sugar and cinnamon filling before the dough is rolled, so the baked swirls are studded with soft, juicy bits of fruit. The rolls bake pressed together in the pan, and their sides tear apart tender when you pull one off.
A warm side to spoon next to a steak: chopped spinach bound in a thick sauce of cream cheese and cream. Once wilted, the spinach is pressed hard in a sieve before it meets the sauce.
The browned bits left in the pot after searing chicken and andouille sausage end up soaked into every grain of rice. This Louisiana one-pot rice is not a stir-fry: tomatoes, Cajun seasoning, and stock go in, the lid goes on, and the rice absorbs the liquid over low heat.
Only three quarters of each peanut butter ball goes into the chocolate, leaving a pale circle of filling on top. There is no flour, egg or oven involved. The powdered sugar firms the center as much as it sweetens it, and cutting it back makes the balls hard to dip. Let the chocolate cool to barely warm, since a hot coating softens the chilled center and loosens it from the pick.
Vanilla ice cream dropped into cold root beer makes the foam rise fast, then settles into a creamy top layer over still-fizzy soda for a few minutes. Ginger beer or regular beer will not taste the same as root beer, and the bottle should be labelled nonalcoholic. Without ice, nothing waters the drink down. A spoon and a straw let you eat the cream and sip the soda separately.
In the American South this is everyday home cooking: chicken stew with soft dumplings on top. The batter is spooned onto the broth and puffs up in the steam under the lid, so the dumplings come out light, closer to biscuit than to noodle. The thigh meat is pulled into shreds, so a spoonful gets chicken and dumpling together.
Grainy mac and cheese usually comes down to two things: flour lumps that never dissolved and cheese that split into grease from too much heat. Adding the milk in three parts prevents the first, and melting the cheddar over very low heat prevents the second. The macaroni comes out of the water underdone and finishes cooking in the sauce. If baking, the dish stays in the oven only until the top browns, which keeps the inside creamy.
Ham, turkey, cheddar, hard-boiled eggs, and cherry tomatoes go onto a bed of romaine in neat, separate rows, enough protein to make the chef salad an American main course rather than a side. The honey mustard dressing waits on the side, so the lettuce stays crisp to the last bite.
Loosely formed patties hit a smoking-hot pan and are left alone to build a brown crust, with no pressing. Overworking the ground beef makes a dense, tight patty, and a shallow dent in the center stops it from doming as it cooks. The patty is ready to flip once the edges have browned and set and juices bead on top. Pickles, lettuce and tomato cut through the melted cheddar and rich beef inside a soft brioche bun.
The cornstarch tossed with the apples is what lets this pie slice cleanly: it catches the juice the fruit releases and sets it into a glossy syrup. The dish has English and Dutch roots going back to the 14th century, and Americans have baked it since colonial times. The apples sit between two sheets of crust, with slits on top to let steam out. Serve it warm with vanilla ice cream, a la mode, or beside a slice of cheddar as in New England.
Grated cheddar with red pimento showing through, bound with mayonnaise into a cold spread; the cheese is never melted. Pimentos are sweet, mild jarred red peppers, and the same amount of chili flakes or fresh bell pepper does not stand in for them. Cheddar grated from a block keeps its shreds instead of mashing into paste.
Rice, then a beef patty, onion gravy and a soft fried egg: the Hawaiian bowl is built in that order. The gravy starts in the pan the patties came out of, with butter and the rest of the onion scraping up the browned juices before flour and Worcestershire sauce go in. The yolk gets broken and stirred through with the gravy.