Italian Recipes

142 Italian recipes. Page 1 of 6. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Almond Biscotti, Arancini (Crispy Sicilian Risotto Balls with Melted Cheese), Affogato.

Baking Easy

Almond Biscotti

Shaped into a flat log, baked once, sliced on the diagonal, and baked again at a lower temperature, these Tuscan cookies earn their name, which means twice-cooked. The second bake dries them until they are hard rather than merely crisp, a style long associated with Prato. Whole almonds give each slice a toasty crunch, and lemon zest and vanilla scent the dough. Dunked in espresso or vin santo, the outside softens while the center holds firm.

Prep 15min Cook 45min 24 servings

Rice Hard

Arancini (Crispy Sicilian Risotto Balls with Melted Cheese)

Cut one open and the mozzarella in the center stretches out of a crisp, amber breadcrumb shell. The risotto is used cold, mixed with Parmesan and worked until the grains cling together, which lets it close around the cheese without cracking.

Prep 25min Cook 25min 4 servings

Desserts Easy

Affogato

Hot espresso melts the outside of the vanilla ice cream into a coffee layer while the center stays cold, and each spoonful carries both temperatures. Affogato means drowned in Italian, after the ice cream sitting in coffee. In this version dark chocolate and cocoa add bitterness, toasted almond slices add crunch, and a tiny pinch of salt finishes it.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes

Prep 5min Cook 2min 2 servings

Drinks Easy

Tomato Basil Juice

This juice lives or dies by the tomatoes. Underripe ones give little but sourness, so let them ripen at room temperature rather than in the fridge. The basil goes in right before blending, and the juice is seasoned with salt and pepper, so it drinks savory rather than sweet.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes

Prep 10min 0 2 servings

Soups Medium

Ribollita (Tuscan Bread and Bean Soup)

Stale baguette soaks up the bean and vegetable broth until this is less a soup than something close to a porridge. The name means reboiled, and true to it, the soup tastes deeper when reheated the next day.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 20min Cook 45min 4 servings

Pasta Easy

Garlic Olive Oil Pasta

Aglio e olio means garlic and oil, and the Neapolitan dish asks for little beyond that: sliced garlic, chili flakes, olive oil, and spaghetti. With so few ingredients, the result rests on how the garlic cooks. Over low heat it should reach a pale gold in 3 to 4 minutes, and a few seconds past that the oil turns bitter. Starchy pasta water, added in portions and shaken hard with the oil, turns into a cloudy emulsion that clings to every strand. The traditional version uses no cheese and no cream.

Prep 10min Cook 15min 2 servings

Salads Easy

Antipasto Salad

Salty salami and olives, mild mozzarella balls, and crunchy bell pepper and cucumber trade places from bite to bite. With only red wine vinegar and olive oil in the dressing, the cured meat and olives carry most of the seasoning.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes 🥗 Lighter Meals

Prep 15min 0 2 servings

Western Medium

Beef Carpaccio

Raw beef tenderloin sliced almost paper-thin is laid in a single layer and finished with olive oil, lemon, shaved Parmesan and arugula. Because nothing is cooked, it needs fresh beef suitable for eating raw, served before the surface starts to change color.

Prep 20min 0 2 servings

Baking Medium

Calzone

Unlike a flat pizza, the tomato sauce stays outside here, served on the side for dipping. Inside the folded half-moon, soft ricotta, stretchy mozzarella, ham, and basil melt together into one hot filling. Brushing the top with olive oil before baking gives the crust a glossy, golden finish.

Prep 20min Cook 20min 2 servings

Rice Medium

Beet Risotto

All of the red comes from beet. It is pureed and stirred into the toasted rice, so every grain takes on a deep color. The rice goes into the pan unwashed to keep its surface starch.

Prep 15min Cook 25min 2 servings

Desserts Medium

Bam Tiramisu (Chestnut Tiramisu)

Mashing home-cooked chestnuts into the mascarpone, instead of using a smooth commercial paste, leaves a fine graininess in every spoonful. A few chopped chestnuts scattered over the top give it something to bite.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 20min Cook 5min 2 servings

Soups Easy

Tomato Basil Soup

Canned whole tomatoes go in with their juice and are crushed with a spatula and fried first to drive off water. The cream gets only 3 minutes on the heat, and the soup keeps its bright tomato red.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 10min Cook 30min 4 servings

Pasta Easy

Spaghetti Aglio e Olio (Garlic and Olive Oil Pasta)

The dish turns on slicing the garlic thin and even. If the slices vary, the thin ones burn first and the whole pan of oil turns bitter. Done right, no oil pools in the pan; it has all gone onto the strands as a thin sheen.

Prep 10min Cook 15min 2 servings

Salads Easy

Caprese Salad

With no cooking involved, the whole dish rests on ripe tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and basil-scented olive oil. Slices of red, white, and green overlap on a wide plate, and a thin thread of balsamic glaze adds sweet acidity without pooling in one spot. Salting too early draws water from the tomatoes and floods the plate, which is why seasoning waits until just before serving.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes 🥗 Lighter Meals

Prep 10min 0 2 servings

Western Easy

Bruschetta

Crisp, garlic-rubbed toast against juicy tomato makes this antipasto work, and that contrast fades as soon as the bread turns soggy. That is why the cherry tomatoes lose some seeds and watery centers and drain briefly in a sieve before seasoning.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes

Prep 12min Cook 8min 2 servings

Baking Hard

Cassata Siciliana (Sicilian Ricotta Marzipan Layer Cake)

Ricotta sweetened and studded with dark chocolate chips and candied fruit fills a liqueur-soaked sponge shell in this Sicilian celebration cake. Traditional cassata is wrapped in marzipan and a sugar glaze, while this version keeps things simpler with a thin coat of stiffly whipped cream. It is made the day before: an overnight rest in the fridge lets the sponge soak up moisture from the filling so the layers hold together, and thin, cold slices show flecks of fruit through the white cream.

Prep 40min Cook 25min 8 servings

Rice Medium

Mushroom Risotto

The mushrooms come before the rice. Button mushrooms stay over high heat until their liquid is gone and the edges brown, and only then do onion, garlic and arborio go in, followed by warm chicken stock a ladle at a time. The rice is not rinsed; its surface starch is what makes it creamy.

Prep 10min Cook 30min 2 servings

Desserts Hard

Bomboloni (Italian Cream-Filled Deep-Fried Yeast Doughnuts)

An enriched dough of bread flour, milk, egg, and butter fries into a thin, crisp shell around a soft, airy crumb. The dough stays a little tacky after kneading; working in extra flour to tame it is the usual way to end up with a heavy, bready center.

Prep 35min Cook 20min 4 servings

Soups Easy

Zuppa Toscana (Hearty creamy soup with sausage)

Raw Italian sausage, out of its casing and crumbled, is browned first, and its fat becomes the cooking oil for the onion and garlic. When the chicken stock goes in, the brown layer on the bottom of the pot is scraped up too, carrying the sausage flavor through the whole soup. Potatoes are cut no thinner than 0.5 cm to hold their shape, and the cream is only warmed over low heat at the end.

🏠 Everyday

Prep 15min Cook 30min 4 servings

Pasta Easy

Penne all'Arrabbiata (Spicy Tomato and Garlic Pasta)

All of the heat in this penne comes from the peperoncino, so adjusting that one teaspoon sets the spice level. The chili gets only 10 seconds in the garlic oil before the tomatoes go in; blackened garlic or chili leaves a bitter streak through the sauce. Simmered uncovered for 8 minutes, the tomatoes thicken enough to coat the outside of each tube and fill the hollow. A pinch of sugar rounds off tomatoes that taste too sharp.

Prep 8min Cook 18min 2 servings

Salads Easy

Citrus Fennel Salad (Orange & Shaved Fennel with Arugula)

Shaved thin and soaked in cold water, fennel turns into crisp, anise-scented ribbons that catch the juice from orange segments. Bitter-edged arugula and sliced almonds fill in between the sweet and the sour. The dressing is only olive oil and white wine vinegar, so each raw ingredient comes through clearly. The salad is tossed only at the last moment, because fennel left sitting in vinaigrette goes limp and crunch is the whole point of the dish. Citrus and fennel wake the palate rather than dulling it, which is why the salad comes before rich meat or fish courses.

⚡ 20-Minute Recipes 🥗 Lighter Meals

Prep 15min 0 2 servings

Western Easy

Caponata (Sicilian Sweet and Sour Eggplant Stew)

Decide whether to serve the caponata at room temperature or chilled, and allow for an overnight rest if you want a softer sweet-sour balance. When browning the eggplant, the cubes should color without collapsing before they return to the sauce. Vinegar or sugar that dominates can obscure the eggplant, so their balance matters as much as the browning. Toasted bread, grilled meat, and fish are serving options already suited to this dish.

Prep 20min Cook 30min 4 servings

Baking Medium

Ciabatta Bread

Arnaldo Cavallari, a baker in Veneto, created this wide, flat loaf in 1982 and named it after the Italian word for slipper. The dough carries so much water that it is folded in the bowl rather than kneaded, and that water becomes steam in the oven, opening large, irregular holes through a chewy crumb under a thin, crackly crust. It goes stale faster than denser loaves and is best the day it is baked: split for panini, torn and dipped in olive oil, or set beside soup to soak up broth.

Prep 20min Cook 25min 2 servings

Rice Medium

Risotto alla Milanese

Warm stock steeped with saffron goes in a ladle at a time, turning the rice yellow as it cooks. Off the heat, cold butter and Parmigiano are beaten in quickly, and the risotto is done while it is still loose enough to spread slowly on the plate.

Prep 10min Cook 30min 2 servings