57 recipes. Page 1 of 3
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Thin beef and thick onion rings are tossed in a salty, tangy sauce of soy sauce and lime juice, a regular weeknight dish with rice in Filipino homes. It is the Philippine version of Spanish bistec, and there calamansi is squeezed in where wine or vinegar would go; lime takes its place in this recipe. The onions cook only until translucent with lightly browned edges and keep some crunch.
The batch makes 12 small half-moon pastries, each one sized for a single hand. The filling is ground beef cooked with onion and sweet pepper and seasoned with tomato paste and cumin. Spooning off the leftover fat and letting the filling cool completely keeps the inside of the baked pastry from turning greasy or weak.
Spinach, bean sprouts, carrot and zucchini are each cooked on their own rather than tossed together, which keeps their textures distinct even after everything is mixed. Blanched greens that are not squeezed dry leave the rice soggy.
Twenty perilla leaves go in, but they never actually cook over the flame. The soy-marinated beef is stir-fried, the heat is turned off, and only then are the leaves folded in for twenty seconds of residual heat; any longer and they blacken.
Ground beef and pork seasoned with soy sauce, sugar, garlic, and sesame oil give this patty the sweet-salty taste of tteokgalbi, Korean grilled short-rib patties, inside a burger bun. The toasted bun gets mayonnaise and lettuce before the patty goes on.
La lot leaves, sold as wild betel, wrap seasoned ground beef and char at the edges while the meat's fat soaks into them, giving each roll a peppery, herbal smell. They are not the betel leaves sold for chewing, so look for the la lot or wild betel label.
Napa cabbage and onion line the bottom of the pot, beef goes on top, minari (Korean water parsley) rings the edge, and the octopus sits highest of all. When its legs curl up and turn bright red, the heat goes off at once and everything is ladled out with the broth.
Plenty of finely chopped garlic chives go into the ground beef, so these bite-sized jeon come out flecked with green. Tofu squeezed dry makes them softer than meat alone, and the soy sauce and sesame oil seasoning still tastes clear once they have cooled.
Each block of firm tofu gets a shallow well scooped out with a spoon, and none of the scooped tofu is wasted: it returns to the filling with ground beef, shiitake and carrot. Dubu-seon comes from the Korean royal court table; this version skips the older crumble-and-shape method and steams the stuffed blocks directly, with the filling mounded slightly above the rim. A thin glaze of soy sauce and water keeps the finish light and lets the mild tofu lead.
Beef and shiitake share one soy and garlic marinade and hit the pan together, letting the mushrooms soak up the meat juices instead of tasting like a separate vegetable. What sets this japchae apart is the last step: after everything is tossed in a bowl, it goes back into a hot pan just long enough to drive off loose seasoning. The noodles should end up clear and bouncy with no thin sauce pooling underneath. Sweet and salty japchae like this is a fixture of Chuseok, Seollal and birthday tables in Korea.
Wide lasagna sheets get stacked two or three times over with meat sauce, ricotta, and mozzarella, then baked under a layer of Parmesan. Ricotta softens the acidity of the tomato, while melting mozzarella glues the layers together. A 10-minute rest before cutting keeps the hot cheese from running and the stack from slumping. If the top browns too fast, a sheet of foil goes back over it. The whole dish can be assembled ahead and refrigerated, which makes it easy to bake for guests.
All the fillings of a taco, minus the tortilla: browned ground beef, kidney beans, corn, cheddar, and salsa piled over crisp romaine and finished with lime. Any water left on the romaine, beans, or corn joins the liquid from the salsa and lime and ends up pooled at the bottom of the bowl. Assemble just before eating, since the warm beef starts wilting the lettuce as soon as it lands.
Small beef meatballs are browned only on the outside, then finish cooking in an onion and tomato sauce with a little paprika. The sauce tastes fuller after a day, so it can be made ahead and served with bread or rice.
Mashed potato mixed with sauteed ground beef and onion gets shaped into ovals, coated in panko, and fried until golden. The crust shatters while the inside stays fluffy and potato-forward, plainer and heartier than cream-filled croquettes. Worcestershire or tonkatsu sauce goes on top, and in Japan butcher shops and delis sell them freshly fried to eat on the go. Fillings vary widely, from curry to crab cream to kabocha squash.
Beef, potato, rutabaga (swede), and onion are sealed into the pastry raw, so the juices they release while baking stay inside and act as the gravy. Cutting everything to about 1 cm lets the raw filling cook through. The hand pie grew out of a portable meal for miners in Cornwall, England, and the thick crimped edge served as a handle.
Twelve chard leaves are rolled finger-thick around ground beef, soaked rice, onion and dried mint. The rolls are packed tightly into the pot, weighed down with a heavy plate, and cooked slowly in a thin tomato broth. In Turkey they come to the table with a tangy garlic yogurt.
Mala xiangguo takes the numbing, spicy flavors of Sichuan hot pot and puts them into a dry stir-fry: beef, lotus root, shiitake, and bok choy get only a thin coat of mala sauce, with no broth at all. Everything is patted or shaken dry first: with nothing simmering, any water left on the ingredients just pools in the pan.
Wrapped around a wooden skewer rather than served as a free-standing patty, this tteokgalbi mixture needs far more grip than the plated kind. A little starch and more than 3 minutes of kneading give it that, and skewers soaked in water for 10 minutes scorch less. Tteokbokki sauce or ketchup alongside makes it a street-stall snack.
Broad, thin sheets of sirloin cut across the grain give this neobiani a tender bite, and the beef stays in whole slices instead of being minced into patties. Grated onion and sugar in the soy marinade brown fast and scorch before the beef does, so the slices are laid in one layer without the leftover marinade.
Napa cabbage lines the bottom of a wide hot pot, and tofu, shiitake and marinated beef are laid in a ring around the edge, giving the pot its finished look before it ever heats. The kelp broth, seasoned with soup soy sauce and no chili, stays clear, and the pot is served bubbling for everyone to ladle from.
Lotus root stays crisp even when fully cooked, and here a thin layer of seasoned ground beef is pressed onto each slice, giving one bite two very different textures. The slices go into the pan beef side down first, letting the meat set onto the root.
Each piece of eggplant gets a deep cross cut that stops just short of the base, which opens it up like a pocket for a beef and tofu filling before it is steamed. Stuffing every piece by hand takes time, and the dish was traditionally kept for guests and feasts.
Hold the lime and fish sauce dressing until the bowl is about to be eaten; once it hits the rice noodles, they start to go soft. The beef is sliced thin against the grain and needs a pan that is already very hot, with room for the slices to lie in a single layer. Crowded slices give off water, so cook in batches and pull each one as soon as the edges brown and no raw red surface is left. Rinse the boiled noodles hard under cold water to wash off the surface starch, and lay the lettuce and cold noodles in the bowl before the warm beef goes on so the greens do not wilt.
Baked ziti borrows the meat sauce, ricotta, and mozzarella of lasagna but skips the layering: the tube-shaped pasta is simply tossed and spread in the dish, which cuts the work considerably. Only half the sauce and half the ricotta go into the pasta; the rest sits on top under the cheese, keeping the inside moist. The ziti come out of the water two minutes early because they keep cooking in the oven. Once the mozzarella and Parmesan bubble gold, a 5-minute rest lets portions cut cleanly.