Simmer

It’s a humble combination of two everyday ingredients, but Kiribath has enormous significance in Sri Lanka—it’s cooked by the Sinhalese to mark the new year in April, and on other special occasions that celebrate new beginnings.

This delicately spiced mussel soup uses the bivalves at their very best, when they’re plump and filled with flavour. The curry powder, chutney and raita give the soup a scent of the warm sub-continent, in the depths of dreary January.

A light, fragrant and utterly delicious south-Indian-style curry, packed with juicy prawns and tempered with coconut milk.

Two flavor powerhouses—bright, spicy kimchi and savory, briny clams—create a soup fast enough to make on even the most hectic weeknight. 

Like many long-simmered sauces, this one, perhaps the most delicious of all the Italian meat sauces, is more flavorful and balanced the following day.

Use this rich, creamy Italian white sauce for lasagna, gratins, and mac and cheese.

This garlicky, gingery soup is a heartier take on classic chicken and rice, thanks to the addition of sweet potatoes.

The sour cherry relish can be used in a similar way to cranberry sauce. Its tart, fruity flavor is perfect with pork, but it’s also great with ham or turkey.

Fresh shell-on peanuts are available only at harvest time and are hard to find, but unroasted shell-on peanuts work just as well and can be found in many supermarkets and online.  

When 5:15 p.m. hits and there’s still no dinner plan, Deb Perelman makes this Instant Pot soup. While the beans cook you can prepare the taco fixins, manage life’s last-minute chaos, and take a load off.

Take the time to really cook the onion and garlic in this recipe until they’re completely soft—this encourages them to release even more flavor into the velvety-rich tomato broth.

We did it! We wanted to make dinner for one where the cleanup is just washing out a few bags and that’s it.

Cool yogurt, crunchy seeds, and herbs turn lentils into a lunch salad you’ll actually be excited to eat. Serve it with warm pita for swiping up the garlicky yogurt.

This all-purpose chile crisp—which is tangy, spicy, and addictive—will give your other condiments an inferiority complex. You’ve been warned. Put it to good use on eggs, meat, seafood, or hearty salads.

If you’d like, soak the beans overnight before cooking; it will help them cook more quickly and evenly.

Double-down on the dairy by tossing torn pieces of mozzarella in a bowl with sour cream, lemon juice, and salt to make an extra-rich, luscious topper for this greens-and-grains salad.

Turmeric, chiles, and chewy-nutty cooked grains balance the sweetness of fresh corn in this loose vegan riff on creamed corn.

This chilled rice pudding pie is adapted from the popular dessert at MeMe’s Diner in Brooklyn, NY.

Other quick-cooking shellfish, such as mussels or medium shelled shrimp, can be substituted for the clams, but you might need an extra splash of pasta water to loosen the sauce.

Use the biggest beans you can buy for this Greek-inspired dish—baby limas are easy to find, but gigante beans are amazing too.