The Top Recipes You Cooked This Year

Pounding the chicken cutlets before cooking renders them thin and terrifically tender. Deglazing the pan with Marsala and stock after cooking the chicken creates a quick, rich sauce. Get the recipe for Chicken Marsala »

Cooking brown rice, or at least cooking it well, is tricky. Here is our technique for making light and fluffy rice.

This buttery cake slathered with rich caramel icing has earned local fame on Chicago’s South Side—it’s one of our favorites to make for special occasions. Get the recipe for Rose’s Famous Caramel Cake

This rich, multilayered dessert of angel food and devil’s food cake, peanut butter mousse, and milk chocolate ganache should be frozen before icing is added and refrigerated before it’s sliced. Get the recipe for Heaven and Hell Cake »

Cream, whiskey, vanilla, and coffee combine with sweetened condensed milk for a silky-smooth alternative to store-bought Irish cream. We love it added to coffee, used to sweeten cake frosting, or just on its own, enjoyed over a little ice.

Grilled Lobster with Garlic-Parsley Butter

Tangy feta and crunchy veggies get extra body from rotini in this classic Greek-inspired pasta salad. Easy to make and best served chilled or at room temperature, it’s a perfect picnic dish.

Traditionally made with local olives, oil-cured tuna, and anchovies, this protein-rich salad from Provence has become a staple of brasseries all over France. Get the recipe for Salad Niçoise »

In North Africa, cooks have long relied on this garlicky chile paste to lend depth to cooked meats and vegetables. It’s incredibly dependable in its ability to liven up foods—we use it in all sorts of ways, from serving alongside crudités to rubbing grilled meats to topping falafel. Get the recipe for Harissa »

Perfect for poutine

Traditional baguettes are 24 to 30 inches long and are baked in ovens that produce steam, which delays crust formation so the loaves can fully rise. This recipe reduces the length to fit in home ovens and calls for adding ice cubes to a hot cast-iron skillet to create steam.

Author Nancy Harmon Jenkins uses olive oil three ways in this version of the venerable Italian soup: for sautéing garlic, rubbing on the toasts that accompany the dish, and finishing the soup.

Chef Massimo Bottura gave us the recipe for this creamy risotto, a take on the classic Roman pasta dish cacio e pepe that he developed after earthquakes devastated the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy in 2012. Wanting to utilize the nearly 1,000 wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano that were damaged in the disaster, he devised an ingenious technique. First, he simmers parmesan cheese in water, then refrigerates it until it separates into three distinct layers: protein solids on the bottom, a thick broth in the middle, and a parmesan cream on top. The broth is slowly stirred into the risotto, taking the place of chicken stock, while the cream is added toward the end of cooking, giving the risotto a luxurious texture and little need for any additional salt.

Thick Italian meringue is sandwiched between moist layers of cake, which is topped off with sweetened shredded coconut in this recipe from chef Thomas Keller. Get the recipe for Thomas Keller’s Coconut Cake »

Sweet fried garlic mingles with soy sauce and ginger in the sauce for this wok-seared eggplant.

Some say that the patty melt—a griddled sandwich of ground beef, caramelized onions, cheese, and rye bread—isn’t technically a burger, because it has no bun. We love it just the same.