Nut Free

Stirring a simple vinaigrette into warm just-cooked lentils helps them drink up flavor so they taste anything but plain. Use French green or black beluga lentils as they will hold their shape best. You can keep a batch of these dressed lentils in the fridge and add to salads, pastas, soups, and more all week long.

The texture is delightfully soft, almost cake-like, and sweetened with a quick-and-easy lime glaze. These cookies make great holiday gifts.

Savory cornmeal meets the sweetness of blueberries and zest of a lemon for tender muffins that come together in 45 minutes.

This pasta offers the familiar comfort of baked macaroni and cheese but with pops of pleasantly bitter bright green broccoli rabe throughout.

Beets can stand up to a hard roast and plenty of spice. Their sweet earthiness and firm texture mean they’re ideal for making meatless chorizo. If beets aren’t your thing, any sweet root vegetable will work.

This easy chile-spiked cooked tomato salsa pairs well with the beet-topped tostadas but is a great sauce all on its own.

The herbed sauce in this grain dish gets a double hit of punchy dairy: Not as sharp as other acidic ingredients, buttermilk lends a unique tang and yogurt brings body and richness.

Using a sliced whole lemon gives you unbeatable fresh aroma from the skin, bitter complexity from the pith, and tart, puckery juice from the flesh. Thin slices soften evenly and ensure that the lemon plays nicely with the pasta, butter, and Parmesan.

What would happen if you gave winter squash the coq au vin treatment? Layers of flavor from browned mushrooms, wine, and miso that give the classic a run for its money.

Dried barberries are incredibly tart, more so than any other dried fruit you’ll encounter. Look for them at Middle Eastern markets or specialty foods stores, or order them online. 

Slowly rendering the pancetta, gently toasting the garlic, and concentrating the tomatoes puts three pots’ worth of flavor in just one.

Juicy pork al pastor and oozy Oaxacan cheese make a brilliant combo. Thinly slicing the pork and cooking it in a hot skillet with plenty of marinade still clinging to the meat yields the charred edges and deep flavor of traditional spit-roasted pastor.

Birria is usually served with a side of consomé, the rich pan juices from the roasted meat. This recipe takes things a step further by puréeing those juices with roasted vegetables and dried chiles.

The power of a tangy, vinegary brine, but in powdered form. This spice rub brightens and invigorates roasted chicken, seared fish and shines when sprinkled over vegetables before roasting. The cornstarch in the vinegar powder helps form an extra-crispy, extra-tart crust on anything you put it on.

It’s really satisfying to make chicken stock on the grill. The pot can sit in a corner of the grill as long as the grill is fired up, and the stock will only get better with each hour.

This Northern Iranian dish traditionally features wild greens. This version is made with braised spinach, herbs, and eggs—and gets a vibrant boost of flavor from lime juice.

In this recipe, creamy mashed potatoes get jazzed up with crispy bits of bacon and sharp cheddar cheese, then wrapped in Savoy cabbage leaves before roasting in the oven.

This lovely, simple dish is great to have in your fridge at all times. It adds a wonderful, distinctive flavor to any dish it accompanies.

Frozen fava beans make easy work of this fragrant rice dish, and you could also replace them with shelled lima beans or edamame instead.

Using both syrupy date molasses and pitted, sliced dates gives this dish rounded sweetness. It gets a dash of sourness from apple cider vinegar and some heat from cayenne.