Gluten Free

This recipe from Salt & Straw takes sweet, rich strawberry ice cream up a notch—honey balsamic vinegar adds some tang and finely ground black pepper brings a little spice.

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.

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.

You need a bigger bowl and more water than you might think to rehydrate wood ear mushrooms—they nearly triple in size.

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. 

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.

With its crinkly texture, savoy cabbage is our go-to for stuffed cabbage, but the regular ol’ green variety also works. Both will become meltingly tender.

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.

This chile oil combines tons of texture from toasted whole spices and seeds with a just-spicy-enough heat level. Drizzle it over any, literally any, savory food you can think of.

Use this coffee spice mix as a dry rub on chicken, steak, pork chops, or carrots for dinner, or fold into chocolate chip cookies, coffee cake, ice cream, and more for dessert—it plays happily on both sides of the field.

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.

In this spicy salad, cubes of fried tofu act like tender-bellied croutons amid the leaves of baby kale, only with much more protein and spunk than the usual toasted bread.

This is a very simple way to make wonderful rice in under an hour. It is a technique favored around the Caspian, where rice is eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Quinoa and baked fish are well seasoned with tangy sumac, tart lime, and garlic in this Persian-inspired dinner.