Gluten Free

The smoky sauce and mix of spices in this meatball recipe complement lamb perfectly.

A sheet-pan salsa and quick-cooking tostadas make this multi-component meal easy to pull off.

Trimming a generous amount of the stem from the brussels sprouts makes it quite a bit easier to tease apart the leaves for this winter slaw recipe.

Fennel and celery share more than just the dubious honor of being incredibly underrated vegetables. Their snappy crunch is awesome raw, as proven by this densely textured salad recipe.

A true Southerner wouldn’t dare add sugar to this cornbread recipe, but a Yankee might miss it. Do what you will; we don’t judge.

This recipe for raw vegetables is the only conscionable thing you can serve right before sitting down to a heavier meal.

This crackers recipe features a variety of seeds, and the combination of colors and textures is impressive, but you can use fewer types—just make sure total volume stays the same.

Smoked almonds and black olives are our suggestions for this appetizer, but use any nut or olive that you like.

Treat this recipe as COOK90 nextover inspiration: instead of steaming squash, use whatever cooked leftover vegetables you have on hand for the flavorful stir-fry.

This figs recipe is sweet, salty, sticky, and acidic—everything you want in a one-bite appetizer.

Cacio e pepe works on so many things, this potato chip recipe is just our latest obsession with using the whole flavor combination.

The lime juice and oil will keep the avocado from turning brown, but it’s a good idea to make this pico de gallo recipe right before you serve it.

Maple syrup pumps up the flavor of puréed sweet potatoes and provides a sweet glaze for extra-peppery candied pecans in this classic Thanksgiving side.

Zhoug is a spicy herb sauce of Yemenite origin that you find in Syria and Israel. It’s often the go-to condiment for falafel and is eaten with bread for those who want heat with every bite. It’s a must with Shakshuka, and you’ll probably find yourself stirring it into scrambled eggs, spreading it on a sandwich, mixing it with Greek yogurt to make a dip, or just eating it by the spoonful.

This fresh new take on classic horseradish sauce makes a lot, but you’re going to want extra. It’s the perfect companion for both our Porcini-Rubbed Beef Rib Roast and our Crispy Baby Yukon Gold Potatoes.

I like spreading Quark on my morning slice of bread and topping it with jam, but you can also mix it with salt and herbs and dollop it next to boiled potatoes for a light meal. Using buttermilk will result in skim Quark, which is best for baking recipes. If you want a creamier Quark to eat as is, simply stir a little heavy cream into the Quark to loosen and enrich it. (Mixed with high-quality fruit preserves, this makes for a luxurious little snack.)

While you can make a very nice vanilla sugar by simply plunging a vanilla bean into a jar of sugar and leaving it there (for a really, really long time), I actually like to make a slightly fancier version by processing vanilla and sugar together until the bean is all broken down and the sugar is speckled with countless tiny beans and specks of pod. The sugar is more intensely flavored than regular vanilla sugar. Packaged in a pretty glass jar, it also makes for a great gift.

Also known as advieh, this aromatic blend comes from Persian cuisine. It’s fragrant, a little sweet, and gently warming. It is delicious mixed with sugar and sprinkled over baked goods, donuts, and rice pudding or added to dried fruits that are cooking into jam. It straddles the sweet and savory world because it’s also great for flavoring rice pilaf with toasted nuts, lentil soup, lamb meatballs, braised chicken, or vegetable stew. It’s a blend that is shared by chefs and pastry chefs. Use it to make Persian-Style Carrots and Black-Eyed Peas.

One of my favorite crops from my husband’s farm are his fall carrots. I prefer the fall carrots because as the weather gets colder the vegetable sugars concentrate, yielding the sweetest carrots of the year. We use lots of carrots in this recipe, so that it’s more about the carrots than anything else. For the best flavor, serve it cold the day after you make it. You can substitute chickpeas for the black-eyed peas, if you prefer to use another type of bean.