One of the things I obsessively collect in my cooking life is recipes with very short ingredient lists. I don't find the two-ingredient vinaigrettes particularly newsworthy, or meringues with just egg whites and sugar, but the recipes below are noteworthy to me because they truly do a lot -- things like dinner, even -- with very little, and without compromising on taste, either. I hope you try .
Cheers, Deb
STARTERS
union square cafe's bar nuts A 5-ingredient reminder that the most exceptional stuff is often the simplest, plus a bit about eating alone and very, very well.
easiest french fries This recipe requires no peeling, soaking, twice-frying, deep-fry thermometer, temperature monitoring or even stirring and uses a fraction of the oil of classically twice-fried frites. It really, really loves us.
crisp rosemary flatbread More cracker than bread, this stuff is dreamy. It comes together in about 15 seconds flat, bakes in about 10 minutes and if you don’t live in our apartment, will hopefully last a bit longer.
MAINS
oven-braised beef with tomatoes and garlic This three-ingredient cult classic from Gourmet is worth all the hype. Less than 15 minutes prep time yields a meltingly tender braise and days of gorgeous leftovers that will improve meals all week.
quick, essential stovetop mac-and-cheese This is for 15 minutes from now, or when an intense need for pasta with a sauce of salty melted cheese strikes and nothing else will do. And it's single serving, so when your craving has passed, you can return to a life of leafy greens, or, you know, do it again tomorrow.
slow-roasted sweet potatoes When slow-roasted, the flesh of the sweet potato gets sweeter, louder, and more nuanced than seems possible and the salty, lightly blackened skin gets so crispy, you’re going to immediately retroactively resent all of the sweet potatoes you had before for not tasting like this. Plus, two serving suggestions in case "a pat of salted butter" isn't all you needed to hear.
SWEETS
apple sharlotka Got apples? Sugar? Flour? Eggs? You should have sharlotka for dessert tonight. It has no butter or oil. It's mostly apples and your evening will be better with this in it.
chocolate walnut cookies An astoundingly good chocolate walnut cookie with all of five ingredients.
ridiculously easy butterscotch sauce Plain vanilla ice cream? Not under my roof! Did you know that deadly good butterscotch, butterscotch so transcendent it might bring tears to your eyes, is ridiculously easy to make? Five ingredients + five minutes on the stove = we just can’t. You're going to have to for us.
RECENTLY REFRESHED
how to hard-boil an egg There are about as many techniques for hard-boiling eggs as there are eggs out there. Until 2017 I just did it the way my mom does, because it never fails. Then, I made a little change in the technique and whoa...they are so much easier to peel.
