It’s no secret that BA editors cook a lot for work. So it should come as no surprise that we cook a lot during our off hours too. Here are the recipes we’re whipping up this month to get dinner on the table, entertain our friends, satisfy a sweet tooth, use up leftovers, and everything in between. For even more staff favorites, click here.
July 26
I returned on Monday from a quick weekend trip and wanted to cook something both very easy and on the lighter side. This Slow-Roasted Salmon With Fennel, Citrus, and Chiles fit the bill just right—I threw aromatics and citrus into a baking dish, topped it with a big ol’ fillet, and showered it with olive oil and salt. While it baked I got to work, unpacking my suitcase and emptying the dishwasher. I even had time to make a grain (necessary in my mind to sop up all the citrusy, chile-laden oil) before the salmon was ready. —Kate Kassin, editorial operations manager
Every summer I look forward to handpicking blueberries. The easy part is the hour or so spent in the field filling a bucket with ripe, round berries. The hard part is figuring out what to bake with them all. This year’s winning recipe was Kendra Vaculin’s Skillet Blueberry Cobbler. Delightfully easy to make with minimal ingredients, this showstopper came together in all of 10 minutes on a Tuesday night. The cobbler topping was buttery and fluffy, and baking it all in a cast-iron pan created a fun textural play with crisp edges and pools of bubbling blueberries. I served it warm out of the oven with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. It was so good my friend and I couldn’t resist a second serving, leaving just enough for me to enjoy for breakfast the next morning. —Ali Inglese, director of content production
’Tis the season of corn salad, and this method by cookbook author Anna Stockwell is a great blueprint for whatever shows up in your CSA box or shines brightest at your local market. My most recent version had burnished kernels that I roasted husks-on in the oven (I don’t own a grill), slender pink celery, mild green peppers, scallions, basil, and a boatload of heirloom tomatoes. I dressed the salad in mayo (Blue Plate, please) and sour cream, cut with Ilocos vinegar, ancho chile powder, and black lime powder. Piled onto butter crackers or scooped with tortilla chips, the corn salad served as lunch for three days in a row, getting better each day. —Joe Sevier, senior SEO editor, cooking
You say tomato season, I say gazpacho season. This recipe from cookbook author Rick Martinez has a smart trick: Before blending the vegetables, toss them with salt, garlic, and vinegar, and let them hang out at room temp for 30. It’s a hands-off step that translates into a spectacularly flavorful soup. I served mine with bread, cheese, and a Little Gem salad. Plus some bug spray on the side to keep the mosquitos at bay. —Emma Laperruque, associate director of cooking
Chef Jacques Pépin’s plum galette is my platonic ideal of dessert. It’s buttery, flaky, not too sweet, and entirely forgiving. The key to success is to refrigerate, refrigerate, refrigerate: after the dough ball is formed, after it’s rolled out, and, my trick, one more time after it’s all assembled. That keeps the butter from melting and guarantees a delicate, not tough, crust. I used overripe peaches instead of plums and topped it with rounds of ice cream. —Nina Moskowitz, editorial assistant
July 19
Hana Asbrink’s Elote-Style Corn Soup might be designed for frozen corn that you can keep year-round, but when fresh corn is in season, why not put its sweet flavor to use? I went heavy on the chili powder and cilantro, which provided a beautiful peppery balance to the creamy soup. And I served it with toasted bread and greens dressed up with an apple cider vinaigrette. A delicious dinner. —Zachary Zawila, research fellow
As a fan of both science and natural flavorings, I have always rejected my boyfriend’s insistence that Limon-Pepino Gatorade is FDA-approved medicine. Then I caught a cold, he made me Jesse Szewczyk’s Cucumber-Lime Energy Drink, and now I am (sort of) converted. Health benefits aside, this magical elixir is a perfect summer drink, with a restorative dose of salt that also intensifies its fresh flavors of cucumber, mint, and lime. And yes, the drink is green—a chic, pale shade that evokes the farmers market rather than a packet of highlighters. I plan on drinking this all summer, and when I am fully recovered, I might even add tequila and some soda water. —Paz Mendez Hodes, director of creative development
I spend my time from June through September worried that I’m not making the most of three things: swimming in the ocean, eating stone fruit, and cramming as much massive tomato flavor into my diet as possible. Alongside garlic-rubbed tomato toast and drippy heirloom sandwiches, I have a new recipe to add to the seasonal arsenal: Jesse Szewczyk’s no-cook cherry tomato pasta. Almost everything in this recipe gets mashed before it’s married to butter-and-cheese-slicked pasta. It’s a summery dish that goes down just as well solo in the peace of my air-conditioned living room as it does in an 85-degree vacation house feeding a crowd. —Adam Moussa, associate director of creative development, social & visuals
My friends know how to commit to potluck dinner parties. One friend brought tongue-tickling jambalaya, another a bountiful kale-peach salad, and I helped the host make Zaynab Issa’s Creamy Coconutty Shrimp Salad. This ceviche-inspired dish is a melody of textures—luscious from the coconut milk, succulent from the poached shrimp, and crisp from cherry tomatoes and jalapeños. Instead of topping the dish with tortilla chips, we swapped in crushed plantain chips to deliver even more crunch. —Nina Moskowitz, editorial assistant
Senior test kitchen editor Shilpa Uskokovic’s Basil Chicken Stir-Fry from this month’s Feel-Good Food Plan will change the way you cook ground chicken. Full stop. The trick is adding a little baking soda (which our editors also love for beef). If chicken is a go-to protein for you—run, don’t walk. But if you’re like me and you don’t cook meat at home, do what I did this week: Swap in tofu. The stir-fry is still excellent, or as my husband put it, “wow.” I skipped step 1 and crumbled a pound of extra firm tofu onto the sizzling shallots in step 3, adding a little more oil to the pan. And inspired by a reader’s idea in our Epicurious app, I added a chopped-up zucchini (stir-fried in a separate pan while the tofu was browning) because I had one around. —Emma Laperruque, associate director of cooking
July 12
For a cookout with friends, I wanted a side salad that had a lot of produce and very little work. This recipe from Anna Stockwell, Tomato-Watermelon Salad With Turmeric Oil, checked both boxes. I used an assortment of cherry tomatoes for pops of color, and per a reader comment in the Epicurious app, I replaced coconut oil with olive oil, so there was no risk of the dressing seizing. Because I love their salami energy, I added some fennel seeds along with the peppercorns, coriander, and cumin. It was spectacularly refreshing alongside burgers and dogs—and somehow even better the next day. —Emma Laperruque, associate director of cooking
A couple of months ago, I bookmarked several crispy rice paper dumpling recipes on TikTok with the intent of making them. This week I adapted a pork version from What Great Grandma Ate with a bunch of finely chopped broccoli, green beans, carrots, and shiitake mushrooms. The process is pretty simple: You parcook ground pork with all of your veggies, fill moistened rice paper, double wrap, and pan-fry in oil—I used sesame for an added flavor boost. I love how shatteringly crispy the pan-fried dumplings get. They also reheat well in the air fryer for an easy-to-meal-prep lunch during the week. —Urmila Ramakrishnan, associate director of social media
I didn’t think I needed another vegetarian meatball in my life. I have a bag of Gardein in my freezer at all times. But after one nibble of test kitchen editor Kendra Vaculin’s Tofu Meatballs, I knew my store-bought staple was about to be dethroned. You don’t need a food processor or any special equipment (just crumble the tofu in a bowl and mix in the usual suspects, like breadcrumbs and egg). Plus no need to stand over the stove (they bake in the oven until crispy and golden). You could serve them with tomato sauce, as in the recipe, or put them toward literally whatever dinner could use a blank-canvas protein. I paired mine with warmed-up matbucha, fluffy couscous, and a romaine-cucumber salad. —E.L.
Over the Fourth of July weekend, I was reminded how good, easy, and versatile an egg casserole is—not just for a holiday breakfast, but anytime. I used my family’s tried and true Cowboy Casserole, swapping out the sausage and spinach for other ingredients I had on hand (namely leftover slow-roasted yellow squash and onions with tons of black pepper and dried sage). Since there are only two of us enjoying it, it’ll be there for days of quick breakfasts. And in a heatwave, I can’t think of anything better than not standing over a stove. —Joe Sevier, senior SEO editor
Hana Asbrink’s One-Pot Salmon and Shiitake Rice has won me over. All I had to do was gently tuck my grains, mushrooms, and fish into a Dutch oven and let it do its thing (steam) while I did mine (retire on the couch). I like my meals saturated in sauce, so I may have tripled the scallion-soy dressing. And yes, I’m probably going to mix up more for lunch tomorrow. —Nina Moskowitz, editorial assistant
July 5
I’ll eat anything in the test kitchen, but at home I don’t cook meat. (More on this in last month’s edition of our new Feel-Good Food Plan.) Luckily, our Epicurious app has thousands of vegetarian recipes—and many of the non-vegetarian ones can easily be vegetarian-ified. Case in point: these grilled chicken thighs with tomato-corn couscous from deputy food editor Hana Asbrink. As Hana puts it, “Does this look like summer on a platter or what?” It does! I needed it. So instead of chicken, I simply grilled slabs of Halloumi until they were charred outside and juicy within. A downright delightful dinner to welcome July. —Emma Laperruque, associate director of cooking
My favorite way to eat summer squash? Yellow crookneck cut into rounds, plenty of butter, cooked until jammy. Second favorite? This Chocolate Zucchini Cake. A mound of the prolific summer produce goes into the batter, rendering the crumb so plush and moist, it may just be my favorite chocolate cake, full stop. Don’t skip the scattering of walnuts and chocolate chips (I use a chopped chocolate bar) on top. The nuts get deeply toasted as the cake bakes and the chocolate melts into little puddles for a bite that’s fluffy, crunchy, creamy, and rich: ideal for breakfast, dessert, or anytime snacking. —Joe Sevier, senior SEO editor
Roasted cauliflower? In July? I, too, was horrified at this unseasonal bent, but my husband had procured two incredibly beautiful heads of purple cauliflower, so pristine they looked like they’d walked off a stock image website. I settled on making this Whole Roasted Cauliflower Salad. Though we didn’t have basil, parsley, or golden raisins, cilantro, chives, and an underripe apricot proved to be suitable substitutes. There’s a fair bit of chopping involved, but the end result is so full of texture and so pretty, that the prep is more than worth it. An excellent and impressive vegetarian main, I’ve bookmarked it to make again when the weather turns. —Shilpa Uskokovic, senior test kitchen editor
You know when you’re at the supermarket and you see a jar of mustard and you’re like, Oh! We need mustard! And then you get home and you realize, Oh! We already had two jars of mustard! That happens to me not infrequently. And so I found myself with a surplus of fig jam (how? why?), which seemingly no number of PB&Js could make a dent in. The solution became clear over the weekend: Jam Diagonals from senior test kitchen editor Shilpa Uskokovic. They’re crumbly-tender, fuss-free, and exceedingly buttery. Heed Shilpa’s advice to use cultured butter (I went with unsalted Kerrygold)—it makes all the difference in the why-are-these-so-good flavor. —E.L.
