Libum is one of the oldest written recipes in Western culinary history. Recorded by Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder in De Agri Cultura around 160 BCE, this ancient Roman cheese flatbread requires three ingredients and has not changed in over two thousand years. A ritual offering to the household gods — lares and penates — it was also everyday food for Roman commoners. The recipe belongs to the ancient cuisine of Rome that anyone can recreate at home without adaptation. Relevant for anyone interested in ancient recipes, paleo diet history, Roman culinary tradition, and ancestral cooking. Served hot with honey, it transforms from a neutral dense cake into something that tastes unmistakably of antiquity.

50 min220 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian💪High protein

★4.7

🇫🇷FranceAdvanced

Meat Dishes

Beef Bourguignon

Tender pieces of beef stewed in red wine with vegetables, mushrooms and aromatic herbs. A classic of slow cooking that creates a unique taste and aroma.

165 min600 kcal4 serves

💪High protein

★4.8

🇮🇱IsraelAdvanced

Breakfast and Brunch

Shakshuka

Eggs poached directly in a spiced tomato and pepper sauce. One pan, 30 minutes. The sauce does most of the work — build it properly and the eggs finish themselves.

30 min230 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian⚡Quick🌶️Spicy

★4.5

🇺🇸USAAdvanced

Flour and Confectionery Products

Banana Bread

The beloved American quick bread — ultra-moist, deeply banana-flavored loaf with a caramelized crust. The secret is using very ripe, almost black bananas and browning the butter first.

75 min310 kcal10 serves

🌿Vegetarian

★4.6

🇺🇸USAMedium

Meat Dishes

Marry Me Chicken

Chicken breasts seared to a golden crust and finished in the oven in a creamy sauce with sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, and Parmesan. A staple of American home cooking that went viral worldwide for its simplicity and depth of flavor.

35 min520 kcal4 serves

💪High protein🌾Gluten-free🌶️Spicy

★4.6

Weekly meal plan

Seven days of dinner, handled.

Set your calorie target and dietary preferences. Get a balanced week of recipes — breakfast, lunch, dinner — shoppable list included. Regenerate anytime.

Plan my week

Browse by diet

Seven ways to eat. Filter the archive by what matters for your kitchen — vegetarian, keto, gluten-free, the usual honest labels.

Keto Vegetarian Vegan High protein Gluten-free Spicy Quick

World cuisines

Eight home kitchens the author has cooked in. Flags tell the truth, the recipes do too.

USA145 recipes found France66 recipes found Italy58 recipes found Russia28 recipes found Japan25 recipes found India18 recipes found Mexico17 recipes found China15 recipes found

Editor's picksby Sergei

Recipes I keep coming back to — the ones I cook for people I actually want to feed.

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🇫🇷FranceAdvanced

Meat Dishes

Duck Confit (Confit de Canard)

Confit de canard is the defining dish of Gascony, the south-west corner of France where ducks are raised for foie gras and the region's most celebrated cooking technique is confit — from confire, to preserve. Duck legs are cured overnight in salt, pepper, thyme, and juniper, then submerged in duck fat and cooked at a barely trembling 100°C (210°F) for two and a half hours until the meat becomes impossibly tender and slides from the bone. The result is stored under its fat blanket in the refrigerator — the traditional method of preservation before refrigeration — where it continues to develop flavor over days or weeks. To serve, the legs are pulled from the fat and placed skin-side-down in a cold pan, then brought to high heat until the skin crackles and blisters to a dark, shattering gold. The interior stays fall-apart tender. The reserved duck fat is one of the finest cooking fats in the world — use it to fry potatoes.

1440 min620 kcal4 serves

🌾Gluten-free💪High protein

★4.9

🇻🇳VietnamAdvanced

Soups

Pho Bo (Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup)

Vietnam's most iconic dish — a crystal-clear, deeply aromatic beef broth simmered for hours with charred onion, ginger, and whole spices, served over rice noodles with paper-thin beef, fresh herbs, lime, and chili. The broth is everything.

210 min400 kcal4 serves

🌾Gluten-free🌶️Spicy💪High protein

★4.9

🇯🇵JapanEasy

Soups

Miso Soup

The soul of Japanese daily cooking: a light umami-rich broth of dashi and miso with silken tofu, wakame seaweed, and scallion. Ready in 15 minutes with just 6 ingredients. The one rule: never boil miso — it kills the living enzymes and dulls the flavor.

15 min90 kcal2 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free⚡Quick

★4.4

🇮🇩IndonesiaAdvanced

Meat Dishes

Beef Rendang

Voted the world’s best food by CNN Travel readers in 2011 — slow-braised beef in a rich aromatic paste of coconut milk, garlic, ginger, galangal, lemongrass, and spices, cooked uncovered for hours until every drop of liquid evaporates and the meat is coated in a dark caramelized crust. A labor of love from West Sumatra that gets even better the next day.

150 min380 kcal5 serves

🌶️Spicy🌾Gluten-free💪High protein

★4.7

🇰🇷KoreaMedium

Vegetable and Mushroom Dishes

Kimchi

Kimchi is a traditional Korean dish — fermented Peking cabbage with spicy spices and seasonings. Characterized by a bright tangy flavor with sour notes, crisp texture and intense aroma.

45 min50 kcal4 serves

🌶️Spicy💪High protein

★4.9

Fresh from the kitchen · June 2026

Recipes cooked, shot, tested and published in the last two weeks.

🇧🇾BelarusMedium

Soups

Zhur

A traditional Belarusian sour soup whose tang comes from fermented rye (or oat) flour rather than vinegar. The starter is cooked with smoked pork, potatoes, root vegetables, and marjoram, then served with a hard-boiled egg and sour cream.

50 min320 kcal6 serves

★4.5

🇺🇿UzbekistanAdvanced

Soups

Shurpa

A slow-simmered Uzbek lamb soup of bone-in lamb, chickpeas, and large chunks of vegetables in a clear, fragrant broth. Seasoned with cumin and coriander, it is served with plenty of cilantro and flatbread, the broth often drunk alongside the meat and vegetables.

120 min350 kcal6 serves

🌾Gluten-free

★4.9

🇺🇦UkraineMedium

Soups

Kulish

A hearty Ukrainian Cossack soup of millet cooked with salo and onion, somewhere between a soup and a porridge. Potatoes, carrot, and herbs round it out; rendered salo and golden onion give it its deep, smoky-savoury character. It is served hot with dill and cracklings.

45 min330 kcal6 serves

🌾Gluten-free

★4.6

🌍AzerbaijanAdvanced

Soups

Dushbara

A classic Azerbaijani soup of tiny meat-filled dumplings simmered in a clear lamb broth. The dumplings are famously small, and the soup is served with crushed garlic and vinegar, dried mint, and cilantro for a sharp, tangy finish.

90 min420 kcal5 serves

★4.8

🇬🇪GeorgiaAdvanced

Soups

Chikhirtma

A Georgian chicken soup with almost no vegetables, thickened with egg yolks to a velvety, golden creaminess and soured with vinegar. Saffron colours it and cilantro gives it its Georgian character; it is a Kakhetian winter dish and a famous hangover cure.

75 min260 kcal6 serves

★4.4

🇷🇺RussiaMedium

Soups

Okroshka

A cold Russian summer soup of finely diced raw vegetables, boiled potatoes, eggs, and meat in a tangy base of bread kvass. Its name means to crumble; refreshing and light, it is served cold, often with sour cream and a dab of mustard.

30 min160 kcal5 serves

★4.4

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