Recipes that actually work

Birria Tacos with Consommé (Mexican Quesabirria with Beef and Chile Broth)

Birria tacos with consommé are crispy red corn tortillas filled with shredded chile-braised beef and melted cheese, served with a small bowl of the rich red braising broth for dipping. The dish originated in the Mexican state of Jalisco as a goat stew (birria de chivo); the modern beef-and-cheese taco version, quesabirria, was born in Tijuana and spread across the United States in the late 2010s. Three dried chiles do the heavy lifting: guajillo for fruity tang and red colour, ancho for raisiny earthiness, and a couple of chiles de árbol for heat. Plan on about 1.5 hours of active work and 3 to 3.5 hours in the oven. Serves 6 with 16 tacos and consommé to dip.

Ingredients beef chuck roast, beef short ribs, guajillo chiles, ancho chiles, chiles de árbol, white onion, garlic cloves, ripe tomatoes

BBQ Pulled Pork

Southern-style slow-roasted pork shoulder, rubbed with a smoky spice blend and cooked low and slow until it falls apart into tender, juicy strands. Served on brioche buns with homemade coleslaw. Count on about 30 minutes of hands-on work and 4–5 hours in the oven; the rub needs an overnight rest in the fridge, and the meat an hour at room temperature before roasting and 30 minutes under foil after.

Tefteli (Russian Meatballs with Rice)

Tefteli are Russian meatballs mixed with rice and braised in a creamy tomato gravy. The rice worked right into the mince keeps them soft; a close cousin made with raw rice and no browning, where the grains poke out, is known as 'hedgehogs'. A light crust from browning holds the shape, the inside stays tender, and the gravy soaks into a side of mashed potatoes or buckwheat.

Lembas Bread (Elvish Waybread)

Lembas is the elvish waybread from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings — a single piece said to fill the stomach of a grown man. This version is a buttery, slightly sweet shortbread biscuit with warm spice, honey, and cream. It bakes in under 15 minutes and keeps for days in a tin. The X scored into each piece is a fan-recipe custom.

Russian Fermented Pickles (Solyonye Ogurtsy)

Solyonye ogurtsy (солёные огурцы) are Russian sour pickles: small whole cucumbers fermented in a cold salt brine with dill, garlic and horseradish, blackcurrant and cherry leaves, and no vinegar. Russians call this the cold method, kholodny zasol, and pickles made this way in wooden barrels are called bochkovye ogurtsy, barrel pickles. This version fits one 3-litre jar. They are not malosolnye ogurtsy, the lightly salted cucumbers eaten within hours or days while still green, and not marinovannye ogurtsy, which get their sourness from vinegar. Here the acid is made by the ferment itself. This is the Russian home method: about a week in the warm, then the cold. It is shorter than the fermented pickle process tested in the United States, which runs 3 to 4 weeks at 21 to 24 °C, and US food safety services advise against the shorter one; the note below explains what that means and who should not eat these pickles. The hands-on work is about 40 minutes. The rest is waiting: 3 hours of soaking, 5 to 7 days of fermenting at room temperature and 4 weeks in the fridge, about 5 weeks in all. The jar is kept cold from the day the bubbling stops and is never stored in a cupboard.

Ingredients cucumber, water, salt, dill, horseradish leaves, garlic, blackcurrant leaves, cherry leaves

Russian Fermented Tomatoes (Solyonye Pomidory)

Solyonye pomidory (солёные помидоры) are Russian fermented tomatoes: small whole tomatoes soured in a cold salt brine with dill, garlic and horseradish leaves, and no vinegar. Russians call this the cold method, kholodny zasol, and the same tomatoes are also called kvashenye pomidory. They are not marinovannye pomidory, marinated tomatoes, which get their sourness from vinegar or citric acid. Here the acid is made by the ferment itself. This version fits one 3-litre jar. This is the Russian home method: about a week in the warm, then the cold. It is not a process tested by a food safety service, and US food safety services advise against cucumber pickles made on the same schedule. The note below explains what that means and who should not eat these tomatoes. The hands-on work is about 40 minutes. The rest is waiting: 5 to 7 days of fermenting at room temperature and 4 weeks in the fridge, about 5 weeks in all. The jar is kept cold from the day the bubbling stops. It is never sealed airtight with a metal canning lid and never stored in a cupboard.

Spiced Butternut-Sweet Potato Bowl

Roasted butternut squash and sweet potato together, ground turkey with warm autumn spices, cottage cheese, avocado, and hot honey. The gentlest bowl in this series. Sweet potato holds its shape and caramelizes at the edges; squash softens into something almost melting. Together they make a base that is richer and more layered than either one alone.

Homemade Apple Cider

Homemade apple cider here is the alcoholic kind, known as hard cider in the US: a dry, lightly sparkling drink made from apple juice fermented with wine or cider yeast for 1 to 2 weeks, then cleared and bottled. It is not the unfermented "cider" sold as juice in the US. The juice alone gives roughly 5 to 6% alcohol, and the 50 g of sugar per litre in this recipe lifts that to about 8 to 9%, so treat it like wine rather than a soft drink. It comes out drier and sharper than sweet supermarket cider, and its flavour depends on the apples you start with. With shop-bought juice the work itself adds up to about an hour, and pressing your own apples takes at least another hour; the rest is waiting and keeping everything clean.

Pho Bo (Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup)

Pho bo is a beef noodle soup from northern Vietnam, most closely associated with Hanoi, built around a clear, richly spiced beef broth — bones and spices simmer for hours with charred onion and ginger, while the bowl itself is finished with rice noodles, thin beef, fresh herbs, lime, and chili. Both cooked and raw beef go into the bowl: a well-done cut simmered in the broth, and paper-thin raw slices that turn from red to grey when boiling broth is poured over them.

Ingredients beef bones, beef brisket or shank, beef eye round or sirloin, rice noodles, onions, ginger, star anise, cloves

Miso Soup

Miso soup (味噌汁, miso shiru) is a Japanese soup of dashi stock with miso paste stirred in, here with silken tofu, wakame seaweed and scallion. Ready in 15 minutes with just 5 ingredients. Regular dashi is made with katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes) and some miso is made with barley, so for a vegetarian or gluten-free bowl use kombu dashi and a rice or soybean miso labelled gluten-free. The one rule: never boil the soup once the miso is in, or its aroma cooks off.

Beef Rendang

Rendang (randang in Minangkabau) is a dry, slow-cooked beef dish from West Sumatra, Indonesia: cubes of beef simmered uncovered in coconut milk with a paste of shallots, garlic, ginger, galangal, turmeric and chili until the liquid cooks away and the meat fries in the separated coconut oil to a dark, caramelized coating. Readers of CNN's travel site CNNGo voted it number one in a 2011 poll of the world's 50 best foods, ahead of nasi goreng and sushi. Use a stewing cut such as chuck or boneless short rib, not a lean steak cut. It tastes even better the next day.

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.

Weckmann (German St. Martin's Bread Man)

A Weckmann is a German bun shaped like a little man, made of sweet yeast dough with raisins for the eyes and buttons and often a small clay pipe tucked into one arm. In the Rhineland, Hesse and the Rhine-Neckar region children get one on St. Martin's Day, 11 November, after the lantern procession, while in many other parts of Germany it comes on St. Nicholas Day, 6 December. Westphalia and the north call it a Stutenkerl, and you will also hear Weckmännchen, Klausenmann, Hefekerl and Dambedei, or Grittibänz in Switzerland. The dough is plain milk, butter and egg with no spices, and it rises once for 30 to 45 minutes, so with a fan oven, from warming the milk to the first warm bun takes about an hour and a half.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Roasted pumpkin seeds are the whole seeds scooped out of a pumpkin, white hull and all, washed free of pulp, tossed with a little olive oil and salt, then baked until golden and crisp. In the US they are the snack made once the jack-o'-lantern is carved, in German they are geröstete Kürbiskerne, in Japanese かぼちゃの種, and the dark green pepitas sold in bags are the same seeds without the hull. We skip the salt-water boil some American recipes start with and roast the seeds low, at 150 °C, for 30 to 40 minutes. Cleaning, drying and roasting take just under an hour, plus cooling on the tray.

Colcannon (Irish Mashed Potatoes with Cabbage)

Colcannon is Irish mashed potato with cooked cabbage or kale, milk and plenty of butter, often with scallions (spring onions), served with a pool of melted butter in a hollow on top. The name is usually traced to the Irish cál ceannann, 'white-headed cabbage', although nobody is sure where the word comes from, and in County Mayo it was called cally (in Japanese it is コルカノン). In Ireland it is one of the dishes most closely tied to Halloween, and older people put a ring into the colcannon to tell someone's future. This version uses Savoy cabbage, boiled briefly and squeezed dry, with scallions warmed in the milk, and takes about 45 minutes, because the cabbage and the milk are done while the potatoes simmer.

Barmbrack (Irish Halloween Fruit Bread)

Barmbrack is the Irish Halloween fruit loaf: a dense, lightly spiced bread packed with raisins soaked overnight in tea and a splash of whiskey, with a ring traditionally hidden inside. In Irish it is bairín breac, the speckled loaf, and in English it is often shortened to brack. This is a tea brack, raised with baking powder instead of yeast, which is how most of the Irish recipes we read make it at home, Darina Allen's Ballymaloe brack and Donal Skehan's among them. Start two days ahead: the raisins soak overnight, the loaf bakes for about an hour, cools completely and rests wrapped for a day before you slice it.

Moretum (Ancient Roman Garlic and Cheese Spread)

Moretum is an ancient Roman spread of salted cheese, garlic and fresh herbs, pounded together in a mortar with olive oil and a little vinegar and eaten with bread. The word is spelled the same way in German and Italian, Моретум in Russian and モレトゥム in Japanese. The best-known account is a Latin poem called Moretum, which is attributed to Virgil, although nobody is sure who wrote it. In the poem a poor farmer gets up before dawn, bakes his bread, pulls four heads of garlic from his garden and pounds them with salt, a cheese gone hard from the salt, and the herbs he picked: apium (celery or parsley, translators disagree; we use celery leaves), rue and coriander. The poem gives no weights at all, so the quantities here are a modern reconstruction. Pecorino romano stands in for the Roman cheese, and arugula (rocket) takes the place of rue, which is hard to buy. It takes about 30 minutes, all of it hands-on.

Piroshki with Potato (Russian Potato Pies)

Piroshki with potato are small Russian pies of soft yeast dough wrapped around mashed potato and fried onion, then cooked in a pan of oil that comes about halfway up them. In Russian they are пирожки с картошкой (pirozhki s kartoshkoy; one is a pirozhok) and in Japanese ピロシキ. Most of the Russian home recipes we read fry them, and they can also be baked in the oven. The dough here is a lean one, just water, oil, yeast, sugar, salt and flour, with no egg or dairy. That makes these piroshki vegan. The doughs of the meat piroshki on this site are richer: sour cream and eggs for the fried ones, milk, butter and egg for the baked ones. Allow about 2½ hours in all. For an hour of that the dough rises, and you make and cool the filling while it does.