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Pasta & Grains

Pasta, rice, grains. Weeknight fast or Sunday slow — each recipe tested to get the ratio of water, salt, and time exactly right.

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Oyakodon (Japanese Chicken and Egg Rice Bowl) with chicken, eggs and dashi — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanMedium

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Oyakodon (Japanese Chicken and Egg Rice Bowl)

Oyakodon is a Japanese rice bowl (donburi) of chicken and onion simmered in sweet-savoury dashi broth, finished with softly set egg and served over rice. The name means "parent and child": chicken and egg in one bowl, which is either charming or a little dark depending on your mood. It's the easiest donburi to get right at home, and the one I make when there's nothing in the fridge but chicken thighs, eggs and rice. The egg goes in at the very end and sets into soft, barely cooked curds, and the whole thing takes about fifteen minutes.

20 min550 kcal2 serves

⚡Quick💪High protein

Pad See Ew with wide rice noodles, dark soy sauce and Chinese broccoli — Thailand recipe

🇹🇭ThailandMedium

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Pad See Ew

The Thai stir-fry of wide rice noodles seared in a hot wok with chicken, egg, and Chinese broccoli, coated in a sweet-savoury sauce of dark and light soy. It's the mild, smoky counterpart to pad thai — no tamarind, no peanuts, no chili heat built in — and it lives on the char that only a screaming-hot pan can give.

25 min600 kcal2 serves

⚡Quick💪High protein🌶️Spicy

Pad Thai with rice noodles, eggs and bean sprouts — Thailand recipe

🇹🇭ThailandMedium

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Pad Thai

Stir-fried rice noodles with egg, bean sprouts, peanuts, and your choice of protein — shrimp, chicken, or tofu — in a sauce built on tamarind, fish sauce, and palm sugar. The three-part balance of sour, salty, and sweet is what makes Pad Thai distinct from any other noodle dish in the world. It is one of Thailand's most iconic street foods, eaten at vendors across Bangkok and virtually every Thai restaurant globally. The sauce is the whole recipe — get the sauce right and the rest is quick. Two rules matter most: cook in small batches so the wok stays hot enough to caramelize the sauce, and never overcook the noodles.

25 min580 kcal2 serves

🌾Gluten-free⚡Quick🌶️Spicy

Paella with rice, saffron and chicken — Spain recipe

🇪🇸SpainAdvanced

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Paella

Paella is a famous Spanish dish originating from the Valencia region — a flavorful combination of rice, saffron, seafood and meat cooked in a large flat pan.

90 min660 kcal4 serves

💪High protein

Pasta all'Amatriciana with bucatini or spaghetti, guanciale and tomatoes — Italy recipe

🇮🇹ItalyEasy

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Pasta all'Amatriciana

One of four classic Roman pastas, and the only one with a tomato sauce. Bucatini or spaghetti with guanciale, San Marzano tomatoes, a touch of chilli, and Pecorino Romano. The dish comes from Amatrice, a mountain town on the Monti della Laga (part of Abruzzo until 1927, now Lazio). Transhumant shepherds carried it through the Roman countryside, and in the 19th century emigrants from Amatrice who ran inns and food shops in Rome made it a Roman staple. The white version without tomatoes, Pasta alla Gricia, is the older dish. The key is in the guanciale: cured pork cheek with a higher fat content than pancetta, it renders into the pan and flavors the tomato sauce with a deep, porky richness that no substitute fully replicates. The rules here are strict — no garlic, no onion, no herbs — because the dish doesn't need them.

30 min560 kcal4 serves

⚡Quick🌶️Spicy

Pasta alla Puttanesca with spaghetti, anchovy fillets and olives — Italy recipe

🇮🇹ItalyMedium

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Pasta alla Puttanesca

A bold, briny Neapolitan pasta sauce built entirely from pantry staples: anchovies, olives, capers, garlic, and canned tomatoes. The name translates roughly as 'in the manner of a prostitute' — the exact origin is disputed but the dish is genuinely Neapolitan, from the Spanish Quarter, and dates to at least the mid-20th century. What makes it work is the combination of four distinct salty elements — the anchovy dissolves into the oil, the capers add a floral brine, the olives add a fruity richness, the tomato provides acidity — and none of them taste quite right alone, but together they produce something complex and deeply savory in under twenty minutes. Do not worry about the anchovies: they disappear completely into the oil and leave no fishy taste. Only their umami remains.

25 min490 kcal4 serves

⚡Quick🌶️Spicy

Pasta Primavera with pasta, tomato and zucchini — Italy recipe

🇮🇹ItalyAdvanced

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Pasta Primavera

Pasta Primavera is a popular American dish inspired by Italian traditions, created in the 1970s at Le Cirque restaurant in New York City. Light and fresh, perfect for spring and summer.

30 min430 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian⚡Quick💪High protein

Pastitsio with pasta, ground beef and tomato — Greece recipe

🇬🇷GreeceAdvanced

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Pastitsio

Three layers baked in a deep dish: tubular pasta bound with egg whites, a cinnamon-and-clove spiced beef sauce cooked until very dry, and a thick Greek béchamel enriched with egg yolks that sets firm during baking. Pastitsio is sometimes called Greek lasagna but the comparison only goes so far — the warm spices in the meat sauce give it a depth that Italian ragù does not have, and the Greek béchamel is deliberately thicker and richer than anything on a lasagna. The dish requires time but all three components can be made separately and assembled the same day or the next.

120 min550 kcal6 serves

Penne alla Vodka with penne, pancetta and vodka — Italy recipe

🇮🇹ItalyMedium

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Penne alla Vodka

Penne in a creamy tomato sauce with pancetta, vodka, and a hit of chilli. The sauce is the color of a sunset — somewhere between deep red and pale pink — and the texture is what happens when heavy cream meets a reduced tomato base: thick, glossy, and rich enough that the pasta takes on its own weight. Penne alla vodka became a cult dish in Italy in the 1980s and hit American restaurant menus shortly after. Its origins are genuinely disputed between Rome, Bologna, and New York. What nobody disputes is that it works: the vodka doesn't add alcohol flavor (it mostly cooks off) but it unlocks aroma compounds in the tomato that neither water nor oil can dissolve, making the sauce smell and taste more intensely of tomato than a standard tomato cream sauce.

30 min620 kcal4 serves

⚡Quick🌶️Spicy

Penne in Tomato Sauce with penne, tomato and garlic — Italy recipe

🇮🇹ItalyMedium

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Penne in Tomato Sauce

Penne in tomato sauce is a versatile dish that can be either a simple everyday dinner or the basis for more complex variations with the addition of meat, seafood or vegetables.

33 min580 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌶️Spicy

Perlovka with Beef (Russian Pearl Barley) with pearl barley, beef and onion — Russia recipe

🇷🇺RussiaAdvanced

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Perlovka with Beef (Russian Pearl Barley)

Perlovka with beef is a hearty Russian one-pot of pearl barley simmered with browned meat, onions, and carrots — cooked much like a plov. Soaking the barley first is the secret to plump, separate grains instead of a tough, chewy mess. It's a filling, high-protein dish that long made pearl barley a Soviet kitchen staple.

90 min420 kcal4 serves

💪High protein

Plov (Uzbek Pilaf) with rice, lamb and carrot — Uzbekistan recipe

🇺🇿UzbekistanAdvanced

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Plov (Uzbek Pilaf)

The king of Central Asian cuisine: a fragrant pilaf of long-grain rice cooked with slow-fried lamb, golden carrots, whole garlic heads and cumin in a large kazan. Rich, aromatic and deeply satisfying — every grain of rice absorbs the flavors of the zirvak base.

180 min1000 kcal10 serves

💪High protein

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