Cuisine · Spain

Spanish cooking

Olive oil poached potatoes, slow-cooked paprika, the kind of dishes that take over a table for hours. Tapas, simmered soups, seafood rice, sweet custards — tested in a Madrid kitchen and adapted for yours.

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🇪🇸SpainAdvanced

Sweet Dishes

Crema Catalana (Catalan Cream)

The classic Spanish custard dessert with a silky vanilla and citrus cream base topped with a crackling caramel crust. Made with egg yolks, milk, and cream, it is chilled overnight then caramelized with a kitchen torch just before serving.

240 min250 kcal5 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free

🇪🇸SpainMedium

Appetizers and Sandwiches

Croquetas de Jamón

Spanish ham croquetas are made from a thick bechamel enriched with finely diced jamón serrano, chilled until it can be shaped, then breaded and deep-fried. Unlike the French croquette, which is built on potato, the Spanish version has no starch filler at all: the interior is meant to be liquid at eating temperature and held together only by the crust. The dish came out of home kitchens as a way to use the last shreds of ham from the bone, and it survives in almost every bar in Spain as the standard measure of a kitchen. The two things that decide the result are the flour-to-milk ratio and how long the flour is cooked before the milk goes in. Active work is about an hour, but the dough must chill for several hours before shaping.

60 min430 kcal4 serves

🇪🇸SpainAdvanced

Soups

Fabada Asturiana

Fabada is the bean stew of Asturias, in northern Spain: large flat white beans called fabes de la granja cooked for hours with the compango, the set of cured pork that flavours the pot. The standard compango is chorizo, cured Asturian blood sausage, salt-cured pork shoulder and cured belly, and the broth thickens on its own from starch released by the beans rather than from any flour or puree. Records of fabes being grown in Asturias go back several centuries, though the dish in its present form is usually dated to the nineteenth century. Two rules separate a good pot from a broken one: the liquid must never reach a rolling boil, and the beans must not be stirred with a spoon. Add the overnight soak to the cooking time.

210 min780 kcal4 serves

💪High protein🌾Gluten-free

🇪🇸SpainMedium

Soups

Gazpacho

Gazpacho is a refreshing cold soup that is perfect for hot summer days. It is made from fresh vegetables and flavored with olive oil and vinegar.

25 min175 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian⚡Quick🌱Vegan

Gazpacho Andaluz (Classic Spanish Cold Tomato Soup)

🇪🇸SpainMedium

Soups

Gazpacho Andaluz (Classic Spanish Cold Tomato Soup)

Gazpacho is not a recipe — it is a summer habit in Andalusia. Ripe tomatoes, cucumber, green pepper, garlic, sherry vinegar, and a generous pour of olive oil go into the blender raw and come out as a cold, silky, bright-tasting soup that is consumed by the glass as much as by the bowl. The quality of the tomatoes decides everything. Needs at least two hours in the fridge before it tastes right.

20 min145 kcal4 serves

🌱Vegan🌾Gluten-free⚡Quick

🇪🇸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

🇪🇸SpainEasy

Breakfast and Brunch

Pan con Tomate

Pan con tomate is the Catalan bread-and-tomato preparation known in Catalan as pa amb tomaquet. A thick slice of open-crumbed country bread is toasted until its surface is dry, rubbed with a cut garlic clove and then with the flesh of a ripe tomato until only the skin is left in your hand, and finished with extra virgin olive oil and coarse salt. The tomato works as a seasoning rather than a topping, so what you get is a crisp warm slice under a thin, cool, faintly acidic layer. In Catalonia it accompanies tapas and grilled meat; in Andalusia the same combination turns up at breakfast, usually with the tomato grated into a bowl instead of rubbed.

15 min235 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian⚡Quick

🇪🇸SpainMedium

Vegetable and Mushroom Dishes

Patatas Bravas

Patatas bravas — literally 'fierce potatoes' — is one of the most ordered tapas dishes in Spain. The concept is simple: crispy fried or roasted potatoes served with a smoky, spiced tomato sauce called salsa brava and a drizzle of garlic aioli. The potatoes need two things to be genuinely good: a fluffy interior and a crisp exterior that holds up under the sauce. The baking soda trick in the parboiling water roughens the potato surface and dramatically improves crispiness whether you roast or fry. The bravas sauce is built on smoked paprika — pimentón de la Vera, the sweet-smoky Spanish kind — which is non-negotiable. The aioli is simply good mayonnaise with fresh garlic and lemon.

55 min380 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌱Vegan🌾Gluten-free

Pulpo a la Gallega (Galician Octopus with Potatoes)

🇪🇸SpainAdvanced

Fish and Seafood Dishes

Pulpo a la Gallega (Galician Octopus with Potatoes)

Pulpo a la gallega is Galicia's most famous dish and one of the simplest in Spanish cooking — tender slices of boiled octopus laid over soft potatoes on a wooden plate, then finished with nothing but coarse salt, smoked paprika, and a generous stream of olive oil. There's no sauce and nowhere to hide, so everything rests on cooking the octopus to exactly the right point and using paprika and oil worth tasting on their own.

80 min340 kcal4 serves

💪High protein🌾Gluten-free

🇪🇸SpainMedium

Sauces and Dips

Romesco Sauce

A thick, brick-red Catalan sauce of roasted red peppers, toasted almonds, garlic, tomato, stale bread, and sherry vinegar, pounded together into a rustic paste with smoked paprika and good olive oil. Romesco is one of those sauces that makes everything it touches better — grilled vegetables, fish, roasted chicken, even a fried egg. It originates from the fishermen of Tarragona who needed a bold sauce for their catch, and it has not changed much since.

25 min150 kcal6 serves

🌿Vegetarian⚡Quick

🇪🇸SpainMedium

Beverages

Spanish Red Sangria

Red wine, fruit, brandy, and eight hours in the fridge. The ratio matters less than the resting time — sangria made two hours ahead tastes like wine with fruit floating in it; sangria made overnight tastes like something worth a second glass. Garnacha or Tempranillo, a cinnamon stick, orange and apple, a splash of brandy. No fancy liqueurs needed.

15 min185 kcal6 serves

🌱Vegan🌾Gluten-free⚡Quick

🇪🇸SpainMedium

Vegetable and Mushroom Dishes

Spanish Tortilla

Potatoes and onion slow-cooked in olive oil until soft, then bound with beaten eggs and set into a thick round omelette. Five ingredients. The technique is what matters. In Spain this gets eaten at any hour — breakfast, tapas, a wedge in a bread roll at midnight. It is one of those dishes that tastes better the next day cold, which is not something you can say about many things.

50 min320 kcal6 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free

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