Ingredient

Lemon Recipes

51 recipes with lemon for weeknights, meal prep, and quick ingredient searches. Choose by time, cuisine, and what is in your kitchen.

51 recipes

🇱🇧LebanonMedium

Meat Dishes

Kabob / Skewers (Kofta & Shish Kebab)

Kebab (from Arabic كَبَاب, also spelled kabob or kabab) is one of the oldest cooked meat preparations in the world, found in some form across the entire stretch from Morocco to Central Asia. This recipe covers the two foundational types: kofta kebab (ground meat mixed with onion, parsley, and spices, moulded onto flat metal skewers) and shish kebab (cubes of marinated whole meat threaded onto skewers). Both are grilled over direct high heat — ideally charcoal, which contributes a smoky dimension that gas cannot fully replicate. The key technical difference between good and mediocre kofta is the handling of the meat mixture: it must be kneaded until it becomes cohesive and almost paste-like, and the onion must be squeezed completely dry — wet onion releases steam during grilling and causes the meat to fall off the skewer. The 7-spice blend (baharat) is the foundation of the flavor.

60 min380 kcal4 serves

🌾Gluten-free💪High protein

Yakitori (Japanese Grilled Chicken Skewers)

🇯🇵JapanMedium

Meat Dishes

Yakitori (Japanese Grilled Chicken Skewers)

Yakitori (焼き鳥, yaki = grilled, tori = bird) is one of Japan's most beloved street foods and izakaya staples — bite-sized pieces of chicken threaded onto bamboo or metal skewers and grilled over charcoal, seasoned with either coarse salt (shio style) or brushed repeatedly with tare, a soy-mirin-sake glaze that caramelizes into a lacquered, sweet-savory coating. Authentic yakitori is cooked over binchotan (白炭), a white oak charcoal that burns at very high temperature with minimal smoke, allowing the fat dripping from the chicken to produce fragrant vapour rather than flare-ups. The two defining skewer styles covered here are negima (ねぎま) — chicken thigh alternated with long onion — and the plain momo (もも) thigh skewer. Both are grilled in multiple passes, dipped in tare, returned to the grill, and repeated until the exterior is lacquered dark and the interior is cooked through.

60 min310 kcal4 serves

🌾Gluten-free💪High protein

Asparagus Risotto with Lemon, Dill and Goat Cheese

🇮🇹ItalyMedium

Cereal and Pasta Dishes

Asparagus Risotto with Lemon, Dill and Goat Cheese

Spring asparagus, fresh dill, a hit of lemon, and a pile of goat cheese stirred in at the end — this is risotto that actually tastes like the season. The technique is the same as any risotto: soften aromatics, toast the rice until it smells nutty, add wine, add warm stock ladle by ladle, stir often enough to keep it moving. Where this version diverges is the finish. Goat cheese instead of the usual Parmesan-only approach gives a tang that cuts through the starchiness; dill, stirred in off the heat, stays bright and grassy. The asparagus goes in two ways: the stalks get folded into the risotto in the last few minutes so they stay slightly firm, and the tips get reserved and sautéed separately so they have some color and texture for the top.

45 min480 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian

Sheet-Pan Harissa Chicken with Garlic Yogurt

🌊MediterraneanMedium

Meat Dishes

Sheet-Pan Harissa Chicken with Garlic Yogurt

One pan, one hour, a lot of flavor. Bone-in chicken thighs marinated in harissa, cumin, and olive oil roast at high heat alongside waxy potatoes and leeks, developing a spiced crust that stays crisp while the interior stays juicy. The garlic yogurt comes together in two minutes while the chicken is in the oven — cold, garlicky, slightly sharp, the exact counterpoint to the hot, smoky chicken. A handful of peppery rocket and fresh dill over the top before serving keeps the whole thing from being heavy. This is mid-week food that tastes like you planned it.

60 min520 kcal4 serves

🌾Gluten-free💪High protein🌶️Spicy

🇲🇦MoroccoAdvanced

Soups

Harira

Harira is Morocco's most important soup. The name comes from the Arabic word for silk — a reference to the velvety texture it gets from a flour-and-water slurry (tedouira) stirred in at the end. Every Moroccan family has their version, but the spine is always the same: tomatoes, chickpeas, lentils, fresh herbs, ginger, and warm spices. It is the soup that breaks the Ramadan fast every evening at iftar, served alongside dates, hard-boiled eggs, and chebakia cookies. It is also eaten through the rest of the year, as a starter or as a meal in itself. The lamb version is the most traditional, but the vegetarian version is nearly as popular.

90 min320 kcal6 serves

🇲🇦MoroccoAdvanced

Meat Dishes

Chicken Tagine with Chermoula

Chermoula is a Moroccan marinade — raw herbs, garlic, cumin, lemon, oil — and it does more work here than the tagine itself. The chicken sits in it overnight if you have time, or two hours if you don't. Either way, something changes in the meat. Then it goes into the pot with preserved lemon, olives, and onion, and cooks low and slow until it falls off the bone. No tagine pot required. A wide, heavy pan with a lid does the same job.

90 min455 kcal4 serves

🌾Gluten-free💪High protein🌶️Spicy

🇷🇺RussiaMedium

Meat Dishes

Shashlik

A post-Soviet summer classic of fatty pork neck cut into cubes, marinated overnight with plenty of onion, lemon, and mineral water, then grilled on skewers over charcoal. The onion tenderises the meat while the coals give it a smoky char; it is served off the skewer with flatbread, pickled onion, and a spicy sauce.

40 min480 kcal6 serves

🌾Gluten-free💪High protein🌶️Spicy

🇺🇦UkraineMedium

Fish and Seafood Dishes

Baked Carp in Sour Cream (Ukrainian)

Baked carp in sour cream is a Ukrainian classic: a whole fish coated in a garlicky sour-cream layer on a bed of onions. Diagonal slashes along the sides let the sour cream and heat reach inside and soften the fine bones. The foil is left open on top so the skin browns while the flesh stays moist.

55 min360 kcal4 serves

🥑Keto💪High protein🌾Gluten-free

Lavangi (Azerbaijani Walnut-Stuffed Fish)

🌍AzerbaijanAdvanced

Fish and Seafood Dishes

Lavangi (Azerbaijani Walnut-Stuffed Fish)

Lavangi is an Azerbaijani fish stuffed with a paste of walnuts, onion, and sour plums with narsharab. The grated onion must be squeezed dry, or the filling turns watery. The fish is stuffed, sewn shut, rubbed with narsharab, and baked until the skin is dark and glossy. It's a festive Talysh and Lankaran dish, a classic of the Novruz table.

75 min450 kcal4 serves

💪High protein🌾Gluten-free

Canard a l'Orange (French Roast Duck with Orange Sauce)

🇫🇷FranceAdvanced

Meat Dishes

Canard a l'Orange (French Roast Duck with Orange Sauce)

Canard a l'orange is one of the pillars of classical French cooking: a whole roast duck with crisp, rendered skin, served with sauce bigarade — a sharp, glossy orange sauce built on a gastrique of caramelized sugar and vinegar. The point isn't sweetness but tension, the acidity and faint bitterness of the orange cutting straight through the fat of the bird. Codified by Escoffier, it's the dish that taught generations of cooks what balance means.

150 min680 kcal4 serves

💪High protein🌾Gluten-free

Imam Bayildi (Turkish Stuffed Eggplant in Olive Oil)

🇹🇷TurkeyAdvanced

Vegetable and Mushroom Dishes

Imam Bayildi (Turkish Stuffed Eggplant in Olive Oil)

Imam bayildi means 'the imam fainted' — from delight, or from the sight of how much olive oil went in, depending on which legend you follow. Whole eggplants are softened until collapsing, split open, and packed with slow-cooked onion, tomato, and a startling amount of garlic, then braised in olive oil until everything melts together. It belongs to the zeytinyagli family, dishes cooked in olive oil and eaten cool, and it's better the next day.

90 min310 kcal4 serves

🌱Vegan🌾Gluten-free🌿Vegetarian

Knafeh with Pistachios and Orange Blossom

🇱🇧LebanonAdvanced

Flour and Confectionery Products

Knafeh with Pistachios and Orange Blossom

Knafeh is the great sweet of the Levant: a layer of mild, stretchy cheese buried between two layers of buttered kataifi pastry, baked until the shredded strands turn deep gold, then drenched in cold orange blossom syrup the moment it leaves the oven. Salty and sweet, crisp and molten at once, it's eaten warm while the cheese still pulls, scattered with green pistachios. In Lebanon it's as much a breakfast, tucked into sesame bread, as a dessert.

90 min610 kcal8 serves

🌿Vegetarian

Ingredients

Goes well with

Other ingredients that appear most often alongside lemon across the archive. Pick one to drill deeper.

garlic onion butter olive oil eggs tomato chicken milk flour cilantro salmon shrimp