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Low-calorie recipes

Under 350 kcal per serving, without the sad-diet energy. Real flavour, careful fat, plenty of vegetables — the kind of light cooking you actually want to make again.

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Herring with Onions and Potatoes (Russian Zakuska) with salted herring, potato and onion — Russia recipe

🇷🇺RussiaMedium

Fish and Seafood Dishes

Herring with Onions and Potatoes (Russian Zakuska)

Herring with onions and potatoes is a simple Russian zakuska: salted herring fillets with rings of raw onion and warm boiled potatoes. The fish is drizzled with unrefined sunflower oil and a splash of vinegar, then scattered with dill. The contrast between cold, salty fish and hot potatoes is the whole point of the dish.

35 min340 kcal4 serves

🌾Gluten-free💪High protein

Hojicha Latte with hojicha powder and whole milk or oat milk — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanEasy

Beverages

Hojicha Latte

Hojicha is roasted Japanese green tea — reddish-brown, nutty, and faintly caramelised, with a fraction of the caffeine of matcha or coffee. When whisked into a paste and combined with hot frothed milk, it becomes one of the most comforting drinks in the Japanese tea repertoire. This version works hot or iced. The water temperature is the only thing that needs attention.

10 min110 kcal1 serves

⚡Quick🌾Gluten-free

Hollandaise Sauce with egg yolks, butter and lemon juice — France recipe

🇫🇷FranceEasy

Sauces and Dips

Hollandaise Sauce

A warm, buttery emulsion of egg yolks, clarified butter, and lemon juice whisked over gentle heat until it holds its own weight on a spoon. Hollandaise is one of the five French mother sauces, and its reputation for being difficult is vastly overblown — the only real rule is keep the heat low. I make this every weekend for eggs Benedict and it takes me about twelve minutes from cold butter to finished sauce.

15 min180 kcal4 serves

⚡Quick🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free

Homemade Apple Cider with apple juice and yeast — UK recipe

🇬🇧UKMedium

Beverages

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.

60 min135 kcal16 serves

🌱Vegan🌾Gluten-free🌿Vegetarian

Homemade Ayran (Yogurt Drink) with plain full fat yogurt and cold water — Turkey recipe

🇹🇷TurkeyEasy

Beverages

Homemade Ayran (Yogurt Drink)

Plain yogurt whisked with cold water and a pinch of salt until smooth and frothy. Ayran is one of the oldest and simplest drinks in Turkish and Central Asian cuisines — nothing more than diluted salted yogurt, yet the result is cooling, tangy, and genuinely thirst-quenching in a way that sweet drinks aren't. The foam is not decoration: the vigorous whisking or blending aerates the yogurt and gives the drink its characteristic light texture.

5 min90 kcal2 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free⚡Quick

Homemade BBQ Sauce (Sweet, Smoky & Tangy) with ketchup, apple cider vinegar and brown sugar — USA recipe

🇺🇸USAMedium

Sauces and Dips

Homemade BBQ Sauce (Sweet, Smoky & Tangy)

Barbecue sauce is the foundation of American pit cooking — a condiment that in its classic Kansas City form balances four fundamental flavors: sweet (brown sugar and molasses), sour (apple cider vinegar), savory (Worcestershire sauce and garlic), and smoky (smoked paprika). Unlike most sauces, which are built by reducing a complex stock, BBQ sauce is assembled from pantry staples and then simmered together for 15 to 20 minutes until the flavors merge and the raw edge of the vinegar rounds out. The result is a thick, glossy, mahogany-coloured sauce that clings to ribs, glazes chicken, and tastes of concentrated American summer. The key adjustable levers: more brown sugar for sweetness, more vinegar for tang, more smoked paprika (or a small amount of liquid smoke) for smokiness, cayenne for heat. This recipe makes approximately 480 ml (2 cups) — enough for one full rack of ribs with extra for dipping.

25 min55 kcal16 serves

⚡Quick🌶️Spicy

Homemade Bread Kvass with dark rye bread, sugar and yeast — Russia recipe

🇷🇺RussiaEasy

Beverages

Homemade Bread Kvass

Dark rye bread toasted until almost charred, steeped in boiling water, sweetened, and left to ferment for one to two days with a small amount of yeast. Kvass is one of the oldest fermented drinks in Eastern European cuisine — mildly sour, faintly sweet, with a roasted bread depth that no other drink has. The active preparation takes thirty minutes; everything else is waiting. The result is a lightly carbonated drink with less than 1% alcohol, deeply satisfying cold on a hot day.

30 min55 kcal6 serves

🌱Vegan⚡Quick

Homemade Eggnog with egg yolks, whole milk and heavy cream — USA recipe

🇺🇸USAEasy

Beverages

Homemade Eggnog

Egg yolks cooked into a thin custard with milk, cream, nutmeg, and vanilla, then chilled until thick. Store-bought eggnog is sweet and shelf-stable; this is something different — rich from real eggs, fragrant from freshly grated nutmeg, and thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. The technique is exactly the same as making crème anglaise. If you've made that before, you already know how to make eggnog.

25 min320 kcal6 serves

🌾Gluten-free💪High protein⚡Quick

Homemade Granola with Honey and Clusters with rolled oats, honey and oil — USA recipe

🇺🇸USAMedium

Breakfast and Brunch

Homemade Granola with Honey and Clusters

Golden oat clusters held together by honey and egg white, baked low and slow until they shatter when you break them apart. The secret is pressing the mixture flat and never touching it in the oven — that's what builds those chunky pieces everyone fights over. Dried fruit goes in after baking so it stays chewy instead of turning into little rocks.

40 min320 kcal10 serves

🌿Vegetarian

Honey-Glazed Ham (Easter Spiral-Cut Ham with Honey Mustard Glaze) with bone in spiral cut ham, honey and light brown sugar — USA recipe

🇺🇸USAAdvanced

Meat Dishes

Honey-Glazed Ham (Easter Spiral-Cut Ham with Honey Mustard Glaze)

Honey-glazed ham is the centerpiece of the American Easter table — a fully cooked spiral-cut bone-in ham, slow-warmed under foil and brushed with a sticky lacquer of honey, brown sugar, and Dijon mustard. The bone keeps the meat moist, the spiral cut lets the glaze seep into every slice, and a final blast under the broiler gives the signature caramel crust. Serves twelve, makes great sandwiches the next day, and the leftover bone goes into split pea soup. The technique is forgiving: low oven, foil tent, glaze in the last 30 minutes.

150 min330 kcal12 serves

💪High protein🌾Gluten-free

Horchata (Mexican Rice Drink) with long grain white rice, cinnamon sticks and water — Mexico recipe

🇲🇽MexicoEasy

Beverages

Horchata (Mexican Rice Drink)

Horchata is a sweet rice drink from Mexico: long-grain rice and cinnamon soaked overnight, blended, strained and finished with milk and a little sugar. It shares its name with Spanish horchata de chufa, which is made from tiger nuts rather than rice — two different drinks under one word. Most of the work happens while you sleep and finishing it takes about fifteen minutes, plus an hour to chill; the result is cold and milky without being heavy, with a clean cinnamon finish.

15 min180 kcal6 serves

🌾Gluten-free🌿Vegetarian

Hot Chocolate with dark chocolate, whole milk and cocoa powder — France recipe

🇫🇷FranceEasy

Beverages

Hot Chocolate

Real dark chocolate melted into hot whole milk with a spoonful of cocoa powder and a pinch of salt. The combination of actual chocolate and cocoa powder is what separates this from a packet mix — the chocolate gives body and creaminess, the cocoa sharpens the flavor. The French version, chocolat chaud, is served thick enough to drink slowly. This sits between that and the thinner American style: rich and smooth, not something you gulp down.

15 min310 kcal2 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free⚡Quick

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