One pot
Skillet white beans with spinach and garlic toast
White beans simmer in tomato sauce until creamy, then finish with spinach and lemon. Crisp garlic toast is served alongside.
View recipe · 4 servingsComfort food recipes
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15 recipes, showing 12
Breakfast
Belgian waffles
A Belgian waffle is thick and crisp outside, light and almost custardy inside, with deep pockets that hold butter and syrup. The lift comes from egg whites whipped on their own and folded in, so this is the recipe that teaches you to whip and fold, two skills you'll use again in cakes, soufflés and mousse.
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Soups
Broccoli cheddar soup
A thick, cheesy soup that comes down to one skill: getting cheese to melt into hot soup smoothly instead of turning grainy or stringy. Along the way you build a roux-thickened base, the same method behind many cream soups and cheese sauces, so what you learn here carries over.
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Breads
Buttermilk biscuits
Tall, flaky biscuits come down to three habits: cold butter, a light hand and a hot oven. Once those are yours, you can have a pan of biscuits on the table any morning from flour, butter and buttermilk.
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Soups
Chicken noodle soup
This version gets a fuller, rounder pot in about an hour by simmering bone-in chicken thighs in store-bought broth, so the bones and skin add body while the meat cooks. It teaches you to sweat vegetables, keep a simmer gentle, skim, and save the seasoning for the end.
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Soups
Corn chowder
Make this when sweet corn is piled high at the market. It teaches you to get every bit of flavor out of the ear: the kernels, the milky pulp you scrape off the cob, and the bare cobs themselves, simmered right in the pot. Blending part of the chowder gives it body without a heavy hand of flour.
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Breads
Cornbread
Cornbread baked in a hot cast-iron skillet gets a crackling brown crust that no other pan gives you. This version sits in the middle of the long sweet-or-not argument, with a little sugar you can raise or leave out, and it teaches the hot-pan pour you'll use again and again.
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Soups
French onion soup
This soup is really a lesson in caramelizing onions. Three pounds of them cook down slowly until they're deep brown and jammy, and then broth, a splash of wine and a bubbling cheese crust do the rest. Once you can judge caramelized onions by color and smell instead of by the clock, you'll use them on burgers, in dips and on pizza too.
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Soups
Hot and sour soup
This soup is a lesson in balance and timing. Vinegar brings the sour, white pepper brings the heat, and a cornstarch slurry gives it the silky body that holds up every strand of mushroom, tofu and egg. Almost everything happens in the last five minutes, so the whole trick is having it lined up.
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Soups
Potato leek soup
A few inexpensive ingredients, a little patience with the leeks, and a soup that tastes far richer than it is. It teaches you to clean leeks properly, sweat them to silky sweetness without color, and blend potatoes so they turn creamy instead of gluey.
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Potatoes
Potato pancakes
Crisp, lacy edges and a tender middle, from little more than potatoes, onion and a hot pan. They're the classic Hanukkah latke and an everyday side across Central and Eastern Europe. They teach you how to get water out of grated vegetables, keep the starch that comes with it, and shallow-fry at a steady heat.
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Breakfast
Stovetop Oatmeal
A pot of oatmeal is a few minutes of easy stirring, and it teaches three moves you'll use far beyond breakfast: toasting a grain in fat, cooking starch to a creamy set, and salting the liquid early. Made this way, it tastes like toasted oats and warm milk, not paste.
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