Main Dish Recipes & Ideas

I make it every week.

It’s ready in 30 minutes.

Lo mein is a popular Chinese-American dish for good reason — it’s got savory noodles, crisp veggies, and your choice of protein all packed into one weeknight-friendly dish. But with the help of a sauce that also doubles as a marinade for the chicken breast, you can make and dig into a big pile of noodle stir-fry in less than 30 minutes. That’s quicker than it takes for delivery to arrive! This recipe is also easily adaptable depending on your mood and what’s available.

This should be in heavy rotation.

Spoiler: You don’t need a single packet.

It’s decadent!

The sauce is everything.

And it cooks in less than 15 minutes.

And it’s so comforting.

It’s so easy.

Stromboli might actually be the most perfect weeknight meal. You roll up your family’s favorite fillings — meat, cheeses, or veggies — in pizza dough (store-bought, obviously) and bake the whole thing to golden-brown perfection. Then you slice the stromboli into portable, easy-to-dip pieces that you can serve with marinara sauce for dipping or wrapped in a napkin on the way to soccer practice.

Bon appétit!

It’s sweet, salty, sour, and gets a little kick from the pepper.

A quick skillet of fried rice is one of the easiest, most satisfying ways to transform leftover rice into a complete meal. Here, we’ve added crumbles of ground pork, a couple of eggs, and whatever vegetable you’ve got in the freezer to create a winning dinner the whole family will enjoy. Here’s how to make it. It only takes 15 minutes to make. From start to finish, this pork fried rice takes about 15 minutes to cook for a quick and delicious weeknight dinner.

Ready in less than 20 minutes!

During Valentine’s Day, there’s no better way to show appreciation for your loved one – whether that’s your spouse, significant other, best friend, or even (especially) yourself – than to spend quality time with them over a special at-home dinner. You don’t have to spend all day to cook a romantic dinner.

I am a huge fan of chicken thighs, especially boneless, skinless chicken thighs because they’re inexpensive, tasty, and easy to cook. In fact, I find it difficult to mess them up. They are just dark enough to stay tender, but not so dark as to put off people who prefer white meat. Everyone who eats regularly at my house has eaten chicken thighs.In the summer I grill them every week, especially when I have a big table of people to feed.

You only need six ingredients.

If you’re looking for a way to give your basic mashed potatoes a seriously impressive upgrade, there’s no better way to do it than by taking inspiration from a loaded baked potato with all the fixings. I’m talking tangy sour cream, smoky bacon, sharp cheddar, and fragrant fresh chives.From Thanksgiving dinner to game day when there’s a slow cooker of chili and you need a little something extra to round out the meal, loaded mashed potatoes are always the answer.

It’s packed full of flavor.

Cheesy, creamy, and tangy all in one bite.

Pure comfort.

You need only six basic ingredients.

You’ll want to drizzle the sauce over everything.

It truly is the most delicious of all time!

Whether we’re talking about date night at home or a quick weeknight meal, it doesn’t get much better than a giant bowl of steamed mussels. This dish has the kind of easy elegance and immediate gratification that I look for in both cases. Today, I’m sharing my favorite, most basic method for quickly steaming a batch of mussels. It’s simple — just mussels steamed with broth and white wine — but oh so very good!

I have ESP (extremely slurpable pasta).

A perfectly cooked beef tenderloin is truly a sight to behold. The delectable cut often made special-occasion appearances when I was growing up, but Easter Sunday and its rosy-hued tenderloin tea sandwiches was always a holiday favorite.After early church and egg hunts in our finest spring whites, my family would race home to enjoy my mother’s fabulous Southern spread.

They're perfectly light and airy.

It may top my own version.

My father in-law is not a big fan of turkey. So about five years ago, we started adding a bone-in-ham to the family Thanksgiving menu. But each year I am the host and cook, and so I would run into a problem: After making the turkey, how do I season and heat a full ham while all the side dishes are hogging the oven space? Fortunately I settled on a solution: Put the ham in a slow cooker!I admit, spiral-cut ham wasn’t something I always loved.

Say goodbye to dry lasagna.

Bonus: You can assemble it ahead of time.

It might even be better than the Thanksgiving meal itself.

The glaze is everything.

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There’s no such thing as too much lasagna.

The best with naan.

Calling all seafood-lovers! This restaurant-quality crab-stuffed salmon can be made at home in under 40 minutes and tastes just like the real deal. The key to creating this luxurious dish at home is starting with great seafood. Thick salmon fillets and jumbo lump crab meat are the stars. This recipe adds just enough ingredients to elevate their flavors without overpowering the fresh seafood taste. Here’s how to make it. It’s fancy, but also easy to make.

Oh-so cheesy.

A classic side takes center stage.

While I am big fan of traditional pan-fried crab cakes, it’s hard to beat the ease that comes with baking them. Skip standing over a hot stove and instead, bake the whole batch at once on a sheet pan.For these easy crab cakes, you’ll shape the crab mixture into patties and chill them for 10 minutes, which ensures they’ll firm up a bit so they won’t fall apart in the oven. The patties are then transferred to a 425°F oven and baked until just cooked through.

Nothing says “Christmas” like pernil.

This plus mashed potatoes is actual heaven.

If creamy pasta makes you weak in the knees, white lasagna is going to be right up your alley. Unlike lasagnas made with marinara, you won’t find a drop of red sauce in sight. Here you get layers of hearty pasta, ricotta cheese, mozzarella, Italian sausage crumbles, and an entire pound of fresh spinach.But what makes white lasagna so special is the creamy white sauce that’s blanketed throughout the casserole.

Just stir and bake.

Often, when I don’t feel like cooking, I’ll make a dinner salad, a plate of scrambled eggs and toast, or a quick beans-and-greens sauté and call it a night. But come winter I crave dinners that are way more comforting than that. When I’m looking for something to warm me from the inside out — something that is as hearty as they come — I turn to these recipes.

Eating fancy at home has never been so easy.

It made John Krasinski fall in love with her for a reason!

Yeehaw!

They taste like childhood.

Bonus: You also get a luscious sauce.

Zero to braised in under an hour.

I’ve never met a lasagna I didn’t love. Yes, there’s something about the way it’s assembled — with the rich sauce, melty cheese, and juicy bits of browned meat blanketing the noodles — but what really makes it stand out is how the ingredients come together for a warm, comforting meal. And that’s exactly what you can expect when you tuck into a bowl of this lasagna-inspired soup. The secret to the best (and easiest) lasagna soup is jarred marinara sauce.

It’s so flavorful.

It's truly restaurant-worthy.

The gravy is next-level.