Go for the gold: What to Cook This Weekend

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Francesco Tonelli for The New York Times

Friday, January 8, 2021

What to Cook This Weekend

Sam Sifton

Good morning. It’s stew season, at least for those of us not using the month as a cleanse, and I suspect many will hunker down this weekend with two of our most popular recipes: Molly O’Neill’s fabulous old-fashioned beef stew and Regina Schrambling’s elegant, comforting Dijon and Cognac beef stew.

Others may make galbijjim, or a tagine (above). You might thrill to this smoky lentil stew with leeks and potatoes, or to a charred cauliflower stew. A spicy white bean stew with broccoli rabe this weekend? Goulash? Chicken paprikash? It’s Dutch oven time in America.

But do not simply bubble and braise. You could roast this weekend, too: Peruvian chicken with spicy cilantro sauce, for instance, along with some duck-fat potatoes. Or roast pork dip sandwiches? (You could make the meat on Sunday for reheating on Monday night for an excellent meal to accompany the national college football championship game at 8 p.m. in the East: Roll Tide!) And a whole roasted cauliflower with romesco sauce? That would be a fine weekend feed, as well.

Though perhaps you’re in a reflective frame of mind. Maybe consider our 50 most popular recipes of 2020, or our 50 most popular vegetarian recipes, or the 33 recipes the staff here made most over the course of the year.

There are thousands more recipes to consider making this weekend waiting for you on NYT Cooking. Go browse a while and see what you find. (Did you receive an Instant Pot for the holidays? We’ll show you how to use it.) You can, of course, save the recipes you like. We hope you’ll rate the ones you’ve made. And you can leave notes on the recipes, too, for yourself or for fellow subscribers, if you’ve made any observations about the cooking that you’d like to remember or share.

Yes, you do need to be a subscriber to do that, to enjoy all the benefits of NYT Cooking. Subscriptions are what make this whole enterprise possible. They allow us to continue working. Please, if you are able to do so, if you haven’t done so already, I hope you will subscribe to NYT Cooking today.

And we will be here to help you, should something go awry in your cooking or with our technology. Just write: cookingcare@nytimes.com, and someone will get back to you. (If you have a dart to shoot or an apple to share, you should write me directly: foodeditor@nytimes.com. I read every letter sent.)

Now, it’s kind of the opposite of juicy Lucys and deep-fried onion rings, but one other thing you might get up to this weekend is the 7-Day Well Challenge in The Times, quarterbacked by the amazing Tara Parker-Pope. Following along can yield results you’ll be thankful for all year.

Here’s Samin Nosrat in The New York Times Magazine, on a chicken and rice dish she developed for Earlonne Woods, a founder of the prison-life podcast Ear Hustle, to recall and improve upon the one Woods made when he was incarcerated.

Seen the trailer for “One Night in Miami” yet? It opens (and streams) next week.

Finally: “Over the years, I’ve noticed one unvarying trait in my customers. If offered a free drink once every 20 visits, they love the restaurant. But if offered a free drink 19 visits in a row but not on their 20th visit, they’re pissed off and resent the restaurant. I’ve since realized this holds true outside of restaurants.” That’s Keith McNally in an essay on the opening and pandemic closing of Balthazar, his restaurant in SoHo, Manhattan, in Vanity Fair. It’s worth reading. See you on Sunday.