five ingredients or fewer
plus: potato leek soup
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Good morning!
Not sure I will ever love sheet pan gnocchi (sorry!) [Taste Cooking]
How America Tuned In to the TV Dinner [NYTimes, unlocked]
Did you know oranges weren’t always orange? [Food & Wine]
Friends, it’s cold out there and it’s made me terrifically lazy. Do something outisde? Absolutely not. Hibernate inside and cook something amazing? Yes, please. Go to the grocery store first to obtain what I need to make such cozy cooking happen? That’s crazy talk. Enter: The 5-ingredient meal, recipes with so few ingredients, you might even already have them around. Below, a few of my winter favorites, recipes that always surprise me with how big a flavorful, nuanced outcome you get from so little. Plus, a new and long overdue recipe for Potato Leek Soup, my way. Let’s stay inside forever, okay?
Cheers,
Deb
I’ve written three cookbooks and I’m a tiny bit biased, but I think you’d love them all. Wondering what you might cook from Smitten Kitchen Keepers in the depths of winter? I thought you’d never ask! Try the ginger garlic chicken noodle soup, charred salt and vinegar cabbage, creamy coconut rice with chili-lime vegetables, and oven-braised beef with harissa. To finish, I recommend the oatmeal date shortbread, the chocolate dulce puddle cakes, and/or the white Russian slush punch. Were you looking for a list of all the recipes in each of my cookbooks? I’ve added these in a separate page and hope it makes it easier for you to find everything you want to cook.
potato leek soup
New: Potato leek soup, my way. The kind of hearty, cozy soup needed to offset the biting cold of January with a few strong opinions on sour cream, chives, and lemon (they’re essential) and a crispy topping nobody can resist.
“One of the winning elements of ‘The Recipe’ is that it’s not prescriptive — rather than settling on one universal ‘perfect’ recipe, the chefs explain their personal preferences, then give listeners the information they need to make their own adjustments. By breaking their recipes down ingredient-by-ingredient, digging into what each one is doing, they make the science of cooking approachable and fun.” — New York Times, 7 Podcasts to Inspire a New Hobby
“J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Deb Perelman’s new podcast gets to not only the heart of how they make their recipes—but also the why behind each decision, too.” — Esquire, The 26 Best Podcasts of 2024
The latest full episode of my podcast with J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, The Recipe with Kenji and Deb, is all about Onion Soup! You can listen to it anywhere you get your podcasts, such as Apple, Spotify, and more. A few weeks ago, we ran an excerpt of the new special audiobook edition of Smitten Kitchen Keepers, Smitten Kitchen Keepers: A Kitchen Counter Conversation. You can listen to it here.
cauliflower salad with dates and pistachios
A clean-out-the-fridge roasted cauliflower salad, the kind of thing I crave endlessly for winter lunches. This one has charred scallion segments, salted pistachios, chopped dates, and a sharp lemon dressing and it's so inhalable that forkfuls were walking off as I tried to take photos.
melting potatoes
These buttery, brothy, crispy and creamy potatoes are here to melt off the winter chill. The heat will seem too high, the butter too brown, the color on the potatoes too dark, and then you’ll try them and wonder why they alone don't deserve the dinner spotlight.
roasted cabbage with walnuts and parmesan
This roasted cabbage is a site favorite because it’s much more than it seems: A warm salad for cold weather. Starter Cabbage for people who are cabbage hesitant. Better from the tray than a serving dish, thus rewarding laziness, you're welcome. It takes 20 minutes total, including prep. Don't sleep on those lacy, crunchy edge pieces -- they tend to "disappear" before you even get it to the table. [Video below!]
tomato sauce with onion and butter
If you haven't yet experienced the magic of Marcella Hazan's three-ingredient tomato sauce, there is no time like an icy January day. Still on the fence? One of the ingredients is butter. You're welcome.
foolproof cacio e pepe
Cacio e pepe, one of my favorite dishes, as good at you’d have in Rome -- that is with only cheese, pepper, pasta, and water and not one other thing. You could be eating this in 20 minutes.
cannellini aglio e olio
A 10-minute meal from doctored-up cans of beans and artichokes, treated like pasta. The result is a warm, almost creamy bean salad that you can finish with parmesan and eat with a fork straight from a bowl, or ladle over slices of toasted baguette.
oven-braised beef with tomatoes and garlic
This three-ingredient cult classic from Gourmet is worth all the hype. Less than 15 minutes prep time yields a meltingly tender braise and days of gorgeous leftovers.
cabbage and sausage casserole
It may not be, perhaps, the *cutest* dish on smittenkitchen.com but if you're looking for a 4-ingredient rustic dinner you can heap onto craggy bread (we like it with spicy mustard), you're in for a treat.
lemon sorbet
Lemon sorbet is basically a beam of sunlight in a bowl and this recipe, adapted from David Lebovitz, is our go-to with a full-bodied lemon flavor and the perfect tart-sweet balance. A perk of making it at home is that you can go to your freezer for a spoonful whenever life requires a burst of refreshment.
salted peanut butter cookies
The best peanut butter cookies I’ve ever made have only five ingredients, no flour, no butter, can be mixed by hand in one bowl, and have a perfect salty finish. Thank you, Ovenly!
roasted cabbage with walnuts and parmesan
shop my favorites
Ever wonder where I get my cutting boards, paring knives, offset spatulas and more than you see when I cook? I've created a page on Smitten Kitchen with links to some of my favorite kitchen items, the ones I'm asked about the most — yes, including the the Smitten Kitchen x Staub Braiser (currently out of stock but we’ll have more in soon!). For each item, I've attempted to provide a range of shopping links so we're not just focusing on one giant retailer.
See you next week!
