For many years now, I’ve been sharing favorite family recipes on a regular basis in my weekly Links I Love posts. Maybe it will be surprising to hear, but when someone in my family asks a question like “what was that great chicken recipe we made last fall”, I often find the answer by searching my own blog archives!
I thought it might be helpful—and not just to me?—to gather the best-of-the-best recipes I’ve shared over the years in one place. I don’t typically share recipes in Links more than once, but many of those recipes I shared that one time in Links are ones the Bogel family has gone on to make dozens of times.
These twenty recipes include many Bogel family favorites, though it’s far from exhaustive and limited by availability: in Links I Love, I can’t share recipes from cookbooks, and I don’t share recipes that are only available through paid subscriptions. What I do love to share are recipes that are freely available on my favorite online cooking sites, and from paid online cooking sites that allow me to share gift links with you so that you can access those recipes for free. (That’s why it may seem like NYT Cooking is overrepresented in the list below—it’s because I can easily share those recipes for free!)
We use the Paprika app to manage our recipes, which has made our dinner prep lives a little bit easier.
This is the dinner version of a recipe round-up, but we’ll have a baking version coming your way soon! For now, I’d love to hear if you’ve found any great recipes from Links I Love, and what your favorite go-to weeknight dinner recipes are.
20 easy and delicious dinner recipes
1. Gingery Grilled Chicken Thighs with Charred Peaches | NYT Cooking
We make this Melissa Clark recipe every summer, and every summer it’s FANTASTIC. 10/10 recommend. We extend the seasonality of it by grilling pineapple instead of peaches at other times of year.
2. Chicken Tortilla Soup | Pinch of Yum
This chicken tortilla soup recipe has the best flavor-to-effort ratio of all the versions we’ve tried. We make it year-round.
3. Paprika Chicken and Potatoes | NYT Cooking
Fabulous and fabulously easy dinner. This is so, so good. I rarely share recipes that aren’t forgiving with substitutions; for this one we often use what we always have on hand: Hellman’s, lemon instead of lime, no parsley.
4. Pressure Cooker Spicy Pork Shoulder | NYT Cooking
I’m not a fan of star ratings for books, but I am highly likely to try 5-star NYT Cooking recipes, especially when they’re written by Melissa Clark. Like many of my weeknight favorites, this recipe delivers big results for little effort.
5. Slow-Cooker BBQ Pulled Chicken | NYT Cooking
Another easy weeknight dinner that’s a big hit! Lately I’ve been using Trader Joe’s Sriracha & Roasted Garlic BBQ Sauce more often than not, but it’s worked well with every barbecue sauce we’ve tried (and we’ve made this a ton).
6. Soy-glazed Chicken | Smitten Kitchen
When it comes to weeknight dinners, we look for a trifecta of delicious, easy, and fast—and this recipe nailed it. We take Deb’s recommendation and usually serve it with chili crisp, plus a very simple salad, like snap peas or cucumbers.
7. Vietnamese-Inspired Chicken Salad with Rice Noodles | Pinch of Yum
After professing my summer love for “food in bowls” in this post, a friend texted me this recipe. I knew I would love it but because not everyone at my house loves rice noodles as much as I do; I was surprised it was a huge hit with the whole family.
8 and 9. Blackened chicken breasts and Ali Slagle’s Lemon-Garlic Linguine | NYT Cooking
Both recipes are simple and delicious on their own but we often serve them together. Sometimes we grill the chicken instead of cooking it on the stove; if we’re serving it with the pasta we slice it up and plunk it on top of the creamy garlic lemon pasta. The recipe calls for linguine, but we’ve made the pasta recipe with a variety of shapes.
10. Chicken Enchilada Casserole | Gimme Some Oven
We make this enchilada casserole all the time. The original recipe is solid, but our style is considerably more freewheeling: we cook everything in our large cast iron skillet, give it a nice stir (including the tortillas; we’re not even layering), and put the whole thing in the oven for twenty minutes. An easy peasy crowdpleaser!
11. Moroccan Spiced Chicken over Couscous | Fresh Off the Grid
We started making this eons ago on camping trips, but everybody enjoys it so much—and it’s sooo easy—it entered the regular weeknight rotation at home years ago. (We like to serve this with green beans, which is our most crowdpleasing family green vegetable, but you do you.)
12. Cheesy Baked Pasta with Sausage and Ricotta | NYT Cooking
A winter staple in my house, but we also just made it on a warm August weekend and everyone gobbled it up. (We often leave out the ricotta because my kids object to this specific variety of deliciousness.)
13. It’s Hard Shell Taco Night | Alison Roman’s A Newsletter Substack
After an absence of many years, we started picking up hard shells again and they’ve become a big hit at my house. Bonus: they’re sooo easy. I like Alison’s method and topping suggestions but our go-to filling is Sam Sifton’s Middle School Tacos recipe. (NYT Cooking)
14. Tomato-Ginger Chicken and Rice Soup | NYT Cooking
We make this a lot during cooler weather and it’s delicious! Even if you’re using frozen chicken thighs, it’s on the table within an hour.
15. Salmon salad: the one and only | Dinner: A Love Story
This recipe is versatile and tasty, especially if you serve it as a composed salad instead of tossing it all together. One night we had several vegetarians join us for dinner and we just added hard-boiled eggs and served the salmon on a separate platter so everyone could take what they wanted.
16. Pasta With Bacon, Cheese, Lemon and Pine Nuts | NYT Cooking
This simple pasta dish is always a huge hit. Delicious and easy for a weeknight; we serve it in big bowls with rotisserie chicken and green beans.
17. The Fake Shack (or the Shack Burger at Home) Recipe | Serious Eats
These burgers are DIVINE. I’ll also note that they sound like considerably more effort than they turned out to be: once you have the technique down they’re a breeze! This is now our go-to burger recipe; I love that we don’t have to turn on the grill.
18. Turmeric-Black Pepper Chicken With Asparagus | NYT Cooking
When we need a quick and crowd-pleasing dinner, this stir-fry is usually the answer. One of the reasons we love it is it’s so adaptable: we make it with chicken breasts or thighs, depending on what we have on hand, and all kinds of different vegetables.
19. Best Pork Tenderloin Stir Fry (Asian Bowl) | Posh Journal
My whole family loves this stir fry, a total winner I stumbled upon once upon a time while searching for non-chicken dinner options. When we serve this, we like to make one or both of the linked recipes for spinach salad and cucumber salad.
20. Sloppy Joes | The Pioneer Woman
One of our staple camping dinners—and always a big hit whether we’re dining indoors or out.
What are your go-to winning dinner recipes? Please share in the comments.
P.S. 10 delightful cookbooks for reading, cooking, and gifting and 20 interesting recipes to make for dinner with boneless skinless chicken breasts.
14 comments
The recipe we eat on repeat that WSRIN turned us onto is Milk Street Turkish Lentil Soup. It is one of our FAVORITE all time recipes, and I previously was not wild about lentils. We like it better without the mint but the spice oil and lemon are a must. We also tried it with olive oil instead of butter and nope, we only use butter now. Much better that way. We usually serve a salad as well. Everyone in our family likes this including our 11 month old grandchild (minus the spice oil for him).
https://katu.com/amnw/am-northwest-cooking-recipes/milk-street-turkish-red-lentil-soup
Thanks for the list! With fall coming this will be helpful for inspiration. Here’s a simple one: https://iwashyoudry.com/last-minute-chicken-recipe/
I’d love to see some vegetarian recipes. I think others might also, since Meatless Monday has become so popular! Thankyou!
Absolutely!!! I was going to say this too. I’ll share a vegan chef, cookbook author and blogger who creates the most delicious vegan recipes I’ve ever had( and I’ve sampled a LOT!).
Her name is Laura Wright and her book is The First Mess. Everything she makes is so flavorful and satisfying. None of the recipes contain ingredients that are inaccessible to the local markets or aren’t easily adapted. Her shepherd’s pie is astoundingly delicious.
I’m a vegetarian and most of these could easily be changed to be vegetarian! Instead of chicken enchiladas, I make black bean enchiladas. For the soups and stir fry dishes, mushrooms or extra veggies like broccoli and carrots are great substitutions for the meat. Sometimes I just leave the meat out altogether and increase the other ingredients. Beyond meat is a good ground beef sub but I personally prefer using things like veggies or beans over processed meat substitutions. Hope that helps with some ideas for tweaking the recipes.
I second this!
Here’s an easy one that I make on repeat because I love bowls, quick week night dinners (this one takes 30 minutes) and Mediterranean food (I made it up so amounts are flexible)
Enough boneless thighs to feed your people, bottled dressing (Greek, Italian, French vinaigrette–whatever you have on hand), salt and pepper, rice (cooked in my rice cooker, according to directions on pkg–I use a basmati style of rice called “My Skinny”–has slow release carbs, but any rice will do), store-bought hummus and tzatziki, a salad mixture of chunks of tomato,onion, cucumber, Kalamata olives, chopped parsley, sprinkled with sumac, Allepo pepper, and salt. Directions: Marinate chicken in dressing for 30 min to overnight. Toss together the salad ingredients and drizzle with the barest bit of olive oil and a squeeze of lemon. Let sit for 15 minutes or so. Cook the thighs on the stove top at medium high heat (I use a cast iron pan with a bit of olive oil) until nicely browned and done. Let cool and then slice into bite sized nuggets. Put everything (cooked chicken, rice, hummus, tzatziki and salad in a bowl, nestled side by side, or on a plate. Serve with store-bought naan or pita.
We discovered Ina Garten’s fish cake recipe during Covid and it’s been in regular rotation ever since! We enjoy these all year round, with different sides suitable for the season. Since lobster’s a bit spendy, we use a can of crab meat instead and any whitefish will work in place of the cod. The fish cake mixture keeps well for a couple of days in the fridge too, lending itself well to advance prep or easy leftovers 🙂 https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/fish-and-lobster-cakes-3764690
I also love a bowl recipe. Playswellwithbutter.com has many great versions with meal prep instructions and often a vegetarian option. One of my family faves is this one although we do the original version with the red cabbage that she has linked https://playswellwithbutter.com/hummus-bowls-recipe/
Another fave is The Whole Cook’s healthy turkey burgers. https://thewholecook.com/cilantro-turkey-burgers/
Co-signing the NYT’s Pasta with Bacon, Cheese, Lemon, and Pine Nuts. A total winner for my picky, pasta-loving children. Full disclosure, I’m a recipe blogger so I’m linking to my own site here, but these are two of my go-to meals that my family and I absolutely love: https://www.vanillabeancuisine.com/tofu-fried-rice/ and https://www.vanillabeancuisine.com/turkey-zucchini-meatballs/. From the Kitchn, this is a favorite in the summer with fresh corn and potatoes: https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-chicken-milanese-with-s-94775.
I love this NYT chickpea stew recipe and make it often during the winter. (Gift link) https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1019772-spiced-chickpea-stew-with-coconut-and-turmeric?unlocked_article_code=1.jk8.hmQ-.OGx5YTD2aSmr&smid=share-url
A friend made this for a girlfriends weekend years ago, and it has been my easy go-to recipe ever since: Saute a bag of baby spinach in olive oil until wilted. Prepare 16 oz. box of your favorite pasta, preferably a twisty kind. Toss pasta with spinach and the better part of a jar of Bella Sun Luci Julienne Cut Sun Dried Tomatoes with Italian Herbs (so, 2/3rd of the tomatoes but all of the juice/oil in the jar). Serve with lots of fresh Parmesan to sprinkle on top. It sounds basic but it is soooo good.
Just want to say how much I love Paprika! Been using for probably 10 years or more and wish could get more people to use it but they are put off by the price. Worth every penny!
Love this post! Thank you! Here’s a family favorite curry. So easy and versatile. I love swapping the veggies for peppers, snap peas and zucchini. I usually leave out the cream and reduce the sugar a bit. Hard to mess up. https://laurenslatest.com/30-minute-bang-bang-chicken-copycat-recipe/
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