31 Recipes to Make in January

Roasting mushrooms concentrates their flavor, while dry vermouth offers an aromatic kick to this otherwise classic risotto.

This vegan soup from Desmond Tan's Burma Superstar in San Francisco features a broth that's seasoned with black mustard seeds, cumin, and turmeric. Fresh cabbage, herbs, and chiles top each ample bowl, contrasting tender lentils and potatoes with a pleasing crunch.

This earthy French classic, with smoked sausages, greens lentils, and pungent mustard vinaigrette, is custom-tailored for winter weekends in front of the fire. Updated twist: toasted walnuts add great crunch.

Suzanne Goin refers to this salad as "The 4 Ps" and thinks of it as a persimmon salad with an arugula garnish, rather than the other way around.

Taking a cue from Chef Mei Lin of Nightshade in Los Angeles, we're adding spicy pork, creamy egg yolks, and crunchy sesame to classic congee. Low and slow cooking is the key to getting its texture right; adjust the heat as needed to maintain a gentle bubble that results in tender grains.

Unsweetened coconut milk and refined coconut oil add a creamy richness to this vegan Swiss chard side from chef Rocco DiSpirito. Reducing the coconut milk deepens its flavor and lends a velvety texture that truly mimics dairy.

This rich, wintry stew with a tart bite from sour cherries, adapted from Beyond the North Wind by Darra Goldstein, gets its deep flavor from tender veal. Choose pork shoulder for a fattier, slightly juicier dish.

"Ladled over a pile of tagliatelle and topped with more cheese, this nourishing sauce tastes slow-cooked and comforting, especially on a wintry weeknight," Food & Wine's Kelsey Youngman writes.

To make a simple topping for this elegant dessert, add two tablespoons sugar to the leftover egg whites and whip to stiff peaks to make a meringue. Garnishing the tart with mixed citrus segments adds a natural sweetness to balance the rich, tart lemon curd filling. Read Jamila Robinson​​​​​​​'s essay about this recipe, Romancing the Stove.

Briefly heating spices and dried chiles in oil or ghee allows their flavors to bloom, creating a flavorful tadka that serves as the backbone of this dish. It also adds a crispy, spicy finish to the creamy mixture of mung beans, lentils, and pigeon peas.

Spicy red onion sambal is spooned over diamonds of coconut rice in this Sri Lankan dish, served to commemorate new beginnings. While a mortar and pestle is traditionally used to pound the sambal, it also can be gently pulsed together in a food processor.

Puntarelle stays bright and crisp in this salad, while beets bring a tender, earthy sweetness. Puntarelle is a specialty buy—check your local farmers market, or substitute another bitter chicory like Belgian endive.

Todd Richards spices up his family recipe for this Southern favorite (often enjoyed on New Year's Day) with harissa for extra heat. Richards makes the traditional ham hock optional so that vegetarians can enjoy the dish as well, and adds smoked paprika and cumin to deliver a similar savory depth. Turnips become soft and tender after a quick braise, adding body to the dish.

In Senegal at the Keur Moussa monastery, a typical meal includes poulet mafé, a thick peanut sauce with chicken, root vegetables, and cabbage served over rice, fonio, or millet couscous. For chef Pierre Thiam, poulet mafé is the ultimate comfort food. His advice: "Be patient when cooking mafé. Let the stew simmer slowly until the oil rises to the surface."

Red-wine vinegar and Worcestershire sauce effortlessly infuse quick-cooking flank steak with bold flavor. Pile the thinly sliced steak on crusty rolls for sandwiches, or serve with buttery baked potatoes and a salad of crisp lettuces.

On the fence when it comes to gin? Try a sip of this gateway cocktail. Known as sorrel in parts of Africa, roselle—the type of hibiscus used in most hibiscus teas—complements the floral notes of gin, resulting in a refreshing, balanced beverage. Stir leftover hibiscus tea into lemonade for a refreshing nonalcoholic sipper.

Mildly bitter Belgian endive cooked in schmaltz, or rendered chicken fat, becomes sweet and tender, with golden, caramelized edges. Fresh lime juice and crunchy roasted peanuts balance the richness of this simple-to-make side dish.

Chef Todd Richards is known for his personal, globally inspired take on Southern cuisine, and his Collard Greens Ramen is no exception. Riffing on a memorable bowl of yaka-mein he had as a child, Richards' soup begins with a pot of collards and a generous pour of bourbon, which cooks down into an intense potlikker.

A red wine braise, complete with other mulling ingredients like fresh orange and whole spices, makes the oxtails in this stew fall-apart tender and flavorful. The longer the braise, the better, says New York chef JJ Johnson. "I forgot about it in the oven and returned to find it perfectly cooked," he says.

In this baked oatmeal, perfectly tender spiced oats mixed with sweet and tart fruit are topped with crispy coconut and pecans. The recipe calls for raspberries — blackberries, blueberries, or sliced strawberries would work as well. Blooming the spices in the hot brown butter releases their flavors and infuses the entire dish with a nutty warmth.

Kete, buttery, flaky Turkish pastries, come in many variations, some sweet and some savory. This savory version adapted from The Turkish Cookbook (Phaidon) incorporates crushed walnuts and a hint of fresh thyme to make herbaceous, multilayered bread rolls with a satisfying crunch to them. When folding the kete, the most important step is rolling the dough into spirals to create flaky layers. The kete bread rolls are best enjoyed warm from the oven the day they're made, but leftovers are delicious gently toasted in the oven.

These meatballs are tender, savory, and juicy thanks to a rich blend of pork shoulder, belly, and spicy, spreadable 'njuda. Traditionally, meatballs shouldn't be overworked, but treat these more like a sausage filling — thorough mixing helps the fat emulsify properly. Substitute 70/30 ground pork for pork belly and pork shoulder if desired.

During Ottoman times, şerbeti made with saffron was commonplace at communal bathhouses known as hammams; nod to its roots by making this cordial part of a moment of self-care, or enjoy it anytime you need a refreshing drink.

A fragrant blend of dried herbs, spices, and garlic flavors this slow-cooked pork, which gets a touch of balancing sweetness and acidity from fresh orange juice. A surprising ingredient here, sweetened condensed milk, helps the pork caramelize during cooking. Source a well-marbled pork roast for this recipe; the extra fat doubles down on the rich pork flavor. Many cooks in Mexico City add sweetened condensed milk to carnitas, says Pati Jinich, who created this stunningly good recipe.

If you've never made pasta before, pasta expert Meryl Feinstein recommends starting with pici, a thick, hand-rolled spaghetti from Siena that looks like a plump udon noodle. Pici is made with all-purpose flour, water, and olive oil, and it doesn't require any special equipment, making it especially approachable for beginners. Feinstein likes to coat the dough in olive oil before rolling it out because pasta dough dries out quickly. "The more time you take to roll out the pieces, the more the surface will dry out and start to crack. I never like people to feel rushed, and olive oil is a little bit of insurance; it keeps the dough silky and smooth." Pair the handmade pasta with a simple, jammy sauce of sheet pan–roasted canned tomatoes and garlic.

Made with Lisa Ludwinski's Sister Pie All-Butter Pie Dough, the golden, crispy pastry encasing these savory hand pies shatters almost like a croissant. Lightly mashed sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, tangy sour cream, and aged cheddar make up the creamy-cheesy filling.

Cookbook author Hank Shaw likes to use ground venison for his British take on cocktail meatballs. He seasons them with warming spices and herbs and leavens them with ground oats — a Scottish twist that also makes them gluten-free. Because ground venison tends to be quite lean, Shaw includes the succulent fat from thick-cut bacon, which lends a pleasing richness and rounded flavor, and serves the meatballs in his version of the classic Cumberland sauce.

At Lido 84, his restaurant on Lake Garda in Northern Italy, chef Ricardo Camanini oven-dries fresh cakes of yeast for hours, but the store-bought powdered version works just as well. Tossing the spaghettoni with the butter constantly at the end of cooking emulsifies the sauce. You'll want inactive brewer's yeast for this recipe. The version from Twinlab has a delicious, funky, umami flavor.

A combination of dry hard cider and dried seaweed brings a sweet, mild salinity to the stock, making it ideal for precooking the mussels and clams before using it as the base of the chowder.

Meryl Feinstein's Ossola-Style Gnocchi with Sage-Butter Sauce are hearty cold-weather dumplings from the Ossola Valley in northern Piedmont, only a few miles from the Swiss border. In addition to potatoes, these gnocchi include winter squash, chestnut flour, and nutmeg. The chestnut flour provides nuttiness and warmth: "It makes me want to put on a sweater and sit by the fire," Feinstein says.

Mezzelune (which means "half-moons" in Italian) is a crescent-shaped stuffed pasta similar to ravioli. They're a relatively simple shape to try that requires little equipment to make at home. Meryl Feinstein of Pasta Social Club fills hers with rosemary and smoked mozzarella. A little semolina flour will give the pasta dough more structure and bite, but feel free to omit it and use the same weight of "00" flour or all-purpose flour. If you can't find smoked mozzarella, another smoked cheese like gouda will work in a pinch.