17 Recipes Nearly As Comforting As FaceTiming Your Best Friend
There's no one definition of "comfort food" apart from the obvious one: It's food that makes you feel good. It offers a moment—however brief!—of relief, like the first ten seconds of lying in bed, when your toes relax, or when you've been playing phone-tag with your friend and she finally picks up the phone and you hear her voice and sigh!
All of us have a dish or two—maybe it's a steaming bowl of congee, a neat little Spam musubi, or a big square of jiggly noodle kugel—that produces that effect. Or maybe you'll see a recipe on this list that you've never tried, give it a go, and find it gives you the same warm-fuzzies. These come together easily and, most often, quickly, leaving you plenty of time to make a meal for yourself and maybe a batch of focaccia or a couple quarts of chicken noodle soup for a neighbor or a friend, too. It'll be almost as good as giving them a hug.
Photo by Emma Fishman, Food Styling by Yekaterina Boytsova1/17Broccoli Cheddar Soup With Cheesy Croutons
Photo by Alex Lau, Food Styling by Yekaterina Boytsova3/17Vietnamese Canh
Loaded with vegetables and a little protein, the light, brothy soups signal homey comfort. Andrea Nguyen learned to make them from her mom, who prepared them five nights a week, and she'll walk you through putting together your own version.
Photo by Laura Murray, Food Styling by Susan Spungen6/17Sour Cream and Onion Biscuits
If you've ever had trouble making biscuits in the past, consider this recipe your saving grace. While many other methods count on pockets of butter and an angel’s touch for pull-apart flakiness, we weren't willing to leave it to chance. Our simple folding technique manually multiplies the number of layers for guaranteed, no-risk success.
9/17Spam Musubi
When Elyse Inamine moved to New York, her mom sent her along with a Spam musubi press so she could live that Spam musubi lifestyle even thousands of miles away from its homeland, Hawaii. Now it’s become her antidote to her cooking blues, an absolute unit of carbs and calories that’s unabashedly salty and fatty and joy-filled. And here’s how it can become yours, too.
Photo by Alex Lau, Food Styling by Yekaterina Boytsova10/17Greens Gratin With All the Cheese
Here's a fun party trick: Ask your friends to guess how many pounds of greens went into this supremely cheesy gratin. Three huge bunches of kale (and/or chard) get drowned in garlic- and rosemary-infused cream, then blanketed in cheddar cheese and panko and sent into a hot oven, where they sizzle and shrink.
Photo by Alex Lau, Food Styling by Sue Li11/17Pork and Cabbage Hot Pot
Easier to make than it looks, this Japanese nabe, or hot pot, consists of concentric circles of fat-rimmed pork belly and frilly Napa cabbage, organized into some kind of savory Edible Arrangement and simmered in dashi until slack and succulent. Here's how to do it.
Photo by Emma Fishman, Food Styling by Pearl Jones12/17Chinese Steamed Eggs
Somewhere in between Japanese chawanmushi and diner-style scrambled eggs lies one of the most delectable and practical egg dishes of all time: steamed eggs. As opposed to being an established dish of any specificity, steaming eggs is a homestyle Chinese method for cooking eggs. Learn to make them here.
Photo by Chelsie Craig, Food Styling by Rhoda Boone16/17Chicken and Rice Soup with Garlicky Chile Oil
