Bacon

Tart cherries, bacon, ricotta, and pickled jalapeños—these are the pizza toppings we dream about.

Three words: bacon-fat tortillas.

Ground turkey is hardly the stuff of flavor fireworks, but turkey sausage, preseasoned and ready to cook, tends to have great flavor right out of the package.

If you don’t want to make the chicken stock from scratch for this congee recipe, simmering some store-bought broth with a few slices of bacon and ginger for 20 minutes or so will give you a huge head-start on flavor.

Holding the raw oysters in the rice-flour dredge is a genius do-ahead trick, allowing you to shuck and coat the oysters hours ahead of fry time.

They're smoky, salty, and ready to be sprinkled on everything.

Is it necessary to blanch, then shock, the ramp greens? If you want a super-green (not khaki) pesto, it is.

You’ll be thanking yourself (and us?!) the next time that breakfast sandwich craving hits.

Lemon makes the perfect foil for carbonara’s salty richness. You may never go back.

We would eat pretty much anything topped with mashed potatoes.

Don’t sweat rolling this into a perfect omelet; just top the cooked eggs with mushrooms and ricotta, and fold like a taco.

You’ll probably have some of this deliciousy bacony butter leftover from this recipe, in which case you should probably serve it atop a juicy steak. Obvs.

Like a wedge salad, except easy and you can eat. it. with. your. hands.

Think of this recipe as your favorite bacony wedge salad reimagined as an additive party snack.

Oh, and they're whole wheat pancakes, so there's that.

Whip this up with whatever you have in the fridge already

First of all, zoodle is a made-up word for vegetables that have been cut to look like noodles. Make this recipe vegetarian by substituting 8 oz. fresh shiitake mushrooms in place of the bacon and using a vegetable stock or water.

Quaker brand grits work really well in this recipe, and they are distributed very widely. If you can’t find them, use any other white, medium-grind, long-cooking grits.

This figs recipe is sweet, salty, sticky, and acidic—everything you want in a one-bite appetizer.

Cooking the brussels in two stages for this recipe ensures that the cores will be tender and the outer leaves will still have bite.

For this recipe, the greens taste best if sautéed just before serving, but you can cook the bacon and stems ahead; leave the pan on an unlit burner 'til go time.

The traditional stuffed pork roast is so delicious but so laborious. This chicken has all the same garlicky, herby flavors—not to mention lots of crispy bacon bits—and it’s optimized for a weeknight meal.

As long as the kohlrabi's greens are fresh-looking and not wilted, you can eat them. They can be sauteéd just like spinach.

Cook the collards until they completely surrender themselves to the rich, spicy, lip-smacking braising liquid. This recipe is from Buxton Hall, one of the Hot 10, America's Best New Restaurants 2016.