Everyone, regardless of their culture or homeland, has their own favorite recipe to make when they need cheering up or being reminded of home. While the list of meals below covers all kinds of dishes, each and every one of them is guaranteed to make you feel warm, happy and full. Give our list a look, either to see where your particular dish ranks or to check if we missed your particular comfort food.
- Goulash. This rich and meaty dish is bursting with protein, starch and all manner of seasonings and spices. The earliest versions of this dish eschewed the use of tomatoes; any goulash recipe that calls for tomatoes is no younger than the first half of the 20th Century!
- Spaghetti and Meatballs. Considering how simple yet satisfying this dish can be, it makes sense as a comfort food. Other than pizza,”pasketti” is usually the first exposure Americans get to Italian food. Personally, we like it best when its powdered with Parmesan cheese and then blended up until all that white powder turns orange.
- Beef Stew. A classic staple of American kitchens for decades, every serving of this satiating stew is loaded with meat and potatoes, as well as carrots and all manner of fragrant seasonings.
- Chicken and Dumplings. This delicious Southern concoction takes cuts of chicken and wads of dough and drowns them in a tantalizingly delicious cream sauce.
- Meatloaf. Nothing satisfies like a slice or two of meatloaf; this dish is a lot like a savory, meaty version of a pound cake. You take cheap cuts of meat, add in pieces of bread and egg, maybe some onion and bake in the oven until you smell something delicious in the kitchen.
- Macaroni and Cheese While not every cheese is useful for the same task, macaroni always benefits from the addition of ooey gooey cheesy deliciousness. If you really want to go all-out, consider making a simple cheese sauce to drizzle over each serving. Another idea is to bake your macaroni and cheese, treating it like a casserole topped with Japanese panko breadcrumbs.
- Chicken and Tortilla Soup Recipe. If you squint your eyes just right, you can see this as a twist on chicken and dumplings. You take some chicken, add shredded tortillas and use tomato as a base for the sauce. But wait, do not forgot to add jalapeños, black beans and any other Tex Mex staples to the pot.
- Lasagna. What’s not to love about a savory baked dish consisting of alternating layers of pasta, cheese and seasoned meat and marinara?
- Fried Rice. One of the best things you can do with leftover cooked rice is to let it sit an hour or two, then fry it up while tossing in whatever you please, including meat, egg, vegetables or even ketchup!
- Grilled Cheese Sandwiches. You take bread, butter (so the bread is flavored as it cooks), melty cheeses and apply heat. Enjoy!
- Baked Ziti. As can be seen in several other entries, baking tends to do wonders for a dish’s flavor profile. Basically take everything you might put into a lasagna and forgo the layering process and you’ve got the gist of a baked ziti.
- Chicken Pot Pie. Another dish that invites adding whatever you like. A chicken pot pie is all of your favorite hearty ingredients in a piping hot serving.
- Au Gratin Potatoes. Potatoes are already a great baseline for comfort food; adding a cheesy browned crust to the top is only going to take them over the top!
- Pancakes. Pancakes have two major benefits over most comfort foods; you can quickly prepare them in large numbers and you can customize them in a number of ways, adding different ingredients into the batter.
- Pozole. This distinctly Mexican concoction calls for hominy (which is how it gets its name), meat (often pork), and then onions, garlic, radish, salsa, and shredded cabbage. As a staple dish of celebrations like birthdays and New Year’s Day, this definitely qualifies as comfort food.
- Fried Chicken. Unless you are a vegetarian or a vegan, everyone loves fried chicken. While there are hundreds of tweaks to the recipe, all you need to do is get some cuts of chicken, get a bowl filled with flour, herbs and spices; a second bowl to serve as an egg or buttermilk station and then a vessel to fry that chicken up right. Protip: while hot fried chicken is delicious, the refrigerated stuff tastes even better.
- Chicken Noodle Soup. Any kid who ever came down with any sort of illness has likely been served this dish at some point in her life. While people love the noodles and the chicken is a nice hit for protein, all of the nutritional benefits responsible for a fast recovery can be found in the nutrient-rich broth.
- Roast Chicken. If you want to enjoy well-prepared chicken without resorting to frying it in oil, roasting your bird is the next best approach. One perk to roast chicken over fried chicken is the option of roasting an entire bird; frying an entire chicken is an ill-advised idea.
- Brunswick Stew. Much like with chicken and dumplings, this is another Southern staple that mixes some of the ingredients of beef stew while having hundreds of permutations based on what people had handy to cook with; several versions of which may call for game meat like squirrel or rabbit.
- Mulligatawny Soup. This Indian specialty is flooded with an array of flavors which all complement each other while also providing a nice bit of a kick in case your nose is stopped up.
