The Best Recipes Eater Staff Made in 2024

From ambitious bakes to slow-cooked short ribs, these are the best recipes Eater staff turned to this year

It’s hard to determine what makes a recipe the best recipe, something reliable and memorable that’ll be turned to for years to come. There’s a lot to consider, but most importantly, a recipe should be easy to follow and yield spectacular results — even if the recipe itself is not easy to attempt. Whatever your definition may be, these are the ones that fit ours in 2024.

Oolong Milk Tea and Almond Rice Crispy Treats

Frankie Gaw, First Generation

For a long time, I’ve been completely devoted to just one Rice Krispies Treat recipe: Smitten Kitchen’s salted brown butter crispy treats. This slightly grown-up take on the classic did it all: It was easy to make, impressive, and crowd-pleasing. But for a recent Eater event, I needed to jazz up my baked goods offering, so I went looking for something a bit more creative. Frankie Gaw’s milk tea rice crispy treats fit the bill perfectly, with an elevated flavor profile from oolong tea and the addition of roasted almonds. Gaw says the miso is optional, but I think it adds a much-needed savory boost, kind of like a cheese foam topping. And I particularly loved Gaw’s tips about oiling the bowl and pot, and pouring the melted butter and marshmallows into the mixing bowl as opposed to the other way around, which makes pouring the mixture out much easier. The yield here is 16, but I cut them much smaller and managed to get 48 bite-sized pieces instead, more than enough to feed a crowd. — Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief

Almond Frangipane Blondies

Maddie Omeltchenko, Loaves & Such

Perhaps this is recency bias (I whipped up a batch of these blondies for Thanksgiving when I didn’t feel like dealing with pie crust), but this recipe was by far the best thing I baked all year, surpassing many loaves of breads, cookies, and trays of butter mochi. The problem I often find with blondies is texture; I’m looking for a deliciously moist and dense, fudge-like consistency, not something airy and cakey. These blondies deliver on all that and more: the slivered almonds on top add ample nuttiness and crunch while almond flour and almond extract provide that robust almond flavor that fans of the nut will appreciate. Baking this is like enjoying the best parts of an almond croissant without worrying about laminated dough, which is a win in and of itself. — Kat Thompson, Eater at Home associate editor

Easy Apple Galette

Claire Saffitz, What’s for Dessert?

I am someone who gets pleasure out of baking a good pie, even if my usual process includes a fair amount of anxiety and self-doubt. But even I can recognize the ease that comes with opting for a galette instead. And when I happened upon Claire Saffitz’s galette recipe in What’s for Dessert? it completely eliminated any desire I had to make a full-on pie. I made Saffitz’s version with stone fruit first, but fall became all about her apple galette, an extremely simple recipe with huge payoff. The most difficult thing is procuring and scraping out the vanilla beans. Upon first bite it reminded me of eating a chausson aux pommes on a bench in Paris. Since then, it’s become the kind of recipe I force occasions to make. Should we have people over, so I can make the galette? The answer, always, is yes. — Monica Burton, deputy editor

Kimchi-Braised Short Rib Pappardelle

Eric Kim, Koreaworld and Korean American

When I look for a recipe, I usually want something that will take just a few minutes or all day. While flipping through Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard’s cookbook Koreaworld, the kimchi-braised short rib pappardelle from Eric Kim immediately caught my eye. The recipe can also be found in Kim’s debut cookbook, Korean American. The long-braised short ribs are fork-tender after three hours in the pot, while the kimchi reduces to a jammy consistency, becoming one with the gochugaru, garlic, soy sauce, and sesame oil. Sticking to the recipe’s recommendation for a wide pasta like pappardelle is essential — a smaller noodle will not hold up to the sauce’s richness, nor add the chewy contrast in texture that a sturdier one will. Finish the dish with a generous grating of Parmesan. Like many braised dishes, this one’s sauce will be just as good, if not even better, the next day once the flavors have more time to mingle. — Rebecca Roland, associate editor of Eater LA

Hearty Vegan Multi-Mushroom Soup

Adeena Sussman, Shabbat

I’ve been making a lot of soup for the last couple months, and it’s rare that I use a recipe — generally, I follow the formula of dumping aromatics, vegetables, and coconut milk into a pot, then simmer, season, and puree it. A notable exception to this rule is the mushroom soup recipe in Adeena Sussman’s most recent cookbook, Shabbat. This is a soup tailor-made for mushroom fiends like me: It calls for approximately three pounds of mixed mushrooms (I use cremini and oyster), along with an optional mushroom broth, plus an onion, some garlic, fresh thyme, and a bit of miso paste and soy sauce. The result is easily the most mushroomy mushroom soup I’ve ever eaten, an extended umami embrace. The soup is also vegan, which has the effect of letting the mushroom flavor shine instead of muting it with dairy. It’s even better when eaten with a hunk of crusty bread, and will definitely be sustaining me through both the literal and metaphorical chill. — Rebecca Flint Marx, Eater at Home editor

Brazilian Chicken Stroganoff

Ham El-Waylly, NYT Cooking

When I first tried it, this Brazilian chicken stroganoff recipe really hit a sweet spot for me. It was just challenging enough that a novice-level cook like myself felt like they could learn a few things from it, but easy enough that I felt confident taking it on. Its ingredients list — browned chicken, mushrooms, onions, garlic, butter, Worcestershire, ketchup, heavy cream, mustard, and potato sticks — reads almost as a joke, because it’s just naming delicious things. To give credit where credit is due, Ham had a huge part in selling me on this recipe: his use of chicken stroganoff as comfort food and his professed dedication to perfecting it for others was contagious. I’ve since found that the recipe works for date night, meal prep, and everything in between — it’s now part of my repertoire as a comfort food I associate with my first Brooklyn apartment. — Sergio Scardigno, social video producer

Heirloom Tomato Sorbet

Gabriella Lewis, Turntables

I could not get enough of tomato season this year. One day, in a farmers market shopping-induced frenzy, I managed to get my hands on some beautiful and fragrant heirlooms — more than I knew what to do with. In an effort to immortalize them for as long as possible, I turned them into a tart and tangy sorbet. At first, I was a bit skeptical that I might just find myself with gazpacho, or worse, frozen ketchup. But what I ended up with was not only incredibly easy to make but also bright, floral, and extremely refreshing. Using my KitchenAid stand mixer and ice cream-maker base to get the sorbet to the perfect consistency and topping it with olive oil and Malden salt made for an astonishingly refreshing treat. — Gabriella Lewis, supervising producer