Making a cooking resolution? These recipes will get you started

If abiding by resolutions were as easy as setting them, perfection would be attainable and the self-improvement section of the bookstore would be cobweb city. Still, self-reflection can be a rewarding exercise at the beginning of a new year. What better place to start than in the kitchen, where you have to spend at least a little bit of time each day?

Consider a gentler approach to resolution-making: Try to become just a little bit better at something, rather than change your habits wholesale. Perhaps you’d like to incorporate Meatless Mondays into your weekly routine, or maybe you’re resolving to bake the birthday cakes for your loved ones this year. Maybe, just maybe, this is the year you finally learn how to cook.

No matter what your goals, we have recipes to bring you closer to them. Give these a try in 2024, and, by this time next year, we’re certain you’ll be impressed by how far your cooking has come.

FOR THE NEW VEGETARIAN

Red Lentil Soup by Melissa Clark

Yield: 4 servings

Total time: 45 minutes

This is a lentil soup that defies expectations of what lentil soup can be. Based on a Turkish lentil soup, mercimek corbasi, it is light, spicy and a bold red colour (no murky brown here): a revelatory dish that takes less than an hour to make. The cooking is painless. Sauté onion and garlic in oil, then stir in tomato paste, cumin and chile powder and cook a few minutes more to intensify flavour. Add broth, water, red lentils (which cook faster than their green or black counterparts) and diced carrot, and simmer for 30 minutes. Purée half the mixture and return it to the pot for a soup that strikes the balance between chunky and pleasingly smooth. A hit of lemon juice adds an up note that offsets the deep cumin and chile flavours.

INGREDIENTS

3 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for drizzling

1 large onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal), plus more to taste

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Pinch of chili powder or ground cayenne, plus more to taste

1 quart chicken or vegetable broth

1 cup red lentils

1 large carrot, peeled and diced

Juice of 1/2 lemon, more to taste

3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

PREPARATION

1. In a large pot, heat 3 tablespoons oil over high until hot and shimmering. Add onion and garlic, and sauté until golden, about 4 minutes.

2. Stir in tomato paste, cumin, salt, black pepper and chili powder, and sauté for 2 minutes longer.

3. Add broth, 2 cups water, lentils and carrot. Bring to a simmer, then partly cover pot and turn heat to medium-low. Simmer until lentils are soft, about 30 minutes. Taste and add salt if necessary.

4. Using an immersion or regular blender or a food processor, purée half the soup, then add it back to pot. The soup should be somewhat chunky.

5. Reheat soup if necessary, then stir in lemon juice and cilantro. Serve soup drizzled with good olive oil and dusted lightly with chili powder, if desired.

FOR THE BEGINNER COOK

Gyeran Bap (Egg Rice) by Eric Kim

Yield: 1 serving

Total time: 10 minutes

Gyeran bap is a lifesaving Korean pantry meal of fried eggs stirred into steamed white rice. In this version, the eggs fry and puff up slightly in a shallow bath of browned butter. Soy sauce, which reduces in the pan, seasons the rice, as does a final smattering of salty gim, or roasted seaweed. A dribble of sesame oil lends comforting nuttiness, and runny yolks act as a makeshift sauce for the rice, slicking each grain with eggy gold. (You can cook the eggs to your preferred doneness, of course.) This dinner-for-one can be scaled up to serve more: Just double, triple or quadruple all of the ingredient amounts, using a larger skillet or repeating the steps in a small one.

INGREDIENTS

1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

1 cup steamed white rice, preferably short- or medium-grain

1 (5-gram) packet roasted, salted seaweed, such as gim (optional)

PREPARATION

1. Melt the butter in a small nonstick skillet over medium heat. Continue cooking, stirring occasionally with a rubber spatula, until the melted butter starts to darken in colour from yellow to light brown, 1 to 1 1/2 minutes.

2. Crack in the eggs and drizzle the soy sauce and sesame oil on top, cooking until the whites puff up slightly around the edges of the pan and the translucent parts around the yolks start to turn opaque, 2 to 2 1/2 minutes. Watch that the soy sauce doesn’t burn, removing the pan from the heat if necessary.

3. Scoop the rice into a medium bowl and top with the fried eggs, including all of the buttery soy sauce drippings from the pan. Crush the seaweed directly over the eggs, piling it high. This will seem like a lot of seaweed, but it will wilt as you mix everything together with a spoon, which you should do to disperse the ingredients before eating.

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