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December 12, 2025 
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The Best of the Week in Cooking
What we — our readers and staffers — are clicking, cooking and can’t stop thinking about.
If you make one thing this weekend
Here is a direct quote from Emily Weinstein, our editor in chief: “Latkes can, in fact, be dinner, especially with smoked salmon and sour cream.” Not that I need encouragement to make Melissa Clark’s crispy-edged, soft-centered classic potato latkes, but I appreciate that, should I find myself leaning over my stove this weekend and scarfing down latke after latke when they’ve barely had time to cool, my boss will be somewhere nodding in approval.
Want to try Carolina Gelen’s new pickle latkes, or Sawako Okochi and Aaron Israel’s okonomi-latkes? You’ll find those in our collection of our 12 best latke recipes, and you can find Carolina’s latke-making tips here.
Most-clicked recipes
Melissa Clark’s roasted honey nut squash and chickpeas with hot honey was, fittingly, a hot one this week. And it’s easy to understand why: With the squash and chickpeas providing not-too-heavy heft and the hot honey adding its characteristic spicy sweetness, it’s the sort of dish that feels simultaneously comforting and energizing.
More popular recipes from this week: Hetty Lui McKinnon’s hoisin garlic noodles, Melissa’s Parmesan cabbage soup and Molly O’Neill’s old-fashioned beef stew.
New and noteworthy
We’ve hit the part of winter when I need my breakfast to be hot, creamy, soothing and sustaining — basically, I need it to be Yewande Komolafe’s isidudu (creamy corn porridge). As Yewande writes, it’s a classic across Xhosa and Zulu households in South Africa and its diaspora, and the cornmeal base will feel familiar to cooks with a daily morning routine of grits, cream of wheat or oatmeal. I love her serving suggestion of adding chopped dried fruit for extra sweetness and chew; a spoonful of nut butter stirred in adds protein and extra creaminess.
You said it
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| Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Susan Spungen. |
View this recipe: Genevieve Ko’s cranberry lemon bars
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