The Best Recipes of 2024 🍳 & The Year in Cooking

Should you cook one of these tonight? Probably.

Author

Liz Galvao
December 13, 2024

*Heads up: This newsletter may get clipped in your inbox due to all the food pics. You can read the whole thing on the website HERE or click “View entire message” at the bottom in Gmail.

Hi friends!

How are you?? I’m doing pretty well. I took the Friday this goes out off work, because my husband Ross and I are hosting a little party at our apartment this evening with a very special theme, let’s say, and I need to run errands and make pigs in a blanket. I’ll write more about that next week and let you know how it goes, but for now, I just hope people come! We’ve been planning this for a long time, and it’s the first time we’ll be having most of these people over our new-ish (as of last May) apartment. I went all out on themed decor, I ordered catering, I even made goodie bags! Again, I’ll give you the full update next week, with photos, promise.

(Also, if you are a friend in L.A. and I didn’t invite you, know it’s because the common area in our apartment can only fit so many people, and the theme is very dumb. I still love you! If anything, I have too much respect for you!)

Since we’re going to have people over, I did a bunch of cleaning and organizing over last weekend and finally got rid of the last of the moving boxes in our living room and my office. Yep, it’s been… over six months. I don’t know why it’s like, no matter where we live, we never have enough storage. This apartment is the largest we’ve ever lived in, but it doesn’t have a pantry or linen closet. Our little one-bedroom in East Hollywood where we first lived in L.A. had both, somehow. Of course, we could always buy more furniture for storage, but there is something to be said for being able to stuff a bunch of shit behind a door.

Worth it.

TMI warning: I am in some mild discomfort as I write this (several days in advance) because unfortunately, I currently find myself being a cutie with a UTI (pronounced “yootie” for the sake of rhyming). I’m pretty sure the cause was sitting around in a wet bathing suit when I was in Hawaii, which is like, the most fabulous reason ever to have a UTI. I am not one of those UTI girls who gets them all the time. I feel like I used to know girls in college who would be at the health center every other week with one. Not me! (Why am I acting weirdly proud of that, as though it’s something I can claim, and not a toss-up of anatomy?) (It’s also almost definitely because they were having more sex than I was in college.)

I have to say, though, I’m rather delighted by how my antibiotics look. They are these half black, half white oblong capsules that are the pilliest pills I’ve ever seen. Fun!! When you were a kid, did you ever take a bunch of Mike & Ikes and pretend you were a fully zooted 1950s housewife? Maybe that was just a me thing. Come to think of it, that’s one factor this whole tradwife movement is missing: drugs. I would definitely have more fun making the cheese and bread for a grilled cheese from scratch if I were flying high on Mother’s Little Helpers.

Speaking of cooking (seamless transition!), this week’s newsletter is all about all the delicious things I cooked this year! (And some fails, too.) Shall we get into it?

Like You Know Whatever Presents: The Very Best RECIPES of 2024

I cooked a lot this year! I didn’t start working full-time until the end of August, so I definitely had the time to do it most of this year, although I’ve been pretty consistent about continuing to cook dinner at least twice a week even after I started working. For this newsletter, I went through every single newsletter I sent this year and compiled a list of every recipe I wrote about this year (will share after the “awards”), and came up with a list of my top picks. You can find last year’s list here, and all my best-of content for 2022-2024 here.

Honorable Mentions a/k/a the Biggest Repeat Recipes of the Year: There are a few recipes that I technically cooked and wrote about for the first time in the fall of 2023, but that I made over and over again this year. It didn’t feel fair to exclude them from my best-of list, since they were such weeknight staples for me. They are:

Honey Garlic Pork Chops that I should have sauced more heavily for this photo, honestly

Now, to the real winners! Here are the very best recipes that I made for the first time this year! These were all new to me, not necessarily new to the internet/world. They are ranked according to my very subjective ranking system that weighs multiple factors including deliciousness (most important), eatability, effort-to-result ratio, and the number of times I made them this year. Enjoy!

#5: Panang Curry. I’m proud that I made this from scratch this year, although it was actually much easier than you might think. A pre-made curry paste is doing a lot of work here, which is fine by me. Actually, come to think of it, I should make this again soon. I always want curry in the winter.

#4: The Best Chicken Soup You’ll Ever Eat. I know the title is a bit braggadocious, but I think this actually was the best chicken soup I’ve ever made. As we enter cold and flu season, make sure to bookmark this one. Loaded up with turmeric, ginger, and garlic, this soup is practically guaranteed to make you feel better.

That’s that me Pasta Alla Vodka

#3: Pasta Alla Vodka. This recipe! This fucking recipeeee!! It’s so simple but so good. I made it approximately one million times this year!

#2: Mixed Berry Muffins. I am famously not a baker (jk I’m famously nothing, I will die in obscurity) but I lost count of how many times I made these berry muffins with a crumbly streusel topping this year. You can use any kind of berry you want, including frozen berries, which means these could not be easier. You probably have the ingredients on hand right now. Go make them!

#1: Chicken Meatballs. These are truly some of the tastiest meatballs I’ve ever made, period. They prove that you don’t need red meat to make a great meatball. They also contain a whopping two and a half cups of spinach in them, so they’re “healthy.” As I write this, I literally have leftovers of these in my fridge right now. That’s how often I make them.

Wow, now that I’m looking at that list, I’m realizing that I made a lot of one-pot or one-pan meals this year! That’s funny, because ever since I’ve had a dishwasher, I don’t really worry about that kind of thing. It’s nice, though!

Here is the full list of every recipe I wrote about in 2024, with lots of food pics to feast your eyes upon! The winning recipes are starred. 

WINTER

I really need to make this again soon

SPRING

I love the combo of arugula + steak

These Sweet Potato and Chorizo Enchiladas are a staple in my recipe rotation

SUMMER

Arroz Con Pollo con my favorite Lodge Dutch oven

FALL

Whoops

Biggest Cooking Fail: Burning the shit out of these mustard roasted potatoes. I’m still not sure if that was an execution error, or a recipe one.

Biggest Cooking Triumph: Nailing beef bourguignon on Election Night. At least one thing went right!

Biggest Cooking Surprise: Looking back on my accounting of this year’s recipes, I cooked a lot more different types of cuisine than I expected.

Most Impressive New Technique Learned: I cooked a lot of variations on chicken with rice, and I feel pretty solid about that combo now. Not gonna win me any awards, but I’m happy with it!

Most Used Countertop Appliance (other than microwave): Probably the rice cooker. I get why people don’t feel the need to have a single-use appliance around, but it is super handy.

Least Used Countertop Appliance: Probably my panini press/waffle maker/grill press thingy. I don’t think I used it once. (Note to self: make waffles in 2025.)

Weirdest Ingredient Used: The Milk Bar chocolate chip cookie recipe called for powdered milk, which I could only find in an enormous bag. It remains in my baking drawer, barely touched.

New Dish or Ingredient I Fell in Love With: Sometime in the spring I got blood work done and found out my cholesterol was a little high and decided to cut back on red meat, which is why in the second half of the year, I cooked sooo much chicken, dude. Like, so much.

Best Cookbook: It won last year, too, but honestly, I’m still eating my way through Smitten Kitchen Keepers by Deb Perelman.

Best Recipe Site: This year, I finally ponied up for a subscription to Bon Appetit and Epicurious (it’s a two-for-one situation), and it’s been lovely.

***

That’s it for now, my dears! I’ll be back next week with the final installment of my Best of 2024 series: the Best Of everything else. You won’t want to miss it!

If you have a second, I’d love it if you’d like or comment on this post–just click this link to go to the post page. This post is public, so feel free to share it on social media, or forward it to a friend.

Until next time—keep cookin’.

Love,

Liz

XOXO

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