The Rice Bowl You Need for Dinner

If you eat meat, or have ever eaten meat, then I probably don’t need to mount an argument for bacon, a food so powerfully appealing that science has sought to explain the reasons why. Bacon is transformative in cooking, elevating other ingredients that share the bun, pan or plate. That, of course, includes eggs, which don’t need bacon’s help to be delicious, but become even more so in a New York-style breakfast sandwich or a bowl of spaghetti carbonara.

Eric Kim brings that pairing to his easy recipe for bacon and egg don, a nontraditional but highly delicious addition to the world of donburi, the Japanese rice bowls whose numbers include katsudon and oyakodon.

Scroll down for that recipe, along with four other dinners for the week. What are you cooking? What do you wish you were cooking? Tell me at [email protected]. You may be featured in a future newsletter (like Richard, one of our readers, below)!

1. Bacon and Egg Don

Eric’s eggy new recipe is made even more delicious with a tablespoon of mirin, the Japanese rice wine that is always in my kitchen and should also be in yours, if it isn’t already.

View this recipe.

3. Cilantro-Lime Salmon and Rice

Yossy Arefi’s latest is a one-pot wonder, a light and fresh meal with few ingredients and hardly any cleanup. This is the breezy, lime-spritzed recipe you need for dinner tonight.

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4. Chickpea Stew With Orzo and Mustard Greens

This New York Times Cooking classic from Melissa Clark is one of the best ways I know of to turn a can of chickpeas into dinner. I like to use baby kale instead of mustard greens.

5. Creamy Turmeric Pasta

A reader named Richard wrote in to endorse this stellar recipe from Sue Li, and I’m reprinting his words verbatim: “You can make it in the time it takes the water to boil and the pasta to cook. Actually you’ll have time left over. Nine ingredients may sound like a lot, but the only real work is slicing a shallot and two garlic cloves and grating the Parmesan. You lift the pasta right out of the pot and drop it into the sauce. No colander required. The salted water blends right in. Everyone in the family loves it including the four grandchildren. The only other food that everyone in the family loves is ice cream.”

View this recipe.

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