Counting down the top foods of 2020

We have made dozens of new recipes and made several favorites on repeat in our house this year. While finding delicious new meals is exciting, sometimes nothing beats the comfort of tried-and-true items when inspiration and energy runs down. I’ve been going through my cookbooks to flag favorite recipes on my EYB bookshelf so I can easily find them but I hadn’t thought about making a list of the top foods for the year – at least not until I saw Australian Gourmet Traveller’s list of their 25 most popular recipes of 2020.

Other outlets also published their top recipes of 2020: The Washington Post did a top 10 (along with a top 10 of baking), Food & Wine also went with a top 10 list, while NYT Cooking doubled that with their top 20 recipes of the year, and Epicurious besting all of them with their top 57 recipes (they did not explain why they went with 57 instead of a round number like 60).

It will come as no surprise that all of the lists were heavy on comfort food, featuring tried-and-true favorites like beef bourguignon, chocolate chip cookies, and macaroni and cheese. People moved beyond the basics, however, with items like Peruvian-style roast chicken, Hong Kong milk tea tiramisu, and Crispy tofu with cashews and blistered snap peas. I do not keep track of what I make to the level required to do an actual ranking, but a few items made several encore appearances on our table, including a clean-out-the-vegetable-drawer soup,  Falafel with sumac onion, and the Tahini and halva brownies from Sweet by Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh. What have you had on repeat this year?

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5 Comments

  • Lsblackburn1  on  December 22, 2020

    Thanks to working from home since March, this has been my year of “big meats.” Needs 4-5 hours in the oven? No problem – not going out! I just repeated Alison Roman’s pork shoulder and beans and have made Homesick Texan’s brisket a couple of times, too.

  • LeilaD  on  December 22, 2020

    Still working in a bank, so I’m still throwing together meals when I get home from work. Chicken Cortez, Broiled salmon, Chili-garlic prawns, and various crockpot goodies (chili, stroganoff, Swiss steak) have all been repeats this year.

  • matag  on  December 22, 2020

    Making pasta …lots of pasta

  • goodfruit  on  December 23, 2020

    I repeated several Skillet Dinners from Closet Cooking. Cheesy Beef Burrito Skillet. Lemon Chicken Skillet and Asiago Chicken. All quick, easy and with one skillet to clean up when done.

  • GenieB  on  December 24, 2020

    About the 57 recipes from Epicurioys:
    Heinz 57
    Heinz 57 is a synecdoche of the historical advertising slogan “57 Varieties” by the H. J. Heinz Company located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It has come to mean anything that is made from many parts or origins. It was developed from the marketing campaign that told consumers about the numerous pickle products available from the Heinz company. From Wikipedia

    We used to say that mixed breed dogs were Heinz dogs. You have to be old to remember this….

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