What's your favourite comfort food recipe?

These long winter nights make me want to curl up with a big bowl of pasta and a good book.  It got me thinking about comfort food. What's your favourite comfort food recipe?

When I was a kid it was my mum's broccoli quiche. That's what I always requested for birthday or special dinners. Sometimes we'd have broccoli scrambled eggs as a quick, easy substitute. Our scrambled eggs were more like a frittata maybe - scrambled minimally in the pan so it cooked into something you could take slices of.

As a teenager and into my twenties it was brown rice with grated cheddar.

For many years after becoming vegan it was popcorn with a bit of olive oil and nutritional yeast.

Now, for quite a few years I've been back to broccoli. I chop broccoli into half inch or so pieces and fry a couple minutes, just enough to get the cooking started. Then I pour a chickpea flour batter over and fry like a pancake. You end up with a thick savoury pancake, barely holding together due to all the broccoli. I could, and often do, eat this every day.

I would have to say Cheesecake! (Well nobody ever said anything about being healthy)!

I really do like Cheesecake, but generally we make it as a dessert for a meal. Bacon Wrapped Pinwheel Salmon, Italian Bread dipped in Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Salad with Cottage Cheese as a topping, and Grilled Smashed Red Potatoes.

Bread dipped in olive oil was a popular weekend family lunch at my house when I was a teenager. We added balsamic vinegar to the oil and often had a head of roasted garlic, too.

I suppose my comfort foods are rather "healthy" sounding aren't they :D Here's some balance. My first roommate and I would often get eggrolls (the kind you can't find anymore around here, big, battered and deep fried, full of ground beef, bean sprouts, cabbage) from a local Chinese place now long gone, and huge slices of homemade pie from a hotel that no longer makes it. I'd usually get lemon meringue. That would be our dinner with a movie.

My really only "comfort" food is Chicken Fried Steak and as an adopted Texan, we are very specific about what Chicken Fried Steak is and how it is served.  It is a beef steak dipped in egg then in flour seasoned with salt and pepper and then pan fried.  The cream gravy is made from the pan drippings.  When served, the steak is covered in the cream gravy and served with mashed potatoes.


According to the Texas State Historical Association:     https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/lgc01

 The origin of chicken-fried steak—also known as country-fried steak or pan-fried steak—is debatable. ...

Other food historians have stated that recipes for batter-fried steaks appeared in Southern cookbooks as far back as the early 1800s.

Another theory claims that Jimmy Don Perkins, a short-order cook in a cafe in Lamesa, Texas, invented the dish by accident in 1911.  According to the legend, Jimmy Don mistook two separate orders, one for chicken and one for fried steak, for one strange request and chicken-fried steak was born. In Texas, Pig Stand restaurants (the first opened in Dallas in 1921) took credit for the creation of the chicken-fried steak sandwich.

This has bothered me for a while now. So where's the chicken in the chicken-fried steak?

I suppose I could get down with a battered, pan-fried steak, but it would have to be blue rare.

Steak is a comfort food of mine. An inch-and-a-half thick, reverse-seared on my cast-iron frying pan, salt and pepper to taste... perfection.

I also love mutton, and made myself a killer lamb korma the other weekend out of a reduced package of frozen stewing lamb, some tomatoes, and spices I had in the pantry. I didn't think anything could compete with steak, but I was wrong.

Lastly, generally speaking, indian cuisine. I love to whip up a giant lentil dahl that lasts me for a week of lunches. I look forward to those lunches the whole week. My favourite go-to takeout is lamb korma from a place up the street from us that easily yields two meals. And one of my favourite home-made dishes I make is saag paneer, a spinach dish with tomato and home-made fresh cheese.

So many choices, how could I have a favourite?

-CK

Yum...I'm getting hungry!

Here is a dish I first made a few years ago, and for lack of a better name, I call it "Quick Chili". Very easy to make and a real crowd-pleaser.

Ingredients:
1 LB Ground Beef
2-3 Sweet Italian Sausage links
1 jar Black Bean Salsa or Black Bean & Corn Salsa (pick the heat level you like)
1 jar Chunky Garden Salsa (pick the heat level you like)
1 small can Tomato Sauce
3-4 large Garlic Cloves
Olive Oil
Chili Powder (optional)
Salt/Pepper

Directions:
1. In a black iron skillet, chop up and brown the ground beef and sausage. Remove sausage from casings first.
2. While ground beef/sausage is cooking, dice up garlic cloves and saute to a light brown in in a bit of olive oil.
3. Add tomato sauce to browned garlic and simmer.
4. Drain ground beef/sausage.
5. Add jar of black bean salsa, 1/2 jar of chunky garden salsa, and 1/2 cup of tomato sauce.
6. Add 1/2 cup (more or less) of tomato sauce.
7. Add salt/pepper/chili powder (optional) to taste
8. Simmer until excess moisture evaporates.

Serve over rice or in Taco Shells with Taco fixings. Makes a good event snack on Tostito scoops.

I have this recipe listed in the recipe section of our website: https://www.moonshadowsfarm.com/recipe-corner/quick-chili/

Unfortunately, for me comfort food is all about the carbs, mashed potatoes, spaghetti, potatoes au gratin. But I love soups also, broccoli cheddar, loaded potato, matzo ball soup.

This season, peanut butter on heavy rye bread (pumpernickel) with our own chokeberry / lemon jam. A little bit of every kind of taste.

Like Raven, a bowl of pasta for me. Thin spaghetti, with just butter, salt, pepper, Parmesan and red pepper flakes. Then a nice long nap with a book propped on my chest to pretend I am reading, and call me comforted. Yeah, way carby, but so good...

When we go back to the UK to see children and grandchildren,  my first stop is Tangs Chinese Restaurant, Above Bar, Southampton, where we pig out on their gaaaawgus buffet. Over the next couple of days we visit Basmati Indian Restaurant, Bedford Place, for a super good curry with peshwari naan, and Mike's Fish and Chip shop, Charlotte St for haddock in batter, pineapple in batter and pea fritters. Then we visit the children and I feel comforted out for another 6 months or so. Salivatjng over the keyboard as I type. Roll on 13th March........

If I hadn't already (and recently) posted my regional borscht recipe, I'd have shared it in this thread.  Served hot, it really is comfort food.  Especially so when served, as it has been traditionally I understand, with a thick piece of buttered bread.

https://permies.com/t/99968/kitchen/fine-northern-soup#824645

Try my grandma's chicken & dumplings

There's chicken in that recipe. Definitely one of my comfort foods. Having it tonight a matter of fact.

Make no mistake about it though. Chicken fried steak smothered in cream gravy is very high on my list of comfort foods. Drooling all over the keyboard just thinking about it. Yum.

My go to has been mac and cheese for 28 years. My mom always made me instant and cut up hotdogs into it. Now that I know I have a lactose allergy, I make it very differently, but I think it is very much improved.

First I boil the macaroni. While that is going, I fry bacon and render it. The bacon is taken out to drain. The grease has flour added, then goat milk to make bechemel sauce. To turn bechemel into mornay sauce, I melt in as much manchego cheese as it will accept. Then the pasta is stirred in. The bacon (crumbled) and some fresh minced parsley go on top.

Optional toppings include: pork sausage, chopped sundried tomates, fried chorizo, spinach, pesto, roasted garlic, etc...

Shepards pie followed by apple crumble and custard for desert.

It was corned beef when I was a kid. Always been a big fan of savory things. Been vegetarian for over a decade now and my favorite go-to recipe for comfort food is mujadara (spelled differently depending who you talk to.) It's a relatively inexpensive meal but filling and so gloriously savory! I highly recommend the version from the food network- that recipe has a wide tolerance for substitutions and that's what I rate my favorite recipes by as I usually just make do with whatever is on hand.

Not many Polish or Ukrainian responses but my comfort food is homemade Pierogi.Hey where are all you Pittsburgh and Milwaukee people?

Abbey Battle wrote:Shepards pie followed by apple crumble and custard for desert.

3 courses of pie then? (*⌒∇⌒*)

Stacy Witscher wrote:Unfortunately, for me comfort food is all about the carbs, mashed potatoes, spaghetti, potatoes au gratin. But I love soups also, broccoli cheddar, loaded potato, matzo ball soup.

Yes, as I thought about my favorite comfort foods, I kept coming back to fresh hot homemade bread with butter and honey or apple butter or jam. Dad baked bread every week when we were growing up. So fresh homemade bread brings back childhood memories. I carry on the tradition of baking bread. Nowadays for me it is sourdough.

With time to savor memories my favorite Mom's comfort food she made was Barley,Mushroom and Flanken Soup.Mom is gone several years now but oh how that soup echoes in the cavernous cold winter! She used fresh vegetables cut-ins but the basic mix was a packaged tube of dried mushrooms and the beef .At 68 yrs. old I'd like to tell you millennials still at home, cherish every moment! I never had it so good! I'm married and I am not a chauvinist and still boy was it good when Mom fed you and cleaned every nook and cranny! Appreciate the great labor of Love that Mom's do!!!

Besan Chilla is one of my favorite recipes. It is prepared in only 20 mins. Besan ka cheela made of gram flour is usually eaten in combination with curd is an instant, nutritious, low calorie, protein rich recipe ideal for breakfast and snack time. Read here How to Make Besan Ka Chilla Recipes

Cracked millet pollenta with a white peanut butter sauce. Sauce includes:

White peanut butter
Crushed raw peanuts
Chicken broth
Salt
White Roselle leaves or callices
Fresh moringa leaves
Onion
Garlic

Stuart Sparber wrote:With time to savor memories my favorite Mom's comfort food she made was Barley,Mushroom and Flanken Soup.Mom is gone several years now but oh how that soup echoes in the cavernous cold winter! She used fresh vegetables cut-ins but the basic mix was a packaged tube of dried mushrooms and the beef .At 68 yrs. old I'd like to tell you millennials still at home, cherish every moment! I never had it so good! I'm married and I am not a chauvinist and still boy was it good when Mom fed you and cleaned every nook and cranny! Appreciate the great labor of Love that Mom's do!!!

Millenials are 25-39. If they still live at home they have issues. You are probably thinking of generation Z, the mfs that eat tide pods.

My favorite comfort food recipe is some good ole oatmeal!

I prefer to make my oatmeal very sticky. I would use roughly one and a half times more liquid than the oats, maybe a little less. I prefer using whole milk in my oatmeal, but other liquids work well, too. Then, I heat until the oats  thicken up enough to my liking.

And now this is where it gets really tasty! While it is still warm, I get out my bowl for eating, and then I mix in my toppings. I add 1-2 tablespoons of good butter, then 2-4 tablespoons of nut butter (almond butter, sunflower butter, pecan butter, etc), maybe a little more, add some coconut flakes, add some nuts on top (I like almonds, pecans, walnuts, and whatever else is available), add whatever fresh fruit is around, and then a little of whatever herbs or spices are around (green onion, cilantro, etc). It makes for a wonderful mix of savory, sweet, crunchy, soft, gooey, and hearty! I love making oatmeal up like this!