I cooked 5 of NYT Cooking's top-rated recipes of 2024. One's going into heavy rotation next year.

• I decided to cook five of the top-rated recipes of 2024 on The New York Times' Cooking app.

• Some dishes were a hit — while others left me frankly confused.

• Following the ranking, which is based on a popular vote, allowed me to broaden my food horizons.

As a personal treat this year, as part of Black Friday sales I finally took the plunge on something I've long coveted: a subscription to NYT Cooking.

The recipe juggernaut celebrated 10 years of publishing in September, following a massive expansion in 2021 and the development of a wildly successful app.

As a product, it's bolstered The New York Times' business model. Other publishers have tried to get in on the act, including The Guardian, which launched its own subscription-based food app, Feast, in April.

NYT Cooking says it published around 1,000 recipes in 2024, and it's clear that much of the appeal is on comfort food, un-fussy recipes, and shrewd attention to social media trends.

Last week, it released its annual top 50, which I took as a challenge.

I chose the five recipes with the highest number of ratings and which all had five stars at the time of writing (I couldn't obtain a key ingredient for one, so skipped to the sixth in that instance.)

Some recipes wowed me — while others left me frankly puzzled.

1. Creamy, Spicy Tomato Beans and Greens were incredibly moreish.

Creamy, Spicy Tomato Beans and Greens, published in April, was fourth on the list in terms of ratings, and I was excited to give it a try.

It's been quite the year for the humble bean. Beans and legume-based recipes have been all over my TikTok feed, and I can see why — they're cheap, easy to cook, vegan, and add heft and creaminess.

Combining cannellini beans with sun-dried tomatoes, cream and parmesan in this recipe — similar to the combo that's in the super-viral Marry Me Chicken — it was easy to see where the flavor was going to come from.

The most fun part was turning this, into this.

Into the pan went the onion, crushed pepper, and garlic, and then the beans and sauce.

It was beautiful to watch the sun-dried tomato and puree slowly melding into heavy cream.

What made the dish really work was the panko and arugula.

The beans themselves were hearty and rich — I couldn't finish a modest portion, but despite the description, the dish didn't come out remotely spicy. Perhaps the crushed red pepper I bought was milder than the recipe allows for.

Crusty bread with a drizzle of olive oil was also a must — as were the toasted Parmesan panko crumb and arugula, which added much-needed texture and freshness.

2. Something went terribly wrong with the Sticky Miso Salmon Bowl.

Third on the list was the Sticky Miso Salmon Bowl.

Everything about this dish — butter-laced sushi rice, tender broiled salmon in a sticky glaze of miso, honey, ginger, and grapefruit — called out to me.

But somewhere along the way, I messed up.

The glaze should taste amazing. But it didn't.

The recipe called for two teaspoons of fresh grapefruit zest. But as I tasted the glaze it was off-the-charts bitter.

I restarted with half as much zest and ended up with a marmalade-like substance to coat the salmon, hoping that the broiling process would mellow it out.

It didn't.

I'd cook the dish again, but would be much more careful.

It's clear that the grapefruit — citrusy, aromatic, and a little bitter — is the stand-out flavor twist for this recipe.

But either due to me messing up, or perhaps getting an extra-amped grapefruit, the result tasted harsh and metallic.

The sushi rice was glorious, however. Stirring butter and diced scallions in made it glossy and rich, an almost decadent accompaniment to the avocado.

Done right, this dish would pretty much be my dream meal, but I'll have to be extra careful next time around.

3. The Taverna Salad was a massive hit with my family.

Salad is generally my least favorite method of getting nutrients, so I wasn't too excited about this one, which was second on the list.

But the Taverna Salad is a good proposition — as the author says, it's based around a mashup of fattoush, a Lebanese dish, and Greek salad, making this a sort of Mediterranean super-salad.

Inside the dish are chickpeas, capers, tomatoes, red onion, parsley, scallions, cucumber, bell pepper, and Kalamata olives, along with cheese and croutons, and a garlic and red wine vinaigrette.

Fat and starch balance out the healthy parts.

You can make this dish with store-bought pita chips, but it's worth the effort to fry them fresh in lashings of oil.

And with the toasted halloumi, the residual warmth and fattiness makes the salad super moreish.

I took this one around to my parents' house, and it went down a storm, almost eclipsing the main event of steak.

There's plenty of salty 'meatiness' in the form of the capers, olives, and cheese to balance out the freshness and crunch of the vegetables.

4. One-Pot Chicken and Rice With Caramelized Lemon looked fancy but was super easy.

The One-Pot Chicken and Rice With Caramelized Lemon, which was top of the ranking, was rustic and full of flavor, and combined the richness of chicken fat with unctuous, caramelized lemon.

It's all done in stages but in a single pot.

This recipe works by browning off the chicken thighs and caramelizing the lemon slices separately, before starting the rice and broth in the same pan.

The dish is then topped with the chicken and lemon, and it all goes into the oven.

The result was deeply comforting.

This dish was delicious. But if I made it again, I'd make some adjustments — I ended up with way too much rice, and I needed to cook it in the oven for longer than stated, as my chicken was still a little pink.

I also used the leftover Kalamata olives from the Taverna Salad, which turned out a little too salty for my taste. The recipe says you can also use green olives, which is what I'll use next time.

5. I really wanted to love the Peanut Butter Noodles.

I wasn't able to make the Cheesy Green Chile Bean Bake, which was fifth on the list, due to not being able to get my hands on pinto beans, so I turned to the sixth choice, Peanut Butter Noodles.

The comment section on this recipe is a massive love-in — people are wild for this extremely simple dish.

"I wanted to eat this alone, naked, in a closet. It's that good," one commenter wrote.

I was curious to see for myself.

It's just 5 simple ingredients.

This dish involves just a handful of ingredients: noodles, butter, soy sauce, Parmesan, and, of course, peanut butter.

Everything about the recipe seems designed to be as simple as possible: You're encouraged to use the cheapest peanut butter you can find, and the noodles are from packet ramen.

You can also use spaghetti, so in the interests of science, I resolved to try both.

The spaghetti was a disaster, but the ramen worked well.

The dish is just a matter of cooking your spaghetti/ramen, then mixing some of the cooking water with the rest of the ingredients to make a glossy sauce.

As soon as I tasted the spaghetti version, I knew it wasn't for me: they were just too thick and heavy with the cloying sauce.

The texture with the springier noodles, however, had just the right chew.

Even so, I won't be making it again.

The recipe is clearly designed to be an umami-fest that you can blearily throw together after a night out. But it was just too bland and salty for me.

Overall, this was a great adventure for me and my assistant.

Before I started, I had hit a bit of a cooking rut and was fresh out of ideas.

It was brilliant to throw the choice open to the popular vote, and to see what people — 17,265 devoted NYT Cooking readers at the time of writing — were eating and loving.

Most of the five dishes were not recipes I would have chosen myself, but they've broadened my outlook — and I'll definitely be cooking some of them again soon.

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