My Favorite Recipes of 2025

Here’s a list of my favorite recipes published in 2025. Half of them are new, from quick pantry meals and a 5-minute chili crisp, to cozy favorites like bacon cheese dip and high protein granola. The other eight recipes are refreshed recipes that are staples in our house, including baked grated carrots, peanut sauce, blueberry cobbler, and a silky chocolate frosting to die for.

As a way to wrap up the year before heading fully into the new one, I’ve been thinking about all the meals made in our real food kitchens this past year.

In 2025, we leaned into simple, dependable recipes that fit real life. I heard from many of you that loved the new quick pantry meals series as examples of recipes that didn’t require a long list of ingredients or a lot of time. From our family’s new staple, 5-minute chili crisp, that adds instant flavor to just about anything, to cozy standbys like bacon cheese dip, and high protein granola and a protein-rich chicken salad, these recipes showed up again and again in our meal plans.

This year was also about making old favorites even better. I updated some longtime recipes like baked grated carrots, peanut sauce, blueberry cobbler, and a silky chocolate frosting so they’re clearer for everyday cooking and easier to share. If you’ve been cooking from this site for a while, these refreshes were made with you in mind.

If you missed any of these recipes or want to revisit what made 2025 such a good year in our simple homemade kitchens, I’ve gathered them here all in one place for you.

Thanks for cooking along with me this year, saving recipes, and making them part of your home. I’m so grateful to be here with you, and I can’t wait to share what’s coming next.

8 Favorite New Recipes in 2025

In no particular order:

5 Minute Chili Crisp

Once you try this viral condiment you realize it pretty much makes everything better! I have to keep this in stock for cooking fried eggs, drizzling on bowls, and adding to sauces. When my kids visit, this is what they look for at every meal almost, so coming up with a homemade version was a no-brainer.

Some recipes use a lot of ingredients, include delicate cooking of garlic (get it crisp, but don’t burn it…), and quite a bit of time. I’ve streamlined this recipe to use all dried ingredients AND to heat it in the microwave, all in the jar you’ll store it in.

Quick & Easy Pantry Recipes

I’m cheating a bit to include a whole section of recipes in one but this series has been rather life-giving to me this last year. It’s been a wonderful challenge to create healthy, real food recipes that can be made quickly with a few canned foods and things we normally have in our pantries.

So far it has included recipes like the tomato white bean soup pictured above, as well as white bean shrimp salad, high protein chicken salad and more. And I’m excited to keep adding to the series through 2026!

Cheesy Bacon Dip

I’m not sure why it took me so long to add this recipe to the site – I’ve made it for years for special occasions and it’s one my kids ask for repeatedly. Which is a sure sign of a good recipe – even though it’s definitely one I only make a few times a year!

Vinegar Coleslaw Dressing

I love slaws and how they are the perfect salad to have with things like tacos and pulled pork, but I prefer vinegar-based dressings over the oddly sweet, goopy creamy dressings. While making a specific flavored dressing for a meal like cumin-lime slaw for tacos and a fun Asian flavored slaw is great, having a dedicated dressing in the fridge for any type of slaw has been wonderful. This is based on a classic 1940s-50s dressing and I now regularly make it up to keep on hand (tip: it’s good on any salad, too!).

Salmon Caesar Salad

Salmon is my favorite seafood and as soon as I started making this quick and easy main dish salad, I knew I’d have to share it with you. Not only is it delicious, but I finally discovered a way to cook the salmon filet perfectly in a skillet so that it’s still tender in the middle but fully cooked (unlike some restaurants that serve it raw in the middle *shiver*).

Maple Cinnamon Protein Baked Oatmeal

2025 was the year that baked oatmeal became a regular part of our weekly breakfasts (yes, even supplanting my beloved granola – see below – on some days!). While I’ve made pans of baked oats for guests over the years, it was when I realized it could be baked in individual cups that could be frozen that it became an option for weekdays. Then I added more protein (from plain protein powder) so it could deliver more balanced macros and, voilà, a new regular breakfast option for us was born.

Maple Cinnamon High Protein Granola

Yep, I did it. Jumped on the protein bandwagon and adapted my beloved staple Maple Honey Almond Granola to include more protein. And we love it. I spent months perfecting it because I wanted the most protein without tipping the fat content into the sky-high range (which happens if you use all nuts and no oats) and I think it’s the perfect balance that still delivers the flavor we love.

Easy Slow Cooker Pork Sirloin (For Slicing or Pulled Pork)

This was another recipe I spent quite a bit of time developing trying to find the best way to cook the sirloin tips you could find for a good price at Costco, but that were usually smaller than many recipes out there (so were easy to overcook and dry out). The slow cooker proved the best at delivering a moist, tender roast – and has the benefit of being completely hands off (a fav of mine). Wouldn’t you know it – as soon as I published this mentioning the specific cuts at Costco, they stopped carrying them!! Ugh. However, this is still a great recipe for any sirloin pork roast (not tenderloin) you can find in the 2-4 pound range. (Tip: I will cut up bigger roasts and freeze them in these smaller portions because they are so handy for our smaller household.)

8 Favorite Updated Recipes in 2025

Again, in no particular order.

Grated Baked Carrots with Lemon & Garlic

This recipe is a LONG TIME favorite of our family. Back when my daughter was still a picky eater, she’d ask for this recipe – it’s that good. The frustrating thing for me as a so-so food photographer is that I just can’t get a good photo of it where the carrots don’t look like they’re neon orange, lol. I tried yet again because I want everyone to at least try this – for some reason grating the carrots and baking them with lemon and garlic creates a perfect sweet-tangy balance that is nothing like any cooked carrot you’ve had. Really so good.

Easy Artisan Bread (Yeast Risen)

This recipe has been on the website almost from the beginning, but was overshadowed by my easy, one-day sourdough artisan bread after I started using a sourdough starter. But I do make it often still when I need a bread quickly and my starter is still in the fridge. Plus, this makes enough dough to keep in the fridge for up to a week if you’d like smaller, fresh loaves, or rolls, etc. It’s based on the popular Artisan Bread in 5-Minutes fame and it literally takes 5 minutes so I think it should be in everyone’s arsenal of quick recipes.

The Best Fluffy Chocolate Frosting

Sometimes I update a recipe because I just can’t believe more people aren’t making it and this amazing frosting falls into that category. This has been my go-to chocolate frosting for YEARS and I have no need for any other. It takes any cake or cupcake into the realm of a high-end bakery and yet it’s made quickly and easily with either unsweetened chocolate OR my standard cocoa powder substitution (because I hardly ever have unsweetened chocolate on hand).

Canned Tomato Bruschetta (Summer in a Jar)

This recipe was SO overdo for a photographic update! The old photos from 2010 showed only the jar (and blurry at that, ha) and not what the actual tomatoes looked like.

Why is this a favorite of mine? While I’m honest enough to say that the bruschetta doesn’t taste like bruschetta made with fresh tomatoes, by the time you open a jar of this in January or February you realize the flavor is way more than you can get with bland, store bought tomatoes! It’s like a breath of summer when it’s cold out and whether you top salads or bread with it, you will know it was worth canning a few jars in the fall.

Easy Skillet Blueberry Cobbler with Lemon-Honey Sauce

Before developing this recipe for blueberry cobbler back when I was doing some sponsored work for Oregon Blueberry Growers, I wasn’t much of a cobbler fan. This pretty much changed my mind overnight. And to be honest, I added the lemon-honey sauce just to differentiate it from other cobblers out there, but in the end it’s the thing that MAKES this dessert so delicious. The blueberry flavor together with the lemon? Heaven on a spoon.

Easy 5-Minute Peanut Sauce

This is a pantry basic – those recipes that you can make faster than trying to find it at the store, and that tastes better with healthier ingredients. I’ve kept this in the fridge for up to a month and when you have it available, you can make quick stir fries, salads, and even just a pile of veggies and meat taste so good you’ll be licking the spoon at the end.

French Beef Stew with Bacon – The BEST

You guys. I don’t think I have all the words to describe how much I love this recipe. I have made it since college (yes, many years ago…) and it’s become a favorite of almost every one I’ve served it to. We’ve had it for birthdays, game nights, special occasions – and once even for Christmas Eve. This is another recipe I updated in the hopes more people would make it – please make it and let me know if you did!

Crispy Baked Chicken with Maple Mustard Sauce

It’s probably fitting that I end with a Boys family classic, a recipe I adapted from one published in The Oregonian (back in the day when everyone got printed newspapers!). While easy enough to make on a weekday night, this is so good that Brian and my son regularly ask for it for their birthdays. There is mustard in the marinade, dry mustard in the coating and the sauce simply adds an exclamation point to everything.

These are the simple, dependable recipes that fit our real lives and I hope they become a part of your menus as they have of mine! To help these recipes see the light of day in this era of AI and Google algorithms, please remember to leave reviews and ratings on any recipes you’ve made – it’s a simple way you can make a difference and I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart!