Nytimes cooking

Hetty McKinnon swaps spaghetti for rice in her umami-rich mushroom stir-fry.

The dishes our readers loved most this year include recipes for chicken, pasta, soup, burgers and more.

There’s nothing wrong with a dinner of pan-seared chicken seasoned with salt and pepper. But there’s everything right about the same chicken when you add anchovies, capers, garlic and plenty of lemon to the pan. What was once timid and a little dull turns vibrant, tangy and impossible to stop eating. And the only real extra work is chopping the garlic and a little parsley for garnish. In this dish, the cut of chicken is less important than the pungent pan sauce. Most people will probably…

It’s been 12 months of delicious dishes, and these are the biggest hits published this year: marry me chicken, banana pudding, gochujang noodles, white chicken chili and more.

We asked the legendary cookbook author to go through his recipe archives and find his 10 favorites. (Naturally, his first pick was pancakes.)

In this recipe, which Pierre Franey brought to The Times in 1992 in one of his 60-Minute Gourmet columns, two teaspoons of lemon zest are added to a simple sauce of lemon juice, thyme, garlic and shallots. It is, at once, lively and elegant. To round it out, it needs a sturdy accompaniment. Mr. Franey suggested mashed potatoes with garlic and basil, with just a little olive oil swirled in.

Gochujang, the fermented Korean chile paste, offers intrigue in this otherwise classic chewy sugar cookie. A gentle amount of ground cinnamon lends snickerdoodle vibes, and the dough is raked through with ripples of clay-red gochujang “caramel,” in which brown sugar and butter mellow the chile’s heat. Mixing this dough by hand is highly recommended for the most defined crinkles and the chewiest texture.

Here to save your weeknight life: a slow-cooker main that’s truly “set-it-and-forget-it,” with results that taste like they required significantly more effort. This rich and flavorful pork takes about 5 minutes to throw together in the morning. Before dinner, just simmer the sauce — a sweet-salty mix of soy and honey — until it’s syrupy, shred the meat, add a flurry of fresh herbs and you’re done. The meat is a wonderfully simple anchor, and you can build a meal around it: Add lettuce cups…

Recipe video above. This is a wildly popular raw Broccoli Salad by Melissa Clark of the New York Times. The red wine vinegar lightly "cooks" the broccoli so it's not as hard as plain raw broccoli, then it's marinated in an intensely flavoured cumin, garlic and sesame infused olive oil. It is unexpectedly good, it's unique, and I keep making it so I wanted to share the recipe.Not a fan of raw broccoli? This probably isn't the dish to convert you, I'll admit. Try instead just lightly steaming…

Pan-fried gnocchi is like a faster version of baked pasta. Store-bought gnocchi can simply be browned in a pan for an exciting mix of crispy outsides and chewy middles, no boiling required. This dish is studded with juicy tomatoes and melty pockets of mozzarella. Cherry tomatoes are reliably more flavorful year-round than larger, more watery varieties like beefsteak and heirloom. (That said, taste yours, and if they’re more tart than sweet, add 1/2 teaspoon sugar in Step 2.) Toss the…