20 of Our Favorite French Recipes (2024)

Don't be intimidated by French food. Once you learn the basics, you can use the skills as a springboard for cooking all kinds of dishes from cuisines across the globe. These fantastic French recipes, from the classic pot-au-feu to comforting croque madame and buttery pistachio financiers, are full of essential culinary techniques. With a bit of patience and practice, you'll be serving show-stoppers in no time.

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Steak au Poivre with Red Wine Pan Sauce

Red wine pan sauce is an amalgamation of fond (those browned bits left in the pan after searing meat), shallots, broth, good-quality red wine, and a few pats of butter to bind it all together and thicken it to a syrupy consistency. It's an ideal accompaniment to peppercorn-crusted rib eye steak, a well-marbled cut that stays more tender than New York strip.

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Socca with Zucchini and Olives

Socca is a tender pancake made from chickpea flour. Unlike the versions in Nice, which are cooked in copper pans, this one is baked in a cast-iron skillet before it's topped with a summery marinated squash salad.

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Salmon Niçoise Salad

Fresh salmon, briny olives, crisp-tender green beans, and satisfying potatoes all soak up the zippy, perfectly balanced dressing in this variation on a classic tuna Niçoise. Don't skip the anchovy garnish — it provides pops of umami saltiness that take this salad over the top.

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French Lemon Tart

In this classic citrus tart, the lemony custard is poured into a fully baked tart shell, so there's no need to worry about an undercooked crust or a curdled filling.

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Warm Camembert with Wild Mushroom Fricassee

Chef Daniel Boulud makes this oozy appetizer with Vacherin Mont-d'Or, a creamy cheese sold at top cheese shops. Here, we use Camembert; it's as rich and runny as Vacherin Mont-d'Or and much easier to find.

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Croque Madame

The French croque madame sandwich is a lesson in extravagance, made with white bread, butter, cheese, ham, Mornay sauce, and a fried egg. It's a luxurious, deeply comforting dish. If you like, turn it into a croque monsieur by simply skipping the fried egg.

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Chicken Provençal

The flavors are bold in chicken Provençal, a southern French braise with a sauce of tomatoes, garlic, rosemary, olives, and just enough anchovy paste to give the sauce depth.

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Gnocchi Parisienne

These tasty gnocchi are made with pâte à choux — the same dough used for profiteroles, cream puffs, and éclairs — that is poached and then baked. You don't need a light hand to make these, as you do for other forms of gnocchi; in fact, the dough comes together quickly in a saucepan and requires vigorous stirring.

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Duck Liver Pâté with Blackberry Conserva

Jacques Pépin's recipe for chicken liver pâté is silky-smooth and simple to make. It's ideal with a co*cktail or glass of wine before a meal.

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Poached Eggs with Red Wine Sauce

In 2018, we named this recipe one of our 40 best. Anne Willan, founder of the prestigious École de Cuisine la Varenne in France, expounded the virtues of cooking with wine and shared her version of classic oeufs pochés en meurette, a Burgundian preparation reminiscent of eggs Benedict. Traditionally the eggs for this dish are poached in red wine, causing them to take on a grayish-purple color. Here, the eggs are poached in water, then assembled with red wine sauce at the end.

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Ham Steaks in Madeira Sauce

For this recipe, Julia Child was inspired by jambon à la morvandelle, the signature dish of Alexandre Dumaine, one of France's most famous chefs in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. "Although supermarket ham will do, real country ham will give you a dish more like Dumaine's fabled creation," wrote Child. She called the dish — featuring ham steaks basted in a mushroom and Madeira sauce — one of her "fast entrées for fancy people."

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Beef Stew in Red Wine Sauce

For many Americans, the quintessential French stew is boeuf bourguignon — beef cooked in Burgundy red wine. The stew, featured regularly at Jacques Pépin's mother's restaurant, was made from tougher, cheaper cuts of beef, which had to be braised a long time to get tender and to stay moist.

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Ratatouille

This vegetable stew from the South of France is a celebration of summer vegetables at the height of their seasonality. Our recipe relies on a simple technique for creating a richly flavorful dish: cooking each vegetable separately. After just a few minutes in the pan, the vegetables release water, deepen in flavor, and become just tender enough to begin to break down.

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Extra-Creamy Chocolate Mousse

What sets French pastry chef Dominique Ansel’s chocolate mousse apart from other versions of the dessert is that he folds in the chocolate just before serving.

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Vichyssoise

Topped with crunchy garlic croutons, shaved Pecorino Romano cheese, and a scattering of sliced scallions, this creamy chilled potato-leek soup deserves a spot in your summer rotation.

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Quiche Lorraine

Crisp bacon bits and grated Gruyère flavor Julia Child's rich and creamy classic quiche, which boasts a flaky, buttery crust. The secret to the super-silky texture is simple: It's the heavy cream whisked into the eggs for the filling.

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Cassoulet with Duck Confit

Chef Laurence Jossel created this stripped-down version of the classic French stew with creamy white beans, luscious store-bought duck confit, smoky French garlic sausage, and slab bacon. Letting the beans rest overnight develops their flavors.

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Pistachio Financiers

These absurdly easy-to-make buttery French cakes can be stored overnight in an airtight container at room temperature.

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Double-Baked Cheese Soufflé with Parmesan Cream

Chef Alain Ducasse's cheese soufflé includes Comté and Parmigiano-Reggiano. It pairs especially well with fresh sparkling wine; we prefer a green apple-inflected version.

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Classic Pot-au-Feu

For this dish, winemaker David Duband braises two cuts of beef — shank and rump roast — with marrow bones and then separately cooks leeks and carrots with more marrow bones until everything is deeply flavorful and tender. When serving, you can mix the horseradish with the sour cream to make a tasty garnish.

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