14 Easy Healthy Dinner Recipes

Start the year off right with these recipes to refresh and reinvigorate.

Becky Hughes’s vegan Caesar salad.Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini.

By Allison Jiang

Published Jan. 2, 2025Updated Jan. 2, 2025

Eating well at the start of every year can be a daunting task, encumbered by the prospect of unfamiliar cooking methods and monotonous meals. But sometimes all you need is a new slate of recipes to kick-start your creativity. So consider the 14 below: They’re fresh, filling and full of goodness — and they’ve been tested and vetted not only by our recipe developers and editors, but by our readers as well. Healthy can look like different things to different people, but the goal with these dishes is to help you get cooking, and to make something that feels nourishing. Read on for dishes that will make you feel confident about cooking, and, most important, taste really good.

This Andy Baraghani recipe is a glorious example of how some ingredients can bring out the best in one another. When paired with honey, miso and ginger, grapefruit zest and juice (though I’ve used orange) sing. The buttery scallion rice is also a revelation. You’ll hardly believe you made it yourself.

Ground chicken, vastly easier to contend with than thighs or breasts, takes on the flavors of seasoned Korean short ribs in this weeknight banger from Kay Chun. It’s part bouncy noodle dish, part salad, and involves very little cooking. The glass noodles are crucial here for lightness — and much more fun to chew and slurp than noodles made from egg or wheat.

You need to try this Becky Hughes recipe only once before you understand the hype. The comment section is full of adoring converts, but there’s arguably no fan more vocal than my colleague Natasha Janardan, who told me: “Between my sister and I, we make it nearly every week. It’s the perfect balance of salty, crunchy, creamy and savory, and the dressing batches great.”

Each component of this five-ingredient Ali Slagle recipe (including the juice from the kimchi container) brings enormous flavor. It takes only 20 minutes, so it’s easy enough to throw together after a long day.

Made from firm tofu, raw garlic, sugar and five-spice, Hetty Lui McKinnon’s luscious sauce could make anything delicious, but its best use is arguably poured over chewy Chinese wheat noodles. It’s creamy without cream, and the raw tofu has a wonderful texture while adding protein.

If you’ve been boiling off frozen dumplings and calling them dinner, consider doing as Hetty Lui McKinnon does, and adding just a few more moves for an astounding dinner. Persian cucumbers, smacked and crushed with a big handful of cilantro and drizzled in a garlicky peanut-soy sauce turn those handy dumplings into a meal, one worthy of decent silverware and even a cloth napkin.

The best part of this Lidey Heuck recipe is how you can make it whatever consistency you like — extra soupy, extra thick or anywhere in between — by changing the amount of Parmesan or how long you cook the beans. It takes 30 minutes at most, and even less time once you’ve committed it to memory (which is very easy to do).

Let Sohla El-Waylly’s take on a “spoon salad” — that is, a salad you can eat with a spoon — change your perspective. Full of exciting textures from raw broccoli, pecans, dried cranberries and Cheddar, it’s a fast, filling way add a bright, punchy spot to your day. Don’t be tempted to parboil or cook the broccoli since the raw crunch goes perfectly with the other ingredients.

Sue Li’s steamed chicken dish is proof that you don’t need much for a protein-filled meal. It’s made in one pot and steamed to perfection, but best of all, it’s so generous. The recipe calls for boneless, skinless chicken breasts, but feel free to sub with thighs, or skin-on whole breasts to stay closer to the Chinese origination of the dish.

Pinto beans, elbow macaroni, chopped tomatoes and a bouquet of herbs simmered together are as hearty as they are heartening. This recipe for the classic Italian soup, from Martha Rose Shulman, calls for simmering beans from scratch, which would add flavor and heft, but using canned beans is perfectly fine.

Hetty Lui McKinnon’s vegan version of the Lao dish is vibrant, punchy and meaty, thanks to the crumbled extra-firm tofu. And a bonus: This recipe is almost all assembly, with very little actual cooking required. A lime juice dressing provides bold acidity in an already-bright recipe, but try dipping a completed wrap in it for even more lift.

This recipe from Priya Krishna is whatever you want it to be. Your choice of protein (paneer, halloumi, tofu, something else) or your favorite leafy green all work. The end result is aromatic, savory and nutrient-dense, a dish you should be able to commit to heart and make any time joy is needed.

If you’re not a fan of raw salads, this warm one from Yossy Arefi is the perfect solution. Equal parts sweet from the potatoes and nutty from the toasted brown butter vinaigrette with sage and boiled lentils, it’s meant for fall, but amazing all year round. The hint of funk from the goat cheese is optional, but highly, highly recommended.

A tagine on a weeknight? It’s possible with this simplified recipe from Nargisse Benkabbou. From start to finish, it’s only an hour until you can enjoy the fruits of your labor, which will be deeply savory and tart, thanks to preserved lemon, turmeric, ginger, olives and onions. Making preserved lemons at home is easy and completely worthwhile, but if you’re in a pinch, normal lemons work, too.