Food Network’s Most Saved 50 Recipes Of All Time

Plus MY Favorite Recipe In The Entire Universe

PLUS A Shoutout To Paula 

You can thank me later. The Food Network website does NOT make it easy to take a quick look at their list of top Fifty Most-Saved Recipes. In fact, they make it IMPOSSIBLE to see it all at the same time. Soooo, I went through the tortuous process of clicking through a FIFTY PAGE slideshow to make this list of recipes with links for you to peruse.

I’m a sucker for stuff like this. I like to compare other people’s favorites to my own. That’s also the fun thing about thumbing through recipes - the next great one is just around the corner. (AND with the online equivalent, hardly any thumbs are necessary.)  Go to the end of this post for MY favorite recipes of all time.

Without further ado, here are the Food Network’s top recipes. (AND I won’t be annoying like they are. I’ll list the top one first!)

No. 1 Ina Garten's Lemon Chicken Breasts

No. 2 Giada De Laurentiis's Chicken Piccata

No. 3 Ina's Linguine With Shrimp Scampi

No. 4 Food Network's Lemon-Garlic Shrimp And Grits

No. 5 Giada's Roman Style Chicken

No. 6 Ellie Krieger’s Zucchini Parmesan Crisps

No. 7 Tyler Florence's Chicken Enchiladas

No. 8 Ina's Garlic Roasted Potatoes

No. 9 Ree Drummond's Twice-Baked Potatoes

No. 10 Ree's Best Tomato Soup Ever

No. 11 Giada's Salmon Baked In Foil

No. 12 Ina's Baked Shrimp Scampi

No. 13. Ree's Baked Ziti

No. 14 Ree's Chicken-Fried Steak with Gravy

No. 15 Alton Brown's Guacamole

No. 16 Food Network Magazine's Skillet Rosemary Chicken

No. 17 Ree's Perfect Pot Roast

No. 18 Tyler's Smothered Pork Chops

No. 19 Ina's Lemon Yogurt Cake

No. 20 Food Network Kitchen's Low-Cal Fettuccine Alfredo

No. 21 Ree's Simple Perfect Enchiladas

No. 22 Ree's Chicken Spaghetti

No. 23 Giada's Baked Penne with Roasted Vegetables

No. 24 Ree's Twice Baked Potato Casserole

No. 25 Trisha Yearwood's Chicken Tortilla Casserole

No. 26 Giada's Lasagna Rolls

No. 27 Giada's Lemon Ricotta Cookies with Lemon Glaze

No. 28. Ina's Roasted Brussels Sprouts

No. 29. Ree’s Knock-You-Naked Brownies

No. 30 Trisha's Charleston Cheese Dip

No. 31 Giada's Chicken Parmesan

No. 32 Beatty's Chocolate Cake (from Ina)

No. 33 Giada's Chicken Tetrazzini

No. 34 Ree's Broccoli Cheese Soup

No. 35 Giada's Parmesan-Crusted Pork Chops

No. 36 Tyler's Shrimp Scampi With Linguini

No. 37 Ree's Restaurant Style Salsa

No. 38 Trisha's Slow Cooker Macaroni And Cheese

No. 39 Alton's Stovetop Mac-N-Cheese

No. 40 Ina's Perfect Roast Chicken

No. 41 Ree's Blackberry Cobbler

No. 42 Trisha's No-Bake Chocolate-Pretzel-Peanut Butter Squares

No. 43 Ree's Salisbury Steak

No. 44 The Best Cauliflower Ever from Daphne Brogdon

No. 45 Giada's Chicken Cacciatore (858 Reviews)

No. 46 Ina's Chicken Pot Pie

No. 47 Ree's Macaroni And Cheese

No. 48 Ina's Mac and Cheese2

No. 49 Tyler's Chicken Parmesan

No. 50 Ina’s Asian Grilled Salmon

YAY! An Ina recipe is NUMBER ONE, although she doesn’t have the most recipes on this list. Pioneer Woman is in first place with 14 recipes.

Number Of Recipes By Chef (or host)

Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond – 14

Ina - 11

Giada - 10

Trisha and Tyler - 4 each

Alton - 2

Ellie Krieger - 1

(I know that doesn’t add up to 50. There were a few random ones thrown in for fun.)

Here’s the breakdown by type of recipe:

14 Chicken recipes

12 Pasta recipes (with 4 Mac and Cheese recipes)

6 Seafood recipes – 4 Shrimp, 2 Fish

6 Dessert recipes

5 Meat recipes

I guess this tells us that, most often, people are searching the Food Network website for what to make for dinner and chicken is at the top of their list.

Notice anything else? Obviously this is a list of CURRENT Food Network chefs and hosts, but it does seem a little strange that there isn’t ONE Paula Deen recipe here. In the past, she had always dominated lists like these. In 2007, she had the top recipe, Creamy Macaroni and Cheese, plus 46 others out of the top 100. In 2009, her Baked French Toast Casserole with Maple Syrup was the second most popular recipe. And she had the second and seventh most popular “Main Course” recipe in 2011. (Just saying, she was a pretty glorious part of the Food Network’s past.)

If I had to choose my favorite Food Network recipe, it wouldn’t even be close. I don’t follow it exactly or even closely anymore, but it gave me the inspiration to make such a delicious, always popular and never routine dish that I love it AND its creator. Ina’s Roasted Vegetables with Orzo takes top billing for me.

If I were to pick my all-time favorite recipe from anywhere or anyone, I could do that easily too. And I know there are thousands (millions?) of people who would agree with me. The Silver Palate’s Chicken Marbella wins hands down for best recipe. It has everything – It’s salty and sweet, easy to prepare, can be done ahead of time, great for every day and excellent for company. What else could anyone need?

What’s on the top of your list of best recipes – from the Food Network or otherwise?

Sheila Lukins – Great Friend In The Kitchen

I never met Sheila Lukins, but if Julia’s books are like having a teacher right next to you in the kitchen, then Sheila’s are like having a good friend. That’s why I was so sad to learn that Sheila Lukins, co-author of The Silver Palate Cookbook, died at 66 last week after a short bout of brain cancer. She was an extraordinary cook and a formidable person.

I don’t even remember a time when I WASN’T cooking from The Silver Palate, which was published 30 years ago, although there seems to be some dispute about the date. (My copy says 1979, many sites say 1982). In either case, Chicken Marbella is probably one of the most well-known recipes in the universe.

It had already travelled the world when I was introduced to it by an Australian in the 1980’s while we were both living in Spain. She had brought the recipe with her to serve at dinner parties.

It amazes me when I think of the many, many times I’ve made Chicken Marbella from my increasingly worn Silver Palate book. I probably never (even once) made it exactly as written, but it never failed to delight me (and all for whom I served it) with its ingenious mix of sweet, salty and piquant flavors. Plus all those lovely juices, studded with prunes, olives and capers, became the most marvelous sauce. That was pretty ground-breaking back in the day. And it does give me pause when I realize that the last time I made it was only days before Sheila died.

The word sad is the one I keep coming back to. In 1991, at 47, Sheila suffered a serious stroke that forced her to spend 4 months in rehab and took years to recover from. But she didn’t just travel on the road to recovery. Amazingly, very shortly after, she began traveling the world for research on her Around the World book. As she says in its introduction, she journeyed for 730 days on and off, all around the world gathering material for her book. The result was a huge comprehensive cookbook, chock a block full of fabulous ethnic recipes and exciting menus. That she accomplished this volume at all is amazing; that she did it with her physical limitations is awe-inspiring.

I don’t think our cookbooks mean the same to us as they used to. We get so many of our recipes online or from television that, to me anyway, they aren’t the same source of inspiration.

I’m looking at my cookbook shelves. James, Craig, Julia…all gone. Marcella and Maida still around, but getting on.

But Sheila…It’s funny. I never thought of her as a culinary icon, although her books outsold many of them.

She was more like one of us.

Of course, she was an accomplished professional, but she made it seem like she was cooking to have fun, cooking to entertain her friends and family. She had a big hearted, open kitchen approach that was so evident on every page of her books. Her delightful drawings only added to their charm.

I know a lot of younger folks treasure The New Basics, but I used the Silver Palate, probably on more occasions than any other cookbook. You’re not going to learn the tenets of consommé making (there IS a salmon consommé in The New Basics) or chicken deboning from either Silver Palate. But you will make darn good food and in some cases great food, which, if you’re anything like me, you’ll keep coming back to time after time. THAT is what I’ll remember Sheila Lukins for.

There IS One Acceptable Use For Pimentos

In a post last week complaining about Robin's dull recipes, I completely dissed her use of roasted red peppers and remarked that I detest pimentos. I forgot that there is one place that I do find them acceptable; and that's in the center of olives to be used in Chicken Marbella – the now classic chicken, prune and caper recipe from the original Silver Palate Cookbook. They don't specifically say to use them, but they add a bit of red that's really dashing. Aside from that, my pimento ban stands!

BTW,
if you’ve never tried Chicken Marbella, YOU MUST. It sounds weird, especially mixing prunes with capers and THEN sprinkling over brown sugar before cooking the whole thing, but it is really divine.

I don’t follow the recipe exactly, I just throw in handfuls of what’s called for. And you certainly don’t need to use 10 pounds of chicken! But do double the chicken you think you need, because it’s soooo good the next day.

Plus even if I’m using a lot less chicken than what’s called for in the recipe, I only halve all the other goodies, because they’re so delicious. The recipe calls for one cup of prunes, for example, but I always use at least ½ cup, no matter how little chicken I’m making. Oh, and don’t bother with the oil. I haven’t missed it once in the 17,000 times I’ve made this.

Serve it with orzo to sop up the amazing juices from all those strange things together. Questions?