52 Best Italian Recipes

For a country the size of Arizona, Italy has a truly amazing variety of regional cuisines and dishes, along with universally beloved foods like pizza, risotto, pesto, and gelato. However, many of our favorite "Italian," dishes, like baked ziti and chicken piccata, are actually Italian-American in origin. But they are still Italian in tradition and spirit and certainly deserve to be placed alongside authentic dishes.

You'll find plenty of pasta here of course, but also slow-braised meats, soups, salads, and seafood. No matter the dish, or where it comes from, Italian food always rests on a foundation of the best ingredients. So whatever you choose to cook, do it with quality olive oil, good canned tomatoes, and the kind of fresh meat and vegetables that only need salt to taste great. Beyond that, your Italian dinner is up to you, and you'll certainly have your hands full picking a recipe to try first.

A relative of cacio e pepe and carbonara, spaghetti alla gricia is your ideal weeknight pasta dish. Incredibly easy, it relies mainly on Pecorino Romano and guanciale for flavor, with just a bit of white wine. After the pasta is cooked, it's finished in the pan with olive oil, the crispy meat, and cheese, forming a smooth, rich sauce. 

Just remember to save that pasta water to mix into the sauce, as it's necessary to thicken it and give it a glossy finish.

Recipe: Spaghetti Alla Gricia

This is a spicy variation of another simple Italian classic. Normally garlic, salt, pepper, and oil are all aglio e olio needs, but a little bit of extra texture and heat never hurt anybody. 

The pasta is prepared the same way as the classic recipe but then topped with a mixture of jarred Calabrian chiles and breadcrumbs that have been toasted in a pan for more flavor and crunch. It's just a little something extra, but for a very simple dish, it adds a whole new dimension.

Recipe: Spaghetti Aglio E Olio And Calabrian Breadcrumbs

Pasta primavera is a fun way to get a big serving of veggies in with your pasta. Usually centered around a medley of spring vegetables (primavera means spring), this version mixes it up with the addition of mushrooms and peppers. The vegetables get roasted separately to brown them and bring out their flavor. 

While the veggies are roasting, you can cook the pasta and make the light, creamy Parmesan sauce, so the dish comes together quickly. Then, all that's left to do is toss everything together for a filling and nutritious meal.

Recipe: Roasted Vegetable Pasta Primavera

Struffoli are bite-sized balls of fried dough, like the smaller relative of Italian zeppole, which makes them a great dessert for a crowd. The dough is a rich mixture of butter, sugar, and eggs, which gets flavored with vanilla and the killer ingredient: a few tablespoons of citrusy, lightly bitter orange liqueur. 

After they are shaped into small berry-sized balls and fried, the struffoli are coated with a mixture of honey, sugar, orange liqueur, and lemon juice. Piled high in a round and topped with powdered sugar, they make a festive treat for any special occasion.

Recipe: Homemade Struffoli

Crab can be a pricy meal even when it comes out of a can, but this ravioli is a great way to get a dish full of seafood flavor without breaking the bank. Mixing and shaping homemade ravioli requires no special equipment, and lets you stuff it with a filling of crab meat and ricotta that's briny and slightly sweet. 

The ravioli is so tasty on its own that it doesn't need anything except butter to top it off, lending everything a luscious flavor without drowning out the star of the show.

Recipe: Crab Ravioli

Pasta is often a heavy meal, but you can have your carbs and no follow-up nap with this lemon spaghetti recipe. Lemon zest and juice mix with olive oil for a simple, bright dressing that will coat your spaghetti in summer flavor. Some added Parmesan brings a little salt and extra umami flavor, while basil is mixed into the sauce and sprinkled over top for a pop of green and some welcome herbal notes. 

It's a lively variation on your standard pasta that is also one of the easiest things you'll make all week.

Recipe: Lemon Spaghetti

This is not your standard chicken piccata, this dish pulls out all the stops. The chicken cutlet is first pan-fried, adding crunch and browned breadcrumb flavor. The sauce is a delicate, yet deeply flavored mixture of wine, chicken stock, capers, garlic, and shallots. 

A generous helping of butter thickens the sauce and emulsifies it into something smooth, creamy, and gourmet. This is chicken piccata to impress, even if the only person you're impressing is yourself.

Recipe: Upscale Chicken Piccata

You don't need to hunt for an Italian bakery for good biscotti when you have an old-school recipe like this one on hand. Your biscotti will get their unique, hardened texture from being baked twice, once as a whole log, and then sliced and baked again. 

This recipe is only lightly sweet, but packed with a variety of tastes, including vanilla and almond extract, orange juice and zest, and cinnamon. Studded with chocolate chips and almonds, they are made for being dunked, not just in coffee, but wine or tea too.

Recipe: Italian Biscotti

This is some real grown up tomato soup, swimming with pasta and fit for a full meal. You'll use three different types of tomato to get the best of every kind. Puree gives you the silky, creamy base, chopped tomatoes give you texture, and tomato paste brings some sweetness and depth. 

Tortellini is the ideal, filling pasta to turn this into a main course, and some spinach tossed in at the end adds vegetal balance. It's so satisfying you won't even miss the grilled cheese.

Recipe: Creamy Tomato Tortellini Soup

Eggplant isn't just a meaty substitute for chicken here, it brings its own earthy bitterness and tender texture. Fried in breadcrumbs and roasted in the oven, the meat of eggplant will become soft and creamy, with just enough crunch from the coating to add some texture. 

A simple homemade tomato sauce and mozzarella coalesce with the eggplant to form an almost silky bite that will melt in your mouth, and leave you wondering why you make parm any other way.

Recipe: Baked Eggplant Parmesan

Tomato sauce with lasagna may seem essential, but sometimes you have to step back and let the cheese hog the spotlight. In this recipe, a traditional béchamel is mixed with ricotta for a more pillowy and milky filling. 

A host of complementary mix-ins like caramelized onions, red pepper flakes, and spinach add depth and complexity to the mixture, while crumbled sausage lends some heft and salt. The béchamel mixture will get nice and bubbly and browned in the oven for an enticing finish.

Recipe: White Lasagna With Sausage And Ricotta

Pasta e fagioli is Italian eating in its purest form. This recipe is easy and hearty, as it should be, with only a mixture of carrots, celery, onion, and a bit of pancetta to complement its base of beans and pasta. That doesn't mean it's not flavorful though. 

The broth is boosted by fresh herbs, tomato paste, and a Pecorino Romano rind, so even if the appearance is simple, the taste is not. This pasta e fagioli also really benefits from extended cooking, which lets the aromatics fully permeate the broth.

Recipe: Classic Pasta E Fagioli

If you've never had an egg yolk ravioli before, start here. Every aspect of this recipe goes big: the spicy tomato sauce is loaded with pancetta and Calabrian chiles and the ricotta mixture features sage, lemon, parmesan, and basil. 

But of course, you are here because of the egg. A whole yolk is delicately placed into a bed of ricotta inside each raviolo, just waiting to burst open and cover your plate the second you make a cut.

Recipe: Egg Yolk- And Ricotta-Filled Ravioli

Slow cooker soups like this chicken ribollita are always a great option for an effortless, rewarding dinner. Like other great Italian soups, this recipe starts with beans and tomato broth, with celery, onion, carrots, and garlic as the aromatic base. 

Shredded chicken and kale fill out the meal, and everything goes in the pot with bay leaves, red chile flakes, and Italian seasoning for four hours on high. With only a little chopping and shredding (and almost no stirring), you can have a Tuscan classic waiting for you any night of the week.

Recipe: Slow Cooker Chicken Ribollita

This recipe smartly recognizes that the way to improve on one of the best salads out there is to just add bread. But there is more than meets the eye going on here, as the tomatoes get a whole new dimension of flavor from being roasted, and fresh mozzarella is swapped out for its more creamy cousin burrata. 

Topped with balsamic vinegar and basil, it resembles a classic caprese on bread, but it tastes like so much more.

Recipe: Roasted Caprese Sandwich

This is a Roman (as in the city not the empire) dish, that takes the simple, limited-ingredient Roman pastas like alla Gricia, and turns those ideas into a soup. The key ingredient this time is chickpeas, which both stay whole and get blended with the broth to produce a soup that's silky and thickened by the aquafaba. 

The chickpea liquid gets infused with herbs before the blending, and everything gets a kick from some acidic tomatoes afterward. Pasta e ceci is part soup, part creamy pasta, and everything good.

Recipe: Pasta E Ceci

This sumptuous and filling soup starts with bacon and sausage, and somehow gets better from there. Shallot and garlic are cooked in rendered bacon fat, and then wine and chicken stock form the beginnings of a deeply flavorful broth. 

Potatoes make a welcome companion for the meats, and kale brings a bit of Tuscan greenery and some helpful vegetal notes. If that wasn't enough for you, it all gets topped off with some cream, transforming an already lush meal into something greater than the sum of its parts.

Recipe: Easy Zuppa Toscana

Just a few simple additions can transform a basic tomato sauce, and this spicy arrabbiata shows the difference even one ingredient can make. Infusing olive oil with red chile flakes not only turns a fresh tomato sauce into a punchy showstopper, but it also draws extra flavor from the chiles, so you are getting more taste, not just more heat. 

Red onion and garlic further round out the olive oil, before whole peeled tomatoes go in and get quickly cooked down for a chunky sauce that marries bright with earthy warmth.

Recipe: Spicy Penne Arrabiata

Another Italian-American favorite, our ziti is as cheesy and saucy as you expect a cozy baked pasta dish to be. Red wine and crumbled sausage make for a deeply flavored and complex sauce base, with enough moisture to prevent the ziti from getting dry in the oven. 

The mixed pasta and sauce are layered with ricotta, Parmesan, and fresh mozzarella, so it's fatty, creamy, and melty at the same time. A few minutes under the broiler at the end will give you the essential browned top and crispy pasta edges.

Recipe: Classic Baked Ziti

This is the quintessential Italian holiday dessert, a cake-bread hybrid with dried fruit that is traditionally made for Christmas. This recipe is all about the technique, as the highly enriched dough has plenty of butter and eggs worked into it until it reaches a smooth consistency that tows the line between batter and bread dough. 

After an overnight rise for extra flavor, you mix in liqueur-soaked fruit and almonds. The biggest trick is at the end: letting it cool upside down stretches out the bread instead of compressing it, leading to panettone's signature spongy texture.

Recipe: Italian Panettone

All'amatriciana is heavily dependent on one ingredient — guanciale — to make it stand out from other pasta dishes. Guanciale is cured pork cheek that is very fatty, lending the entire sauce a buttery flavor, like bacon without the smoke. 

Calabrian chiles add a bit of heat, and white wine brightens everything up, but the guanciale is the star, as everything else is cooked in copious amounts of the fat rendered from it. If you can't find guanciale, pancetta or bacon will do, but the taste will be affected.

Recipe: Traditional Bucatini all'Amatriciana

The only thing better than a fresh margherita pizza is learning you can make it at home. Invest in some good canned tomatoes here, because the fresh sauce is a big source of flavor. Other than that it's just mozzarella and basil, for that classic tangy, creamy, herbal taste that has stood the test of time. 

Our one secret is a finishing drizzle of herb-infused olive oil, which lends some extra flavor and a nice buttery depth to the whole thing.

Recipe: Homemade Margherita Pizza

Pasta salad is always underrated as a refreshing dining option, and this take on an Italian deli staple makes a full meal out of it. The cooked pasta is dressed in an herby mixture of olive oil, red wine vinegar, and lemon juice that gives the whole dish a light, sharp flavor. 

The meal factor comes from the panoply of veggies and pickled goodies that get mixed in. This recipe features olives, tomatoes, artichokes, hearts of palm, pepperoncini, and onion, with a healthy serving of fresh mozzarella as a final touch.

Recipe: Veggie Antipasti Italian Pasta Salad

Polenta's luscious, creamy texture is worth the hour of stirring it normally takes to do right, but you can also just make this version, which gets great results by moving off the burners and into the oven. An aromatic base of shallots and garlic adds some extra flavor to the broth the cornmeal is cooked in, and then everything goes in the oven for a half hour, with only one stir necessary to keep it smooth. 

Parmesan, salt, pepper, and butter then get mixed in at the end for extra richness and flavor.

Recipe: Creamy Polenta

The chicken and the cheese are the focus of chicken Parmesan, but here you can get an elevated version that makes everything better with a more flavorful sauce. In addition to your basics of onion and garlic, sherry vinegar is added to the tomato sauce for a wake-up call, and tons of depth from simmering with a Parmesan rind. 

The extra Parm lends the sauce a cheesy layer of flavor before the chicken and fresh mozzarella are nestled on top and browned in the oven to crispy perfection.

Recipe: Chicken Parmesan

Cherry tomatoes are front and center in this summery pasta dish. Roasting the cherry tomatoes brings out extra sweetness and flavor, and the juices they release mix with the garlic, olive oil, oregano, and red pepper to form the base of a simple, fresh sauce. 

Once it's out of the oven, the tomato mixture gets a splash of pasta water to help coat the bucatini. Adding some capers at the end brings some unexpected brininess that takes everything to the next level.

Recipe: Oven-Roasted Tomato Bucatini