10 Sweet and Savory Recipes You'll Love

Fresh apple, dried fruit and cashews add color, sweetness and crunch to a ready-in-45 vegetarian chili. For a twist on the traditional toppers (and to hint what’s inside), garnish with apple slivers.

Apple Harvest Chili

Sirloin strips marinated in raspberry-chipotle vinaigrette get caramelized edges on the grill. Pile skewers on mixed greens with goat cheese and veggies, then pass the tongs and dressing.

Sweet and Spicy Steak Salad

A few pinches of pantry spices jazz up the traditional sour-cream gravy. This cozy weeknight dish dances on the line between comfort food and curry.

Cinnamon-Spiced Beef Stroganoff

The classic fruit and pork combo gets a bold update: Slather the meat with a paste of garlic, mustard, lemon and rosemary, then serve with ruby red cherries. This recipe multiplies easily for entertaining.

Lemon-Rosemary Pork Loin with Cherry Sauce

Fruit-and-nut stuffing transforms everyday chicken breasts into a company-ready feast. Bonus: It's deceptively simple; you’ll have dinner on the table in an hour.

Grape-Stuffed Chicken with Lemon Orzo

Affordable beef chuck roast, apple, parsnip and sweet potato slow-simmer in broth flavored with dark beer, herbs and spices. Warm corn bread muffins and cold winter night optional.

Spicy Beef, Bean and Vegetable Stew 

These cookies come with a friendly warning: Chewy caramel, toasted pecans and a flurry of sea salt will make you popular. Very popular. A product called caramel bits gives these cookies great flavor and chewy texture. Some supermarkets carry them, and they’re widely available online. (Search for Kraft Caramel Bits.) Take care to follow recipe directions when baking: caramel bits melt quickly.

Salty Caramel and Pecan Oatmeal Cookies

This moist beauty begs for a mug of afternoon tea. Fennel seeds add the faintest hint of licorice flavor, just enough to make the cake stand out from the other Bundts in the room. We like the sweeter flavor of Meyer lemons in this cake. Look for them sold in bags at large supermarkets. If you substitute regular lemons, reduce the zest to 2 tablespoons.

Toasted Fennel-Lemon Cake

Crispy bacon, extra-creamy cheese sauce, pears sauteed in brown sugar and butter. It took our Test Kitchen three tries to get all the pieces right for this fall comfort food. Oh man, was it worth it.

Bacon-Pear Macaroni and Cheese

Bright green pistachios and spice give this buttery chocolate cookie plenty of personality. It’s like shortbread, perfect for pairing with a cup of coffee.

Spiced Chocolate-Pistachio Cookies

Common pantry ingredients take on new roles in our recipes, bending the definitions of sweet and savory.

Salt brightens almost any dish, even dessert. A generous grind is the final flourish on Salty Caramel and Pecan Oatmeal Cookies.

Chocolate in all its many forms is a kitchen chameleon, morphing along a flavor spectrum of bitter and sweet. We used two kinds in Spiced Chocolate-Pistachio Cookies.

Inspired by mulled cider and German sauerbraten, we seasoned Spicy Beef, Bean and Vegetable Stew with allspice.

Cuisines across Asia and Africa use pumpkin pie spice in savory dishes. We chose to update an old favorite, creating Cinnamon-Spiced Beef Stroganoff.

Get your apple a day in a new way. Morsels of fruit add nutrition and sweet-tart zing to Apple Harvest Chili.

Chipotle peppers infuse campfire smoke in grilled Sweet and Spicy Steak Salad.  Pick a pepper: Chipotles are smoked jalapeños. Most recipes call for the canned kind, which are available at big supermarkets and come in flavorful adobo sauce. Puree or mince the extra peppers with the sauce, and freeze in a flattened resealable plastic bag. Break off pieces when you want to add smoky heat to a recipe. (One tablespoon of puree equals about one pepper.) We also like Tabasco’s chipotle sauce; it’s milder, but super convenient. 

Enjoy more of our favorite recipes in any of our free printable cookbooks.

Top 10 Slow-Cooker Recipes Cookbook

10 Favorite Casseroles Cookbook

Best of the Midwest Recipe Contest Winners Cookbook

7 Fresh Chicken Recipes Cookbook

21 Sweet Corn Recipes Cookbook

14 Fall Harvest Recipes Cookbook