15 Simple and Savory Dinner Recipes for Spring 

This colorful, light, and quick dish is infused with Asian flavors. It’s delicious on its own or makes a wonderful partner for fish or chicken.

This salad is easy to vary depending on what you have on hand; crumbled fresh goat cheese, chicken, or smoked trout can all be subbed in for the shrimp. It’s especially refreshing when the ingredients are cold.

Not up for dealing with live crab after a day at work? Let the grocery store fish counter or a fish market do the cooking. At dinnertime, just toss in a few ingredients for flavor and serve with a loaf of crusty bread for a hearty, easy meal in minutes.

This recipe turns a beloved pasta dish—rich, creamy Alfredo—into an easy, one-pot endeavor. If you like it saucier, use the larger amount of cream. Sunset reader Wendy Hollingsworth of Clinton Township, Michigan shared the recipe.

This simple, one-pot recipe is easy and quick enough for a weeknight dinner. Feel free to substitute ground beef for the lamb, and during the springtime, try fresh peas for frozen, cooking them a little less time.

Use a peppery, top-quality olive oil to bring out the best in this spring salad, created by Jeanne Kelly, author of Salad For Dinner. Buy really fresh asparagus and radishes, from a farmers market if possible—that too will make a difference.

This salad, from San Francisco cookbook author and teacher Michelle McKenzie, benefits from a variety of greens: at least one sweet (pea shoots and flowers, fava greens), one peppery (watercress or peppercress), and one bitter (dandelion greens or amaranth). For the herbs, she likes a mix of mint, dill, parsley, or chervil; fennel fronds work too.

“This is a great dish for a big family-style meal,” says Meave McAuliffe of Ojai’s Rory’s Place. “The whole side of salmon cooks great and looks beautiful and rustic presented on a large platter in the center of your table. We love serving this salmon with braised leeks or slow-cooked spring onions.”

To keep the color in this mild spring soup bright, use a deep green head of lettuce, cooking it only enough to wilt it, and peel favas shortly before using them.

Now’s the time to use spring herbs with abandon, adding them by the handful to salads, eggs, and pasta. This quick vegetarian main dish combines your choice of herbs with a little cream and some goat cheese, which melts in the heat of the pasta to lightly coat each strand. Crumble more cheese on top.

Welcome to our easy version of this Sichuan street-food classic, with ground chicken instead of pork, and fresh vegetables rather than preserved ones. A dan-dan is the pole, balanced on the shoulder, that vendors use to tote containers of noodles and sauce.

Serve these robustly flavored open-face sandwiches as a light dinner with a big salad.

“You wouldn’t find fresh asparagus in Saigon when I was a kid,” says chef Eric Banh, co-owner with his sister, Sophie, of Seattle’s Monsoon and Ba Bar restaurants. “But it’s the kind of thing that a fancy restaurant would serve [from cans].” Now that he and Sophie live in the Pacific Northwest, where spring asparagus is sweet, juicy, and abundant, they love to use it in spring dishes—like this savory shrimp stir-fry.

Tender-crisp peas add a bright bite to this comfort food staple. Serve with warm biscuits.

This recipe comes from Chris Cosentino, chef at San Francisco’s Incanto restaurant and author of Beginnings; My Way to Start a Meal. We doubled this appetizer recipe so it could serve as a main course. Lamb loins are amazingly tender and flavorful, but expensive; we found that cheaper lamb shoulder roast (although tougher) works too. Just cook it a little longer—about 10 minutes more.