Comfort food is not just a pretty face it appears. It actually has the capacity to make us feel better, trigger the release of the good stuff: endorphins and dopamine.
It may be a nostalgic effect, taking us back to our favourite dish of our childhood or another happy era. It could be the fulfilment of expectation, ‘this is going to make me feel good’ and it does, like placebo. And there are foods that act in a warming, soothing or anti-inflammatory way, like the famous chicken soup treatment of colds.
But the popular understanding of comfort food means the dish must be warming, it better be rich, creamy, cheesy, saucy or all of the above. Just like the ten recipes below.
You don’t have to suffer from a cold to enjoy comforting chicken soup, especially lovely in a colder season. The best chicken soup is made from whole chicken carcass, with my Grandma’s unique ingredient. Also, butchers tend to give away chicken carcasses for free!
Chicken soup with noodles
RECIPE
What is it about minced meat dishes that is so comforting? I think it takes us back to our childhood fave dinners, nothing too spicy, nothing chewy or biting but rather happily munching baby goop. Nothing goopy about this meatloaf though: it’s deliciously flavoursome and wrapped in grown-up pancetta.
It doesn’t have to be creamy: green salsa will deliver plenty of comfort if it’s used to bake chicken filled enchiladas topped with cheese. Interesting how Mexican food delivers so much comfort in a cold climate!
Obviously, this is a dish that inhabits top comfort lists everywhere. My recipe is sneakily healthier than the rest, with added fibre in the form of leeks. But I’d argue that the taste is enhanced too with that addition.
Fish pie always makes me feel blissfully happy, maybe it’s because it’s rich and comforting, but still fish after all so not as frighteningly calorific as a meat pie. My version features sliced potatoes topping the fish instead of mash – a bonus for the weird people who don’t like mash.
A vegetarian comfort dish with copious amounts of cheese and a no-effort creamy sauce made with white wine and crème fraiche. It’s assembled a little like a lasagne, with alternating potato and leek layers, and it’s so delicious you might make double the amount and freeze a tray.
Another Mexican/Texan classic with a capacity to make us happy. What’s better than a huge vat of simmering chilli on the hob, with or without beans? I’m in the bean party, and my recipe gives you the option to cook beans from scratch, use tinned ones or do both.
This gratin is a spin on dauphinoise potatoes, with sliced fennel and spuds baked in a creamy, cheesy sauce. It is very rich so might well constitute your main course, with just a green salad for accompaniment.
Potato and fennel gratin
RECIPE
One pan dish ready in minutes, it’s vegetarian and it has masses of molten cheese on top, it’s pleasantly spiced up and delicious. What more would you want from a lentil recipe? You can use lentils from tins but cooking them from scratch is much better value and very easy.
Spicy cheesy lentils bake
RECIPE
Some might say any cake is a comfort food and I’d largely agree with them. Brownie though is in a league of its own I believe – this simple, classic recipe beats all the fancy-pants ones.