Although there are many people who eat only one dish each day, all nutritionists recommend that as usual, we always have a first course, a main course and a dessert. To help you prepare your menus, today we wanted to collect these 37 quick and easy first course recipesso that you have them at hand and serve as inspiration.
As you will see below, we have organized this selection of our first courses and starters according to the type of food or type of preparationthus classifying our first courses into soups and creams, legume dishes, vegetables, pasta and rice dishes, salad recipes and finally another group that we have called other first courses.
We think that this way you can organize your six-day menu and we leave the seventh day free so that you can use it with the leftovers that have accumulated, a more forceful single-dish meal or, for example, an outing to eat away from home.
37 quick and easy first course recipes
We have tried to ensure that all the recipes are simple, easy to prepare and with not very complicated ingredients, and that its elaboration is not very long so that you give yourself time to other things without these first recipes occupying you all morning. Bon Appetite.
a) Appetizing soups and creams
homemade chicken soup
Peel and clean all the vegetables. We do the same with the meat, discarding any remaining viscera that the chicken or hen may have. Put everything in a large saucepan and cover with water. Once it starts to boil, we can lower the heat and make the broth slowly, approximately for 2 hours.
Remove the meat and vegetables from the pot and strain the broth. At this time we can refrigerate the broth until the next day, which will help us defat it better, or carefully scoop out the fat with a spoon, if we want to make the soup immediately.
We crush the vegetables and add a couple of tablespoons to the chicken broth. Thanks to the carrot, the chicken soup will have a nice tone. We heat the broth and when it starts to boil add the noodles and salt, lower the heat and leave until we like the pasta done. We serve immediately with the crumbled meat.
Full recipe | homemade chicken soup
BRA PRIOR – Pot for stews, Black, 20 cm, suitable for all types of stoves including induction
Other recipes for soups and creams
b) First vegetable dishes
Recipe of rice beans with vegetables
- Ingredients: 2 Cloves of Garlic, 1/2 Onion, 2 Carrots, 1 Potato, Sweet Paprika, 4 g, Laurel 1 leaf, 250 g Rice Beans (soaked 12 hours), Vegetable broth or water, 500 ml
- Elaboration: Heat a little extra virgin olive oil in a saucepan and poach the garlic cloves, peeled and chopped, and the onion, also peeled and finely chopped. When the onion is translucent, add the peeled and chopped carrot and potato, a teaspoon of paprika, the bay leaf and the vegetable broth (or water). Bring to a boil before adding the beans. Cook over low heat for an hour or until the beans are tender. We can add liquid during cooking if we see that they remain dry. Once cooked, season to taste. We can let them rest for a few hours or even until the next day. In any case we serve hot.
Full recipe | Rice beans with vegetables
Other vegetable recipes for first course
c) First courses of vegetables
Buttered Green Beans Recipe
- Ingredients: Flat green beans 200 g Abundant water for cooking Salt to taste Wheat flour 10 g Butter 15 g
- Elaboration: Making green beans that are very green, tasty and creamy may seem like a very simple task and it really is not a very difficult dish. However, making them a really delicious dish deserves a little explanation so that, -as has happened with me-, it changes your perception of this cheap and traditional dish that you can serve as a starter, use it for a light dinner or serve as side dish, instead of chips or other much higher-calorie side dishes. To begin, we clean the green beans by cutting off the tips or ends. We cook the green beans for exactly five minutes in salted water and as soon as that time has passed, we cool them in ice water to stop the cooking and set well that green color of the chlorophyll, which we will like much more than the usual khaki brown color or brown that they usually have. Once cooked and with that magnificent color, instead of cutting them into two or three transverse portions as usual, we are going to cut the beans lengthwise to obtain very, very thin or narrow beans that will cook/heat in a very short time in the second phase that I tell you now. In a pan, mix a glob of butter with half a tablespoon of flour and make a light roux. Next, we add a little of the water from the cooking of the beans until we obtain a very light cream, in which we heat the strips of green beans that will be coated or covered with that cream. And that’s it, they are ready to serve and surprise everyone with their color, their texture -somewhat al dente- and their flavor enhanced by that velouté or bechamel from the broth of the beans themselves.
Full recipe | Green beans in butter
Other vegetable recipes for the first course
d) Pasta and rice dishes
Wholemeal Kale and Mushroom Risotto Recipe
- Ingredients: 10 g of dried shiitake mushrooms, 1 small white onion, 1 clove of garlic, 140 g of brown rice, 100 ml of white wine, 600 ml of vegetable broth, 2 kale leaves, 20 g of butter, 40 g of Parmesan cheese, dried thyme, ground black pepper, salt and extra virgin olive oil.
- Elaboration: Put the mushrooms in a container with approximately 300 ml of water, stir and leave to rehydrate for at least 20 minutes. Drain and reserve the broth. Finely chop the onion and the garlic clove. Wash the kale leaves and cut into small pieces, discarding the central stem as it is somewhat tough. Heat the broth and keep it warm. Poach the onion with the clove of garlic in a wide saucepan, with a pinch of salt, leaving them to brown over low heat until they reduce in volume. Add the dry rice and stir for a minute. Add the wine and let the alcohol evaporate. Add the mushrooms, stir a few times and pour in their reserved broth. Lower the heat when it reaches a boil and keep the cooking constant but soft. Water little by little with the broth as the rice asks for it, without haste. The technique is the usual one for a regular risotto, but it will require a little more liquid and more time, depending on the variety of rice. Stir constantly, gently, to release the starch. When about 20 minutes have passed, add the cabbage. We can throw it before if we prefer it to be more tender. Continue cooking until the rice is ready, approximately 50 minutes in total. Add the chopped butter and freshly grated cheese. Check the salt level, add a little thyme and freshly ground black pepper.
Full recipe | Wholegrain kale and mushroom risotto
Other pasta and rice recipes
e) Salad recipes to enjoy
Perfect Mixed Salad Recipe and Dressing Trick
- Ingredients: Mezclum (mixture of lettuces) bag 1 Hard-boiled or boiled egg 1 Canned sweet corn 1 Canned white asparagus 4 Canned tuna belly 1 Grated carrot 1 Spring onion 1 Green olives (a jar) 1 Extra virgin olive oil Vinegar of Sherry Salt
- Elaboration: The first step is to make the vinaigrette, where we mix three parts of oil with one of vinegar and a pinch of salt in a jar that we can close and then we shake it vigorously until it emulsifies. Then, cook the egg —if it wasn’t already cooked— in plenty of boiling water for 10 minutes and then cool it in ice water. Peel and cut into slices. We also cut the spring onion into rings and grate the carrot if it is not grated. In the bowl that we are going to serve the salad, dress the salad with part of the vinaigrette and then add the hard-boiled egg, the sweet corn, the drained asparagus, the ventresca in pieces and also drained, the grated carrot, the olives, the spring onion and dress with the rest of the vinaigrette, ensuring that everything is well seasoned.
Full recipe | perfect mixed salad
Other salad recipes
f) Other first courses
Salmon and avocado tartar recipe
- Ingredients: 300 g of cleaned salmon, 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, juice of half a lemon, 1 teaspoon of soy sauce, 1 teaspoon of Perrins sauce, 30 g of tomato, 60 g of avocado , 30 g spring onion, salt.
- Elaboration. Cut the salmon with a good knife. Season with vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, soy sauce and perrins sauce. Season, cover with transparent paper and let marinate in the fridge for 30 minutes. Peel the onion, avocado and tomato and chop finely. After the rest time, we mix everything and taste the point of salt. We cover it again and let it rest a second time, in the fridge, for another 30 minutes.
Full recipe | Salmon and avocado tartar recipe
Other first course recipes
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