Pork Stroganoff Recipe for Tender Pork Made with the Chinese Velveting Technique. Friday night dinner ideas. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Friday Night Dinner Ideas If You Want Dinner In To Feel Like Dinner Out

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Our Friday night dinner ideas for a restaurant style meal at home if you want your dinner in to feel more like a dinner out, include everything from my melt-in-the-mouth pork Stroganoff and shoestring fries to a Mediterranean style succulent braised chicken and olives, which we love to serve with chicken jus and crunchy Hassleback potatoes.

My Friday night dinner ideas include a sublime pork Stroganoff with crispy shoestring fries (one of my best Stroganoff recipes), a gorgeous juicy soy ginger chicken with an Asian slaw (or Chinese greens), succulent braised chicken with olives and capers, which I recommend serving with hasselback potatoes, and juicy pan-roasted, brined and marinated pork chops.

If you’re like me and missing those Friday nights back in the day when you’d have dinner reservations at a fancy restaurant in the city, then why not try one of my Friday night dinner ideas for a restaurant quality meal in that feels more like a dinner out.

All of these recipes make comforting home-cooked dishes that can be served as hearty shared family meals on a Sunday night – or on a Friday evening can elegantly plated on your best porcelain and served with the good cutlery and linen napkins for a posh meal in.

Whether you’re exhausted or just lacking the energy to go out, you’re feeling the pinch from this cost-of-living crisis, or maybe you or a family member are immunocompromised and a restaurant meal just isn’t worth the risk, try one of our Friday night dinner ideas instead.

Bonus: you don’t need to dress up (although you could), no need to find parking or pay exorbitant parking fees, you can play whatever music you like in the background, no need to wait patiently for something to explain the menu to you, and no need to tip anyone.

Now before I share our Friday night dinner ideas for restaurant style meals at home, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-supported. If you’ve cooked our recipes and enjoyed them, please consider supporting Grantourismo by supporting our epic Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreonbuying a handcrafted KROK, the best mortar and pestle ever; or buying something from our Grantourismo store such as gifts for food lovers designed with Terence’s images.

Other ways to support the site include using links on our site to buy travel insurancebook accommodation, book a tour on Get Your Guide, or buy something on Amazon, such as these cookbooks for culinary travellers or classic cookbooks for serious cooks. We may earn a small commission but you won’t pay any extra. Here are my Friday night dinner ideas for a restaurant style meal at home.

Friday Night Dinner Ideas for a Restaurant Style Meal at Home

Our Friday night dinner ideas for restaurant style meals at home if you’d like your dinner in to feel more like a dinner out.

Pork Stroganoff Recipe for Tender Pork Made with the Chinese Velveting Technique

Topping our list of Friday night dinner ideas for restaurant style meals at home is my pork Stroganoff recipe for an umami-rich, melt-in-the-mouth pork Stroganoff. The silky, tender-soft texture of the pork comes courtesy of the Chinese velveting technique.

The Chinese cooking method calls for marinating and pre-cooking the pork before stir-frying and braising the pork with mushrooms in a richly-spiced sour cream-based sauce. My inspiration was Shanghai’s East-West Haipai cuisine so it’s a dish with an exotic history, albeit a partly imagined one!

If you enjoyed my richly spiced chicken Stroganoff recipe and you’re a lover of Chinese cuisines and dishes made with the Chinese velveting technique – such as the popular stir-fried pork with mushrooms that partly inspired this dish – you’ll love this pork Stroganoff, especially with crispy shoestring fries, a classic beef Stroganoff side, and a garden salad.

It won’t look as fancy on the white porcelain plates, but I also have a recipe for a rustic meatball Stroganoff and a mushroom Stroganoff recipe for a vegetarian take on the traditional beef Stroganoff.

Pork Stroganoff Recipe for Tender Pork Made with the Chinese Velveting Technique

 

Soy Ginger Chicken Recipe for Sticky, Flavourful and Succulent Chicken Thighs

Terence’s soy ginger chicken recipe will make you sticky, flavourful and succulent chicken thighs that are fantastic with steamed rice, Chinese greens or an Asian salad, such as this Burmese slaw, and it’s another of best Friday night dinner ideas for restaurant style meals at home.

We’ve been cooking a lot of chicken recently as the prices of pork and beef have gone through the roof. While we love perfectly poached chicken breasts, we really love grilling chicken thighs as they stay so moist all the way through cooking, even when you end up with a smoky-flavoured char on the chicken skin and meat.

We generally use this Thai Soy sauce but for this soy ginger sauce we want something heavier to impart more flavour into the chicken, so our preference is the ubiquitous Japanese Kikkoman Soy Sauce, which is darker and saltier. The chicken can be marinated from one hour up to 24 hours before cooking, then it can be done on a pan, grill or barbecue.

A tip: make sure to use a good digital kitchen thermometer to check that your chicken is cooked through and reaches an internal temperature of 74°C (165°F).

Soy Ginger Chicken Recipe for Sticky, Flavourful and Succulent Chicken Thighs

Braised Chicken with Olives and Capers Recipe for Juicy Mediterranean Style Chicken

Our Spanish braised chicken with olives and capers recipe makes incredibly succulent chicken legs in a Mediterranean style with a couple of surprising Asian ingredients, and it’s easily another of top Friday night dinner ideas for a restaurant quality meal at home.

Adapted from a recipe by Australian chef Martin Benn, it’s one of our best chicken recipes, a foolproof set-and-forget chicken dish that no matter how long you leave it or reheat it the chicken remains juicy.

We love to serve it with a chicken jus and my crunchy Hassleback potatoes made with baby potatoes (also called new potatoes, which cook faster than standard potatoes), and this radish cucumber salad with feta, rucola and fresh herbs.

Alternatively, you could serve these succulent chicken legs with creamy mashed potatoes or even a warm German potato salad. Germany is not on the Mediterranean, we know, but, trust me, it works. As the braised chicken is done with Japanese soy sauce and mirin, this fragrant fresh herb salad also makes a fab side.

Braised Chicken with Olives and Capers Recipe for Juicy Mediterranean Style Chicken

 

Pan-Roasted Brined and Marinated Pork Chops Recipe

Terence’s pan-roasted, brined and marinated pork chops recipe makes some of the juiciest pork chops you’ll ever taste. It’s a recipe that defies the notion that pork chops are generally dry and bland, and it’s another of top Friday night dinner ideas for restaurant style meals at home.

Using a simple brining technique combined with a spicy marinade, the bland pork chop is transformed into a succulent and zesty main course. Brining the pork keeps the meat moist and marinating adds flavour.

If you’re not familiar with brining, a basic brine is a salt-water solution, but Terence always adds an equal amount of sugar to match the salt. That additional sweetness works beautifully for the pork.

The marinade gives the meat extra flavour, particularly when using Asian spices, which are more bold than European flavours. While an Italian potato salad is perfect on the side, in winter months it’s hard to beat creamy mashed potatoes.

Pan-Roasted Brined and Marinated Pork Chops Recipe – How to Make the Juiciest Pork Chops Ever

 

Easy Braised Chicken Recipe with Chicken Jus

How about this easy braised chicken recipe with chicken jus for your fancy Friday night dinner in? Our recipe makes the juiciest chicken with crispy skin from just seven ingredients – stock, olive oil, lemon, garlic, a homemade chicken seasoning, and butter.

One of our best chicken recipes, it’s a foolproof dish with little work required other than basting. Whether you cook the chicken on high, go low and slow, or reheat it, the chicken remains succulent.

Serve with chicken jus and sides of vegetables. If you made and enjoyed our Spanish style braised chicken with olives and capers, above, or our Italian roast chicken recipe with peppers and leeks, and enjoyed those, then you’ll love this.

This is also wonderful with crunchy Hassleback potatoes or creamy mashed potatoes or vegetable side dishes such caramelised Brussels sprouts or blistered green beans. If the weather’s warm where you are, you could opt for a simple fragrant herb salad or this radish cucumber salad with feta, rucola and fresh herbs on the side.

Easy Braised Chicken Recipe with Lemon and Garlic and Delicious Chicken Jus

 

Japanese Tonkatsu Recipe for Tender Juicy Deep Fried Pork Cutlets

This Japanese tonkatsu recipe makes the most tender, melt-in-your-mouth, deep-fried pork cutlet that you’ll ever taste and it’s another of our best Friday night dinner ideas for restaurant style meals at home, especially if you love dining out on Japanese.

We first appreciated what a great dish tonkatsu could be on our second trip to Tokyo 13 years ago, almost mid-way through the year-long global grand tour that launched this website. We were at a very tranquil tonkatsu restaurant at sleek Roppongi Hills where we ate the perfectly deep-fried, breaded pork cutlet in silence. Sigh…

Our recipe will make you that simple but revered deep-fried Japanese pork dish, which has an amazing crunch from the golden panko breadcrumbs crust, incredibly moist pork, and the tangy taste of the tonkatsu sauce.

While store-bought tonkatsu sauces can be just fine, many brands tend to be very expensive, and this tonkatsu sauce recipe can be made with ingredients that you’ll probably have at home. We love to serve this Japanese potato salad recipe or Japanese-style cabbage, cucumber and sesame salad on the side.

Tonkatsu Recipe for the Most Tender Juicy Japanese Deep Fried Pork Cutlet Ever

Published 3 February 2022; Updated and Republished 22 March 2024

Please do let us know in the comments below if you cook any of our Friday night dinner ideas for restaurant style meals at home as we’d love to hear how they turned out for you.

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A travel and food writer who has experienced over 70 countries and written for The Guardian, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Feast, Delicious, National Geographic Traveller, Conde Nast Traveller, Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, DestinAsian, TIME, CNN, The Independent, The Telegraph, Sunday Times Travel Magazine, AFAR, Wanderlust, International Traveller, Get Lost, Four Seasons Magazine, Fah Thai, Sawasdee, and more, as well as authored more than 40 guidebooks for Lonely Planet, DK, Footprint, Rough Guides, Fodors, Thomas Cook, and AA Guides.

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