10 Most Popular Recipes of July 2023 – Recipes Our Readers Are Cooking

The 10 most popular recipes of July 2023 included everything from my Russian-Ukrainian family recipes, such as this salmon potato salad recipe with soft-boiled eggs, capers, gherkins and dill and my authentic beef Stroganoff recipe to Cambodian recipes from our adopted home here in Siem Reap, such as a traditional nom banh chok recipe and classic fish amok recipe.

In response to requests from readers, we’re bringing back our series of the 10 most popular recipes of the month, which has been on hiatus. Many of our long-term readers got in touch to say they were missing this series and our What to Cook series, so we’ve decided to reinstate both series.

We’ve also had our new newsletter on hiatus, because we both had Covid and it’s been a slow recovery, and something had to give. We’re resuming our newsletters this week, so if you haven’t joined yet, please sign-up to receive our new regular newsletter using the subscribe form at the bottom of this post.

Now before I share our 10 most popular recipes of July 2023, 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 Patreon, which you can do for as little as the price of a coffee.

If you’re planning a trip, you could use links on our site to purchase travel insurance, rent a car, book accommodation, book a tour on Get Your Guide or buy something on Amazon, such as these cookbooks for culinary travellers, classic cookbooks for serious cooks, or travel books to inspire wanderlust.

Alternatively, you could buy a handcrafted KROK, the best mortar and pestle ever; buy something from our Grantourismo store such as gifts for food lovers designed with Terence’s images; or buy us a coffee and we’ll use our coffee money to buy cooking ingredients for recipe testing.

With any of those purchases, we earn a small commission but you won’t pay any extra. Now let me share our 10 most popular recipes of July 2023.

10 Most Popular Recipes of July 2023 – Recipes Our Readers Are Cooking

Here are our 10 most popular recipes of July 2023 – the recipes our readers searched for, spent the most time on, and cooked.

Salmon Potato Salad Recipe with Soft-Boiled Eggs

My salmon potato salad recipe with soft-boiled eggs, capers, gherkins and dill makes my take on one of our Russian-Ukrainian family recipes so it was very cool to see it on the list of our 10 most popular recipes of July 2023.

It makes a filling salad that you can eat year-round. In the cool season, you can serve it with warm potatoes and seared salmon straight from the pan, while it can be refrigerated for warm weather meals, such as summer barbecues and spring picnics.

I really love a salad you can eat all year. You can work quickly and combine the potatoes, pan-seared salmon and soft-boiled eggs while they’re still warm if you’re eating this in cool or cold weather.

Or if you’re making this salmon potato salad recipe for picnics, barbecues or summer meals, then follow the instructions below and refrigerate it. This salad is fantastic chilled or warm, which is something I love in a salad.

Russian Salmon Potato Salad Recipe with Soft-Boiled Eggs, Gherkins, Capers and Dill

Authentic Beef Stroganoff Recipe

My authentic beef Stroganoff recipe topped our list of the 10 most popular recipes of July 2023, which is not surprising, as it’s long been one of the most popular recipes on Grantourismo.

Best known as a retro classic of the 1970s, beef Stroganoff is an old aristocratic Russian dish that is rich in history. Democratised and popularised in the cafeterias of the Soviet Union, beef Stroganoff travelled the world with Russian émigrés, exiles and World War II refugees, including my Russian grandfather and Ukrainian grandmother.

One of my best Stroganoff recipes – I also have recipes for chicken Stroganoff, mushroom Stroganoff, meatball Stroganoff and pork Stroganoff – beef Stroganoff is fantastic with traditional Stroganoff sides such as crispy shoestring fries, mashed potatoes or a crisp garden salad, plus homemade dill pickles and sour cream.

Dishes are rarely eaten alone when a Russian-Ukrainian family gathers. For our Sunday meals and holiday feasts, such as Orthodox Easter, baboushka would prepare a whole spread of dishes, such as borscht, piroshki, Russian pelmeni and Ukrainian vareniki, stuffed cabbage rolls, a beetroot potato salad, and chicken kotleti.

Authentic Russian Beef Stroganoff Recipe for a Retro Classic from a Saint Petersburg Palace Kitchen

Nom Banh Chok Recipe for Khmer Noodles

Cambodian food has such a special place in our hearts, having spent almost a decade here, researching and writing our epic Cambodian cookbook and culinary history, so I was thrilled to see not one but two Cambodian dishes land on this list of 10 most popular recipes of July 2023.

Nom banh chok, also written as nom banhchok, which is both the name of the fresh rice noodles and the dish itself, is an ancient Khmer specialty that has influenced so many other dishes around Southeast Asia, from Thailand’s khanom jeen to a Southern Vietnamese Khmer dish from the Mekong Delta called bún kèn.

There are a handful of types of nom banh chok but our authentic nom banh chok recipe for Cambodia’s beloved ‘Khmer Noodles’ makes nom banh chok samlor proher, a popular breakfast dish of the rice noodles doused in a yellow-green coconut-based fish curry, garnished with fragrant herbs, seasonal vegetables, edible flowers, and wild herbs.

Authentic Nom Banh Chok Recipe for Cambodia’s Beloved Khmer Noodles

Traditional Cambodian Fish Amok Recipe

Our traditional Cambodian fish amok recipe was next on our list of the 10 most popular recipes of July 2023, which makes me especially excited, seeing most of my days are spent researching Cambodian cuisine and writing a Cambodian cookbook.

Our fish amok recipe makes an authentic steamed fish curry to a classic recipe from an older generation of cooks who believe that if it’s not properly steamed, then it’s not amok trei. ‘Amok’ means to steam in banana leaves and ‘trei’ means fish in Cambodia’s Khmer language.

While the dish is eaten by all Cambodians on all kinds of occasions – the firm consistency and banana leaf wrapping made it convenient for farmers to take it out to the rice paddies for a midday deal, while the sumptuous texture and rich taste made it a wedding party favourite – it’s thought that this refined dish is a Royal Khmer specialty dating as far back as the Khmer Empire.

Cambodian Fish Amok Recipe for an Authentic Steamed Fish Curry in the Old Style

Baked Meatballs Recipe with Middle Eastern Baharat Seven Spices

My easy baked meatballs recipe will make you tender juicy meatballs flavoured with the spice blend baharat or seven spices. It’s one of my favourite Middle Eastern recipes and one of our best meatball recipes. If you enjoyed our beef kofta recipe but find squeezing the mince around a skewer fiddly (some do) you’ll love these little meatballs.

The meatballs can be formed in minutes and due to their small size bake quickly in the oven, remaining wonderfully moist. They’re also very versatile.

If you don’t like baharat, you could even use another spice mix, such as Ras el Hanout or keep the seasoning simple, and go for some sumac or Aleppo pepper.

You can serve them with toothpicks at a social gathering or eat them as an appetiser or a main with Middle Eastern dips hummus and baba ganoush and salads such as fattoush and tabbouleh.

I love to roll the meatballs up in soft warm pita bread spread with carrot hummus or beetroot hummus and sprinkled with loads of fresh mint and parsley. They’re also fantastic stuffed into crispy baguettes on layers of hummus, shredded lettuce and pickles for a Middle Eastern style banh mi.

Easy Baked Meatballs Recipe with Middle Eastern Baharat Seven Spices

Authentic Mexican Guacamole Recipe

This authentic Mexican guacamole recipe was next on the list of our 10 most popular recipes of July 2023, which was so cool to see, as it’s another recipe that we added during our time in Mexico for Terence’s series called The Dish.

For that series, he cooked the quintessential dishes of the places we settled into for two weeks at a time on the 2010 yearlong global grand tour that launched Grantourismo, aimed at promoting slow, local and experiential travel.

Our recipe makes a genuine Mexican guacamole of the kind your Mexican abuela (grandma) might make – the kind that’s made table-side at good restaurants in Mexico. It’s all about the creamy luscious texture, bright green colour and full flavour of perfectly ripe avocados

I’ve been making this authentic Mexican guacamole recipe for almost 30 years, since we tasted our first genuine guacamole in Mexico City on our inaugural trip to Mexico in the mid-Nineties. We became so smitten with that sublime guacamole that was so much simpler yet far superior to the one I’d been making, that we adapted a guacamole ritual and I’ve been making it ever since.

Whether you use a Mexican mortar and pestle called a molcajete or not is much-debated. In Mexico City, chef Martha Ortiz said it was essential, while our cooking instructor in San Miguel de Allende was adamant it wasn’t. As most of our readers outside Mexico probably won’t have a molcajete, the recipe calls for a fork. You could also use a Southeast Asian granite mortar and pestle.

Authentic Mexican Guacamole Recipe Just Like Your Mexican Abuela Would Make

Classic Burmese Chicken Curry Recipe for an Aromatic Tomato Based Curry

This classic Burmese chicken curry recipe makes a fragrant gently-spiced curry that is perfumed with turmeric, ginger, garlic, chilli, and lemongrass. A rich curry with a moreish tomato-based gravy and a layer of aromatic oil that’s quickly soaked up by coconut rice, it should be served with zingy salads and a relish or two.

If you could only make one Burmese curry and asked me choose for you from this classic Burmese chicken curry and the Burmese Indian style chicken curry recipe that we recently shared, it would be impossible. I’d have to tell you to make both as they are equally delicious, especially if you’re a lover of Burmese curries.

I’ve adapted this classic Burmese chicken curry recipe from my favourite Burmese cookbook, Mi Mi Khaing’s Cook and Entertain the Burmese Way, dating to 1978. It’s a delightful little booklet written in a charming style that is as much a historical document as it is a practical cookbook.

If you enjoy this curry, we’ve also shared Mi Mi Khaing’s homemade curry powder, the Indian-style Burmese curry I linked to above, Burmese street food-style fried chicken, Burmese coconut rice, Burmese raw cabbage salad, a Shan vermicelli noodle salad and a Shan tomato salad recipe. The coconut rice and salads are wonderful with this curry.

Classic Burmese Chicken Curry Recipe for an Aromatic Tomato Based Curry

Cambodian Grilled Corn Recipe for Poat Dot with a Delicious Coconut Milk Sauce

Our Cambodian grilled corn recipe makes poat dot, a Cambodian street food snack of smoky barbecued corn on the cob brushed with a delightfully sweet and salty sauce made from coconut milk, fish sauce and spring onions. It’s one of our favourite corn recipes and it was another one of our 10 most popular recipes of July.

Hugely popular during corn season (and with good reason!), the corn cobs are continually brushed with a delightfully creamy salty-sweet sauce as it’s being barbecued. While I love eating this on the street I prefer making it at home. It’s super easy.

When you make this street food favourite yourself, you can not only cook the corn to your liking – we prefer our corn cobs more charred than they’re sold on the street – but you can also make sure you get the sauce balanced to your taste (it’s often too sweet for me when done on the street) and you can serve extra sauce on the side.

Since we’ve lived in Cambodia, Terence has grilled our corn (among other things) over a traditional clay brazier just like most Cambodians do at home and street food vendors do on the streets. He loves his coconut charcoal BBQ briquettes.

When we can’t cook outside, we use this stovetop Korean BBQ grill pan or this griddle pan on the stove as I did when I made these. If we were in Australia, I know Terence would be using one of these outdoor barbecue or grills if he could.

Cambodian Grilled Corn Recipe for Poat Dot with a Delicious Coconut Milk Sauce

Rice Congee with Pork Meatballs Recipe for Khao Dtom Moo Suup

This rice congee with pork meatballs recipe for khao dtom moo suup makes a very satisfying bowl of rice porridge bobbing with flavoursome pork meatballs, topped with chilli oil and crunchy fried shallots, and garnished with loads of fresh fragrant herbs.

You’re going to love this rice congee with pork meatballs – especially if you’re a lover of rice bowl meals and you’ve made and enjoyed our other Southeast Asian congee recipes, such as this Thai rice soup with shredded chicken and this Cambodian rice soup with meatballs.

Rice porridges and rice soups – or congees as they’re called in China, which is almost certainly where they originated – are made all over Southeast Asia, especially here in Cambodia, and in neighbouring Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Laos and we just love them. It’s no surprise this was another of our 10 most popular recipes of July.

This rice congee with pork meatballs recipe is based on a recipe of the same name in Thai-Lao-American chef James Syhabout’s delightful cookbook Hawker Fare, Stories and Recipes from a Refugee Chef’s Isan Thai and Lao Roots. I’ve just made a few tweaks to the chef’s recipe.

Rice Congee with Pork Meatballs Recipe for Khao Dtom Moo Suup

Buckwheat Kasha Recipe with Bacon, Caramelised Onions, Mushrooms and Eggs

This comforting Russian buckwheat kasha recipe with caramelised onions, bacon lardons, pan-fried mushrooms, and soft-boiled eggs makes my hearty take on my baboushka’s traditional Russian breakfast and it was another of our 10 most popular recipes of July 2023.

Despite the rustic appearance, it’s perhaps the least traditional of all my Russian family recipes but it’s one of my favourite recipes. Although I have to confess that of all the traditional Russian breakfasts my baboushka used to make – French toast, blini, potato cakes, and buckwheat pancakes – kasha was my least favourite breakfast as a child.

As a little kid, it was the strange smell that put me off more than the nutty taste of the ancient grain, and it wasn’t until I was a young adult going to Sydney University and visiting my grandparents for overnight stays that I finally got kasha and I’ve loved it ever since.

The key ingredient of this savoury porridge (kasha) is buckwheat groats (grechka). While based on my Russian grandmother’s recipe, I’ve spiced things up. My baboushka put chopped-up hard-boiled eggs on top, whereas I use soft-boiled eggs and also serve it with a dollop of sour cream, diced gherkins, and plenty of fresh fragrant dill.

Comforting Russian Buckwheat Kasha Recipe with Bacon, Caramelised Onions, Mushrooms and Eggs

Please let us know in the comments below if you make any of the recipes in this round-up of our most popular recipes of July 2023 as we’d love to hear how they turn out for you.