Our suggestions for what to cook this weekend include recipes for my grandmother’s French toast, Terence’s chicken schnitzel burger with creamy pickle mayo, bacon, cabbage and tomato, and a Moroccan lamb tagine with prunes and almonds recipe that we learnt to make in Morocco.
I’ve got a real mixed bag of easy recipes for delicious dishes for you in our latest edition of our random What to Cook this Weekend recipe series. The recipes include dishes that we love to cook, as well as some of the most popular recipes with our readers.
Don’t forget, if you don’t find any recipes below you like, there’s lots more cooking inspiration in our recipe archives, which are heaving with thousands of recipes. You can click top right of the page to search for recipes or you can browse recent recipes under Latest Recipes on the home page.
Now before I share our suggestions for what to cook this weekend, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is readers-supported. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting Grantourismo by buying a handcrafted KROK, the best mortar and pestle ever, 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 extra. Now let me share my ideas for what to cook this weekend.
What to Cook this Weekend – French Toast, Schnitzel, Tonkatsu and Tagine
Here are our What to Cook this Weekend suggestions for meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner for Saturday and Sunday.
Saturday Breakfast – Russian-Style French Toast Recipe for Grenki
My first suggestion for what to cook this weekend for Saturday breakfast is this Russian French toast recipe for the kind of ‘grenki’ that my Russian-Ukrainian baboushka and mother made me for breakfast as a child.
Grenki is the Russian take on French toast and not only is it incredibly easy to make, with only a handful of ingredients, it’s versatile. You could make this as a sweet French toast, with sugar honey, golden syrup or maple syrup, or sour cream and stewed berries or fruit jam.
Or you can make a savoury French toast with cherry tomatoes and feta, go Russian-style with smoked salmon, dill pickles, sour cream, and fresh dill, or as a side to a grilled breakfast of sausages, ham and tomatoes.
It’s a great way to use up stale bread (we have more stale bread recipes here), but if you prefer eggs for breakfast, browse our Weekend Eggs series for hundreds of egg dishes from around the world.
Russian French Toast Recipe for Grenki Just Like My Russian Grandmother Made
Saturday Lunch – Chicken Schnitzel Burgers with Creamy Pickle Mayo and Bacon, Cabbage and Tomato
Next on my list of recipe ideas for you for what to cook this weekend for Saturday lunch is one of our best burger recipes, this chicken schnitzel burger with creamy pickle mayo, bacon, cabbage and tomato.
First you’ll need to make the chicken schnitzel, which we love to serve with this amazing warm potato salad recipe with anchovies, capers, chives and celery leaves. Crispy on the outside and moist and flavourful to bite into, the chicken schnitzel and potato salad make a very hearty yet simple dish.
But even better are the leftovers squeezed into this chicken schnitzel burger, served with our amazing hand-cut spicy potato wedges. We have a recipe for a sweet chilli sauce to go with those. I also think our homemade Sriracha is fantastic with the wedges.
Chicken Schnitzel Burger Recipe with Creamy Pickle Mayo and Bacon, Cabbage and Tomato
Saturday Dinner – Simple Succulent Braised Chicken
I suggest this easy French style braised chicken recipe for what to cook this weekend for Sunday dinner. 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 enjoyed our Spanish style braised chicken with olives and capers or Italian roast chicken recipe with peppers and leeks, you’ll love this.
Serve it with crunchy Hassleback potatoes or creamy mashed potatoes, or caramelised Brussels sprouts or blistered green beans. We also have more recipes for vegetable side dishes here. 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
Sunday Breakfast – Crab Omelette Recipe for a Decadent Vietnamese Inspired Crab Omelette
One of our best omelette recipes, this crab omelette recipe is my best suggestion for what to cook this weekend for Sunday breakfast or brunch. It makes for a decadent weekend eggs dish that’s perfect if you’re just back from an early morning shop at the fish markets, armed with luxurious fresh crab meat.
It was Terence’s inaugural recipe for Weekend Eggs, the Asian series some years ago and he adapted it from Charmaine Solomon’s The Complete Asian Cookbook which used to be on our bookshelves in Sydney for years and saw a lot of use. It’s a classic in the Australian-Asian kitchen.
Solomon calls it a Vietnamese crab omelette, however, in all our travels through Vietnam — we lived there for a short time and I’ve hosted culinary tours there — we’ve never seen an omelette like this, so we tend to call it ‘Vietnamese inspired’. This crab omelette is a little sweet, a little spicy, and very, very moreish.
Sunday Lunch – Japanese Tonkatsu Recipe
Terence’s tonkatsu recipe is another one of my top suggestions for what to cook this weekend if you’re looking for a special meal for Sunday lunch. It makes the most tender Japanese deep-fried pork cutlet you’ll ever taste.
This Japanese favourite can be made with either pork (katsu), tenderloin (hire katsu) or sirloin (rosu katsu) but we prefer pork tenderloin. Make double and you can use the leftovers to make this tonkatsu fried rice with onsen eggs recipe or tonkatsu burgers (use this katsu burger recipe).
Tonkatsu wouldn’t be tonkatsu without a tonkatsu sauce and Terence’s recipe is a simple one – although we’ve seen recipes with more than a dozen ingredients such as the amazing tonkatsu sauce recipe in our friend Jane Lawson’s cookbook Zenbu Zen.
The reason to keep this simple is that you’ll only ever use this sauce with the tonkatsu. While store-bought tonkatsu sauces can be just fine, many brands tend to be expensive and this tonkatsu sauce recipe can be made with ingredients you’ll probably have at home.
Tonkatsu Recipe for the Most Tender Juicy Japanese Deep Fried Pork Cutlet Ever
Sunday Dinner – Moroccan Lamb Tagine with Prunes and Almonds Recipe
Lastly, on my list of suggestions for what to cook this weekend is this Moroccan lamb tagine with prunes and almonds recipe. Terence learnt to make this traditional Moroccan lamb tagine from Jamila, the lovely cook at the Marrakech riad we settled into for our two weeks in Marrakech on the yearlong grand tour that launched this site in February 2010.
Morocco was the first stop on that 12-month trip, which was aimed at inspiring you all to travel more slowly, locally and experientially, forms of travel we’d long believed were more immersive, engaging and interactive, and therefore more meaningful and more memorable. Cooking food, slow food, was a big part of that project.
In the Moroccan edition of Weekend Eggs Terence wrote about how there were many different versions of chakchouka. Well, that’s nothing compared to the variations of tagine in Morocco. You won’t find two cooks who’ll agree on exactly what should go into a tagine as most follow their own family’s recipes, finely tuned in their ancestors kitchens over many generations.
That means you shouldn’t feel pressured to follow the recipe exactly, even if it’s brilliant and turns out every single time. It’s been one of our most popular recipes since we published it that year. But if you can’t source lamb, you could also try this classic chicken tagine with preserved lemons and olives. Also very delicious!
Moroccan Lamb Tagine with Prunes and Almonds Recipe from Marrakech
Please do let us know in the comments section below if you make any of our recipes for what to cook this weekend as we always love to hear how our recipes turn out for you.
