Plat Easy difficulty Kitchen
Blanquette de Veau
The dish France votes for when asked. White, creamy, undefeated — the no-browning rule, the proper egg liaison, and the gentle heat throughout.
French main dishes
13 recipes. The centerpiece of the table: stews, roasts, one-pots and the bistro classics that built the reputation.
Plat Easy difficulty 
Plat Medium difficulty Kitchen
Bœuf Bourguignon
Beef shoulder simmered three hours in Burgundy wine until the wine becomes the sauce — the Burgundy monument this site somehow reached 142 articles deep without, so here it is at last.
Plat Medium difficulty Kitchen
Coq au Vin
Rooster stewed in wine, because patience was cheaper than tenderness. The braise decoded: browning order, wine math, and exactly when it's done.
Plat Easy difficulty Kitchen
Croque-Monsieur
Ham and cheese toast under a hat of béchamel, inside and out — the Paris hot sandwich of 1910 whose truffled upgrade is the only four-euro menu supplement that has ever earned its keep.
Plat Easy difficulty Kitchen
Endives au Jambon
Belgian endives braised sweet, rolled in ham and buried under nutmeg béchamel — the dish every French child swore to hate at eight and quietly demands at thirty-five.
Plat Easy difficulty Kitchen
Hachis Parmentier
France's shepherd's pie: yesterday's leftovers formally promoted to a national dish, under a thick ridge of potato you can draw on with a fork.
Plat Easy difficulty Kitchen
Moules Marinière
One pot, fifteen minutes. Belgium claims the frites; France keeps the pot. A marinière that tastes of wine, shallots and the Atlantic, no cream.
Plat Medium difficulty Kitchen
Poule au Pot
Henri IV promised a hen in every pot. Six centuries on, the Béarn still stuffs, poaches and serves the bird whole — broth first, hen after.
Plat Easy difficulty Kitchen
Ratatouille
Provençal vegetables sautéed one pan at a time, then married — the rule that separates a ratatouille from a compote, whatever the rat in the film told you.
Plat Easy difficulty Kitchen
Salade Niçoise
Nice has one rule for its famous salad: nothing cooked. The city has defended it for a century, and lost the argument almost everywhere else.
Plat Easy difficulty Kitchen
Soupe au Pistou
A summer vegetable soup finished at the table with crushed basil, garlic and oil. No pine nuts, no consensus, every family certain it's right.
Base Plat
The foundations behind the french main dishes — techniques every recipe above quietly depends on.
Plat Easy difficulty Technique
Purée de Pommes de Terre
France's mashed potato: fork-crushed, dried over the flame, finished with salted butter — and never, under any circumstances, allowed near a food processor.
Plat Hard difficulty Sauce
Sauce Hollandaise
Butter, yolks and acid balanced on sixty degrees of margin — the warm emulsion that crowns asparagus and haunts apprentice cooks. Feared, famous, and entirely fixable.