Food & Cooking Recipes 24 Fun Things to Cook When You're Bored in the Kitchen Get out of your culinary rut with a bunch of fun and delicious recipes. By Riley Wofford Riley Wofford Riley is an associate food editor for Martha Stewart Living. Editorial Guidelines Published on July 16, 2024 Close Photo: Julia Gartland We are all for incorporating tried-and-true, much-loved recipes into our weekly menus. But when you’re cooking day after day, sometimes you need to try something different to keep things fresh and interesting. If you need to get out of a rut and get your culinary groove back, we have a stellar lineup of fun things to cook. These recipes are guaranteed to breathe new life into your breakfast, lunch, and dinner routines. Many offer chances for the whole family to get involved threading food onto skewers or letting the kids get busy when you set up an assembly line of homemade egg rolls. Whether you’re looking to fill an afternoon or just want to enjoy your time in the kitchen, these recipes will fit the bill. 24 Fun Things to Bake—Including Cake, Cookies, Pretzels, and More 01 of 24 Giant Meatballs With Ricotta Bryan Gardner These aren’t your average meatballs. Each is approximately the size of a baseball–they’re almost like miniature meatloaves. An unusual ingredient goes into the meat mixture: ricotta! It keeps the meatballs light and fluffy as they bake and simmer in the marinara sauce. View Recipe 02 of 24 Bacon, Egg, and Toast Cups There’s even more to look forward to when breakfast comes in the form of an adorable, portable cup. Slices of sandwich bread toast in muffin cups to create a hand-held vessel for crispy bacon and baked eggs. All they need is a crack of salt and black pepper, and they’re ready to devour. View Recipe 03 of 24 Loaded Potato Bites Kana Okada Once the crispy potatoes come out of the oven, set up an assembly line to take care of the toppings. Each person can be responsible for the sour cream, cheddar cheese, bacon bits, and scallions, respectively. View Recipe 04 of 24 Fondue for Two Justin Walker Romance aside, there’s something extra special about fondue. This savory dip pairs nutty Gruyere with buttery fontina cheese to create the perfect scoopable texture. Serve it with sourdough croutons, roasted fingerling potatoes, sliced fennel and apples, salami, and breadsticks for dipping. View Recipe 05 of 24 Potato Gnocchi Sonia Bozzo Nothing beats homemade pasta, and if you’re a beginner, gnocchi is a great place to start. The soft, pillowy dumplings are made with mashed potato, flour, and eggs. If you have a gnocchi roller, you can easily create those unmistakable ridges, but a regular old fork will do nicely, too. View Recipe 06 of 24 Sheet-Pan Pizza Lennart Weibull Pizza is fun to make in any situation, whether wood-fired, grilled, or oven-baked. This sheet-pan variation is not only fun, but it’s also super easy. Little hands will enjoy stretching the dough to the edges of the pan and scattering the sausage on top. View Recipe 07 of 24 Beans-and-Greens Stuffed Peppers Johnny Miller From hollowing out the peppers to create edible vessels to deciding which filling you want to use, the old-school dish of stuffed peppers is always an enjoyable recipe to make. The plant-powered mixture that’s spooned into these sweet peppers is made with hearty Swiss chard, canned white beans, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and melty fontina cheese. View Recipe 08 of 24 Yogurt-Marinated Lamb and Chicken Skewers Bryan Gardner Kebabs are a fun and family-friendly way to get dinner on the table, whether made with chicken and lamb or with a medley of your favorite vegetables. Get the whole family involved—kids will enjoy (carefully) threading the chunks of meat, onions, and tomatoes onto the skewers. The coriander and sweet paprika-spiced yogurt help keep the meat tender. View Recipe If you’re using wooden skewers, soak them in water for at least 20 minutes before threading and grilling. Unlike metal skewers, they tend to burn easily–soaking beforehand helps combat the flames. 09 of 24 Skillet Chili Nachos Justin Walker Who doesn’t love a plate of nachos? Whip up a pot of our Easy Beef Chili, then set out to pick your toppings. Cheese is a must (use good melting cheeses like cheddar and Monterey Jack), but feel free to play around with the other components. You can add canned beans, corn kernels, and fresh toppings like sliced chiles, cilantro, and avocado. View Recipe 10 of 24 Mozzarella Sticks Bryan Gardner We don’t know what’s more fun—assembling these mozzarella sticks or breaking into the gooey centers after they’re fried. Be sure to warm up some marinara sauce to serve alongside for dipping. View Recipe 11 of 24 Instant Pot Shrimp Boil Julia Gartland Enjoying peel-and-eat shrimp is a whole experience. If serving a shrimp boil sounds like a lot, know that the Instant Pot does a lot of the heavy lifting, leaving you to enjoy the perfectly cooked shrimp, sausage, potatoes, and corn (and the flavorful broth they cook in). View Recipe 12 of 24 Savory Crepe Rollups Lennart Weibull Cooking crepes is a fun activity on its own, but adding fillings to create these bite-sized swirls is even better. Spread each crepe with some lemony cream cheese and top with slices of prosciutto and spears of blanched asparagus before rolling them up like a burrito. For an even more elegant variation, add sliced scallions to the cream cheese and replace the prosciutto and asparagus with smoked salmon. View Recipe 13 of 24 Ground Chicken Tacos Julia Gartland These chicken tacos are simple enough for a weeknight dinner and you can count on extra fun if you make your own taco shells. Simply brush corn tortillas with neutral vegetable oil, drape them over the grates in your oven, and bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit until they’re crunchy, 5 to 10 minutes. View Recipe 14 of 24 Beer-Battered Fish Fish sticks at home? Yes, please! The beer-infused batter creates a crisp, light-as-air coating on the pieces of white fish, and it can also be used for other foods like chicken tenders and onion rings. View Recipe 15 of 24 Grilled Spatchcocked Chicken Put your culinary skills to the test with this recipe for spatchcocked chicken. It’s easier than it sounds—just use kitchen shears to remove the backbone and flatten the bird. It makes grilling a whole chicken a breeze as the chicken cooks quicker and more evenly. View Recipe 16 of 24 Pull-Apart Sliders The Morrisons We love any food that comes in miniature form. To make these pull-apart sliders, assemble bite-size burger patties and slices of American cheese on a slab of Hawaiian sweet rolls. Since it’s all baked together, the sliders are ready to pull apart individually. View Recipe 17 of 24 Scrambled-Egg and Sausage Pocket Pastries Ngoc Minh Ngo These breakfast pastries are a blast from the past—with a savory twist. A combination of breakfast sausage, scrambled eggs, and sharp cheddar cheese is baked between layers of peppery whole wheat flour pastry dough. Perhaps the funnest part is creating a decorative crimped edge with the tines of a fork. View Recipe 18 of 24 Pork Egg Rolls We happen to find the process of rolling and assembling these egg rolls to be quite meditative and hope you will too. Start by making the flavorful ground pork, cabbage, and carrot filling, then roll it up in egg roll wrappers, and bake or fry. View Recipe 19 of 24 Grilled Whole Fish Romulo Yanes If you’re looking to switch up your seafood routine, why not try cooking a whole fish? It’s a fun new way to enjoy delicate white fish like branzino or trout. Depending on what you’re craving, you can fill the fish cavities with a combination of lemon and dill or lime, basil, and serrano chiles. View Recipe 20 of 24 Garlic Knots These might seem like a twisted tangle of pizza dough, but once you get the hang of it, making garlic knots is a blast. Brush the dough with olive oil and garlic and bake them at a high heat, just like you would with pizza. View Recipe 21 of 24 Chicken Cordon-Bleu Roll-Ups David Malosh If you want to wow dinner party guests and have fun in the kitchen at the same time, give this recipe a try. There’s a lot to enjoy, from pounding out the chicken breasts to breading the roll-ups in a buttery cornflake mixture. View Recipe 22 of 24 Movie-Theater-Style Popcorn Ryan Liebe Homemade popcorn is vastly better than any microwavable version. Use a combination of vegetable and butter when popping on the stovetop—the oil will help keep the butter from burning. All this recipe needs is a sprinkle of salt to make it movie theater-worthy. View Recipe 23 of 24 Robiola Cheese Filled Ravioli David M. Russell If you have an afternoon to spare, break out the pasta machine. Roll out the pasta dough as thin as possible, then fill it with a Robiola cheese filling. If you can’t find Robiola cheese you can still make these, opt for another mild soft cheese, such as Brie. You won’t go back to store-bought pasta after this. View Recipe 24 of 24 Chicken Schnitzel With Dill and Sesame David Malosh There are a lot of ways to get involved when it comes to cooking this dish. First, the chicken breasts need to be pounded thin. From there, set up a breading station and put people to work dredging the cutlets in flour, egg, and panko. View Recipe Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Tell us why! Other Submit