26 Asparagus Recipes to Put a Little Spring in Your Step

A neatly tied bundle of asparagus recipes to celebrate spring.

One of the miracles of the modern world is that you're able to find fresh asparagus in your local supermarket in the middle of winter, and it might even taste okay. But those supermarket spears pale in comparison to what you'll find at your local farmers' market come spring. The stuff shipped from who-knows-where can't touch the sweet, grassy flavor of peak-season asparagus, and I like to eat asparagus all the time in all sorts of ways this time of year. If you need a little help with preparing and storing asparagus, we've got a guide that's got you covered, but here are also 26 of our best asparagus recipes—from an asparagus and sweet pea frittata to Sichuan-style asparagus and tofu salad—to inspire you.

Sides

Sautéed Asparagus

One of the absolute easiest ways to cook asparagus is to sauté it in a heavy pan with a little vegetable oil. The key is to get the pan hot and to avoid overcrowding the asparagus—you want to sear the stalks quickly so that they get a charred, woodsy flavor before their interiors get too soft. Try serving the asparagus with a quick caraway-yogurt sauce.

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Broiled Asparagus With Cotija Cheese

A hot pan will get you pretty nicely caramelized asparagus, but putting that pan under a blazing broiler is even better. The asparagus will get great color but also stay crisp. We toss the asparagus with olive oil, salt, and pepper before cooking and finish with a squeeze of lime juice and a sprinkling of Cotija cheese.

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Simple Grilled Asparagus

The grill is another effective tool for quickly browning asparagus. Toss the asparagus with olive to make sure it doesn't dry out and be careful to keep the stalks perpendicular to the grates so you don't lose any to the fire. Grilled asparagus is delicious as is, but it's even better when dipped in homemade aioli.

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Charcoal Chimney–Grilled Asparagus With Green Goddess Dressing

Green vegetables like asparagus often end up overcooked on the grill, either flaccid or charred to a crisp. Grilling the spears hard and fast by placing them directly over a charcoal chimney starter keeps them green and tender-crisp, while giving them just the right amount of char.

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Braised Asparagus

Braising might seem like a recipe for mushy asparagus, but do it right and you'll be rewarded with a flavorful, perfectly tender result. We like to sear the stalks first to give them a little extra flavor before braising them in a mixture of stock and butter, which reduces to a rich sauce.

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Charred Asparagus With Miso Béarnaise Sauce

A plate of charred asparagus with a velvety miso béarnaise is an elegant (and surprisingly easy) steak dinner side dish. The asparagus cook in the time it takes for your steak to rest, before everything is drizzled in the umami-packed sauce.

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Quick-Pickled Asparagus With Tarragon and Shallot

You don't have to cook asparagus at all—the hearty vegetable stands up well to pickling. This recipe uses a white wine vinegar brine flavored with tarragon and shallot, which makes for tangy, crunchy pickles that you can eat on their own, toss into salads, or layer into sandwiches. This recipe isn't appropriate for canning, but the pickled asparagus will last a few weeks in the fridge.

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Breakfast and Brunch

Spring Ramp and Asparagus Frittata

This frittata pairs asparagus with a more elusive spring vegetable: ramps. If you can't find ramps, leeks or garlic will make a different but still tasty dish. We stir the eggs vigorously when they first hit the pan to form loose curds, then stop, let the bottom set, and move the pan to the broiler until the top looks done.

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Asparagus and Sweet Pea Frittata With Minty Spring Salad

Ramps aren't always easy to find, but I'm sure you can get your hands on some peas to make this frittata. If you have access to tiny, super-sweet fresh peas then you can use them, but otherwise go frozen. To round out the meal, serve the frittata with a fresh, herbal salad of shaved raw asparagus, mint leaves, and pea tendrils

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Flipped Frittata With Asparagus, Spinach, Ham, and Cheese

If you don't feel like turning on the broiler to make a frittata, you can finish it by flipping it midway. You end up with a denser texture, one that you might actually prefer over a poofier, oven-finished frittata. Here we use the technique for a frittata loaded with asparagus, shishito peppers, spinach, ham, and cheese.

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Diner-Style Asparagus, Bacon, and Gruyère Omelette for Two

Packed with crispy bacon, sautéed asparagus, and Gruyère, this hearty omelette will comfortably feed two people. This is no delicate French omelette—we cook the eggs until they start to brown and we don't move them around that much, which lets them form large, fluffy curds.

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Sautéed Asparagus With Chorizo, Fried Eggs, and Smoked-Paprika Allioli

We keep the asparagus and eggs theme going here, but turn instead to fried eggs and replace the bacon with cured Spanish chorizo. The chorizo's flavor penetrates the whole dish because we use the rendered fat to sauté the asparagus and cook the eggs. If that's not enough for you, finish it all off with an additional drizzle of the chorizo fat.

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Cheesy Grits With Spring Vegetables

As far as savory breakfasts go, grits are one of the most luxurious ways to start the day—especially if you make them with whole milk, cheddar cheese, and Parmigiano Reggiano. A rich bowl of slow-cooked grits needs something lighter for balance, so we top it with an assortment of spring vegetables glazed with butter and fresh herbs.

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Asparagus alla Milanese (Poached Asparagus With Fried Egg and Parmesan Cheese)

Asparagus alla Milanese has just three main ingredients, making it a perfect breakfast option on weekdays when you have asparagus to use up, but not a lot of extra time. Asparagus spears are poached until cooked but still ever-so-slightly snappy, then they're topped with a fried egg, a generous amount of Parmigiano-Reggiano, and a drizzle of good olive oil.

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Broiled Asparagus With Fried Egg and Gorgonzola

This dish is an equally easy take on the classic asparagus alla Milanese. Here, the asparagus are broiled instead of poached, and topped with creamy gorgonzola, a fried egg, grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, and a sprinkle of toasted bread crumbs for texture.

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Kimchi and Asparagus Stir-Fry With Spam and Fried Egg

A fried egg turns any dish into breakfast food, right? Right! Here, asparagus is sliced quite thinly, and stir-fried with kimchi and spam. Then it's topped with a fried egg, grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and a dusting of grated Spanish chorizo.

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Crispy Pork Shoulder Hash With Charred Asparagus and Serrano Chile

This crispy pork hash is designed to use leftover pork roast and our preferred techniques for making great potato hash—par-cooking potatoes with vinegar to maximize internal tenderness and outer crispiness, as well as cooking all the components (potatoes, asparagus, and pork) separately so that they end up tender and perfectly crisp.

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The Rest

Asparagus, Mushroom, Leek, and Cheese Galette

Easy to throw together, this vegetable tart has a crispy, flaky, and buttery free-form crust and a savory filling of spring ingredients—tender asparagus, melted leeks, and earthy mushrooms, with Fontina cheese tying everything together.

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Poached Chicken and Asparagus With Green Goddess Sauce

One tricky thing about cooking asparagus is that the tips cook faster than the stems. This isn't usually a big deal, but peeling the asparagus will let it cook more evenly. We poach the asparagus and serve it with poached chicken and a green goddess sauce that has whipped cream folded in for an almost mousse-like consistency.

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Stir-Fried Spring Vegetables With Black Olives and Sichuan Peppercorn

This stir-fry is packed with some ingredients you probably wouldn't expect to find in a Chinese-style dish, like morels and black olives. Tradition aside, these spring vegetables taste great with garlic, ginger, scallions, Shaoxing wine, and soy sauce. It's worth the effort to blanch the green veggies before stir-frying—it sets their color so they stay vibrant.

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Sichuan-Style Asparagus and Tofu Salad

Another Chinese-inspired dish, this one pairs tender-crisp blanched asparagus with meaty firm tofu. We dress the salad with a mouth-numbing hot-and-sour sauce that we'd normally use to serve with Sichuan-style wontons (minus toasted sesame oil, which is a little overpowering in this dish).

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Ricotta Gnocchi With Asparagus and Prosciutto

Making pasta from scratch is an intimidating task, but homemade gnocchi is actually incredibly easy and only takes about half an hour. Whether or not you make the gnocchi yourself, definitely try out this dish of gnocchi served in a cream-based sauce made with asparagus, prosciutto, and scallions.

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Asparagus Tartine With Ricotta and Mint

If I find beautiful asparagus at the farmers' market, I want to prepare it simply to preserve its fresh sweetness. This tartine celebrates the vegetable—we blanch the asparagus and serve it with creamy, mild ricotta. Mint leaves, freshly cracked black pepper, and olive oil bring the dish together without stealing the spotlight.

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Asparagus and Ramp Soup With Yogurt

We couldn't leave you without one more recipe using ramps—we love to pair them with asparagus while their seasons overlap. This easy spring soup is made with blanched asparagus, sautéed ramps, broth, and yogurt. Garnish each bowl with sautéed ramps and asparagus tips, mint, and plenty of olive oil.

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Asparagus and Tarragon Velouté (Dairy-Free Creamy Asparagus Soup)

Technically, velouté is a sauce made by thickening stock with a butter- and flour-based roux. These days, the term is most often used to refer to velvety, smooth soups with little to no dairy fat. We build the base of flavor for this soup by cooking leeks, fennel, and asparagus with vegetable stock. The soup is puréed until smooth, and served with asparagus tips, crème fra?che, chopped tarragon, fennel fronds, and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil.

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Mushroom and Asparagus Risotto

We often use a pressure cooker for mushroom risotto, but here we employ our almost-no-stir technique, which allows us to add asparagus toward the end of cooking. We worked out the timing so that the asparagus becomes tender just as the rice finishes cooking.

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