Between restaurants, social media, TV shows, and movies, there’s no shortage of recipe inspiration swirling around, leaving home chefs to take to the internet to track down their newly favorite dishes. The most searched recipes of the year, according to Google Trends, run the gamut from simple sauces to more complex main dishes to enticing desserts. Perhaps you’ll find a new favorite.
Related: Copycat Recipes You Can Now Make at Home
1. Sugo
There’s not much to sugo in the ingredients department, but the red sauce is apparently still pretty compelling because it was the most-searched recipe of the year. There are many variations for the recipe, but the gist is tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, basil, onions, and garlic.
Related: Olive Garden Favorites You Can Make at Home
2. Cincinnati Chili
When brothers Tom and John Kiradjieff immigrated to Cincinnati from Greece in the early 1920s, they opened a restaurant called Empress Chili Parlor, and Cincinnati chili was born. Unlike Texas-inspired chili that relies mainly on chiles and meat, this recipe was influenced by the Kiradjieff brothers’ Mediterranean and Slavic roots and adds tomato and spices like nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon. This take on chili is essentially spaghetti topped with chili, cheese, beans, or onions, or a combination of them.
Related: Chili Casserole and Other Creative and Unexpected Chili Recipes
3. Marry Me Chicken
Search the web for “marry me chicken” and you’ll be met with recipes from seemingly every food blog in existence. The creamy chicken recipe includes ingredients like heavy cream, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, parmesan cheese, and herbs. Oh, and apparently, it’s so good that if you make it for someone you’re not already married to, they just might pop the question.
4. ‘Quick’ Pancake
We can’t help but wonder if Googlers on the hunt for a quick pancake recipe have never heard of Bisquick — the word “quick” is literally in the name. How about Krusteaz? Kodiak Cakes? Betty Crocker? No? Grocery stores sell many brands of pancake mixes, many of which require you to “just add water” to the mix — as if it could get any faster than that to make flapjacks. Nevertheless, internet surfers still hit up Google in search of a speedier recipe.
5. Mango Pie
Juicy mango pulp, sweetened condensed milk, sugar, eggs, and heavy cream make up the base of this sweet pie, all tied together with a buttery graham cracker crust. No wonder it’s a favorite. Yum.
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6. Green Goddess Salad
Though it’s surged in popularity in recent years thanks to TikTok, the Green Goddess salad originated at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel in 1923 as a tribute to actor George Arliss who starred in the play, “The Green Goddess.” We love a good, practically named recipe. This salad typically contains veggies like iceberg lettuce, cabbage, cucumbers, chives, and green onions, but the real secret is in the sauce — well, the dressing. Combining lemon, olive oil, nutritional yeast, garlic, rice vinegar, and a handful of other flavorful ingredients, the dressing is the key to this green dish.
7. Jennifer Aniston Salad
When word broke on TikTok that Jennifer Aniston ate a salad made up of quinoa, cucumber, red onion, chickpeas, feta cheese, mint, and lemon juice every day on the set of “Friends,” users all over started making videos of the viral recipe. As it turns out, Aniston said she never ate that salad, opting for a Cobb instead. Still, what goes viral cannot be undone. At least according to Google search trends.
8. Grinder Sandwich
Takeout has become more and more off-putting and out-of-reach as inflation surges, leaving folks who have a hankering for a grinder from their favorite sub shop or pizza place to instead search how to make one in the comfort of their own kitchens.
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9. Bella Hadid Sandwich
Another TikTok “big-name celebrity eats this so you should try it, too” recipe made the cut for the most-searched recipes of the year. This sandwich is basically a grinder, but it has Bella Hadid’s name backing it.
10. ‘The Bear’ Spaghetti
FX’s “The Bear” series surged in popularity in 2022 after being released on Hulu in June. The premise of the show follows a main character who is a young chef who left the fine-dining world to run his family’s sandwich shop after his older brother’s death. Though several recipes from the show caught the eye of viewers, apparently none were more captivating than the spaghetti.
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