11 Recipes for Vegetables You Probably Never Cook—but Totally Should

Roasting, stir-frying, and grilling turn cucumbers, lettuce, radishes, fennel, and more into weeknight comfort.

By
Daniel Gritzer
Daniel Gritzer
Daniel Gritzer
Editorial Director

Daniel is the editorial director of Serious Eats, where he leads the site's editorial strategy and oversees everything from recipe development to articles on food science, cooking techniques, and more. He's a former food editor at Food & Wine and has cooked in New York City restaurants.

Learn about Serious Eats' Editorial Process
Updated October 24, 2025
Pieces of cucumber browning in a frying pan

Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez

Most foods can be eaten raw or cooked, but there are some that we often think of as raw-only, like cucumbers and lettuce. In most cases, though, even those vegetables are incredibly delicious when cooked, revealing whole new dimensions of flavor and texture. Here are 11 recipes to help you break out of your raw-vegetable monotony and experience just how good they can be when they meet some heat.

Love any of these recipes and haven't saved them already? Tap "Save" to add them to MyRecipes, our free tool to save and organize favorites from top food sites.

  • Levantine Roasted Cucumbers With Rice and Lamb

    A dish with stuffed zucchini rice and yogurt sauce being poured on top garnished with pine nuts

    Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez

    In Jordan and other parts of the Levant, whole cucumbers are stuffed with a spiced mixture of rice and ground lamb and then roasted until browned and tender. The dish is called khiar mahshi, which means stuffed cucumbers. The only hard part is coring the whole cucumbers for stuffing, which is most easily done with a special tool most cooks in the US don't have. To get around this challenge, associate culinary editor Laila Ibrahim came up with this deconstructed twist, in which the cucumbers are sliced and then pan-roasted and served atop the stuffing mixture. The result is a dish that's rich and fragrant, proving cucumbers should absolutely be cooked.

  • Stir-Fried Cucumbers With Spicy Ground Pork

    Stirfried dish of cucumbers and ground pork in a wok on a stovetop

    Serious Eats / Shao Z.

    Like most stir-fries, this one comes together quickly, but the result is nothing short of a cucumber makeover. Tossed with ground pork, plenty of garlic, and seasonings like soy sauce, sesame oil, and chile flakes, the cucumbers come out plump, juicy, and bursting with flavor.

  • Butter-Glazed Roasted Radishes With Fresh Herbs

    Cooked radishes garnished with herbs in a cast iron skillet placed on a cloth

    Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

    It's a rare day to see a cooked radish on the table—it's one of those vegetables that seems destined for eternal rawness, all crisp and crunch and peppery bite. But radishes become absolutely divine when cooked, such as the roasted radishes in this recipe. Their firm, watery texture gives way to juicy softness, and the intense spice they're so famous for mellows out. Radishes are related to turnips, so if you're trying to imagine what they're like, think of tiny, sweet-plump roasted turnips with a clean, less sulphurous flavor and you'll kind of get the idea. One you try cooking them, you may find yourself eating a lot more radishes in your life.

  • Eggs Baked in Avocado

    Overhead view of eggs baked in an avocado

    Serious Eats / Victor Protasio

    Okay, avocados are technically fruit, but they lack sweetness and play a more vegetal role on the plate, so I'm including them in this list. Here, they're halved and backed with eggs nestled in the little cups left behind by the pit. Even after baking, avocados retain their creamy texture, it's just...creamier. Pair that with the tender whites and runny yolks and top it with whole-grain mustard and fresh herbs (or whatever toppings you like), and you have a filling meal that's less salad and more a main course.

    Continue to 5 of 11 below

  • Crispy and Flavorful Avocado Fries

    Overhead view of dipping an avocado fry into ranch on a yellow plate

    Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez

    Building on the above idea, avocados can also be sliced, breaded and and then "oven-fried" (that's just a silly way of saying baked until very crisp). The result is a wonderful combination of contrasts: crisp and crunchy breaded shell and silky smooth avocado within. One tip: Pick ripe but firm avocados, as they'll be easier to handle during the breading process and will then soften up during cooking without be becoming mushy.

  • Creamy Lettuce Soup

    Bowl of lettuce soup garnished with microgreens and thinly sliced vegetables spoon and napkin on the side

    Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

    Lettuce seems almost destined for the salad bowl, but it doesn't have to be: It makes phenomenal soup, which can be served warm or chilled. When cooked into broth with sautéed onions, the lettuce produces a soup with a fresh, clean flavor that's mildly sweet (a little parsley in the mix helps punch up the green color). Don't worry about the flavor of your lettuce—even spicy varieties like arugula work, their punch receding with the heat of cooking. Also worth noting that this is a great way to use up lettuce that's starting to wilt. It may not make great salad anymore, but it'll still produce fantastic soup.

  • Blanched Lettuce With Oyster Sauce

    Sauteed lettuce with oyster sauce served in a bowl garnished with sauce from a spoon

    Serious Eats / Qi Ai

    Cooked lettuce is much more common in the Chinese kitchen than in US ones. In this recipe, crisp romaine is quickly and gently wilted in hot water, leaving just a trace of bite in each leaf's sturdy rib, then topped with a flavorful sauce made of little more than oyster sauce, soy sauce, garlic, and sugar.

  • Grilled Caesar Salad

    Grilled chicken caesar salad on a platter.

    Serious Eats / Kevin White

    Romaine loves the intense heat of the grill too. By slicing the heads in half, you can get a good sear on the cut side for a more complex, lightly charred flavor while still leaving much of the rest of the lettuce raw and crisp. It's a natural pairing for bold Caesar dressing and, in this case, some grilled chicken tossed on top for more substance.

    Continue to 9 of 11 below

  • Celery Soup With Peanut Crumble and Pickled Grapes

    A bowl of celery soup topped with grapes and crumbled toppings accompanied by a spoon

    Serious Eats / Emily Dryden

    Okay, I'll admit, it's quite common to cook celery, but a lot of the time that's only as a supporting aromatic flavor, such as in a mirepoix with carrot and onion for soups, stews, stocks, and sauces. Much more rarely is celery cooked as the star ingredient. This soup challenges that idea by puréeing it into an aromatic soup. And just for fun, the garnishes give a nod to the classic ants on a log, but reimagined as quick-pickled grapes and a peanut crumble.

  • Spicy Stir-Fried Fennel, Celery, and Celery Root With Chinese Sausage

    Stirfried fennel celery and celery root topped with sliced Chinese sausage on a rectangular plate

    Serious Eats / Shao Z.

    Here, again, we see celery taking a more central role in a stir-fry (because as with lettuce, in Chinese cooking, featuring celery in this way is much more common). This recipe pairs celery with two texture-and-flavor bedfellows—fennel and celery root—which adds more dimensions and interest to the stir-fry. Thin slices of Chinese sausage infuse all of it with a judicious amount of porky fat and flavor.

  • Grilled Radicchio With Tart Cherry Sauce

    A platter of grilled radicchio garnished with fresh herbs, placed on a set table

    Serious Eats/ Vy Tran

    Here's one last lettuce-adjacent idea to see you out: grilled radicchio. The bitter edge of this typical salad vegetable is a great match for a grill's smoky char, and the radicchio's more sturdy structure holds up well to the grill's heat, softening without becoming overly limp and soft. The recipe here pairs the radicchio with a fruity, sour sauce made from cherries (frozen are fine) and vinegar—technically a gastrique if you want the fancy French word for it, but don't let that turn you off. It's quick and easy to pull together, and it packs a lot of flavor punch.

Explore more:

More Serious Eats Recipes