Eight Adam Liaw Recipes to Up the Ante on Midweek Meals

Since Adam Liaw sauntered onto our screens in the second season of Masterchef, he’s been a mainstay on our TVs and on our bookshelves. Across multiple cookbooks, Liaw has shared foolproof recipes for feeding our friends, our families and ourselves, laid out with easy-to-understand instructions.

When Liaw creates a time-saving recipe, he doesn’t just factor in cooking and prep time: he thinks about how many ingredients you might need, how much chopping is required and how much washing up it will take. You’ll see this holistic approach in our below collection of top Adam Liaw recipes for midweek meals. It’s a non-stop parade of hits: 10-minute “carbonara” fried rice, clever tofu doughnuts and scotch fillet tacos that’ll be on the table in less than an hour and more.

Need more Liaw? We’ve asked him for his top kitchen hacks and the five things you need for a really great dish.

Quick chicken noodles

Crowned our most popular recipe of the year so far, this speedy chicken noodle recipe is a winner on multiple levels. It employs a fast braising method for cooking noodles that delivers maximum flavour with minimal effort. It’s the ultimate weeknight feed that you’ll have on repeat – and it reheats in the microwave pretty damn well.

10-minute “carbonara” fried rice

Liaw is the first to admit this take on fried rice is “unconventional”. “Truth be told there’s very little ‘carbonara’ about this simple fried rice. I’ve mainly called it that to annoy the carbonarinieri (Italian food police).” Whatever you call it, it’s big on taste – and absurdly quick to pull together.

Extra-crispy tomato-sauce chicken

This tomato-sauce chicken is a riff on a pork-based dish Liaw’s grandmother made for him when he was growing up. Now his version, made with chicken, is a firm favourite of his kids. Make sure you double-fry your strips to guarantee the extra-crispy finish that makes this dish a real winner.

40-minute scotch fillet tacos

One scotch fillet steak goes a long way in this recipe, which serves four people. It’s jazzed up with a zesty guac and a bright pico de gallo, and on the table in around 40 minutes – a weeknight boon, if you ask us.

Tomato and prawn risotto with chilli butter

As anyone who’s eaten a gluggy risotto can attest, getting the consistency of this rice dish down pat is a fine art. Here, Liaw shares a few tips for getting it right. Flavour is loaded into this dish at every step, from the wine and stock the rice is cooked in to the prawns swirled through the risotto and the chilli butter spooned on top.

Ssamjang chicken wrapped in lettuce leaves with nori

Big flavour doesn’t mean big effort – the proof is in this punchy dish. Ssamjang, a Korean dipping sauce, is poured over butterflied roast chicken. Once served, you’ll wrap chunks of chook, along with some steamed rice and nori in lettuce leaves and enjoy.

Quick Sri Lankan prawn curry

Prawn eaters face two important questions: do you eat the tail and the contentious “poo chute”? In this simple yet spectacular Sri Lankan prawn curry, which comes together in about 20 minutes, Liaw recommends for you to leave the prawn tails on – we’re partial to them for the added crunchy texture. Serve it with fluffy rice or warm naan for a satisfying weeknight meal.

Speedy tofu doughnuts

If you have 15 minutes, a spatula and a saucepan, you can pull together these light and airy tofu doughnuts, which starred in Liaw’s show The Cook Up. According to the cook they are “so incredibly quick and easy I don’t know if I’ll ever make doughnuts another way again”.

Need more cooking inspiration? Check out our recipe hub.