Snack recipes
Snack recipes belong to parties, match days and the hour before dinner: food you eat with your hands, often fried or baked, and nearly always made in bigger batches than planned. The ones here run from a ten-minute dip to pastries worth a day’s work for a crowd.
Mash guacamole or char bruschetta when people are already at the door, bake buffalo wings for the match, and make arancini or bitterballen when you want something to pass around with drinks. Set the number of guests and every amount scales with it.
56 recipes
Buffalo Wings🇺🇸 American recipes · Snack · 1 h 35 min
Guacamole🇲🇽 Mexican recipes · Snack · 10 min
Bruschetta🇮🇹 Italian recipes · Snack · 20 min
Arancini🇮🇹 Italian recipes · Snack · 9 h 45 min
Chocolate Chip Cookies🇺🇸 American recipes · Snack · 2 h 45 min
Empanadas🌎 Latin American recipes · Snack · 4 h 10 min
Pumpkin Bread🇺🇸 American recipes · Snack · 3 h 30 min
Banana Bread🇺🇸 American recipes · Snack · 1 h 30 min
Berliner🇩🇪 German recipes · Snack · 3 h 15 min
Brezeln🇩🇪 German recipes · Snack · 1 h 45 min
Burek🌍 Eastern European recipes · Snack · 1 h 15 min
Chebureki🌍 Eastern European recipes · Snack · 1 h 40 min
Chicken 65🇮🇳 Indian recipes · Snack · 1 h 40 min
Chin Chin🌍 African recipes · Snack · 50 min
Chorizo al Vino🇪🇸 Spanish recipes · Snack · 20 min
Coconut Drops🌎 Caribbean recipes · Snack · 1 h 50 min
Deviled Eggs🇺🇸 American recipes · Snack · 27 min
Karaage🇯🇵 Japanese recipes · Snack · 1 h
Khanom Krok🇹🇭 Thai recipes · Snack · 40 min
Kimchi Jeon🇰🇷 Korean recipes · Snack · 25 min
Koulourakia🇬🇷 Greek recipes · Snack · 1 h 10 min
Lángos🌍 Eastern European recipes · Snack · 2 h 10 min
Madeleines🇫🇷 French recipes · Snack · 3 h 45 min
Mandazi🌍 African recipes · Snack · 1 h 55 min
Martabak🇮🇩 Indonesian recipes · Snack · 3 h
Mhadjeb🌍 North African recipes · Snack · 2 h 10 min
Nachos🇲🇽 Mexican recipes · Snack · 30 min
Obatzda🇩🇪 German recipes · Snack · 1 h 45 min
Pajeon🇰🇷 Korean recipes · Snack · 30 min
Perkedel🇮🇩 Indonesian recipes · Snack · 1 h 10 min
Roasted Chickpeas🌍 Mediterranean recipes · Snack · 40 min
Salt and Pepper Squid🇨🇳 Chinese recipes · Snack · 30 min
Scallion Pancakes🇨🇳 Chinese recipes · Snack · 1 h 45 min
Sfenj🌍 North African recipes · Snack · 2 h 35 min
Sopaipillas🌎 Latin American recipes · Snack · 1 h 20 min
Speculaas🇳🇱 Dutch recipes · Snack · 9 h
Amêijoas à Bulhão Pato🇵🇹 Portuguese recipes · Snack · 1 h 23 min
Börek🇹🇷 Turkish recipes · Snack · 1 h 40 min
Chả Giò🇻🇳 Vietnamese recipes · Snack · 1 h 35 min
Chinese Spring Rolls🇨🇳 Chinese recipes · Snack · 1 h 50 min
Coxinha🇧🇷 Brazilian recipes · Snack · 1 h 25 min
Elote🇲🇽 Mexican recipes · Snack · 25 min
Frikandel🇳🇱 Dutch recipes · Snack · 1 h 30 min
Karelian Pies🌍 Nordic recipes · Snack · 3 h 10 min
Keftedes🇬🇷 Greek recipes · Snack · 1 h 50 min
Kibbeling🇳🇱 Dutch recipes · Snack · 50 min
Kroket🇳🇱 Dutch recipes · Snack · 11 h 50 min
Pimientos de Padrón🇪🇸 Spanish recipes · Snack · 18 min
Puff Puff🌍 African recipes · Snack · 2 h 10 min
Bitterballen🇳🇱 Dutch recipes · Snack · 8 h
Currywurst🇩🇪 German recipes · Snack · 30 min
Gambas al Ajillo🇪🇸 Spanish recipes · Snack · 25 min
Jamaican Beef Patties🌎 Caribbean recipes · Snack · 2 h 20 min
Kanelbullar (Cinnamon Buns)🌍 Nordic recipes · Snack · 3 h
Lumpiang Shanghai🇵🇭 Filipino recipes · Snack · 1 h 30 min
Patatas Bravas🇪🇸 Spanish recipes · Snack · 1 h 10 min
Quick snacks in 30 minutes or less
Guacamole takes 10 minutes and no cooking: avocado crushed rather than blended, with lime, white onion, coriander and green chilli. Bruschetta and chorizo al vino take 20, elote 25, and deviled eggs just under half an hour.
Keep good bread, cooking chorizo, eggs and mayonnaise in the house and you are most of the way to bruschetta, chorizo al vino and deviled eggs. The rule these quick snacks share is to finish them at the last moment: bruschetta topped too early goes soft, and guacamole browns as it stands.
Filled pastries: baked, fried and folded
Nearly every cuisine wraps a filling in dough, and several of them are on this page: Turkish börek, Bosnian burek, Crimean Tatar chebureki, Argentinian empanadas and Brazilian coxinha. Burek and empanadas go into the oven, while chebureki and coxinha go into hot oil.
The fillings need as much care as the pastry. Empanada filling is chilled until firm so the edges can be crimped without splitting, coxinha dough is cooked in the chicken’s own broth and shaped while warm, and chebureki filling is spread thin because it goes in raw and has to cook through in a few minutes in the oil.
How to plan snacks for a party
A good spread mixes hot and cold, crisp and soft, savoury and sweet. Pair something hot and crunchy, like buffalo wings or chicken 65, with something cool, like deviled eggs or guacamole, and finish with chocolate chip cookies, chin chin or coconut drops.
Fried snacks are easier when most of the work happens the day before. Arancini are made from risotto cooled overnight, bitterballen from a ragout set firm in the fridge, and empanadas can be shaped and frozen raw. Put everything for the party on one shared list, grouped by aisle, so anyone can pick up the shopping.
Frequently asked questions
- What are easy snacks for a party?
- Guacamole, bruschetta, chorizo al vino and deviled eggs each take half an hour or less and are easy to make in quantity. For a hot snack that looks after itself, buffalo wings bake in the oven rather than frying, so a whole tray is ready at once. Chin chin, small crunchy cubes of fried dough, keeps for weeks in a sealed tin.
- What is the difference between börek and burek?
- Börek is the Turkish name for a family of filled pastries; the one here is filled with feta and parsley, either baked in boiled layers of yufka as su böreği or rolled into cigars and fried. Burek is the Balkan relative, and in Bosnia the name belongs only to the meat version: minced beef and onion rolled in thin pastry, coiled into a tin and baked.
- How do you make crispy chicken wings in the oven?
- Toss the wings in a dry rub that includes baking powder, not bicarbonate of soda. It raises the pH of the skin so it browns and crisps instead of steaming. Leave them uncovered in the fridge for a few hours if you can, then bake until the skin blisters, and only toss them in the hot sauce and melted butter once they are fully crisp.
- Are spring rolls gluten-free?
- It depends on the wrapper. Chinese spring rolls use wheat wrappers, so they contain gluten. Vietnamese chả giò are rolled in rice paper instead, filled with pork, wood ear mushrooms and glass noodles, and the recipe here is tagged gluten-free. They are fried twice, first low to cook the pork and then hot, so the shell blisters and stays brittle.
- What are bitterballen?
- Bitterballen are a Dutch bar snack: a very thick beef ragout made from slow-cooked shin, chilled until firm, rolled into balls, crumbed twice and deep-fried so the middle turns molten again. They are eaten hot with sharp Dutch mustard, often with a beer. The ragout can be made two days ahead, and the crumbed balls can be frozen raw and fried from frozen.