Sardine

13 Sardine Recipes for Party Snacks and Tinned-Fish Feasts

Pop open some tins and make these pastas, salads, and hors d’oeuvres.
Sardine spaghetti with bread crumbs and pine nuts on a plate.
Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food styling by Mira Evnine

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If there’s one pantry ingredient I always have (even more reliably than sugar, flour, or olive oil), it’s sardines. Sure, canned sardines can be a great souvenir from a trip or a compact gift for a seafood-loving friend. And having a collection of tins is a great excuse to buy yourself a fancy sardine fork. But these small nutrient-packed fish can also be turned into a million different salads, pastas, and snacks (trust me, I wrote a whole book’s worth of recipes for tinned seafood).

Here are some of our favorite recipes from cookbooks, the pages of Gourmet, and our own staff recipe developers, to turn canned sardines into meals all year round.

  • Sardine puffs on a serving plate.
    Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food styling by Mira Evnine
    1/13

    Sardine Puffs

    If you need to make a lot of hors d’oeuvres in a short amount of time, may I suggest these 5-ingredient sardine puffs? Like many sardine recipes, these make efficient use of a very short ingredients list and a brief cook time.

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  • Photo by Chelsie Craig
    2/13

    Pan-Fried Sardines With Salsa Verde

    While you can (and should) snack on sardines straight from the can, you can also always give them a quick pan-fry before setting them on a plate of emerald-green salsa verde.

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  • Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food styling by Mira Evnine
    3/13

    Sardine Rillettes

    It doesn’t get much simpler than mashing together sardines with lemon juice and the best butter you can get your hands on.

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  • Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food styling by Mira Evnine
    4/13

    Fish Cakes With Caper-Parsley Sauce

    Skip the crab cakes and make these out of halibut and canned sardines instead. A bright parsley–caper sauce ties the dish together.

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  • Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food styling by Mira Evnine
    5/13

    Sicilian-Style Pasta With Sardines

    This Sicilian-inspired pasta dish combines some heavy-hitting pantry ingredients with sweet onion and fennel, for a rustic seafood pasta that tastes like it took way longer to cook than it actually did.

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  • Photo by Steven Joyce
    6/13

    Sardines With Roasted Tomatoes, Fennel, and Saffron

    For a tinned-fish meal full of color and flavor, roast some cherry tomatoes and fennel together on a sheet pan before tossing them with toasted pine nuts and almonds and canned sardines.

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  • Photography by Emma Fishman, Food Styling by Adriana Paschen, Prop Styling by Elizabeth Jamie
    13/13

    Braised Beans and Sardines With Fennel

    Sardine recipes don’t have to be all about the fish, and these simmered beans with a sardine topping prove that less is sometimes more.

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Anna Hezel is a Buffalo-born, Brooklyn-based food and culture writer. Before joining Epicurious in 2022, she was the senior editor at TASTE. Anna has written about food, drinks, and culture for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bon Appétit, Rolling Stone, GQ, Eater, and more. She’s the author ... Read More
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