Choosing from among our favorite fig recipes is like deciding between a cup or cone at your go-to ice cream shop: it’s hard to make a wrong move.
As botanists and pedants will tell you, figs are technically a flower, not a fruit. Regardless, their versatility defies categorization. Blessed with tender skins and jammy interiors, fresh figs can offset the tang of tomatoes and bitterness of salad greens. They turn simple baked goods into company-worthy desserts, and transform oatmeal, snack boards, and toasts into cause for celebration. When their seasonal window closes, dried figs happily step into the breach, bringing concentrated flavor and chewy texture to everything from hearty roasts to tart chutneys and beyond.
Sweet but not cloying, figs can go from breakfast to dinner to dessert without so much as a costume change. Here are 23 of our favorite ways to put them to use.
