Recipes

13 Recipe Ideas For Your Next Movie Night at Home

What you eat is just as important as what you watch.

By Published May 4, 2020

When it comes to movie nights at home, what you eat is just as important as what you watch. Here are some of our favorite recipes to make when we're tucking in for a movie, whether we’re feeling like something snacky, sweet, or more substantial.

One-Hour Pizza and Korean Fried Chicken Wings

One-Hour Pizza

If you want dinner during a movie, you don’t have to spend hours cooking. This recipe makes a crisp, tender, light homemade pizza crust as fast as it would take to get delivered. [GET RECIPE]

Korean Fried Chicken Wings

Chicken wings are the perfect snack for a movie night at home: It’s dark, so you don’t have to worry about your fellow movie-goers seeing you with sauce all over your face, and you’re in your own home, so you can always pause the movie to get extra napkins or wash your hands. These spicy-sweet-salty wings are best eaten during a loud action movie—they’ve got some major crunch. [GET RECIPE]

Pizza Dip and Spinach-Artichoke Dip

Pizza Dip

This is exactly what it sounds like: pepperoni pizza in dip form. It’s creamy, savory, and hot—just perfect for movie night. [GET THE RECIPE]

Spinach-Artichoke Dip

In most versions of this popular dip, the artichoke and spinach flavors get lost. To amplify them, we swapped dull, fibrous frozen spinach for sautéed fresh baby spinach and left tinny canned artichokes behind in favor of bright, tender marinated artichokes. It’s a slightly more sophisticated version of your favorite pre-movie restaurant appetizer. [GET THE RECIPE]

Vidalia Onion Dip and Caramelized Onion Dip

Vidalia Onion Dip

Onions are often relegated to a supporting role helping other ingredients shine. But down in Georgia, cooks have made a local onion the leading lady in a creamy party appetizer: Vidalia onion dip. [GET THE RECIPE]

Caramelized Onion Dip

OK, the store-bought version of this dip is good, but if you’ve got caramelized onions on hand (and we recommend always keeping them on hand, because they’re delicious in or on just about everything), this quick and easy recipe truly showcases their savory-sweet flavor. Minced chives offered a burst of freshness, and the combination of sour cream and yogurt gave the dip its tangy depth without being too rich. [GET THE RECIPE]

Cheesy Nachos with Guacamole and Salsa and Crispy Spiced Chickpeas

Cheesy Nachos with Guacamole and Salsa

The ultimate party food is also the best movie-at-home food. The key is in the topping distribution. To ensure that all of the chips would be cheesy and spicy, we layered tortilla chips with a full pound of shredded cheddar cheese and sliced jalapeños. Layering the jalapeños with the cheese also helped the chiles stick to the chips. [GET THE RECIPE]

Crispy Spiced Chickpeas

You might not have thought about how those canned chickpeas in your pantry could make the ultimate movie snack, but think about it: They’re crunchy and satisfying, and when tossed in a salty-savory spice mix, they might even give popcorn a run for its money. [GET RECIPE]

Buttered Popcorn and Buttermilk Ranch Popcorn

Buttered Popcorn

If you’re a bagged popcorn person, movie night is a great time to expand your horizons. And this recipe—as simple as it is—will turn you off from microwave popcorn forever. [GET THE RECIPE]

Buttermilk Ranch Popcorn

One of the best parts of making your own popcorn is being able to customize the toppings. This recipe uses a simple technique that will leave no kernel unpopped, and tosses them with a homemade spice mix. [GET THE RECIPE]

Cast-Iron Chocolate Chip Cookie, S'mores Rice Cereal Treats, and Vanilla MIlkshakes

Cast-Iron Chocolate Chip Cookie

A cookie in a skillet? A cookie in a skillet. You can always bake cookies to eat while you watch a movie, but baking a cookie in a skillet makes the whole experience much more special. [GET THE RECIPE]

S’mores Rice Cereal Treats

If you’re letting a kid choose the movie, ask them to make the movie snack, too. They’ll be happy to help if it’s these crispy, gooey rice cereal treats, which one nine-year-old kid recipe tester approved of, saying, “We should make these 1,000 times.” [GET THE RECIPE]

Vanilla Milkshakes

We couldn’t publish this article on May 4th without acknowledging the all-important movie-watching holiday that it is. If you’re celebrating May the Fourth the way it’s supposed to be celebrated—by watching a Star Wars film—add a couple drops of blue food coloring to a vanilla milkshake to make your own version of the famous Blue Milk. [GET THE RECIPE]

Learn more with these other cooking resources and recipe recommendations: