The one secret to cooking a great meal
The cooking hack your momma never told you.
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Cooking at home can be a real Hell’s Kitchen, especially if you’re just learning to cook. Honing your skills takes time and practice, which can be difficult to come by if you’re cooking for one or just don’t have a lot of time (read: patience). But, the solution is here.
The secret to easy cooking
One-pot meals are your new holy grail. With one-pot meals, you can make a homemade dinner that you won’t be embarrassed to serve to your friends. What makes one-pot meals so great? Let’s take a look.
One of the most difficult cooking skills to learn is timing.
Making sure your main dish is done before your sides get cold is an equation on par with a seventh grade word problem (i.e. basically unsolvable).
One-pot meals figure this problem out for you.
With one-pot meals, you only have to pay attention to when to add items. Prep all your ingredients beforehand to get all the chopping and dicing out of the way. Then, just follow your selected recipe instructions.
Using the one-pot method, your chicken will be done at the same time as your veggies. Without any multi-tasking anxiety, you might actually end up finding cooking relaxing and enjoyable. Plus, there’s fewer pots and pans to clean up when you’re all done.
Other easy cooking hacks
Another offshoot of this cooking hack is the three-ingredient meal. You can also find a four-, five- or six-ingredient variation of this trend. Basically, unless your pantry is completely bare, you can probably find a way to whip up a meal.
Want to make sure you have the ingredients on hand before you jump in? Apps like Tasty, Supercook or Allrecipes let you input the ingredients you do have, then output your recipe possibilities.
In need of a really easy recipe? Combine a search for three-ingredient one-pot meals. Or search for sheet-pan meals (same concept, but you bake these in the oven rather than on the stove).
A sheet-pan favorite at my house? Totchos — tater tots topped with your typical nacho condiments like cheese, onions, corn, black beans and chicken — topped with a drizzle of our secret ingredient, sweet chili sauce.
Where to find recipes
Try these searches for other great ideas:
- One-pot meals
- Sheet-pan meals
- Three-ingredient meals
- Slow-cooker meals
- Dump dinners (unattractively named because you dump all the ingredients together)
What do you think you can come up with? Happy cooking and even happier eating!
