Don’t we all just want dinner to be easier? I sure do.
Here are my five rules for keeping dinner uncomplicated. I made these up, but they have been developed after a lifetime of helping home cooks make dinner easier.
Rule #1: Lean on Simple Meals
Beans on toast, rotisserie chicken on bagged salad, hot dogs, pasta with butter and parm: these are all perfectly wonderful dinners. I underline dinners because so many of my past students and clients would balk at these kinds of suggestions: “That’s not dinner!”
A Back Pocket Dinner (a meal you can make from what’s already in your fridge/pantry), is just as much “dinner” as roast chicken with mash and broccoli. It’s food, you’re eating it and feeling satisfied. That = dinner. Sure, you might not want to eat Back Pocket Dinners every night for the rest of forever, but they are exactly right on that one/ two/ five nights when even the simplest tasks feel beyond reach.
Rule #2: Eat What You’ve Got
The chili you made last month and put in the freezer; the tin of salmon in the pantry; the club pack of chicken thighs that you frozxe 2 months ago. This is food that you have already paid for and brought home, and you can be turning it into dinner! These ingredients can also give you a meal plan of sorts (i.e. chili on Monday, salmon loaf on Tuesday, chicken thighs on Wednesday and the leftovers on Thursday).
There is no need to “save” ingredients or frozen meals for a rainy day. In other words, don’t treat your freezer like a retirement fund and keep adding to it without making any withdrawals. Treat it like a petty cash jar and dip into it every other day!
Rule #3: Don’t Shop Blind
Before you go grocery shopping, take 10 minutes and look at what’s coming up for you this week. Are your kids home every night? Will you have time to cook or will you need to have dinner on the table in less than 10 minutes? Are you out and the kids will need to make their own dinner one night this week?
Look at what’s already in the fridge and pantry so you’re not buying ingredients just for the sake of it
These will make dinners just a little easier, because you’ll have a vague idea of what is coming and what you have, and that will inform your grocery shopping. This is a far cry from meal planning, but it’s still extremely useful.
Rule #4: Do Favours to Your Future Self When You Can
Do something today that makes life easier for Future You. When you’re making anything that you can easily double, without adding too much extra work or time, do it!
A good example of this is taco meat: if you’re making one batch, it takes the same amount of time to make a double batch. Eat half tonight and freeze the rest for Future You. Even something as basic as cooking rice. Make twice as much as you need tonight and then have fried rice for dinner tomorrow or the next night.
This isin’t about taking a Sunday afternoon to stock the freezer (although that is also amazing and I will write about that another day!), but just doing a little bit more without adding a lot of work.
Rule #5: Share the Load
Anyone in the home who eats should be contributing to dinner in some way. Little kids can set and clear the table; slightly older kids should help to choose what’s for dinner and assist with basic kitchen tasks. And I firmly believe that anyone age 12 or older can be making dinner for the family at least once a week. (This might be Kraft Dinner or pasta with jarred sauce: IT DOESN’T MATTER. Those eating don’t get to complain because they didn’t have to make it, so do please enjoy!)
You can help facilitate this by showing your co-dinner makers a book of easy, tried-and-tested recipes like this one!
Important reminder that “making dinner” isn’t just cooking a meal, it’s thinking up what to make, getting or checking the groceries, cooking and cleaning up (or delegating the clear up!).
Hope these “rules” are helpful! I talked through them all on Instagram, check it out here.
