When you get home from school or work, a hot meal should be waiting for you. If you’re a cook, bring out your simple recipes for dinner so that you get to enjoy the fruits of your labor too. Simplicity is the key to quick, nutritious dinners. Don’t smother them with elaborate preparations and sauces. Don’t pile them high with layers of complications and hidden flavors. Don’t make them be a reason to wish for a pizza ordered from the pizza joint in the corner.
There are several ways to ensure that your menu ends up featuring only simple dinner recipes. Foremost of that is to use convenient ingredients, like bottled pasta sauces, frozen raviolis, crumbled Italian-style sausages, canned chicken stock to add into your dish. Doing so helps save time in preparation and cooking itself. You’re not short-changing your family or guests, you’re just being smart.
Uncomplicated ingredients, like pasta, chicken, eggs, cheese, bread, and familiar vegetables (at least those familiar to you), should bring out the best in your simple recipes for dinner. They are versatile, full of flavor and promise, nutritious, and certified crowd pleasers. Have them in many of your dinner dishes and you will be rewarded with filled tummies and flowing conversations.
When in doubt, go for tried and tested dishes. Those that you consider as classics or staples in your kitchen should make its way to your dinner table as well. Fried chicken, beef stew, pot pies, fried fish, corned beef and cabbage, fritters, cream of mushroom soup, corn on the cob—these are simple to make (sometimes as easy as pouring from a can) but the edible rewards much greater.
Crockpot cooking should be part of your game plan if you want to keep things simple from the moment you leave the house in the morning to the time you come back, all ready and anticipating dinner. You get hearty meat stews, moist chickens, and flavorful vegetables if you cook using your crockpot.
Lastly, when you have some edible leftovers waiting in the fridge, transform them to something simply palatable—omelettes, pasta, frittatas, baked potatoes with toppings, rice with toppings, stir-fries, baked rice, the possibilities are as endless as one’s hunger during dinner time. So stand on the kitchen counter, get busy in front of the stove, and gather round the table for a simple but filling meal.
