how to make weeknight dinners easier, faster, and tastier

recipe recommendations, tips, strategies, and the best cookbooks

I spend a lot of time thinking about what’s for dinner, and I have a lot of feelings on the topic of “easy weeknight dinners.” But nothing has more dramatically shifted my approach to weeknight dinners than having a kid.

Pre-kid, my approach to weeknight dinners was: get home from work whenever; start cooking maybe by 6:30; try an ambitious new NYT Cooking or Bon Appetit recipe I’d never tried before; sit down to eat dinner with my husband by 7:30. Do some dishes but also maybe we’d leave some dishes in the sink for the next day, it’s fine, whatever.

After having a kid, my evenings between 5-7 pm look more like: rush out of work to commute home, rush to pick up my kid from school, rush home with her, rush to cook and get dinner on the table as fast as you can, rush to do bath, bedtime, clean up the kitchen, and then finally you can collapse on the couch after the kid goes to bed.

I no longer have enough time to cook at a leisurely pace, not when there is a hangry toddler who may or may not be screaming at any given moment and wants to eat RIGHT NOW — dinner must be ready in as little time as possible. And I (generally) prefer not to cook separate meals for our daughter, I want to cook one meal that we all sit down and eat together, and I want my daughter to get exposed to a variety of foods and eat the same things we are (I am only moderately successful at getting her to eat these things, but we keep on trying!).

I also like food with a lot of flavor. I want meals that I genuinely look forward to eating. I need lots of seasonings, sauces, marinades, things that add a ton of flavor. (And I want to expose my kid to that too). I simply refuse to eat bland food.

So all of that is to say I have a lot of very specific criteria for what I need in a weeknight dinner — fast, easy to make, big on flavor. In today’s newsletter, I’ve got a roundup of some of my favorite weeknight dinners that I’ve built into my rotation over the years.

Here’s my criteria for how I decide if a recipe might make it into my regular weeknight dinner rotation:

• Must be able to cook in under 30 minutes: perhaps 45 mins max, but that’s really pushing it, and the best weeknight recipes are half an hour tops.

• Must be a complete meal: it has protein, vegetables, carbs, etc all in one recipe. A pet peeve of mine on the food internet is when a recipe is presented as “dinner” but it’s just one thing: ie. chicken cutlets, and then YOU need to spend time and energy finding a vegetable/side and/or starch to round it out — AND you have to cook three dishes?? Who has time for that!

• Healthy-ish: This means different things to different people, but in my household, our preference is that every dinner has a protein and vegetables, and I don’t make a lot of pasta or meals where the carb is the primary focus of the meal (this is because I have type 1 diabetes so this is a personal preference! you do you!)

• Must not dirty too many dishes: If I have to use 2-3 different pans or multiple prep bowls, you’ve already lost me.

• Not a ton of chopping/active cooking: The ideal weeknight meal is one where where you can toss a few things in a pan or stick a sheet pan in the oven without needing to spend a ton of time standing over the stove actively cooking, or chopping tons of things.

My favorite weeknight dinner recipes

Beef & Pork

• Peanutty pork & brussels (Caroline Chambers) — I buy a bag of pre-shredded brussels sprouts to make this, and it takes less then 15 minutes with virtually no chopping.

• Shawarma lettuce wraps (Caroline Chambers): I was genuinely shocked the first time I made this recipe at how delicious it was — the recipe title doesn’t fully do justice to how good this is. It’s the lemon-tahini sauce and the avocado-cucumber salad, which don’t take too long but add a ton of flavor. And she packs in a bunch of cauliflower rice, an easy way to add extra veggies.

• Cumin pork chops and brussels sprouts (NYT Cooking, gift link): Prep the pork ahead of time and this is super easy to throw in the oven at dinner time.

• Korean BBQ-style meatballs (NYT Cooking, gift link): Meatballs are really underrated but I love them. This is an easy, flavorful meatball recipe that everyone will eat. I usually serve in a bowl with quinoa, roasted broccoli and top with sauces of choice.

Chicken & Turkey

• Spicy sesame noodles with ground chicken and peanuts: Not so kid friendly (it’s spicy) but great if you’re only feeding adults.

• Miso honey chicken and asparagus (NYT Cooking, gift link): The miso-honey sauce is so flavorful, and this cooks in record time under the broiler.

• Crispy bbq chicken tacos (Caroline Chambers): These are delicious and such a winner with kids and adults alike.

• Turkey taco salad (Caroline Chambers): An easy, healthy, and quick taco salad that even kids will eat!!

• Sweet and spicy cashew chicken lettuce wraps (Jenn Eats Good) I love these fun, flavorful lettuce wraps (you could also serve with a grain if you prefer)

Fish & Seafood

• BBQ salmon with mango avocado salsa (Pinch of Yum): I’ve tried a lot of salmon recipes in an attempt to get the salmon-hater in my household to like salmon. This has been the most successful one, and it’s quite easy to make.

• Maple and miso salmon and green beans (NYT Cooking, gift link): An ideal sheet pan meal. Make a marinade, toss everything in the sheet pan and you can go sit down and relax while dinner’s in the oven.

• Easy shrimp tacos with quick slaw (What’s Gaby Cooking): The fastest, easiest shrimp tacos. I buy pre-shredded cabbage for the slaw.

• Cheesy chipotle shrimp tacos (Caroline Chambers): A fun spin on shrimp tacos with the melted cheesy tortillas.

Vegetarian

• Crunchy roll bowls (Pinch of Yum): I’ve made this a million times and it never stops being delicious — it’s on regular rotation in my household meal plans. You can also easily riff on it — sub in cubes of salmon instead of tofu

• Spicy cheesy black bean bake (NYT Cooking, gift link): This is so easy, requires almost no work and is done quickly. My kid, who is a bean enthusiast, loves it — and though “spicy” is in the title, I don’t find it to be very spicy in practice.

• Sesame noodles with crispy tofu (Bon Appetit): Everybody loves this dish, adults and kid alike. It’s a winner.

• Crispy miso lime tofu lettuce wraps (Caroline Chambers): Another all-star tofu recipe. The sauce is delicious, this is easy to make in 15 minutes, and doesn’t require time spent pressing the tofu in advance.

Tips for making weeknight dinner faster

• Embrace shortcuts. Buy a rotisserie chicken and shred it instead of cooking chicken breasts. Don’t feel guilty about buying pre-chopped or pre-shredded veggies if you want to — they save you time AND they make cleanup easier. If it makes your life easier, it’s worth it. Bagged coleslaw mix is my fave anytime a recipe calls for cabbage — I’m not shredding a whole cabbage! Pre-shredded brussels sprouts are also another fave.

• Batch cook one grain for the week on Sundays: If I know I’ll be making more than one bowl-style recipes in a week that might require a grain, I’ll batch cook a whole bunch of rice or quinoa on Sunday that I can then use with recipes throughout the week, which saves a ton of time vs cooking a grain the night of when you’re in the middle of the dinner rush.

• Prep in the mornings if you can. If you have a few minutes in the morning to marinate a protein or chop veggies and store in the fridge for later, it can save a ton of time.

• If you have to defrost something, set a calendar reminder. When I have a recipe on the meal plan one night that requires taking meat out of the freezer to thaw in the fridge, I set a calendar reminder for 24 hours before and move it from the freezer while I’m making the previous night’s dinner.

The weeknight dinner cookbook library

I also turn to several cookbooks for inspiration for weeknight dinners. These are the ones that live on my kitchen countertop permanently and get heavy use:

• I Dream of Dinner, by Ali Slagle: some of my favorite weeknight dinners from this book include her gochujang shrimp and shishitos, harissa chickpeas and feta, and sesame chicken meatballs with broccoli

• What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking, by Caroline Chambers: I’ve already cited a million Caroline Chambers recipes in this newsletter, but she’s really the queen of easy, flavorful weeknight dinners, and she’s got even more in the cookbook that aren’t online. Her substack and cookbook are worth paying for!

• Dinner: Changing the Game, by Melissa Clark. This is a cookbook I’ve come back to so many times over the years and was really foundational to my dinner routine when I started getting into cooking.

• Easy Weeknight Dinners, NYT Cooking. Lots of easy classics from the NYT with a wide range of flavors.

Each of these books is, honestly, a treasure trove of inspiration and full of recipes that meet all my ideal-weeknight-dinner criteria: fast, easy to make, flavorful, has vegetables and protein,

I’d love to hear your weeknight dinner tips, strategies, and favorite recipes!