10 Actually Easy Dinners
Feeding humans is relentless, and meal-planning is exhausting to just about everyone. If you’re trying to avoid most ultra-processed food, it’s a lot of work every day. I happen to think it’s worth it (more on my personal meal-planning method here), but there are a lot of weeks where it all feels like a bit much.
A friend of mine recently pointed out that it’s often a pick-two dilemma:
affordable ingredients
nutritious, balanced meals
ease of prep and cleanup / time
Our exchange made me realize that I have a few dishes in regular rotation that I lean on in moments of desperation or when life gets too busy. Meals that feel like a relief: wow, we’re fed, and that was so easy.
My criteria for inclusion here is simply: would I want to make this and clean it up by myself after I get home from work? If no, I didn’t include it. (Mostly, this means the list has a lot of soups and stews.)
That said, my threshold for easy might be different than yours. In general, I’m willing to spend 30-60 minutes on making dinner. If your threshold is 15 minutes of baking chicken nuggets, that’s fine, but this might not be the list for you.
A lot of these lean on frozen vegetables and canned legumes, which are a regular part of our diet that I feel good about, but you can of course use fresh vegetables or make your own legumes. A few recipes with more expensive ingredients are included at the end.
Smitten Kitchen | Quick Pasta and Chickpeas
This is so easy that it’s really more “assembly” than cooking. Use whatever fun tiny pasta you can find; it’s usually ditalini for me. Double it, trust me; it’s so much more delicious than it seems like it should be.
Budget Bytes | Lentil and Sausage Stew
This stew is quick and easy with a pretty small ingredient list. I usually make it with the full pound of Italian sausage, and I cook my lentils for 20 minutes rather than 30. Makes fantastic leftovers and freezes really well!
Alyssa Hakanson |
Coconut Sweet Potato Lentil Soup with Rice
I adore this soup for so many reasons: the cozy factor! the spices! the fact that it’s basically a pile of vegetables! If you can handle peeling a few sweet potatoes, you’ve got this. I also recommend a rice cooker; it’s the only uni-tasker allowed in my kitchen.
Alyssa Hakanson | Taco Bake
This is basically a simple chili with cornbread baked on top. Nothing fancy, but I can clean the kitchen while it quickly bakes, and then all I have to deal with after dinner is plates and utensils!
Smitten Kitchen | Greens, Orzo, and Meatball Soup
I make this soup a little harder for myself by sautéing onion and garlic before proceeding with the broth, but I make it easier by using store-bought meatballs. I love these ones from Trader Joe’s, which happen to be less expensive than buying a pound of beef. I use either fresh or frozen spinach for the greens
Smitten Kitchen | Summer Squash Pizza
This pizza is so simple, but every time we make it one of us says, “I can’t believe this is so good!”
The only thing that might trip you up for a weeknight dinner is the yeasted dough. We tend to make a yeast-free pizza dough. (Or you can buy some at the grocery store. That works too.)
For a little extra flavor, I like to add 1/2 teaspoon each of adobo and red pepper flakes to the breadcrumbs before they get sprinkled on.
Alyssa Hakanson | My Dad's Chili
My husband has this recipe memorized, and it’s a reliable and cozy dinner. Three types of beans, two types of meat. And can I interest you in a Midwestern twist? Serve it on a bed of macaroni noodles topped with cheese. We call it chili-mac around here.
Smitten Kitchen | Asparagus with Chorizo and Croutons
I can never believe how delicious this is. It’s a great way to use up a crusty bread that’s going stale. (Do not use a soft white bread!) I usually use a can of white beans, and I’ve made it with andouille sausage when I couldn’t find chorizo. Delicious every time, and it’s surprisingly good left over.
Alyssa Hakanson | Slow Cooker Carnitas
This one is for the meal-preppers. A few hours on the weekend can deliver a variety of deliciousness for the rest of the week: make burrito bowls, tacos, quesadillas, or grilled cheese or use to top macaroni and cheese, eggs, or a baked potato. Freezes so well.
Naturally Ella | Chipotle White Bean Tacos
A delightfully easy vegetarian taco. I always serve these topped with feta and some pickled red onions.
For dishes like this, I can’t recommend this baby food processor enough. I use mine at least once a week!
Honorable Mentions:
La Cuisine de Geraldine | Finnish Salmon Soup Salmon can be pricey, so I left it off the main list, but I’ve made this soup so many times since I discovered it. I add a little wine in before the potatoes and stock, and it’s totally fine to use an onion instead of leeks. I used dried dill; add it in with stock and taste until it’s your preferred level of dill-y.
Smitten Kitchen | Burrata with Lentils and Basil Vinaigrette Burrata is a bit expensive for us, but the concept of this dish is fantastic. My changes: I add a carrot to the veggie mix, use a bunch of pesto in the vinaigrette instead of dealing with fresh basil (another use for the food processor above), and I swap burrata for mozzarella balls, adding them at the very end and letting them melt a bit into the lentil mixture. It’s so good. We make this a lot.
Smitten Kitchen | Zucchini Quesadillas An excellent sneak vegetable dish. There is more zucchini than cheese in here, and the filling keeps for a few days for a quick meal.
Joy the Baker | One-Pot Hamburger Helper with Sneaky Veggies Disqualified from the main list because it’s more chopping and grating than I think qualifies for this list and is pretty pasta-heavy, but it’s not that difficult and it’s very good, so you should know about it!
