One-Pot Meals to Save Your Sanity This Week
Break the cycle of constant cooking and cleaning with these dishes, all of which make a multi-meal batch of food and only dirty one pot
Yunhee Kim
Are you sick of doing dishes? I’m sick of doing dishes. Like most of you, I haven’t eaten a meal outside my own home since mid-March, and the tedium of scrubbing pots and pans up to three times a day is getting to me.
I’ve found a few strategies to help me cope. One is that I have jettisoned the idea of a hot breakfast every morning. A few weeks ago, I had the romantic notion that I could use what had been my commute time to make myself a leisurly, fortifying breakfast. But when I realized that the time I had gained had actually been claimed by much-lengthened grocery store visits and an extra daily round of skillet-scrubbing, I fell into a more sustainable regime of parfaits and cold cereal.
More constructive (and more nutritious) has been an increased reliance on one-pot meals. Finding ways of minimizing time spent at the sink has given me more time in my day and helped me keep alive my joy of cooking—important in a time like this when I am doing a lot of it. Here are a few favorite one-pot recipes. They’re not all quick to make, but they certainly are easy to clean up after.
The Best Ideas We’ve Had Lately
The Slow-Cooker Is Your Friend
Put in almost any combination of protein, green veggies, and root vegetables, and a balanced meal takes care of itself.
Ditto the Dutch Oven
The Dutch oven (defined here as any sturdy lidded pot with oven-safe handles) is a kitchen workhorse very much like the slow cooker. Put that protein and vegetable combo in the Dutch oven, add liquid, and pop it in your actual oven. Dinner is served right out of the pot.
