The art of improvisation in the kitchen can absolutely be learned if you reframe how you look at your pantry. Plus, three recipes for go-with-anything sauces that turn any ingredients into a meal.
FoodNetwork.com | November 05, 2021 | By: Dawn Perry | Make Dinner
For the past twelve years or so I have spent the bulk of my professional time writing recipes for busy working people, myself included. Focused on dinner solutions, I made promises about 30-minute meals, aimed to dirty as few dishes as possible, and put melted cheese and tomato sauce on enough things that I thought the kids might, at the very least, taste what I was selling.
Those solutions are all great on paper but they can only get you so far when you get home, tired and hungry, and faced with the task of putting together another meal you hope everyone might like.
A lot of people will tell you it’s all about meal prep. You make A, B, and C on Sunday and then reinvent them throughout the week. Which is great in theory, but I’m not interested in spending a whole Sunday in the kitchen chopping and simmering and packaging meals for the week ahead. Plus, rare are the times when whatever I had intended to eat on Wednesday still seemed appealing when hump day finally arrived.
I say forget meal planning. Instead, I exercise these habits to help make weeknight meals so easy it hardly feels like cooking at all. (And read even more of my tricks and recipe ideas, in my brand new cookbook, Ready, Set, Cook.)
