Cooking Methods
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Dinner in One: Exceptional & Easy One-Pan Meals: A Cookbook
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 100 all-new super-simple and incredibly delicious one-pot, one-pan, one-sheet-one-everything!-recipes from the star food writer and bestselling author of Dinner in French.
Melissa Clark brings her home cook's expertise and no-fuss approach to the world of one-pot/pan cooking. With nearly all of the recipes being made in under one hour, the streamlined steps ensure you are in and out of the kitchen without dirtying a multitude of pans or spending more time than you need to on dinner.
Expect to find a bevy of sheet-pan suppers (Miso-Glazed Salmon with Roasted Sugar Snap Peas), skillet dinners (Cheesy Meatball Parm with Spinach), Instant Pot® pinch hitters (Cheaters Chicken and Dumplings), comforting casseroles (Herby Artichoke and Gruyere Bread Pudding) that you can assemble right in the baking dish, crowd-pleasing one-pot pasta meals (Gingery Coconut Noodles with Shrimp and Greens), vegetable-forward mains, and dozens of tips for turning a vegetarian or meat-based recipe vegan. And since no dinner is complete without dessert, you'll find a chapter of one-bowl cakes, too-from an Easy Chocolate Fudge Torte to a Ricotta-Olive Oil Pound Cake.
These are simple, delicious recipes for weekdays, busy evenings, and any time you need to get a delicious, inspiring meal on the table quickly-with as little clean-up as possible.
Melissa Clark brings her home cook's expertise and no-fuss approach to the world of one-pot/pan cooking. With nearly all of the recipes being made in under one hour, the streamlined steps ensure you are in and out of the kitchen without dirtying a multitude of pans or spending more time than you need to on dinner.
Expect to find a bevy of sheet-pan suppers (Miso-Glazed Salmon with Roasted Sugar Snap Peas), skillet dinners (Cheesy Meatball Parm with Spinach), Instant Pot® pinch hitters (Cheaters Chicken and Dumplings), comforting casseroles (Herby Artichoke and Gruyere Bread Pudding) that you can assemble right in the baking dish, crowd-pleasing one-pot pasta meals (Gingery Coconut Noodles with Shrimp and Greens), vegetable-forward mains, and dozens of tips for turning a vegetarian or meat-based recipe vegan. And since no dinner is complete without dessert, you'll find a chapter of one-bowl cakes, too-from an Easy Chocolate Fudge Torte to a Ricotta-Olive Oil Pound Cake.
These are simple, delicious recipes for weekdays, busy evenings, and any time you need to get a delicious, inspiring meal on the table quickly-with as little clean-up as possible.
Editorial Reviews
"As always, Clark has home cooks in mind with this collection of streamlined, crowd-pleasing recipes; perfect for beginning cooks and readers looking to build a repertoire of sure-fire dinner options."-Library Journal
"New York Times food columnist Clark calls upon her decades of 'recipe streamlining' in this excellent guide to weeknight cooking. . . . Busy home cooks shouldn't miss this smart collection."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"New York Times food columnist Clark calls upon her decades of 'recipe streamlining' in this excellent guide to weeknight cooking. . . . Busy home cooks shouldn't miss this smart collection."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Readers Top Reviews
Eternal Senshi
I would highly recommend disregarding negative opinions about this book. They read as they are coming from people who have never cooked or are offended by flavor. If you don't know what an ingredient is, Google is your friend. Also, the author makes several notes for each recipe on how to change items up. Right off the bat you will notice that this book is of rich quality. The pages are thick and glossy. Much more thicker than the average book. The height of the book is much smaller though than the rest of my collection. It doesn't feel odd or weird though, despite that. It kind of adds a cozy feel, if that makes sense. The variety of recipes is something that I really enjoyed skimming through. As I went through page after page, I felt like this was a really worthy purchase and knew I'd get my money's worth. I like to place sticky tabs / notes on recipes I am interested in but there were far too many in this one so I didn't even bother. There are recipes of all sorts of tastes. Vegetarian, meat, sides, etc. The author uses a varying amount of herbs and spices and if you are a seasoned cook, as you read the ingredients, you will feel the recipe come to life already. This book has Milk Street vibes in the sense that it contains flavors from all over the world, but she uses a lot more seasonings and herbs in her recipes (which I love!). This book is not a simple, plain cookbook though. If you are looking for a quick weeknight meal with a fussy spouse / children, I would not recommend this. This feels like it is more geared towards people that enjoy cooking as a hobby and savoring wonderful flavors and tastes. Maybe you could use some of the recipes for a weekend dinner when dining with friends or family. The only disappointment in this cookbook is that there are not images for every recipe. This does bother me a lot with other books but I think I can overlook that because of the quality of the product itself. Highly recommend if you appreciate flavor, depth, and deliciousness. Do not recommend if you do not like to cook and / or do not like strong, bold flavors.
Katherine SEterna
Just in the nick of time -- back-to-school season -- this godsend appears. I'm a timid cook, but Melissa makes it so easy and friendly. The photos are gorgeous, and the directions are mostly just a few steps, doable by even harried after-work cooks. Plus, she offers such an imaginative range of meals that everyone in my house will be happy. But my favorite part? The accompanying "Swap it out"; "Add it in"; and "Veg it up" notes on each recipe that teach unimaginative cooks like me how to think about ingredients and get a little more fluid and confident. Thank you, Melissa -- I already know my copy is going to be stained and dog-eared with love and use by the end of this month.
Jim n MarthaKathe
Two things: I love autumn and I love interesting, tasty and easy recipes. This cookbook combines both cozy, comforting recipes (wine braised mushrooms and gnocchi; garlicky chicken; savory bread pudding) and simple preparation (usually 4 or 5 steps) with interesting, new ideas (farro w/chickpeas, tomatoes and leeks; tartiflette w/bitter lettuces and pear salad) in a variety of one: pot, sheetpan, dutch oven, casserole or skillet (easy clean-up!). She suggests ways to make various dishes either vegetarian or vegan. I’m pretty sure this chef is checking all my boxes, and I’m excited to explore these recipes. 👍🏼👍🏼
LaurieJim n Marth
First, a disclaimer--I am an ardent fan of Melissa Clark and the New York Times Cooking blog. So of course I had to pre-order this book. It does not disappoint. Like Melissa, we are trying to adopt a more plant-centered, "flexitarian" diet, and I appreciate that so many of the recipes are vegetarian. I especially love her suggested swaps and additions, which help the home cook use what's on-hand as well as up the ante on the use of vegetables in the dish. For example, I made the Cuban-style chicken and rice and, as per one of her "veg it up" suggestions, added a few ounces of baby spinach that was languishing in the fridge. Delicious, and with an added nutritional bonus. I have cleared some premium kitchen shelf space to make this one of my go-to cookbooks. Thanks Melissa!
Copper KellyLauri
Melissa Clark is one of my favorite recipe writers. I have both Dinner, and Dinner in French, and follow her avidly on the Times. She writes in such a way that the recipes are extremely user friendly, and can be flexible based on what you have at home, and what is fresh and seasonal. People complaining that there’s “too many ingredients” probably aren’t reading through the actual list. In many she lists salt and pepper separately, and sometimes salt is even listed twice if it’s needed in the recipe and for garnish. Several recipes also call for both sweet and smoked paprika. I don’t think multiple spices really necessitates a recipe having “too many ingredients,” but I digress. All the ingredients called for throughout the book are easily accessible in any standard big box grocery store, and if you’re even half heartedly into cooking, you probably own them already. I was nervous there might be a lot of overlap in recipes from her previous books, but they all seem innovative and inventive. I look forward to making these meals, and seeing how they evolve through the seasons.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Introduction
There's nothing that makes me appreciate the streamlined ease of a one-pan meal more than watching a professional chef at work.
The first time I stepped into a restaurant kitchen to observe the cooks, it was at a popular, cavernous restaurant called An American Place in New York City, where I had a college job as a coat checker. Sometimes, on a warmish night when coats were sparse but the dining room was crowded, I'd slip into the kitchen to take in the drama.
There was all of the exciting bustle and energy you'd imagine, but what riveted me most was the elaborate choreography the cooking entailed, completely different from anything I'd seen done at home.
To make one menu item, a chef might use three separate pans, two bowls, and an array of plastic squeeze bottles. There'd be a skillet for sautéing the salmon fillet, an oval sizzle platter to crisp the skin, another skillet to brown the accompanying sugar snap peas. In one bowl, pea shoots would be tossed with a couple of squirts from various squeeze bottles; in another, a sauce was reheated over a bain-marie.
Scurrying in the background were the dishwashers who cleaned up every greasy pan, dirty spatula, and sticky bottle. Without them easing the flow, the chefs would have sweat even more profusely than they already did.
The whole thing made me understand why many recipes in chefs' cookbooks were such a pain to make in my home kitchen. Chefs don't care about using every pot and pan in the house, because they don't have to think about having them pile up in the sink; they have dozens of pots and pans . . . and people to clean them.
I took this lesson with me when I became a food writer and started coauthoring cookbooks with celebrity chefs. Could I translate what they did in a professional kitchen using half a dozen pots, pans, and bowls into a recipe that would work just as well at home using one or two?
That was where my obsession with recipe streamlining began. And it continues to this day, now that I'm a food reporter and recipe columnist for The New York Times. My job is to create recipes home cooks want to add to their repertoire. And for every single recipe I develop, whether for a cookbook or for my Good Appetite column at the paper, I deconstruct the process. Is there a way I could make this recipe easier, faster, and tastier? And what's the minimum number of pots, pans, and dishes I need to dirty to get here? It's a discipline that has slowly solidified into a less-is-more philosophy-less work, less mess, more flavor.
This book of one-pan recipes is the culmination of it all.
The recipes are simple but not simplistic, with complex, layered flavors that you can achieve with minimal stress.
Along with reducing the number of pots and pans all the way down to one, I've also limited the number of utensils and bowls. It's not just for the sake of cleanup, it's also for convenience and flow while cooking. It's just easier to use the same bowl in which you mixed your vegetables to whip up the salad dressing, without having to stop and wash it in between.
I've applied this same spirit of paring down to techniques as well. Case in point: where I can get away with not browning every side of every piece of chicken for a stew or a braise, I don't. In the Cheater's Chicken and Dumplings on page 233, I brown only as many chicken pieces as can fit in one layer in the Instant Pot at once. This browning builds up enough fond (those umami-rich bits on the bottom of the pan) to flavor the sauce, without you having to stand over the splattering pan to sear each piece.
Shortcuts like this mean that the majority of the recipes in this book are weeknight friendly-the kinds of meals you can start thinking about at 6:00 p.m. and have on the table by 7:00 p.m. But they're also weekend delicious, out-of-theordinary dishes you'd be proud to serve to guests.
Even though I'm a thoroughly committed omnivore, almost half of the recipes in this book are meatless. And many of the ones that do contain meat use a lot less of it than others of their kind. Plus, for every dish in which it will work without diminishing the flavors, I've included a vegan variation. I've been eating less meat in this ecologically fragile moment, and these recipes reflect that shift.
Finally, a note on the number of servings in these recipes. For this book, the yield is necessarily dictated by the size of the pot or pan: the larger the vessel, the more people you can feed from it. Big, deep pots like Dutch ovens and soup pots can hold more servings than shallow sheet pans and skillets (depending on the recipe). Theref...
There's nothing that makes me appreciate the streamlined ease of a one-pan meal more than watching a professional chef at work.
The first time I stepped into a restaurant kitchen to observe the cooks, it was at a popular, cavernous restaurant called An American Place in New York City, where I had a college job as a coat checker. Sometimes, on a warmish night when coats were sparse but the dining room was crowded, I'd slip into the kitchen to take in the drama.
There was all of the exciting bustle and energy you'd imagine, but what riveted me most was the elaborate choreography the cooking entailed, completely different from anything I'd seen done at home.
To make one menu item, a chef might use three separate pans, two bowls, and an array of plastic squeeze bottles. There'd be a skillet for sautéing the salmon fillet, an oval sizzle platter to crisp the skin, another skillet to brown the accompanying sugar snap peas. In one bowl, pea shoots would be tossed with a couple of squirts from various squeeze bottles; in another, a sauce was reheated over a bain-marie.
Scurrying in the background were the dishwashers who cleaned up every greasy pan, dirty spatula, and sticky bottle. Without them easing the flow, the chefs would have sweat even more profusely than they already did.
The whole thing made me understand why many recipes in chefs' cookbooks were such a pain to make in my home kitchen. Chefs don't care about using every pot and pan in the house, because they don't have to think about having them pile up in the sink; they have dozens of pots and pans . . . and people to clean them.
I took this lesson with me when I became a food writer and started coauthoring cookbooks with celebrity chefs. Could I translate what they did in a professional kitchen using half a dozen pots, pans, and bowls into a recipe that would work just as well at home using one or two?
That was where my obsession with recipe streamlining began. And it continues to this day, now that I'm a food reporter and recipe columnist for The New York Times. My job is to create recipes home cooks want to add to their repertoire. And for every single recipe I develop, whether for a cookbook or for my Good Appetite column at the paper, I deconstruct the process. Is there a way I could make this recipe easier, faster, and tastier? And what's the minimum number of pots, pans, and dishes I need to dirty to get here? It's a discipline that has slowly solidified into a less-is-more philosophy-less work, less mess, more flavor.
This book of one-pan recipes is the culmination of it all.
The recipes are simple but not simplistic, with complex, layered flavors that you can achieve with minimal stress.
Along with reducing the number of pots and pans all the way down to one, I've also limited the number of utensils and bowls. It's not just for the sake of cleanup, it's also for convenience and flow while cooking. It's just easier to use the same bowl in which you mixed your vegetables to whip up the salad dressing, without having to stop and wash it in between.
I've applied this same spirit of paring down to techniques as well. Case in point: where I can get away with not browning every side of every piece of chicken for a stew or a braise, I don't. In the Cheater's Chicken and Dumplings on page 233, I brown only as many chicken pieces as can fit in one layer in the Instant Pot at once. This browning builds up enough fond (those umami-rich bits on the bottom of the pan) to flavor the sauce, without you having to stand over the splattering pan to sear each piece.
Shortcuts like this mean that the majority of the recipes in this book are weeknight friendly-the kinds of meals you can start thinking about at 6:00 p.m. and have on the table by 7:00 p.m. But they're also weekend delicious, out-of-theordinary dishes you'd be proud to serve to guests.
Even though I'm a thoroughly committed omnivore, almost half of the recipes in this book are meatless. And many of the ones that do contain meat use a lot less of it than others of their kind. Plus, for every dish in which it will work without diminishing the flavors, I've included a vegan variation. I've been eating less meat in this ecologically fragile moment, and these recipes reflect that shift.
Finally, a note on the number of servings in these recipes. For this book, the yield is necessarily dictated by the size of the pot or pan: the larger the vessel, the more people you can feed from it. Big, deep pots like Dutch ovens and soup pots can hold more servings than shallow sheet pans and skillets (depending on the recipe). Theref...
