One-Pot Meals

One of my favorite meals was made by finding some leftover meat or fish and some cooked rice, and tossing them in a skillet with whatever caught our fancy. When you're good and hungry, a mixed-up quick meal tastes every bit as good as any long pot [long-cooked dish]. And you don't have to wait.

Using shrimp instead of chicken in this recipe makes for an equally delicious soup.

This dish uses three vegetable-bin staples: onions, celery, and carrots. If you don't have any canned broth on hand, dissolve a bouillon cube in water.

Avgolemono, a classic Greek sauce flavored with lemon juice and thickened with eggs, adds richness to the tender stewed chicken in this outstanding main course. Pour a chilled Chardonnay, and offer purchased baklava for dessert. See how to joint a chicken.

This is what I call a fridge-eater recipe. The key here is getting a nice sear on the sausage and cooking the tomato down until it coats the sausage and vegetables well.

Crisp winter greens and tender slices of steak get the restaurant treatment with a punchy peppercorn dressing, crisp bacon bits, chives, and blue cheese.

This one-pot dinner cooks chicken thighs directly on top of a bed of flavorful cilantro rice studded with black beans for a complete dinner.

Rehydrating dried cherries in hot water turns them plump and juicy—exactly what you want scattered throughout a rosemary-scented pan sauce for pork chops.

Canned cranberry jelly transforms into a glossy stir-fry sauce that coats chicken and green beans for a dish reminiscent of your favorite take-out.

A can of pumpkin purée adds richness, body, and an autumnal hue to this speedy chili, letting the flavors of the spices, aromatics, and ground beef shine.

All the flavors of chicken piccata, only instead of meat, the dish is built upon plump potato gnocchi (the shelf-stable kind) in this no-boil one-pan recipe.

Smoky brown-butter pasta is a pantry-friendly, grown-up version of beloved buttered noodles. Salted almonds and parsley elevate this to bistro-worthy fare.

A weeknight-friendly chicken dinner with two kinds of vinegar, dried figs, and a rich sauce. It’s restaurant-quality food in just 30 minutes.

This Puerto Rican sancocho recipe is hearty, flavorful, and loaded with falling-off-the-bone beef, tender carrots, potatoes, squash, corn, plantain, and yuca.

This riff on the Italian classic comfort food gets its verdant color from kale two ways: blended into the base, and wilted among the pasts and white beans.

Juicy ground chicken and charred cabbage are the stars of this family-friendly meal.