Day by day on our Hotline—certainly one of Food52’s oldest, coolest options—curious cooks ask questions that the specialists in our group reply. Usually the questions relate to a selected recipe, however we get open-ended queries, too, like this one from Katie McDonald:
Katie, your days of ramen is probably not over simply but, however we can assist you add extra home-cooked meals to your week. Let’s begin with the ideas from the three Food52ers who supplied their recommendation on our community-fueled discussion board.
Begin Small
Nancy, who typically lends her experience on the Hotline, recommended including a number of cookbooks to your library together with Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubb’s A New Method to Dinner, which incorporates grocery lists and meal plans for as much as 16 weeks of menus.
She additionally recommends mastering only a few key recipes at first, which can assist you develop your methods and make grocery purchasing simple. A few of these fundamentals may embody:
Make Deliberate Overs, Not Leftovers
As Miss_Karen factors out, “it helps to think about leftovers as ‘deliberate overs’ since cooking for simply two could be tough.” In different phrases: Suppose upfront about how one can flip your dinner into tomorrow’s lunch—that roast rooster might develop into a rooster salad or easy rooster fried rice.
Spend money on a Sluggish Cooker
“For those who do not have already got one, put a crockpot in your wishlist,” says Mcter1. “My favourite [slow-cooker recipe] is cheap pork loin with BBQ sauce for pulled pork.” Put it in earlier than you go to class, and dinner will probably be prepared while you get house for dinner with leftovers or “deliberate overs.”
Prep Your Greens
Our final little bit of professional recommendation come from our Check Kitchen Director Allison Buford. Kale and broccoli make common appearances on her weekly menu, and as quickly as she brings them again from the shop, she de-stems, trims, washes, and shops hers—wrapped in paper towels—in her produce drawer, so that they’re prepared to make use of anytime.
She has a go-to cookbook for newbie house cooks, too:
“Once I first began and I didn’t know something about cooking,” says Allison, “what I discovered useful was Mark Bittman’s Easy methods to Cook dinner Every thing. Any questions you may need, so simple as you assume they could be, it was an enormous assist in laying the inspiration for how you can cook dinner every little thing.”
A few of our Favourite Weeknight Meals
