Cook with Kre

A Weeknight Dinner Plan You Can Start Cold

Updated

A weeknight dinner plan after work needs only three decisions: the main thing, what goes with it, and which part takes longest. Start that longest part first, usually the oven or a pot of water, prepare everything else while it runs, and leave whatever has to be cooked at the last minute until the end. No weekend batch-cooking and no chart on the fridge, just an order of work you can apply to whatever is in the kitchen tonight.

Decide what’s for dinner in a minute

The slowest part of a weeknight dinner is often the deciding. Two things make it quick.

A short rotation. Keep a list of five or six dinners you can make without a recipe, and pick from it on the nights you’re tired. Add a new one now and then; drop one when you’re bored of it.

A simple template. Most weeknight dinners are a protein, a starch and a vegetable, or a single dish that combines them. Pick one of each from what you have, starting with whatever needs using up first.

Look in the fridge before you look for ideas. Half a bag of spinach, two sausages and some rice is already a plan.

Start the longest job before anything else

Before you take your coat off, if you can, start the slowest thing. That usually means one of these:

  • The oven. It needs time to heat. Turn it on even if you’re not sure yet what’s going in.
  • A pot of water. For pasta, potatoes or blanching vegetables. An electric kettle gets it there quicker.
  • Rice or grains. They need a burner and a while, but almost no attention.

Then do the rest of your thinking while those are under way.

What to cook first on a weeknight

Once the slow job is running, work in this order:

  1. Prep for the long dish. Chop the vegetables for the tray, season the meat.
  2. Get the long dish going. Into the oven or into the pot.
  3. Prep everything else while it cooks: the salad, the sauce ingredients, the garnish.
  4. Cook the last-minute parts near the end: the stir-fry, the eggs, the greens, the pan sauce.

That order uses the waiting time, which is where weeknight cooking wins or loses. The guide to cooking several dishes at once explains the same idea for bigger meals: plan backward from when you eat.

Keep a cupboard you can start cold from

A few things on hand make nearly any night workable:

  • Pasta, rice and noodles, which cook from dry with nothing else prepared.
  • Eggs, for a frittata, fried rice or eggs on toast.
  • Tins: tomatoes, beans, chickpeas, coconut milk, fish.
  • Frozen vegetables, already washed and cut.
  • Flavour in jars: stock cubes, curry paste, soy sauce, mustard, a hard cheese.

With those, a cold start still gets somewhere: pasta with tinned tomatoes and garlic, fried rice with frozen peas and an egg, a chickpea curry from a tin and a jar.

Cook once, eat twice

Making extra of the slow part saves the next night’s longest job. A double batch of rice becomes fried rice; extra roast vegetables go into a frittata or a grain bowl.

Leftovers need handling with some care. The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service advises getting cooked food into the fridge within two hours and eating it within three to four days. Cooked rice is worth particular attention: spread it out to cool quickly rather than leaving it in a warm pot.

Keep several things straight

Even a simple dinner can have three things running at once. Name each timer as you set it, so “rice” and “oven” are never confused, and check the one closest to finishing whenever you turn around. Keeping several kitchen timers straight covers this in more detail.

Starting a recipe with Kre

When tonight’s dinner comes from a recipe, Cook with Kre is one way to start it without reading the whole page first. Bring the recipe by link or paste it in, choose how many you’re cooking for, and Kre talks you through it one step at a time, with the amounts scaled to that number. It keeps the timers and your place, so a phone call in the middle doesn’t lose you. See how Kre cooks with you.

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