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one-pot cheesy baked meatballs
Click here for the WTC recipe index, and scroll to the bottom of this post for a printer-friendly version of today’s recipe. ‘Tis the season for feeding tons of people, and this is the perfect recipe to do it! These are the most tender, perfect meatballs with the simplest, most delightful sauce. We are cooking them entirely in one pan. They’re a riff on the meatballs in my cookbook, Just Married, but I made them even easier because I’m no longer just married, I now have three children. I don't have time for homemade sauce right now! The recipe takes an hour in total, but there’s only about 15 minutes of active cooking. If you skip the fresh parsley (you could use 1 teaspoon dried instead!), you wouldn’t have to chop a single thing to make these! If you do not find yourself needing enough meatballs to feed 8 to 10 people, you can either halve this recipe, freeze half, or bring meatballs to a friend for Christmas! I’m totally serious — my mom gives chicken curry to her good friends for Christmas! I like to serve a simple salad first, then a big bowl of cheesy meatballs with really good bread to scoop the sauce and cheese for dinner. Yum. You can also make a big pot of spaghetti and scoop the meatballs and sauce over top. Pick your poison. Happy ball-idays! You’re looking at it! Thanks to all of you who are gifting WTC this holiday season! Give a gift subscription Serves 8 to 10 Cook time: ~1 hour (15 minutes active, 45 minutes inactive)
one-skillet roasted chicken and peaches
 Click here for the WTC recipe index! And scroll to the very bottom of this post for a printer-friendly version of today’s recipe. On Thursday, I sent you an email all about my favorite summer produce, TOMATOES, and today I’m sharing a recipe that celebrates my second favorite supper crop: PEACHES! This recipe is a riff on a dish in my cookbook, but that recipe included only the chicken and peaches, no rice! Now that I am older and wiser and massively pregnant, I don’t have time to be making side dishes separately! Everything must happen in one skillet! And honestly, magic happens when the chicken and rice cook together here. The chicken schmaltz (drippings from the chicken skin) drips down into the pesto rice and gives it a really unique, rich, savory flavor. It is delightful. Can’t wait for y'all to try this one. P.S. If you can’t find any good peaches … first of all, I’m so sad for you; secondly, nectarines, plums, apricots, or even apples all work here!
saucy ground beef teriyaki bowls
 Today’s recipe — brought to us by the lovely of kalejunkie (Caro’s fifth maternity leave guest!) — is one that you can turn to anytime you need a super quick, super delicious meal using whatever ingredients you can scrounge up from your fridge, freezer, and pantry. It’s what weeknight dinner dreams are made of, is endlessly riffable, and will hit the spot any time of year! From Nicole: These ground beef teriyaki bowls are so good, you’ll want to lick the bowl clean. This meal comes together in 25 minutes (maybe even less, if you hustle!) and is a great way to use up any veggies sitting in your crisper drawer. The recipe can be doubled, is perfect for meal prep, and freezes well, too, if you want to set yourself up for success on a night weeks from now when you don’t want to cook a damn thing. The secret sauce of this recipe is … the sauce! From Nicole: Most people find this hard to believe since my job is — quite literally — making food, but most nights I don’t actually feel like cooking. When your days are spent developing and perfecting recipes, and you having two extremely picky kids, dinner needs to be simple. But no matter how simple the recipe is, it needs to taste great, because even busy weeknights should feel special. When deciding what to make when I don’t feel like cooking, for me it always starts with a killer sauce. If it’s a loaded salad, the dressing needs to be the star of the show. If it’s a sheet-pan meal, a good sauce to drizzle on top is key. And if it’s a loaded bowl of sorts — like we’re making today — there’s got to be a magic sauce involved. No one likes (or deserves!) dry, boring food! What makes this seemingly basic recipe extraordinary is the homemade teriyaki sauce. It’s delicious with beef or any other protein you may have on hand: ground or cubed chicken, ground pork or turkey, or even cubed salmon. You can also skip the meat and make it a teriyaki veggie bowl, or add crumbled or cubed tofu. As always, see the notes and substitutions below the recipe for ideas! Thank you to for developing this recipe for What to Cook! For more from Nicole, head over to kalejunkie, check out her cookbook, follow her on IG and/or TikTok, and read our Q&A with her here. If you love this meal, you’ll also love Caroline’s beef basil bowls! They’re similar (quick and delicious ground beef bowls that let you use up what you’ve got) but involve a creamy peanut sauce instead. For a sheet-pan teriyaki situation, cook sheet-pan orange teriyaki steak and broccoli. And if you’re in the mood for an Asian-inspired bowl but want to light up the grill, go with these vietnamese-inspired grilled pork or chicken bowls.
sheet-pan orange teriyaki steak and broccoli
 Hi and happy holidays, y’all! Santa Claus is choppering into Carmel Valley today (Santa Fly In is the best day of the year!!!!), my house is positively covered in garland and poinsettias, we’re baking lots of cookies tomorrow, we’ve entered good-good Christmas movie watching territory… it’s all happening!! This week I wanted to share a meal that is so, so easy, a total crowd pleaser, and packed with non-traditional December flavors. I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve gotten my fair share of quintessential fall/holiday food lately — squash, potatoes, thyme, etc., I love you and I’ll see you next week. For now, we’re making teriyaki steak and broccoli and OMG IT’S SO GOOD. We’re marinating skirt steak in a refined sugar-free orange teriyaki marinade overnight (or for 30 minutes if you don’t have the time), then broiling the steak on a sheet pan with broccoli tossed in sesame oil. At the same time, we’re boiling the marinade to create an absolutely delightful teriyaki sauce to drizzle over everything. Make bowls by serving the steak and broccoli over plain rice, microwaved rice, frozen vegetable fried rice (like I did in the pics!), coconut rice, quinoa, cauliflower rice… pick your poison. Or, just enjoy the steak and broccoli! This recipe is DELICIOUS as written — it’s also completely modifiable. If you don’t love broccoli, you can use asparagus or green beans or mushrooms. If you’re wanting a vegetarian meal, use a mix of those veggies and omit the steak. Or if you don’t love steak but do want meat, sub in chicken or shrimp. This meal would be very easy to double or triple if you’re feeding a crowd over the next few weeks (or if you want to stock your fridge with leftovers for lunches!). You can double the steak and broccoli, or just the steak, or just the broccoli. If you’re doubling the steak, I’d also double the marinade — which, by the way, we’re repurposing into an INSANE teriyaki sauce by bringing it to a boil once we’ve removed the meat (doing so makes it totally safe to eat). Or if you’re cooking for one or two, you could just as easily halve it. Yet another reason why I love this recipe is that you can easily prep it ahead of time, which is helpful anytime, but especially so during the most frantic FESTIVE!! time of year. This steak is actually best when it has marinated overnight — or even for up to 36 hours. You’ll simply take it out of the marinade and broil it along with the broccoli for 8 minutes while you turn the marinade into a sauce. If you’re a stock-the-freezer person, you could even stick a ziplock bag of uncooked steak in marinade right into the freezer. Thaw and cook it weeks from now! Serves 4 to 6 Cook time: 30 minutes active cook time, 24 hours with marinating Tools: Medium pot or saucepanMicroplane or box graterYour largest rimmed sheet pan Small bowlChef’s knifeCutting board Medium pot or saucepan Medium pot or saucepan Microplane or box grater Microplane or box grater Your largest rimmed sheet pan Your largest rimmed sheet pan Small bowl Small bowl Chef’s knife Chef’s knife Cutting board Cutting board Ingredients:
short ribs and grits
 See bottom of this post for a printer version of the recipe! Happy Boxing Day and welcome to the hundreds of new subscribers who received What To Cook for Christmas! If you fall into that category, hi! You’ve been gifted a one year subscription to this newsletter, which I really don’t like calling a newsletter because it’s more of a serialized, one-recipe-per-week cookbook. Every Sunday you’ll receive one recipe in your inbox that is a complete meal — no need to root around trying to pair the perfect entree and side dishes together, I do the heavy lifting for you. These recipes almost always take under an hour to cook — although I’m breaking that rule for the second time in WTC history today because… it’s still the holidays. Next Friday is New Years Eve and this is an absolutely perfect NYE dinner party meal. To check out past WTC recipes for meal planning purposes, you can go to the site, login using the email address, and noodle through all past posts. Or, you can go check out this categorized index of all past WTC recipes. I know it was weird and Omicron-y, but I hope everyone was able to find magic in the madness of the 2021 holiday season. My children haven’t eaten anything but cookies in about three days, but they are happy and I am happy and tomorrow we will attempt to reintroduce vegetables to our diets. Maybe. We’re all exhausted so let’s cut to the chase: short ribs. Short ribs are an excellent set-it-and-forget-it meal that are actually a rather elegant meal versus, ya know, another freaking pot of chili (but if you’re looking for a chicken chili look no further). After a very minimal amount of prep, you throw everything in a pot, let it crank for a few hours, and voila. Succulent, fall apart-y meat awaits. We’re serving ‘em with grits here, but polenta, mashed potatoes, mashed cauliflower, or my personal fave, cauliflower mashed potatoes would all work. Really quickly though, let’s talk about short ribs. Short ribs are from the “chuck” cut of a cow, but include part of the rib bone. They are the exact same cut of beef as a beef spare rib, so if you can’t find short ribs, you can always ask your butcher to time spare ribs into short ribs. They are a tough, cheap cut of meat, which is why we coax the flavor and tenderness out of them with a nice long braise (aka a long bath in a flavorful liquid). What we wind up with is a fall-off-the-bone, melt-in-your-mouth, ridiculously flavorful piece of meat. If you can’t find short ribs, you can just buy a chuck roast and trim it into 4-inch chunks to make boneless short ribs! Serves 4-6 Cook time: ~20 minutes active time, 3 hours and 45 minutes total
steak, salad & garlic fries
 a perfect night-before-the-feast meal and Nov 19, 2023 ∙ Paid Happy Thanksgiving week, guys! TLDR: my friend Ali Slagle is guest-posting this week. She’s a New York Times recipe columnist and cookbook author and she just started a fabulous new Substack called 40 Ingredients Forever — subscribe, it’s brilliant. I am so thankful for each and every one of you. Thank you for cooking my recipes, sharing photos of them … Keep reading with a 7-day free trial Subscribe to What To Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives. A guest post by I write recipes—find some in my cookbook "I Dream of Dinner (so You Don't Have To)" and Substack "40 Ingredients Forever"
cheesy chicken and veggie enchilada skillet
 Click here for the recipe index for all past WTC recipes. And for a printable PDF of this week’s… scroll to the bottom of this post! Someone messaged me this past week and said, “I make the al pastor enchiladas once a week, but I’m too lazy to roll them so I just smoosh the tortillas down into the skillet, cover everything with cheese, and bake it!” That is some serious What To Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking ingenuity, people. Think about it — when you serve enchiladas, they totally fall apart. You don’t end up eating a perfectly rolled enchilada anyway. So why not just smoosh the tortillas in there and serve it more like a casserole situation? So I tried it out. My first test used rotisserie chicken and, while I loved it, shredding the cooked chicken actually took longer than just cooking ground chicken, so I used ground chicken for my second run, added a lot more vegetables, and… dang! This is delicious. (But if you don’t mind a few extra minutes and would rather have whole pieces of chicken versus ground — check the notes, of course!) This recipe is as easy as it comes. We sauté veggies and ground chicken, stir in some diced chilis and enchilada sauce, then throw in the tortillas, which we’ve cut into strips to make things easier to serve and eat. Top it off with shredded cheese, bake for 20 minutes, and there we go: enchiladas (kinda) in about 30 minutes! Last week with the roasted harissa chicken and sweet potato bowls, we talked about the importance of how we plate our food. We eat with our eyes, so don’t give up at the end and slop the food onto the plate! (Or, ya know, if it makes your life easier and you had a day, you can totally slop the food on the plate.) When it comes out of the oven, this skillet looks, eh, pretty ugly. But that’s nothing a bit of garnishing can’t fix! Throw some sprigs of cilantro, a dollop of sour cream, and some sliced avocado on top and bam — suddenly it’s food magazine-cover worthy! This recipe makes a BIG OLE skillet full of enchiladas, so plan to have leftovers (they’re good for up to 5 days). If you don’t need that much food, you can halve the entire recipe — just use a 10 instead of 12-inch skillet. Since using half of a zucchini and bell pepper is annoying, just pick one and use the entire can of black beans. And buy a 15-ounce jar of enchilada sauce! Serves 4 to 6
crispy artichoke and chicken salad
Click here for the WTC recipe index and scroll to the bottom of this post for a PDF of today’s recipe. Oh boy, do I love a big a$$ salad for dinner! A leafy green salad with meager toppings is not a dinner salad. But a salad like this one, where the greens are almost secondary to the other ingredients? Now we’re talking. This sheet-pan chicken with artichokes and potatoes was a major hit last July, and we’re borrowing elements of that recipe for this salad. We’re again using the marinated artichoke brine to marinate our chicken. And we’re again baking canned artichokes. But this time, we’re really letting those artichoke leaves crisp up and get golden brown by spreading them out and giving them lots of space on the baking sheet. Throw it all together with a zippy lemon Parm dressing, kale (lots of subs in the notes below the recipe for you kale haters!), white beans (plant-based protein — sustained energy!), crunchy croutons and nuts (more plant protein!), and you’ve got the type of salad that even the biggest salad-for-dinner skeptics out there will admit is freaking delicious. Worcestershire is a really wonderful umami-rich ingredient to throw into salad dressings or marinades. Consider it a cousin to soy sauce or fish sauce — tons of salty, savory flavor. It’s made up of anchovies, molasses, vinegar, onion, and garlic — all the good stuff! Adding a smidge to this salad dressing adds wonderful salty depth. There are a lot of areas where I cut costs. I very rarely buy clothing unless it’s on sale. I buy furniture second-hand. But at the grocery store, with rare exception, I do not bargain shop. Why? Because quality seriously impacts the taste of your food. And I like food that tastes good. Case in point: The first time I tested this recipe, my InstaCart shopper brought me crappy Parmesan cheese. The cheap kind. The kind that feels like rubber. I was nap-trapped and couldn’t run to the store so used it — and it was all wrong. The dressing was muted and dull; it tasted boring. So I re-tested it with the good stuff: real, authentic Parmigiano Reggiano. That is what you want the label to say. And you want the rind to look like the photo above. That’s how you know you’re getting authentic, aged, high-quality Parm. I know it’s a few bucks more expensive, but don’t skimp on your Parm! My 19-month-old will dive head first into a bowl of salad, no problem. My 3-year-old? Absolutely not. So I kept all of the roasted ingredients separate on his plate: one pile of chopped chicken, one pile of halved artichoke hearts, one pile of croutons, and a few chunks of parm (he loves parm). Huge glob of ketchup. And ya know what? He actually ate almost everything! Serves 4
unstuffed tomatoes
 Hi! Let’s get straight into what I think will be the newest cult WTC fave: unstuffed tomatoes! To give you an idea of how very easy this recipe is — I got home on Thursday after four book tour events, was watching the kids by myself while George took a much deserved break, and still managed to cook this for dinner! Also a warning on portions: George ate half the skillet! Feel free to double it and cook it in an ovenproof pot such as a Dutch oven! Makes for great leftovers or a freezer meal! I had the most perfect stuffed tomatoes when I was eating dinner with my cousin Marlea at Chez Fonfon in Birmingham, Alabama during the third leg of my book tour this week. Stuffed tomatoes are a classic French dish where whole tomatoes are scooped out, filled with rice flavored with garlic and basil or parsley, topped with breadcrumbs, and baked — SO good. But, way too fussy to cook when I don’t feel like cooking. When I got home, I immediately started playing around with how to make those same flavors What To Cook friendly, and voila: unstuffed tomatoes. A one-skillet meal filled with perfectly fluffy rice, jammy roasted tomatoes, pesto breadcrumbs (yep), very few ingredients, but SO MUCH FLAVOR. George’s reaction to this meal was, and I quote “Caroline this is ABSURD" so, ya know, I think it’s worth adding to this week’s meal plan!!! What To Cook, the book, made the NYT bestseller list for the 4th week in a row this week! GEEZE, guys. My editor literally told me it was not possible since Amazon and Target were out of stock the entire week. She underestimated the power of Y’ALL! Seriously, all of your shares and posts and tags are making this book find all of the people who don’t feel like cooking out there, and I am so deeply appreciative. I am happy to report that the book is back on Amazon and on steep sale — it’s $24 at the time that I’m posting this. Target already sold out again, sheesh! There are just a few more stops left on the What to Cook book tour! I am heading to Texas on September 25th, with events lined up in Dallas, Austin, and Houston. Then I am wrapping things up back in California, in Palo Alto and Monterey. You’ll find all the deets here — come see me!!! We added more tickets already, but I’m afraid the Texas events will sell out again soon so get your tickets now! Serves: 4 Cook time: 1 hour Tools: Chef’s knifeCutting board10 or 12 inch OVENPROOF skillet. I used cast iron, but nonstick is also great if you have an ovenproof nonstick! Stainless steel is great here, too.A mismatched pot lid, baking sheet, or aluminum foil for covering the skillet!Small bowl Chef’s knife Chef’s knife Cutting board Cutting board 10 or 12 inch OVENPROOF skillet. I used cast iron, but nonstick is also great if you have an ovenproof nonstick! Stainless steel is great here, too. 10 or 12 inch OVENPROOF skillet. I used cast iron, but nonstick is also great if you have an ovenproof nonstick! Stainless steel is great here, too. A mismatched pot lid, baking sheet, or aluminum foil for covering the skillet! A mismatched pot lid, baking sheet, or aluminum foil for covering the skillet! Small bowl Small bowl
my mom's egg salad
 Sending this week’s newsletter a day early so that you can make egg salad for your Easter feasts! It makes a great appetizer: Pile it onto a piece of toasted baguette and top with a sprig of dill! (Click here for the WTC recipe index and check the bottom of this post for a printer-friendly PDF of this egg salad recipe.) Here’s the thing: This is a newsletter about dinner. Every single recipe is a complete dinner in under an hour. Those are the bylaws, that’s the understanding. It’s why you guys are here and what you expect to receive every single week. So… egg salad? I think many recipients of this email will be a bit confused. But stay with me on this one. I think that egg salad is actually the ultimate quick weeknight meal. It takes about ten minutes to throw together (after the eggs are cooked). It’s full of lean protein. There are so many ways it can be enjoyed: as a sandwich, scooped up with Ritz crackers, spooned into a lettuce cup, devoured straight out of the bowl because you can’t freaking believe how much you love egg salad. And if your house is anything like my house, it’s positively overflowing with dyed hard-boiled Easter eggs right now. If you don’t celebrate Easter or don’t participate in the somewhat bizarre ritual of dying hard-boiled eggs, check the notes section for my favorite ways to hard boil your eggs either on the stovetop or in an InstantPot. Just be sure to use food-safe dye so that your eggs are safe to eat once the dying festivities are over! My mom always grates her hard-boiled eggs when making egg or tuna salad, or when adding them to a spinach or chopped salad of any kind. The fine shreds of egg are what *make* this egg salad. Big chunks of egg don't absorb the sauce nicely, but with the shreds, everything combines magically. It is truly the perfect egg salad. P.S. You’ll notice that there are MANY repeat ingredients from last week’s sheet-pan salmon recipe. This was on purpose! I know you all have leftover chives and dill, so when I was deciding which herbs to use (my mom just uses whatever’s in the fridge or alive in the garden) it was a no brainer to use those. If you have leftover dilly sauce from last week’s salmon, check the notes below the recipe — you can just use that sauce in your egg salad! Serves 2 to 4 (double it if feeding 4 really hungry people) ~10 minutes (plus ~30 minutes to hard boil + peel all the eggs) Tools: Chef’s knifeCutting boardBox grater (see notes if you don’t have one) Chef’s knife Chef’s knife Cutting board Cutting board Box grater (see notes if you don’t have one) Box grater (see notes if you don’t have one) Ingredients: