Easy

This vegetable jambalaya is faster and just as good, in my opinion, as traditional jambalaya (which typically has andouille sausage, chicken and/or seafood). With the “holy trinity” of vegetables, juicy tomatoes, and long-grain rice, this is a fantastic main dish (with some optional add-ins, if you want) or a hearty side dish to serve alongside your favorite main.

Dashi is an incredibly simple broth, and it forms one of the culinary cornerstones of Japanese cooking. It’s made in about 10 minutes with just three ingredients: water, kombu (dried kelp), and bonito fish flakes. The resulting clear broth tastes like the essence of the sea. Dashi can be used to make a fantastic bowl of miso soup, to poach fish or vegetables, or to add savory umami flavor to any number of Japanese recipes. Here’s how to make dashi broth at home.

I love everything about chocolate-covered strawberries. I love the crunchy, melt-in-your-mouth shell and the cool, sweet strawberry beneath. I love giving them as homemade food gifts, and I love receiving them equally as much (especially for Valentine’s Day dessert!). But what I love most is how easy they are to make at home. It’s an afternoon fun cooking project with a result that looks fancy no matter your candy-making skills (or lack thereof)!

Meet your new favorite party recipe: slow cooker baked beans. Long loved for their sweet, tangy flavor and tender, creamy texture, baked beans for backyard barbecues, summer cookouts, and game day parties used to mean heating up the whole house to slowly cook the dried beans for hours upon hours. Here the slow cooker saves the day by doing all the work and keeping you cool at the same time.

Show me a platter of baked chicken wings slathered in sticky Buffalo sauce and I can take ’em or leave ’em. But show me a platter of ultra-crispy garlic Parmesan wings blanketed with a double-dose of punchy garlic, plenty of salty Parm, and some melted butter for good measure, and I’ll be first in line to pile them on my plate. Serve themwith ranch dressing or blue cheese dip, alongside carrot sticks and celery sticks for your next party.

While it may feel like kale has overstayed its welcome in the food scene, the hype over the leafy green is very much still alive. And knowing the right way to cook it is a total game-changer. (Don’t miss our in-depth kale guide to learn about the different types of kale and more! )Mastering this method will convert kale-haters, yes, but it will also inspire kale fans who feared they’d never be able to get it right at home.

On their own, baked potatoes are one of the absolute best foods. They’re cheap, filling, and require practically zero effort to make. All you really need is salt, pepper, and a pat of butter. You could be satisfied — no, delighted — by this simplest of preparations. But let us indulge, if you will, in what a humble baked potato could become.You don’t even need a recipe.

So simple, so satisfying.

There are plenty of days when we’re fired up and eager to begin a baking project. Unfortunately, those moments don’t always line up with when our chocolate dessert cravings hit. More often than not, we start wanting a warm, fudgy homemade brownie right as we sit down to relax in front of the television, perfectly content to not move for the rest of the night. Unfortunately, we can’t just snap our fingers and have a brownie appear.

I would place “how to cook fish quickly” right up there with other essential cooking skills like boiling eggs and cooking a pot of rice. If you can cook a fish fillet, you can have a healthy, easy dinner on the table in 10 minutes. Or less! It’s such a simple and versatile weeknight meal. Here’s how to do it. For quick stovetop cooking, go for a white fish fillet.

Pork shoulder is one of my secret weapons in the kitchen. Slow-cooked, it can become a thousand different meals. I can mix in some barbecue sauce and make pulled pork sandwiches, scatter it on top of tortilla chips for pulled pork nachos, or use it as a filling for pulled pork lettuce wraps. And that’s just to start! Here’s everything you need to know about pork shoulder — from choosing the meat to transforming it into a fork-tender meal that can last all week.

You might adore Olive Garden for the unlimited salad and garlic breadsticks (our copycat recipe is seriously legit!) or the ultra-comforting creamy pastas, but for me, it’s all about the luxuriously creamy chicken gnocchi soup. Just thinking about it, I can smell the herb and black pepper-flecked broth and feel the warm, satisfying comfort it brings to my belly.

Ready in minutes.

They could barely wait to get their hands on this recipe.

Tastes as good as it smells.

Almost everything you need is in your pantry.

If you were to glimpse into my freezer at any given moment, I guarantee you’d find a pound or two of uncooked sausage inside. Hot Italian sausage is my preference — either ground sausage sold in bulk or as links — but really, no matter the variety, ground sausage makes delicious quick and easy dinners. It’s so packed with seasoning that you hardly need to do much to turn it into a meal.

We love a classic lasagna, although we’ve never met a lasagna we didn’t like! Whether it’s an extra-cheesy white lasagna, a gnocchi lasagna, or a skillet ravioli lasagna, it’s the ultimate family dinner because it feeds everyone and it feeds everyone well.What to serve with lasagna, though? It’s usually packed with enough good things like cheese, meat, and even veggies to make it totally satisfying all on its own.

Baked chicken breasts don’t have to be dry and boring. They can, in fact, be moist, tender, and full of flavor — something you actually look forward to having for dinner. The secret? The parchment paper method. By covering the chicken with a piece of parchment paper, the chicken bastes in its own juices so they never dry out. It’s basically a cross between braising and roasting and is sure to become one of your new favorite ways to cook chicken.

On some level, you probably already know that, sure, it’s pretty easy to make your own peanut butter. But if you’ve never actually made homemade peanut butter, I don’t know if you quite understand how truly, incredibly, ridiculously easy it really is. To make easy, delicious peanut butter at home, use your food processor. Then go make Kelli’s 3-Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies. (Trust us on this one.

There's a reason it has 5 stars.

Casually read a book while you wait.

I am not sure which is more tried-and-true when it comes to weeknight cooking: a trusty skillet dinner or crowd-pleasing chicken. It really doesn’t matter, though, because if you bring the two together you have easy eating at its very best. Take your pick between bone-in or boneless thighs, lean chicken breasts, or even whole chicken, because they’re all fair game in these chicken skillet recipes.

Those cans of chickpeas sitting in your cupboard have been hiding an amazing secret. Roasted in the oven, chickpeas transform into a crispy, salty, savory snack. So tiny. So easy to eat by the handful. So irresistible. Roasted chickpeas are easy to make and customize. Here’s everything you need to know. Canned chickpeas: Using canned chickpeas is the easiest method, but you can cook dried chickpeas if that’s what you have on hand.

A marinade is like an insurance policy for your grilled steak.

There are no shortage of ways to cook up a really great chicken dinner, and one of my absolute favorite ways is in the slow cooker. That’s right — your slow cooker isn’t just for big, tough cuts of meat. It’s also perfect for cooking up tender, juicy chicken. Whether you’re starting with a pack of meaty chicken thighs, lean chicken breasts, or even a whole chicken, your slow cooker is the secret to turning it into an easy, family-friendly dinner.

Salmon is a weeknight-dinner hero.

We all know this scenario. You tossed a bunch of kale into your cart last weekend with the best of intentions to add more greens into your meal plan this week. But they’re still in the refrigerator and you’re stumped about what to make. Don’t worry! The possibilities are endless when it comes to kale.

Anytime I’m sick (or even on the verge of being sick), two things are certain: My energy and inspiration to cook are pretty low. Even when my meals are planned out for the week, I’m happy to abandon my plans for pork chops or a casserole for another night. This is a time when I crave simple foods that are warm, nourishing, and supremely comforting. A pot of warm and comforting soup is often the go-to for whatever ails us.

Two words: garlic butter.

Our favorite way to eat cauliflower isn’t as a cauliflower pizza crust or cauliflower rice, it’s an extremely creamy mash. But before we designate mashed cauliflower as just a lighter version of mashed potatoes, let’s consider why it is a side dish with merits all its own. You can’t over-mash or over-whip cauliflower the way you can potatoes. Without potato’s starch to contend with, you can purée the cauliflower all day with no risk of gumminess.

Take your pick of mix-ins.

They're shockingly simple to make.

You won't believe how I do it.

Every year as the holidays approach, I eagerly anticipate holiday baking and decorating sugar cookies. And every year, they don’t exactly turn out as planned. That’s because decorating cookies is a lot easier said than done — especially if you’re a perfectionist like me who likes straight lines and clean edges. But this year, I’m prepared. I recently got to work developing a simple royal icing recipe that makes cookie decorating as stress-free (and mess-free!

Over my years of writing for The Kitchn, I’ve shared almost all of my favorite holiday cookies, from my mother’s famous peppermint cream-filled butter cookies (followed by the much less finicky peppermint cream squares the following year) to rugelach and gingerbread cookies. I’ve saved one of my most beloved cookies for last. These candy cane cookies are the best.

It's our go-to brunch dish for a reason.

You've never had creamed corn like this.

A hot and fruity Mexican Christmas punch.

And it's so easy!

No one ever said they could only be eaten at lunch.

These are simple classics to memorize.

A big casserole dish filled with baked pasta is the easiest (and tastiest) way to feed all of your family and friends.

Bring on the cheese!

We applaud all of you just cooking like champs. Here are some extra-easy, extra-delicious recipes to get you through one more week.

Start your morning the right way.

Ten downsized meals that won't leave you with leftovers for days.

Not sure what to make? These simple meals are weeknight-approved.

You're welcome.

Lean on one of these pantry recipes for dinner this week.

No time, no meat, no problem.

We've got you covered for Meatless Monday and beyond.

There are nights when it feels like making even a 30-minute dinner recipe is a challenge. And on those nights you might be tempted to order takeout — but there’s a better option! If you have just 10 minutes (or less!), it’s possible to get an inexpensive, filling, and (most importantly) tasty meal on the table. Don’t believe us? These seven recipes are proof.

These quick and easy recipes are the perfect complement.

Recipes, ideas, and suggestions for turning your pantry staples into complete and filling meals.

It seems these days a quick meal is less than 30 minutes — thank you Rachael Ray. But there are nights, now and then, when even 30 minutes can seem like a luxury. With 30 minutes we could cook a 3-course meal, do some laundry, run the dishwasher and whittle a horse from a spare piece of wood. In the real world, when you’re dashing from one evening activity to another, dinner sometimes needs to come together in 10 minutes or less.

These are the ridiculously easy and comforting dinners we all deserve this week.

When a busy weeknight calls for nachos, start here.

Two ingredients will solve your baking emergency in a pinch.

Bananas turning black? Lucky you.

This is the best way to cook corn for a crowd.

It doesn't get any easier than this.

These check all the boxes.

Steak! Bread! Veggies!

From bolognese, to burgers, to meatloaf, and more.

The easiest, most nourishing dinners to keep in your meal plan rotation.

Pork tenderloin is the weeknight dinner hero you're probably missing out on.

This healthy, budget-friendly staple takes the stress out of dinner.

According to you!

These toss-and-go meals do all the work for you.

We love the slow cooker all year round, but winter is when it truly shines. Here are our 10 favorite recipes for the coldest days of the year, from French onion soup to A+ brisket.