Quick Weekday Suppers

I am having trouble coming up with new weekday supper ideas. I need to be able to prepare the meal in under 30 minutes and it should be affordable (okay, cheap is even better). My last creation was just a ‘breakfast for dinner’ concept which I will share. (It only takes about 15 minutes to make.)

I have two kids (7&5) who aren’t picky per se, my husband and myself.

1 red onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
2 cups frozen hash browns (the little pieces of potatoes)
10 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup shredded cheddar
salt & pepper
salsa

Put eggs & milk into a bowl. Add salt and pepper to taste. Beat and set aside.
Saute red onion and green pepper in a little oil until the onions are translucent.
Add frozen hash browns. Continue cooking until they are thawed and warm.
Add egg mixture. Mix while eggs cook creating scrambled eggs.
Remove from heat and mix in cheddar cheese.
Serve in bowls and add salsa on top.
(There will usually be two leftover servings which the grownups take for lunch the next day.)

Anyone else have something we could try?

“Thin” meats are usually better for quick-cooking suppers. You can buy “cutlets” at the supermarket, but expect to pay a premium per-pound price for them! Or, you can buy bargain meats and pound them out yourself on a weekend afternoon, then freeze them. Thin pork chops, simply seasoned with salt, pepper and some Italian herbs, then pan-fried in some butter, are delicious. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can make a pan-gravy by deglazing the pan with either some dry wine or some chicken stock, thicken with a corn starch slurry.

If you guys like “sweet” dinners (I have one daughter who loves sweets, but not sweet-tasting meat toppings), you can season and brown pork chops or boneless/skinless chicken thighs in butter; cook 6 minutes per side, remove to warm oven or tent with foil; add some fruit preserves (about 1/2C) to the pan, and something tangy to balance out the sweetness of the fruit. You can mix and match the sweet n’ tangy to one another. Brown mustard and apricot preserves is wonderful; balsamic vinegar with cherry or strawberry preserves; you can even use plain ol’ stock-in-a-box as your savory, though you may wish to thicken the sauce a little if you do this.

Ground beef is always good for quick cooking. Make a meatloaf mix (recipe available upon request, but most folks have their own meatloaf recipe); put scoops of mix in a greased muffin tin for faster baking. Bake extra and freeze them, use them a night when you don’t have any other plans. You can also buy ground beef in bulk, brown it as soon as you get it home from the store, then store meal-sized portions in zip-top bags. Freeze the portions, use on hurried weeknights to make quick-n-dirty spaghetti sauce (use store-bought sauce with some of your own seasonings for taste); make beefaroni; make tacos or chili. Etc.

A little advance prep really makes weeknight meals easier (and cheaper, too, since you have a plan, which makes picking up a pizza that much less likely).

500 calorie 30 minute dinners.

I make frittatas for dinner probably once a week. Put the oven on broil, throw scrambled eggs in a pan with whatever else tickles your fancy, let it set until it’s almost firm, top with cheese, wrap the handle of the pan in foil if it’s plastic, and then broil for about a minute. I usually do just a plain egg and cheese, and then serve it on the side with guacamole and salsa.

Dinner last night was pasta with cauliflower, possibly my favorite pasta dish. Steam or boil one medium head of cauliflower until it’s tender - you want the florets to break apart easily, but don’t cook it until it turns to sulferous mush. I generally do this in a covered dish in the microwave. Separately, bring a pot of salted water to boil and cook 1/2 lb of the cut pasta of your choice according to the package recommendations, reserving some of the cooking water before you drain. (Last night was whole wheat fusilli - this recipe works well with whole wheat pasta, because the other flavors are strong enough to balance it.) While the pasta is cooking, heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet on medium-low, and add 3-5 cloves of minced garlic, a healthy pinch of red pepper flakes, and 4-6 anchovy fillets. Stir this mixture until the anchovies break down into a paste and the garlic starts to brown, 1-2 minutes. Add the cauliflower and stir, mashing the cauliflower against the sides of the pot to break it down. Cook until heated through and broken down to a good size to eat with pasta. (This can be prepared in advance and reheated when pasta is ready.) Add pasta and a little pasta cooking water to loosen it up, stir to combine, and top with chopped parsley. Serve immediately.

The anchovies are optional, but they make the dish - they add a depth of flavor and richness without any fishiness whatsoever. Mr. GilaB doesn’t eat anything fishy, and he likes this a lot; I was skeptical for several years, but once I tried it, I wouldn’t make it without them. (Buy the resealable glass jars rather than the flat cans.)

Other variations: top with fried breadcrumbs, and/or add a can of drained chickpeas when you add the cauliflower.

We’re pretty low-rent ghetto foodies. When we need something quick, I buy pierogies, Mrs. T’s, but the store brands have a bigger variety. Mushroom, cheddar and onion, feta cheese, garlic, white cheddar…I will boil them up and/or saute them in a little butter. and cook some mushrooms with the mushroom, onions for the onion, etc. Grated cheddar never hurts anything, nor does sour cream. Green salad on the side, or a bag of boring old frozen mixed vegetables, steamed, buttered, sprinkled with dill.

I discovered a delicious half soup/half chili recently, in my search to try to reduce the sodium in canned foods - one can of Campbell’s Chunky Fajita soup, one can of no sodium chopped tomatoes, one can of mixed beans (rinsed), and heat. Serve with buns and butter.

Another meal I frequently make is fried tenderized steak (with barbecue sauce), mashed potatoes, and frozen veggies - not exactly gourmet fare, but it’s quick, cheap, and tasty.

Do your major cooking on weekends, assuming you have more time then. Freeze everything, then zap it in the microwave during the week.

Or each night, after dinner, prepare tomorrow’s meal.

Food Network Magazine has a regular section called “Weekday Cooking” that has tons of very good, fairly cheap and ready in 30 minutes meals.

We buy frozen chicken and veggie potstickers. The kids like them just boiled or steamed. While boiling I make a batch if sticky rice in the cooker and steam broccoli. Broccoli get drizzles of sesame oil. If I have more ambition, I stir fry a bunch of veggies instead. 20 minutes pot to table.

Something really important to note is that “steaming” vegetables is easy. Take a bag of mixed veggies or peas or whatever you like, dump into a pyrex or some microwave safe bowl and nuke for like, 2 minutes. Stir, nuke for a bit longer. There’s no reason to boil vegetables (the nutrients seep into the water!) and it makes a bigger mess.

Dump into bowl and heat. They will all steam perfectly and retain their nutrients.

Add salt and seasonings as you like.

Speaking of stir-fry, those bags of ‘Stir Fry Meals’ that come complete with meat and sauce are pricey, but their lonely, ugly cousins (by which I mean bags of pre-cut frozen stir-fry style veggies) are cheap enough. Because they’re pre-cut, they stir-fry up in a hurry, and it’s easy and quick to cut meat into small pieces, stir-fry them at the same time, and add some bottled soy or hoisin sauce! The boil-in-bag 10 minute rice is quick, too. If you prefer brown rice (better for you), make a big batch on a weekend, and refrigerate a couple of portions for the coming week.

Dried beans are cheap and nutritious, but cook slowly. Canned beans aren’t quite as good (imho), and are a bit more expensive. But they’re still cheap, in terms of the nutrition you get for your money, and quick and healthy. One meal I make (that I cribbed out of a cooking magazine) uses three cans of beans and a pound of ground beef (how cheap and quick can you get?)
Brown the ground beef, drain (I salt and pepper the beef, too, even though the recipe doesn’t say to; I go really light on the salt, though, since I’m using canned beans)
Add one can each: red kidney beans, baked beans (favorite brand), and butter beans.
Add a couple TBSP ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and brown sugar. Simmer until the smell has everyone starving to death.

You could really mess with that recipe a lot, experimenting with what to make the ‘sauce’ from (a spicy BBQ sauce instead of ketchup? a spoonful of good grainy mustard?) and different kinds of beans.

You can make your own hot pocket things. Get 1 or 2 cans of crescent rolls leave them in rectangles instead of separating into triangles. Add any kind of precooked meat, shredded cheese, and steamed or sauteed veggies to one half of each rectangle then fold the other end over and pinch the edges. Bake at the temperature on the can until they’re puffy and golden brown.
My favorite ingredients are chicken, asiago cheese, garlic herb spice blend, and sateed mushrooms and steamed spinach.

Get some Israeli couscous (that’s the big kind, not the tiny little dot kind). Sautè some veggies in a deep pan or wok. Add some saffron (less than a tablespoon, more than a pinch). Add water, boil, then add couscous. Cover and simmer on very low heat for 8-10 minutes (12 if you live in a desert or at altitude).

I also use lemon, for some extra zing. I’m a veg, so I don’t add meat to the mix, but sometimes I’ll add some tofu, seitan or other soy-based protein thing to the stir-fry. Garlic and onion go well in it, too.

It’s delicious, and keeps well in the fridge. Tastes great cold the next day. The whole thing takes anywhere from 20-30 minutes to prepare, depending on how much prep work the veggies need.

You can do the same kind of deal with refrigerated pie crust. Be sure to pierce the top before baking, so the steam doesn’t ‘explode’ them. This is a great way to use leftovers!

Also, as far as quick and cheap is concerned, try the roasted chickens available at most grocery stores. The work’s already done for you, and it costs about the same as a raw chicken! You can have slices of it for dinner one night (I’d make boxed stuffing-to which I add some sauteed onions and celery for a more ‘homemade’ taste) with a veggie, and shred the rest to use in tacos, tortillas, whatever.

My fallback has always been spaghetti with meat sauce. I brown ground beef and add chopped onions and bell pepper and sliced mushrooms and some garlic. Then I drain if necessary (I use pretty lean beef these days, so it’s not always necessary) and add a half a jar of sauce. I start the water boiling when I’m cooking the meat and veggies. It comes to a boil just as I’m adding the sauce, I put in the pasta, and the sauce has time to warm up and the flavors blend a bit while the pasta is cooking.

My husband and daughter would probably eat this five or six days a week, if I’d let them.

One of my fallbacks is stovetop chili made with ground turkey: Sprinkle some chili powder (more or less depending on how hot you want it) on about 2 lbs. of ground turkey and brown in a bit of oil over medium head. When it’s almost done add some diced onion and chopped garlic and cook until the onion is translucent. To this add a 14-oz can of drained black beans (I use the low-sodium kind by Goya), a small can of diced tomatoes with chili (Rotel is preferred, but I’ve also used store brands), about a half cup of defrosted corn kernels, some cumin, and maybe a dash more chili powder. Stir, cover, and let it simmer for about a half hour.

I usually serve this with corn bread, which I mix and pop in the oven while the chili is simmering.

The leftovers makes a wonderful burrito filling, especially if you add some cooked rice to it.

Pannini night. My MIL bought me a pannini press, something I would have never bought for myself, but I love it!

I pull out different breads (regular, rolls, pita, tortillas), deli meats or leftovers, different cheeses and spreads and let everyone create their sandwich. Into the press they go until crispy. flattened and melty. Serve with cut veggies, cut fruit or a salad.

Easy clean up, too.

These are all such great ideas! I wish I could cook ahead and freeze but we don’t have a standalone freezer and I buy my meat in bulk when it is on sale so there is never any extra room (though I might try to start squishing in some more frozen veggies. They are so handy and quick!)

Thanks guys. Keep 'em coming!

This is an easy one-skillet meal that usually takes about 15-20 minutes; you can adjust it to your family’s likes and what’s in your pantry.

In a large skillet, add a little olive oil and brown one of the following:

  • Cut-up chicken breasts (or re-warm previously cooked chicken or turkey)
  • Pre-cooked Keilbasa, smoked sausage or chicken/turkey sausage
  • Leftover pork roast

When the meat is cooked, add some chicken broth (maybe a cup) and some al dente pasta (small shapes like wagon wheels, penne, or corkscrews). Let simmer so the pasta can finish cooking, add more chicken broth if it starts to reduce too much.

Toss in whatever vegetables you like (peas, carrots, broccoli, snow peas, mushrooms - I like spinach).

Let simmer until the broth is reduced, veggies are cooked and pasta is done. Small veggies will cook faster than, say, big chunks of frozen broccoli.
I always toss in one pat (1T) of butter, but that’s optional.

Toss in a little parmesan cheese, then serve with a green salad and a loaf of french bread.
Quick and easy, one skillet cooking; and you can adapt it to whatever your family likes/you happen to have handy. You can substitute cooked rice if you like, it becomes like a stir-fry.