Easy dinner recipes with short ingredient lists and simple steps. Weeknight casseroles, one-pan meals, skillet suppers and slow cooker favorites that get food on the table fast.
Easy dinner recipes with short ingredient lists and simple steps. Weeknight casseroles, one-pan meals, skillet suppers and slow cooker favorites that get food on the table fast.
This slow cooker corned beef comes out fall-apart tender with almost zero effort — and the vegetables cook right alongside it, so dinner is completely hands-off. It feeds a crowd, reheats beautifully, and the leftovers make the best sandwiches the next day. I make this every St. Patrick’s Day, and honestly it’s become one of those recipes my family asks for in February, well before the holiday even shows up. My husband grew up eating corned beef made on the stovetop — boiled for hours, which works but takes constant attention. The slow cooker version gives you the same deeply …
There’s something about Dolly Parton that just makes you trust her in the kitchen. I don’t know when I first made one of her recipes — sometime around 2019 maybe, or maybe it was the year before, it all blurs together — but I do know that once I tried her green beans, I started paying attention every time her name showed up next to a recipe title. The woman has been quietly iconic in ways that go way beyond the rhinestones and the songs, and honestly? Her casseroles might be the best-kept secret of all of it. Try our …
Pork has a lot of flavor companions, but this zippy little combination of honey, mustard, and orange is one I keep coming back to. It’s sweet, it’s savory, it’s got that garlicky depth that makes the whole kitchen smell like you actually know what you’re doing — and the coating caramelizes in the oven into something honestly a little magical. Once you taste it, you won’t want to go back. Why You’ll Love This Recipe The sauce does all the work. You whisk it together in five minutes and it transforms a plain piece of pork into something that tastes …
My friend Linda brought something like this to a potluck maybe three or four years ago — one of those neighborhood things where everybody’s supposed to bring a dish and half the people show up with a bag of chips and call it a day. Linda showed up with a slow cooker still plugged into an extension cord she’d run from her kitchen, which is exactly the kind of person Linda is, and she set the whole thing on the folding table and said, “It’s just pasta and cream and garlic, don’t overthink it.” I had two helpings. I asked …
There’s a Tuesday-night version of dinner and a Saturday-night version, and this one sits right on the line between them. Three things go into a bowl, you spread the mixture over the chops, and the oven does everything else. My daughter-in-law made something like this for us a few years back — maybe 2019, or early 2020, right before everything got strange — and I asked her for the recipe before I even finished chewing. She laughed and said, “It’s literally just mayo and a ranch packet.” I didn’t believe her until I watched her make it. The topping melts …
My husband Gary is not a fancy-restaurant person. Never has been. Early in our marriage I’d get these ideas about Valentine’s Day — reservations somewhere with cloth napkins, the whole thing — and he’d go along with it the way he goes along with most things I suggest, which is to say quietly and without much enthusiasm. One year we waited forty-five minutes past our reservation time at some Italian place downtown and he ate his entire entrée in about eight minutes flat, which is how he eats when he’s anxious, and I spent the drive home genuinely wondering why …
My mother had this battered enamel pan — dark blue with white speckles, chipped along one edge — and every Sunday afternoon she’d pull chicken out of the oven, skin dark and glossy, the kitchen smelling like caramel and soy sauce and something warm I still can’t fully name. I’ve been chasing that dish ever since. What I’ve figured out is that a slow cooker gets you most of the way there. Bone-in thighs go in, a simple brown sugar glaze goes over the top, and a few hours later you’ve got something that made me stand at the counter …
There’s a dish I’ve been making for years — ground beef patties, a couple cans of mushroom soup, a gravy packet, and some water — that my family genuinely thinks I spent hours on. I don’t correct them. It all goes into the slow cooker in about ten minutes and comes out tasting like a Midwestern diner plate: rich brown gravy, fork-tender meat, the kind of thing you want to eat with mashed potatoes on a cold Tuesday when nobody has energy for anything. My neighbor Paulette gave me the idea, I think around 2009 or so. She showed up …
My brother Kenny has asked me to make these ribs at least a dozen times in the past two years. Maybe more. He texted me last Fourth of July — not “happy Fourth of July,” just “are you making the ribs.” That was the whole message. I made the ribs. They’re slow cooker country style ribs with barbecue sauce and brown sugar, and that’s genuinely it. Three ingredients, set it in the morning, and by dinnertime your whole house smells like a backyard cookout even though you haven’t done anything. Try our Dr Pepper Ribs next. Why You’ll Love It …
This bacon brown sugar pork tenderloin is one of those recipes that looks impressive but comes together faster than you’d expect. Crispy bacon, a sweet-smoky spice rub, a quick sear, and the oven does the rest. My neighbor Paulette used to make something like this for her dinner parties — she called it her “company pork” — and honestly, that name still fits. Why You’ll Love It Weeknight easy, Sunday dinner impressive — it takes less time than you’d think and the oven does most of the work That sweet-savory glaze — the brown sugar caramelizes with the smoked paprika …
