Take the Guesswork Out of Dinner With This Quick and Easy Hack
Here are 2 recipes that you can use to save the day.
How many times have you tried to answer the age-old question,
“What’s for dinner, honey?”
If you don’t have a plan or time to bust out a cookbook to reverse engineer a meal, what’s a quick fix? One of my favorite time-savers consists of the most important meal of the day: breakfast.
Now, I don’t necessarily mean cereal and your choice of nut milk. The fun thing about breakfast is that it’s endlessly customizable — and these days, you may have skipped breakfast anyway (I hear the cries of 1000 intermittent fasters).
Think eggs and bacon. Pancakes or waffles. A side of ham, sausage, or grilled tomato. Yes, these items require effort to cook, but you most likely have some flour, milk, and eggs kicking around. Like a shepherd’s pie or okonomiyaki— you just have to use what’s available to you.
Here are a couple of quick and easy breakfast meals that are winners at my place.
The Sweet Option — The Dutch Baby
Picture a pancake meeting a waffle in a bar. They have a fantastic night and end up mystically producing a tasty Yorkshire pudding baby.
I love the Dutch Baby because it’s easy to make, and when it’s done, it looks like a million bucks. I serve ours sweet, but the options are only limited by your imagination.
Dutch Baby — Makes 1 large pancake (Serves 1–2)
½ cup flour
½ cup milk
2 eggs
1 tsp sugar
Dash of salt
1. Preheat your oven to 425°. Add butter to the pie plate and set it in the oven to heat.
2. Mix flour, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl.
3. Add eggs and milk and stir until moistened. Pour into the warmed pie plate and bake until the top edges are nice and brown — about 20 minutes.
Check it often.
This recipe is easily doubled — just avoid the temptation to open your oven while it’s baking. It will deflate.
Here are some ideas for toppings:
Fruit compote
A squeeze of lemon
Whipped cream
Fresh, seasonal fruit
Maple syrup
A healthy pat of butter
Icing sugar (for the gram, of course.)
To make a quick fruit compote:
- Take 2 peeled and sliced apples and sauté them in 2 tbsp of butter and 1 tbsp of brown sugar.
- Reduce until thickened.
Feel free to substitute a cup of your favorite fresh or frozen fruit for the apples.
The Savory Option— Egg Rolls
I picked up this trick from Nadiya Hussain on Time to Eat on Netflix.
Essentially, you’re going to make an omelet with 3tbsp of egg mixture and your favorite toppings then place a small tortilla on top before you flip it. Once the egg adheres to the tortilla, flip it and grill the tortilla.
Pull it aside to your cutting board and roll the tortilla. Cut it in half diagonally. Once again, the beauty of this recipe is that it’s customizable. There are no rules as far as toppings go on an omelet.
Here are some ideas for toppings:
Cheese (cheddar, feta, sharp, jalapeño jack, mozzarella).
Tomatoes
Mushrooms
Green, red, or yellow bell peppers
Scallions
Spinach
Bacon
Ham
Shrimp
Whether you fry up some eggs and a couple rashers of bacon or use one of the recipes above, breakfast is the perfect solution for a quick dinner. Using what you have in your fridge and cupboards is an ideal way to repurpose leftovers and create something new.
They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day — so why not serve it for dinner?
