I know how it feels when you’ve got a busy schedule, everyone’s tired, everyone’s getting hungry, and the last thing you want to do is a bunch of extra prep to pull off a nice home-cooked meal. I still want my family to eat well and healthy, and I don’t want to have to resort to fast food or delivery, because those options just aren’t any good.
So the following recipes are things that you can pull off in 20 minutes that will still feel like a really nice meal, but without all the extra work.
1) Shrimp Scampi Pasta
This is a pasta dish, typically with a long spaghetti or fettuccine style noodle, with a lemon butter sauce. You typically see this one served with shrimp, but you could easily sub in chicken if seafood’s not your thing.
If you’re doing shrimp, have all your ingredients ready to go, because the shrimp will cook really fast, and you don’t want to overcook them because they get kind of rubbery. Sometimes I even cook them first and set them aside, and then build my sauce and add them back in at the end.
The sauce on this one is pretty light, so when you make your pasta and drain it, save some of the pasta water in case you need to stretch your sauce a little bit. This one uses lots of lemon, but you could also throw some capers in there for a nice salty punch. Throw a quick big salad on the side and you’re all set for a rounded dinner.
2) Kimchi Fried Rice
This is a quick version of fried rice with kimchi added to it, with rice, soy sauce, and maybe some sesame oil, and the option to add a fried egg on top. Most fried rice recipes call for day-old rice or cold rice, but that’s not necessarily something you have to do, especially without a lot of time.
So if you do cook your rice the night of, just do your best to cool it off in the fridge for a little bit before you try to fry it, so it doesn’t get all sticky and gloopy. Whenever I make fried rice, I like to use the little hack of adding just a cup of frozen mixed veggies in.
3) Pesto Tortellini
This is either refrigerated or frozen tortellini in a nice pesto sauce, with the option to add cherry tomatoes or spinach. If you want to add cherry tomatoes or any other vegetables to this one, just sauté them first in the pan so you can get some nice color and char on them before you add the pesto.
If you want your pesto sauce to stretch a little bit and not be so thick, save some of the pasta water from boiling your tortellini to stretch your sauce. I like to serve this with a quick Caesar salad, just romaine lettuce and shredded cheese, maybe a few croutons if you have them.
4) Sheet-Pan Sausage And Broccolini
This is sliced, pre-cooked smoked sausage tossed around with broccolini and olive oil and broiled in the oven. I love the broiler for a quick kitchen hack, especially when you’re short on time, because you can just turn it all the way up and it heats up so much faster than your entire oven. Just be careful not to leave anything too close to it and burn it.
Any pre-cooked smoked sausage will work for this. It doesn’t have to be chicken, and it’s very well accompanied by any sort of mustard that you have. My fridge has probably five or six types of mustard in it right now.
5) Tuna Melt Quesadillas
This is essentially tuna salad, but instead of between pieces of bread, it’s between small tortillas with some cheese, served warm. Because you’ll be heating these up in a pan, make sure that you don’t make your tuna salad too wet. Thoroughly drain all the juice out of the can after you open it, otherwise your contents can leak out of your quesadilla and make a big mess.
I like to cut the mayo in my tuna salad with Greek yogurt to add some extra protein and cut the fat down. Plus, I also like to add plenty of Old Bay seasoning to give it a nice seafood kick.
6) Chickpea Coconut Curry
This is canned chickpeas cooked in a creamy coconut curry sauce made with curry paste, garlic, and a little ginger if you have it, with the option to add spinach. I like to sauté my curry paste in a little bit of oil in a pan over medium high to really wake up the flavors before adding the coconut milk to make the sauce.
If you don’t have fresh garlic or fresh ginger, that’s fine. You can just substitute dried. Just be careful not to add too much. Cook your spinach first in the pan, don’t add it in at the end. That can make your sauce extra watery after you spent all that time making it thick and creamy.
7) Caprese Chicken Cutlets
These are thin pan-fried chicken cutlets and caprese salad combined: chicken with tomato, mozzarella, fresh basil, and balsamic glaze over the top. This is another great chance to use your broiler, because not only is it fast, it’ll give a great brown color to your mozzarella.
I like to season my chicken for this dish with just a little bit of salt and pepper and Italian seasoning and then pan fry it in olive oil, so the flavor doesn’t overwhelm the tomatoes or the mozzarella.
8) Peanut Soba Noodles
This is a cold noodle dish of a peanut, soy, and rice vinegar sauce and cold soba noodles mixed together. This one’s nice because you can cook everything ahead of time. Get your noodles cooked and put them in the fridge, make your sauce and also put it in the fridge, and then you can just assemble after work.
Make sure to use creamy peanut butter for this, not chunky peanut butter, so you get a smoother consistency with your sauce. Garnishes can really dress this one up. Chopped green onion, sesame seeds, cilantro, sriracha sauce, really you name it. Anything Asian you can think of.
9) Omelet Dinner
This is a take on breakfast for dinner, serving a large omelet or individual omelets with toast and fruit on the side. When I make my eggs, I like to crack the eggs in a bowl, add a little salt, and then whisk them and let them sit for five minutes. This will result in a very fluffy egg.
If you’re going for an actual omelet, make sure you use a non-stick pan or a well-seasoned cast iron, because you don’t want your eggs to stick when you try to flip them. Otherwise, you just wind up with a scramble, which is fine. If you’re adding any meat or vegetable filling to your omelet, cook it ahead of time in the pan, set it aside, and then begin building your omelet. Once you flip it over, add the filling and the cheese and fold.
10) Turkey Lettuce Wraps
This is ground, browned turkey with Asian condiments like gochujang and soy sauce, wrapped in crunchy lettuce. I like to serve this or anything Asian with a nice cucumber salad on the side. Cucumber, mirin, rice vinegar, sesame seeds, and you’re done.
I’ve found that butter lettuce is the best option for a lettuce wrap like this, because it has the best crunch and the best shape to really make a nice little handheld lettuce cup.
11) Lemon Pepper Salmon
These are seasoned and pan-seared salmon fillets served with packaged salad or rice. If you like a leaner salmon, go for a Pacific salmon. If you like a fattier, less fishy salmon, go for Norwegian or farm-raised.
I season and then sear my salmon skin side up at first, so I can get a nice good sear on the top of the fish, the piece that you’ll be seeing when you eat. Then flip it over and put it skin side down. The skin sticks to the pan, and you can just use a spatula to slide the fish right off the skin.
I like to serve this one with rice that’s got lots of salt and butter mixed in, and then slivered almonds on top.
12) Creamy Tomato Gnocchi
This is warm marinara mixed with either cream or mascarpone cheese to make a nice creamy sauce, with store-bought gnocchi stirred in. If you’re adding cream, mix it in with the marinara at the beginning and let them warm up together. If you’re adding mascarpone cheese, wait until your marinara is warm and then add the cheese. This will make it break down a little easier and make it easier to stir in.
To make your store-bought gnocchi a little bit fancier, boil them in water until they float, strain them, and then pan fry them in browned butter before you add them to the sauce. This one’s great with a Caesar salad, because you can do shredded Parmesan cheese on the Caesar as well as on top of the gnocchi.
13) Black Bean Tacos
These are canned black beans that have been seasoned, warmed up, and then spooned into a tortilla, with a shredded cabbage slaw with lime, salt, and a little mayo. When I make seasoned black beans, I like to fry a little onion, jalapeño, and garlic in butter first, and then add the black beans whole before smashing them up and adding a little bit of chicken stock and taco seasoning.
I’ll make a simple cabbage slaw for this. Slice up all your cabbage nice and thin, and in a separate bowl, mix mayo, lime juice, salt and pepper, honey, and apple cider vinegar. And then dress your slaw right before you want to eat it, otherwise it winds up getting a little bit watery if it sits for too long with the dressing on it.
14) Steak Salad
This is thin cut steak on top of an arugula, lemon, olive oil, and Parmesan salad. You’ll have a better sear on your steak if you cook your entire steak first and then slice it and put it on top of the salad, as opposed to slicing it first and then cooking.
When I make steak, I just stick to the classics, with salt, pepper, and garlic powder on the outside and a hard sear in a hot pan. When I do an arugula salad, I like to do shaved Parmesan, because the big pieces stand up really well to the peppery flavor of the arugula.
15) Pantry Carbonara
This is a take on classic carbonara with bacon instead of pancetta. Pasta, eggs, Parmesan, and black pepper. Cut your bacon up really small, and then in a hot pan, cook it until it’s nice and crispy and just set it aside, but save the bacon fat.
I like to do shallots in mine, so I would add them after the bacon, crisp up the shallots a little bit, and then start building my sauce. If you want to sneak an extra little vegetable into this, when you’re just about done tossing the pasta and the sauce together, add some frozen peas.
16) Chicken Caesar Wraps
Think of everything in a chicken Caesar salad, just rolled up in a tortilla. Romaine lettuce, Parmesan, Caesar dressing, and croutons if you have them. Instead of making a Caesar salad, tossing the dressing in, and then just adding the chicken on top, put your shredded rotisserie chicken in with the Caesar when you’re mixing it. That way you don’t wind up with a dry wrap or have to add more dressing.
If you’re adding croutons, just be sure to crush them up so they eat well and they’re not too big. I would probably serve this one with potato chips or something crunchy on the side, because the wrap tends to be kind of soft.
17) Miso Soup
This is tofu cubes and scallions and spinach in a broth made with miso paste. Typically, I think the tofu is added after, but I think the tofu could really benefit from being cubed up first and then pan fried a little bit to give it a little bit more texture and a more appealing color.
You could easily make this into a quick sort of ramen noodle situation by just cooking ramen noodles and putting them in the soup.
18) Sardine Spaghetti
This is a marinara sauce that’s been fortified with garlic and chili paste and sardines, served over spaghetti. I like to dress up my store-bought marinara by dicing up any veggies I have laying around in the fridge, cooking those first, and then adding the marinara. In this case, I would also do that with the sardines, adding them first to get a nice little fry on them before crumbling them up as much as possible and then adding the marinara.
A light salad on the side, with perhaps an oil and vinegar dressing, would be nice with this to cut through the saltiness of the sardine sauce.
19) Greek Pita Pizzas
These are toasted pitas topped with feta, olive oil, tomatoes, oregano, and other typical Greek ingredients, and then broiled in the oven to resemble a small pizza. I would serve these with some Greek yogurt on the side. It’s a nice high protein addition, and it also cuts through the heavy saltiness of the dish. Fresh herbs like mint or parsley would be a great addition to this meal.
To keep your pizza from getting too soggy, make sure to thoroughly toast it before you put it in the oven, and then possibly just top it with the feta cheese and broil it, bring it out, and add your cold Greek toppings to it. I think thinly sliced red onion is a great addition to this one, too.
20) White Bean Toast
This is canned white beans dressed up with olive oil, lemon, and salt and pepper, warmed up, and spread onto toast. If you’ve got some leftover bacon laying around, you can crumble it right into the beans. Or if you have some raw bacon, chop it up really small, fry it till crispy in the pot, and then dump your beans in to warm them up.
Almost any fresh herbs will be a really good addition to this one. I like to use a heartier, thicker bread like a sourdough loaf. Slice it thick and place it in the oven, maybe with a little bit of cheddar cheese on top, to get a nice even toast on it.
21) Beef And Broccoli
This is thin slices of beef and broccoli in a sauce made from soy sauce, sugar, and garlic, typically served over rice. I always try to get a good sear on the beef by cooking it in a pan at medium high first. You cook it for a little bit and get most of the water out of it, and then add your sauce, so you don’t wind up with a thin sauce that you have to cook down or reduce again.
I like to try to cut the broccoli into even-sized pieces so it all cooks at the same time, and I’m not stuck with some big tough raw pieces and some small overdone ones. When I make a sweet soy sauce like this, I like to take equal parts soy sauce and brown sugar with a little bit of minced garlic and ginger, and then just bring it to a simmer on the stove for five minutes.
22) Cacio E Pepe
This is Italian for cheese and pepper. It’s a pasta dish with lots of black pepper and grated cheese, and then you add a little bit of the pasta water in to make a nice, kind of light, creamy, silky sauce. Make sure you have everything ready to go for this one, your grated cheese, your fresh cracked pepper, your pasta water, because this will happen fast once everything’s ready to go and you start cooking.
This simple dish is deceivingly good, so make sure you make plenty of pasta, because everyone’s going to come back for seconds. Classically, you would use Pecorino Romano cheese, which has a little bit sharper and more piquant flavor than Parmesan, but Parmesan is perfect for this as well.
23) Chicken Ramen
This is instant ramen packets with shredded rotisserie chicken added and whatever else you have laying around, like a handful of greens or a soft boiled egg. When I’m dressing up ramen at home for dinner for my family, I’ll make a big pot of broth, then separately cook all of the ramen noodles and set them aside, and then at the end assemble everything.
I like a good sriracha sauce with this for heat. I also like it with a soft boiled egg cut in half set on top. You can add some shredded rotisserie chicken to this one. Season it a little bit with soy sauce and sesame oil first, or even sauté up a couple shrimp, because they cook so quick and thaw really fast.
24) Halloumi Chickpea Skillet
This is sautéed halloumi, a cheese that doesn’t quite melt when you heat it up but gets nice and crispy, cooked in a pan with chickpeas, smoked paprika, and olive oil. I would toss the chickpeas with olive oil, garlic, and all my seasoning ahead of time, and then have them ready to go once the halloumi starts to get crispy, then dump them in the pan.
Lemon and parsley are great garnishes, as well as warm pita bread cut up.
25) Tomato Basil Grilled Cheese
This is like your favorite grilled cheese, except you add sliced tomato and fresh basil to it. I have better success with this one when I make it in the oven as opposed to a pan, and I make the sandwiches open faced, just bread with cheese on top. Melt it in the oven, and then add the tomatoes.
Slice the tomatoes ahead of time and let them sit on a paper towel so they’re not excessively wet and your sandwich doesn’t turn soggy. Slice your basil leaves really thin before you add them, and just put a little bit, because it goes a long way and can have a strong flavor.
26) Turkey Bolognese
This is a classic Italian red meat sauce, but substituting ground turkey in place of ground beef or ground pork. When I make bolognese, I like to brown the meat and chop it up as fine as I can to get lots of nice little crispy bits on it. Then I take the meat out of the pan and set it aside, cook my vegetables, add my marinara sauce, and then add the meat back in.
If you want to add dairy, I would not recommend milk because it can curdle. Go with heavy cream instead, and if you have no heavy cream, you could always do mascarpone cheese.
27) Ravioli With Brown Butter
This is refrigerated ravioli fried up in a brown butter sauce, with the option to add sage if you have it. I would boil my ravioli first and set them aside, then brown the butter in a big skillet and add them in. That way you’re not trying to cook the frozen or refrigerated ravioli all the way through in the brown butter, which will let the brown butter burn if it takes too long.
Sage is great in this one, but a little goes a long way, so be careful if you’re adding it. Depending on the filling of your ravioli, you can add a few extra things to the pan, like some sliced shallots or some peas or some greens, or even asparagus or mushrooms.
28) Teriyaki Tofu Bowls
This is cubed up tofu that’s been dried and fried to a golden brown with some bottled teriyaki sauce, served over rice and broccoli. I’ve always had a hard time getting a lot of flavor out of tofu, but I think if you cube it first and then dry it, you have a really good chance of getting some golden brown color on there. Then just be generous with your sauce so it really soaks up the flavor.
For a quick fried rice on the side, you can just use frozen pre-cooked rice and frozen mixed vegetables. Make the rice in the microwave, then add the vegetables and stir it up while it’s hot. Tofu isn’t for everyone, so it couldn’t hurt to have a little bit of rotisserie chicken to maybe prepare separately, just in case it doesn’t go well.
29) Warm Lentil Salad
This is a salad of feta and crunchy vegetables topped with warm, dressed lentils. When I rinse my lentils, I always do a really good job of checking for small rocks, because sometimes they can sneak in there, and that will break one of your teeth.
Warm lentils really love fat and acid, so if you have any bacon, fry it up, or get a little bacon fat and plenty of lemon juice or vinegar. I always like to use fresh rosemary in a warm bean and bacon salad, so I think that would apply really well here.
30) Bacon And Peas Pasta
This is a buttered pasta dish with the addition of crispy fried bacon and peas and Parmesan cheese. Frozen peas don’t take super long to cook, so I always try to add them at the end of a dish like this, straight out of the freezer.
I have better luck with the bacon if I cut it up really small first and then fry it in the pan, as opposed to making whole strips and then the whole scene with the paper towels and drying it out. With this one, I would definitely cook a bunch of spinach down with garlic first, or maybe fry some shallots in the bacon fat for a little extra punch of flavor without a lot of work.
31) Chicken Shawarma Bowls
This is shawarma chicken, which is a Lebanese style of chicken, thinly sliced and heavily seasoned. It’s usually served with rice, cucumbers, or tomatoes, or any sort of Lebanese or Middle Eastern accompaniments, like pita bread, yogurt, or lemon. Shawarma is one of my absolute favorites.
I like to cube up my chicken or chop it up, heavily season it, and then pan fry it in a hot pan, but be careful not to crowd it, because you want to get a lot of little crispy char on the corners to give you an authentic flavor.
To make a quick yogurt sauce, I like to do Greek yogurt, lemon, black pepper, and a little bit of dried mint. With this kind of cooking, this is also my favorite way to make rice. I like long grain white rice, and when it’s done, add lots of butter and salt and slivered almonds.
32) Veggie Stir-Fry
This is a meal for cleaning out your veggie drawer in your fridge. Any vegetables you’ve got, cut about the same size and fried up in a pan with a little soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, cashews, or anything Asian like the teriyaki sauce you have.
Depending on what you’re using, try to cook your harder vegetables first, or at least give them a head start in the pan, like carrots and onions and bell pepper. Cook them for a few minutes first and then add your softer stuff, like your zucchini or your mushrooms, so that everything can cook around the same time.
You can make this into an even fuller meal if you have some instant ramen noodles to cook or some quick rice to make. I would also like a light salad of cucumbers, sesame seeds, maybe onion, and some mirin and vinegar. Kind of a nice Asian cucumber salad.
33) Ricotta Lemon Pasta
This is ricotta seasoned with lemon zest, salt, and pepper, turned into a sauce for pasta with sautéed bell peppers. Ricotta by nature is pretty grainy stuff, so be careful adding too much lemon to it. And if you want to kind of smooth it out, you can always add some heavy cream to it when you’re warming it up in the pan and loosening it up with your pasta water.
Ricotta tends to be sweet as well, and so do the sautéed bell peppers. While they have a little bit of char to them giving them a bitterness, you could really use a little extra acid or some salt in this dish. So maybe capers would be good to throw in.
34) Pizza Pasta
This is all your favorite pizza toppings, but instead of on pizza dough, over pasta, either broiled or warmed up with a lid on it to melt the cheese. If you want to do crispy pepperoni on this, you could throw a bunch of pepperoni on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper, bake it in the oven for maybe 10 minutes at 375, and then crumble it up on top.
Raid your fridge for anything like banana peppers or olives or capers. Those would be pretty good toppings on a pizza as well. I would serve this one with a light Caesar salad on the side, just romaine lettuce, Caesar dressing, and Parmesan cheese, to help accompany the heavy dish.
35) Honey Mustard Pork Chops
These are thin sliced pork chops with a nice honey mustard glaze. Pork chops can be a tricky one to get right because of their low fat content. It’s easy to dry them out. So what I like to do is give them a good hard sear in the pan and then just take the entire pan and throw it in the oven to finish cooking the rest of the way.
For a mustard glaze, I like a nice stone ground mustard with plenty of honey in it and a splash of either vinegar or water to kind of loosen it up, keeping in mind this glaze will taste a lot sweeter once it’s been cooked onto the pork chops.
36) Mediterranean Couscous
This is a couscous dish with canned tuna, lemon, and olive oil on top, and herbs, with the option to add chickpeas or feta if you want a heartier dish. When I make couscous, I like to use vegetable stock or chicken stock as opposed to water to give it some more flavor.
Drain your tuna thoroughly, and then try not to break it up too much when you put it on top of the couscous, because you just want it to be nice and flaked. Lemons have to be good in this, and feta cheese, or even capers or Kalamata olives.
37) Creamy Mushroom Skillet
This is sautéed mushrooms cooked until golden brown, with the addition of spinach and garlic and a little bit of cream to make a creamy sauce, served over toast or rice. Slice your mushrooms and then cook them in the pan first. This will get all of the water out of them, and then you add the butter and salt and pepper to get a nice brown on them.
Next, I like to add the spinach after the mushrooms are golden brown, because the spinach cooks down and the water comes out, and this water helps to deglaze the pan with the mushrooms and get all the little crispy bits and the brown flavor off of the pan. Stick with heavy cream for this one as opposed to cream cheese. Cream cheese tends to get a little bit grainy when you put it into a sauce.
This meal would be great over rice, but it would also be really good over egg noodles, sort of like a mushroom stroganoff.
38) BBQ Chicken Sandwiches
This is shredded rotisserie chicken that’s been warmed up with barbecue sauce and then piled onto a bun with either pickles or slaw or quick pickled onions, or all three. I shred my chicken, add the barbecue sauce to it, and then give it a nice medium fry in a sauté pan, so you get a little bit of crispy action on it while you’re heating it up. Toast your buns for this one so they hold up to the sogginess of the barbecue sauce on the chicken.
I like to make pickled red onions at home for my family using a brine of vinegar, salt, sugar, coriander seeds, peppercorns, and crushed red pepper. Bring it to a boil and just pour it over a bowl full of sliced red onions, and in five to ten minutes you’ve got some quick pickled onions.
39) Garlic Mussels
These are mussels cooked in a broth of garlic and butter and white wine or lemon or both. The options are pretty endless when you’re making mussel broth. Any kind of veggies that you have, onions, tomatoes, even some crumbled Italian sausage, you can sauté that up first before you add your liquid and your mussels.
I like to make crispy toasted bread to go on the side. I slice baguette or French bread or whatever I have about an inch thick, and then just drizzle one side with olive oil and a little kosher salt and bake in the oven for four minutes. This way it’s crunchy enough to eat with the mussels, but it’s also soft enough to soak up lots of the liquid.
You’re going to want to put the mussels in once you’ve got your broth developed, and then cook them until they all open. If any of them don’t open, just throw them away. Don’t try to pry them open.
40) Avocado Toast
This is toast that’s topped with mashed up avocado, usually seasoned with salt and pepper and really anything that you like. All of your typical, traditional bagel toppings are always a great option for this as well, like smoked salmon or capers or even a little bit of bacon or ham.
A fried egg is a nice touch, or even something that my wife likes to do is to make her avocado almost akin to guacamole, with some fresh jalapeño in it. It’s also hard to beat a nice over medium fried egg on top of this one.
