What are your go to quick, easy evening meals?

[ImaHogg]

I’m spending more and more time rushing about these days as I am caring for my mum. I am finding I am sticking frozen foods in the oven more often than not which isn’t ideal.
Any ideas for quick, easy, relatively healthy meals that I can rely on as go to’s for the family. We eat meat but ds is veggie so I usually have to do him something different then he has the same veggies as us.

Ham or gammon steaks with macaroni cheese

Carbonara

Dry off garlic in olive oil. You can used cooked chicken or bacon. Heat through and add double cream. Then add to pasta. Done in 15 minutes.

Make sure you have plenty of eggs in. Omelette, scrambled egg, poached, fried. With anything. The egg is your friend. We buy a box of 15 each week.

Cheese lasts long enough so a decent sized block will fair well.

I do a roast every Sunday and make sure I’ve an extra large chicken or gammon joint as can make so much with left overs. If it’s beef it turns into a stir fry. Lidl do a great frozen stir fry vegetables.
Also, I like Lidl’s large family lasagne. Great with salad, though takes a while to heat up, but a great cheat eat.

I don't enjoy cooking. I love Nigella's Express - not too many ingredients and tasty quick meals. I also do Jamie Oliver's Hit and Run chicken (Google it but treble the spices) - one tray cooking.
Also a real time saver is getting some frozen baked potatoes. Then you can have tuna, sweetcorn and mayo on it with a side salad. Or chopped up bacon and cheese and onion. Real simple meal done in minutes.

Salmon fillets few drops of water (90-120 secs in microwave)
Microwave rice (90 secs)
Asparagus with butter (60-90 secs in microwave)
Dinner in less than 10 mins.
Also use steam fresh veg packs for non lovers of asparagus.

Fresh pasta "carbonara" - (shallot or leek, pancetta cubes, mushroom, tub of half fat creme fraiche)

Tacos

Spaghetti carbonara. The proper version, without cream. Only takes 15-20 minutes.

Cowboy bake - grill chicken sausages and chop them up. Boil pasta. Fry diced onion and garlic, add tin chopped toms, 4 tbsp of ketchup, 2 tbsps brown sauce, 1 tsp Dijon and 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce.

Chuck it all in a dish, but some cheese on top and bake for 20 mins!

Chicken thighs on the George Forman, stick chicken thighs on, season once on and leave. Serve with salad and leftover potatoes or pitta bread.

Mince pitta or tortilla. Cook mince, chop some veggies, perinaise (any condiment you like), pitta bread or tortilla.

Extra lazy: pitta bread, perinaise, veggies and sliced ham.

Can you tell I like pitta bread?

Toad in the hole
Chicken kiev and vegetables
Stir fry and noodles

sweet potato wedges and grilled chicken pittas with salad for your ds veggie alternative such as quorn or veggie burger takes about 30 mins filling and cheap

If you can get some time in the morning a slow cooker is good. You can do soups, stew/casseroles, meats. My slow cooker is massive so I always fill it up and freeze the leftovers.

Our quickest, healthy-ish meals are:

Soup from the refrigerator (not tinned), with sourdough and cheese.

Fresh pasta (e.g. a pack of the stuffed ravioli type stuff they sell in supermarkets) with a pot of sauce, served with tenderstem broccoli steamed or baked in the oven.

Jacket potato with various toppings & salad.

Fishcakes with couscous and peas.

Good quality ready meal like a Charlie Bingham Fish Pie.

lachy

Get one with removable plates - easier to clean and normally come with 2-3 different plates.

I think I put this on the gadget thread so sorry for the repeat, I cook eggs on in the sandwich maker.

Heat the sandwich maker with a little oil - I use a 1 cal spray, once hot break an egg into the 'triangle' and put the lid down, don't use the clasp, just leave the lid loose, 3 mins later you have a triangular egg somewhere between a fried and a poached.

Batch cook chilli and freeze. I make my veggie version with big chunks of sweet potato.
Microwave and serve with tortilla chips and microwave rice.

Chicken curry - chop up a chicken breast per person, stir fry in a wok. Add a tin of coconut milk, a tin or sweetcorn, a handful of frozen peas and ahh by y other veg you fancy. Stir in curry paste if your choice - Patak’s Korma works for the spice-dodgers i love with! Simmer for 20 mins or so until the sauce has reduced.u

OP

Do you live somewhere where there are sweet centres? Shops that sell traditional Indian sweets and samosas?

My favorite one also sells curry, sheek kebab, shami kebab etc, so you can pick up a 'take away' but it is all chilled and you just warm in the oven.

I would urge batch cooking. I don't set aside any time to do this specifically, but if I am making say a bolognese then I make a huge pot- 3Kg of beef, 8 cans tomatoes etc. I have a massive slow cooker.
Freeze in smaller portions- can be eaten with pasta or made into lasagne, add cumin, chilli and kidney beans to make chilli con carne.
Prep ahead- tray bakes are great, everything in one dish, potatoes, seasoning, veg and meat, cover and chill in the fridge.
So much you can do without resorting to ready meals.

lentil dhal and rice
or lentil spag

Authentic veggie curry..Punjabi style. Cut an onion, thumb of ginger and grate some garlic. Brown in a pan with some spices (don’t be daunted by spices) start off basic with a teaspoon of turmeric and teaspoon of garam masala. Add a couple of whole spices so a couple of black or green cardamom and peppercorns. Add some cauliflower or sliced aubergine and cubed potato and brown in the spices. Throw in a tin of tomatoes and a dash of water and let it cook on low heat for about 20 minutes. Serve with rice and you can all enjoy that one...even the meat eaters will love it.

Bookmarking. These sound amazingly good ideas!

Honestly I’d throw money at the problem and remove one thing off your list.

Get Mindful Chef / Gusto meals
Delivered for 4 mid-week meals. Pick off the quick ranges.

Have pizza with veg sticks or something on the Friday.

Or go one step further and get frozen meals delivered.

When I make lasagna, I make 2 and freeze one in portions in takeaway boxes. Easy to take out requisite number of portions and microwave, and cook some peas when DC1 has football at Y o’clock and DC2 has Cubs at Z o’clock kind of evenings. I do beef, veggie and seafood variations. Macaroni cheese also freezes well.

Google a recipe for oven baked risotto. That’s basically mixing stuff up and putting it in the oven. Get to know how to use the timer and delayed start functions on your oven.

Wraps (with chicken or falafel and a bit of salad) and wedges (potatoes or sweet potatoes)?always go down well, and use up left over roast chicken.

For stir fries and tray bakes I prep in the morning.

Mash is easy to warm up, fresh pasta, noodles and cous cous cook very quickly.

We've taken to having smaller meals in the evening, as otherwise we end up feeling sluggish. So things we have include:

Soup with bread eg foccacia, bread roll or cheese toastie

Salad (big hearty ones with protein such as chicken or tuna mayo, and with veggies such as sweet potato or lentils)

Jacket potatoes (microwave from frozen) or quiche with salad

Egg or beans on toast

I also find to prep makes life a lot easier.

Before my shop, I work out lunches and dinners for Mon-Fri. I bought the vegetable and fruit saver containers, so on a Sunday after shopping I wash and cut everything, put into the containers and into the fridge. These containers keep everything fresh and crunchy over the 5 days.

I've also discovered frozen diced onion, game changer.

Personally if I'm organised and the food is bought and ready to go, I find it's a lot easier to cook each week night. And "cooking smart" - so if I do a stir fry on Monday, Tuesday I'll dice finely the leftover veggies and make a quick quiche using store bought pastry and serve with salad.

I like to cook a few jacket potatoes so they can quickly be reheated in the microwave for quick meals

I would say plan to use left overs, it's not quite the same as batch cooking.

Eg on Saturday I had baked potato, but I cooked double and then yesterday made gnocchi with the left over potatoes.

Ghocchi with just potato and flour cooks in about 2 mins in boiling water and a tomato soup made with passatta and a few herbs can be warmed up while the water is being boiled.

*Cowboy bake - grill chicken sausages and chop them up. Boil pasta. Fry diced onion and garlic, add tin chopped toms, 4 tbsp of ketchup, 2 tbsps brown sauce, 1 tsp Dijon and 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce.

Chuck it all in a dish, but some cheese on top and bake for 20 mins!*

It sounds nice enough but... You have to grill, boil, fry and bake? How is that quick and easy?