Which 3 recipes?

[MoodEnhancer]

My DH is not a confident cook. We’ve fallen into a pattern of me making almost all the meals and he recognises this is not fair. He has asked me to suggest 3 recipes for relatively easy, family friendly meals that he can practise and start making consistently.

Which 3 would you suggest?? Ideally the meals would be reasonably healthy too as also for our DC. And not pasta based as we eat it too often already! DC is relatively unfussy and eats most cuisines.

Nice choice!

Couple off top of my head

BBC crispy turkey noodle recipe
San Choy Bau served with rice or lettuce cups

Really? I'd have thought that the first stews were cooked on an open fire, and with fresh kill rather than leftovers. I also thought that 'casserole', when used to refer to the food rather than the cooking vessel of the same name, would imply the food had been cooked in a casserole dish rather than in a slow cooker. Hey ho, I guess every day's a school day...

Ive came back.. Do you have a slow cooker OP? As this I think would make life a hell of a lot easier for the pair of you. I use mine often throughout the year. Especially on the days I know where we have a late evening due to clubs ect.
I make an array of meals in mine, soups, stews, chilli, bolognaise, mince for shepherds pie then I just get home & have to do the topping. I even use it to cook meats, like a will slow cook a whole chicken then slice up & use the chicken in meals for the next 3 days like pastas ect.

I have the Ninja slow cooker & really like it. You can set a timer, then once the cooking is done it’ll then keep the food warm for however long. You can also braise meat in there before hand. I really do recommend a slow cooker for ease of meals. Especially if it is you who is the main cook as I am

Some healthy omelette? Like carrot omelette? You can add cheese/ham/other stuff in the middle to make it interesting.

Tomato risotto? I've found a recipe for this: neilshealthymeals.com/quick-healthy-tomato-basil-risotto/

Seasoned chicken breast with wraps or homemade potato wedges and salad.

Sausage, mash and veg

Beef or chicken stir fry

One of my regulars is stuffed red peppers. Stuff with halved cherry tomatoes topped with three teasooons pesto out if a jar and hollumi cubed, sprinkle lemon juice on top. Bake for about 20 mins at fan 200. Ten minutes before this I wedge or chip potatoes, add season and Cajun spice put them in the oven, serve with peas and sweetcorn. All takes about 40 mins to cook.

I think if you’re going to focus on three dishes, a mix of proteins would be good. These are some of our go to quick and easy mid week meals

midweek quick paella
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/easiest-ever-paella

Cajun chicken pasta
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/cajun-chicken-one-pot

a mid week quick roast
sausages or some kind of chops or steaks work well.

Chicken, chickpea and spinach curry.
A teaspoon each of ground cumin, ground corriander, and medium curry powder.
Fry off an onion in oil and the spices, then add the chicken, chopped garlic, potatoes and chickpeas, and a tin of coconut milk plus one of boiling water. Cook for about an hour and add frozen spinach in the last few mins.

Sausage traybake.
Chorizo and regular sausages with sliced onions, peppers, carrots, potatoes and seasoning cooked in the oven for an hour or so.

Leek and potato soup.
Self explanatory, but can add spinach and cream, and a touch of nutmeg.

Egg fried rice is quick and versatile as can add any sorry looking veg or leftover meat.
But I would pass it back to him - he can find the recipes and learn to cook them. Otherwise you are still carrying the burden. For me, the meal panning is a worse chore than the actual cooking. So everyone in the family now takes turns.

Mine would be

Chicken curry
Toad in the hole
Prawn stir fry

• Chilli - batch cook and freeze.
• Chicken traybake - there are several in the Jamie Oliver 'One' book that include the rice as well so it's all in one tray. We like the Cajun one.
• fajitas - all he needs to do is cook the meat and vegetables then everyone assembles their own in wraps with shredded lettuce, cheese, salsa etc.

Also, things like jacket potatoes with different toppings and salad don't even need 'cooking' as such but it's a meal he could prepare.

Fried rice is a good shout - we all love Chinese food.

I don’t wholly agree with your suggestion that I simply pass this back over to him. He has recognised it’s a problem and is making an effort. He has asked me what would be most helpful to me and the whole family for him to learn. He’s not just lazily handing over all thinking to me. So I am trying to work out what the recipes ought to be so he and I can discuss the choices.

I do have a slow cooker. I rarely use it because the recipes I have tried all seem to be a bit meh. Hard to create texture in meals using a slow cooker and I find something that tastes and feels the same all the way through the meal a bit uninspiring. Does that make sense??

Are there any recipes you particularly recommend? Would love to cut down time spent cooking!

Lemon chicken tray bake
chicken thighs, lemon wedges, new potatoes, olive oil salt and pepper, garlic cloves and red onion in wedges.Roast for 30 mins or so, the fling in some green veg of choice for 10
mins, zest some fresh lemon and serve. you can add in any been you like the flavour of, tarragon or parsley work well.

ginger soy protien (chicken, beef salmon tofu)
coat your protein in season flour and fry off in oil and a little butter. Cook for 10 mins evenly on each side and get a little crust.
Meanhwhile in a jar mix a thumb of grated ginger, 4 tables spoons of soy sauce, 2 tablespoons of honey and a splash of vinegar. Shake well. when the proteins is cooked add in the sauce on a high heat and let it bubble. fling in some veg for last few mins., turn off let it rest for 5 mins. Serve with rice or noodles.

chorizo tomato pasta
dice an onion, slices of chorizo and fry off. Grate in a courgette and add in some pasata. Sliced black olives and garlic. Add in pasata. Serve with pasta and crumbled feta.

All of the above can be done in about 35-45 mins.

Casseroles - so easy. Chopped onions and carrots, braising steak, chopped potatoes and then (if he’s not confident adding herbs / spices) one of those seasoning packet mixes, water and cook on low for a few hours. Very hard to mess up.

Not a recipe suggestion as such but having ready chopped onions and soffrito in the fridge makes life easier, as do bags of frozen mash. My very unconfident son can do a cottage pie with these ingredients. Cook About half a bag of soffrito, add 500g mince, and when that's brown add gravy (bistro instant is fine) . Add frozen peas. Top with defrosted mash. Top with cheese if you like and grill until browned on top. If making it to serve later it can go in the oven for about half an hour. The frozen onions and soffrito also make chillis and ragus pretty easy

My DH can cook some superb meals but his repertoire is extremely limited.

Basically, he can cook any type of vegetarian curry. He typically starts with the same base for everything and then adds whatever ingredients he fancies. Experiments a bit with different spices etc. And makes it up as he goes along. It's pretty quick, easy and always very tasty. He'll usually make rice or homemade chapatti to eat with it.

Apart from that, he can do various iterations of egg fried rice, and he makes delicious omelettes.

I would suggest that the best starting point might be for your DH to think about what he likes to eat and what he would like to be able to cook! Most things are pretty easy if you start by using a recipe. As you build up confidence, you can then start making things up as you go along and branch out to new things.

You could get the Ministry of Food book by Jamie Oliver, or the 30-Minute Meals one.

My favourite slow cooker meals are bolognese, meatballs, I used to do a good cider and pork casserole, or pork shoulder can also be slow cooked for pulled pork. The key thing is to really cut down the amount of liquid going into anything because none of the liquid disappears and any veggies will release liquid so it needs to be as thick to start with as what you want to eat, unless you've put flour or something in there to thicken it up.

E.g. meatballs I would add some bits of frozen sweet potatoes which break down over the day to nothing but thicken the sauce up. Bolognese only a stock cube (no liquid stock) and maybe use more tomato puree and less tinned tomatoes. Etc etc.

Easy peasy meals:
Omelette
Fajitas
Dahl

https://www.nigella.com/recipes/chicken-and-pea-traybake
dead easy, and tastes far better than the sum of all its parts (I use chopped frozen dill often if I don’t have fresh in).

If you have a slow cooker there’s a recipe for a slow cooked sausage and onion casserole on a certain similar sounding rival mums internet forum that’s really good (sorry for mentioning the dark side, but it is delicious and dead easy😳).

Any sort of one pan thing, either pasta bake or med veggies and potatoes with a protein (chicken thighs, salmon, sausages, whatever). Some chorizo adds a bit of oomph. There’s a nice sausage and tomato bake of jamie Oliver’s. I don’t usually bother with the rosemary, and often add some courgette or onion wedges. Some feta crumbled on for the last 10 minutes cooking and then stirred through before serving is really great too.
https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pork/sweet-cherry-tomato-and-sausage-bake/

Oven risotto
Spaghetti bollognaise
Homemade pizza

I don't think there's anything easier to cook than roast chicken, roast potatoes, stuffing (good old Paxo) and three or four veg. The only difficult part is the timing at the end and serving up. This is a dinner I always delegate to my DH who is a willing but not confident cook. We sometimes treat ourselves to ready-made red cabbage or cauliflower cheese to tart it up a bit.