#201: One-Pot Easy Winter Dinners

Today I'm sharing Winter Dinners that will save your sanity. One-pot and one-sheet-pan meals for busy, cold nights that'll make winter cooking easier. 

Recipes & Meals Mentioned:

Slow Cooker Sunday
• Simple slow-cooker chicken
• Honey Butter Chicken (Naptime Kitchen–inspired)

Ground Beef Monday
• Meatloaf
• Chili
• Meatballs

Asian Tuesday
• Coconut milk chicken with kale
• Korean tacos
• Fishbird Chicken
• Butter Chicken Meatballs

Salmon Wednesday
• Sheet-pan salmon + roasted vegetable

Thursday Simple Night
• Grilled cheese + tomato soup
• Minestrone
• Carrot ginger soup
• Turkey sandwiches

Friday One-Pot Chicken
• Chicken pot pie
• Butternut squash–chicken–rice bake
• Quinoa–sweet potato–chicken sausage bake
• Marry Me Chicken

Bonus Meals
• Sheet-pan chicken thighs, potatoes & Brussels sprouts
• Extra batch rice & mashed potatoes prep

www.daraboxer.com

Transcript

The One-Pot, One-Pan Solution

Batch Cooking And Sanity Savers

Weekly Dinner Rhythm Overview

Slow Cooker Sunday Playbook

Ground Beef Monday Staples

Bright And Easy Asian Tuesdays

Sheet-Pan Salmon Wednesdays

Sandwiches Or Soup On Thursdays

Cozy One-Pot Chicken Fridays

Lazy Leftovers And Reset Saturdays

Pantry Essentials For Winter Wins

Meal Planning Without The Overwhelm

Dara Boxer 0:15

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode. Today I wanted to share a really easy winter episode. I am focusing on one pot winter meals, things that are easy. One sheet pan, one pot, and just keeping the flow going. It is tough. December, December in particular, is tough. It feels like the end of a marathon. We are sprinting to the new year. There's just a lot going on. I mean, everyone like loves the holidays. There's so much joy and magic and wonder at this time of the year, but it's also kind of a bear. And I feel like December is also really tough when you're a mother of little children. When it gets dark at like 4:30 in the afternoon, it just feels like there's no like a wind down, there's no evening, there's really no go outside and go play kids when it's like 12 degrees and windy, right? It is just like endless jackets and gloves and snow boots and snow pants and hats and just endless everything. Early sunsets are hard. It coincides with the witching hour. Kids are just restless. Like it's just a grind. December is a grind, and it will continue to feel like a grind until the sun stays out a little bit later and it gets a little bit warmer. We've been we've been pretty blessed with days in the 40s and even in the 50s in December, but that doesn't negate the days that it's like literally like 11 degrees and the wind is just whipping. And it's tough, right? And so this episode is just about making dinner lighter, more simple, more satisfying, especially when you're nursing, you're tired, you're overstimulated because your kids are going crazy from all the indoor time, and you're just buried under winter gear for all of your children. And so tonight's theme is that dinner does not have to be gourmet necessarily, it just needs to get done. Like it just needs to get done. And I think a really good metric for success, especially in this season, is did everyone eat it? And did it make your nighttime dinner prep rhythm go smoother? And that's it. And I think one pot and one sheet pan meals can really save your sanity because it is fewer dishes, fewer decisions, and we are going to talk about how you can just easily fit this into your winter rhythm. They're cozy meals, they're warm meals, they're predictable meals, and they are heavy in protein and it can make you feel a little bit more grounded and satisfied. Um, so I'm gonna also talk about why I batch cook, how I bulk up certain um food items to kind of make the flow go easier. I'm gonna talk about the constant repeating that we do and just rotating through the same winners that we have December through February. Um, especially, I mean, it's just a rough time of the year. For our family in particular, we've had a lot of like one-off events like um the birth of a new baby that took everyone to New Jersey, the death of a grandparent that took everyone to Florida, um, my daughter's birthday is in December, my husband and I have a wedding anniversary in December. Uh, we always host Thanksgiving. I mean, so this time of year is insane on top of all of the other things and like extras that we've had. And I feel like I always say this like December, I just like feel like I need to stop and take like a deep breath. And so anything that I can do that makes my day-to-day a little bit easier, that being like laundry and the cleaning and you know, the the batching of the errands, the batching of certain foods to make like just anything that to make my flow a little bit easier, especially with four kids that are now uh between the ages of one and seven, just like anything to make it easier. So hello, one pot winter meals. Okay, so I'm gonna walk you through what we do basically like every single week with like a little bit of variation in there. Um, just depending like if somebody wants something special or whatever. But here's sort of like my rhythm for the week. Sundays are just for the slow cooker, and I'll talk about what I throw in there, but we have been well, just so many Sundays have just been like really busy, and so for me it's just easy in the morning to kind of like throw chicken and a couple of different variations of like the spices and the ingredients and like what I plan to do with that chicken that comes out of the slow cooker like eight hours later, but like Sundays are just for slow cookers and it's been great, and it's pretty easy because like there are I mean I can't I a bajillion slow cooker recipes, right? So it's just it's great, it's an easy one. Mondays um I still have for ground beef, Tuesdays are Asian themed, just for like bright, flavorful, healthier vibes for a Tuesday. Wednesday is salmon night um or fish, like sometimes I do a cod, but like 99% of the time it's salmon. Um, Thursdays are either just for like super simple, like a sandwich night, because by Thursday I'm really tired and burnt out, or Thursday is like a soup night with homemade sourdough. Friday I'm doing one pot chicken meals. Um, and Saturdays are my lazy leftover night. My like I want the fridge clean and empty and and deep cleaned from the week so I can restart again when I buy groceries on Monday. Okay, so let's work backwards. Let's go back to Sunday. Um, so throwing my piece of chicken in the slow cooker, or I mean more than a piece of chicken, I have six people to feed, but throwing chicken, I usually buy um a ton of chicken at Costco. I have like their six pack of their um boneless, skinless chicken thighs, and it I just like thaw out one or two packets um the night prior, and I either season them with salt, pepper, and a little bit of like a homemade, like barbecue-y um type of seasoning. Uh, I throw that in for eight hours. Maybe I'll add an onion or some fresh garlic in there, and then I will throw that over rice with homemade guacamole or um like some black beans or whatever, just for like, I don't know, like chicken with rice in a bowl, like of some sort, like cut up fresh tomatoes, like whatever, like so much variation there. Um, or I found a really fun recipe for um like honey butter chicken. Um, that was a naptime kitchen recipe. And so that's again the same chicken thighs that I use: salt, pepper, paprika, curry powder, a can of chickpeas, half an onion, um, a couple of slabs of butter, um, a big squirt of honey and some Dijon mustard, let that sit, throw that over rice. Um, so those are kind of like my two fallbacks that I do on Sundays, and it's it's just easier. I'm packing lunches on Sunday, like I just have no appetite to actually cook or do anything more than like the lunches and the snacks and whatever for the backpacks the next day. So, like slow cooker Sunday it is. It's just worked out really well. Sundays have turned into like birthday parties and piano lessons and everything in between, and so again, just to like get up and prep dinner while I am feeding the kids breakfast, it's just like I get it out of the way, and then all I have to worry about is the rice. And the rice I wanted to talk about also. So, rice is one of those like really awesome things. It's like so easy to bulk up, and a lot of these one pan and one pot meals have um like rice, like you'll throw something over rice. And so on Sundays, I will usually do like two cups of rice. I'll get that prepped, and then I'll just pop that in the fridge, and then we'll just you know pick off of it as the week goes on. Okay, so Mondays I like ground beef night. Um, it's high protein, it's flexible, and it's cheap. I should say it's it's cheaper. It used to be really cheap to get like a pound of ground beef used to be like three dollars. Now it's like closer to seven, but what can you do? Um, so I really like to either rotate through meatloaf, chili, or meatballs, and having like a category night kind of like removes the mental load. So, like slow cooker Sundays, ground beef Mondays, like that's kind of like the theme. I'm sure you're catching on to that. Um, so meatloaf you can throw that in a chute pan, um, and then just roast a vegetable alongside it. Um, and this is also a good time to bulk up on mashed potatoes. Like, I think mashed potatoes and meatloaf like are just they go to they go together like hand in hand. So I usually do like three pounds of mashed potatoes at once, and similar to my rice, I will just make a humongous amount, way more than we need, and then I will put that in the fridge and we will just pick off of it or add it to another dinner later on in the week. Tuesdays have turned into our Asian night, it's just like bright and flavorful. Um, and again, it's just like it's a little healthier. Um, some of the I mean, I I don't know, it's like all relatively healthy, but um I really like to do either like a pan seared chicken with uh kale and coconut milk. That's been really fun, and again, I'll pair that with rice. Um, I have a Korean taco recipe, and that's just like a big piece of beef that I pop in the slow cooker and soy sauce and a little bit of brown sugar and a couple of other um spices and Asian flavors, and again, throw that with rice, and we'll throw some cabbage on it and um some really delicious spicy sauce, some like fresh cucumbers. It's really good. Um, I have another chicken recipe. We call it fish bird chicken because I marinate chicken and fish sauce, which sounds really weird, but it tastes really good. Um, some fresh red bell peppers, red onion, um, more coconut milk, and add that with rice. That is a really good one. And again, just easy sauces to make, they're pantry staples, um, and all of this works really well with either rice or noodles. Um, I also have a really delicious um butter chicken meatball recipe. The recipe that I found called for pre-made, like store-bought meatballs. Those did not taste very good. Um, I we tried the Trader Joe's ones, the pre-made ones. They were pretty disgusting. They were like really rubbery. Um, so the sauce, the butter chicken sauce, is delicious. Um, so and that's like really easy to bulk up. It's really just like a can of tomatoes, an onion, some fresh ginger, um, or you could buy like the frozen cubed ones that they sell um and just like bulk that up with like a couple of other spices. Uh, use an immersion blender, and so like the sauce is really easy. So if you have time to make meatballs, that works really well, just like meatballs, a really delicious curry sauce over rice. Um, okay, Wednesday, I would say nine out of ten times or having salmon, but occasionally I'll get a cod or something else. And I like to roast salmon in a sh in on a sheet pan alongside either roasted potatoes or a green, like green beans, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, like whatever's in season and you know, available to purchase. Um this is my simplest night of the week. It is like 10 minutes hand on hands-on. Um, and then you can either pair it with mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes that you roast alongside the salmon or the rice, like right, so you're like starting to catch on. Um, and I am okay basically doing every other night like rice, potatoes, rice, potatoes. I mean, it's just the season. It it is what it is. Um, okay. So Thursdays, I like to keep it simple by either doing like sandwich night or um a soup. And I like obviously most of my soups are one pot. Um, sometimes we'll do like grilled cheeses and uh tomato soup. Sometimes it's a minestron soup or a carrot ginger soup, like whatever it is, paired up with maybe like a turkey sandwich or whatever. It's just an easier night. Thursdays are just really intense. I'm just like starting to feel it and like really looking forward to the Sabbath the next day. So just giving myself like a little bit of grace the night before Shabbat, I feel like, is always a good option. And then Fridays have turned into like one-pot chicken meals, whether that's like a chicken pot pie or a butternut squash chicken rice bake or a quinoa sweet potato chicken sausage bake, or uh Mary Me chicken, which is really fun. It's like uh chicken with cream and uh sun-dried tomatoes and spinach, like it's a it's a whole thing, and again, over rice. And these are just like perfect warm, cozy winter meals that I love so so so much. And with the chicken pot pie, I usually do a homemade pie dough, and the recipe I use makes two like enough for two meals, so I'll just freeze one and then use one that night. Um, but then it's great because then like future Dara doesn't have to do pie dough from scratch when she wants to do a chicken pot pie night. And then Saturdays have really just turned into like lazy leftover night, and that's just been sanity saving. I really don't want to cook on the Sabbath, and I just give myself permission to not do anything. And so, yeah, those are the meals that we're basically eating over and over and over again. Um, I wanted to share another really easy meal, like on a Friday, if I don't feel like making something, you know, like doing whatever the chopping. You could just throw chicken thighs, potatoes, and brussels sprouts on a sheet pan with some cut up lemon and diced up rosemary. It's like nothing fancy, but it's like bright and wintery. And I just I I fall back on this meal like when I have like nothing left in my gas tank. And the Mary Me Chicken is also another favorite of mine because it is just like perfect and ideal for warm, cozy nights at home. Um, and so yeah, that is basically what we are eating over and over, and a way to stock and set up your winter pantry. Um, you can stock up on broth, coconut milk, crushed tomatoes, garlic, lemons, uh, onions, rice, and potatoes. Um, and for your easy proteins, chicken thighs, ground beef, chicken sausage, um, salmon, and meatballs, um, ingredients such as like breadcrumbs, eggs, and um just like some easy spices like onion powder, garlic powder, you have the works. Um, and then of course, ginger. You'll you'll want to keep some ginger on hand. Um, so basically, if you're able to stock up on all of these things, um, your new motto can be like, if I have rice, broth, and a protein, like your dinner is basically done, right? And so I encourage you to pick one of the recipes that I had mentioned and start adding it into your rotation. And I know meal planning can feel really exhausting and daunting. And trust me, there are some days where I'm just like, ugh, Sunday rolls around. I'm like, I don't want a meal plan, I don't want to think about this, but I have this list written down, like what we eat on different nights and the different options for each night, and then I can just really easily sit down and pick what we're having for dinner. And so, yeah, that's all I have for you um this week, and I hope it's helpful. Um, and you know, if you are feeling the holiday struggle with just like the amount of boxes and packages that you have to like break down and throw away and gifts to wrap and cards to send. I took my one and my three-year-old to UPS this morning, and I mailed out seven gifts for my nieces and nephews that are spread out all across the country, and I'm just like, it is just a crazy time. It is a crazy time. We needed another book of stamps because I guess we were out for the holiday cards that are probably going to be late at this point. I don't know, guys. I'm like, we're we're just hanging in there, we're doing the best that we can. Um, so yeah, that's that's all I have for you. We can like almost take it. I feel like once February comes around, we can like take no, not February. February is really cold and terrible. Like, like March. I feel like once March rolls around and we get to like set our clocks back or forward or whatever it is, like the sun will set later, like spring will be around the corner. We could like take a deep breath. But until then, I think that we should just make our lives easy but still like intentional and healthy and fulfilling. And so here you are one pot, one pan dinners for the next couple of months. You are welcome. See you back here next week.