Dinner in One: Exceptional & Easy One-Pan Meals: A Cookbook

Every recipe is easy and delicious. I use my Dutch oven for everything. Also love the simple ingredients. Yummy !!

I have always loved Melissa Clark’s NYT Cooking recipes, and had high hopes for this book in helping us find good new weekday meals. The recipes are easy to follow, and not too many ingredients. My family has a lot of allergies, and we were easily able to find a lot of recipes that either worked, or had easy allergy-friendly swaps.

I got this book as a way to get my husband more inspired to cook since I'm in my third trimester with twins and we have a three year old. I also have gestational diabetes due to the twins so have to eat a low carb diets. These recipes really work for our family since it provides a full meal instead of just a single dish.He's made 8-10 meals with it and all have been excellent - mostly in the sheet pan and skillet sections. For people who like to eat clean meals that consist mostly of meat and veg, this is a great recipe book. We can easily add rice, pasta, bread or some other starchy/carb to fill out the meal.The meats and veggies are well flavored and there is often a sauce that goes with meal to add even more flavor. I also love that she give easy substitutes for veggies in case they are out at the store, you're cooking with what you have on hand or adding more veggies for leftovers.The only thing feedback I have is that there aren't estimated times for the recipes. While it says in the intro that most recipes take 1 hr, sometimes the meals are 40ish min and sometimes they are 1.5hrs. Which can make weekdays with a hungry kiddo and hungry mama eating for three a challenge. But then again my husband is not a very experienced home cook so that could be the cause for the variation.I'm buying a copy of this for my best friend who is a mom of two and is always looking for ways to make healthy meals easier. It's truly a home run.

I would highly recommend disregarding negative opinions about this book. They read as they are coming from people who have never cooked or are offended by flavor. If you don't know what an ingredient is, Google is your friend. Also, the author makes several notes for each recipe on how to change items up.Right off the bat you will notice that this book is of rich quality. The pages are thick and glossy. Much more thicker than the average book. The height of the book is much smaller though than the rest of my collection. It doesn't feel odd or weird though, despite that. It kind of adds a cozy feel, if that makes sense.The variety of recipes is something that I really enjoyed skimming through. As I went through page after page, I felt like this was a really worthy purchase and knew I'd get my money's worth. I like to place sticky tabs / notes on recipes I am interested in but there were far too many in this one so I didn't even bother.There are recipes of all sorts of tastes. Vegetarian, meat, sides, etc. The author uses a varying amount of herbs and spices and if you are a seasoned cook, as you read the ingredients, you will feel the recipe come to life already.This book has Milk Street vibes in the sense that it contains flavors from all over the world, but she uses a lot more seasonings and herbs in her recipes (which I love!).This book is not a simple, plain cookbook though. If you are looking for a quick weeknight meal with a fussy spouse / children, I would not recommend this. This feels like it is more geared towards people that enjoy cooking as a hobby and savoring wonderful flavors and tastes. Maybe you could use some of the recipes for a weekend dinner when dining with friends or family.The only disappointment in this cookbook is that there are not images for every recipe. This does bother me a lot with other books but I think I can overlook that because of the quality of the product itself.Highly recommend if you appreciate flavor, depth, and deliciousness. Do not recommend if you do not like to cook and / or do not like strong, bold flavors.15/10/2022 Update: So far I've made 3 recipes from this book. The tofu and roasted veggies were freaking delicious. Loved the way of cutting the potatoes and fresh herbs made a huuuuuge difference.The Kimchi Fried Rice was awesome! I added some sautéed garlic prawns to it and wow! This was sooooo delicious.The Cumin-y Chicken and Rice was also super yummy! I added way more garlic and marinated my chicken for several hours, ignoring the recommended time. If you do this too, make sure to massage the chicken every couple hours or so!

Every recipe I have tried has been good. Happy I bought this book!