One-Pot Meals

If you don’t happen to have or particularly enjoy pastrami, bacon or pancetta would be a delicious substitute for this minestrone recipe. Check out step-by-step photos here.

For a hearty vegetarian version of this pasta recipe, use squash, mushrooms, or eggplants in place of shrimp.

Think of this butternut cacio e pepe recipe as pasta cacio e pepe...with sausage. It’s comfort food-y, so it could use some fresh greens and/or veggies to help balance it out. Check out step-by-step photos here.

This is going to seem like a lot of oil, but you really need it to a) crisp up the rice and b) make it seem like fried rice and not a rice pilaf. To that end, you can’t use freshly cooked (meaning, still warm and moist) rice for this recipe. If you do, it will get gummy in the pan and won’t crisp. Day-old rice is ideal, or you can quickly dry out a just-made batch. Spread rice on a sheet tray and put in a low oven 5–10 minutes. Let air-dry for about 1 hour and up to 5. Seems nitpicky, but worth .…

The ingredient list for a curry can be a little daunting with all those spices, but the technique isn’t very far from a pasta sauce: you just toast the whole spices and then move on to a sort of sofrito of onion, garlic, and ginger. From that flavor base, you add tomatoes and whatever veggies you desire. At the end, a quick chutney, really just a rough chopped blend of herbs and coconut, gives the stew a bright pop of flavor (the way a few torn basil leaves make that tomato sauce sing).

For this carb-on-carb fried rice recipe, you can use anything but boxed stuffing (the texture is too fine and will turn to mush). We chose a cornbread and chorizo stuffing, which can handle being cooked again and tossed in the stir-fry.

When overlapping the phyllo over the filling in this recipe, work carefully but quickly so the phyllo doesn’t dry out before baking.

To cut up the kabocha squash for this recipe, slice ¼" off the stem end and base. Stand it on a cut end and halve from top to bottom. Scoop out seeds, peel, and you're home free.

The chicken should be falling-apart tender; if it starts to shred when you plate it, that’s a good sign!

Not a big fan of chorizo? This chili recipe can also be made with chicken, turkey, or Italian sweet or spicy sausage.

A cool green zingy soup; pack it in a thermos on ice and take it picnicking or to the beach.

White miso is the mildest and sweetest type, which is why it’s called for in this quantity.

If you’re using a charcoal grill, you’ll want to actively monitor the heat in different spots and shift the pan this way and that as needed.

A dead-simple shellfish dish that is pure Erickson: ocean-adoring, dairy-rich, fun to eat.

De Laurentiis uses Peroni, an Italian beer, for this 20-minute dish, but any light-bodied lager will work and make a perfect drink pairing as well.

You can use kielbasa or any kind of dry-cured pork sausage, but spicy andouille gives this jambalaya a nice kick of heat.

This is the perfect weeknight dinner because it requires very little maintenance and doesn’t take long to put together.

The key to browning chicken skin in butter is to crowd the pieces so the butter doesn’t burn in the skillet—then it makes the most beautifully browned skin!

This isn’t a super-saucy chicken curry; the aromatics from the coconut chicken will brown in the pan, yielding lots of yummy crisp bits.

Ras-el-hanout is a Moroccan spice blend that contains several warming spices (such as cinnamon and nutmeg) with a little ginger and chile for heat. If you can’t find it, use garam masala instead.

A single pan leads to many wonders: crackly-skinned chicken, hardy escarole, and a touch of smoky bacon.

Like all good leafy greens, the giant pile of escarole leaves will wilt down dramatically as they cook.

You can substitute braised short rib, pork shoulder, or brisket for the pastrami—if it’s fatty and shreddable, it will make a good hash.

You can make this dish with whatever vegetables you have on hand—potatoes, shallots, carrots, and leeks are all good options. This is part of BA's Best, a collection of our essential recipes.