ON THIS WEEK’S episode of Dinner SOS, food director and host Chris Morocco is joined by associate food editor Kendra Vaculin to help caller Cait bring a bit of weekend pizzazz to her weeknight cooking.
Cait loves to create restaurant-quality meals at home. She has ample time on weekends to try new recipes or go deep on a single technique. She might spend all of Saturday hand making ravioli with her own pasta dough or braising short ribs. But on weeknights, Cait is struggling to find time to make meals as compelling as she knows she is capable of. She needs a playbook of faster recipes for busy weeknights when she comes home from teaching high school English, so Chris calls on Kendra, author of the monthly column Speedy Does It which features shortcuts to dinners that still pack a flavor punch.
Kendra is a huge proponent of sheet-pan and one-pot dinners, which you can throw in the oven or on the stove and then use the cooking time to make a sauce, a grain, or another component to elevate your meal. She is a pro at weeknight-ifying dishes that would otherwise look or sound like they should take ages. To get those restaurant vibes, Chris suggests two of his favorite Kendra recipes, Meatball Soup With Beef Stew Vibes and Gorgeous Green Shrimp, which both manage to achieve a ton of flavor in not a lot of time. Kendra suggests two of her go-to recipes, Everything-Spice Fish With Tomato Salad and Creamy Spinach and Chickpeas.
Listen now to hear how Cait learns to love her weeknight dinner routine again with a little help with Chris and Kendra.