Molly Yeh’s Household Is Fueled by Frozen Dumplings and Lightning-Fast Rice Bowls

“You have caught me in my most semi-homemade phase of my life,” Molly Yeh tells me. The unofficial queen of hotdish and host of the Food Network’s Girl Meets Farm is in the midst of promoting a newish book (Home Is Where the Eggs Are), running a newish restaurant (Bernie’s, in East Grand Forks, Minnesota), and caring for two young kids, all fueled by a whole lot of salad kits, frozen dumplings, and Rao’s pizza sauce.

I was dying to know what grocery shopping looks like for a Food Network star who lives on a farm in Minnesota, so I asked Yeh to share a few details about what she’s been buying (and cooking) on repeat lately. She clued me into her latest bread-baking shortcut, and a dead-simple way to cook broccoli and salmon in a hurry.

Are you the kind of person who generally goes to one grocery store and you’re done?

We have a local grocery store called Hugo’s, so most things we can get there. Some things we have to go to the Super Target for, and then our one butcher shop has the good salmon.

What are the things that always make it onto your grocery list?

I love grocery lists. Every Friday is when I make my grocery list. Every single week, we have a few things that are on the list. Almond milk, because Nick, my husband, has it every single morning, and peanut butter. I think we keep the peanut butter industry in business too because my 3-year-old is obsessed, and also I’m on this mission to avoid any sort of peanut allergies in my 8-month-old, so I feed her peanut butter a lot. Eggs, of course. Because they’re the easiest dinner when I have completely forgotten to plan dinner. 

And the other two things I wanted to call out are salmon and broccoli, because every single week, we do a night with salmon and broccoli so that I can sleep well at night knowing that I have eaten healthy at least for one dinner. We’ve been doing sushi rice, with roasted salmon and roasted broccoli with Kewpie and chili crisp on top of it. It’s the easiest meal that everybody will eat, and I can feel good about it, and it has just the right amount of junkiness from the mayonnaise that I can really crave it, but also it’s got salmon and broccoli, so I feel okay.

How are the salmon and broccoli cooked?

I just roast the shit out of them. I have this new oven that I’m still getting to know. It has the heating element on top, so when it’s preheating, it acts like a broiler. So I stick the broccoli on the top shelf while it’s preheating, and it gets the broccoli super crispy, and I get it super oily with olive oil and really, really salt, and I take it out of the oven, and then I put the salmon in the center of the oven and let that cook. And, inevitably, I eat like half the broccoli while I’m cooking the other things. 

Sometimes I’ll make a scallion-garlic-ginger oil to go on top of everything too, but I haven’t gotten around to that recently because most of the time that I cook this, I have my 8-month old sitting in my arms.

What other groceries have been making the list lately?

We buy a lot of beans because they’re so easy to throw together. A lot of bananas, a lot of Honeycrisp apples, a lot of pasta.

Every Friday we’ll get pizza toppings, and I’ll sometimes make the dough the night before, but these days with the kids and the restaurant and the book, I usually buy pizza dough. 

And Rao’s pizza sauce—or I use marinara, because we just keep a stack of the marinara on hand at all times. They have a pizza sauce, but we always have a half-eaten jar of the marinara in our refrigerator. 

Oh, frozen potstickers are another thing I can reliably make and know that my 3-year-old will love. I do frozen potstickers, and then I get an “Asian salad kit” and I have those together as a meal, and that’s one of my faves because I know that she’ll look forward to them.

What does the salad kit consist of?

Cabbage and carrots. Sometimes a little bit of kale. The crunchy packet has fried wontons and roasted almonds, and the dressing is a sesame-ginger type thing. I usually enhance it with chili crisp and sometimes I’ll add peanut butter to that dressing too if I’m in need of a protein boost.

Do you make a fun dipping sauce for the potstickers?

I will usually add some rice vinegar or black vinegar and soy sauce. A friend of ours gifted us a really fancy soy sauce, so I’ve been using that. You have caught me in my most semi-homemade phase of my life.

But there have been a lot of great new convenience items! There have been better frozen potstickers and really good condiments and really good store-bought dressings that make life easier. Convenience foods these days aren’t necessarily less good.

What’s an ingredient that your book might convince people to try out?

I use a lot of potato flour when I’m baking these days, which has been the best shortcut for fluffier breads. For a while, I was boiling and mashing potatoes to put in challah, and then when I was writing Home Is Where the Eggs Are, I discovered how much easier it is to just use potato flour right in with the dry ingredients.