When You Love to Cook But Also Have a Kid, Embrace the Microwave

I’ll never forget when I realized that I was cooking dinner all wrong. My hungry preschooler had just thrown a Category 5 meltdown while I was making burritos—which took me about 30 minutes, using a half-dozen pots and dishes. When my husband came home later, he dumped the cold beans, rice, and cheese on a tortilla, microwaved it, and peacefully sat down to eat—all within two minutes. Why hadn’t I thought of the microwave? This, I realized, was how to do burrito night!

As a former cookbook editor and kitchen-equipment reviewer, I pride myself on being a good cook. But since having kids, I’ve learned to simplify my approach, which allows me to spend quality time with my daughters.

For many families, the job of making dinner falls on one parent, and it’s hard work figuring out what to make every night, let alone what kids will want to eat. “Food blog proliferation has pushed forward this idea even more that this is all kind of fun for everybody, and that it’s relatively easy to come up with something easy to eat, when it’s not,” says Lesley Téllez, author of Eat Mexico: Recipes from Mexico City’s Streets, Markets and Fondas, who cooks nightly for her two young children.

To find better strategies, I asked accomplished home cooks and cookbook authors—who are also parents—for their real-world tips on making meals simpler and family time more relaxed.

Invest in time-saving tools

As I came to learn after burrito-gate, there’s probably no better friend to time-strapped parents than a microwave (Wirecutter has several recommendations). “We live and die by our microwave,” says Francis Lam, host of The Splendid Table. He often makes dinner in the morning, and his wife later reheats it in the microwave to feed their 3-year-old daughter before Lam returns from work.

Electric pressure cookers and slow cookers both require little attention—just dump in the ingredients and push a button. If you have a little time before dinner, go with an electric pressure cooker, which cooks something in half the time (sometimes less) it would take in the oven or on the stove. Téllez uses hers to make beans from scratch in 45 minutes. (Wirecutter recommends the Instant Pot Duo 6-Quart in its guide to electric pressure cookers.)

If you prefer to let food cook overnight or while you’re at work, choose a slow cooker. “Slow cookers were something I totally turned my nose up at in my more chef-y career days, and I now think are genius,” says Sarah Copeland, author of Every Day Is Saturday: Recipes + Strategies for Easy Cooking, Every Day of the Week. She’ll braise pork shoulder or short ribs overnight, then stow the meal in the fridge to serve dinner later to her 4- and 8-year-old kids. (Wirecutter recommends the Hamilton Beach Set & Forget.) NYT Cooking features a variety of easy slow-cooker recipes.

Another no-attention-required appliance is the rice cooker, which you can use to cook more than just what its namesake suggests. “I throw on the rice cooker with rice or quinoa or a mix of whole grains, to get a blank slate going for dinner,” says Copeland. (Wirecutter recommends the Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy NS-ZCC10 in its guide to rice cookers.) I regularly use a rice cooker and an Instant Pot in tandem, setting both to cook before I pick my kids up so that dinner is ready when we get home.

Tara O'Brady, author of Seven Spoons and mom to 11- and 13-year-old boys, uses an upright blender to make quick pureed soups. “They come together lightning fast in a blender, especially one with a cook function,” she says. “The rest of dinner might be grilled cheese sandwiches, but there's a homemade, hearty soup to accompany, and I feel like that's a win.” (The Vitamix 5200, which Wirecutter recommends in its guide to blenders, will heat soup, although it won’t actually cook the ingredients.)

Sheet pans can also do double duty for baking and making easy dinners. (Wirecutter recommends Nordic Ware half-sheet pans.) “I love my sheet pans: It's a way to make delicious dinners with minimal cleanup (this is key),” says Emily Weinstein, deputy editor of The New York Times Food section and editor of NYT Cooking, who has a 21-month-old daughter. Weinstein will pile vegetables and a protein onto one pan (she recommends this recipe for sheet-pan squash and sausages served over farro or herbs), or she’ll bake carrots on one pan and meatballs on another (she recommends these four simple shape-and-bake meatball recipes).

Maximize your freezer

On nights that you’re cooking something special, take advantage of the effort by making extra to freeze. “I always try to make a double batch of bolognese, meatballs, or falafel, or simply cooked beans in their broth,” says O’Brady. “Quinoa, pasta, and grains also hold well in the freezer. I'll roast a second chicken, or plan on extra when braising or grilling meats and vegetables that freeze or keep well.”

Frozen dinners certainly extend past meals you’ve made. “I love frozen or pre-prepared dumplings or tamales from Trader Joe’s or bought, wrapped, and frozen, from our great local vendors,” says Copeland. “These are two things I serve about once a month each that feels like a complete night off.” And freezing speciality items you love can help elevate even the simplest meals. Téllez freezes freshly made tortillas from a tortilleria near her home in Queens, then defrosts them as needed.

Collect a few back-pocket dinners

For times when you don’t have a dinner plan, try to learn a few dishes that you can always fall back on. For Téllez, that often means hot dogs wrapped and baked in Pillsbury crescent rolls, served with ketchup and mustard, along with frozen veggies or a spinach salad on the side. For Lam, that’s generally spaghetti aglio e olio—pasta mixed with garlic sautéed in olive oil—combined with whatever vegetables he has on hand. For Weinstein, it’s a breakfast classic: “My now-and-forever easy dinner is scrambled eggs with toast. It's one of my favorite foods, and I can always make it, no matter how tired I am.”

And dinner doesn’t always need to be cooked. “I rely on grazing, platter-style meals at least once a week, and much more in the summer,” says Copeland. “This lets me get away with serving all the things—meats, cheeses, crackers, vegetables, dips, olives, bread, hummus, or whatever we have on any given day—in new and inventive ways that always end up to be a please-all meal.”

On the nights when you really don’t have energy—maybe a child is sick, or you’re late getting home from work—it’s worth budgeting for takeout, especially if it will relieve your stress level. “I try to leave one day a week when we order out,” says Téllez. “Just having the one day of a break is really nice. I try to keep a Wednesday or Thursday, when I’m in a rut.”

Do what works for your family

“I one-hundred-percent believe in the power of a family sitting down to eat together every night. I also know that is not possible every night,” says Lam. “You don’t have to beat yourself up.”

This forgiving approach extends to rethinking what mealtime looks like for your family. Because of a busy schedule, Copeland has made breakfast the main mealtime in her household. “Evening is, collectively, our most worn-out time of the day, so keeping dinner simple and something that doesn’t absolutely have to check off all the boxes has taken so much pressure off of us as parents, and made our evenings much breezier and more enjoyable.”

If (and when!) getting dinner on the table feels like a chore, the best advice is to keep it simple. “In all aspects of parenting, my goal has been to make everything as easy and low key as I can, when I can,” Weinstein says. “If I get mired in the details or stressed about hitting a goal that ultimately isn't terribly important, I just won't be my best self for my daughter.”