Glorious One-Pot Meals (2 page)

Glorious One-Pot Meals call for whole foods rather than processed and packaged items, and you’ll find that each recipe— even the vegetarian ones—offers a complete and balanced meal of an appropriate amount of protein, a variety of vegetables, and a healthy serving of carbohydrates.

While many other familiar one-pot meals require a side dish of pasta or rice made separately, or even a salad or bread, Glorious One-Pot Meal recipes are intended to provide the entire meal
in just one pot—
nothing else is needed, not even a salad. Each meal is complete in and of itself and offers a range of nutritional benefits.

The centerpiece of the infusion cooking technique is the Dutch oven. If you haven’t used a Dutch oven since you were a Scout, relax: It has grown up. Today’s Dutch oven is not the heavy, blackened behemoth that simmered baked beans for fifty at the cook-out all those years ago. Lighter in weight than those of old, sometimes coated with a nonstick surface of fired-on enamel, and often dishwasher-safe, modern Dutch ovens still carry a core of cast iron but now come in a wide variety of brands, sizes, shapes, and colors.

Any shape or brand of cast-iron Dutch oven works well with this technique: Round or oval ovens are most common, but you might also see snowflakes, hearts, eggplants, apples, and other fanciful shapes. As a result of its unique heat-conduction properties, cast iron works best for this cooking method; you won’t experience the same guaranteed results using a pot made of another material.

Personally, I prefer enamel-coated cast iron over uncoated cast iron for a variety of reasons: (1) Enamel-coated Dutch ovens are lighter, an important consideration since you will be loading the pot with food and then lifting it in and out of a hot oven; (2) enamel-coated cast iron doesn’t need seasoning and won’t rust; and (3) most enamel-coated cast-iron Dutch ovens are
dishwasher-safe, making clean-up even more of a breeze. However, uncoated cast-iron Dutch ovens perform just as well when cooking Glorious One-Pot Meals, and may be less expensive.

Some readers have had limited success using stainless-steel Dutch ovens as long as they have the essential characteristics of a Dutch oven: a wide, flat bottom, vertical (not sloped) sides, and a lid with a ridge on the underside that sits heavily and securely on the pot.

The recipes in this book are based on using a two-quart Dutch oven to provide a complete dinner for two adult eaters. If you’re cooking for more than two, you will want to double or triple the recipes and use a larger Dutch oven (see the Recipe Adjustment Chart, page 12).

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well,
if one has not dined well.
Virginia Woolf

As mentioned earlier, Glorious One-Pot Meals work by infusion cooking—the process in which ingredients are placed in a covered Dutch oven and heated rapidly in a hot oven, releasing the moisture from the vegetables and trapping the steam inside the pot, which in turn cooks the food and infuses it with flavor. Because the hot steam is trapped against the food instead of evaporating, it cooks the food quickly and retains moisture. The method is deceptively simple, yet it produces complex flavors and aromas and enhances ordinarily mild flavors while retaining much of the nutritional value of the food.

The critical elements that ensure successful Glorious One-Pot Meals are (1) using a cast-iron Dutch oven, (2) baking in a 450°F (Fahrenheit) oven, and (3) layering the ingredients in a specific order.

Since an oven ten degrees off in either direction will negatively affect a Glorious One-Pot Meal, it’s worthwhile to verify the temperature with an oven thermometer.

Resist the urge to lift the lid of the pot too early—you don’t want to release the steam that’s infusing the food with flavor. Go sit down, relax! You’ll know your meal is ready when you can smell the aroma escaping from the oven. This is your
three-minute warning:
Give your meal another
three minutes of baking and then pull out the pot, lift the lid, and serve immediately. No more fussing at the stovetop while everyone else is already eating, no preparing rice or pasta separately, no need to make a salad; just bring the Dutch oven to the table and serve.

The infusion cooking method eliminates the obstacles that prevent us from cooking healthier, more nutritious meals by making it almost effortless to put dinner together and by significantly reducing the after-dinner cleanup chore. Choose a simple recipe for those days when you just need to get food on the table fast, and save more complex recipes for when you can spare the energy for a little more effort.

A typical Glorious One-Pot Meal for two people requires less than twenty minutes to prepare and thirty to forty-five minutes to bake. Build your pot at an earlier, more convenient moment, keep it refrigerated, and then move it directly into a fully preheated oven a half hour or so before dinnertime.

Forget menu planning and detailed recipes. Instead, use a very basic shopping list of staples to stock your kitchen: meat, fish, or poultry (fresh or frozen); in-season vegetables in as many colors as possible; pasta, rice, or another grain; and a few fresh herbs. (See the sample shopping list on page 23.) To increase the variety in each meal, use just part of a vegetable and seal the rest in the fridge for a future meal. There’s no need to thaw anything from the freezer because Glorious One-Pot Meals accept any mix of fresh, frozen, and canned foods, usually with minimal or no adjustment of oven time.

Glorious One-Pot Meals work with anything from simple chopped fresh herbs to complex spice medleys or flavorful marinades. Use your favorite vinaigrette salad dressing as a marinade; add jarred condiments such as salsa, teriyaki sauce, and mustard; or just count on the pure flavors of salt, pepper, and garlic to enhance your creation. Almost any familiar flavor combination or exotic culinary culture can be interpreted as a Glorious One-Pot Meal with a little bit of creativity and intuition.

Go easy on yourself and try a few of the suggestions here that contain ingredients you already know you like. Or add things you do like to the recommended recipe.
Don’t like meat? Hate onions? Leave them out. Don’t want to eat protein and carbs together? Then don’t add them to the same meal. Glorious One-Pot Meal cooking is an adventure you know will always turn out well because you choose the ingredients and flavors you like each and every time.

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
George Bernard Shaw

The main premise for constructing a Glorious One-Pot Meal is to layer. While building a lasagna means interspersing sheets of pasta with meat, cheese, and tomato sauce, building a Glorious One-Pot Meal means layering the ingredients across the bottom of the pot in order of
type:
dry goods, protein, root vegetables, above-ground vegetables, and herbs, spices, and other flavorings. Don’t be afraid to freely mix and match fresh and frozen items as they will all emerge perfectly cooked at the end!

This basic technique for making infused one-pot meals is adaptable for any combination of ingredients. If you’re not adding a certain type of ingredient, such as pasta or meat, simply skip that step and continue with the process. I encourage you to fill the pot to the brim with veggies to take advantage of the extra space available when something else is omitted from a recipe.

The portions in the Glorious One-Pot Meal recipes presented in this cookbook feed two people and use a two-quart cast-iron Dutch oven. Adjust the measurements (see pages 8 to 9) and size of oven accordingly to feed more people.

Consider the recipes in this book as guidelines rather than gospel. Feel free to substitute or omit an ingredient or change a recipe in almost any sense to produce the delicious dinner you and your family
want
to eat. With some practice and confidence you can become an intuitive cook with
Glorious One-Pot Meals.