Solving the Problem of Weeknight Dinner

Summary

Summary of "Solving the Problem of Weeknight Dinner"

The Wirecutter Show by The New York Times, hosted by Christine Cyr Clisset and Kyra Blackwell, features producer Rosie Guerin. In the episode released on November 6, 2024, the hosts delve into the common struggle of preparing weeknight dinners, sharing personal frustrations and solutions. They are joined by Emily Weinstein, the Editor in Chief of New York Times Cooking and author of Easy Weeknight Dinners: 100 Fast, Flavor-Packed Meals for Busy People Who Still Want Something Good to Eat. This detailed summary captures the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode.

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1. Introduction to Weeknight Dinner Challenges

The episode opens with the hosts sharing their personal experiences with cooking on weeknights. Both Christine and Kyra express their love-hate relationship with daily cooking:

• Kyra Blackwell [01:13]: "I hate it, Rosie. I hate it. My pandemic hobby was cooking, but now I'm back in my New York apartment that has no kitchen, basically, and I have to cook for myself. Cause I live alone, I have to do it three times a day. It's become my own personal hell."

• Christine Cyr Clisset [01:34]: "I honestly really love to cook, but oftentimes I don't have a lot of time to cook. So, you know, it's kind of like the 15 minutes before I'm going to go pick up my kids, I'm like, oh, what am I going to make?"

2. Introducing the Guest: Emily Weinstein

Recognizing the widespread issue of dinner fatigue, the hosts welcome Emily Weinstein to provide expert insights. Emily introduces herself and her latest work:

• Christine Cyr Clisset [02:04]: "Today is a special episode of the Wirecutter Show. We're going to have a conversation with the editor in chief of New York Times Cooking and the food section, Emily Weinstein."

• Emily Weinstein [02:26]: "Woo."

3. Emily Weinstein’s Background and Career

Emily shares her journey into the culinary world despite not having a formal background in cooking:

• Emily Weinstein [05:07]: "I always loved food. I did not grow up in a household where there was a lot of cooking... I miraculously landed this fact checking job at the New York Times... The thing that draws me to food is that it is endlessly creative. It's endlessly fascinating." [05:45]

4. Personal Experiences with Weeknight Dinners

The conversation shifts to personal anecdotes about weeknight meals:

• Emily Weinstein [08:43]: "So when I think about eating as a kid, ... my favorite thing we would have would be like Kraft Macaroni and cheese." [08:43]

• Rosie Guerin [09:51]: "I find myself thinking a lot about how my mom cook for our family when we were young." [07:51]

Emily emphasizes the importance of making meals enjoyable and diverse for her children, contrasting her childhood routine of repetitive meals.

5. The Genesis of Easy Weeknight Dinners

Emily discusses the inspiration behind her book, which aims to alleviate the stress of cooking on busy nights:

• Emily Weinstein [12:36]: "I was experiencing it in my own life... we were like, how do we help people with meal planning?" [12:36]

She highlights the shift from elaborate weekend cooking to simple, quick recipes suitable for working parents and busy individuals.

6. Curating Recipes for the Book

Emily outlines the criteria for selecting recipes that make it into her book:

• Emily Weinstein [15:54]: "I am always looking for a mix of flavors. If I'm doing something that takes a little longer... I wanna make sure there's something, like, really fast in there." [15:54]

• Emily Weinstein [16:41]: "We have started moving towards including prep time in recipes, you know, so people really understand, hey, what does this require from you?" [16:41]

The focus is on creating a balanced collection of recipes that are flavorful, quick to prepare, and require minimal cleanup.

7. Addressing Cooking Ruts

Emily provides strategies to overcome the monotony of weeknight cooking:

• Emily Weinstein [25:30]: "Sometimes I deal with the ruts by taking a break from cooking... I find that that kind of gets me excited." [25:30]

She suggests embracing simplicity, utilizing freezer staples, and exploring new recipes to rekindle enthusiasm for cooking.

8. Tips for Solo Cooking

For those cooking alone, Emily offers practical advice:

• Emily Weinstein [32:47]: "Get really comfortable with your freezer... Swipe your stuff up, label it." [32:47]

She emphasizes the importance of meal planning, proper storage, and selecting recipes that cater to individual preferences.

9. Cooking for Others: Handling Restrictions and Picky Eaters

Emily shares her approach to preparing meals that accommodate diverse dietary needs:

• Emily Weinstein [34:16]: "I do tend to start with an ingredient that's gonna work for everybody... and then I find that if you can identify recipes that let people customize." [34:16]

She recommends versatile dishes like taco nights and customizable pasta meals to satisfy varied tastes and restrictions.

10. Favorite Meal: Emily’s Desert Island Choice

When prompted about a meal she'd cook forever, Emily chooses a comforting and customizable option:

• Emily Weinstein [35:28]: "A toasted bagel with cream cheese and lox and some scrambled eggs on the side and maybe like, a little salad." [35:28]

11. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

The episode wraps up with the hosts summarizing key takeaways and promoting the resources available for listeners seeking to improve their weeknight dinner routines. They encourage exploring Wirecutter’s reviews on kitchen gear and Emily’s book for further assistance.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Kyra Blackwell [01:13]: "I hate it, Rosie. I hate it... It's become my own personal hell."

• Christine Cyr Clisset [02:04]: "Today is a special episode... to solve the problem of weeknight dinners."

• Emily Weinstein [05:45]: "The thing that draws me to food is that it is endlessly creative..."

• Emily Weinstein [15:54]: "I am always looking for a mix of flavors... really fast in there."

• Emily Weinstein [25:30]: "Sometimes I deal with the ruts by taking a break from cooking..."

• Emily Weinstein [34:16]: "I do tend to start with an ingredient that's gonna work for everybody..."

---

Key Insights and Conclusions

1. Understanding the Struggle: Weeknight dinners pose a challenge due to time constraints, leading to repetitive and uninspiring meals.

2. Simplicity is Key: Adopting simple, quick recipes with minimal cleanup can alleviate stress and make cooking more enjoyable.

3. Utilize Freezer and Prep Ahead: Preparing and freezing ingredients or meals can save time and reduce daily cooking burdens.

4. Versatile Recipes: Choosing recipes that allow customization caters to diverse dietary needs and personal preferences, making meal preparation more inclusive.

5. Embrace New Ingredients and Techniques: Introducing new flavors and cooking methods can rejuvenate the cooking experience and keep meals exciting.

6. Resource Utilization: Leveraging resources like Emily Weinstein’s book and Wirecutter’s kitchen gear reviews can enhance efficiency and meal quality.

7. Community and Feedback: Engaging with a community, such as the NYT Cooking comment section, provides valuable insights and recipe modifications from other cooks.

By implementing these strategies, individuals and families can transform their weeknight dinner routines, making them more manageable and enjoyable.

Transcript

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[Christine Cyrclassette]

From the New York Times, you're listening to the Wirecutter Show.

[Kyra Blackwell]

Hey, everyone, it's the Wirecutter Show. I'm Kyra Blackwell.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

I'm Christine Cyrclassette.

[Rosie Guerin]

And I'm Rosie Guerin. And we work at Wirecutter, the product recommendation site from the New York Times.

[Kyra Blackwell]

Each week we bring you expert advice from Our newsroom of 140 journalists who review everyday products that will make your life better. Better.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

This episode of the Wirecutter show is called Solving the Problem of Weeknight Dinner.

[Rosie Guerin]

Hey, Kyra. Hey, Christine.

[Kyra Blackwell]

Hey.

[Rosie Guerin]

I'm coming in with a question for you both today. I want to know, how much do you two cook at home? Are you cooking every day?

[Kyra Blackwell]

Yeah.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Yeah. Yes.

[Kyra Blackwell]

Too much.

[Rosie Guerin]

How do you feel about it?

[Kyra Blackwell]

I hate it, Rosie. I hate it. My pandemic hobby was cooking, but now I'm back in my New York apartment that has no kitchen, basically, and I have to cook for myself. Cause I live alone, I have to do it three times a day. It's become my own personal hell.

[Rosie Guerin]

What do you think about that, Christine? What's your perspective?

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Well, I honestly really love to cook, but oftentimes I don't have a lot of time to cook. So, you know, it's kind of like the 15 minutes before I'm going to go pick up my kids, I'm like, oh, what am I going to make? But, yeah, weeknight dinners is not, like, the funnest time for me. Like, I. I feel like it's not the inspirational, fun cooking that I like to do.

[Kyra Blackwell]

Yeah, it does get really boring. And for me, I'm. I just feel like there's nobody to impress. It's. That's just me. I don't know. Sometimes I don't even taste that good. It's just I'm trying to get protein into my body.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Well, you know, there are some people in this world that their entire jobs are to kind of help think through this issue of weeknight meals. And we're lucky enough to have one of those people joining us today. Today is a special episode of the Wirecutter Show. We're going to have a conversation with the editor in chief of New York Times Cooking and the food section, Emily Weinstein.

[Emily Weinstein]

Woo.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Yes, Emily just came out with a new New York Times cooking book, easy weeknight 100 fast flavor packed meals for busy people who still want something good to eat. That kind of sounds like me. That sounds like you too.

[Rosie Guerin]

I think that's a lot of people.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Emily writes a newsletter called Five Weeknight Dishes. This is sort of what the book is based off of. And today we're just going to go really deep in how to solve the problem of weeknight dinners. So we'll take a quick break and when we're back, we'll chat with Emily.

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[Christine Cyrclassette]

What I like about the New York Times app is how much variety it gives me.

[Emily Weinstein]

I start my day with a cup of coffee and wordle and Connections, which is all in New York Times app. It's well organized, it's multimedia. I can also save my articles easily in this area. I can add politics or Paul Krugman or Jamal Bouie. I like him. I like that the cooking tab on top is really easily accessible.

[Kyra Blackwell]

So if I'm on my way home and I'm just thinking, oh, what am I gonna make for dinner?

[Emily Weinstein]

I'll just quickly go on to cooking and say, oh, I've got this in my pantry. The photos are just phenomenal.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

I have my saved articles, my entire.

[Emily Weinstein]

History, which is actually very interesting. I'm just scrolling through the home tab. There's already so much stuff. I'm off. Interesting. I spent a lot of time doing Wirecutter. I like that it's just right there. I loved how much content it exposed me to. Things that I never would have thought to turn to a news app for the New York Times app.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

All the times all in one place. Download it [e-mail] Apple welcome back to.

[Kyra Blackwell]

The Wirecutter Show, Today we're speaking with Emily Weinstein, who is the editor in chief of New York Times Cooking and the editor of the new book, easy weeknight. 100 fast flavor packed meals for busy people who still want Something good to eat. Emily also writes the weekly newsletter five Weeknight Dishes and is a working mom who cooks regularly for her family of four. And she knows a thing or two about dinner burnout.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Emily, welcome to the Wirecutter Show.

[Emily Weinstein]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

So lovely to have you here. I'm really excited to talk about your book today. And, but before, before that, I wanna talk a little bit about your career at the Times. You have this very interesting background where you came in to the Times as a fact checker, right, for the dining section. And you didn't have a culinary background or experience working in restaurants, but you really loved it. And you've been working in various roles on the food team or at Cooking For, I don't know, like since 2007. Now is that right?

[Emily Weinstein]

Yes. Is that not wild?

[Christine Cyrclassette]

It's wild, but I'd love to hear a little bit about what drew you to this work.

[Emily Weinstein]

You know, I always loved food. I did not grow up in a household where there was a lot of cooking. You know, my parents both worked full time, really demanding jobs, and they loved food too. And it was sort of culturally important to us. But, you know, it wasn't like there was a big tradition around cooking. There weren't rituals around cooking. I did not learn to cook as a kid. I just didn't have that frame of reference. It wasn't like there was like a stack of food magazines in, in our home or even really cookbooks. And so fast forward, I am in my 20s, I live in New York, I am working in journalism. That I was always very clear that I wanted to do. I wanted to be a writer or an editor. And I still wasn't really thinking about working in food. And around that time, you know, there was this big surge in interest in restaurants and sort of the culture in the mid-2000s. And that's when I started to get really excited about the idea of food. I miraculously landed this fact checking job at the New York Times. It was a freelance job working on the restaurant listings, which is sort of perfect for a person who's obsessed with restaurants in New York. And as soon as I got into the building at the Times and I was in what was then called the dining section, I just was like, oh, this is what I should do. This is what I should do. If they'll let me stay, they let me stay. The thing that draws me to food is that it is endlessly creative. It's endlessly fascinating. It just delivers this intense joy in people. Like there's a social dimension to it that some art is missing. Food does not miss it. It's comforting. It's just. It plays all these different roles in people's lives. And it's just fun to explore all the different threads there.

[Kyra Blackwell]

I love that.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

I love that, too.

[Rosie Guerin]

I have two little kids, and I find myself thinking a lot about how my mom cook for our family when we were young. And I'm curious for you, what weeknight dinners were growing up, and in what ways has that drawn a line to how you think about it?

[Emily Weinstein]

So when I think about eating as a kid, you know, and I had a babysitter too, after school, and sometimes she cooked us dinner. My parents didn't. They just didn't like cooking, which is funny because now my parents are retired and they love to cook and they bake, which is joyous. Cause we all love to do. But a lot of times my babysitter cooked the food after school. So my memories of that were a lot of repetition. You know, chicken cutlets, chicken with rice, ketchup, like a ton of ketchup with that chicken. Broccoli. My brother liked peas, so I liked broccoli. And just very of fish. Breaded fish, pasta, for sure. Not a ton of variety, but, you know, I wasn't unhappy. That's satisfying food. My favorite thing we would have would be like. Like Kraft Macaroni and cheese.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Oh, yeah.

[Emily Weinstein]

Chicken cutlet and broccoli.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

That sounds like a meal my kids would actually really want to eat tonight, actually.

[Emily Weinstein]

Yeah, my kids would definitely eat that. So it was a lot of that kind of food. But when I was with my parents and they were preparing the food, you know, I grew up in the New York area, so once in a blue moon, we would be near Zabar's, which is a big food emporium on the Upper west side. My family is Jewish, so Zabar's, like, culturally occupies a space in our lives. And I remember we would always double park outside Zabars, which they love, by the way.

[Rosie Guerin]

They love when you do that double bark.

[Emily Weinstein]

And parents would get bagels and lox. And it's probably my favorite food memory with my parents.

[Rosie Guerin]

So when you have young kids or even, you know, your kids now, are you thinking, let me do my best to balance, or are you like. Cause for me approaching cooking for my kids, Now I'm like, I really wanna try and get them to love food by at the very least giving them lots of different flavors and maybe lots of different textures. So I'm wondering what. Yeah. What that was like for you.

[Emily Weinstein]

I think about it actually the exact same way. I want them to love food. And I know there are things that are delicious, like the chicken cutlet with the Mac and cheese and the broccoli.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

It's gonna work.

[Emily Weinstein]

And why not make that for them sometimes? But I want them to enjoy food. I want them to really eat it and engage with it. I want it to be a healthy, joyous thing for them emotionally, and I want them to try new things.

[Rosie Guerin]

Yeah.

[Emily Weinstein]

One of the limitations of the way I ate as a kid, and this is not a knock on anybody, but there wasn't a ton of exposure to other ingredients, dishes, ideas. And also, frankly, it was like a different time culturally in the United States where people didn't look necessarily to food as a way of thinking about the world. But I want my children to get to a place where they want to try ingredients and dishes from a host of different cuisines, things I never would have had the chance to try when I was a kid. I mean, I didn't even eat spicy food when I was a kid.

[Rosie Guerin]

No, no, I didn't. I didn't either.

[Emily Weinstein]

It's not a thing in Jewish cooking. So I got to be older and I liked spicy food, but I had to build up my tolerance and now I love spicy food. So I've started to try to introduce the idea to them that, like, hey, if you're open minded and you're willing to try new things, there is so much fun stuff we could do together. I'm, I'm threading the needle on that now. Not super successful.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

I have total confidence because I, my kids are a little older than yours and I was in the same boat. And I was kind of like, are they ever gonna stop eating just chicken and white rice? And there was something that clicked. And my older kid, I remember the day that we went to Chinatown and had soup dumplings and kung pao chicken and she was like, sold.

[Rosie Guerin]

I love that. I, I, I'm in like an, a funny psychological moment with my baby son where he will ask me, he'll look at me and ask me if he likes something.

[Kyra Blackwell]

Uhhuh.

[Rosie Guerin]

So he's like, do I like garlic? I'm like, absolutely. You do what you do, kid. Absolutely. Do I like this? Yeah, you love spinach.

[Kyra Blackwell]

What are you talking, you started this very successful Newsletter called Five weeknight dishes. And the tagline is recipes for busy people who still want something good to eat. Which totally relatable. How did you initially recognize this need, that people wanted this in the first place, this solution to weeknight dinners? Like, were you hearing it from colleagues? Were people walking up to you in the street? Like, who was telling you this? And were you experiencing it in your own life?

[Emily Weinstein]

I was experiencing it in my own life. So we launched that newsletter right after I came back from my maternity leave with my first child. Something you will hear people with small children say all the time is, well, before I had kids. Before I had kids. So sad. You know, before I had kids, I would cook really elaborately, like, all weekend. I would have, like, big dinner parties. I would also cook after work. It didn't matter if I started cooking at 8, and we wrapped up at 10:15, like, who cares, right?

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Yeah, they're like the salad days.

[Emily Weinstein]

Yeah. You know, if you enjoy cooking, that's luxurious, that's fun.

[Kyra Blackwell]

I had a baby, and everything changed.

[Emily Weinstein]

Everything changes. And, well, first of all, you just, like, straight up have less time, especially if you are a working parent. You know, at that time, it was before COVID I was just literally not home all day. Even if you're not a working parent, the sort of schedule gets stacked up really, really quickly. Or if you're a caregiver in some other capacity, maybe it's not a child, maybe it's somebody else in your life. Like, things are busy and that sort of two hour, like, maybe I'll make. Blah, blah, blah, you know, vanishes. Right. And I really saw that need clearly Also, you know, with kids, I really started to think about cooking in a really different way. It was way less about dishes and way more about ingredients. I started to think with a lot more intentionality about simple food. And I also, frankly, just rediscovered simple pleasures like a quesadilla. Like, it's not like I ever thought quesadillas weren't good, but I wasn't making them at home. At the same time, at the times we were trying to figure out how to help people with meal planning. This was around the time Blue Apron and some of the other meal kit delivery companies were surging. And we were like, how do we help people with meal planning? Because we had started to hear that people loved these meal kits, but then they sort of wanted to graduate from them. They didn't mind doing some grocery shopping. Like, how could they actually cook? And we did all this audience research. You know, we focused it on Working parents with young children. And it was amazing to hear the scope and intensity of the needs for simple recipes and to really focus on them. You know, we had a newsletter then. It's one we still have. It's the Big Cooking Newsletter. Sam Sifton and Melissa Clark write it. And that newsletter certainly includes recipes you could cook after work, but it also has all sorts of other stuff in it. It's got amazing desserts. It's got holiday planning. It's really the big picture of cooking on any given day. We needed something that was just explicitly aimed at helping a group of people who loved food. They still wanted something good to eat. They just didn't have very much time to cook it. And once we saw that real need and that sort of like, well, I love NYT cooking, but, like, I'm not making pork shoulder on a Wednesday, you know, which personally would never do that, then we were able to zero in on a newsletter to help them.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

That really resonates with me. I went through kind of a similar journey as a mom of young children and just having to really simplify things. I'm curious, when you're thinking about the newsletter weekly, how are you curating the recipes that go into it? Like, how do you decide what goes in?

[Emily Weinstein]

I am always looking for a mix of flavors. If I'm doing something that takes a little longer, like bone in chicken thighs, for instance, there's no way around it. It takes about a half hour just to cook the chicken through. So if I'm doing something that takes a little bit longer, I wanna make sure there's something, like, really fast in there. There are always two vegetarian recipes at least. I'm also sort of looking for complexity. It's like, is it really simple enough? I don't wanna include recipes that use more than, like, two big pieces of equipment or pots and pans to wash, because cleaning up is a part of home cooking. And I'm just feeling like maybe we haven't helped you that much if you have to spend 45 minutes cleaning up after dinner on a Monday.

[Kyra Blackwell]

Also, relatable content. I do have a question, because we were having a debate yesterday. When you add in the chopped onions, the chopped vegetables, does that all bake into the cooking time for you?

[Emily Weinstein]

Yes. And you know what? The way we used to calculate cooking time at the New York Times was, it started from step one of the recipe. It didn't include the prep, which is madness, especially when you think about a recipe like stir fry, for instance, where the cooking is lightning fast, but you Might be chopping several vegetables or preparing other ingredients before you start cooking. It just felt inaccurate. So we have started moving towards including prep time in recipes, you know, so people really understand, hey, what does this require from you? Your mileage may vary.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

You might be a really slow chopper.

[Emily Weinstein]

Yeah. Or a fast chopper, you know, and that's part of why the Times didn't used to do it. It's like, well, everyone's got different skills. And it's like, well, I still think we could probably be a little more helpful than that.

[Rosie Guerin]

What are the common questions, concerns that your readers are coming to you with? What are you hearing from people? What are their largest issues when approaching cooking for their families? Cooking for themselves on a weekly basis?

[Emily Weinstein]

You know, a big part of it is figuring out dishes that will sort of feed everybody at the table. Right. And it's not even necessarily about pleasing everybody, especially when you're thinking about little kids. It's more literally like, will they eat this without a fight? And sometimes it's also about special diets. So you're not talking about a young child who just doesn't want to try something new. You're talking more about legitimate changes you might have to make to your meal plan to feed somebody who is celiac. So I get that a lot. It's like, how do you solve that puzzle and just planning overall, like, how do I make the week work? Sometimes they're really specific about ingredients. I think the most common complaint I get in my inbox is that NYT cooking loves chicken thighs.

[Kyra Blackwell]

Yes.

[Emily Weinstein]

Why don't we do more boneless, skinless chicken breast? And it's true, like, we have a strong chicken thigh bias.

[Kyra Blackwell]

Well, they're affordable and they taste better.

[Emily Weinstein]

More importantly, they taste better. So there's more fat, so there's more flavor. And also they're more forgiving. It's very easy to overcook white meat, you know, that dry baked chicken, and then it gets sort of cottony and it doesn't taste good. Chicken thighs, you got a lot more leeway. You're just starting from a place of, like, almost guaranteed tastiness. So that's why we do that.

[Rosie Guerin]

Do people ask if you can sub in chicken breast for thighs in recipes?

[Emily Weinstein]

Yeah. And you know, for the most part, you really can. You just have to adjust the cooking time.

[Rosie Guerin]

Yeah.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Emily, I wanna talk a little bit about the book. It's called Easy Weeknight Dinners and it is filled with so many great recipes. I've been really enjoying flipping through it the last couple of weeks. A lot of these recipes have obviously come from New York Times cooking and you featured them in the newsletter. I'm wondering what was the litmus test for making it into the book? Because you have an embarrassment of riches on the site. And from your six years of doing the newsletter, how did you decide what would go in the book? Was it the length of time the recipe takes? Was it the ingredients? Walk us through that.

[Emily Weinstein]

So, I mean, there are a hundred recipes in the book and I just wanna say right off the bat, we could have filled the book several times over, not repeating a recipe. I started with the recipes that I love the most. It has an idea, that spark of genius, that clever twist, that technique you might not have thought of before, you know, the magical ingredient. To me, those are like the NYT cooking recipes, the strongest example of what we do. So I started with those and then I start to build from there. What are the recipes I love and cook at home? I mean, we really have hundreds of recipes that fit the bill for this book. I use the same standards I use for my newsletter. So not too much cleaning up less than an hour. Although I don't even think anything takes an hour and certainly less than 40 minutes for me. In a perfect world, I'm really psyched if I see a 20 minute recipe, a 25 minute recipe. And we have some in the book that are faster even than that. And I really wanted to get a good mix of cuisines and ingredients. You know, I just want to give people a lot of ways into this kind of cooking. Like weeknight cooking doesn't belong to any one cuisine or way of thinking about food. The thing about me is that I'm like an NYT Cooking super fan. I use the app constantly. And you know, these are all writers that we brought into the fold because we love them, right? And it's broken down by ingredient, each chapter, and it's organized from the shortest recipes to the longest. And again, like we're really aiming for the shorter recipes. The longer ones are still less than an hour and they are outliers.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

I love that you have 15 minute recipes in this book. You've got that in the fun index in the front. And I think that's so great because sometimes you really do need to just go fast.

[Kyra Blackwell]

I can't even imagine a 15 minute. Is it just a salad? How do you cook something in 15 minutes?

[Emily Weinstein]

It's like a sandwich salad. Caitlin Roper, who's an editor at the Times, also a working parent, and she loves to cook. And right off the bat, she's like we need a few handheld dinners. So we've got a really great grilled cheese in this book. We've got a tuna sandwich. It's like the best tuna sandwich you're ever gonna have. There are potato chips in the sandwich.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

That is 100% right. Five minute crunchy tuna fish sandwich. Done. I'm doing that at home.

[Kyra Blackwell]

Yeah, I might try that tonight, actually.

[Emily Weinstein]

It's really good.

[Rosie Guerin]

What's your relationship with the comment section of the New York Times cooking app?

[Emily Weinstein]

I love the comment section. I don't develop recipes, so it's a little easier for me to love the comment section, like unreservedly than I think it would be for somebody who's seeing the comments coming in on their recipes. But I can say, broadly speaking, like, at NYT Cooking, we love the commenters. We love that there's a community there and they have valuable insight on the recipes. So I actually almost always read the comments before I cook a recipe from NYT Cooking that I've never made before. I'm just curious how people altered it, what they did. If somebody says double the sauce on any given recipe, I'm a sauce person. So I'll like, okay, I'm gonna double the sauce.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Yeah.

[Emily Weinstein]

They're also threaded through the book too.

[Rosie Guerin]

Which is so cool.

[Emily Weinstein]

We brought those reader comments like into the actual book. So there are these voices on the pages with the recipes that they're not my voice, not the recipe developer's voice, but a commenter.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

We're talking to Emily Weinstein, the editor of NYT Cooking and author of Easy Weeknight Dinners. We'll be back after a quick break.

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[Christine Cyrclassette]

Before we get back into the show, I want to tell you about Wirecutter's brand new newsletter. It's called the Gift and it's the ultimate year round gift guide dropping straight to your inbox every week.

[Kyra Blackwell]

You know, the best gifts I've ever given have been recommendations from Wirecutter's experts who, by the way, have impeccable taste.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Every week in the gift, the newsletter team will share hidden gems and some great deals on delightful things. They'll find the best gift. All you have to do is take the credit. Sign up [e-mail] thegift welcome back to the Wirecutter Show. We're talking with Emily Weinstein, editor of New York Times Cooking, about her new book, Easy Weeknight Dinners.

[Kyra Blackwell]

This entire episode and your book is all about how to solve the monotony of weeknight dinners, right? People know the things that they can usually cook, but it just, it gets boring. I want to know how you deal with those ruts. As the pro from New York Times.

[Emily Weinstein]

Cooking, Sometimes I deal with the ruts by taking a break from cooking. Nothing wrong with that. And for me also, like taking a break from cooking also includes like frozen prepared food. And it's the kind of stuff I always have. Like I always have dumplings in my freezer. And if I'm feeling like I don't want to go the extra mile, I don't want to make something from scratch. Even simple, that's what I'm doing. I'm not a huge takeout person. So take a break, number one. Number two, like go to the grocery store, which might feel a little counterintuitive, but if you are somebody who genuinely likes food, let alone loves food, and you're kind of out of ideas, I'm assuming you still have to buy things like coffee, tea, milk, bread, whatever. So you're going to the store, just wander around a tiny bit, pick up something that you're like, oh, that sounds good. It could be a new condiment. Cheese. I find that that kind of gets me excited. And then frankly, recipes. I know, maybe that's really obvious coming from me, but if I'm in a rut, every once in a while a recipe will catch my eye that'll get me really excited to cook again.

[Kyra Blackwell]

What's your go to? I need to eat, but nothing seems good right now. Meal.

[Emily Weinstein]

It always starts with carbs. I can always eat a bowl of rice, a bowl of noodles, a bowl of pasta, toast. I find if I can start with the carb, the tasty carb, I can always kind of get to a place to layer on top. And sometimes it's a non carb ingredient that I'm excited about. But if I'm really feeling lackluster, you know, if there's like a bagel in the freezer, if there's rice in the fridge and then we have an egg, and then I can fry the egg and put it on the rice and put on some, you know, Chili crisp or some hot sauce. Then I'm getting to a place where I'm like, okay, I could eat that for lunch.

[Kyra Blackwell]

That sounds good.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Yeah. I mean, this has come up on this podcast before. I think that chili Crisp is the answer to life. Personally, I put it on everything. When my kids were little and I felt particularly harried at dinnertime, I would often rel some kind of pre made ingredients. Like I would keep some pre made gnocchi from Trader Joe's in my freezer and finish that off with maybe some vegetables, maybe an egg, maybe some kind of protein. Are there pre made ingredients that you really rely on? Like you just mentioned dumplings that you like to keep in your freezer. Are there other things that kind of like halfway there and then you can finish them off really quickly at home?

[Emily Weinstein]

Tons. And I think a lot of the best recipes in this book rely on those kinds of ingredients. I mean, that's one of the keys to great weeknight cooking is to lean on ingredients that already have a ton of flavor. And some of them are like chili Crisp. You mentioned store bought gnocchi noodles, like noodle packs. Go for flavor blends that already exist. Old Bay is a spice mix and it brings so much to everything. Right? Hot sauce, like, don't just think of it as something you put on at the end. You can cook with hot sauce and it's great. Allie Slagle has a recipe where she uses shrimp and butter and she tosses the butter with the hot sauce to make like an basically an instant sauce for shrimp. Wow. Wish I'd thought of that. You know, it's so delicious.

[Rosie Guerin]

Emily, there are a lot of sheet pan recipes in your book, and I know that you have a special relationship with the sheet pan. When did you first start sheet pan cooking? What's the love affair?

[Emily Weinstein]

Sadly, it is a love affair. So maybe about a decade ago, Melissa Clark, who's an amazing cook, writer, recipe developer, video host, she proposed that we do a recipe, a column in which we cook a whole meal on a sheet pan. You know, and I knew what she was talking about. It goes by different names. It's like a rimmed half sheet. Technically, in restaurant kitchens, they use those pans all the time for everything, but they're much bigger. So technically the version we use at home is half. She proposed we do that. And it was chicken and broccoli rabe and a sweet potato. And she made a little Sauce on the side. And it was just kind of a moment like, oh, we should do more of these. And she kept going and going, and then it just grew and grew and grew. Everyone's looking for one pan dinners, and the sheet pan just opens up all these different possibilities. And critics of the sheet pan will say you can cook all the ingredients at once on the sheet pan, but it doesn't cook them all perfectly the way they need to be cooked. To which I would say, it's Tuesday.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Yeah.

[Emily Weinstein]

Does dinner need to be perfect or does it need to be tasty and done?

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Yeah. What's the saying? Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.

[Emily Weinstein]

I use that saying a lot. Yes, yes. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. And we've got, honestly, just genuinely delicious sheet pan recipes in this book. And the more people wanted them and the more people came to rely on that, and the more we saw this, like, truly insatiable demand for one pot one pan recipes, we started to lean on the sheet pan more and more.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

I did our first review, Wirecutter's first review of sheet pans, and I think our pick from then, it was like 10 years ago, is the Nordic ware. And I think the thing that I realized with sheet pans is that actually getting a good one can really help. I think a lot of people have these, like, flimsy cookie sheets in their kitchens. And that's what I had always used until I started using these half sheet pans. And they are actually much more durable. And I've had mine for a long time now, and they are so great. And they cook a little bit more evenly too. It's not gonna burn things like a thinner cookie sheet. So big fan of those.

[Emily Weinstein]

You know, it's funny, as part of our mini book tour for this book, I went to D.C. with Eric Kim, who's another fabulous recipe developer and member of our team. And people were asking us for equipment recommend. And normally we stay away from that. We leave that to you all at Wire Cutter. But, you know, we were like, well, there's this brand that we love for sheet bands, and it rhymes with schmordic Schmeyer. But now I'm in the world of wire cutters, so I can just come out and say that, yes, I totally agree. I have nordicware sheet pans myself, and it's a great piece of equipment, especially for how much it costs. And it's one of those things that you keep for a really, really long time. Like, I've not ever had to get rid of one. And that's the sort of stuff I'm always looking to bring into my kitchen. Like, I. I would rather spend, like, $10 more now and never have to buy another one again.

[Kyra Blackwell]

Well, I kind of want to bring us back to this idea that you said earlier. It's Tuesday, and who needs perfect when you can have good? I feel like I've taken that a bit too far, though, because I live alone. There's nobody to impress. Between you and me, my food looks like dog food. I just hear mixing stuff in the pan. But I have seen that in your book. You do have this section in the index that's easy recipes to adapt for a single person. What's your best piece of advice for people who are living alone or cooking for themselves?

[Emily Weinstein]

This is a question we get a lot Cook to please yourself. Right? Obviously. What an amazing thing. I would say get really comfortable with your freezer because there are a lot of ingredients that freeze well. Like, for instance, if you do want to buy a pack of chicken thighs, but you don't need all four at once, maybe you want to cook one, maybe you want to cook two. You're going to eat both at night. You're going to take one for lunch tomorrow. Talk about an ingredient that freezes perfectly. So get to know your freezer. Have a freezer strategy. Buy a Sharpie, wrap your stuff up, label it. Labeling is actually really helpful. Get to know your freezer. And then also, there are just things that you're going to cook that freeze really well. So it's not even just that you're freezing the ingredients. You know, if you, like, ever have a deep craving for soup, a lot of soups freeze brilliantly. You can make that soup, put it away in the freezer.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Okay, I want to flip the script a little bit and talk about when you have to cook for others. And you touched on this a little earlier about when you're cooking for, you know, people with a variety of food restrictions. Or maybe you have some picky eaters and they could be children, or maybe they're not children. But I'm wondering if you and the folks at cooking have some favorite, either favorite strategies or favorite recipes for tackling that problem when you've got people who either have food restrictions or who are picky.

[Emily Weinstein]

You know, I do tend to start with an ingredient that's gonna work for everybody for the most part. Chicken, pasta. Like, what's sort of the baseline that's gonna work for everybody. And then I find that if you can identify recipes that let people customize. You're okay. And everyone thinks that's fun, too. It's like a make your own sundae bar.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

That's why we eat taco night. For that reason.

[Emily Weinstein]

Taco night's a great example. Or also, like, a lot of pasta dishes. You can make pasta that's really pretty plain. And then if somebody wants to toss in vegetables, you could have those vegetables cooked on the side. You can have some mushrooms, like bacon. Amazing. For that, fry up some bacon, cut it into bits, and people can, like, finish their dish with, like, a little smoky, crunchy hit. And I find that that works really well for people who, you know, if you really are trying to feed a variety of people.

[Kyra Blackwell]

Well, Emily, we usually ask one final question of our guests. What's the last thing you bought that you really love? But we're gonna put a spin on it for you. If you had one meal that you could cook for the rest of your life, which meal do you think would take the longest for you to get tired of?

[Emily Weinstein]

So basically, this is like my desert island meal.

[Kyra Blackwell]

Yeah, your desert desert island meal.

[Emily Weinstein]

It probably would be. I know it came up earlier, but bagels, like a toasted bagel with cream cheese and lox and some scrambled eggs on the side and maybe like, a little salad. Yes. It's like cooking, but, like, it's pretty easy. And I think those, to me, those combination of flavors are home, and they're always delicious.

[Rosie Guerin]

You're ending on a political statement. You're toasting the bagel.

[Emily Weinstein]

I know. I never used to toast the bagel. I used to only be fresh bagel.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Well, how fresh are the bagels that you have access to?

[Emily Weinstein]

I love.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

That's the question on a desert island.

[Emily Weinstein]

I don't know exactly. Right. Also, I have come to appreciate the crunch you get from a trip to the toaster. Wow.

[Rosie Guerin]

Emily, thank you so much for joining us.

[Emily Weinstein]

Thank you so much. This was fun.

[Rosie Guerin]

Our guest today was Emily Weinstein. Her book is called Easy Weeknight Dinners. If you're looking for some gear to help you get those easy weeknight dinners on the table faster, the experts at Wirecutter have reviewed tons of helpful kitchen items. There's rice cookers, sheet pans, blenders for food processors, instant pots. Christine has reviewed slow cookers. Kyra has reviewed air fryers. And don't forget the freezer and the microwave. They're your friends. As always, you can find links to our [e-mail] Wirecutter or in the podcast show notes. And real quick, if you like this show. We would really appreciate if you gave us a follow. You'll get new episodes so it's automatically downloaded every Wednesday. You can do this wherever you like to listen. That's it for us. Thanks for listening.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

The Wirecutter show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Kiel. Editing by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Matty Mazziello and Nick Pittman. Today's episode was mixed by Katherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marian Lozano, Alicia Ba? E and Diane Wong. Wirecutter's deputy publisher and interim general manager is Cliff Levy. Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's editor in chief.

[Kyra Blackwell]

I'm Kyra Blackwell.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

I'm Christine Cyrclassette.

[Rosie Guerin]

And I'm Rosie Guerin.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Thanks for listening.

[Kyra Blackwell]

Bye.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Was I supposed to say bye?

[Kyra Blackwell]

No.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

Okay.

[Emily Weinstein]

I feel like that was really cute.

[Christine Cyrclassette]

We were saying bye at the right moment. Sky was like, bye.