FuzzyChef Food & Pottery

With all of us practicing self-isolation, many of you will suddenly be cooking for yourselves a lot more often than you're used to. And, if you don't have a large personal recipe repertoire, you're going to get really tired of burgers and spaghetti marinara after a while.

As such, I'm going to publish a lot more recipes for "easy" dishes over the next couple weeks under the "new cooks" tag. But to kick it off, I thought it might be helpful to just do a round-up of recipes from my blog and elsewhere that I think are suitable for inexperienced cooks.

As a general group, stir-fries, vegetable/pasta dishes, stews, tacos, and egg dishes tend to be easy & forgiving, so look to these if you don't find anything to please you below.

General Dishes

• Weeknight Za'atar bread
• Korean vegetable pancakes
• Take my Japanese Winter Curry but just use the premade curry blocks instead of making it from scratch
• Moroccan Carrot-Date Curry
• For you folks in Portland who stockpiled all that kale: Gnocchi Alla Bruce Banner
• It really is the easiest bread to make, and hardest to mess up, except for in looks: Quick Challah, and the Original Recipe that shows you all the steps.

Breakfasty Stuff

Breakfast & brunch dishes are among the easiest things to make, lacking complex steps and having short cooking times. And you don't have to only eat them for breakfast!

• Cal-Bennie
• Boxty (also appropriate for St. Paddy's Day)
• Fried Apples and Onions
• Matzoh Brei

Other Blogs

Here's a few recipes from food blogs I like that are good for new cooks:

• 3-ingredient mac & cheese is super-easy, but also super-rich, so maybe small portions with a salad
• Tortilla Skillet Pizza, plus the deluxe and stuffed versions
• Broccoli Rubble Salad, plus the even easier Cheese Broccoli Toasts
• Caprese salad based on fridge ingredients
• Skillet Ravioli, but use a nonstick skillet to make it easier on yourself
• Persian Rice the easy way, doesn't even require measuring cups
• Turkish Eggs, but only do the chili sauce
• Burnt Basque Cheesecake

Making Do

Here's a few recipe sets that are about making the best out of canned goods:

• Spanish canned chickpea recipes
• French canned chickpea recipes
• Canned tuna recipes
• Instant ramen hacks

Video Series

Here's some video channels that tend towards easier recipes:

• Chef John has multiple "basic" recipes and is generally pretty easy to follow
• Spain on a Fork focuses on meat-free Spanish food that you can make in "30 minutes or less". Check out the 3-ingredient empanda recipes.
• America's Test Kitchen and Milk Street are both hosting free content for the month. While neither is what I'd call "easy cooking", they do cover many important cooking techniques in exhaustive detail.

I hope that all helps you get cooking. Look for more to come on this blog.