I love meat and vegetables.
A roast dinner will always have a place in this house.
So will steak and salad, sausages and mash, grilled chicken and potatoes.
But sometimes the problem with dinner isn’t that you don’t know how to cook.
It is that your brain keeps returning the same three answers.
That is when a dinner rotation helps.
Not a strict meal plan.
Not Monday must always equal pasta.
Just a mental list of formats you can cycle through depending on what you have.
Here are twelve I use.
1. Pasta
Possibly the greatest dinner blank canvas ever invented.
Start with pasta and build from there.
Tomato sauce, pesto, leftover roast vegetables, sausages, tuna, chicken, prawns, beans, broccoli, peas or simply garlic, olive oil and parmesan.
One ingredient can completely change the direction.
2. Tacos
Tacos solve both dinner and family politics.
Put everything on the table.
Everyone builds their own.
Use mince, chicken, pork, fish, beans or roasted vegetables.
Add lettuce or cabbage, tomato, cheese, yoghurt or sour cream, avocado and whatever salsa or sauces you have.
3. Tray bake
This is my “I need dinner cooking while I do something else” option.
Protein.
Vegetables.
Seasoning.
Oven.
Chicken thighs, sausages, pork, fish or chickpeas all work.
Change the seasoning and the same ingredients can taste completely different.
4. Curry
Curry is excellent for using vegetables that don’t immediately suggest a meal.
Start with onion, garlic and spices.
Add tomatoes, stock or coconut milk.
Then add whatever protein, legumes and vegetables make sense.
Serve with rice, flatbread or potatoes.
5. Rice bowl
Rice bowls are especially useful for leftovers.
Start with rice.
Add leftover meat, tofu, beans or egg.
Then vegetables.
Finish with something punchy: pickles, herbs, sesame, chilli, soy, yoghurt or a dressing.
6. Fried rice or noodles
The vegetables don’t need to match.
That is part of the point.
Rice or noodles plus a protein, vegetables, eggs and a good savoury sauce can turn bits and pieces into a proper dinner very quickly.
7. Frittata, omelette or quiche
Eggs are one of the best fridge-clear-out ingredients there is.
Leftover potato.
Roast pumpkin.
Spinach.
Broccoli.
Ham.
Cheese.
Herbs.
Put them together and suddenly yesterday’s odds and ends look deliberate.
8. Soup or stew
Particularly useful when you have time rather than enthusiasm.
Chicken soup.
Bean soup.
Minestrone.
Beef stew.
Lentil soup.
Leftover roast vegetables blitzed with stock.
Add bread and dinner is sorted.
9. Loaded potatoes
A potato can carry an extraordinary amount of dinner.
Bolognese.
Beans.
Tuna.
Leftover chilli.
Chicken.
Cheese.
Roasted vegetables.
Even leftover curry.
Bake extra potatoes and tomorrow’s lunch is halfway there.
10. Pizza or flatbread night
I make sourdough pizza, but the principle works with whatever base you use.
Pizza is another brilliant place for small amounts of ingredients that are not enough to make a whole dinner by themselves.
A little chicken.
Half a capsicum.
Some mushrooms.
A few olives.
Leftover roast pumpkin.
Suddenly useful.
11. Build-your-own dinner
This isn’t really one cuisine.
It is a strategy.
Put components on the table and stop trying to construct five slightly different plates.
Tacos do this.
Rice bowls do it.
BBQs do it.
Pita and kebab dinners do it.
It works particularly well when children have strong opinions about food touching other food.
12. Bitsa Night
My personal favourite for the end of the week.
Bitsa this.
Bitsa that.
Perhaps there is half a roast chicken, three potatoes, some salad, leftover pasta, a few vegetables and one lonely sausage.
Fine.
Make dinner out of it.
Bitsa night is permission to stop pretending every meal has to begin with a recipe.
You don’t need all twelve every week
This is not another plan to follow.
Keep five or six in your head.
When you look at what you have, ask which format fits.
Chicken might become a tray bake tonight.
Next time it becomes tacos.
Then curry.
Then soup.
Same basic ingredient.
Completely different dinner.
Let tonight make tomorrow easier
Whichever format you choose, think one meal ahead.
Extra rice becomes fried rice.
Extra chicken becomes lunch.
A larger batch of tomato sauce goes into the freezer.
Roasted vegetables go into tomorrow’s frittata.
That is where dinner starts becoming a system rather than a nightly emergency.
Need help choosing?
And that’s exactly why I created EAT by Mrs E — to take the guesswork out of everyday meals.
Whether you’re staring into the fridge wondering what to cook or simply need a little inspiration, EAT helps you turn the ingredients you already have into something delicious.
Less meal planning, less food waste and more good food on the table.
EAT by Mrs E — making everyday meals easier.