What’s for dinner?

Like death and taxes. This question is coming for you.

I am a professional recipe developer, food stylist, culinary school graduate, married to an award-winning restaurant chef. If I’m not cooking food, I am reading about it, discussing it, scrolling through pictures of it, shopping for it, scrubbing it clean from our pots and pans. We live and breathe it.

And also… I have three wonderful, growing, voracious young boys. And a husband that can’t get enough protein. We like to eat healthy and don’t like to scrape toddlers off the floor of a busy restaurant. So, I have to get to decide what everyone eats 357 days out of the year.

Decision fatigue is REAL.

Which brings me to this newsletter. I have lots of delicious, family-friendly recipes that I can’t wait to share for your inspiration. But let’s be honest—a shortage of recipe content is not the problem. Actually, I think maybe we’re all stunned into indecision by over-saturation. Just me?

Time to flip the script. There’s no cheating the time and energy it takes to cook good food. So how do we get ahead of it?

My short answer: lean in. Learn to treat your home kitchen like a restaurant kitchen.

Keep a constant influx of fresh, seasonal produce.

Break it down and clean it up. (Remove any unusable parts, wash, store.)

Have basic proteins at the ready.

Be open to inspiration, but don’t get buried in it.

Stock the pantry.

Be flexible.

Taste as you cook.

Buy a rice cooker.

Buy a Rice Cooker

I once pitched a story to a food editor singing the praises of the rice cooker. The story was turned down because they “don’t like to do features on single-use appliances.” And while I agree that many single-use appliances are unnecessary, there is nothing limiting about a rice cooker. Au contraire, it’s a beacon of possibilities.

On that uh oh day where you have nothing in the fridge and no time for shopping or cooking, you warm up a bowl of perfectly cooked rice and top with soft scrambled eggs, a touch of soy, and chili crisp to taste (bonus points if you happen to have ripe avocado). And you win the question, what’s for dinner, for all aged 1 to 100.

Each brand of rice cooker is different so read your instruction manual for the best cooking method. Our tried-and-true technique follows:

Rinse 4 cups rice under cold running water until the water runs clear. This takes a few minutes. Drain well. Add to rice cooker (turned off) and cover with 4 cups fresh cold water. Let sit for 20 minutes. Add 1 tablespoon Diamond Crystal coarse kosher salt and 3 fresh bay leaves. Plug in the machine and switch it on—when the cooking cycle is complete, fluff rice with a fork or rice paddle.

Rinse excess starch off the rice & soak before cooking.

The rice will keep warm for hours. Most manufacturers recommend removing the cooked rice after 12 hours and transferring it to the refrigerator. (True confession: we sometimes leave ours on overnight and live to tell the tale. Knock on wood.) Either way, directly from the cooker or cooled in the fridge, it is so handy to have rice at the ready. It beckons to be added to soup or stew, a bed for meatballs or sautéed veggies & salmon, or cooked down further into savory chicken congee or sweet rice pudding. (And if you have toddlers, you can smush it up into little golf balls and they’ll eat them like candy). It’s a building block to a working kitchen, and for us it’s a staple.

THE RECIPE: Turkey Rice with Spring Vegetables

Makes about 2 quarts to serve 6 (or 4 with leftovers)

The beauty of this recipe is its adaptability. It’s one of those not-recipe recipes. You can pretty much put any vegetable or cooked meat into it. Sometime we use ground pork or chicken. Sometimes I fold in diced leftover pork tenderloin or steak. My friends recommend adding a fried egg on top. The onion, garlic, ginger, and chilis are a constant, but the rest varies based on whatever looked amazing at the market or whatever’s left in the fridge.

Just make sure you cut everything small so that it cooks in the same amount of time and could be eaten with a spoon. Once you get the technique down, play around with it!

just a bit of knife work and you're almost there

1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil

1 1/2 lbs ground turkey ( I prefer the dark meat blend if possible)

1 tablespoon neutral oil, such as canola or avocado

1 tablespoon chopped ginger

1 tablespoon thinly sliced garlic clove

2 tablespoons finely diced jalapeño, serrano, or fresno pepper (seeds removed)

1 1/2 cups thinly sliced spring onions, white and light green parts

2 cups small dice zucchini or squash

1 cup small dice carrots

2 cups chopped greens, such as kale or spinach

4 cups cooked rice, at room temperature

1 tablespoon sweet soy sauce *see note below

Coarse kosher salt, to taste

Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Chili crisp, to serve

Heat sesame oil in a large skillet over medium heat (I use a 14-inch cast iron skillet or a deep 12-inch nonstick skillet for this).
Add turkey and cook until browned, breaking up the meat into small pieces with a wooden spoon, about 5 minutes. Season generously with salt and pepper. Transfer turkey to a bowl and reserve.
Add canola oil to the now empty skillet. Add ginger, garlic, chili pepper, spring onions, zucchini, and carrots. Season with salt. Sauté over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are tender, about 5 minutes. Add the greens and cook 1-2 minutes longer until wilted.
Add the rice and the reserved cooked turkey meat to the skillet. Carefully stir until rice and meat and vegetables are mixed thoroughly, breaking up any large clumps of rice as you go. Let cook over medium heat for 1-2 minutes without stirring, until you hear the bottom of the rice sizzle and start to caramelize. Using a metal spatula (for cast iron only; use a wooden spoon on a nonstick skillet!), scrape the bottom of the pan to reveal the caramelized bits of rice and fold into the tender white rice on top. Continue doing this all the way around the skillet until you have a good mixture of crispy and tender rice.
Remove from heat and stir in sweet soy sauce. Taste and season with additional salt and pepper if needed. Serve hot with chili crisp drizzled over the top to taste.

Ingredient Note

I discovered sweet soy sauce during a recipe test for a client. We go through different types of soy or soy-like sauces—some artisanal, some Japanese-style (shoyu), and gluten-free tamaris. I honestly like them all and you can use whatever you have here. Add a bit at a time and taste until you’re happy. The sweet soy sauce, as its name suggests, contains more sugar and is a bit syrupy in texture. I use it sparingly, but our kids love it.

Turkey Rice with Spring Vegetables