5 Lazy One-Pan Dinners for When You're Too Tired to Cook | Allrecipes

I'm showing you what to cook when you don't feel like cooking. We are making lazy dinners tonight. Lazy dinners have shortcuts, and they require minimal effort, but they're gonna deliver maximum flavor. Lazy dinners are versions of longer-cooked meals. I'm starting with lazy lasagna. We know that lasagna requires multiple pots and pans, lots of steps, and lots of time. I'm showing you the cheat code to lazy lasagna, and it's gonna be delicious. You could start this with Italian sausage, which has a lot of built-in flavor. I'm just using ground beef. Because that's what I always have on hand. And I'm just gonna add in a little onion. That's the extent of the prep. And we build the whole thing on the stove. All right, so I'm just gonna start by sauteing my onion. Again, if you just wanna use Italian sausage here, you can skip this step. Since I'm just using the ground beef, I need to incorporate a little more flavor. I'm just gonna get that a little bit softened and brown your ground beef. Lazy dinners are perfect for this time of year when we're really tired of cooking or we're cooking a ton. On those holiday weekends that your family still wants to eat during the week, this I'm just going to add in a little garlic powder because I'm being lazy. I don't feel like chopping garlic or peeling garlic. A little bit of salt and pepper. So we just want this to get all browned and then we go in with our sauce. If you've got some grease you can get it out with a little paper towel. You know I'm not about to dirty a strainer. I said it was a one pan meal. All right this is when the meal turns a little bit magical. For the sauce I'm using A shortcut telling you lazy dinners we're not about to make our sauce from scratch. This is the time and place. I'm going to add in about a third of this jar at this point. Make sure it coats all of that meat. All right you take your lasagna noodles and break them and then just kind of nestle them into the meat mixture. Okay get your lasagna noodles in and then you pour the rest of the sauce over. I'm going to rinse out the jar with about a third and a half cup of water. Spread this out. You want to be sure the noodles are like covered. All right, then we just cover, reduce the heat to like a medium low, and then let it go for about 20 minutes or so until those lasagna noodles are tender. You don't want this to be too hot or all that liquid's going to evaporate out and those noodles are going to kind of burn. You need it to go low and slow for a little bit just to tenderize those noodles and let it absorb some of that liquid. Just before we're done, we're going to take some ricotta cheese. Flavor it up a little bit. A little bit of salt, pepper, and garlic powder. And you could also throw in fresh basil or parsley if you want here. Just mix this together. All right, it's been about 25 minutes here, and you can see these have softened. Okay, but we're about there. They need a couple more minutes, but that will happen once I top it with the cheese. So I'm gonna go in with our seasoned ricotta and just kind of dollop it. Then go in with some shredded mozz. And some grated parm. All right, then we're just going to let it finish. I'm going to cover it, keep it on low, and let it go about five minutes. Look at this. I'm going to add a little fresh parsley. And then you're going to want to let it sit for a couple minutes before you dig in, just so it can kind of come together a little bit. Now, this one is more of a scoop situation and not a square situation. But the bites are still going to be perfect. I mean, it works. It works. A little more parsley. Did not even break a sweat with this one. How does it taste? The lasagna noodles are actually cooked perfectly. They have like the slightest little bite to it, but there's so much creaminess with the sauce and the cheese that it makes for the perfect bite. Lazy lasagna is all about that slow Sunday flavor in a fraction of the time. All right, it doesn't get any lazier than this next trick. This is chicken Caesar bake. You can start with boneless, skinless, chicken breast or thighs here. I'm doing the breast and I'm doing the ones that come like in this pre-packaged. So they're a little bit smaller. Just think they're a good like single size serving. Quarter teaspoon salt and pepper. Now just spread on Caesar dressing. I've seen this like multiple versions of this on TikTok. Now you put on sliced provolone on top of that. Then every Caesar salad has to have croutons, so get Caesar croutons or whatever croutons you want. Give them just a little crush. Then we're going to toss them in some melted butter and then we pour this right on top. All right, then it goes into the oven. I'm going to go 375. I'm going to start with about 35 minutes. That looks so good. I'm going to add a little more green too. And it adds so much just like perfect freshness to your dishes, especially when you're taking shortcuts because it doesn't change the flavor, but it just kind of brightens it up a little bit. All right, let's dig in. Hot and steamy, perfectly cooked. 100% chance I'll be doing this again. It took all of three minutes to prep, and it was already start to finish in way less than an hour. If someone told you to make wonton soup, you'd be like, heck no, that's way too much work. But lazy wonton soup, you can do it. It's one of the most flavorful soups this time of year. It's like the feel-good soup. It's got so much flavor. Starts with store-bought chicken stock. The first thing we're doing is creating our broth. All right, start with two quarts of stock and then you're just going to flavor it up. Take one bunch of green onions. We're going to save the tops for the end and then we're just going to cut up the bottom parts to flavor up the broth. Also going to add in some ginger. You just want to slice the ginger up and add it right in. A garlic clove. Just going to give it a little smash. A couple tablespoons of soy sauce, a little bit of rice vinegar, a little brown sugar. You're going to get your sweet and salty and then a little salt. All right, that's it for this. I'm just gonna give it a little stir. Put this on the stove while we make our wontons. So wontons, you make a pork filling and you wrap it up in the wonton wrappers. We're just gonna make that pork filling, roll it up and drop it in the soup. So you're gonna start out with about a pound of ground pork. So inexpensive. We're just gonna put it all in. We're going to grate in some more ginger. Again, you can also use dried if you want. Little bit goes a long way also, so you don't need a ton. All right, we're going to take those tops of the green onion. We're going to save some for garnish on the top, but we're going to put the rest. Right in this meat mixture. All right, then to this, we're going to add in some sesame oil, a little more salt, a little more soy sauce, and a little cornstarch. That's it. And then you're just going to mix it all together. And then you're just going to take this mixture and roll it up into like one-inch balls. They don't have to be perfect. I actually like them a little less perfect. But you want them like bite-sized because you're going to, you know, this is a soup. You want it to be able to get on your... On your spoon. You could totally have these made ahead of time. You can keep in the freezer and then drop them in the broth when you're ready. Oh my gosh this smells so good. You already know this one's going to make you feel good just by the smell of it. As our broth has come up to a simmer all those flavors from the ginger and garlic have started to infuse into the broth. So it's ready to go basically and now we're just going to cook our little baby little meatballs. The flavor from the pork is going to enrich in the broth also. All right, that's the wonton filling, but we gotta add the wontons. So you can find these wrappers in the produce section of your grocery store. Also very inexpensive, usually under three dollars or around three dollars. I'm just going to take these wrappers and cut them into quarters, then they're going to cook like a noodle or a dumpling into our broth. It's roughly about half the pack that you're going to use. You can wrap this up and stick this in your freezer. for next time. All right, after our little meatballs have cooked for about five minutes and it's come back to a simmer, we'll drop in our wonton wrappers. These will separate pretty well once you put them in, but don't go in with just a pile of them. Kind of like sprinkle them in. So these are going to cook for about seven, eight minutes. Final thing to add, we're going in with a little bit of bok choy. You could also just add in some fresh spinach. You could do some kale. You could leave this out. It's very easy to find and inexpensive, but this is gonna kind of boost the nutrition of the soup, also add good flavor. And this is gonna wilt down just as spinach would. So you can go in kind of with a lot, it's gonna cook down to nothing. Once you add the bok choy, it's just gonna cook about three or four minutes and then you're good to go. This is just a pot of warm hugs right here. To finish it off, you can go a couple different ways here. I like to add a little bit of tang and heat. So you can choose a little bit of sriracha or chili crunch or both. And then the rest of those green onions. Lazy wonton soup that's gonna taste like it took you all day. While this might be called lazy wonton soup, it is the most exciting flavor you'll have all week. The flavor from the ginger, the garlic, the soy sauce, you get that little heat from the chili crunch, totally recommend. And just with the bok choy and that broth, it just makes you feel healthy and good inside. Here's another lazy dinner the family will love, Big Mac casserole. Taking the flavors of our favorite all-American classic, the Big Mac, and turning it into a casserole. Starts with our french fries. This is going to be our bun, our bread, hash brown patties. So it's okay if these overlap. Just find you a casserole dish where you can fit about eight of these patties in there and get them into the oven 400 degrees for about 20 minutes while we get everything else ready. Now for the burger. Some ground beef. All right, then you're going to take an onion. I'm going to grate some of the onion to put into our Big Mac sauce. You're going to add that to a bowl along with any juices that are also accumulated right there. All right, then I'm just going to chop up the rest of the onion. For our meat mixture, this is a lot easier than having to patty up a bunch of burgers and fire up the grill. I'm just going to brown the meat off in the skillet. We're going to make it taste like a burger. Get your meat all browned. You can drain it if it's fatty. And then season it with salt, pepper, and a little Worcestershire is going to give it that burger flavor. And then I'm adding the onion now and I'm only going to cook it for one more minute because you want the onion to still be like slightly crunchy in there, you know, when you get your burger at McDonald's. It's got those onions that are pretty pronounced. Cook that for about a minute and that's it. All right, setting this here. All we have to do is make our Big Mac sauce. Got our grated onion from earlier. A little mayo, a little mustard, a little relish. Got about a cup of mayonnaise, a couple teaspoons of yellow mustard, a little bit of sweet relish, a little bit of salt, a little splash of vinegar, paprika. That's how my husband's grandmother used to say it. Some onion powder. That's good. Good little burger sauce right there. All right we got our burgers, our buns, and our sauce made. Now we build. So our hash browns have cooked. We're going to flip them over so that the crispy side is on top and then the this side can get crispy when it goes back in the oven. Take your burger mixture and stir in some of your Big Mac sauce and some cheese. Stir that up and then pour that right on top. Top it with the rest of your cheese You know the song, two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce. Cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. Sesame seeds are going on top. And then back into the oven for just about 10 more minutes. I wish you could smell this. Hot, bubbly, melty, cheesy. Just get shredded lettuce and chop up some pickles. Some more sauce. And why not? The Big Mac casserole lazy dinner number four is complete. If a Big Mac and a hash brown casserole had a baby, this would be it. This is definitely your fun dinner of the week. I'm telling you, see? Lazy can be exciting. My final trick is the laziest one of the day. Creamy, comforting chicken and dumplings is the laziest dinner of the day. It only has four ingredients, and I have made this before, and it is so delicious. It makes you almost not wanna make it from scratch homemade because they're so good. The four ingredients are just cream of chicken, Chicken broth, canned biscuits, and chicken. All right, start by just... Dumping the cream of chicken right into a saucepan. I like to use slightly larger pot because when we add our dumplings you want them to be able to circulate and kind of swim around in the broth. You're gonna add in about six cups of chicken broth. This is the less sodium one just because there's a good bit of salt in our soup. All right, we want to get that going together first, and then we'll add in our chicken and our dumplings. But this does have a lot of flavor and It's already well seasoned with salt, so you really don't have to add anything else. So that will come up and we'll just get our dumplings ready. Trust me, when it comes to lazy dinners, this one is super lazy to make, but it tastes like you've been cooking all day. Our dumplings are canned biscuits. You've probably even done this before. These are rolled dumplings, but really you can do them fluffy if you want. You can just cut these into little cubes. I like a rolled dumpling in the chicken and dumplings. It's more like the Cracker Barrel effect. So you just want to roll your canned biscuits out and then just give them a little cut into some strips. Once our broth comes up to a simmer, we'll drop these in. Once your broth has kind of come together as it's heating up, you can go ahead and add in the chicken because then it needs to come back up to a boil before you add the dumplings. Because this is a lazy dinner, this is the time to use rotisserie chicken or any leftover cooked chicken. Now bring it back up to a boil. Drop your dumplings in like noodles. You don't want to drop them in as a big clump of dough or they will cook like a big clump of dough. And you want there to be bubbles in your liquid. That way they circulate around and don't all stick together. Just fill it up and let them go. I'm going to cover it and let it go about 12 to 15 minutes. Stirring occasionally. These look so good. Little garnish to finish it off. Some fresh parsley. And then I like a lot of pepper on my chicken and dumplings, so gotta let it cool off for two seconds before I take a bite. But look at that. Really excited about this one. I mean, you can just go right in. You're gonna come out with the perfect bite. I know we used the canned shortcut, but there is just something about it. It tastes like your childhood or home or your grandmother. Or a warm hug. The dumplings are hands down. You cannot tell it came from a can of biscuits. You just can't. Nobody would know that unless you told them. The flavor is perfection. I did not add any salt. It's creamy enough. You can just let it simmer till it gets, you know, the thickness you like. But those biscuits really help thicken it and make it extra creamy. This is the perfect dinner and I don't care if it was lazy. Speaking of lazy, give yourself a little grace. These recipes are delicious. Your family's gonna love them, and it's all about working smarter, not harder. You're welcome.