Family Dinner, Redefined: The Epicurious Guide to Bacon Pancakes, Eating on the Floor, and 16 Other Things That Make Mealtime Less Insane
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Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Prop Styling by Sophie Strangio, Food Styling by Monica Pierini1/18Serve Dessert First
Call it teaching your kids to make responsible food choices, or call it reverse psychology. Either way, when you put that cookie on the same plate as the vegetables, your kids will stop seeing sugar as something to freak out about, reports writer Janet Rausa Fuller. Think that's crazy? Just wait until you hear what she has to say about snack time.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Prop Styling by Alex Brannian, Food Styling by Mariana Velasquez2/18Find a Recipe You Can Make in 20 Minutes
All you need is one. Just one recipe that's fast, unfussy, and so damn delicious you'll make it over and over until you can make it from memory (and with a baby in your arms). Make it this Mustard-Crusted Salmon, or this One-Pot Pasta Primavera. Or learn an updated, healthy version of a takeout classic: Chicken Tikka Masala, Sweet and Sour Chicken, Shawarma-Spice Chicken (hope you like chicken!). Scroll through this collection of 22-Minute Meals and you'll definitely find the one recipe you're looking for. Who knows—maybe you'll find two.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Prop Styling by Sophie Strangio, Food Styling by Monica Pierini3/18Or, Better Yet, 10 Minutes
Yes, really: 10 minutes. With the help of some quick-cooking proteins and grocery store convenience items, you really can get a meal that will make the whole family happy on the table in that amount of time. This one-skillet dinner with a craveable burst-cherry tomato sauce is made possible thanks to fully-cooked Italian sausage and some healthy broccolini. This picnic-style dinner of steamed shrimp, green beans, avocado, and romaine hearts served with a creamy yogurt dipping sauce? It's all about the ingredients (shrimp, beans) that take almost no time to cook at all. And this build-your-own Mediterranean flatbread dinner with quickly sautéed chicken wouldn't be doable without the help of some (premium, please) store-bought hummus. And you know what's great about a 10-minute recipe? They typically only take 10 minutes to clean up. –Anna Stockwell
Photo by Chelsea Kyle4/18Make Your Kids Plan the Meals
No, you won't end up just eating chicken fingers and pizza. Giving the kids some decision-making power over the family meals makes them more likely to try new things. (Kind of.) Senior Editor Anya Hoffman put her girls on meal-planning duty for a week and reports on the misses (herbs!) and wins (noodles!).
Photo by Maura McEvoy5/18Put Dinner on the Back Burner. Literally.
In their latest book, The Dinner Plan, authors Kathy Brennan and Caroline Campion offer five brilliant and practical game plans for hyperbusy families who—between ballet class, basketball practice, and play rehearsal—somehow need to find time to eat. Our favorite of their solutions: the staggered dinner, meals that can be left on the back of the stove and reheated as needed, or are just as good at room temperature or even cold. Check out their recipes for paella-inspired Skillet Chicken and Rice (addictive whether hot or warm), Thai Beef Salad (perfect for countertop DIY assembly), and dreamy Baked Penne with Green Chiles. That last one is a tangy, creamy love child of two beloved cheesy dishes, chiles rellenos and pasta al forno; don't be surprised if it actually brings everybody to the table at the same time after all. –Rhoda Boone
6/18Don't Freak—Reheat!
Quick and easy meals are all fine and good, but that assumes you actually have the time and energy to cook, which, let's be real, sometimes you don't. That's when a homemade frozen meal can save your sanity. Of course, not everything freezes well, and the dishes that do tend to be heavy. So head's up: this collection of our best reheatable dishes includes lighter, healthier fare like herb-packed chicken meatballs and zucchini-and-corn veggie burgers. (Don't worry—for the nights when you're really about to lose it, we threw in some pulled pork, a lasagna, and some other classic comforts.)
Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Prop Styling by Sophie Strangio, Food Styling by Monica Pierini7/18Make Everyone the Same Meal (Basically)
Remember before you had kids and you were like, "I'm not going to be a short-order cook—my kids are going to eat what I eat!"? Hilarious. Turns out that kids, like adults, have their own tastes and preferences and aversions. Add in some age-appropriate toddler (or school-aged) defiance, and you have the makings for some very stressful mealtimes. Which is why Epi Food Director Rhoda Boone came up with Dinner 1-2-3, a genius technique for cooking the whole family one meal that can be plated up in three different ways, according to each person's preferences. Rhoda's newest creation: this Thai turkey meatball noodle bowl, which will make everyone—from don't-like-foods-to-touch preschoolers to spice-loving grown-ups—very happy.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle8/18Let Your Kids Do the Cooking
Yes, it would be great to broaden our children's palates and turn them into worldly little kale-eaters, but there's a better reason to teach our kids how to cook—and it has absolutely nothing to do with nutrition. Writer Stacy Basko talks about the many other, less tangible benefits of giving your kids free rein in the kitchen.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Prop Styling by Sophie Strangio, Food Styling by Monica Pierini9/18Host a Different Kind of Dinner Party
Hill Street Studios10/18Get Real With Yourself About Why You Don't Want to Make Dinner
It's not because it's late. It's not because your kids are whining. And it's not because you didn't meal plan. There's a bigger reason you don't feel like cooking, and it's staring at you from that chock-full sink. Or crumb-coated counter. Or sauce-crusted stove. Fortunately we have 5 proven tips for conquering this dinner deterrent once and for all. (Or at least for this week. Baby steps!) –Anya Hoffman
Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Olivia Mack Anderson11/18Give 'em Pancakes (and Pack Them With Veg)
Any parent who's ever felt desperate for a dinner idea come 6pm (read: every parent) knows that breakfast for dinner can be a life-saver. Throw some waffles in the toaster, fry up an egg, serve a bowl of cereal if you're extra tapped. But there are only so many times you can pull that trick out without it starting to feel a little stale. Enter: savory pancakes. Start with regular pancake batter (you can even use a boxed mix), and add some savory mix-ins. Corn and shredded cheddar. Bacon and leftover potatoes. Ham and frozen peas. Easy, customizable, and appealing to even the pickiest of eaters, savory pancakes also freeze beautifully. Stash away a batch and 6pm suddenly gets a lot less scary.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Prop Styling by Beatrice Chastka, Food Styling by Kate Schmidt12/18Let Somebody Else Plan Your Meals for You
And that someone is us. Between scrambling for childcare and setting up piano lessons and ironing labels on every piece of our preschooler’s clothing, no one has time for trying complicated, time-consuming recipes, especially during back-to-school season. To help make sure we don’t have to rely on a steady diet of frozen pizza while getting back in the swing of things, Epi Associate Food Editor Kat Sacks has created a delicious meal plan that's simple. Really simple. The techniques are fast. The grocery list is short. And there's a lot of prepping ahead. Try it for a week and we promise you'll feel like you’ve got your act together, no matter how crazy things really are.
Photo by Peden & Munk13/18Eat Off the Floor
Dress the dinner table with a picnic blanket—or, better yet, go ahead and spread it out on the living room floor. Put out a plate of sliced cucumbers, a bowl of hummus, some sliced-up cold leftover roast chicken, a platter of cheese, some crackers, a pile of grapes, a bowl of cherry tomatoes, or whatever veggies and fruit you know your kids will go for. And that’s it: dinner is served. It might not be hot, but it’s fast, relaxed, perfectly nutritious—and ten times more fun than your average Wednesday night. –Anna Stockwell
Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Prop Styling by Astrid Chastka, Food Styling by Anna Hampton14/18Forget the Big Sunday Prep
I've read article after article about the merits of the Big Sunday Prep, but I’m still not a convert. Sunday is usually my only family day of the week, and I'd rather be anywhere but the kitchen. Instead of spending the afternoon cooking five pounds of ground beef or 20 chicken breasts, I try to do at least one thing every night for the dinner I plan to have the next evening. This strategy can be as simple as prepping double (or triple) the kale you need for a kale salad tonight, so you have some ready to sauté tomorrow, or making a big batch of grains like farro and stirring half into chicken soup, then using the rest in a fresh tomato and cucumber salad the next night. If I’m already roasting chicken thighs, I'll cook a few extra to shred for tacos. And since the oven is on, why not throw a couple of sweet potatoes in to use tomorrow for stuffed sweet potatoes? Knowing I don't have to start from scratch every night makes it a lot less daunting to get cooking. –Rhoda Boone
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Photo by David A. Land15/18Get Yourself a Cooking Philosophy
And make that philosophy "who cares?" That's the outlook of novelist Rumaan Alam, who feeds his hungry family three meals a day with a certain nonchalance that allows for random loaves of banana bread and kitchen-sink shepherd's pie. Check out his cooking diary for a dose of real-life inspiration (and a rant or two about picky adults).
Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Prop Styling by Sophie Strangio, Food Styling by Monica Pierini16/18Quit Dinner Completely (at Least for a Little While)
Rewind to this spring. I just had our second child and was dealing with a crazy, emotional toddler who, on a good day, refused to eat much more than pizza, cheese, and pasta. Family dinnertime had already been tough, but now a newborn who demanded attention was in the mix; my partner attended school full-time while working part-time; and I had a bad case of the baby blues. Hoping to keep some semblance of our previous life intact, I decided that dinner would go on as before. Life could be the same! But that didn't work: both kids screamed and cried throughout our dinners, and soon I was crying along with them. So I made a game-changing decision about dinner: I didn't serve it. No lasagna, no roast chicken. The baby got his usual dose of breast milk, the toddler happily munched on wheat toast with butter, grapes, and those tiny wheels of red wax-coated cheese. And me? I got some much-needed sanity and energy back—which I used to start serving real dinners again a few weeks later. –Linnea Covington
Photo by Chelsea Kyle17/18Pick Up the Damn Phone!
Meal-planning: it works. Simply knowing what you’re having for dinner each night really does make it easier to get the food on the table faster (if only because it eliminates all the time spent dithering in front of the fridge or digging through the freezer). But finding recipes, combing through ingredient lists, going shopping—it’s time-consuming and can feel daunting. Which is why we’re so excited about a few of the meal-planning apps out there, especially MealBoard, which not only allows you to quickly add recipes from your favorite websites (ahem) but will also produce an organized weekly shopping list from the selected recipes, and help you keep track of what you already have in your pantry. Other apps to check out: Mealime, which provides actually tasty recipes based on your family’s preferences, and MealPlan, which can also import recipes and cull ingredient lists. –Anya Hoffman
Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Prop Styling by Sophie Strangio, Food Styling by Monica Pierini18/18Change Things Up (Even When It's Hard)
Family dinner had once been a sacred time for writer Naomi Shulman and her daughters. But after her marriage ended, the daily ritual morphed into something new—and unexpectedly lovely.
