15 Minute Dinners

Dinner in 15 minutes is possible with a few hacks and these recipes! Grab the tips that make it possible and snag 5 recipes for your meal plan this week!

I’ve always loved to cook. And for the longest time, I had a vision of what family dinner was supposed to look like.

I was able to maintain that for a while… Then I had my 3rd child. I don’t know what happened but it was like someone opened all the cages at the zoo. Dinner suffered.

By suffered, I mean I either OVER PLANNED meals and failed miserably. (The science experiments in my veggie drawer still make me cringe.) Or I UNDER PLANNED dinner — as in, “pizza or Chinese food?”

After my mom reminded me that this part of life, of motherhood, is a season. It is not forever… I had an aha! moment and decided to embrace this 15 minute season of motherhood. (As in I get 15 minutes to do anything before I get called to manage the next mini-crisis.)

I buckled down and started creating 15 Minute Recipes for 15 Minute Nights. It is a cookbook of 15 recipes that go on the table so fast that they are actually do-able when everyone is cranky or overplanned and needs more time interacting with me than staring at my back while I work at the stove. (Please tell me I am not the only mom with this problem!)

If it would help you too, you can buy this cookbook here —> BUY 15 MINUTE RECIPES.

No weird food blogger math. I needed it to go from prep to table in 15 minutes or we were going to be on a first-name basis with every pizza delivery place in my city.

Hacks to Making Dinner in 15 Minutes

Here are a few of the kitchen hacks that make these recipes work…

Ask the butcher do the heavy lifting —-> Most grocery store butchers are beyond happy to do the slicing and cutting for you. Even if your protein is already wrapped up in the meat case. Just ask! Larger pieces of meat take longer to cook. So say no to the whole roast… but yes to thin-sliced roast for steak sandwiches or stir fry.
Get familiar with ingredients that cook really fast —-> shrimp, gnocchi, chow mein noodles, filets of fish, thin or cubed chicken, thin-sliced pork, tortellini, lots of fresh veggies!
Keep your pantry full of shortcuts —-> Deli rolls for sandwiches, rotisserie chicken (my best friend!), ready-made sauces, pre-cooked rice packets, cans of staples like diced tomatoes, black beans, refrained beans.
Keep veggie shortcuts in the freezer —-> Check out the freezer section of your grocery store for starter packages of pre-chopped vegetables. You can find pre-diced onions, peppers, and combos like soup mixes and spaghetti vegetables that are already chopped and frozen. Another upside, frozen vegetables are cheaper than fresh most of the time.
Make a meal plan designed for 15-minute meals —-> Don’t plan complicated dinners during the week. And don’t make meal planning complicated. Grab the 5 recipes below for your meal plan. Write them on the back of a napkin and stick it on your fridge. A low-stress meal plan takes the guesswork out of the grocery store and eliminates the question “what’s for dinner tonight?!”