Opposite to widespread knowledge, two is not usually greater than one particular. A duo of dueling squirrels increasing hell on your window ledge? Nah. Two literal goblins haunting your basement? Thanks, we’re good with just the a single.
But a great deal of other matters are only much better in pairs, like shoes, turtle doves, and recipes that have the magical skill to develop into two linked but totally distinct dinners. As folks in the natural beauty field say of eyebrows: They are sisters not twins.
Which is our notion for this quartet (or octet, definitely) of as-you-like-it dinner options that are not particularly meal prepping but just come about to attain the exact aim. You’ll start off with a double batch of a base sauce use 50 percent for just one dish, and then flip the remainder into a radically various food the adhering to night time. Take Epi affiliate food editor Rachel Gurjar’s umami-prosperous miso–butternut squash soup as an example. It is easy adequate to put together postwork on a weeknight or in the course of a lazy weekend day—simply cook dinner cubed butternut squash with shallot, garlic, and ginger, together with some sweet white miso and a dash of maple syrup, and blend it into a vivid orange, silky smooth soup.
If you double the batch, you will have a lot to try to eat the pursuing day. (You don’t seriously want us to convey to you how to do that aspect.) But this soup also transforms into a sauce in which you can poach filets of buttery cod. The fish flakes superbly in the bowl, and its refined taste pairs incredibly with the salty-sweet soup. Really do not overlook the chili crisp.
If you like that trick, we’ve obtained a couple other people for you. Epi affiliate meals editor Kendra Vaculin turns to her go-to pairing of environmentally friendly olives and jarred roasted purple peppers, which mingle in a thick, prosperous tomato sauce that is equally sweet, smoky, and briny. It is precisely what you’d want with pasta—specifically baked pasta, smothered with melty mozzarella, simply because wintertime calls for rib-sticking fare.
Alternatively, you can use the same sauce recipe for an easy AF a single-pot shrimp and rice meal. It normally takes a slightly different tack than the baked pasta with the addition of cumin and turmeric, which give the dish an extra dimension of spice that performs perfectly with sweet, fresh new-tasting shrimp.
Really don’t try to eat meat? Vegan buddies (and pals of vegans), we’re not leaving you out. For her get on the sauce-two-approaches method, Epi contributor Jocelyn Ramirez starts with a potent chile sauce that phone calls for two versions of dried chiles: fruity, spicy guajillos and roasty, sweet anchos or pasillas. This kinds the foundation for a platter of enchiladas that get stuffed with mashed potatoes, flavored with roasted garlic, umami-rich dietary yeast, and mushroom powder for an excess savory bite.
The following night time, that very same smoky-sweet chile sauce gets the basis of a vegan menudo. Since the traditional tripe in menudo is not accurately plant-dependent, Ramirez turns to dried, frilly snow mushrooms, which are pleasantly chewy once they’ve plumped up, and soak up the sauce nicely alongside with the hominy.
Want 1 much more? We bought you. Rachel Gurjar’s paneer bhurji-encouraged sauce is the best of them all. First, you are going to sear some slabs of paneer in sizzling oil till they go all brown and crispy on the exterior. Take out them from the pan and insert a handful of aromatics and heat spices—onion, garlic, jalapeño, ginger, cumin, mustard, coriander, cayenne, turmeric—and a can of tomatoes prior to returning the paneer, now crumbled, back into the sauce. The resulting chunky gravy is an outstanding filling for roasted bell peppers, specially when they choose on a touch of char in the heat of the oven.
But for an excellent whenever snack, spoon a thick layer of the sauce on some bread—crusty country or basic white or no matter what you have obtained. Top it with shredded cheddar or mozzarella, sliced onion, and cilantro, and pan-fry that massive boy in butter right until golden and crackly all over. Dip the sandwich in a swipe of ketchup amongst bites to take it up yet one more degree.
With these foundation recipes in your back pocket, you have obtained an whole week’s supper scenario sorted. And positive, eight dinners from 4 sauces could practically appear like too considerably food—but try to remember, you’ve acquired all people basement goblin mouths to feed, way too.