While I am a big fan of recipes that take a few minutes of hands on time, and then get tossed into the oven to bake or roast, or into a pot to braise, sometimes we all just need to get dinner on the table, and NOW. The fact that a pork shoulder roast requires almost no attention from me once it’s in the oven, or that a chili can bubble away largely unattended on the stove is all well and good—when you have the time.
But when the clock is ticking and your people are hungry, minutes count. Here are 20 ways to get dinner on the table in about 20 minutes. (Sometimes you’ll need to add a salad, but there’s time to throw that together in between steps.)
20 20-Minute Meals
You won’t believe how flavorful this shrimp stir fry is —and ready in the blink of the eye.
Stuffed with good things and lots of flavor.
A handful ingredients on a crappy cold night when I could not make it out to the store turned into one of the most spectacular pastas.
Plump shrimp, crisp-tender broccoli, and a tangle of udon noodles.
Fish plus three basic ingredients plus 20 minutes gets you this for dinner. Think of this during tomato season.
This pasta salad is portable and flexible. It’s also a nice way to play around with the vegetables of the season.
Feta, zucchini and tomato are classic Greek ingredients and they come together in this pasta like they’ve know each other forever.
I found that getting my kids to eat kale became a whole lot easier when I paired it up with sausage – funny how life works that way.
Forget that box. In about 20 minutes, you can be eating the real deal.
The kind of saucy shrimp that is served along with plenty of crusty bread for sopping up the sauce.
Sometimes one of the most appealing things about a recipe is the small amount of time it takes in front of the stove.
At once elegant and peasant-ish, these few ingredients come together in a kind of classy way.
4 ingredients, not including the salmon. Wow, right?
Like a cleaner, fresher shrimp scampi.
Simple, clean and delicious.
A delicious weeknight warrior dinner.
A chicken quesadilla recipe to keep changing up.
A summery pan sauce turns a package of chicken breasts into a colorful quick dinner.
I love the idea of comfort-bar food at home, and these have that amazing buffalo-wing flavor.
So simple, it’s almost not a recipe.