Feeding the Family Without Losing Your Mind
Cooking for a larger family is a lot like running a small restaurant, except nobody tips, at least one customer suddenly hates a food they loved yesterday, and someone will absolutely ask, “What’s for dinner?” while watching you make dinner.
I love my family. Truly. But feeding a bunch of hungry people every single day has taught me that dinner does not need to be an event every single night.
At this stage of life, I have three requirements for a successful weeknight meal:
It needs to be relatively quick.
It needs to be pretty easy.
It needs to produce enough food that I don’t hear, “Is there any more?” after I finally sit down.
That third one is important.
Side Note: I used to be a professional Chef, so sometimes it's difficult for me to be okay with the "quick and easy" meals and I go a little overboard with cooking things I find fun to make - and if that's you, that's okay, too!
My Secret Ingredient: Lower Expectations
Somewhere along the way, we got the idea that a proper family dinner should contain a protein, two vegetables, a homemade side dish, and perhaps a loaf of bread baked by someone wearing a linen apron.
No.
Sometimes dinner is quesadillas and apple slices.
Sometimes it’s scrambled eggs, toast, and whatever fruit is about three hours away from mush.
Sometimes it’s pasta with jarred sauce, frozen meatballs, and a bagged salad that makes me feel like I’ve really got my life together.
Everyone gets fed. That counts.
In fact, lowering my expectations has probably done more for our family meals than any cookbook ever has. Instead of asking, “What impressive thing can I make tonight?” I ask, “What can I put on the table in 30-45 minutes that most people will eat without filing a formal complaint?”
Much better question.
Feeding the Family with the Big-Pot Meal
When you’re feeding a larger family, tiny recipes are almost insulting.
“Serves four.”
That’s adorable.
When you're feeding a bunch of teenage boys plus a husband who's starving after work all day, even "feeds six" doesn't seem like enough half the time!
I want recipes that involve words like large pot, family-size, sheet pan, and use the entire package.
"Use the entire package" - I know when a recipe calls for this, it'll work for me!
Cook Components, Not Masterpieces
One of the biggest changes I made was realizing I didn’t always need to make a “recipe.”
I could just make…food.
Cook a bunch of chicken. Make rice. Chop some vegetables. Put cheese, tortillas, sauces, and toppings on the table.
Congratulations. Dinner.
Tonight those ingredients might become burrito bowls. Tomorrow, leftover chicken goes into quesadillas. The remaining rice becomes fried rice. Suddenly one cooking session has produced several meals, and I feel like some sort of domestic logistics genius.
The goal isn’t to create seven completely different dinners every week. The goal is to strategically disguise leftovers so nobody realizes they are meeting Tuesday’s chicken again on Thursday.
Convenience Foods Are Not Cheating
There is no prize for chopping every vegetable yourself. If buying pre-cut broccoli means vegetables actually appear on the dinner table, buy the broccoli. HOWEVER, I personally buy fresh produce and chop it all myself simply because I enjoy doing so. That's it, no other reason.
I completely understand that convenience ingredients are especially useful when you're cooking in large quantities because the little tasks add up. Chopping one onion isn't a big deal. Chopping onions, peppers, carrots, potatoes, garlic, and 14 other things while several people wander through the kitchen asking when dinner will be ready is another experience entirely. My family luckily leaves me alone when I'm cooking because they know the kitchen is my sanctuary and that's "Mom time".
Have Five Emergency Dinners
Every family needs a short list of meals requiring almost no thought.
Mine includes things like:
Nachos
Breakfast for dinner (for us, that's French toast, bacon, & eggs)
Grilled ham & cheese sandwiches
Quesadillas
These aren't necessarily the meals I'm posting on social media with the hashtag #CulinaryMasterpiece.
They're the meals that save me from being overwhelmed because it's 5:47 p.m., everyone is hungry, we just got home from football practice, and I have approximately six functioning brain cells remaining.
Keep the ingredients for a few emergency meals around whenever possible. Pasta. Tortillas and cheese. Eggs. Bread. Lunch meat.
Think of it as your dinner emergency kit.
Except instead of flashlights and batteries, it's peanut butter & jelly.
Double Anything Worth Making
If I'm already browning ground beef, I'm probably browning extra.
If I'm making soup, I'm using the big pot.
If I'm cooking chicken, Future Me is getting chicken too.
Doubling recipes doesn't always mean eating the exact same dinner tomorrow. Extra taco meat can become nachos. Extra chicken can become wraps.
And sometimes we do eat the same meal again.
Because leftovers are not a failure.
Leftovers are dinner that has already completed the difficult part.
Let People Assemble Their Own Food
This may be my favorite large-family dinner strategy because it transfers a small portion of the workload back to the people who intend to eat all this food.
Nacho bars. Sandwiches. Personal pizzas. Burrito bowls.
I provide the ingredients. Everyone builds their own dinner.
One person wants no tomatoes? Fine.
Someone else wants enough cheese to concern a cardiologist? That's between them and the cheese.
Another child wants a tortilla containing exactly chicken and nothing else? Enjoy.
Instead of trying to produce one magical meal customized to everyone's preferences, I provide options and let everyone handle the final assembly.
I do this on those "emergency" nights or nights when I just don't want to hear any negative remarks about what's for dinner. Normally though, I cook what I cook and you either eat it or go hungry. I'm not arguing with little humans who didn't purchase said groceries and didn't spend time cooking the meal. Just eat what's on your plate and get over it.
Good Enough Is Actually Pretty Great
I've made complicated dinners that took two hours and disappeared in eleven minutes.
I've also put scrambled eggs, toast, fruit, and yogurt on the table and had everyone happily eat.
Guess which one made me question my life choices less?
Cooking for a larger family isn't really about creating spectacular meals every night. It's about developing a system you can actually sustain.
Use shortcuts.
Repeat meals.
Cook extra.
Keep emergency ingredients around.
Make things people can customize.
And, most importantly, stop judging dinner by whether it looks like something from a cooking show.
If everyone ate something, nobody is currently asking when dinner will be ready, and the kitchen doesn't look like a tornado passed through a grocery store, I'm calling it a success.
Now, if you'll excuse me, someone just walked into the kitchen and asked what's for dinner.
While eating a snack.
Naturally.
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