Making dinner can be exhausting, especially when you have to do it every single night. It can be especially challenging if you’re trying to cut down on food waste and want to avoid buying specialty ingredients that you’ll only use once.
To make things easier, here are six recipes that only need three ingredients to make a complete dish. There are also ways to modify them, depending on your preferences and what you have laying around. Just note that the three-ingredient “rule” doesn’t include pantry staples like olive oil, salt, and pepper.
If you’re craving mac and cheese, you can make a three-ingredient dish using just pasta, milk, and shredded cheddar cheese. This recipe, which is from the website Tasty, has you boiling the pasta in milk for ten minutes, after which you remove it from the heat and stir in shredded cheddar cheese. As one commenter notes, you do have to be very careful and watch the pot the entire time to keep the milk from burning. You can check out the recipe here.
This recipe from EatGood4Life has you putting your provolone cheese and tomato slices on bread and under the broiler for 6-7 minutes. The cheese gets melty and a little bit crispy, and the tomatoes offer a contrast in taste and texture. Add black pepper on top to round out the taste, and you have an easy, fast meal. As the author notes, this can be made gluten-free if you use a gluten-free bread. You can check out the recipe here.
This recipe from Tasty combines soy sauce and brown sugar to make a teriyaki sauce. To make this dish, you’ll sear chicken thighs in a pan and add the soy sauce and brown sugar, after which you cook it until the sauce has reduced to a thick glaze. You can check out the recipe here.
This recipe from the website The Kitchn combines sliced mushrooms, shallots, gnocchi, olive oil, salt, and pepper, which you’ll then bake on a sheet pan at 400°F for 15-20 minutes. The combination manages to be crisp and tender all at once. As one commenter notes, it’s important to use a large enough sheet pan that you can spread it out. And depending on the brand of gnocchi you use, this can be a vegan dish. You can check out the recipe here.
This recipe from Taste of Home calls for mixing Dijon mustard with bread crumbs, which you then use to coat pork chops. After that, you bake the pork chops at 375°F until they’re done. Based on feedback from commenters, it works to play with the type of mustard and bread crumbs you use. It’s a combination that can also work with chicken tenders. You can check out the recipe here.
The classics are a classic for a reason. In the case of cacio e pepe, all you need to make this dish is pasta, Pecorino Romano cheese, and grated black pepper. This recipe from The Kitchn suggests making a smooth paste from the Pecorino Romano cheese and ground black pepper. After that, toss the paste with the cooked pasta, adding in a small amount of the reserved pasta water. You can check out the recipe here.