Turn to These Easy Weeknight Dinners Any Night of the Week

Our recipe planner makes even a simple Tuesday night dinner something special.

“What’s for dinner?” Is there another question you hear — or ask — on a daily basis that creates as much anxiety? Whether it’s a meal for multiple generations in the family, the soccer team after practice, or dinner for one or two, getting to the answer takes some work. You have to sort through your fridge to figure out what leftovers might lurk behind the mustard; forage through your cabinets for rice, pasta, or grains to form the base of the meal; and figure out how to pull it all together in a way that will suit the tastes of each person at the table. It’s a task that seems impossible, yet we do it night after night.

But you deserve better than that combination of stressful and boring. At Food & Wine, we believe every meal deserves to be full of flavor — and every cook deserves a break. That means relying on easy dinners that come together in minutes, don’t create a mess, lean on jarred and canned pantry ingredients you have on hand. Use this collection of easy weeknight dinners as your guide and even Tuesday night dinner can be something special.

We count on the pantry to pull off pasta dinners to remember. Those jars of capers and olives, cans of tomatoes and chickpeas, and tins of anchovies and sardines are flavor-packed  powerhouses when tossed with noodles, a hunk of Parmesan cheese, and a scattering of pepper.

One of the rules of a successful weeknight dinner is that it cannot create a sink full of dirty pots and pans to be dealt with later. This is when we need sheet-pan dinners to cook everything at once, and curries, pastas, and skillet dinners that simmer together in a single pan.

Some nights, the most important thing about dinner is that it has to be on the table before we give up and eat cheese and crackers. This is when an easy meal ready to eat in 30 minutes is essential to our stomachs and our peace of mind after a day of long meetings and maddening commutes.

Vegetarian options make it easy to skip a trip to the store while creating hearty, satisfying meals calling for frozen and fresh vegetables, and pantry ingredients to do the heavy lifting.

Weeknight dinners don’t have to be fancy or ambitious. But with recipes like these, they can become not just better than a quick sandwich or bowl of pasta tossed with butter — they're a chance to sit with the people you cook for and care about. You can take a moment together to connect, share stories about your day, or talk about anything but what happened earlier and maybe even plan something fun for the weekend. In the rush of daily life, those small moments are the most important.