15 Minute Meals: Truly Quick Recipes that Don’t Taste like Shortcuts - Hardcover

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Ali Rosen is the Emmy, IACP and James Beard Award nominated host of Potluck with Ali Rosen on NYC Life and the author of the cookbooks Bring It! and the Amazon Editor’s Pick Modern Freezer Meals.

Ali has also appeared numerous times on The Today Show and The Dr. Oz Show  as well as on Home & Family, NPR’s All Things Considered, Harry, Food Network, Inside Edition and more. She has been featured in Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey Magazine and Food & Wine and has contributed to The Washington Post, Bon Appetit, New York Magazine, People, Epicurious, Refinery29, Manhattan Family Magazine and Fodors.

Ali was named as one of Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 for Food & Drink (when she could still claim being under 30). Potluck with Ali Rosen has been nominated for two Emmys and two IACP awards. Her writing was nominated for a James Beard Award in 2020. Thrillist said she had “one of the coolest jobs in food.”

She is originally from Charleston, SC, and now lives in New York with her husband Daniel, and three children Guy, Rae and Joy. If she’s not at home cooking or writing you can usually find her at the Union Square Greenmarket.

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How to Stick to Fifteen Minutes

Let me just get this out of the way: I love caramelized onions. My sister-in-law once joked that I should write a cookbook called First Start by Sautéing Some Onions. So I am not delusional when it comes to the flavors that can develop from cooking something a long time. Slow roasted meats, simmering stocks, and, yes, deeply caramelized onions are all very dear to me.

But some days just do not have enough time for that—and that is A-okay. Quick meals do not mean you have to inevitably compromise on flavor; they just mean you can’t get some flavors. And since we don’t need every flavor every day, there’s no downside to having many of your meals take only fifteen minutes. Yes, caramelized onions are delightful, but does it beat fresh summer corn cooked for two minutes on a grill? Of course not. It’s different. But there’s no shame in handling different ingredients differently.

Because the truth of the matter is that sometimes a fifteen-minute recipe is the only thing stopping us from eating ice cream for dinner again. Or serving a hodgepodge of leftovers and stray items on a plate as dinner. The thought of spending thirty minutes to get a cohesive meal on the table can feel daunting. Thirty minutes can be a long time. Ten minutes of prep, but then thirty minutes in the oven, can feel like an impossible hurdle to leap. And there has to be an alternative that doesn’t come from a package.

So, instead of another dinner for my kids of grapes, carrot sticks, and salami (yes, I’ve done that), I’ve started trying to find where I can trim away the fat of time. What ingredients can add enough flavor to compensate for speedier cooking? What produce chars quickly? What state can my proteins be in so that they are ready without a long cook time? And once you get into that mindset, the possibilities are endless.

The mainstays I relied on have changed. No-prep vegetables like asparagus and snow peas have overshadowed others. Ground meats and thinner cuts of fish have become the default proteins. High-impact ingredients that used to require special sourcing are now readily available to add flavor when time is short. And shortcut products like minute rice, frozen vegetables, and canned ingredients have skyrocketed in quality, making them essentials in our arsenals.

Quick recipes can thrive without tasting like a compromise. You just have to know where you can get flavor quickly. And 15-Minute Meals will be your guide.