28-05-2025
A Clever One-Pot Salmon Dinner to Make Again and Again
Recipe development may be an art, but it takes a whole lot of science to get there — especially if you're looking for convenience, too. One-pan recipes are engineering conundrums: How do you use a single vessel to get a mix of ingredients with unlike cooking times on the table simultaneously and delectably? The math, the chemistry and the thermodynamics all have to come together. For the cook, a one-pan recipe should be adaptable, instinctive and consistent. To create one takes brain work, creativity and a dollop of moxie.
Making full use of her background in food science, Yasmin Fahr crunches the numbers and nails the taste, as you can see for yourself in her ingenious one-pot miso-turmeric salmon with coconut rice. She builds the dish from the bottom of the pot up, starting by cooking the coconut rice, and next layering on spinach leaves, which act as a steamer basket to gently cook the fish. Finally, just before serving, a squeeze of lime brightens the whole thing. Once you've mastered the recipe's structure you can retool it however you want, swapping in chard, kale or lettuce for the spinach and other fish or tofu for the salmon. It's a marvel of engineering, one you can enjoy for dinner this very night.
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Vegetable yakisoba: More one-pot brilliance can be found in Kay Chun's vegetable-packed Japanese noodle stir-fry, which has a glossy Worcestershire-ketchup-oyster sauce that's tangy-sweet and deeply complex.
Easy chicken tacos: Boldly seasoned with hot sauce, onion powder and lime, boneless, skinless chicken thighs cook quickly and succulently in this 30-minute recipe by Kristina Felix. Piled into warm tortillas along with minced onion, cilantro and guacamole, this chicken makes for a weeknight recipe with panache for miles.
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