What do you think of when you need dinner on the table fast? For many of us, the temptation is to open a meal delivery app and let someone else do the work. I’ve been there, tapping away in a moment of fatigue or indecision, waiting for a driver to appear at my door 45 minutes later with a lukewarm parcel. If I’m honest, I rarely enjoy those meals. They tend to arrive in less-than-stellar condition, and I often end up wishing I’d simply raided the veggie crisper for a quick stir fry.
That’s the irony of convenience: the thing that promises to save us time doesn’t always deliver on satisfaction.
Lately, I’ve been revisiting Jenny Linford’s The Missing Ingredient: The Curious Role of Time in Food and Flavour. I first read it years ago while studying for my Bachelor degree in Writing and Publishing, and recently decided to buy another copy. Linford’s book is structured around the ways time shapes cooking, moving from seconds and minutes through to weeks, months, and even years.
It’s a fascinating reminder that food is more than a task to get through; it’s an experience that unfolds through time. While I’m usually the sort of reader who dips in and out of chapters depending on mood, this book demands something more deliberate. After all, if Jenny Linford spent years researching and writing it, the least I can do is give her words my undivided attention.
Her reflections got me thinking about the fetishisation of quick meals. Cookbook covers promising 15 minute meals sell well for a reason. We crave instant meals, but the microwave—which was supposed to revolutionise home cooking—never truly caught on as anything other than a reheating tool.
Most of us own one. Most of us use it. But not many of us actually cook with it. Secondhand shops are littered with unsold microwave cookbooks, relics of an era when people believed this magical metal box might be the future of food.
The truth is, microwaves are better at warming than transforming. Try cooking an egg and you’ll know the pain of scraping exploded yolk off the ceiling. Vegetables emerge limp. Anything meant to be crispy never quite gets there. And if you microwave a cup of tea – well, let’s just say we might not be compatible as friends.
Lasagne is one of those all-day projects that leaves me too weary to actually want to eat it. After hours of layering sauces and pasta sheets, I’ve tasted it at so many stages that by the time it’s ready, I’d rather just nibble on cheese and crackers. Thankfully, lasagne freezes beautifully, so the effort always pays off later and that’s another small lesson in the role of time.
On the other end of the spectrum is seafood. Most fish and shellfish cook in less time than it takes to boil pasta. A fillet of salmon or a scatter of pan-seared prawns served with something green and a squeeze of lemon, feels both indulgent and efficient.
When time is short, your best weapon is a well-stocked pantry. A few clever ingredients can turn scraps into supper in minutes:
Tinned beans: A quick way to add fibre, protein, and heft to soups, salads, and stews.
Coconut milk or cream: Choose brands with minimal additives, preferably just coconut and water, with perhaps a little emulsifier. It adds richness to curries and broths in seconds.
Cartons of stock: Vegetable or chicken stock is invaluable for soups, sauces, and braises.
Tinned tomatoes or passata: The backbone of countless pasta sauces, shakshukas, and braises.
Pre-cooked rice or grains: Of course you can cook and freeze your own, but the convenience of a sachet of brown rice or quinoa is hard to beat on a weary weeknight.
These meals aren’t complicated and they’re infinitely more rewarding than a soggy delivery bag.
Cooking quickly doesn’t have to mean cooking badly. It’s about finding the balance between time, flavour, and practicality. Sometimes that means embracing a shortcut; other times, it means investing time now to reap rewards later.
When I think about it, the real ‘missing ingredient’ in most weeknight dinners isn’t time itself, it’s intention. With a little planning, a stocked pantry, and a willingness to improvise, dinner can be both swift and satisfying. And perhaps, with the right mindset, even a humble weeknight meal can remind us that food is not just about filling our stomachs. It’s also about how we choose to spend our minutes—choices that, in turn, shape how we spend our days.
From microwaved eggs exploding on the ceiling to lasagne that takes all day and leaves me too tired to eat it… I’ve been rethinking how we cook when we’re in a hurry. Spoiler: flavour doesn’t have to be sacrificed.
I buy sausages freely without thought for when or how they'll come into play. This recipe uses a couple of raw/uncured chorizo that had been hanging around in my freezer for a few months without purpose.
Some days cooking feels like a slog and you need a little something extra to make your meal sing. The good news is you don’t need to spend hours in the kitchen - or restaurant-grade equipment - to create that sense of “oof, that’s special.”