Customer Reviews

Glorious One-Pot Meals: A Revolutionary New Quick and Healthy Approach to Dutch-Oven Cooking

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I purchased this cookbook when I was given a dutch oven for Christmas. I was excited about the gift, but wanted to learn more about how to use it. The recipes in this book have left me underwhelmed thus far (I've only had it about a month, but I've made two to three dinners from this book a week, so it's getting good use). Some are definitely yummy (Chicken Satay stands out as my favorite), but some just didn't seem to have as much flavor as I was hoping for. Regardless, this cookbook is a must-have for learning how to cook in a dutch oven. I've come up with my own recipes and ingredients, but cooked them as advised and explained in this book and everything comes out wonderful!!! I can't believe how quick and easy it is to get dinner on the table now!

Another note - most recipes call for baking in a 450 degree oven, but my dutch oven (Lodge Color Enameled Cast-Iron 6-Quart Dutch Oven, Island Spice) indicated that it shouldn't be used above 400 degrees. I kept the oven at 400 and kept a close eye to see if I would need to modify the time, but didn't - everything still cooked up perfectly and in the noted time.

I have been enjoying the original book for a few years now and just had to get the updated version as soon as I heard it was coming out. I am eager to try the many new recipes available. We fixed the Amaranth Chili the day I got the book and it was fabulous. I substituted butternut squash for the zucchini and used venison instead of beef. We are hunters and I have found that elk and venison work great with this cooking method.
I love the ease of preparation and the flexibility in the recipes. It is nice to put together dinner in just a few minutes, clean up after prep in just a few more and then have about 30 minutes to relax before dinner is ready. I appreciate that the recipes all use healthy foods and not cans of "cream of something" soup or other highly processed ingredients. I have found that many of the recipes (especially those with grains included) serve my husband and me for two nights. The enameled cast-iron dutch oven is a breeze to clean - it is like teflon if you spray it first as recommended.
After hearing Elizabeth speak at one of her book signing parties, I am also eager to branch out from the published recipes and try some one-pot versions of our old time favorite foods. This really is fool-proof cooking if you follow just a few basic guidlines - the right pot at the right temperature for the right amount of time.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to eat delicious, healthy meals with little effort.

I am not a big cook and if it takes longer than 20 minutes from grocery store to the oven, I am no longer interested in making the dish - I also hate, hate washing lots of dishes.

This book is the perfect solution for someone like me. I have had this book for a few weeks now and I managed to make most of the vegetarian recipes and let me tell you - this is a miracle book.

The ingredients are easy to find - and the preparation time is minimal and ALL of it can be done in one pot - period.

The recipes are excellent and easy to make - they taste great..

I also appreciated the breakdown of the calories and fat content for each (watch out for some of the fat contents - they can be a little high).

The one thing that was missing were the pictures of the meals. I would have liked to see what the finished product looked like. Nonetheless, this is a wonderful, wonderful book.

One suggestion, I did try making these recipes in a regular glass casserole and the recipes actually do taste much better in a dutch oven. The dutch oven is way more expensive, but is worth it You will send up getting all your money back on the savings you will be making eating in instead of out.

I really wanted to like this concept and this book. I have now tried 3 recipes (the African chicken stew, the pasta puttanesca, and the chicken satay - that is supposed to be "amazing").

Perhaps for the cook who is moving beyond "hamburger helper" this might be a decent book but for an experienced cook, nothing about this technique works. Everything is soggy and overcooked. And yes - I bought the right sized pots, followed the instructions EXACTLY and recalibrated my oven to provide the perfect temperature and allowed my nose to guide me and it still turned out pretty darn mediocre and mostly in the trash. For the Chicken Satay - the chicken was tough and the snow peas were so overdone that they were limp, for the African Chicken Stew, the flavor was good, but the rice was soggy and the sweet potatoes were too, and the pasta puttanesca was the most disappointing - the shrimp and pasta were overdone and soggy and the broccoli was way too overcooked. This is a very disappointing cooking technique. I like my new La crueset pot however.

I want to start out by saying that I am a mediocre cook at best. I am the type that needs to follow a recipe word for word, and even then my meals rarely turn out fantastic.

Not with this book! I've had it for over a month now, and now well over half of my meals are made using it. Most recipes are really good. I say most, because some are really quite bland, but even then it was no worse than many of my former 'quick meals' I use to make. My former baked chicken, rice, and a veggie is right on par with the frozen chicken meal she has, and it doesn't get any worse than that!

What I really love about this cookbook:

- Everything is healthy
- You can cook with frozen vegetables and meats
- It's easy to add a variety of foods you wouldn't normally use
- Vegetables turn out crisp, meats turn out tender
- Rice used in recipes turns out PERFECT and soooo tasty
- Foods don't mix flavors, but end up complimenting each other very very well.
- My Husband now eats second helpings of vegetables. Sometimes he even cleans out the pot.

Notes:

- some of your food may get a little browned, especially rice. I don't mind it, but I know some people wouldn't like that. If you don't like it, adjust your time.

- You don't need to double up your recipes to use the 5qt. Just take a few minutes off the total cooking time. I cook my meals 3-5 minutes less than she suggests, depending on the ingredients. You'll get a feel for it during your first few attempts.

- Most recipes could use more salt. Usually when she says to sprinkle salt and pepper, I end up using about a tablespoon.

- Many of the recipes call for half of a certain vegetable. Half a pepper, half a zucchini... If its only one vegetable like that in a recipe, I generally put the whole thing in if I know I'm not planning to use it in the future. Better than letting it rot in my fridge, and it seems to have no effect on the quality of the meal.

My Favorite Recipes

- Glorious Macaroni and Cheese (make sure to use a strong flavored cheese)
- Fiesta Steak (sooo flavorful!)
- Honey and Spice Pork (can be a little overpowering for some people)
- Pacific Island Seafood (My husband raved about this one)
- Ed's New England Fish Chowder (DON'T add extra salt)
- Dill Salmon (Used fresh salmon, turned out spectacular)
- Rosemary Chicken (I use more rosemary than recommended)


All in all, this book has saved me not only time, but stopped us from eating out as much which of course saves us money. It's healthy, and it really doesn't hurt that I'm not buying Hamburger Helpless anymore! I actually get excited when I start my grocery list, because I can actually cook these meals. I know that my husband and I are eating so much better now than we were before.

I got this book from the library and have tried three of the recipes so far, the Bahamian Chicken, Chicken Cacciatore, and Chicken Satay. I enjoyed them all and I'm going to order a copy for myself. I can't say I agree with those who find the dishes under-seasoned. The seasoning is what I've enjoyed the most. The Cacciatore sauce was delicious. I do agree that the vegetables are overcooked. I don't see how they could not be with this method. I altered the process a little when I tried the third recipe by putting the chicken and seasoning in the oven for 25 minutes, then adding the vegetables to the pot for the last 20 minutes. That helped quite a bit but the vegetables were still over-cooked for my taste. Next time I'll try putting the vegetables in 15 minutes before the dish is done and just keep experimenting with the time and vegetables until I learn how to get them done to our taste.

Most of the flavor comes from the spices and other flavoring ingredients that went in the pot with the chicken (and not from vegetables stewing down to near mush) so I don't think the taste of the sauce was affected by putting the vegetables in later. By the way, I didn't have cabbage on hand to add to the Satay. Cabbage, of course, would have benefited from a longer cooking time.

The bifurcated cooking time may sound like more work, but it shortened the total time because I was able to cut the vegetables (the most time-consuming part of the prep) during part of the 45 minute cooking time. After all, the chopping has to be done whether the veggies go in at the beginning or later, adding them later just made sense.

I absolutely love this method of cooking: it is indeed fast, easy, and delicious. I saw one review was from guy who tried it and didn't like the results---but then he was using a pot three times as large as the 2-quart Dutch oven she calls for. Not a fair test.

Her recipes are too bland for my taste, but I know how to add spices and seasonings: not a problem. Her recipes do show you how to build a pair of meals in the pot, and once you have the idea, it's extremely easy to improvise, and I have never had a bad result. At first I would sometimes end up with too much liquid in the pot, but it was tasty liquid and I just took the first bowl as a stew, which took care of the extra liquid. I quickly learned by experience how much liquid to add, though occasionally a vegetable will throw me a curve: bok choy seems to be *made* out of water, for example.

The idea is simple: measure in the starch and the protein, fill the rest of the pot with vegetables, pour over (say) 2 Tbsp of vinaigrette and 2 Tbsp of wine, cover, and cook for 45 minutes in 450ºF oven---more or less the opposite of slow-cooker cooking. The method encourages and rewards experimentation. One oddity: her recipes seem always to call for 4 servings of rice for two meals. I don't like rice that much, so I go with 2 servings for 2 meals: 1/2 cup converted rice for a 2-quart pot is just right for 2 meals.

A friend pointed out that this method is an indoor version of the firepit cooking found in various cultures: a pit dug into coals, the food placed in layers in the pit, then covered with fronds and earth until the heat cooks the food. The hot oven functions as the fire, the covered pot as the pit, and the food cooks quickly.

I also got a 3.5-quart pot to try larger meals, and that seems to work well and easily makes 3-4 meals (4 for us). I wouldn't try a larger pot, and the 2-qt pot works quite well for daily cooking.

She recommends Le Creuset, but I think the Staub 2.24 Quart Round Cocotte, Cherry (available in many colors) is of better design and manufacture and I *know* that the Staub is $40 cheaper and comes with a metal handle (instead of asking for another $10 to get a handle suitable for high temperatures, which is what Le Creuset does).

But I actually found the Texsport Pre-Seasoned Cast Iron Dutch Oven without Legs (Gray, 2 Quart), though not enameled, works extremely well and is only $25. It's easy to keep it seasoned (it's preseasoned) and I've had no trouble doing one-pot meals with tomatoes and vinegar: I assume the short cooking time (45 minutes) makes the difference---I don't think I'd want to simmer something like that for hours.

Recently I've been using the Emile Henry Flame Top 4.2-Quart Round Oven, Red pot, which I like a lot. To "season" this pot before first use, you simmer some milk in it. Keep the heat low and stir, so the milk does not stick to the bottom and burn.

The biggest benefit of this method for me is not so much that it's easy and fast and delicious with only one pot to clean---though all that is true---but rather that I now find it easy to include more vegetables in my meal, much more than I previously ate.

I have been using the first edition of this cookbook for the past two years and I am excited to have even more recipes to try. Unlike crockpot cookbooks that advocate the use of lots of canned soups and a few root vegetables, this cookbook uses herbs and simple sauces for healthy flavor, any type of vegetable you can imagine and interesting carbs (amaranth and quinoa in addition to rice and pastas). I love the fact that I don't have to plan a meal hours in advance - meat and vegetables can go in frozen or fresh and they all cook at the same time. My family loves the Adobo Pork and Chicken Satay. Plus there's only one pot to clean!

This book is not about the classic slow dutch oven cooking - it is about a "new and different way of cooking called infusion cooking". All recipes are based on only two servings using a 2 qt dutch oven, a 450 degree oven and only 45 minutes of cooking time. Not much time for braising or flavor development there! If you are looking for real dutch oven recipes, best look elsewhere - I wish I had.

I've tried many techniques/cookbooks in my search for truly healthy, delicious meals that don't dirty up a lot of dishes, involve tons of ingredients, or take forever to prepare. I've tried both the Martha Stewart Quick Cook and What's For Dinner recipes, plus an assortment from books by Robin Miller, Rachael Ray, and the inventors of Dream Dinners. Although I had some success with all of these, I have to say that Elizabeth Yarnell's one-pot infusion method is my favorite. It's fast, it's easy, it requires little clean-up, and the meals taste really good without being the same old, same old mix of vegetables, meats, and grains.

A couple of general tips/comments: you don't need to rush out (like I did) and buy a six or seven quart dutch oven. First, decide how many people will eat the meals you prepare and whether or not you want leftovers. If you're cooking for two, you only need a two-ounce dutch oven. If you plan to serve four (and I think most of us fall into this category), you can use a four ounce pot.

Second, although Yarnell ends each recipe with a reminder that you can tell the cooking time by waiting three minutes after you first smell the aroma of a fully cooked meal, this is actually pretty difficult to get right. I often smell the meal way before it needs just three minutes more. What's worked for me is simple trial and error. Sometimes the meal takes 45 minutes (less than the recommended time for a pot my size and the amount of portions I'm cooking), and sometimes just 35. It could be that my oven runs hot, and Yarnell does advise testing the temperature of your oven before cooking. But I'm lazy, and I don't feel like doing that. So I pull out the meal when I think it's done, inspect it, and put it back in the oven if I need to. Luckily, none of the recipes are for souffles, so this works fine.

Finally, once you've made a few meals, you can mimic the layering technique but experiment with different ingredients. That's one great thing about this method: if you don't like an ingredient in a particular recipe, you can change it, and still end up with a good dish.

So far, I've cooked Paste Tricole (a healthy but a bit bland mix of pasta, meat, and spinach); Chicken Marbella (a wonderfully tasty and exotic mix of unexpected ingredients like prunes, olives, and potatoes); Mediterranean Steak (YUM! I did use green beans instead of broccoli, and it worked out great); California Chicken (who knew you could bake avocados and they'd add such depth to the meal?); and Beef with Sherried Mushroom Sauce (you can change around a lot of the ingredients and still end up with a lovely dish reminiscent of a hearty beef stew or stroganoff). In each case, the prep and clean-up took about 15 minutes each, max.

This book is definitely a keeper for me. I can't wait to try more recipes and come up with my own.

Grade: A