Maybe you know the white bean bake, AKA pizza beans.

Or the black bean bake (enchilada beans).

Or the green chile bean bake (queso beans).

Or the French onion beans or harissa beans from I Dream of Dinner.

Behind all these recipes is a basic structure: saucy beans topped with melty, slouched, bubbling cheese. They all require only a skillet, flavorful sauce, cooked beans, cheese, and high heat. (Is it a casserole? Perhaps.) But that simple framework can create something rich and cozy without much planning or cleanup.

This flexibility is why the bean bake can take so many forms. Any cooked bean works. Any flavorful sauce that’s not too thick works. Any melting cheese works.

Here’s how to make a bean bake with whatever you have:

1. Heat the broiler to high. Start with an oven-safe skillet and sizzle something flavorful in fat. Olive oil, butter, or a mix; onion, garlic, scallions, chiles, ground spices, or tomato paste — anything that smells good when it hits heat. Cook it until softened and it smells good.

2. Add something saucy, 1 to 2 cups. That might be crushed or cherry tomatoes, salsa, cream, stock, pesto, jarred marinara, or even water loosened with tomato paste or miso. Simmer until it’s thicker than broth but thinner than jarred pasta sauce.

3. Stir in any kind of cooked beans, about 3 cups. Stir them until warmed through. Feel free to add another element too, like a vegetable and simmer it until cooked through. If the mixture looks tight, add a splash of water or stock; it should look slightly too saucy before it goes under the broiler and loose enough to pool for bread, pasta, tortilla chips, or grains.

4. Top with cheese. Tear or grate something that melts — mozzarella, Monterey jack, Cheddar, Gruyère — and add a saltier accent like feta or Parmesan if you like. Use 4 to 6 ounces. If you find that the cheese is sinking into the sauce, pause: The sauce is too thin. Simmer a bit more before adding the rest of the cheese.

5. Finish under the broiler until the sauce is bubbling and the cheese is gooey and browned in spots. If you like, top the skillet with something fresh: a squeeze of lemon, herbs, a little arugula salad.

10 bean bakes to get you started

1. Scallions + gochujang + kimchi + water + navy beans + mozzarella

2. The last of the tomato soup + white beans + cheddar

3. The last of the chili + more beans + Mexican cheese blend

4. Butter + thyme + lots of onions, caramelized + chicken stock + white beans + Gruyere

5. Poblano peppers + jarred salsa + pinto beans + pepper jack

6. Preserved lemon + cream + baby spinach + white beans + Parmesan

7. Pesto + beans + frozen broccoli + mozzarella + goat cheese

8. Sage + onion + canned pumpkin + stock + beans + ricotta + Parm

9. Cubed sweet potato + chipotles in adobo + water + pinto beans + jack cheese

10. Today’s recipe: Shallot + tomato paste + cherry tomatoes + honey + butter beans + feta + herbs

Honeyed feta bean bake

Serves 4

• 1 shallot

• A soft-stem herb (parsley, dill, or cilantro)

• Extra-virgin olive oil

• 3 tablespoons tomato paste

• 2 pints cherry or other small tomatoes

• 1 tablespoon honey, plus more for drizzling

• Crushed red pepper

• Salt

• 2 (15-ounce) cans white beans

• 4 to 6 ounces feta

• ½ lemon

• Crusty bread, rice, or small pasta, for serving

1. Set a rack in the upper third of the oven, then set the broiler to high. Coarsely chop 1 shallot and ¼ cup soft-stem herbs.

2. In a large ovenproof skillet, heat 2 tablespoons olive oil, 3 tablespoons tomato paste, and the shallot over medium-high. Stir until a shade darker, 3 to 5 minutes. Add 1 cup water, 2 pints tomatoes, half the chopped herbs, 1 tablespoon honey, and ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper. Season with a pinch of salt and cook, stirring and smashing the tomatoes occasionally, until about half the tomatoes have burst, 8 to 10 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, drain and rinse 2 cans of white beans. Add the beans to the tomatoes and simmer until warmed, 2 to 4 minutes. Taste for salt and crushed red pepper. If the mixture is dry, add ¼ cup more water; you want it slightly too saucy since more liquid will evaporate in the oven.

4. Thinly slice 4 to 6 ounces feta and scatter on top of the bean mixture. Drizzle with oil, then broil until the feta is golden in spots and the juices are bubbling, 4 to 6 minutes.

5. Top with a squeeze of ½ lemon, the remaining herbs, more crushed red pepper, and honey. Serve immediately, with crusty bread, rice, or pasta for soaking up the sauce.

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Honeyed Feta Bean Bake Ali Slagle's 40 Ingredients Forever

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FAMILY TREE (what this recipe is related to)

• The bean bakes above

• Gigantes plaki

• Sheet-pan feta with chickpeas & tomatoes

Recipe testing by Anna Billingskog

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1. Making berry jam

2. Anomia (the game not the condition)

3. Sardines on buttered toast

4. Sardines in general

See above, here, and here

5. Supported fish

6. S’mores with Tates instead of graham crackers

7. Current Rothko

8. When the avocado pit goes plop

9. Baby blue + maroon

10. This face

(coming soon 😏)

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Welcome to Dinner Tetris, an advice column here at 40 Ingredients Forever where a reader shares the ingredients they always have on hand and I dream up three dinners using those ingredients. If you’d like your pantries Tetris-ed into dinner, head here.

’s Tetris is here. ’s Tetris is here. A high-protein, high-fiber Tetris for subscriber Shayna is here.

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The cook: Nikkitha (she/her)

Occupation: is an Indian-American writer living in London. She is the author of the dark comic novel Ghost Chilli, and writes about astrology, tarot and culture in her newsletter The Fool Story.

Feeding: 1

Forever ingredients:

• Proteins: Pecorino cheese, Cheddar cheese, eggs, ground meat (beef/pork/turkey), boneless chicken thighs, canned beans (cannelini or chickpeas), peanut butter, miso, frozen Chinese dumplings

• Starches: dried pasta, bread, rice (jasmine), oats, flour

• Produce: garlic, onions, spinach or kale or salad greens, fresh chillies (jalapeños), lemon or lime, avocados, herbs (basil/cilantro/dill)

• Flavorings: butter, Everything Bagel seasoning, chili crisp, capers, oat milk or whole milk, mayonnaise, olive oil, mirin, rice vinegar, soy sauce, coffee, canned coconut milk, canned tomatoes, dashi powder, nori sheets, turmeric, paprika, maple syrup, preserved lemons

Three Dinners Using Nikkitha’s Ingredients

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I tried counting how many meatball recipes I’ve developed, and then I lost count. Or rather, I got so embarrassed I stopped counting. That’s because there are many ways to play ball: change how you cook them, what you eat them with, and what seems to be my preference, what you can put in them.

Making a meatball with a panade (a combination of starch, like breadcrumbs, and liquid, like milk) is meant to retain moisture for tenderness. It works unless it doesn’t. If the ratio’s off, the meatballs will end up dense, dull, or both. And besides, you don’t have to do all that, as meatballs throughout the Middle East and Asia show.

There are also plenty of other ways to introduce moisture, including sauces, dairy, and juicy vegetables. The texture will be meatier, like a burger patty, but the flavor will be crisper, clearer, undiluted by as much starch and fat.

Today’s meatballs have a whopping 1 1/2 cups of chopped mint, an idea so wild I never would’ve tried it if the food writer Tammie Teclemariam hadn’t first. Mint can be intense, and so much of it seems unwise, but as the mint steams in the meatballs, it lets off a tingly cooling quality that’s pretty cool with the richness of ground meat (lamb and beef both work).

And if that’s not your ball game, here are seven other recipes that all roll with much more than breadcrumbs.

Sesame-feta meatballs with burst tomatoes

Filled with: Feta brine & shallot

Get the recipe

Mostly greens meatballs

Filled with: Kale, scallions, and parsley

Get the recipe

Spicy tahini meatballs | Thai-style meatballs

Filled with: tahini & hot sauce | cilantro, ginger & chile

Get the tahini recipe

Get the Thai-style recipe

Turkey-ricotta meatballs

Filled with: Ricotta

Get the recipe

Spinach meatballs

Filled with: frozen spinach

Get the recipe

Okay, fine, a classic Italian meatball

Filled with: breadcrumbs, water, egg & herbs (in the ideal ratio)

Get the recipe

Mint meatballs with asparagus & orzo

Read more

40 Ingredients Forever is devoted to recipes that are abundant in flavor and joy yet streamlined in process and shopping—because they’ll all be made using my 40 go-to ingredients.

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Anna Billingskog is a supremely talented food stylist and also this newsletter’s recipe tester.* There are many reasons I admire her but one is how much joy she finds in her work. It’s hard not to fall in love with food when you’re seeing it through her eyes.

When I asked her if I could share her testing notes about today’s recipe — and if she wanted me to include any professional links — she asked only to include this photo of her:

Her tasting notes on this particular recipe so vividly captured everything I was going for, so she’s going to explain today’s recipe. I, literally, couldn’t have said it better myself.

*A recipe tester is quality control. (Not every recipe you find is tested, even when it is published in a cookbook.) It is someone who cooks a recipe exactly as it is written without making any assumptions about how they think the process should go. They call out any moments they’re confused, or moments where timing didn’t work. And then they eat the food. Their feedback relates both to how to make the process more fluid and how to make the dish more delicious.

This is a super important step in a recipe’s life because it takes the recipe for a spin with different ingredients, cooking equipment, and human. And ultimately, the recipe has to work for someone else to be successful, even if it worked for me.

I adore testing other people’s recipes because it feels like living in someone else’s recipe — noticing this new world and writing down everything I see.

Heydoh soy sauce giveaway

’s Heydoh soy sauce is savory but not too salty, a little sweet but not cloying like balsamic. I’d love for you to try a sip, or a shot, and then use it with abandon — it makes cooking easier because it carries so much flavor on its own.

Enter to win two bottles of it! Deadline is 6/12.

Enter here

Sour-spicy tomato noodle salad

Serves 4

• Salt

• 12 ounces spaghetti

• ¼ cup less-sodium soy sauce

• 2 tablespoons Sherry vinegar

• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

• 1 tablespoon crushed red pepper

• 1 garlic clove

• 2 pints cherry tomatoes

• 4 scallions

1. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add 12 ounces spaghetti, and cook until just past al dente. Drain and rinse the noodles under cold water until cool to the touch.

2. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, stir together ¼ cup soy sauce, 2 tablespoons vinegar, 2 tablespoons oil, and 1 tablespoon crushed red pepper. Finely grate or chop 1 garlic clove and add to the bowl. Halve 2 pints cherry tomatoes and add to the bowl. Thinly slice 4 scallions; don’t add to the bowl just yet.

3. Add the noodles to the dressing. Toss to coat. Top with the scallions. Eat right away or let it sit for up to 2 hours (the noodles will soak up the dressing, delightfully).

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Sour Spicy Tomato Noodle Salad Ali Slagle's 40 Ingredients Forever

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Add more vegetables

Top servings with kimchi, sliced cucumbers, avocado, corn kernels.

Add protein

Poach boneless chicken breasts in the boiling water until cooked through, about 10 minutes, before cooking the noodles. Or soft-boil eggs in the water before cooking the noodles. Marinate cubed extra-firm tofu to the bowl of tomatoes. Add hot-smoked salmon or trout, or a tin of sardines or mackerel. Top servings with sesame seeds or furikake.

Family tree (what this recipe is inspired by)

This recipe is inspired by Woks of Life’s incredible Sour Spicy Cold Noodles; the tomatoes add another source of sourness and replace the juiciness of the cucumbers.

Recipe testing: Anna Billingskog

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Welcome to Dinner Tetris, an advice column here at 40 Ingredients Forever where a reader shares the ingredients they always have on hand and I dream up three dinners using those ingredients. If you’d like your pantries Tetris-ed into dinner, head here.

’s Tetris is here. ’s Tetris is here. A high-protein, high-fiber Tetris for subscriber Shayna is here.

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The cook: Hannah (she/her)

Occupation: Therapist

Residing in: Baltimore City

Feeding: 3 + our beautiful friends when we host

Dietary Restrictions: None

Notes: It's me, my spouse, and our housemate. We love to host friends for dinner and we are lovers of a simple, homemade meal. I am a therapist, but my spouse is a cheesemonger (hence many cheeses all the time!) and my housemate works for farmers markets on the weekends (hence the seasonal produce!) so we have access to a lot of good, quality ingredients that can help make cooking fun.

However, we all have different schedules and I often work until 7/8pm, which means that something at the intersection of tasty, simple (thank you for your last cookbook), and/or make-ahead/freezer friendly is really magical for us. Or some bases that can be made into a few different iterations (this is a skill I've learned from your substack!). Thank you for considering us for tetris!!

Forever ingredients:

• Proteins: yogurt, chicken thighs, eggs, many kinds of cheese always

• Starches: dried beans (Rancho Gordo bean club, baby!!), rice, tortillas, fresh bread (I made a focaccia loaf roughly once a week), dried pasta, panko

• Vegetables: seasonally varies, but these days it’s winter/long shelf life veg like broccoli, brussels sprouts, carrots, sweet/yukon potatoes, kale, onions

• Fruits/flavorings: lemons and limes, tomato paste, tahini, soy sauce, mayo, olive oil, garlic, dijon, salted butter, salt/pepper, better than bouillon

Three Make-Ahead Meals Using Hannah’s Ingredients

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40 Ingredients Forever is devoted to recipes that are abundant in flavor and joy yet streamlined in process and shopping—because they’ll all be made using my 40 go-to ingredients.

My recipe development* for peak summer recipes started this week, with off-peak summer produce. Working with soft watermelon and greige peaches ensures the recipes work no matter the produce, but boy does it make me excited for summer’s juicy, drippy, colorful cooking. Here’s what I can’t wait to make first. Share your bucket list in the comments below?

*Have no idea what recipe development is? That’s totally understandable. I made a little explainer on the jungle of Instagram.

1. Fresh Tomato and Yogurt Dip

A two-ingredient dip of creamy and electric.

2. Ceviche

Chips for dinner.

3. This tomato pasta

Where the tomatoes are cooked just barely, only by the heat of the pasta.

4. Salad of whatever

When the produce is here, just get out of the way. All the fruits and vegetables need is some lemon juice, oil, and salt to become a salad. (If your produce is more bitter than you’d want it, add a bit of sugar or honey.)

5. Rhubarb galette

Made it last night for a Survivor finale watch party ✔️

6. A California sandwich

In addition to all the crunchy vegetables, I feel like the sandwich needs a significant creamy element (like avocado or hummus or cream cheese or goat cheese) and something pickled (like pepperoncinis or kimchi). And sprouts.

7. Grilled wings

Crackly, crisp, golden, and not at all greasy.

8. Wobbly fish with raw asparagus

Crunchy, spicy, juicy, summer.

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40 Ingredients Forever is devoted to recipes that are abundant in flavor and joy yet streamlined in process and shopping—because they’ll all be made using my 40 go-to ingredients.

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When I was making this recipe, I was thinking about Lily, a new subscriber who wrote to say that she’s a new college grad “with my first adult money and I want to put it towards making good meals for myself!”

Huge heart emoji.

She continued: “I can cook but I’m not always super confident in my abilities and I tend to flounder when I don’t have a recipe” and “I’m hoping to learn how to better utilize ingredients multiple times and gain confidence in the kitchen!”

I was touched that she trusted me to help her in the kitchen. I also, truthfully, felt the pressure. I want your first dollars, first time using an ingredient, and first time feeding yourself to feel delightful, doable, worth it so that Lily (and everyone) cooks forever and ever.

This recipe is for her but also for anyone who needs something solid to cling to. It does not have any bells and whistles. There isn’t even lemon.

It takes 20 minutes, a pot and pan, and five ingredients (not including oil and salt). But what comes of it is food cooked well: salmon with tender meat and shattery-crisp skin; bright-green asparagus with frilly singed buds; savory, creamy, brothy beans.

Each element is a staple you can repeat for a lifetime. But together, they’re a meal. You’re getting a protein, starch, and veg, but more importantly, they hit many notes: savory (salmon and beans) and fresh (asparagus and dill); crisp (salmon skin and asparagus) and soft (beans and salmon).

They are enough—and a good place to start.

Crispy salmon, brothy beans & asparagus

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40 ingredients, infinite dinners.

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Eating salmon and avocado in one meal feels so luxurious to me. Silky, plush, I’m rich! What’s so wonderful about the pair is that they share a buttery-soft texture, but one tastes like the sea and the other the earth.

Here, they meet up in a rice bowl along with a bracing, punchy vinaigrette loaded with raw ginger and scallions. Feel free to add other vegetables to the bowl, such as raw, thinly sliced cucumbers or radishes, or steamed or blanched asparagus or snap peas.

This is one of the recipes I developed for Primavera Avocados, which ships the best avocados to you. A little slice of California showing up at your doorstep? Talk about luxury.

More avocado recipes

Avocado sesame flatbreads

Toast a flatbread, pita, or naan in a dry skillet until crisp and browned. Top with sliced avocado. Zest and juice some lemon over top, then drizzle with tahini. Sprinkle with sesame seeds, sumac or crushed red pepper, and flaky salt.

Chicken with avocado salsa verde

A bright and creamy sauce that can go on chicken, beans, fish, salad greens, and more.

Get the recipe

Avocado egg salad

Trade mayo for avocado for a greener, but just as creamy, egg salad.

Get the recipe

Avocado wedges with peanut-nori crunch

A salty, crunchy, creamy snack/appetizer.

Get the recipe

Avocado citrus salad

This salad of sweet, spicy, creamy, and juicy delights was inspired by one from Zuni Café in San Francisco.

Get the recipe

Ginger-scallion salmon & avocado rice bowls

For 2

• 1 cup long-grain white rice

• Salt

• 2 salmon or other 1-inch-thick fillets (5 to 6 ounces each)

• 1 bunch of scallions

• 1 inch ginger

• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

• 2 tablespoons Sherry vinegar

• Small handful cilantro

• 1 large, ripe avocado

• Toasted sesame seeds, for serving

1. In a medium pot, bring 1 ¾ cups water to a boil. Add 1 cup rice and 1 teaspoon salt, stir to combine, cover, reduce heat to low, and cook for 12 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, pat 2 salmon fillets dry. Set aside while you make the ginger-scallion vinaigrette: Thinly slice 1 bunch of scallions and finely chop 1 inch ginger (no need to peel). Transfer to a medium bowl along with 3 tablespoons olive oil, 2 tablespoons Sherry vinegar, and a pinch of salt. Stir to combine.

3. When the 12 minutes are on the rice are up, add the salmon, skin side down if there’s skin, on top of the rice. Cover and cook until the salmon is just opaque and the rice is tender, another 6 to 8 minutes. Turn off the heat and let sit for 2 to 5 minutes.

4. Thinly slice the stems and leaves from a small handful of cilantro. Stir into the vinaigrette. Use a fork to transfer the salmon and rice to bowls or plates. Top each bowl with half of 1 avocado, then top with the ginger-scallion vinaigrette and sesame seeds.

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Salmon & Avocado Bowl With Ginger Scallion Vinaigrette Ali Slagle's 40 Ingredients Forever

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Welcome to Dinner Tetris, an advice column here at 40 Ingredients Forever where a reader shares the ingredients they always have on hand and Caroline and I dream up three dinners using those ingredients. If you’d like your pantries Tetris-ed into dinner, head here.

’s Tetris is here. ’s Tetris is here. A high-protein, high-fiber Tetris for subscriber Shayna is here.

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The cook: Carolyn (she/her)

Occupation: Video editor

Residing in: Vermont

Feeding: 2

Dietary Restrictions: Lactose-intolerant

Forever ingredients:

• Proteins and starches: Hominy, chicken thighs and quarters, sausage, sardines, anchovies, a rainbow of beans (chickpeas, pinquitos, black beans, red lentils, kidney beans)

• Vegetables: Onions, sweet potatoes (orange and purple), broccoli, carrots, canned whole tomatoes, wild mushrooms

• Flavorings: Olive oil, sunflower oil, butter, apple cider vinegar, white wine vinegar, green olives, capers, Dijon mustard, tahini, white miso, chicken stock, garlic, lemons, limes, canned chipotles in adobo, Frank’s hot sauce

Three Dinners Using Carolyn’s Ingredients

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What's 40 Ingredients Forever?

Anyone who’s been around here for a little while knows I’ve been fiddling with my usual pasta formula so that pasta and I can have a long, loving relationship.

What I’ve learned is that fewer noodles in the bowl can be a less-is-more situation: It can still satisfy carby pasta cravings while also making room for more stuff, which makes for a brighter, bolder, louder pasta.

My first spin at this idea was a cozy, cold-weather combination of sausage, kale, pasta, and white beans. Today’s rendition bounces into spring: Noodles, but mostly white beans and asparagus, are glossed in sausage drippings, melted Parmesan, and lots of lemon.

It has everything you crave in a spring pasta — just reworked for a bigger symphony of flavor, texture, color, spring.

Asparagus, sausage & white bean pasta

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40 Ingredients Forever is devoted to recipes that are abundant in flavor and joy yet streamlined in process and shopping—because they’ll all be made using my 40 go-to ingredients.

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For some, the first signs of spring are ramps, daffodils, or birds chirping. For me, it’s the avocados.

Primavera is a special family farm in California that grows avocados like you’ve never had them before. They taste like so much more than the supermarket options. They remind me of a bite of crunchy romaine salad followed by bread and butter: grassy, sweet, and rich.

Every year I look forward to developing recipes for Primavera in exchange for boxes of avocados in my mailbox. Their season just recently started and runs through end of June-ish, which leaves you just a few sweet months to weave avocados into every meal (and eat them right from their skin with a spoon).

Start with avocado salsa verde, where creamy avocado softens a bright and punchy chopped-herb sauce. This extra-lush take on salsa verde and can be used wherever you use green sauce: on simply seared chicken, like here, or over fish, roasted vegetables, or stirred through beans.

Chicken with avocado salsa verde

Serves 4

• 1 bunch scallions

• ½ bunch parsley

• ½ bunch cilantro

• Salt

• 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

• ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes

• 1 lemon

• 1 large ripe avocado

• 1 ½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs

1. Make the avocado salsa verde: Thinly slice 1 bunch scallions. Push to one side of your cutting board, then thinly slice ½ bunch cilantro and ½ bunch parsley. Add the scallions to the pile of herbs along with a pinch of salt. Chop and smash until everything is coarsely chopped and juicy. Transfer to a medium bowl, along with ½ cup oil, the juice from 1 lemon, and ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes. Cut 1 avocado into chunks and add to the bowl, then stir gently to combine (the lemon will keep the avocado from browning.

2. Meanwhile, sear the chicken: Sear 1 ½ pounds chicken all over with salt, then coat in 1 tablespoon oil. Heat a large skillet over medium-high. When just smoking, add the chicken flat side down and cook, pressing down occasionally with tongs, until golden-brown and opaque halfway up the sides, 5 to 7 minutes. Flip and cook until cooked through, 3 to 5 minutes. Serve the chicken topped with the salsa verde.

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Chicken With Avocado Salsa Verde Ali Slagle's 40 Ingredients Forever

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“i’ve loved your work for a while and as a mom to an active one year old i love how accessible and delicious your recipes are (and how they are written for max efficiency!)” — Cece, 40 Ingredients Forever reader

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This tomato-ginger baked rice can be eaten all on its own. I mean, it’s rice cooked with roasted cherry tomatoes, ginger, and garlic, so it’s fragrant, tangy, just barely light pink. Put an egg on that and call it dinner.

But it’s also a building block: Stow it in the fridge, then use it to jump-start three dinners throughout the week. These meals really just require assembly since all the flavor development happened when you made the rice.

If you’re pro meal prep, let me know by hitting the ❤️ button at the top left or bottom left of this newsletter.

The rice can carry any number of other meals in soupy, salady, and crispy forms, such as…

Meal #1: Rice & herb salad

Herby and bright yet satisfying from the not-just-plain rice.

Meal #2: Chicken & tomato-rice soup

Cook the rice further, until it breaks apart and its starches turn broth creamy like porridge.

Meal #3: Kale & egg fried rice

The fun surprise here is the roasted tomatoes throughout the fried rice — they’re little bits of unexpected sweetness.

By the way, each of these meals use overlapping ingredients so you’re getting three meals with 15 ingredients. Behind the paywall, you’ll get the grocery list and the four recipes.

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Welcome to Dinner Tetris, an advice column at 40 Ingredients Forever where a reader shares the ingredients they always have on hand and I dream up three dinners using those ingredients. If you’d like your ingredients Tetris-ed into dinner, head here.

The recipes in Ham El-Waylly’s new book Hello, Home Cooking: Do-Able Dishes for Every Day are wild and free. Masa waffles. Zucchini poached in yogurt. Giardiniera rice. Frito ganache tart.

It reminds me of books by Superiority Burger and Shopsin’s, where well-trained chefs unbutton their chef’s coats and let loose. Like Brooks Headley and Kenny Shopsin, Ham happens to be cooking from Manhattan’s Lower East Side (something in the water?) and seems to have expansive, limitless creativity — which is why I wanted to give him some guardrails: If you could only cook with 40 ingredients for the rest of time, what would they be?

Here are his picks, along with three ways to turn them into dinner. Some surprises to me? No soy sauce (only fish sauce). No legumes, nuts, or seeds. Scallions and chives. And Russet instead of a more buttery potato.

Ham El-Waylly’s 40 Forever Ingredients

Pantry: Diamond Crystal kosher salt, Black peppercorns, Cumin, Coriander, Cobanero chili flakes, Granulated sugar, All-purpose flour, Rigatoni, Di Napoli canned tomatoes, Brodo chicken bone broth, Za’atar, Grove & Vine extra-virgin olive oil, Zero Acres oil, Tamaki Gold rice, Red Boat fish sauce

Proteins & dairy: Black cod, Bone-in skin-on chicken thighs, Ground lamb, Grass-fed ribeye steak, Eggs, Heavy cream, Whole milk, Cultured butter, Labneh, Tahini, Parmesan

Produce: Lemon, Lime, Garlic, Yellow onion, Scallion, Russet potato, Heirloom tomato, Chives, Parsley, Honeycrisp apple, Savoy cabbage, Persian cucumber, Little Gem lettuce, La Cabra sourdough loaf

Three Dinners Using Ham’s Ingredients

Baked potatoes with lamb & labneh

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See you soon,

Ali

Gochujang Tofu, Squash and Brussels Sprouts Bowls

Roast squash, brussels sprouts, and tofu. Toss them as well as fresh slices of apple and shallot in a vinaigrette made from gochujang and apple cider vinegar. Sweet and spicy.

Get the recipe

Coconut-Chile Salmon and Greens

My prompt to myself was to create a one-pan salmon & green vegetable recipe that jazzed up the old duo. I originally envisioned this recipe with flaked coconut pressed onto the salmon, and what a dud that was. It felt like eating mouthfuls of fish bones. The solution lied in thoran; cooking the greens with the coconut, garlic, and crushed red pepper (instead of the salmon) created a warming, textured backdrop to the silky salmon.

Get the recipe

Sheet-Pan Chicken With Black Beans and Squash

Very proud of this recipe and how big the payoff is for the amount of effort. (It’s also good without the chicken.)

Get the recipe

Spinach Meatballs With Pasta

These meatballs are speckled green with frozen spinach — not for nutrition necessarily, but rather because it adds a juicy lightness and brings out the mineral quality of the meat.

Get the recipe

Salmon Ssam

That nice crust on the salmon is thanks to the broiler and a coating of vinegar and ssamjang, the sauce that’s often dabbed on the final lettuce wraps.

Get the recipe

Quick Pasta e Fagioli

For a 20-minute soup, build the flavor with aromatics that don’t require time to tease out their charm (bacon, garlic), and fill the pot with quick-cooking or already-cooked elements (pasta, canned beans).

Get the recipe

One-Pot Cheddar Tomato Mac

Where mac and cheese, tomato pasta, and tomato soup with grilled cheese meet.

Get the recipe

40 Ingredients Forever is full of abundant, streamlined recipes — because they’re all made of the same 40 ingredients.

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Sometimes I think my relationship with the sheet pan has run its course — is there still that spark between us? — and then I eat a piece of broccoli roasted in sausage fat and recommit to my vows.

Yes, cooking sausage and vegetables on a sheet-pan together is convenient and hands-off and all that, but it’s also an act of kindness to the vegetables. It lets them sizzle in the meat’s flavorful fat, making the vegetables more delicious and attention-grabbing than if they roasted alone.

Thankfully, behind every sheet-pan sausage recipe is a very basic formula that you can memorize — and then repeat, at whim, with whatever sausages and vegetables you have.

Master formula for sheet-pan sausages & any vegetables

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Hello to new subscribers who found their way here from last week’s Dinner Tetris. If you have no idea where “here” is: This is a newsletter full of abundant, streamlined recipes — because they’re all made of the same 40 ingredients.

Welcome,

Ali

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On two occasions in as many months, I showed up to someone’s house with two cooked whole chickens.

Though more bewildering and precarious than a bouquet of flowers or bottle of wine, sometimes you just really want to share a chicken with friends.

The first time, they were paprika-roast chickens: two birds and three pounds of potatoes roasted together on a sheet pan for a couple of hours. The sauce makes itself as the chicken drippings collect beneath, tangy with lemon and brick-red from paprika. It has everything going for it: meat, potatoes, sauce, crispy skin, bones, brawn.

The second occasion was Hainanese chicken and rice with ginger-scallion sauce. Its appeal is more nuanced. The shades of beige and softness don’t really let on how much flavor is waiting for you. It may not have the guts, glory, singe, and smoke of a roasted bird. And yet it was astonishing how good it tasted: satisfyingly light with a richness that lingered.

What I love most about Hainanese chicken and rice is that its efficiency isn’t a shortcut — it’s an improvement. The chicken gently simmers with ginger, scallions, soy sauce, and other aromatics, becoming silky and succulent while turning water into broth. That same broth, along with more ginger, scallions, and the chicken’s trimmed fat, makes rice into a special rice. The two components taste related, because they are, and distinct, because they are.

In the mid-19th century, the dish traveled from the Chinese island of Hainan throughout Southeast Asia. Wherever it landed, its DNA stayed intact while its flourishes shifted.

Today’s recipe shifts it again, to accommodate my 40 ingredients and nights when carving a chicken isn’t happening. Boneless, skinless thighs and store-bought broth stand in for skin and bones. The ginger-scallion sauce pulls double duty, too: Some is sizzled with the rice while it cooks, and the rest is spooned onto servings. Here, this multitasking isn’t lazy or lesser. It’s generous. More.

Hainanese-style chicken & rice

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Hi everybody and welcome to Dinner Tetris, an advice column at 40 Ingredients Forever where a reader shares the ingredients they always have on hand and I (Ali Slagle) dream up three dinners using those ingredients. If you’d like your ingredients Tetris-ed into dinner, head here.

Cooking is a high-effort task for Haley Nahman, the writer behind the always spot-on newsletter Maybe Baby. So when I found out that crispy gnocchi was one of her favorite things in all of 2025 — “insane texture, could write a poem about it” — and that many of my recipes land on her meal plan, I wanted to Tetris her 40 Forever Ingredients into (not-too-high-effort) dinners.

Haley Nahman’s 40 Forever Ingredients

• Proteins & starches: Gnocchi, mezze rigatoni, pearl couscous, bucatini, ramen/egg noodles, short-grain rice, crispy tofu, chicken thighs (boneless, skinless), pork sausage, ground beef, chickpeas, eggs, pine nuts, almonds (chopped)

• Produce: Butternut squash, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, bell peppers, Tuscan kale, arugula, green apples, oranges, pineapple, lemon, shallots, sage

• Flavorings: Parmesan, Manchego, ricotta, goat cheese, ghee, olive oil, flaky salt, chili crisp (Lao Gan Ma), hot honey, miso, soy sauce, chicken broth

  

Three Dinners Using Haley’s Ingredients

Sheet-pan vegetables with hot honey ricotta

Butternut squash, Brussels sprouts, chickpeas, sage, shallots, ricotta, hot honey, olive oil

Arrange a rack in the bottom of the oven and heat to 425°F. Cut a pound of squash into 1-inch pieces. Halve 1 pound of brussels sprouts. Thinly slice 1 shallot. Drain, rinse, and shake dry 1 can of chickpeas. On a sheet pan, toss the squash, brussels sprouts, shallot, chickpeas, and 4 sage sprigs with enough salt and olive oil to coat. Roast until golden and tender, 20 to 25 minutes.

Add spoonfuls of ricotta on top of the sheet pan of vegetables, then roast until the ricotta is warm and slouchy, just 2 or 3 minutes. Drizzle with hot honey. If you have some vinegar, or a lemon wedge, a little drizzle would be nice, but it’s not essential.

Fried rice with pineapple & chile crisp

Short grain rice, kale, oil, pineapple, crispy tofu, chile crisp, tofu

Boil some short grain rice, then drain and shake dry. Remove the stems from a half bunch or so of kale. In a large nonstick skillet, heat some oil over medium high. Add the rice and cook, stirring occasionally, until crisp and sizzling all over. Add the kale and crispy tofu and stir until softened and warm, then drizzle with chile crisp and soy sauce and stir until the rice is coated red. Stir in chunks of pineapple and taste for chile crisp and soy sauce.

Sheet pan sausage, broccoli & orange

Pork sausage, broccoli, oil, orange, Parmesan, almonds, arugula

Arrange a rack in the bottom of the oven and heat to 425°F. Score some sausages and place on a sheet pan with the florets of 1 broccoli head. Coat with S&P and oil and roast until golden brown and cooked through, 20 to 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut an orange or two into bite-size chunks. When the sheet pan is out of the oven, transfer the sausages to plates. To the sheet pan of broccoli, add the orange, arugula, almonds, and some shavings of Parmesan. Toss to coat in the sausage drippings. Taste for S&P.

Thank you for playing, Haley, and thank you for reading, you.

A newsletter devoted to using what you have what you want.

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Ever want to clear the decks? To empty everything from the vegetable drawer into a pot (not the trash!), cook it with some water, blend it, and see how it goes?

Stone soup. Everything soup. Garbage soup (with respect). It usually works — if you bury it under cheese. But cheese aside, there’s another single step that turns any blended vegetable soup from swamp to suave.

I learned it over a decade ago from my former boss at Food52, Kristen Miglore. When I miss peering over to see what she was working on, I reread her Genius Recipes books and column — and one from 2014 in particular, Anna Thomas’s green soup, showed me the promise of blended soup.

The recipe, adapted from Love Soup, seems so typical in parts and process that I probably wouldn’t think it was all that had I not tried it the day they were photographing it. But it tastes rich and substantial, not thin or fleeting, because of one step: a big onion slowly sautéed in oil until sweet and golden. That onion does real work. It gives the soup depth and sweetness that drowns out any vegetable murk.

The rest is flexible — seemingly endlessly so. Add whatever vegetables you have. Include one that brings starchiness to thicken the water (sweet potato, potato, squash, mushrooms). Keep the added liquid minimal so the vegetables make their own broth. Cook until tender. Then blend.

To test the bounds of this structure, today’s recipe uses, um, the majority of the vegetables in my 40 ingredients. It reminds me of broccoli-cheddar soup and not of the mish-mash that’s in it.

Admittedly, chopping and sautéing onions is one of my culinary red lights. I avoid it as much as possible because I rush it, my cuts are uneven, and the results show — burnt bits here, crunchy, sharp bits there. Still, this is one case where it’s worth pushing through (and the recipe includes a trick to smooth out any especially problematic onion pieces).

Everything green soup

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For all my love of fresh and bright stuff — the excitement of juicy citrus and crispy greens — the most delicious color is brown, and today’s recipe embodies it at every turn.

It begins with ground lamb pressed flat to fill the pot, left alone to sear until browned. The crispness will fade, but the savory richness will stay. Garlic and ginger are grated directly onto the meat, their sharpness softening from the heat. Tomato paste, cumin, and crushed chile follow, not for brightness but for body, pushing the color from bronzed to brick.

Rice goes in white and pebbly. Sweet potato in stiff orange cubes. As they both swell and break, their starches thicken the golden broth and smudge the palette. Blurred lines.

The soup/porridge/who knows tastes how it looks: warm, soft-edged, a little sweet, a little savory, brown. On days with sharp edges and surprises, this pot can be shelter.

Lamb & broken rice soup

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