The question “what to cook” is a familiar daily phenomenon. And if it is dinner in question, when you’re tired after a long day, and often already getting late with an early morning alarm set for another workday, somebody needs to come and rescue you. With the help of Kaiser and Colonel Kababz, the answer to the question, “What to cook for dinner tonight?” does not need to be an unhealthy or tasteless option nobody is happy with, but a delightful and nutritious meal that can be prepared quickly.
The key is to stay calm. It’s difficult when one is hungry, especially when hungry children are around, but not impossible. With Kaiser and Colonel Kababz in your freezer, you get many answers to this seemingly unanswerable question, offering a variety of quick and healthy dinner ideas.
Let’s review a few options that you can put together without investing much time and effort into prep on nights when you don’t have a plan.
#1. Tasty one-pot meals
A one-pot meal is an easy dinner idea when you’re pressed for time, thinking “What to cook for dinner tonight?” on your way home.
One-pot meals are cooked worldwide, with various ingredients, in varying types of cookware and with different cooking methods, on an open flame, in an oven, or buried in a pit oven. The essential idea is similar everywhere: to take available ingredients, vegetables, meat, spices, herbs, etc., and cook them together in one pot. These dishes are typically easy to cook and healthy comfort foods. In the older times, the pot would simmer the whole day, and food could be eaten at meal times, while the fire also kept the living area warm in winter. In today’s fast-paced life, the one-pot method is ideal for quick meals, using ingredients that require a short cooking time.
One such one-pot dish is khichdi or khichri. It is a simple dish made with lentils (dal), usually masoor or mung dal, and long-grain rice. These lentils have a short cooking time, so they can be combined with rice for both ingredients to get ready simultaneously. The dish is easy to digest and rich in nutrition. It is an Indian comfort food akin to rice porridge dishes from other Asian countries, such as congee. Khichdi became a popular British breakfast dish called kedgeree, replacing lentils with smoked fish and hard-boiled eggs. The original khichri, however, remains a light food, and you can combine it with other dishes.
If you don’t already have a family recipe that everyone loves, try these recipes for khichdi (with masoor or mung lentils): mung dal khichdi from Neha & masoor dal khichdi from Haley.
Have it with seekh kebabs from Kaiser & Colonel Kababz—choose from chicken, lamb, or beef. These are ready-to-eat and require only a few minutes in a non-stick skillet before you can serve them. Click here to explore all 3 kebab varieties.
To top off your one-pot meal, make mint raita. It’s a fresh taste that goes so well with both rice and kebabs. Here is a simple but great-tasting recipe for mint raita, too, from Swashti’s.
#2. Flavorful healthy meals
Whether it is a family dinner in question, or you just need to feed your hungry self, it is often difficult to think of what to cook for dinner tonight that is both healthy and tasty—especially when you reach home after a grueling workday. Healthy meals are sometimes associated with bland, tasteless foods, and for many, a quick, flavorful meal equates with fast food—high in carbs and fats. If you think it is not possible to have meals that are both full of flavor and healthy, we’d say think again. This assumption is inaccurate, and in fact, there are plenty of healthy meal options that are also big on flavor.
Across Asia, a lot of street or fast food options are actually healthy and tasty meals, such as noodles in broth, the döner kabab, takoyaki (grilled balls of batter typically with an octopus filling), and chicken tikka, among countless others.
If you are longing for ideas for healthy meals that also satisfy your taste buds, go for Kaiser’s charcoal chicken kabab or tandoori chicken wings with a chickpea salad, providing proteins, several vitamins, minerals, carbs, and fiber. These kebab and grill products are fully cooked, and you can heat them in a skillet, conventional oven, or microwave. Indian hari chutney with a mixture of mint and coriander will round out this dinner with refreshing herbs and tangy ginger. Spices and herbs bring us a range of health benefits and also provide us with tasty food.
Click for a quick and easy recipe for chickpea salad with feta, from Adam and Joanne. And, you can find a simple recipe for the Indian hari chutney from Parita here.
Need to put another carb-rich side on the table? Bake some sweet potatoes without the fuss with this recipe from Love & Lemons. It’s a low-fat side, packed with carbs and micronutrients, that pairs well with the skewered chicken kebabs.
#3. Delicious stir-fry meals
Stir-frying is a technique to create a quick, delicious, and fresh meal. All you have to do is bring out that wok or stir-frying pan and get going. We keep hearing about wok hei (pronounced wok hey). The literal meaning of this term, associated with Cantonese cuisine, is ‘the breath of the wok”. When ingredients are tossed over open flame in hot air and smoke, a specific aroma is created.
It might be difficult to achieve the results professionals can, but the stir-fry method can be used at home by ensuring your pan is hot and smoking, your ingredients are already cut and prepped so that you can add them quickly at the right time and in the right order, and that you keep them moving so that the heat reaches all ingredients.
In the blink of an eye, you can create a fusion dish, an Indian-style veggie stir-fry meal, and combine it with Colonel Kababz tandoori chicken tikka or gola kabab to complete it. Both the tikka and kebab come fully-cooked, so you only need a few minutes to heat them in a non-stick skillet, and they’re ready to go. For an Indian-style veggie stir-fry meal, try this recipe from Mee Sha at My Plantiful Cooking. It puts a colorful medley of veggies seasoned with spices on your plate.
Add a bit of mango chutney (branded store-bought, e.g., Patak or Rani) for a sweet and spicy bite and enjoy your dinner—it’s a tasty answer to the teasing question, “What to cook for dinner tonight?”.
#4. Quick and easy meals
If you are really pressed for time and both very tired and very hungry, Kaiser’s aromatic biryani, with kabab or butter chicken, has got your back.
Biryani, butter chicken, and kebabs are worldwide favorites of everyone who loves the cuisine of the Indian subcontinent. Biryani is one of the few dishes that are cooked in the largest possible variety the world over, from Asia to Africa and Europe. It can be rich with different types of meat and garnished with boiled eggs, and it can also be light and simple with only chicken breast meat. It can be extremely spicy or mild, with varying aromas of dried plums and rose essence, or saffron.
Butter chicken is the go-to when one is craving that super-satisfying Indian flavor, and skewered kebabs are a high-protein addition to the layered rice dish. The combination of biryani with butter chicken or kebab leaves no room for error. This is the food of banquets brought to you by Kaiser so that you can prepare quick and easy meals whenever you wish. It takes only minutes to heat and serve.
To this super quick feast, add the option of the raita you prefer. The cucumber raita will bring a cooling and fresh flavor to your Kaiser spread, and the boondi raita will give you a spicy crunch soaked in the goodness of yogurt! Check out Meta’s recipes for cucumber and boondi raita at Piping Pot Curry.
Concluding words…
After a hectic day, don’t be stressed out about “What to cook for dinner tonight?”. The drive or commute back home does not need to be full of worry about what to eat when you are tired and hungry. You can rely on Kaiser Foodline’s many options that help you prepare meals that take care of both your health and taste buds. Wind down and have a lovely dinner at the end of the day before having some sweet dreams for dessert!
