One-pot recipes

What counts as a one-pot recipe

Here it means the main dish is cooked in one vessel: meat browned, onions softened and liquid added in the same pot, so the brown bits on the base become part of the sauce. Briam counts too, baked slowly in one wide dish until the vegetables collapse together.

A side or a garnish sometimes needs a second pan, and the recipes say so. Cozido à Portuguesa cooks its rice in a separate pan with a litre of the broth, and the soft-boiled eggs for congee are boiled on their own.

Use the heaviest pot you own. A thick base spreads the heat evenly, and congee in particular catches easily, after which a burnt taste runs through the whole pot.

How to build flavour in a single pot

Browning comes first in most of these. Brown stew chicken is turned in sugar caramelised in the pot, the Jamaican browning that gives the gravy its colour, while chicken cacciatore and chicken chasseur start with the meat seared on the bone. Fårikål is the deliberate exception: the lamb is never browned, because the dish is meant to taste pale and clean.

Order and reduction matter as much. Cozido à Portuguesa adds each meat and vegetable according to its cooking time, cacciatore and chasseur simmer uncovered so the sauce thickens, and chickpea stew is thickened by crushing a handful of chickpeas against the pan instead of adding flour.

Cooking once for two or three meals

Braises like these often taste better the next day. Chicken adobo keeps four days in the fridge as the sauce soaks into the meat, chicken tinga keeps four days and freezes, fårikål is better reheated the day after, and briam is better again the next day, served warm or at room temperature.

Chickpea stew freezes well if the spinach is left out. The one to eat fresh is chicken noodle soup: cook the noodles just before serving, because left in the pot they swell and soak up the broth.