Cooking is hard enough when you’re tired at the end of the day. Factoring in every family member’s preferences can make it even more taxing, especially when one or more of them swears nothing sounds good (and everything you suggest gets shot down too). On nights like this, it’d be nice to open up a cookbook of dinners to make when everyone wants something different, but alas, no such collection exists.
But instead of making everyone their own dinner like a literal line cook, what if you started with plain bases everyone could customize to their preferences? Family Fresh Meals’ air-fryer chicken bites are simple and the food version of a blank slate. Toss them in buffalo sauce and put them over an Easy Mac cup for one kid.
Throw them in a quesadilla with cheese and taco sauce for the other. Finally, toss them into a salad for your and your partner. You could make them boneless wing-style, too.
Much like the chicken bites, turkey meatballs like Budget Bytes’ are versatile. Throw them over pasta, into a rice bowl, or onto a sub. Everyone can choose their carb and sauce and go from there.
This Cobb salad from Family Fresh Meals happens to have a lot of components that can be made into other meals. Not only can everyone decide what goes into their own salad, they could also easily whip up a BLT, chicken burrito bowl, or a wrap from what you’ve already made. Again, we’re going for versatile building blocks here.
Entirely Emmy’s southwest chicken bowls look delicious as is, but could easily pop these components into a tortilla as a burrito or quesadilla, over tortilla chips to make nachos. For the pickiest kids, pull out the chicken and pair it with ketchup, fruit, and corn chips on the side. This recipe is Averie Cooks’ take on the viral sweet potato, cottage cheese, and ground beef bowls that were all over our social media feeds earlier this year.
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