History of one-pot dinners - save energy and costs; improve nutrition

Despite its apparent recent popularity, one-pot cooking has a long history in many cul­tures internationally. In Med­iev­al Europe, a large cast-iron pot was always on the back of the hearth. Cooks cons­tantly added vegetables, grains and cheap meat to the pot, allowing them to stretch food for several meals. Japan­ese clay Donabe made hot pot, soups, stews and rice, all serv­ed directly from the pot. The eff­ic­ien­t Donabe was also lov­ed for bring­ing people together. Ind­ian cuisine had many one-pot dishes that families had been loving for gen­erations. With regional variat­ions, dal was cooked in ev­ery household in India, often slowly and ov­ernight. Jewish one-pot dishes kept warm overnight from Friday ev­­ening to Saturday evening, because active cooking on Sabb­ath was barred. Called chol­ent, this stew of meat, beans, barley and potatoes originated in Russia or Poland.

Benefits Of One-Pot Meals
1]Speed. Cooking in one-pot helps meet the need of getting a meal on the tab­le qu­ick­ly because it doesn’t require hours. While sim­p­lif­ying recipes and planning ahead can also greatly help to cut back on cook­ing time, especially for 1-2 people. And as the meal is ended without heaps of dirty pots. cleaning is reduced to one-pot, two glass bowls to eat out of, 2 forks, 1 cutting board and a knife.

2]Avoid un­necess­ary costs by choosing to cook at home rather than eating takeaways. And more. One-pot meals often stretch the servings, meaning leftovers can be put back into the fridge in the same pot.

3]Only 5 ingredients. It is very simple to take the main fish-meat-pasta, then go to the fridge to find whatever additional vegetables and vegetable sauce are lying around.

4]Essential food groups are included. Prep­ar­ing everything in one dish makes it easier to ensure that the meal provides the same nutrit­ional value as dinner cooked in multiple pots. And tastier.

5]Good health. While buying pre-cooked food from a shop may be more con­venient, people who eat home cooked dinners are healthier. Home cooks con­sume fewer cal­ories and less fat, sugar and sodium. And fewer of the food's vital nutrients and vitamins in food are lost during the press­ure cooking process. How can a one-pot meal be more nutritious than its conventionally-cooked counter­part? When cooking in water, nu­t­­rients from the veget­ables, meat and bones are released and leach in­to the water. But when we add ab­sorbent ingredients (eg noodles), the liquid and nutrients are abs­orbed. This not only changes the flav­our, but the foods that have less minerals and vitamins can become nutritious.

6]With picky eaters, the one-pot method can hide disliked vegetables or make them more palatable by in­cor­por­ating them in meats, pasta and sauce. Since some children make a fuss if they see disliked vegetables, exposure to non-preferred foods might be assoc­iated with decreased picky eating and healthier eating in the future. The one-pot meals also fortifies the less nutrit­ious, but often more preferred—ingred­ients. If children will only eat the noodles, one-pot cooking will ensure the nood­les hold more nutrition than plain boiled noodles.

7]Save gas/electricity. Instead of cooking onions and meat in a frypan, the vegetables in a large pot, and the chips on an oven plat­ter, cook them all in one heavy pot. It lowers energy bills and makes the family more environmentally friendly. And avoid the oven heating a kitchen in summer by cooking on one, stove-top burner.

8]Meetdietary preferences. The meal usually contains a protein food (eg meat, fish, beans); vegetables; a starch (e.g noodles, rice, potatoes) and vegetable sauce. The pot allows for such di­versity that the meal can be easily adapted as veg­et­ar­ian, meat or fish, dep­ending on the family’s preferences. And one-pot recipes can easily be given the flavours of Italian, Mexican, Russian or Chinese foods etc.