I recently wrote this for Girls Guide To and couldn’t help but share it here, as well. I challenged myself to take my favorite weeknight recipes and tweak them for little to no extra cost. The following 5 recipe tips were my favorite!
Thaw out frozen pre-cooked shrimp for a quick pasta addition!
Eat More Seafood
Chicken seems to be everyone’s go-to meat for weeknight salads and stir frys. Try swapping it with shrimp. You can buy frozen, pre-cooked shrimp for just a little more than the pre-cooked chicken and all you have to do is thaw it out in a bowl of room temperature water and you are ready to eat!
Lighten Up the Tacos
Swap out the tortilla for a red or green bell pepper. Just slice them in half from top to bottom, take out the seeds and fill them up with your taco fillings and enjoy! If you’d like a softer pepper, you can boil them in hot water for 3-5 minutes to soften them a bit, or pop them in the oven after you’ve filled them until the filling is bubbly. Don’t be scared to swap out the traditional beef mixture, either. Try shredded chicken or pork for a lighter option.
Booze Up That Spaghetti
If you’re like me, you always have a bottle of wine lying around. Add 1/2 cup of red wine to your cooked ground turkey or beef before stirring in your spaghetti sauce. Let the wine reduce by half, pour in your sauce and simmer until warmed through. For even more flavor, try adding 2 Tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce when you pour in the wine.
Swap Out the Mayo
If you’ve started dreading turkey sandwich night, try substituting hummus for the mayo. It keeps you sandwich from being overly dry without adding tons of added fat. Try my recipe for Chipotle + Feta Hummus on a grilled cheese!
*Not a fan of hummus? Try slicing up a ripe avocado and mashing it into a paste with a fork to spread easily over your bread. Take it a step further by grilling your sandwich instead of eating it cold. Invest in a panini press and get a hot, crunchy sandwich without using butter or oil.
Cheese on Cheese on Cheese Pizza
I add a dollop of ricotta on top of my frozen pizza if I have some sitting in my fridge, but it isn’t very often I have spare ricotta lying around. So, I recently tried doing the same with some cottage cheese. The results were the same, it added a little more flavor and richness to a frozen weeknight staple. Better still, ricotta or cottage cheese that has been in the fridge cools off the hot lava pizza sauce that always seems to burn your tastebuds off no matter how long you wait for that first bite.
Don’t be ashamed if you don’t whip everything from scratch on a weeknight. A frozen pizza or boxed mac and cheese here and there never hurt anyone. Switch it up a little bit and find some new ways to liven up your weeknight recipes!
