However much you enjoy cooking, nobody likes the sinking feeling you get when you look at the piles and piles of washing up you need to do after making a delicious meal. One-pot dishes promise to keep that from being an issue. Using just one dish filled with ingredients, you can roast, prepare pasta dishes and even make desserts – the opportunities are endless, unlike the dirty dishes!
Popular chefs like the Hairy Bikers understand how efficiency both during and after meal preparation is an essential part of modern-day cooking, so they have created books that cater to this need. Whether you're a vegetarian, a vegan or a meat eater, we have picked out the best (and easiest!) one-pot cookbooks that Amazon and eBay have to offer.
With so many authors and brands jumping on the convenience-cookbook bandwagon, it can be difficult to decipher which ones are worth investing in. It makes sense that your cookbook should suit your lifestyle and your tastes, so we'll break down the ingredients that go into making a good one-pot cookbook.
Because one-pot cooking is all about the amount of equipment you have to use and doesn't stipulate what sort of food it has to be, authors – and therefore you – have plenty of choice when it comes to what a cookbook focuses on.
The majority of one-pot cookbooks won't focus on a specific cuisine, diet or food, and will instead give you a huge range of recipes inspired by cuisine from across the world. This gives you lots of recipes to try, using different pots and cooking methods.
General cookbooks are also more likely to contain one-pot dessert recipes too, perfect if you're prepping for a dinner party or satisfying your sweet tooth. Their large range, however, might mean there are lots of recipes that aren't suited to the way you cook and eat.
Again, due to the fact that 'one-pot' is a very broad classification of cookbooks, there is a massive range of focuses that a book could choose to have. They might, for example, centre around one ingredient or type of dish, like pasta.
They could also orient themselves around a specific diet. With vegetarian and vegan diets becoming ever more popular for a number of reasons, the creation of cookbooks that cater to these diets is growing too, 'one-pot' options included.
Lifestyle requirements are also something to take into account when picking your cookbook. If you are short of time and often find yourself in a rush when prepping food, look for recipes that promise to be speedy so you can save those precious extra minutes.
There are also books that focus on different methods of cooking. Dishes that you can just throw in the oven and leave to roast for an allotted amount of time free you up to do something else while the oven is doing the work for you.
The more recipes there are in a book, the more you'll have to choose for each night. This will stop you from getting stuck in the rut of having the same meals on repeat each week. If you're looking for a big choice of one-pot dishes to inspire you, try and find a recipe book that has 100 or more.
It can also be helpful to see how much a book has to offer by looking at its length. While the length of a book might not correlate exactly to how many recipes it has, if it has lots of pages, it probably means it has helpful hints, tips and images to get you started and keep your cooking going in the right direction.
Cookbooks nowadays come in a few different forms. You can go for the traditional paper or hardback choice, still much-loved by many, or you might be tempted to try something a bit more modern with a digital edition.
There is something special about flicking through a cookbook, being able to see which are your favourites from how stained the pages become. You might also be wanting to build up a cookbook collection to adorn empty bookshelves and walls, in which case a real book will be a much better solution than a digital edition.
Most books will come in either a hardback or paperback form. Hardbacks tend to be the most popular as they're more robust and easy to stand up around the kitchen, but paperbacks are lighter and less bulky.
For the modern chef, a digital cookbook might be more to your liking. You can view it on your tablet or e-reader, meaning you can take it anywhere you take those gadgets. They also tend to have a few pounds off the paper or hardback copy's price, so they're the cheaper option, too!
If you're short on space, digital cookbooks are a great idea as the only space you need to store them is the digital space on your piece of tech. However, they definitely don't have the charm that comes from searching through the pages of a real cookbook.
Now that you've had a chance to think about what sort of one-pot dishes you would like to be rustling up in your kitchen, it's time to choose a book that will show you how to make them. We picked out our top ten that you can buy online so you can start cooking up a storm!
£6.55
Focus | Quick pasta |
---|---|
Dessert Recipes | No |
No. of Recipes | 30+ |
No. of Pages | 72 |
Cover | Hardback |
Digital Edition | Yes |
£9.40
Focus | Roasting casserole |
---|---|
Dessert Recipes | Yes |
No. of Recipes | 75 |
No. of Pages | 162 |
Cover | Paperback |
Digital Edition | Yes |
£9.40
Focus | Foolproof |
---|---|
Dessert Recipes | No |
No. of Recipes | 60 |
No. of Pages | 144 |
Cover | Hardback |
Digital Edition | Yes |
£11.89
Focus | Vegan |
---|---|
Dessert Recipes | Yes |
No. of Recipes | 80 |
No. of Pages | 192 |
Cover | Hardcover |
Digital Edition | Yes |
£14.78
Focus | Pescatarian |
---|---|
Dessert Recipes | No |
No. of Recipes | 100 |
No. of Pages | 224 |
Cover | Hardback |
Digital Edition | Yes |
£9.99
Focus | Roasting, quick |
---|---|
Dessert Recipes | Yes |
No. of Recipes | 75 |
No. of Pages | 240 |
Cover | Hardback |
Digital Edition | Yes |
£5.20
Focus | General |
---|---|
Dessert Recipes | No |
No. of Recipes | 200 |
No. of Pages | 240 |
Cover | Paperback |
Digital Edition | Yes |
£12.95
Focus | General |
---|---|
Dessert Recipes | No |
No. of Recipes | 100+ |
No. of Pages | 224 |
Cover | Hardback |
Digital Edition | Yes |
£14.72
Focus | General |
---|---|
Dessert Recipes | Yes |
No. of Recipes | 100 |
No. of Pages | 208 |
Cover | Hardback |
Digital Edition | No |
£11.00
Focus | General |
---|---|
Dessert Recipes | Yes |
No. of Recipes | 100+ |
No. of Pages | 288 |
Cover | Hardback |
Digital Edition | Yes |
Image | 1 ![]() Si King & Dave Myers | 2 ![]() Darina Allen | 3 ![]() Rebecca Seal & John Vincent | 4 ![]() Joanna Farrow | 5 ![]() Rukmini Iyer | 6 ![]() Rachel Phipps | 7 ![]() Roxy Pope & Ben Pook | 8 ![]() Alan Rosenthal | 9 ![]() Sara Mellas | 10 ![]() Sabrina Fauda-Role |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Name | The Hairy Bikers' One Pot Wonders | One Pot Feeds All | LEON Happy One-pot Cooking | All Colour Cookery: 200 One Pot Meals | The Quick Roasting Tin | One Pan Pescatarian: 100 Delicious Dinners | One Pot Vegan | Foolproof One-Pot: 60 Simple and Satisfying Recipes | The One-Pot Casserole Cookbook | One-Pot Pasta: From Pot to Plate in Under 30 Minutes |
Features | The Wonderful World of One-Pot Cooking | Complicated Dishes Made Simple | Bring a Smile to Everyone's Face Without Any Fuss | Keep Your Tastebuds Entertained With 200 Recipes | Reinventing the Art of Roasting | Delicious Updates to Classics From Around the World | One-Pot Meals Without the Meat | Beginner Cooks Will Love This Short and Simple Book | Packed Full of Comforting Casserole Dishes | Perfect a Pot of Pasta |
Price | £11.00 | £14.72 | £12.95 | £5.20 | £9.99 | £14.78 | £11.89 | £9.40 | £9.40 | £6.55 |
Focus | General | General | General | General | Roasting, quick | Pescatarian | Vegan | Foolproof | Roasting casserole | Quick pasta |
Dessert Recipes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | No |
No. of Recipes | 100+ | 100 | 100+ | 200 | 75 | 100 | 80 | 60 | 75 | 30+ |
No. of Pages | 288 | 208 | 224 | 240 | 240 | 224 | 192 | 144 | 162 | 72 |
Cover | Hardback | Hardback | Hardback | Paperback | Hardback | Hardback | Hardcover | Hardback | Paperback | Hardback |
Digital Edition | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
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If you've mastered the art of convenient one-pot cooking, it's time to expand your cooking horizons a bit further. When you have a bit more time on your hand, why not use it to travel round the world from the comfort of your own kitchen by cooking up delights from across the globe? Here are some of our suggestions to get your culinary journey on its way.
We all have days when the last thing we want to do is spend hours slaving away doing the washing up, and luckily these books will mean that this doesn't have to be a consequence of making a delicious meal. Whether you're roasting, frying, boiling or baking, a one-pot cookbook will keep everyone content.
Author: Emma Cramp
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