Caroline Chambers is an expert at putting delicious, fun and easy dinners on the table. For the mother of four young boys, speediness in crafting a meal is imperative. She struck a chord with her 2024 bestseller, What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking. Her new installment, What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking: Make It Fast, contains 100 more recipes accompanied by time-saving tips, gorgeous photographs and a bold, colorful design.
The book is organized into time-based sections: meals you can make in 15 minutes, in 30 minutes and those that are relatively hands-off. Recipes are clearly written, and Chambers helpfully puts the ingredients in boldface type where they are used. She organizes tips, shortcuts, swaps and other variations beneath recipes, so if you are missing an ingredient or would like to change things up, you can do so seamlessly. And each recipe is a complete meal, so no need to add sides to round out dinner.
Although her focus is on speediness, she uses prepackaged foods minimally, with most recipes relying on whole foods, such as her Greek Chop, a build-your-own bowl featuring a mixture of ground chicken and chickpeas tossed over simple salad ingredients. When pantry staples come into play, they are thoughtful and flavorful, such as in the red lentil soup with coconut milk and lime. Chambers’ recipe for warm sesame noodles takes ramen noodles to the next level; dressed with a combination of sesame, tahini, soy sauce, ginger and maple syrup, the dish packs an umami punch.
Chambers also includes lists of recommended ingredients, equipment for stocking a kitchen and “17 things that will make cooking easier,” a set of personal mantras she has learned over time. The extensive index lists recipes by protein type (chicken and turkey, beef, lamb, pork, seafood and vegetarian) and mood (“what to cook when you want to show off” or “you need pasta” or “you cannot be bothered to chop a single thing”).
“I write my recipes as if I’m standing right next to you in the kitchen, margarita in hand, walking you through it,” Chambers writes in her introduction, and that’s pretty close to how it feels to cook from this book. Make It Fast is a cookbook for both foodies on the run and people who hate to cook—and everyone in between.
