Quick Weeknight Meal Ideas

[Jory]

Life can get busy, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still make time for a delicious, quick, sustainable dinner!

Try our Weeknight Dinner Pack!

It comes with everything you need to plan quick weeknight meals. Sustainably caught breaded haddock for fish sticks, a ginger garlic brick for meatballs and chili, and grass-fed/pasture-raised hotdogs. Here are a few quick recipes we field tested below:

BREADED FISH STICKS

This easy meal is a spin on the classic fish and chips, using Walden Breaded Haddock.

1. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F.
2. Place your frozen breaded fish filets on a non-stick pan or spray regular pan with non-stick spray.
3. Bake for 23 minutes.

While the fish is baking, you can start your sides: air fried potatoes and green peas. We coated small potatoes with olive oil and salt and placed them in an air fryer for around 23 minutes at 380 degrees F (baking works too)! For the peas, we used frozen peas and cooked in the microwave for 3 minutes, stirring halfway through.

When the fish were finished, we sliced them into strips to mimic that “fish stick” shape kids love to dip into tartar sauce or ketchup.

SWEDISH MEATBALLS AND SPAGHETTI

When we have a craving for homemade meatballs, Our Ginger & Garlic Sausage Bricks are an excellent option to speed up the process of making a delicious meal. This pre-seasoned, ground sausage is great to have on hand and the seasoning goes well with many dishes. This week we created our version of Swedish meatballs that hit the spot!

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. After thawing out the meatball mix, make meatballs roughly 1” in diameter and place on a dish. We got around 24 meatballs from a single package. Not bad!
3. Next, drop some butter in a pan on the stovetop and turn heat to medium. You want to quickly brown each of the meatballs, turning over after a couple of minutes on each side.
4. Once you’re done browning, place the meatballs on a baking sheet, spaced out evenly.
5. Place in the oven and bake for around 10 minutes or until done all the way through.

We served our meatballs with some fresh linguine, topped with brown gravy and a dollop of sour cream.

HOT DOG, COME AND GET YOUR HOT DOGS!

Sometimes dinner doesn’t have to be fancy, and hot dogs with a side salad get the job done. Our Walden Pasture-Raised Hot Dogs are packed with flavor and easy to make in minutes.

1. Place around a half inch of water in the bottom of a lidded pan and bring to a boil.
2. Immediately add hot dogs to the boil and turn the heat down to low-medium before covering with a lid.
3. Keep an eye on the hot dogs to make sure they keep their shape and don’t overcook. Cooking should take around 10 minutes.

Have fun getting creative with your hot dog toppings! Ketchup, mustard, onions, cucumbers, chili, pickles, chili sauce, kraut, bacon, relish, tomatoes, blue cheese….we’re getting hungry just thinking of the possibilities! Add a side salad and some freshly cut veggies with a dipping sauce and you have a weeknight meal prepared in no time.

We hope this gives you some ideas on how to use our new Weeknight Dinner Pack!

As always, thank you for supporting our mission to support local farms and offer food to our members that is local, nutritious, and sustainable. Together, we are making local work!

Shop Monthly Specials Here!

[jackie]

I just made an easy one using ginger garlic sausage and it was SO good (serves 4 with one sausage per person):

1. Set up some rice (1-1.5 cup?) in the rice cooker
2. chop a zucchini or two and sweat it (cover it in salt, at least 15 min before you plan to cook with it, and pour off excess water before cooking)
3. Cook the ginger garlic sausage then remove from pan
4. Pour off 3/4 of the fat but leave a little bit, and deglaze with some soy sauce and rice vinegar
5. Stir fry some veggies: I used chopped mushrooms, onion, garlic, ginger in addition to my previously-sweated zucchini.
6. Mix it all together! So fast and easy! Except for the rice, the whole thing was 20 minutes.

[mwk]

I’m another fan of the Walden sausages as a really quick weeknight meal. I do a tray bake with the Walden Italian Sausages. Just take a few yellow onions, peel and cut into wedges through the root end, slice up a bunch of peppers, any kind you like (I do a mix of green and red bell peppers, and if you like a bit of heat, throw a serrano into the pile) into large wedges. You want the veggies to still be in chunks after they cook. You can also throw in a couple of diced potatoes if you want. Lay out the veggies on a half sheet pan, sprinkle with olive oil, some fresh rosemary and thyme, salt/pepper. Toss together with your hands to mix. I also chop the top off of a head of garlic and use the roasted garlic to serve, squeezing it over the food.

Put the veggies around the edges of the sheet pan, making room in the center for the sausages. Put the sausages in the middle, throw in a 450 degree oven for 20-25 minutes, stirring the veggies halfway through, turning over the sausages, and rotating the pan. Timing is dependent on your oven, but you want the veggies soft and carmelized, and the sausages should be nice and brown on the outside. Serve in bowls, sprinkled with lots of parmesan cheese. SO yummy.

[Katie]

I’ve been loving this recipe for Turmeric Coconut Curry. It takes just a few minutes to pull together For me- if I can make the rest of the dish in the time that the rice cooker makes the rice, it’s a perfect weeknight option. This recipe is great with ground pork, but you can also use ground beef! As the recipe suggests- I serve over a mixture of rice, quinoa, and millet. This recipe makes great lunchtime leftovers as well.