FAQ Category: Questions About Glorious One-Pot Meals

I’ve noticed the noodle problem when I:
1) load the pot and let it stand for too long before cooking (non-pasta recipes can be put together in the morning and left in the fridge until dinner time, but pasta will glump together if left in water that long),
2) forget to spray the inside of the pot with oil before putting in the pasta and water,
3) need to add more olive oil to the water and stir with the noodles a little more thoroughly, or
4) leave the pot in the oven for too long after the aroma comes wafting from the oven.
Or, your oven could be running too high. I purchased an oven thermometer at a local cooking store for about $5 to check my oven temp.
The amount of water I call for in the recipe is a tried-and-true amount and I live in a very dry climate, but if it doesn’t work for you, try adding 2 additional tablespoons of water to the recipe.

I have a number of recipes that I think might make great ones in your glorious pot, but they take cheese or cream sauce ( sometimes canned soup ). Do any of your recipes in the cookbook have that type sauce? Let me know as I love this cooking method as I can get a dinner on the table in an hour after coming home from work.

I have developed a few recipes that include cheese — off the top of my head I can think of my Eggplant Parmesan recipe that calls for mozzarella, Glorious Macaroni and Cheese which has cheddar, and my Greek Eggplant with Bread Stuffing that includes feta — and I have always had good results with cow’s milk cheese, goat’s milk cheese, and non-dairy cheese substitutes.

I don’t have any recipes that call for canned soup, velveeta or prepared cheese sauces for a couple reasons: 1) they’re usually full of sodium, fat, and other artificial ingredients that I don’t want to put into my body and 2) cassoroles use canned cream-of-x soups to provide the cohesion desired to meld all the other ingredients together into a uniform slab while one of the benefits of Glorious One-Pot Meals is that each ingredient retains its integrity during the cooking process. I have found that I can get a really creamy, cheesy meal by scattering chunks of cheese through the pot and don’t need to add a canned soup to accomplish this.

This is not to say that you can’t or shouldn’t put anything you desire into your own versions of Glorious One-Pot Meals! In fact, I would love to hear your thoughts on how these recipes turn out if you do choose to use these ingredients. I think it would be an interesting experiment to take one of your old favorite recipes that calls for canned soup and make it into a Glorious One-Pot Meal without the soup and see how you like it. For instance, if the recipe calls for a can of cream of mushroom soup, substitute sliced fresh mushrooms and a few chunks of mozzarella instead. The meal would become significantly lighter in fat, sodium and calories. And who knows, you may even like it better than before.

Altitude is a factor when you are boiling or rising foods, but we’re not doing either of those here. I have prepared Glorious One-Pot Meals at altitudes from sea level to 12,000 feet and haven’t noticed any difference in the time needed to cook the pot. I have found that my nose will always tell me when the meal is ready no matter where I am.

Traditionally, Dutch oven recipes begin on the stovetop and continue with hours of slow cooking in the oven. Most Glorious One-Pot Meals, on the other hand, stay inside the oven for an hour or less, depending on the amount of food you are preparing.

I questioned this recommendation during a meeting with the officials at one popular Dutch oven company and they reassured me that there was no problem for the phenolic plastic knobs when left in the oven for such a short period of time as necessary to make a Glorious One-Pot Meals. Furthermore, the enameled cast iron Dutch oven companies all purchase phenolic knobs from the same company, so this advice holds true across brands.

From personal experience, I own Dutch ovens that have literally made hundreds — if not thousands — of Glorious One-Pot Meals. Of the more than thirty thousand home cooks who use my method, I have only ever heard of ONE knob problem, and that was from an early 1970s-era Dutch oven. The company promptly replaced the knob — even though the knob was almost forty years old!

Several companies, such as Le Creuset, now offer stainless steel replacement knobs, if you would like to replace the phenolic plastic one. It is easy to do since it’s held on by a simple screw.

Legally speaking, you should only do what you feel comfortable doing, of course, but I personally feel safe using the plastic knobs that arrive on the lids of enameled cast iron Dutch ovens for my Glorious One-Pot Meals. If you have a different experience, please let me know!

The reason most of the recipes in the Glorious One-Pot Meals cookbook contain a type of white rice, is because most of the world eats white rice and I wanted the recipes to have an “authentic” flavor. However, you can certainly substitute brown rice in at any time.

The most foolproof way to prepare brown rice in a Glorious One-Pot Meal is to use parboiled brown rice. “Parboiled” means that the rice has been pre-cooked a bit so that it will cook more quickly when you make it at home. The grains are then dried and packaged in boxes or “boil-in-the-bag” pouches and sold in the regular grocery store. Just use 1 cup parboiled brown rice and 1 cup room temperature liquid. Continue to load your pot and bake normally. Your 2-quart meal should take about 45 minutes with the parboiled rice.

For the best results with regular long grain brown rice, add an additional 1/4 cup of liquid, and heat the liquid to almost boiling before adding it to the pot with the rice. Then put the lid on and set it aside while you prepare the rest of the ingredients for your meal. This gives the rice a head start of 15 minutes or so, which it needs in order to fully cook.

Do the same technique with wild rice, but be aware that wild rice is not actually “rice” and the results will be variable depending on where it was harvested. Some wild rice mixtures work better than others in Glorious One-Pot Meals. When using wild rice in a Glorious One-Pot Meal you just need to be prepared that it might not turn out exactly as you had hoped. Usually, the longer you can let it pre-cook in the hot liquid –as you would with long grain brown rice– before adding the rest of the ingredients, the better it will turn out for you.