5 Quick & Easy Dinners I'm Making This Week

Welcome to Simply (Weeknight) Dinners! Every Monday, I will bring you five quick & easy dinner ideas. This week, the list includes my go-to 10-minute ground beef dinner.

Ground beef and rice on a bowl — Simply Recipes / Myo Quinn

Every Monday, our editors bring you Simply (Weeknight) Recipes, five quick and easy dinner recipes to make this week.

My kitchen keeps mocking me.

I am not the kind of person who picks fights with parts of my home. But most days, around 5 p.m., I walk into my kitchen, stare into an open fridge or pantry, and know I’m up against time, limited ingredients, and low motivation. Dinner has to be made—my husband and three children depend on me—but understanding the task doesn’t make it easier. So I stand in my kitchen and struggle.

I suspect all home cooks have the same conundrum: cooking dinner is a hassle, especially during the busy week. Heck, Simply Recipes exists because there's a weeknight dinner problem, and our editors and recipe developers work to solve it through delicious, reliable recipes you can count on.

So, we’re leaning into our expertise with gusto. Every week, Senior Recipe Editor Laurel Randolph and I will bring you five (one for each weekday) easy, quick, affordable, and totally doable dinner recipes. A 20-minute chicken dinner? You bet! A 4-ingredient casserole? Of course! A yummy bowl of beans you can swing after sitting in bad traffic on the way home from work? It’s our specialty.

Here are five of my favorite weeknight-friendly dinners I'm making for my family this week, including tips from our contributors.

Lemony Sardine Pasta

A plate of sardine linguine topped with breadcrumbs — Simply Recipes / Karishma Pradhan

Recipe Developer Karishma Pradhan says, "Don't be afraid of giving those lemons some color! The caramelization will offset any bitterness in the fruit ... [and] I recommend a long pasta shape you can twirl around your fork to pick up all those jammy, crispy bits. Spaghetti, bucatini, or fusilli col buco are all great options."

5-Ingredient Garlic Ginger Ground Beef

Ground Beef with Rice — Simply Recipes / Myo Quinn

This is my go-to lightning-fast dinner that comes together in under 10 minutes, especially if you take my recommendation for the 90-second microwave rice called hetbahn. Costco sells Bibigo Hetbahn, a popular Korean brand of cooked white rice.

Mandu Guk (Korean Dumplings Soup)

Overhead view of a bowl of beef soup with dumplings. — Simply Recipes / Uyen Luu

Recipe Developer Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee says, "Make this soup with either homemade or store-bought dumplings. They can be filled with kimchi, pork, chicken, or shrimp—whatever your heart and stomach desires."

Sheet Pan Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Grill Cheese Sandwiches on the Sheet Pan Recipe — Simply Recipes / Photo by Victor Protasio / Food Styling by Ruth Blackburn / Prop Styling by Claire Spollen

Recipe Developer Nicole McLaughlin says, "We used four types of cheese—goat, white cheddar, provolone, and Swiss—for these buttery, rich sheet pan grilled cheese sandwiches, but feel free to change the cheeses depending on what you like or what you have in your fridge."

Shrimp Fried Rice

Simply Recipes Founder Elise Bauer recommends using day-old cold rice to avoid mushy fried rice. Since I seldom have a batch of leftover rice, I have a go-to trick for mimicking it in a cinch: spread the just-cooked rice on a large plate or sheet pan. Keep it in the fridge (not the freezer) while you prepare the rest of the ingredients, and pull it out just before you add it to the skillet.