Seafood Dinners That Won't Leave You With a Sink Full of Dishes
I've spent enough time in professional kitchens to know that home cooks are often doing the work of an entire restaurant staff. At home, you're the prep cook, line cook, dishwasher, and server. That's precisely why one-pot meals are so appealing. They streamline the process without feeling like a compromise. From seafood paella and shrimp saganaki to sheet pan salmon and fish chowder, these recipes prove that a great dinner doesn't need a sink full of dirty pots and pans. Life's exhausting enough without piling on.
photo by Grace Parisi
This dish is typically made over an open flame in a flat, wide paella pan. Though a skillet and stovetop, while not traditional, are perfectly fine. And like most one-pot dishes, this one is built from the bottom up and includes chorizo, salmon, rice, Spanish olives, and seafood stock. Homemade if you can.
photo by Grace Parisi
Not only is this halibut in foil packets a one-pot wonder, it’s technically a NO-pot wonder, if it goes directly on the grill. Grilling in foil packets serves several purposes — there’s no risk of the delicate fish sticking to the grill; the compound butter mixes with the fish and vegetable juices to make a delicious sauce; and everything is finished cooking at the same time.
photo by Grace Parisi
This classic Greek recipe combines sweet, briny shrimp, tomatoes, feta, dill, and olives in a one-pot dish that’s on the table in minutes. Spot shrimp are sweet and tender and add an unexpected lobster-like flavor. Olives are optional, but highly encouraged as is fluffy warm pita for soaking up the delicious sauce.
photo by Grace Parisi
This article would not be complete without the inclusion of a sheet pan recipe and this one is the epitome of One-pot-wondrousness. It’s built in layers on the sheet pan, yielding a multitude of flavor and texture variations.
When poaching fish in whole milk, the fat keeps the fish incredibly moist while infusing it with a delicate sweetness. Choose a pan that allows the fish to fit snugly in a single layer. Creamy baby potatoes and tender leeks and fennel add flavor and texture to this luscious, simple meal with easy cleanup.
Poaching fish in the oven guarantees evenly cooked, super moist, delicious results. Start off on the stovetop to sauté the aromatics and get things bubbling, then pop the skillet into the oven to finish cooking. Using parchment paper as the “lid” (known as a cartouche) allows just enough of the poaching liquid to evaporate, leaving you with a concentrated sauce base to which butter is added for silky richness.
You can’t claim to be a One-pot Wonder without including a big pot of fish chowder. It starts with rendering smoky bacon, followed by sautéing aromatics, adding broth, potatoes, and finally seafood. This one omits cream which is contentious among chowder purists.
Using steam to cook sablefish may seem counterintuitive (sablefish has incredible skin that gets bacon-crisp in a skillet), but the gentle moist heat keeps the fish tender and infuses it with lots of flavor. This recipe exemplifies true Cantonese cooking at its core: simplicity, freshness, and balance. The best part is that it uses just one pan.
Grace Parisi
Culinary Director Grace Parisi is a cook, writer and cookbook author. Formerly the Senior Test Kitchen Editor at Food & Wine Magazine and Executive Food Director at TimeInc Books, her work has appeared in Cooking Light, Health, O Magazine, Epicurious, Fitness, Today, Serious Eats, Martha Stewart, and many more. She’s the author of more than 6 books, among them The Portlandia Cookbook and Get Saucy, which was nominated for a James Beard award for Best Single Subject Cookbook.
