40 Ingredients Forever

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Chicken & rice

2 weeks ago | alislagle.substack.com | Ali Slagle

A reminder: Paid subscriptions support those who aren’t able to afford one right now. To be comped, join the list here. My mom is an excellent cook but not a fancy cook. She cooks simple food correctly, so even the most basic foods in her hands — sautéed broccoli, steamed rice — are sublime. Why? She knows how to cook, and she has a secret ingredient. Where I might use water, she’s using chicken broth. Not homemade broth. Please.
Ali Slagle's summer cooking bucket list

3 weeks ago | alislagle.substack.com | Ali Slagle

I am ravenous for summer. Let’s do this thing. These are the first recipes I’ll eat as fast as I can. Share yours in the comments below? Made it last year with clams that I dug out of the earth; can’t wait to do a repeat. Like simple roasted chicken but smoky from an hour plus on the grill. I use the method in Paula Disbrowe’s Any Night Grilling. Ate it on a dog at a beach bonfire last night. ✔️Specifically beets and zucchini.
Skillet salmon with soy-butter tomatoes

1 month ago | alislagle.substack.com | Ali Slagle

“I’ve loved your work for a while and as a mom to an active one year old I love how accessible and delicious your recipes are (and how they are written for max efficiency!)” — Cece, paid subscriberHere at 40 Ingredients Forever, recipes are abundant in flavor and joy yet streamlined in process — because they’re all made of the same 40 ingredients. Chicken skin gets lots of love. It’s golden, crackly, delicious, yeah, but what about fish skin?
The best way to cut asparagus

1 month ago | alislagle.substack.com | Ali Slagle

No matter what size asparagus the market is selling, I’m buying. It’s asparagus’s season and there’s no holding back. And when you can cut any asparagus the same way and sprinkle them into any recipe, why would you? For any asparagus — pencil-thin, thick as thumbs, and anywhere in between — thinly slice them (say 1/4 to 1/2-inch thick) on the diagonal. Because:Spears of any chunkiness become roughly the same size, so they’ll cook evenly.
What I’ve learned baking cakes for my coffee shop

1 month ago | alislagle.substack.com | Ali Slagle |Yossy Arefi

1. Cake is breakfast. 2. I don’t know how to develop cake recipes. Only magicians can do that. So when I started making some cakes each weekend for my local coffee shop to sell, I followed cake recipes I’d made before or wanted to try. And for all the cake ideas that didn’t exist in recipe form, I turned to Magician Yossy Arefi, author of Snacking Bakes, Snacking Cakes, and the Substack Have a Little Something. She got a wishlist of random ideas and if any of them appealed to her, I got a new recipe.
Dinner Tetris for Ashley in Mobile, AL

1 month ago | alislagle.substack.com | Ali Slagle

Welcome to Dinner Tetris, an advice column here at 40 Ingredients Foreverwhere a reader shares the ingredients they always have on hand and I dream up three dinners using those ingredients.If you’d like your pantries Tetris-ed into dinner, head here. Occupation: Fitness instructorResiding in: Mobile, ALFeeding: 6Notes: I don't eat a lot of meat, although my family generally loves it.
9 brand-new recipes

1 month ago | alislagle.substack.com | Ali Slagle

Hi everyone! As a thank-you to paid subscribers who didn’t walk away after Wednesday, I’m sharing gift links to my new recipes published elsewhere on the internet. We’ve got make-ahead lunches, flaky puff pastry, slurpy angel hair, and the first spears of asparagus popping up with furikake, burrata, gnocchi, and more. If you’re wondering what becoming a paid subscriber to 40 Ingredients Forever is all about, take a look around. See you next week. This post is for paid subscribers
Kale salad with tempeh, sweet potato, and ginger

1 month ago | alislagle.substack.com | Ali Slagle

"I Dream of Dinner" is the most-used cookbook in our house, and many of your recipes are in our daily rotation. We love many recipe developers and authors, but yours are the most *useful*, by far (and delicious). " — Joe, paid subscriberWhen I go home to California for three weeks, I end up with salads made of raw kale, raw sweet potato, tempeh, and avocado. But don’t unsubscribe yet. I know you want to because every time I post a tempeh recipe, so many say see-ya to this newsletter.
Spring chicken soup

2 months ago | alislagle.substack.com | Ali Slagle

Here at 40 Ingredients Forever, recipes are abundant in joy yet streamlined in process—because they’re all made of the same 40 ingredients. "I Dream of Dinner is a wonderful cookbook, endlessly full of great ideas. 40 Ingredients Forever is much the same. Endlessly full of great ideas!" — Cara, paid subscriberCybelle, who tested this recipe, riddled me this: Is this recipe a “spring chicken” soup or a spring “chicken soup.” Meaning, is it rejuvenating or cozy?
Mostly greens, meal-prep meatballs

2 months ago | alislagle.substack.com | Ali Slagle

Here at 40 Ingredients Forever, recipes are abundant in joy yet streamlined in process—because they’re all made of the same 40 ingredients. Hello! A few weeks ago, I helped my friend Maryam cook Persian New Year for her family and friends. The most important dish, to her, is the kuku sabzi, a fun hat trick in which an actual bed of herbs cooks down to three 9-inch rounds just barely held together with eggs.