4 Easy Dinners Ready in 30 Minutes or Less, According to Our Allrecipes Allstars

At the end of a busy weekday, it can feel hard (and sometimes impossible) to come up with an easy dinner to put together. I can never have enough quick meals in my weekly rotation, and you probably feel the same. In my search for more, I’ve asked college students and family members for their best recommendations, and they certainly didn’t disappoint.

Then, I thought, who better to ask than our very own Allrecipes Allstars? These home chefs know easy weeknight meals like the back of their hand. So, I asked them for their go-to easy meals, and I'm keeping these in my back pocket from now on—and you should, too.

Marinara Sauce and Grits

For an easy weeknight dinner, Allstar Ashley Elizabeth recommends making a “zhuzhed-up” marinara sauce by adding more ingredients to store-bought sauce and serving it over Parmesan cheese grits.

This recipe is an easy way to make a flavorful dinner out of ingredients always hanging out in the fridge. If you have leftovers from pasta night but want something a little different, this dinner will take only a couple of minutes to heat up and put together. To me, this recipe sounds like pizza in a bowl. It's both cheesy and saucy, which means I can’t imagine a better or simpler comfort meal.

To make it, all you need is store-bought marinara sauce. Ashley recommends Rao’s. Heat your sauce with any ingredients that you have in your kitchen, like ground beef, onions, red wine, bell peppers, chicken, or spinach—the options are truly infinite here.

Once warmed, spoon your sauce over some Parmesan cheese grits. Now, you will have a tasty meal in a bowl ready to enjoy all winter.

Hamburger Gravy and Rice

For a quick dinner, you never can go wrong with hamburger gravy. Growing up, one of my favorite dinners that my mom made was Hamburger Helper, which means this recipe is a nostalgic choice, reminiscent of all of the easy weeknight meals that came before it.

Allstar Judy Fusco Cru feels the same and recommends a homemade hamburger gravy over rice for a quick, comforting dinner. We have a great recipe for hamburger gravy that you can spoon over mashed potatoes or, as Judy recommends, over rice.

Judy’s specific recipe, however, is also very easy. For her hamburger gravy, she says to brown a pound of ground beef, chopped onions, and chopped carrots in oil. Then add salt, pepper, and minced garlic. Add 1/4 cup of flour and let it cook for a few minutes. The secret to the gravy element of this recipe is to add water, then beef-flavored Better Than Bouillon and Kitchen Bouquet. This is the kind of dish that'll end your weeknight on a high note!

Pea, Carrot, and Bacon Pasta

There are so many great recipes for quick and easy pasta, but I'm a firm believer that you never can have too many. Plus, Allstar Kim Mancuso’s go-to recipe is one you probably already have all the ingredients for: pasta with peas, carrots, and bacon. Think of it like an easy, low-effort carbonara.

To make this recipe, all you need to do is take a bag of frozen peas and carrots and thaw your veggies under some hot water. Take a package of bacon, cut it up, and cook it in a pan until partially cooked. Drain some of the grease then add your veggies and finish cooking. Once your veggies and bacon are cooked, add a cup of heavy cream and some cooked pasta. Serve the pasta with freshly grated Parmesan cheese, and there you have it—a tasty weeknight dinner that couldn’t be simpler!

While this dish is delicious on its own, you could also adapt it by adding leftover shredded chicken to make a chicken pot pie-inspired pasta dish. It'll taste different enough that you could probably make both these recipes in one week without it feeling repetitive.

Grilled Cheese Patty Melts

Two of our Allstars recommended grilled cheese patty melts for a weeknight meal, and I can see why. Our grilled cheese patty melts recipe lets you enjoy all the comforting flavors and elements of a cheeseburger, without all the work of grilling and cutting toppings.

Allstar Lela Raine says this is the way to go for a "quick and easy meal." Brenda Venable, another Allstar, agrees. She said that her go-to weeknight dish is “a toss-up between a Costco rotisserie chicken and a grilled hamburger!”

You can't go wrong with either, but grilled patty melts are always a fun way to jazz up dinner. Fair warning though: Make this recipe, and your family might be begging for it for weeks to come.

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