the lazy person's guide to hosting

(not vegetarian) (mostly chicken)

Every once in a while you see a lament go round about how nobody has dinner parties any more. The response is that you have to host them yourself, which is true, but then people get intimidated because they feel like you have to be amazing to be a good host—serving restaurant-level food in a spotless penthouse with real dishes and silverware for everybody while a live band plays the songs of Jacques Brel, whatever.

Not only do you not need to be amazing, it’s often better to be a little bit… not-amazing. At any gathering somebody’s going to spill something, for instance; you might as well make them feel at ease about that. If they drop a glass, they will feel better if it’s either nothing special or a plastic one from the store. What you actually want to be is good, not amazing, and good is very achievable.

I love cooking and I love hosting, but I am extremely lazy. If I pull up a recipe and it looks even moderately fussy, I usually close it instantly. Unless forced to for some reason, I almost never bother with the little finishing touches that are supposed to elevate a dish (though whenever I do them, I think, this was worth it, I should do this next time… but I don’t).

Here are the assumptions with which this post is written:

• Neither you nor your guests are vegetarians.

• Laziness is a bigger priority to you than your budget.

• You can chop a vegetable, even if you’d rather not.

I was a vegetarian for ~ten years, and in my experience it is easier to be a lazy host (who nevertheless cooks) as an omnivore than otherwise. That is why this particular list is dominated by meat. I have put in some meatless options, and for something like a sit-down dinner you will find plenty of options out there really. The bigger the group however the less advice I have.

That said, as a host, I try to make everybody feel like they’ve got a plethora of options—I have, for instance, a mental list of which gluten-free brands are good.¹ In general, I try to make it so that every dish is an option to the widest number of people and the ways in which they are not an option are obvious (i.e., if something doesn’t have chunks of meat floating in it, don’t use chicken or beef broth; if you have a guest coming over who has celiac, don’t make a soup with a roux).

Finally, sometimes you’ll have somebody who is following a diet you genuinely can’t accommodate—for instance, perhaps they keep kosher and your kitchen is not kashered. In those instances, it’s best to just ask the person what you can do to make the occasion feel festive for them. Beyond being aware that such a diet does not represent a personal failure on your part, there is no real way to make a more detailed plan for them.

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A Lazy Person’s Sit Down Dinner

add: a salad of some kind (you’re on your own there, I hate making salads), a loaf of bread from a local bakery (you probably have at least one), and a tub of ice cream (everybody likes it)

“Duck de Marietta” (Maggie Zhu, Omnivore’s Cookbook)

If you can shell out for a whole duck, this is the ne plus ultra of a lazy person dinner. It requires almost nothing from you aside from putting the duck in the oven and to the extent that any recipe is impossible to screw up, this one is truly impossible to screw up. (Also, you need somebody to hang around the house for seven hours once it’s in the oven, but if you’re hosting, you can just put it and then start cleaning or day drinking or making a list of enemies or whatever else you have to do to prepare.)

However—and this is important—the hard upper limit here is four people. If you try to stretch this one to five or six, it will not work, people will not get enough, and someone will go home hungry. Four. That’s it. If money is no object and you’re having more people, make Zhu’s slow roast goose (or make two ducks).

“One-Pan Crispy Chicken and Chickpeas” (Yossy Arefi, NYT)

I’ve made this one two or three times and also experimented with trying different meats in it (like lamb chops). It’s consistently good even if an experiment is kind of a failure (like lamb chops). You can use any hardy green leafy vegetable here instead of spinach but you should not try using frozen spinach (I speak from experience). You can stick potatoes in among the chickpeas too, for extra bulk, but I would boil them first.²

The first time I made it I accidentally added like a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar around step three, but I thought it was a good addition so now I do it on purpose.

“Roasting A Whole Chicken Over Some Vegetables” (Me, This Blog)

I don’t have a recipe for this but if you want to roast a whole chicken and have it come out perfect even though you completely ignored it, then what you have to do is spatchcock it—i.e., cut out the spine and lay it flat. It’s easy to do but also some meat counters will probably do it for you.

However, if you can, you really should do it yourself—you just need a pair of sharp, good poultry shears. Since I am an ex-vegetarian I do think that if you cook meat you should be willing to get all up in it sometimes.

After that, you can just Frankenstein a recipe based on whatever appeals to you.

Now, what about sides? We have options.…

“One-Pan Farro with Tomatoes” (Deb Perelman, Smitten Kitchen)

I make this all the time, though usually with quinoa and not farro (as quinoa is gluten-free, and more people can eat it). It does require chopping vegetables (sorry) but you put them all in the pot and then you wander off.

“Spanish Chickpeas and Rice” (Beth, Budget Bytes)

I find most Budget Bytes recipes a tad underseasoned but when I was living on my own and cooking for just myself (and also, a vegetarian) I ate some version of this at least once a week. Just feel free to punch it up.

Do you want a lighter meal? Here are some lazy soups.…

“Chicken and Rice Soup” (Ali Slagle, NYT)
“Chicken, Leek, and Rice Soup” (Deb Perelman, Smitten Kitchen)

Your preference here will be dictated by how much you like fussing with leeks. If you don’t mind, then I personally prefer a soup with leeks in it to a soup without. I’ve made both and enjoyed them. For Slagle’s soup, I did make a couple of changes:

• instead of just cutting up celery, I made mirepoix (not very lazy of me, I know) (however you can often buy pre-chopped mirepoix vegetables)

• I ended up doubling the amount of chicken but nothing else

• I used half a cup of wine instead of lemon juice and added it in with the chicken instead of slowly stirring it in at the end, because we had not a lemon

“Tuscan Chicken And Chickpea Soup” (Amy Hunter, Ava Jane’s Kitchen)

I’ve also had good luck using this soup recipe as a base to riff off of (ignore the brand placements and just use whatever you own).

“Kale and White Bean Soup” (Martha Stewart, Martha Stewart)

I always made this recipe vegan (vegetable broth, no Parmesan rind). It’s very hearty and was always eaten by others with gusto. I also think it’s probably a good base for messing around—you could certainly play with the spices if you want, add some sausage, etc.

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The Lazy Person’s Hosted Gathering

add: some tortilla chips and one to two kinds of dip, slider buns if you want to do sandwiches, sandwich toppings if again you’re doing sandwiches, some sort of grain salad side (see the one-pan farro above), cheese and crackers

“Shredded Chicken” (Me, This Blog)

This requires a slow cooker.

• Procure chicken thighs—you can be pretty flexible with how many you get but the upper limit is probably three pounds.

• Put chicken thighs in your slow cooker.

• Add one bottle of BBQ sauce (possibly one and a half if you’ve gone up to three pounds).

• Cook on high for four hours.

• Shred chicken with forks.

• You’re done. I mean have like little slider buns or something. But you’re done.

Since the point here is that this is a lazy person dish, I’m not recommending “making a BBQ sauce of your own” or anything along those lines. You can do that, obviously, but you could also just buy some bottle from a brand called like Big Ole Mama Gator’s Finger Licking Sauce and that will probably be fine. This process is so lazy you would think the results must be completely disgusting, but the results are in fact quite good. Basically every time I have had a party I make the shredded chicken. Every time, somebody goes, “wow, this chicken is really good.”

You can actually do this with basically any sauce—or straight-up broth / water plus salt if you want the shredded chicken to be a neutral sauce surface (though I haven’t personally done this). You can do this to make “honey garlic” chicken… “Italian” chicken… the possibilities really never end, which means you can do this over and over while making it different enough that people aren’t like “here she comes with that chicken again.”

“Braised Pork All’Arrabbiata” (Ali Slagle, NYT)

If you want a slightly more luxurious but equally lazy dish, this pork shoulder is very reliable. I used to eat it over egg noodles or rice, not really as part of a sandwich, but you could probably make it work for a party however it was you wanted.

“A Pot of Red Beans” (Me, This Blog)

This is not really a recipe, or even a technique, since whenever I make this I sort of proceed by pure instinct and then afterward forget what I did. What you want is a jar of this stuff:

Since you are lazy, you purchase some quantity of canned red beans and you add them with their liquid and a bay leaf if you really feel like and then whatever amount of Tony Chachere’s seem reasonable to you.

Or you can follow the recipe on their website. However, the way I do it is vegan and gluten-free, which is why I mention it in this otherwise meat-heavy series of recommendations. Like the shredded chicken, you’re probably thinking that this sounds gross, but people love it. Well, really, they love Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning (Great on Everything!), for which the beans (and myself) are merely the humble vessel.

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This Is All A Little Too Lazy, If You Ask Me.…

Well, then write the “Medium Effort Person’s Guide to Hosting.”

1. Simple Mills, Mary’s Gone, Jovial.…

2. However, the good news for lazy people is you can just boil them and then having them sitting around in your fridge.