New Year’s Resolutions: How to become a better home chef, according to Amanda Haas

Sure, you’re probably just thinking about the holiday frolic ahead. But can we talk 2024? Is one of your New Year’s resolutions to cook more meals at home or to eat healthier? Amanda Haas can help.

The Orinda-based cookbook author and former Williams Sonoma culinary director recently released her fourth cookbook, “Homemade Simple: Effortless Dishes for a Busy Life” (Cameron + Company, $29), which builds on an idea she first explored in her debut cookbook, “One Family, One Meal“: that dinnertime should not involve being a short-order cook for each family member. In her latest cookbook, she returns to that concept of family-friendly meal simplicity, but with an added emphasis on health and nutrition.

Q. What inspired this cookbook?

A. This is my fourth cookbook. When I had young kids, I believed that I would figure out how to cook things that we would all enjoy eating. I started messing around with simple recipes of the foods I loved, and found that it worked really well on my kids and their friends. Over the years, it became my philosophy that it doesn’t have to be hard to cook, that it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, and it doesn’t have to take a lot of time.

With that, there are a couple of ancillary benefits. One is that you’re just eating better and taking better care of yourself. It’s not that it has to be perfect or free of anything that we consider bad for you — it’s just a better way to live. Over time, I’ve had health issues and started to explore anti-inflammatory cooking and make the connection that food can be medicine, or it can make you feel terrible.

During the pandemic, my kids were home from school, and I started cooking everything that they love — with the philosophy that that is probably taking better care of yourself than if you get takeout every night. I took all the tools I’ve learned over the years, like how to meal plan, shop and budget, and I wrapped that up with over 100 recipes that are easy to make, delicious and maybe a little bit better for you, than if you went out to eat.

That’s the new wellness story to live by: Let’s just try to do a little bit better. If you want to learn how to cook something that you’re used to getting (at restaurants) all the time, it’s probably going to have less sodium and less refined ingredients. I don’t want to beat myself up, and I don’t try to change everything at all at once. Let’s just pick one thing, and let me make it easy for you and give you the recipes and the tools you need, so that it doesn’t feel like a challenge or hard to pull off. During the pandemic, I launched cooking classes online. This book came out of that class.

Q. The book talks about how to meal plan. What pointers can you share?

A. I love to cook, but I don’t love it when recipes call for something obscure. That’s one of the most important things for me — I don’t call for ingredients that you’re not going to use again. I want to teach people how to meal plan. You have to start understanding a couple of things: What are the main things you want to cook that week and then carry into other recipes? If you’re going to roast a whole chicken, can you use part of that to make something else during the week? I start by giving them the ideas and sample calendars of things that they can cook during the week.

Q. What are some of your favorite recipes in this book?

A. Skirt steak with chimichurri. The chimichurri (is made with) fresh herbs, garlic, olive oil, capers, and it is so dang good on everything — a roasted sweet potato, a piece of fish, a steak — so I love that. I had someone stop me last night and tell me that the honey mustard salmon is her family’s favorite. I had to laugh, because it is three ingredients and salt, and I’ve had publishers tell me I couldn’t put it in a cookbook because it was too simple. It’s so simple, but it is so good. Simple food can be really delicious.

Q. What are some tips for incorporating more home cooking into our regular routines?

A. The first thing is: Don’t feel like you have to do it all. Even if you pick a couple recipes that you want to learn how to make and master, it gives you confidence. When you learn to do those in your sleep, it makes everything easier.

I like to go to the grocery (store) and meal plan all at once. You can come home and just spend 30 minutes unloading your groceries and then making a vinaigrette or a chimichurri — something you know you can use during the week. I also teach people how to master one thing that you slow cook or that you can make a really big batch of, because it’s so nice to have something to be able to rely on throughout the week that’s delicious and homemade.

Many of my friends learning how to cook think that they’ve got to learn how to do really fancy recipes. I always joke that’s why I go out to eat. I love going to restaurants where people make complicated food because, most nights of the week, I don’t want to spend two hours making dinner. So start small and build up.

Q. What are some cooking tools people should keep in their kitchens?

A. If you want to cook well, you don’t need that much. But there are some things that are going to make your life a lot easier, like a good knife and a good pan, a good cutting board, things like that. I try to teach people that if you’re going to get new tools for the kitchen, make them count. They don’t have to be expensive; they just have to work well. I’m obsessed with owning a fish spatula, because a spatula like that can flip a pancake and flip burgers. It’s so helpful.

Q. Anything else to add?

A. Even though this is my fourth cookbook, I feel like it’s the book I was always meant to write. I think I hit the jackpot on this one — to get the feedback that people are actually already cooking from it and returning to it makes me feel like I’m doing my job well.