By Leah Koenig

For The Washington Post

Whenever I fall into a dinnertime slump (which, as the primary cook for my family of four, happens more than I’d like to admit), I do what thousands of other home cooks do: I turn to Caroline Chambers. Chambers is the founder behind the most-subscribed-to food newsletter on Substack, “What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking,” which has more than 200,000 subscribers. She is also the author of a new cookbook of the same name.

Like the newsletter, Chambers’ book is built around vibrant, flavorful recipes that get a complete dinner on the table in less than an hour with a minimum of dirty dishes. Think crunchy honey harissa fish tacos and a one-pan coconut curry chicken with gingery rice. The book also captures the same charismatic, approachable energy that makes Chambers’ newsletter such a phenomenon. Also expect plenty of practical riffs and clever tricks.

With hectic back-to-school schedules on the horizon (goodbye, lazy summer evenings by the grill), I checked in with Chambers for her tips to get fuss-free weeknight dinners on the table that everyone in your family will love.

1. Embrace the dinner sandwich

Sandwiches may be the ultimate lunchtime food, but Chambers said it is a mistake to sleep on their dinnertime appeal.

On especially busy nights when everyone needs to eat at different times, she goes for sheet pan sandwiches. “They are customizable, can be taken on the go, eaten warm or [at] room temperature, and they make everyone happy,” Chambers says. For sheet pan sliders, she grabs a 12-pack of King’s Hawaiian rolls, cuts the entire slab of bread in half and stuffs it with an oversize baked hamburger patty. Don’t pass on grilled cheese sandwiches, either, whether griddled in a skillet, made in the air fryer or baked in the oven, as with The Post’s Toasted Fontina and Prosciutto Sandwiches.

2. Shop your pantry

Keeping a well-stocked pantry is always a good idea, but Chambers recommends thinking about which flavor boosters you use frequently and making sure you have them on hand to instantly upgrade whatever you are cooking for dinner. For her, those ingredients are peanut butter, coconut milk, pesto, tahini and chipotles in adobo. “Store-bought pesto can be stirred into plain white rice, used to flavor meatballs or baked fish, or whisked into salad dressing. It adds so much flavor with absolutely no extra work,” she says.

For certain commonly used pantry items, such as olive oil, Chambers recommends a subscription to your favorite brand. There is often a discount, and by subscribing, you can check that item off your grocery list forever.

3. Serve modular meals

Whether it’s tacos, sushi, burgers or grain bowls, Chambers says offering modular meals — where you serve a dish’s components family-style and let everyone choose what goes on their plate — is a winning kid-dinner strategy.

“For sushi night, I put out bowls of rice, edamame, shredded carrots, cucumber and sauces so the kids have lots of choices,” she says. “Anytime I give my kids autonomy over what they eat, it is a slam dunk.”

Modular dinners take a bit of additional prep and cleanup, but they save you from being a short-order cook and from the “I don’t want to eat this” fight at the table. To simplify even more, Chambers suggests ditching individual bowls of ingredients and serving everything on a large cutting board. “Make a bunch of little piles of the different ingredients, set the board in the middle of the table and let your people choose what they want,” she says.

4. Stock your freezer better

Chambers swears by her freezer. Whenever she makes a big batch of soup, stew, turkey Bolognese or pasta with kale pesto, she packs a portion of it into a quart-size bag, freezes it flat, then files it vertically into one of a few containers she keeps in the freezer. (Think a filing cabinet drawer, but with food rather than documents.)

“I keep the soups together and the sauces together so I can easily flip through and find what I need,” she says. “Pop the contents of one of the bags into a skillet and 10 minutes later you have a delicious soup you made six months ago. It really saves me on busy nights.”

You do not have to replicate Chambers’s freezer filing system to use your freezer better. But if you begin to think about your freezer as a place to bank future meals, the time invested will pay delicious dividends.

5. Prep for the future while you cook dinner

If you work from home, Chambers says, you can prepare dinner in bits and pieces throughout the day. Chop veggies in between video meetings, or put a roast in the oven to braise while you finish up a longer work task. That way, you don’t have to start dinner from scratch after closing your laptop for the day.

For people who work in an office, there are still many prep-ahead strategies. “If I am making a chicken recipe … I will throw four extra, plain chicken breasts on the sheet pan to cook at the same time,” she says. That way, with one night of work, she has cooked chicken ready for the following night’s chicken salad or fajitas.

Chambers also says that after dinner, while someone else is doing the dishes or giving the kids their bath, you can quickly prep the carrots, celery and onion for the next night’s soup and store it in a container in the fridge.

Another idea: Put more rice than you need into the rice cooker. Serve some with dinner and refrigerate the rest for fried rice the following day.

“Getting ahead with those small tasks makes getting dinner on the table so much easier,” she says.