Almost exactly a year ago, I made a watermelon salad for friends, and they raved about it.
I am telling this to you in part to brag (I have started so many of my newsletters this way… I honestly should’ve named this substack “I’m Telling You This in Part to Brag”), but mostly because I was surprised; it was incredibly easy to make, and used only four ingredients.
(Side note: I am constantly baffled by what of my cooking excites people. I will spend 3 hours making gluten-free shrimp dumplings from scratch and receive no praise. Then I will post a photo of boxed pasta with a jarred sauce and people will lose their minds. The only moral I can discern is that people go on instagram mostly in hopes of seeing pasta.)
I began to conceptualize a cookbook that I would publish, once I achieved Chrissy Teigen-esque fame (probably the #1 career I wish to emulate: she is basically famous for being a hot mom who cooks sometimes). In said cookbook, I would help people who are not practiced in cheffery (which is ultimately not a word, but would be a gorgeous name for a baby girl) make dishes that seem impressive but require very little technical skill or precision.
In my opinion, a lot of the “easy” recipes that float around on tiktok still require a lot of work. A sentiment common in these comment sections is “if I have to chop an onion, it’s not easy,” and honestly… I agree with that! Anything involving onions is a Meal. Additionally, there are a lot of “easy one-pan recipes” that rely upon cooking a protein perfectly (something I am still very bad at), or “easy dishes to impress your friends” that ultimately are “buy this expensive product and plate it beautifully.”
I would like to restate here that I am by no means a cooking guru. I wouldn’t even say I’m a great cook, which I think implies that one makes delicious things with consistency. I occasionally make meals that I fully throw out because they’re inedible.
However, I do think I can help amateur cooks with more of a Kinder Garten than Ina Garten school of knowledge. My goal here is to give the amateur cooks out there a few recipes that are, in effect, unfuckupable - that use not one concrete measurement, but are really hard to make taste disgusting.
These recipes are not the longbow strapped to your back that requires years of practice to shoot effectively. These are the wooden clubs you keep tied to your loincloth so you can bludgeon a saber-toothed tiger if need be. These are the starting blocks as you learn how to “glean,” eventually being able to feel out how much salt you should add into your omelette, or that cucumber may add the crunch you’re looking for into your potato salad.
I feel like I’ve gotten kinda condescending and annoying in this one, so without further ado, I present some of my 4-Ingredient Recipes. As promised, each recipe only uses 4 ingredients, but each includes a “Level Up” section, so if you feel like you’re ready for the elevated version, you can make it fancier.
Bone apple teeth! And if your cooking skills are above this level and you found this newsletter useless, forward this to a friend! I’m not on socials this month (stunning and brave) so I need all the PR I can get.
Always with too many parentheticals,
Johnny