Donal Skehan Wants You to Prepare Easy Meals in Just Under 5 Minutes!
Donal Skehan is one of Ireland's favourite sons when it comes to culinary prowess. The TV presenter, YouTuber and author, who started one of Ireland's first blogs dedicated to food in 2007, was catapulted to stardom with hit TV series on BBC, Food Network, RTE & FOX, releasing eight cookbooks as well. His newest series, 'Donal’s Super Food in Minutes' is dedicated to serving up easy super nutritious meals for the busy home cooks. We speak to him via Zoom about what his new show is about, and get him to dish on some tips one can do in the kitchen to bring the best of healthy diets to a busy lifestyle.
Tell us a little bit about Donal’s Super Food in Minutes, and what do you hope to achieve from this programme.
Chef Donal Skehan (DS): This show is all about bringing veggies to the floor, it’s about having balanced meals, it’s about using 10 ingredients or less in 30 minutes, bringing it from the kitchen to the table. The whole point of this is that it should be quick, simple and good for you. And the meals range from nourishing bowl foods, hearty salads to one pan suppers and it’s very much geared towards just speedy, easy dinners that you can do and it just so happens to be a little bit healthier. There’re recipes in there that are big on flavour, but they don’t skimp on the veggie content, and like I said, there’s meat in there, but it’s small amounts of really good quality meat, and that’s the essence of it. It’s about trying to find that balanced plate at the end of the day. And particularly, we’re all under pressure these days, from work kids in school or whatever it might be. So trying to come up with something that’s tasty, delicious and can be made in a small amount of time is really key and that’s what the TV show is all about.
What is a common misconception about superfoods and a plant-based movement?
DS: It’s a good question cause I think superfoods in general, you think about blueberries and goji berries and all these crazy faddy sort of ingredients. But for me, super food is exactly what I’m talking about, veg forward, really great flavour, it’s dishes that you come back to time and time again because they are good for you and because they are nourishing And that’s not taking in, juice diets, and blueberries and anti-oxidants, and what this TV series is trying to do is reclaim that superfoods title a little bit, and make it more realistic for people. You don’t have to spend a fortune on ingredients, and actually, superfoods is the everyday bog standard vegetables you get, you just have to eat them.
aubergine curry, by Chef Donal Skehan. image credits: Chef Donal Skehan
What are some essentials we should have in our kitchen to ensure a healthier yet faster way of making dishes?
DS: Oh… there’s so many.. Well obviously, getting a good selection of great veggies is key to a lot of the dishes. Having a good line up of spices is always good for me, and tinned ingredients like chopped tomatoes, chickpeas, pulses, and lentils, they’re all really great ones because they can pack out soups and stews and salads, so they’re really handy to have. I would say go big on spices like harissa pastes, you know my Asian store cupboard is vibrant and I have lots of condiments from fish sauce, to soy sauce, to dark soy sauce, to ketchup and mayonnaise. So I always try and go big on those sort of strong flavours that kind of amplify the ingredients themselves. So having things like that in your store cupboard setup to start with, is always key to really succeeding in getting meals to the table in a very short amount of time.
What advice can you give a home cook who might be a little bit nervous in starting in the kitchen?
DS: The best thing you can do if you are just starting out is to choose three recipes, identify them as ones that you may have tasted before, you know what they taste like and just arm yourself with the ingredients. Don’t even start cooking till you have laid out your ingredients and you’ve laid out your equipment, because the most difficult part of cooking is when you don’t have things at hand and it becomes really complicated and it makes you stressed. So go out, choose three recipes, make them over the course of the week and what happens in that process, is that the confidence builds and you start to realise that, oh I can actually do this, it doesn’t take too long and you get left with something that’s quite palatable and edible in the end. So, I think it’s really about building confidence, if you can kind of get yourself into the kitchen and get past that first barrier then I always think you are off to a good start from there.
So what is a good recipe from your books that you can share for someone to gain confidence and at the same time, feed a family of four?
DS: Well there’s so many in the book and in the TV show that we come back to time and time again. I think that the simple ones for me, are always the pasta dishes. They’re probably my quick fixes when I come home and I’ve mentioned, all of the greens pasta that are in the book really comes together so simply. It’s in the show as well, but I suppose really simple pan-fried meats with vegetables at the forefront. I have a charred pork bánh mì salad which I love. It’s like the Vietnamese bánh mì, but it’s just kind of slightly deconstructed without the bread and all the pickled vegetables, very simply cooked meat, and a really punchy dressing. Those are the sort of the things that I get really excited about because it’s literally while the meat is frying, you can prepare the salad ingredients and maybe the dressing. But again, a lot of those dishes that can be thrown together easily, you have them in the fridge, things like the super green soups, any of the soups are fantastic cause you can literally make them in 15 minutes and have them blended and blitzed and put them in the fridge for when you need them. So recipes like that are very handy to come into play. I’ve got an aubergine curry with turmeric cauliflower rice, it’s really simple to do and you get great results with that because the aubergine is nice and chunky and you don’t miss the meat at all. There’s chickpea pasta with cauliflower bolognese, those are the ones that they give great flavour, which I always think if you’re going to the trouble of buying the ingredients, cooking the ingredients, and sitting down to dinner, you want it to taste good and you want it to work, so those are recipes that really play on that and deliver great flavour. And I think if you’re a new cook, having the kind of confidence to know that you can create something delicious is really the core of why you will come back to cooking. So, I always try and go big on flavour, because that’s the first part people stumble on.
winter citrus polenta cake by Chef Donal Skehan. image credits: Chef Donal Skehan
Tell us some of the things that we should not miss on your show.
DS: Well, we have a five minute meal challenge which is at the end of every show. The point of it is not necessarily to cook recipes in five minutes, but it’s to show people that you can do quite a lot in five minutes with only a few ingredients. So I love that element, a lot of people have to hide behind the cushion because they don’t know if I’m going to finish the actual dish in the five minutes or not. And often times I don’t know myself if I’m going to do it. But I think that’s a bit of fun just to prove that you can make something in a short amount of time. But over and above that, the show is just filled with veg forward recipes that are big on flavour that really do make life a little bit easier in the kitchen, so I think that’s probably key to it and any kitchen tips people pick up along the way, I’m always happy.
Donal’s Super Food in Minutes, every Friday at 7pm. It is available on BBC Lifestyle (StarHub Channel 432) and BBC Player.
