How to Build a Delicious Dinner- Free Printable!

A few weeks ago I showed you how I meal plan and why it works for us. Today I want to dig a little deeper into meal planning and go over how to put together a dinner. At the end, I have a free meal building printable worksheet to help you quickly plan out your meals. It took me a little while to be able to throw together a meal plan with little effort. I used to sit for hours searching through cookbooks, and Pinterest recipes to find what it is I wanted to cook for dinner, and trying to come up with a balanced meal. I wanted variety in our meals and to learn to cook basic things in new ways, but trying to piece together different recipes to create a meal became a bit overwhelming and redundant. “What should I make with this fish,? How should I make it? Is this going to be enough to fill us? ” I would ask myself. But now I am able to throw together a meal plan with little effort, and I’m going to do my best to show you how.

I am no dietitian but I do know that it is important to have a balanced diet. When considering what to cook for dinner, your and your family’s own dietary needs is what is going to decide what a balanced meal looks like in your home. The examples I’ll be giving you is what I would likely make for my family according to our own dietary restrictions.

So with that in mind, let’s begin…

When planning my dinners for the week I remember these 3 elements to making a good, balanced meal:

The main dish, typically based around a protein.
The vegetable side dish.
The starch side dish, something that compliments the main dish. (If you can’t have starches, this side can be replaced with another vegetable or fruit.)

You will have to make adjustments to match your needs but this is my basic map to planning out my dinners. I don’t follow this 100% of the time, and we’ll talk more about that later, but it’s a great starting point.

Choosing a Main Dish.

I like to create my main dish based on whatever my protein is going to be. If you’ve read my previous post about meal planning you’ll remember how I like to plan out my meals by category: beef, chicken, pork, fish, soup, breakfast and other. You may want to make your own categories but this is what works best for me and my family.

Whatever I’m making, I’ll try to keep in mind what I can afford or what I have available to me. When meal planning bi-weekly, I’ll try to plan out one cheaper meal and one that I can spend a little more money on in that category, to balance the cost. However there will be times when all we can afford is cheap meals and I like to get creative with those!

For example: Right now chicken thighs cost almost twice as much as chicken drumsticks for the same amount in my area (not to mention the price of chicken breast). So if I can, I’ll plan a cheap meal with the drumsticks, usually cooking them off for the meat, and make something else like chicken sandwiches with the more costly chicken thighs.

Once you’ve chosen what protein you’re going to make your main dish from, now you can get a little creative in deciding how you’re going to prepare it. When it comes to choosing what to make, it really comes down to what you are in the mood for and what you have time for. Think ahead about what you have going on and what you’ll have time to do. This will help narrow down some of your options. If you’re running short on time, a crock pot or instant pot meal may be a better option for you but if you have the time, you can experiment with a new and fun recipe.

Back to our chicken example: If you’re in the mood for Mexican food, you could make tacos, enchiladas, nachos, or taco salad. Or maybe your family asked for Italian food, you could make chicken Parmesan pasta, or baked chicken thighs with peppers. Or how about you become your own fast food restaurant and make your own chicken sandwiches? The possibilities are endless!

Now that you’ve decided on a main dish, let’s find sides to go with it.

When putting together my menu I try to come up with at least 2 side dishes per meal, depending on what I’m making: a vegetable and a starch. Some dishes will include one or both sides in it, which in that case I will adjust accordingly.

Side #1 will be a vegetable. Veggies are extremely important to our health and well being, helping to keep our digestive system working, our blood pressure low and helping to prevent diseases, such as cancer, heart disease and strokes.¹

Side #2 Will be be a starch, another vegetable, or fruit. This can be something with a lot of fiber like beans, oats, or lentils. Or something like potatoes, rice, or pasta. If you must stay away from starches for whatever reason, you can make this side another vegetable or a fruit.

Let’s stick with chicken as an example: Say you wanted to make the chicken Parmesan pasta. Well that contains both a protein and a starch, so to balance it out I would add a veggie on the side; perhaps a nice salad or baked brussel sprouts. Or if you wanted to make baked chicken thighs with peppers, you could add some rice and since there’s not enough peppers to make a complete side of veggies, you can add some asparagus or a raw veggie platter to go with it.

You don’t always need a side dish.

I know, I just said that I try to come up with at least 2 side dishes for a main dish but there are exceptions for this “rule”. Soup, for example, doesn’t always need a side: if it is a hearty soup filled with meat, veggies and rice, then it already has everything it needs to be a balanced and filling meal. However, some soups are lighter and may need a sandwich or a roll to go with it to be filling enough.

Tacos are another exception: they don’t need sides because all of the elements are wrapped up into one: meat, veggies (lettuce, tomatoes, peppers), and starch (tortillas, corn, beans).

However if you want to add more veggies on the side, you definitely can!

When I make breakfast for dinner I don’t usually have a vegetable with it. This will usually look like: protein (eggs, sausage, bacon), fruit, and starch( pancakes, muffins, coffeecake). It’s not the healthiest option, but it’s cheap and filling, and since we only do this once a week, I’m not that worried about it.

Once you’ve got the base of the side dishes picked out, we can decide how to cook them.

Side dishes don’t have to be plain and simple all of the time, they can be just as fantastic and interesting as the main dish; it’s all about cooking them in a way that you and your family enjoys. This can take a little experimenting, but you can have a lot of fun doing so!

Salads can be full of all kinds of great vegetables and even fruit! You can make a spinach salad with walnuts, strawberries and feta cheese, topped with a vinaigrette dressing for a nice refreshing summer salad. Or you can make what I call a “deconstructed sub”: starting with a leafy green base, add in all of your favorite sub toppings, ham, pickles, peppers, cheese, etc. and top it with honey mustard.
Vegetables that have a bad rap can actually be delicious if cooked right, it just takes a little experimenting to see what you like. Brussel sprouts baked with olive oil and Parmesan cheese is a lot different than steamed ones, and in my opinion a LOT better tasting. On the other hand my favorite way to eat asparagus is steamed and with a little lemon juice and salt on top.
Rice has many different ways it can be cooked as well: Spanish rice is one of my favorites but I also love some risotto. Rice can be added into casserole type dishes, to stretch it out or it can be made into rice pudding.
We all know the many different ways to enjoy potatoes but don’t forget you can make sweet potatoes a lot of the same ways! Sweet potatoes latkes are one of my favorite side dishes to make, and sweet potato fries are a nice change to typical fries with your burger.

“When it comes to choosing what to make, it really comes down to what you are in the mood for and what you have time for.”
A Homemakers Workmanship

Changing seasonings around is an easy way to marry your sides to your main dish so that they go together nicely. If I’m in a hurry, I’ll steam cauliflower, drizzle some olive oil on top and choose some spices that go with my main dish. It doesn’t have to be the exact ones but maybe a rendition of them. For example: I won’t use Asian spices like ginger, or star anise on a side if my main dish is Italian with oregano, and basil, but I may use something like rosemary to change things up a bit while still complimenting the main dish.

Another example of this may be the main dish being pork with a dill mustard sauce but you wouldn’t want every side dish to be dill flavored, that lacks variety. But you can complement the dill with chives, garlic, or thyme.

This is why when I did my first Mini Refresh and reorganized my spice cabinet, I separated my spices and seasonings into types, so that I could easily choose spices that went together.

Make a list of meal ideas to refer to.

Now that you know the structure of a good meal, you can make a list of meal ideas to use while meal planning. In this printable meal builder you can fill out one idea for each row and each category, so you can pick and choose different elements to your meal. That way, you won’t be making the exact same thing every-time!

I suggest making at least two of these, one for quick meals and one for meals you don’t mind spending a little more time on. You could also make 7, one for each category in my bi-weekly meal plan chart: beef, chicken, pork, fish, soup, breakfast, and other. There are a lot of ways you can use this meal builder!