13 of Our Favorite Dump-and-Stir Recipes

Aggressively unsexy name notwithstanding, a good “dump-and-stir” recipe can revitalize your dinner routine. Everything goes into one pot, with minimal manipulation and fussing. You then get to (mostly) forget about it until it’s ready to serve, giving you time to take a shower after work, corral your family or make a cocktail. These are our favorite unfussy dinners, including sumptuous stews, comforting curries and hearty vegetable dishes.

Five-Ingredient Pork and Kimchi Stew

This pork stew calls for just five ingredients that simmer down into a salty-sweet, tangy-spicy Dutch oven of pork and cabbage. Loosely based on kimchi jjigae, we create a broth using kimchi, pork, gochujang, soy sauce and mirin, then add kimchi brine at the end for a layer of fresh, funky flavor. All you have to do is slice some pork and chop the kimchi, then it’s dump, simmer, done.

Miso-Gochujang Pulled Pork

This deeply flavorful pulled pork is an effortless dish that leaves the work to high-impact ingredients. These mouthwatering sliders are inspired by the “Pigalicious” wrap served at Bird & Ewe in Sydney, with rich savory-sweet complexity from white miso and gochujang, and ginger for an extra zing. Dump the ingredients, transfer to the oven, and come back in three hours.

Sri Lankan Chicken and Coconut Curry (Kukul Mas Maluwa)

We learned this Sri Lankan dump-and-stir curry from home cooks Mohara Dole and the mother-daughter team of K.S. Luxmi and Shasikala Samuel. To best replicate the toasty and robust flavors of Sri Lankan spices, we opt for making our own spice blend here—the most effort you have to put into this recipe. This chicken curry boasts bold, complex flavors with minimal work required, getting its richness from a can of coconut cream.

Hungarian Paprika-Braised Potatoes

This one-pot potato dish is a simple and traditional Hungarian side that feels like a main course. We learned this recipe, paprikás kumpli, in Zákányszék, a village in southern Hungary, from home cook Piroska Tanácsné. The potatoes simmer in a rich, paprika-based broth, releasing their starches so everything melds together and reduces into a flavorful sauce. It’s earthy, flavorful and warming from the cumin and cayenne pepper.

Pozole with Collard Greens

The collard greens are the focus in this lighter, meat-free version of pozole, a traditional Mexican stew of hominy (dried nixtamilized corn) and pork. We use a puree of ancho chilies, tomatoes and onion to create a robust broth for the stew. This recipe calls for chicken stock or water, which makes it a vegetarian-friendly option.

Pozole Rojo with Chicken

This chicken pozole is a brothy bowl of chewy, nutty hominy, tender chicken, shredded cabbage, with crunchy tortilla chips for heartiness and texture; lime, herbs, garlic and chili bring a savory, spicy brightness.

Chickpea, Chorizo and Spinach Soup

Calling soup “dump-and-stir” may be a little redundant, but this soup is so easy, it’s hard to think of it as anything but a one-pot, toss-it-all-in affair. It was inspired by Portuguese sopa de grão de bico, which translates as “chickpea soup.” This soup is all about using a few simple ingredients with one bold addition to get the most out of what you have, in this case Spanish dry-cured chorizo, which lends smoky, garlicky intensity to the broth.

Coconut Curry-Braised Fish

This coconut curry comes together in two parts, but both are a dump-and-stir situation. First, we cook down the vegetables in coconut milk seasoned with curry powder, to create a rich broth for braising the fish (that’s the second step). Any firm white fish works for this, but we like cod or Chilean sea bass.

Polenta Soup with Kale and Parmesan

This brothy soft polenta with kale—our take on polentina alla toscana, a rustic Italian soup—is an excellent toss-it-together template for cold weather comfort. You can add a can of white beans if you desire extra heartiness, while a heap of Parm brings loads of savory satisfaction.

Korean Chicken and Vegetable Stew

We love Korean classics for their streamlined approach to intensely complex flavors. This chicken soup builds on the comforting familiarity of potatoes and carrots, adding savory depth with soy and gochujang (fermented chili paste). We sing gochujang’s praises all the time—it’s one of our favorite ingredients because it’s both spicy and full of umami funkiness.

Spiced Ground Chicken with Currants and Pistachios

Spiced ground meat shows up in cuisines all around the world— often served in heaping bowls, stuffed in tacos, or (in this case) with warm flatbread. This recipe brings big flavor in multiple ways: high-impact spice, savory tomato paste, sweet pops of dried fruit, and toasty nuts for crunch— and it comes together effortlessly, in one pot. One of our readers recommends a side of toasted cauli with tahini and lemon, which works beautifully.

Coconut–Red Curry Shredded Pork

The secret ingredient to this dump-and-stir shredded pork is Thai red curry paste. It packs a ton of flavor into one concentrated, aromatic paste (and keeps the ingredient list short, too). This curry is dead simple to throw together, everything goes into a Dutch oven, no browning, no stovetop cooking. Then the entire pot goes into the oven for four hours. Calling this a dump-and-stir almost isn’t fair because there’s barely any stirring involved.

Chicken Paprikash

Instant Pot chicken paprikash is possibly the most elegant dump-and-cook recipe ever—25 minutes of active time and a short ingredients list gets you a chicken doused in creamy, spiced and savory sauce. Serve on a bed of buttery egg noodles.

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest.

And if you're looking for more Milk Street, check out our livestream cooking classes with our favorite chefs, home cooks and friends for global recipes, cooking methods and more.

Willow Montana

Willow Montana is the Production Manager of Digital Media at Milk Street. Willow spends their days coordinating and planning video shoots, managing schedules and overseeing the execution of digital projects. They studied Baking and Pastry Arts at Johnson and Wales University and worked in restaurants while putting themself through six more years of college. They hold a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in English Literature and a Master’s of Fine Arts in Publishing and Writing. Willow is a firm believer in living a slow, quiet life and making things by hand. When they aren’t following the developers around with a camera at the Milk Street office, they may be found at home shaping loaves of sourdough, caring for dozens of houseplants and, occasionally, out in the wild at a punk rock show.