This was a four-day weekend for us, so I’m posting an easy and relatively healthy recipe today. I did actually cook this One-Pan Orzo with Spinach and Feta from NYT Cooking for dinner on Saturday night in between all the takeout, cupcakes, macarons and other treats, too. 😉 I love a one-pot meal, and this one really does only take one pan! (Plus a cutting board.) There is a bit of chopping that you need to do before you start, but it comes together very quickly after that.
When I started posting Mangia Monday recipes on Facebook more than three years ago, it was never my intention to create new recipes. I wanted to post a recipe each week that was approachable to anyone on a Monday – or any other weekday. This one definitely qualifies, and I love all the veggies it sneaks in, too. I love developing my own recipes now, but I’ll never give up cooking other people’s recipes, either.
Despite having two cabinets full of cookbooks, I admit that most of what I cook at home now comes from online sources. It just makes more sense to me to be able to read all the reviews to find out what worked or didn’t work for other people! The New York Times is one of my favorite sources for flavorful, creative and relatively easy recipes that I make again and again. It costs $40 USD a year (only $3.25 or one cup of coffee a month) for a NYT Cooking subscription, and you don’t need to subscribe to the New York Times newspaper to get it. I consider it well worth the cost since some of my favorite and most repeated recipes come from there! All NYT Cooking recipes have been well-tested and the comments are usually very helpful (and sometimes quite entertaining), too.
This One-Pan Orzo with Spinach and Feta by Melissa Clark (her recipes are amazing!) jumped out at me immediately. We love spinach and feta and dill and pasta. Orzo somehow feels less heavy to me than regular pasta, though, and I loved how vegetable heavy this was. Pasta without the guilt and no boiling water required! Yay!
We have always eaten this as a main dish, but I think it would also be a perfect accompaniment to grilled fish or meat. The herbs make it taste like spring to me, but you can cook it even in the dead of winter given the year-round availability of all the ingredients.
It wouldn’t be me if I didn’t change a FEW things, but I stayed pretty close to the original with this one. Here are my personal changes:
- I added 1 cup of frozen peas instead of 1/2 cup. The peas are optional, though, so if you don’t care for them, you can leave them out!
- My spinach was quite small so I didn’t chop it. (Mostly due to laziness and the desire to only use one cutting board.)
- Reduced salt to 3/4 tsp. I added 1/2 tsp with spinach and 1/4 tsp when cooking the orzo.
- I increased the chicken stock to 2 cups this time and thought that worked well for a bit less al dente orzo, which is how we like it
- My preferred ratio of herbs is half dill and half parsley (P.S. Make sure you don’t skip the lemon zest, as that really adds brightness to the overall dish!)
If there are any leftovers, this one reheats well and is even good cold, but I have to admit we usually finish it with just the three of us in one sitting. Thanks, Melissa and NYT Cooking for another solid recipe that will be in our regular rotation.
For dinner 
Lunch leftovers