Are my recipes too simple?

Kale Caesar Salad

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #00adef;”] H[/dropcap]ave you been hesitating about trying a Stonesoup recipe?

Let me guess.

You’re worried they’re too simple.

I hear it from my meal planning members all the time…

“Your recipes sound almost too simple to be delicious. But then you start eating and every bite is better than the last.”
– Julie

“Sometimes it’s unclear if a recipe will taste good using so few ingredients, but it always does!!”
– Sarah

“I have spent my whole adult life in the culinary arts and at first I thought the simplicity of the recipes would be too simple.

Was I ever wrong!!!

I just made the kale chips with beef burger from this week’s meal plan. No stress or hours prepping.

Everybody loved it! “
– Carolyn

I get it.

I’ve been writing recipes with 6-ingredients or less for 10 years.

Yet sometimes I still think ‘it’s going to be too simple’.

But I try my idea any way.

And 90% of the time the simple recipe is the best.

I have very high standards.

I only publish the recipes that taste amazing.

So…

I dare you to try a Stonesoup recipe this week!

What have you got to lose?

Download my free eCookbook over here.

Choose one recipe.

Get those ingredients.

Have fun in the kitchen!

And leave a comment below about your experience.

I’m excited to see what you cook up!

With love,
Jules x

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24 Comments

  • Hello Jules. I just want to say I’ve been following your online blog I found in your 5 ingredients 10 minutes cookbook I came across by chance in a bookshop in 2014 and have been using your recipes and following your blog ever since. I think it’s brilliant.

  • I’ve been turning to your recipes more and more, because they are so simple. Once in a while I find something that I think would be better if it was less simple (Moussaka is the only example I can think of), but I’ve generally been very pleased with your simple recipes. Keep up the good work.

  • Too simple? No. I tried one of the simplest, Chicken & Peppers, last week and it was superb. I added garlic & chillis as suggested in the variations (mainly because our chilli plant has gone wild this season). So good!

  • Your recipes are great! We have tried quite a few, some have become favourites (sausage & cabbage skillet, for example!)

  • I have been using your recipes for a while and like that they are simple. That is what makes them stand out from other recipes. I have been surprised that not adding a lot of things still leaves a tasty recipe so thank you. And I also really like the variations at the end. Keep up the good work!

  • Your recipes are perfect for me. I cook very simply, mainly a plant-based diet, and love your combinations and simplicity of ingredients. Some recipes I use over and over, each time happy with the outcome. Carry on!

  • Absolutely no way are they too simple. They are all the perfect mid week meal. Healthy, easy, usually from scratch and reliably tasty. We use them almost every weeknight and have our favourites we use over and over again!
    Thanks Jules :)

  • when i started to read your blog i made this carrots soup like pumpkin soup and it was so delicious and i worked my way through your recipes
    and now when i read a recipe online or in a cookbook and there is a big list of ingredients my brains will shut up and i‘m going back to your recipes
    they are so delicious – they can‘t be too simple
    lg birgit

    • Lovely to hear from you Birgit!
      That carrot soup is a very old recipe – so glad it got you into Stonesoup :)

  • Simple is all that I will do. I was so happy when I found your “5 Ingredients, 10 Minutes” book years ago. You’ve taught me that I can take 3 or 4 things from the fridge and turn them into something with even more taste than the complicated recipes.
    There are a few foods that I can’t eat, foods like broccoli and capsicum that seem to be in every recipe I’m interested in, and the substitutions you provide always give me a way to cook any of your recipes. You’ve raised the bar for every other cookbook writer.

  • The SIMPLE is what I love about your recipes. I’ve aspired to this kind of cooking for years – I LOVE to cook, but I’d seen this simple style in a French home. Such an easy elegance – then, I lived in Italy. Same thing – and it was the ‘same’ simple but never boring. (An Italian woman saw my “American” spice cabinet and couldn’t believe it – wanted to know what in the world I did with all those spices.) In cooking simply, deliciously, beautifully, the cooking and the food become more of a meditation than a performance – another bar by which we judge ourselves. Cooking like this has brought such peace into my life (and I started learning these principles when I found you), and I think it’s a peace that people crave – and in the last couple of years, I started noticing a larger trend in Cooking Light and on Pinterest (one pan meals). I will now catch myself in the kitchen thinking “I could make another vegetable” or “add a salad” (vs the one vegetable I’ve got). I will start to complicate things – and then think “no, this is enough…” – and I wonder if that’s the thought at the root of it all. I see what you’re doing as FAR more than recipes/health/ease. It’s about beautiful living – and you always have the various substitutions available for choice if inspiration strikes. Your recipes allow for each individual’s unique, individual expression. Brava to you! And ‘Tanti Grazie”!

    • Grazie to you Sandra

      I think you’re right the key thought when I’m creating recipes is ‘this is enough’. So calming :)

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