We’re counting down the top 10 meals we’ve made in the first half of 2025! These recipes were your favorites too — easy, delicious, and perfect for busy nights. Let’s see which ones made the list!
PRODUTS USED IN THIS VIDEO (Affiliate links) – https://www.amazon.com/shop/keepitsimplediy
RECIPES:
Red Curry Chicken Soup https://damndelicious.net/2018/04/18/thai-red-curry-noodle-soup/
Sundried Tomato Egg & Rice
Fajita Chicken Marinade- https://www.pinterest.com/pin/694046992610606566/
Butternut squash gnocchi and chicken sausages https://thegirlonbloor.com/brown-butter-butternut-squash-gnocchi-sage/
Chicken Tender Wraps – Chicken Tenders, Honey Mustard, BBQ Sauce, Lettuce, Tomato: All wrapped and seared in a tortilla.
Pesto Chicken & Pasta – Chicken, pesto sauce, pasta cooked with broth, mozzarella cheese
Creamy Chicken & Veggie Quinoa Bake (Swapped for tomato pesto) – https://therecipewell.com/chicken-and-zucchini-casserole/#recipe
African Beef Stew – https://www.kitchenmomy.com/african-beef-stew/
Fufu (add more flour than this calls for) – https://weeatatlast.com/fufu/
Beef and Barley Stew https://keepitsimplediy.com/2025/01/01/the-most-delicious-beef-and-barley-stew-youll-eat/
Protein Buffalo Chicken – https://keepitsimplediy.com/2025/05/25/high-protein-buffalo-chicken-bake-you-need-to-try/
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CHAPTERS:
0:00 Start the Countdown
0:26 #10 Protein Buffalo Chicken – https://youtu.be/BDxu9v4h22Y
3:53 #9 Beef and Barley Stew – https://youtu.be/06Fgbd9JYyE
8:45 #8 African Beef Stew & Fufu – https://youtu.be/5TbWJg0tdaU
11:19 #7 Tomato Pesto Chicken Quinoa Bake – https://youtu.be/66ZnzGcxDII
14:52 #6 Pesto Chicken & Pasta – https://youtu.be/4TzQSIRbGII
16:29 #5 Chicken Tender Wraps – https://youtu.be/mQ4u5Mi9UqM
18:16 #4 Butternut Squash Gnocchi & Chicken Sausages – https://youtu.be/X3CE-6GWTZA
22:06 #3 Fajita Chicken Marinade – https://youtu.be/4TzQSIRbGII
22:53 #2 Sundried Tomato, Egg, and Rice – https://youtu.be/-9TmR6t4ZCY
25:06 #1 Red Curry Chicken Soup – https://youtu.be/7Tsnz4Z_-Gw
#Top10Meals #EasyDinnerIdeas #BestOf2025
We’re counting down the top 10 meals so far of 2025. This is from January to June, the first half of the year. These are my favorite meals that I made. And we made a lot of meals. So, even the ones that are number 10, these are still meals that you will want to try. So, if you are having a hard time figuring out what you want to cook or need some dinner inspiration, this is the place to be because we have some amazing meals that are coming at you right now. Starting off the countdown, we have a high protein buffalo chicken bake, which was so delicious. I am going to start out by getting some rice going for a buffalo chicken bake. Okay, I just put half a cup of rice into here. I’m also going to add a whole package of cauliflower rice. This is a 10 oz package. I’m going to put it in completely frozen. [Music] And then the idea is I’m just going to cook those together and then we’ll mix them and you won’t even be able to tell, right? So I’m assuming that the cauliflower rice will have quite a bit of liquid in it. And so I’m going to add can of liquid that has probably about a half a cup of broth in it plus the chicken. It’s about a pound of chicken. You could just take a chicken breast, brown it up on the stove or inside of your pressure cooker and then, you know, put it all in at once instead of using canned chicken. I just think canned chicken for buffalo chicken, anything is the way to go. So, I’m also going to just add a few spices. I’m going to do celery salt. Of course, you could add celery in here and just do regular salt. And then I’m going to do a little bit of onion powder and garlic powder. And then we need to get this on and cooking on just the rice setting. Okay, I’m going to get this all mixed together. and break up the chicken. Okay, so let’s do half a cup of low-fat cottage cheese. And then I have Woo, that was hot. Woozers. Okay, we’re a little higher than where I meant to be with that. There’s a line here that’s halfway. So, we probably have an extra tablespoon or two of sauce. But, you know what? I bet that’ll be just fine. I thought about blending the cheese first, but then I figured it’ll probably melt. Actually looks like a good amount of buffalo sauce, so hopefully we’re good there. Going to get that into here. Okay, so my thought about how much it would be was correct. So that’s good. And now we just need about 1/3 of a cup of cheese. Okay, I’m going to sprinkle this over the top. Okay, and into the oven. Okay, this just came out of the oven. I did put it on broil for a few minutes as well, just to get the top a little bit crispy, which it didn’t really crisp up. And then I added just a little bit of parsley just to give it a little bit of a green to it. If you had celery leaves, I think that would probably be the perfect thing to garnish this with, but I don’t. Okay, let’s see. Okay, that is delicious. I like the extra amount of buffalo sauce that I put in. It probably would have been fine, which is the amount that I meant to, but this is so good. Normally, I put ranch seasoning in. So maybe next time what I would do is put a little bit of a ranch seasoning packet in with the cottage cheese and then it would be perfect. I think that might be the only thing this is missing. But this is good just on its own as well and so good for you. I am working on getting out all of the things to make the beef and barley stew that I used to make literally all the time. I made this multiple times and then I overcooked it once and I was like, “Oh, that’s disgusting.” And then I overcooked it again and I haven’t made it since. So, we are going to use up some of this barley and we are going to make sure to not overcook it. So, let’s see what all ingredients I need. So, I’ve got my recipe right here. So, it looks like we need Well, should we just add it all as we’re grabbing it? Let’s see. I’ve got a pot right here and four cups of beeftock. So, I’m going to use up this beef, too. Oh, I didn’t even think about that. Okay, so beef. This has been on my list. This is canned. Oh my gosh. Seriously. 21 is when I canned this. So, this needs to be used up. We are going to just start throwing things in a pot, I guess. You know, usually I’m like getting all the ingredients out and then putting it all in here, but we’re just going to do it one at a time. I do not have all the ingredients out. So, here’s the beef and some beefto. I am just mashing this up a little bit, you guys. Use it up. And it calls for some celery, which I grabbed out already, so might as well add that in. Now, we’re going to try to not overfill it, right? And sauteed onions. I’m not sautéing any onions. We’re going with the shortcut. probably be good with just two. So, I need some broth. And I have a little bit of broth that I didn’t can. I don’t know why I just picked everything up to go in the freezer. We don’t need all that. But it called for. Do you guys remember? I’m cutting this recipe in half, of course, right? Um, okay. Let’s see. One cup of water and four cups of beeftock. That is three cups of liquid. That’s a lot of liquid. And I don’t think it’s all going to fit in here. Well, we already have a little bit of liquid in there. I’m going to throw this a little bit of this is turkey broth, but it’ll be just fine. And then here’s a whole cup. I’m going to use some of this to get this out of the freezer. So, that is about two. Maybe I’ll go a little light on the barley bay leaf or two cuz these are tiny. Little bit of time. Salt. Hope that wasn’t too much salt. Pepper. Okay. Also, carrots. I have not used very many of these carrots that are in the little containers. We’re going to add that liquid, too. That’ll help us get to that total liquid amount we need. I need a couple tablespoons of tomato paste. So, I’m going to use up this big container. Okay. Well, not use up. I guess I’m just going to get a couple tablespoons is all. Milo, I love you. And I think that looks like this. Hi. And then I think barley is the last thing. Let’s double check. Carrot stew. All Well, we didn’t do onions. We did onions a different way. Half a cup of uncooked barley. It’s not using all of it, but we’re using some of it. Look at that. We only had one runaway. All right. Now, it looks really full, but the liquid in there will melt. So, let’s get this on to cook. I’m excited. All right. This is going in here. And we are going to remember to turn it on. Now, let’s see this one. This is the one that in the past I’ve overcooked. It looks perfectly cooked right now. Hot. Mhm. This is just as good as I remember. And I’m going to turn it off cuz I don’t want to overcook it. This one is so good. Number eight is African beef stew with fufu. This was a trip down memory lane for me. If you missed the video, I told the story about how I caught my hair on fire in an African restaurant one time. Anyways, if you want to see that, I will link that video below. But what I’m doing here is I am going to sauté up some onions. They’re already in the Instant Pot. And then I just put some steak bites. This was steak that we didn’t really like. And I put those in here. Added a little bit of dehydrated celery, some tomatoes, some tomato sauce, and then a whole slew of spices. We’re basically just making a stew here. So, I’m starting by adding in some garlic, and then we are going to add in so so many spices. We have some beef bullion that’s going in, and then salt and white pepper. And then we are going to add in thyme, basil, scotch bonnet pepper was an option. I don’t even know what that is. uh curry powder, smoked paprika, green onions, there’s so many. The recipe, of course, is linked below. And just look at how much spice is going in here. I mean, most of the times when I’m cooking, there’s not nearly that much spice. This is how you know it’s going to be delicious. Now, we’re on to the fufu. We are going to get some water boiling and then we are using cassava flour. You basically need to mix them both together and then let it steam. This recipe didn’t call for quite enough of the flour and so definitely use more. Basically, what we’re doing is we’re rehydrating the cassava flour to make it the yuca plant. What you could do if you had a yuca plant is just peel it and then boil it and then pound it down. That’s traditionally how it’s made. And I also don’t know if it’s yuka or yucka. But that’s the plant that the cassava flour comes from. So, while the cassava was steaming, the beef stew got done. So, I gave it a stir and it looked so good. So, let’s get this plated up and then we need to give it a taste test. We are just going to put the beef stew on the bottom followed by a little like dollop of fufu on top. And this is how it’s traditionally eaten. You typically use your fingers and pick it up. The fufu does get less sticky as it has time to sit. But let’s give this a try. This is so good. Oh my goodness. The flavor of everything is delicious. this. I mean, the fufu doesn’t really have much of a flavor. I think all of the flavors balance well. Not sure if they taste completely like an African flavor. Probably cuz it’s not super spicy. I might have, you know, my ratios with spices. I just kind of threw things in. Okay, though. It’s really good. Okay, next meal. We’re making a cheesy chicken and zucchini casserole. I’m going to start by getting the oven preheated to 375. Then, it looks like we need to sauté up some onions. So, let’s add some olive oil into a pan and get this heat on and grab the onions. And I’m, of course, cutting this recipe in half. Also, frozen onions are seriously the best hack to making things be super quick. I guess really, it’s a shortcut. [Music] So, this recipe calls for quite a few other things. I got out earlier some broth, which is still gelatinous, but it was in the freezer. Some zucchini, which I actually did yellow squash. And then some diced chicken. So, those are ready for us. We also need some quinoa and pesto. It said basil pesto, but I only have creamy tomato. I think we’ll be just fine. I need half a cup of rinsed quinoa. So, I’m just going to get these under the sink to rinse for a bit. Let’s get these into there. This zucchini has a ton of liquid in it, so I’m going to just try to get out quite a bit of it. And we need to get the squash in here. It says to get the broth in here once the onions are fully cooked and then pour this all over and then put the chicken on top. My thought is, why does it matter if the chicken goes in before or after? So, I’m going to put it in now. and maybe just kind of spread it out a little bit. Now, of course, we’ve got to do some salt and pepper. And I’m going to add in some basil as well since I didn’t have pesto that was basil pesto. I think that’ll work out well. A decent amount of that over the top. I never add that pepper in. And I’m going to also do a little bit of onion powder, a little bit of garlic powder. I think our onions are cooked up enough. I’m going to add this cup of broth. Turn it down. Okay, I read that recipe quite a few times, and I did not see anywhere where it talked about the pesto. So, I’m going to add it into here. probably go with like half of this jar. Smells good. I don’t know if that’s right, but I mean, I didn’t read super carefully, but I did not see anything about that pesto. And now we just watch it until it boils. Do you think it’ll boil or do you think it won’t? Only because we’re watching it. You know, watch pot never boils. I feel like you all understood that. Okay, I’m going to call it and pour this over the top of this. Make sure everything is covered nicely. And then we can top it with some mozzarella. And this is mozzarella that’s been shredded. Okay. So, it says cover it with foil and bake it for 40 minutes. But I have a lid for this casserole, so we’re just going to use that. Timer just went off and I just took this out of the oven. Look how flipping delicious that looks. Oh, that flavor is delicious. I have some meat thawing in just a cold water defrost. I’m going to get these chicken breasts that are already diced, cooked up, and we will use them for a few different meals. I just put some oil in here. I’m going to turn the heat on, get some onions in. We’ll get the chicken in as well. You can add everything in at once. I’m going to get half of this chicken and onion mixture put over here for the pesto chicken. We’re going to get the rotini going. [Applause] This is for the pesto chicken. I’m only going to do half the box because I think that’s all I’m going to need based on the amount of chicken that I have over there. Whoa. [Music] Get that going again. Okay, we’re getting there. Our noodles are cooked. I’m going to get in our pesto sauce. This is a vegan pesto sauce. And then I’m going to add cheese. So, the dish obviously isn’t going to say vegan, but it won’t have parmesan in it, which a lot of pesto has parmesan, which doesn’t agree with me. So, going to get this in here. And we’ll have to serve this with like a veggie on the side. Throw that chicken in and onions. some harm. Not harm, mozzarella going in. I need to let this cool off for a little bit. I want to give this pesto a taste though. Oh, that’s delicious. We are doing another wrap today. I have some condiments out. I’m going to put some of these just bare chicken strips in the air fryer. And these are so delicious. I’ve seen a bunch of people talk about these and I agree. They are definitely delicious. Of course, you could do any chicken though. So, I’m going to do wrap like I saw at an old pizza place that we used to go to occasionally. And it’s a chicken wrap with lettuce and tomato and then also some barbecue sauce and honey mustard. I’ve got a thin layer of both sauces. I’m going to add some cheese. And then this will be on the side that gets grilled. And so it’ll get nice and toasty and melty. This is just some lettuce that I had cut up the other day. I just want to use the cut up stuff that I cut up first. Add some tomatoes. And then we are just waiting for the chicken to be done. Okay, these are ready. And then just grab two. And then I need to get this wrapped up and then put onto the griddle. I have some water boiling so we can get these boiled up. And I plan to make a butternut squash sauce overki. This is the sweet potato. Apple gutas chicken sausages which we will put in with the reaching to get it is the spinach from 2023. thinking peel them first. I have never cooked a butternut squash. Okay, this is working. My plan is to boil this, get it soft, turn it into a puree, and then that’ll be the sauce. After this boils, we can boil the pasta, cook up the chicken. I did not find a good way to peel that the entire time, but let’s get this chopped into some pretty similar sized pieces, and then we’ll get it boiling. Okay, let’s see if I got a pot that’s big enough for this. Oopsies. Okay, let’s check these butternut squash again. And this time, they do feel like they are fully cooked and ready to go. I am debating between if I want to put these directly into my container or rinse them. And as you can see, I decided cooling them off would be a little bit better of an idea because that container that I’m going to use to blend them is plastic. So, let’s make the sauce. I added about 4 oz of milk, some salt, pepper, and then sage. And then quite a bit of that parmesan. And that’s a dairyfree parmesan, which has been great. So, here I’m blitzing it up. So, I’m tasting it. And you can’t tell what I said, but I said it tastes like baby food. So, I decide it definitely needs a lot more of those spices. And then I blend it up again. And after that, everything was great. I’m now getting out the chicken sausages. And I am just going to quickly chop these into little round pieces. And then we will get these sautéing on the stove. And the goal here on the stove was to try to get them into a single layer, like single file layer. And I want to get these completely golden brown crispy on both sides because that’ll just add to the flavor. And I did need to add some onions. And these are the like onion sauteed onions from Target. And I have actually been loving them. You could sauté onions on your own and then freeze them, but I just haven’t done that. And then you did just see me add in quite a bit of garlic. Into the water these go. And these are frozen. Whenever you have homemade, unless you just made them and you want to cook them fresh, you always want to cook them from frozen because otherwise if you let them thaw, they’ll get like gooey. And I did decide that I only wanted to cook half of that batch at once because the water does drop in temperature when you add the frozen yokki in and I didn’t want it to drop for too long. And so I did just add in all of the spinach and got that mixed around. And now we’re adding the into the sausage. Uh you just saw me add some mozzarella to the dish. So we are continuing to mix. I have all of the in here now. And we are pulling this dish together. I am going to put in some of this sauce. And I don’t think it needs all of this sauce. I think this is probably enough sauce for two meals. And then I start mixing it around and I feel like it’s just way too thick, especially after sitting for a little while. And so I add another squeeze of milk and then I get this all mixed together and it comes together very nicely. These are flavors I don’t typically use. So it was cool to try something new. I think just as we can, I’m going to get some of these marinades made. This is going to be the fajita marinade. I’m adding some olive oil and lime juice and honey. Oh my gosh. And then bunch of different spices. It looks like salt, pepper, garlic, onion powder, paprika, chili powder, and cumin. We are going to get each of those spices in here. And this has quickly become one of my favorite freezer marinades. Didn’t call for salt and pepper on any of these, but like have to, right? Okay, just got to mix it up. I’m going to keep all that air in there so I can mix it. One is done. Is a breakfast for dinner kind of night. And I’m going to make just a thing that I like to make with leftover rice and sundried tomatoes. Okay, I’m going to get some of the oil down in there to sauté the onions. And these are some onions that I diced up last night. And I just put them in my freezer. I diced them up really tiny though, which is what I wanted for this meal today. That’s probably good. So, while those sauté, I’m going to get some of these tomatoes diced up. We are going to get all of this rice added in, followed by our tomatoes. and then some cocoa aminos. I’m going to add some spices. So, we’ve got some salt, garlic powder, white pepper, Italian seasoning, oregano, and I need onion powder, but I’m out in the little container. That’s the onion. Okay, mix this up. I’m going to turn the heat down all the way to low. Going to crack in four eggs. Of course, we’ll salt and pepper the eggs as well. The last thing I’m going to do is add in the shredded mozzarella cheese. Okay, now we just put this lid over it and let it simmer or steam until it’s cooked. Okay, let’s see in here. Okay, I think we’re good now. Still feels a little jiggly underneath the uh cheese there, but I think that’s just a yolk. Okay, let’s dish it up. This is the part that I like so much is you see all that browning? It’s so delicious. Okay. And here is dinner or breakfast. We’re eating it for dinner, of course. We are going to make our third soup today. And this soup is my favorite soup. I’m going to add some olive oil into the bottom of this pan and get some onion sauté. And the soup that we’re going to make is a red curry soup. And it’s just so good. I make a ton of it every year. And only that’s loud. Can you still hear me? I’m only making one batch, single batch because I have Holy cow, you probably can’t hear me over that. I only have a little bit of this I mean in this jar. So, I’m just going to use up what I have and make one batch of the soup. All right, this is super loud. We’re going to get it back. I also have a pot of water boiling because I am going to cook up some rice noodles. You can do this with rice noodles or with rice. It’s better with rice noodles, but rice noodles don’t freeze as well, which is why I usually end up using rice. Okay, let’s add in some squash. I use squash instead of pepper. I’m also going to add in a little bit of garlic. Going to get our spices in. We’ve got some white pepper. And I’m going to go a little heavier handed because these spices are for the entire meal, not just these veggies. Some salt. And our broth is salted. And then we’ve got some ginger, decent amount of basil, and it is still winter, so we do not have any garden fresh spices, unfortunately. This is cilantro. I’m doing a lot of that. And let’s see here. Let’s get three pints of pork stock. These are pork stocks from different batches, so they look different. And then a pint of chicken and the juices that comes with it. Now, it says to use other chicken that’s not canned, but I actually prefer the canned chicken in this recipe. and it’s convenient. I’m also going to add some fish sauce. And I actually go a little bit heavy-handed on that because I like it. And we’ll do a little bit of lime juice as well. Going to add in a whole can of coconut milk. And then this is about a half of a jar of curry paste. And this is my favorite brand. It is Dragonfly instant red curry paste. And the only place that I’ve been able to find it is HMart, which is a local Asian Mart. Oops. and I couldn’t find it online or anything, so that’s where I get it. I’m going to add some green onions, which I left these out for a little too long. And this is probably supposed to be garnished, but you know what? Add it whenever you want. Mine are frozen, so adding them now is fine. And then last but not least is a little bit of brown sugar. And this is necessary to add a little sweetness. You could also use, of course, like Swerve or something. Okay, try not to add too much of that. Okay. Now, the cool thing about curries is as you mix it, they kind of change color. So, first I want to break up this chicken a little bit, which I probably should have done before the pan was quite so full. Yeah, I definitely should have broken up the chicken while I could still see the chicken. In the meantime, though, we can get our noodles going. [Applause] These noodles are mostly cooked and we’re not quite up to a boil yet on the soup. And so I am going to put the noodles in the soup now and let them finish cooking in the soup. I don’t want them to get overcooked, but I figured it’s probably better to put them in now and get the flavors all meshing together. Think I want to give it a little bit of a taste before it gets boiling for too long. See how that is. Oh, that’s so good. That is so good. It is definitely more mild than I usually have it, but I bet once I let it boil for a little bit, it’ll be perfect. Let me know down below if you make any of these meals. Thanks so much for being here, and I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.
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