Cookbook review of 4 Ingredients One Pot, One Bowl by Kim McCosker

Title: 4 Ingredients One Pot, One Bowl
Author: Kim McCosker
Published by: Atria Books
Pages: 208
Source: Publisher/Edelweiss
Format: ebook
Rating: 3 stars

Summary from Goodreads: From a creator of the internationally bestselling 4 Ingredients series comes a new, must-have cookbook designed to bring joy and flavor back into the kitchen. 4 Ingredients One Pot, One Bowl is an ingenious collection of sweet and savory dishes full of fresh, easy-to-find ingredients that require only one pot and one bowl. That means less cleanup and more time enjoying life and delicious food with the friends and family you love.

In this book, you’ll find more than eighty recipes for tasty and deceptively simple casseroles, roasts, soups and stews, pizzas, pasta, pies, and desserts. Imagine Creamy Bacon & Sun-Dried Tomato Chicken, French Lamb Casserole, Apple Crumble, and Baked Rice Pudding—all using four or fewer ingredients. With One Pot, One Bowl, life just got easier… and a whole lot more delicious!

I was intrigued when I came across 4 Ingredients One Pot, One Bowl.  Not only are there very few ingredients, but one pot?  That means my dish washing nightmares are over...right?  Well there is still some dishes because of prep work but otherwisw most of the recipes seriously only use one pot!  How awesome is that?

When I started looking through the recipes I was a little hesitant.  First I'm a pescetarian, and there were a lot of meat dishes.  Then as I was looking through some of the recipes I was wondering how well they will taste with just 4 ingredients.  I decided to find out for myself (with the all too willing family to help me with the taste-testing). 

The first recipe I tried was Key Lime Pie.  I was super excited about this recipe because Key Lime Pie is my favorite desert.  Because this was my first recipe from the cookbook, I followed this one exactly...well almost.  Instead of using a whole pie crust I used small individual pie crusts because I think they are so much cuter!  This recipe turned out really well.  It was smooth, creamy and a bit tart.  With some chocolate or raspberry syrup I think it would have rounded it out nicely. 

The second recipe I tried was Leek & Potato Soup.  I really liked this recipe.  It was so simple to make and I had everything in the pantry besides the leeks.  The first time I made this I didn't make any substitutions.  It was good, but lacked some flavor.  I made this recipe again last night and set out some shredded cheese, seasonings and turkey bacon (for the family) and they all liked it.  I love that the soup is thick and creamy without using any cream, milk or half n half.  I did substitute olive oil for the butter the second time around and I think it tasted even better.  This is soup will quickly be added to the rotation for it is perfect for those cold winter nights. 

The third recipe I tried was the Yummy Tuna Bake.  For this one I immediately added an extra ingredient because I wanted it to be a one dish meal so I added a vegetable.  This recipe was easy and fast to prepare.  While it did use more than one dish because of boiling the noodles and draining them I didn't mind so much.  It came out of the oven bubbling and nice a crispy on top.  The family did enjoy this dish (even my 2 year old niece), but we all thought it could have used more sauce since it wasn't as creamy as we were hoping.

Overall I enjoyed each of the recipes I tried.  However, I am not convinced that all the recipes in this cookbook benefit by having only four ingredients.  Sure it cuts down on time and cost, but I don't want to sacrifice flavor.  That is not to be said for all the recipes since I did only try 3 of them and with the addition of only one or two ingredients they were quite yummy.