Weekly Dinner Menu for a Family of Five, One Long-Cook Night

Cooking for five changes the maths

Most recipes serve four. For five, you either scale by a quarter or you cook a bit extra and eat it tomorrow. The harder problem is not quantity, it is the week: three adults or teenagers wanting different things, and someone always working late.

We already have a seven-night menu for two and a 14-day rotation. This one is built for a household of five and rests on a single rule: one long-cook night, the rest fast.

The week at a glance

Times are from the recipe pages, which are written for 3 to 4 servings. Aloo paratha, for instance, is listed for 3, so for five people you need about 1.7 times the batch.

Scaling for five people

Our recipe pages have a servings scaler, so use it rather than guessing. In general:

• Multiply the ingredients by 1.25 for dishes written for four.
• Multiply salt and chilli by about 1.1 at first, then taste, because spices do not scale linearly. <!-- VERIFY: common cooking guidance, not tested for these recipes. -->
• Use a bigger pot, not a fuller pot. A 5 L (5 qt) cooker or a 28 cm (11 in) pan is the minimum for five.
• Cooking time barely changes for stews. It does change for frying: more paratha means more minutes at the tawa.

Why the long dish goes on Sunday

Aloo gosht needs a 50-minute covered simmer and the whole recipe runs about 90 minutes. On a weeknight that is a full evening of attention. On Sunday it is background. It also reheats well: tomorrow it tastes better as the potatoes soak up gravy. Make it a double batch and you have a second dinner with almost no work.

The same trick works with beef or mutton shoulder, bone-in chicken thighs or a big pot of lentils. See our Sunday daal for three dinners for a vegetarian version.

Keeping Monday to Thursday under 45 minutes

• Do one 15-minute prep session on Sunday: chop onions, make ginger-garlic paste, rinse and soak rice. A tub of onion-tomato masala base saves 10 minutes per dinner.
• Make the roti dough the night before, kept in the fridge covered.
• On Thursday the handi can marinate in the morning before work, which the recipe's 15-minute prep leaves room for.

Handling the argument

With five people the question "what do we eat" repeats nightly. Post the week's menu on the fridge, or let everyone vote on two slots, say Thursday and Saturday. Voting on only two fixed slots stops it from becoming a daily negotiation. See our fair vote rules.

A shop list for the week

• Rice, 1 kg (2.2 lb)
• Atta (wheat flour), 2 kg (4.4 lb)
• Yellow or masoor lentils, 500 g (1 lb)
• Beef or mutton, 800 g to 1 kg (1.75 to 2.2 lb), bone-in
• Chicken pieces, 1 kg (2.2 lb)
• Potatoes, 1.5 kg (3.3 lb)
• Peas (frozen is fine), 300 g (10 oz)
• Onions 1.5 kg, tomatoes 1 kg, ginger, garlic, green chillies, coriander
• Yogurt, 1 kg (2 lb)

Quantities are an estimate and depend on appetite and how much you want left over. <!-- VERIFY: shopping quantities are a planning estimate, not from the recipe data. -->

The Saturday gap

Leave one night open. Something always changes, a friend visits, someone is late, a dish flops. A plan with no slack gets abandoned by Wednesday. If you want to see what your pantry can cover on that gap night, Degchi will match it.

When the plan breaks

It will, usually on Tuesday. Keep three fallback dinners that need nothing from the shop: khichdi from rice and mung beans, daal with fried onions, or eggs with paratha from frozen dough. Swap one into the slot and push the planned dish a day forward instead of dropping it, so the vegetables you bought do not wilt. Write the swap on the fridge list so the person cooking tomorrow knows what changed. A plan that bends is a plan that survives the second week.