Last month I made dinner for my parents when they visited my studio apartment in Seattle, and my mom kept asking where the rest of my ingredients were. I’d just served them this incredible pasta with garlic and olive oil—literally four ingredients total—and she couldn’t wrap her head around how something so simple could taste so good. “Don’t you have any… sauce?” she asked, peering into my nearly empty pantry like she was expecting hidden compartments full of specialty condiments.
That’s the thing about minimalist cooking that I wish I could explain to people—you’re not giving up flavor when you strip things down to basics. You’re actually making every single ingredient work harder, taste better, shine brighter. When I first started cooking this way in college (partly because I was broke, partly because my tiny dorm kitchen couldn’t fit much anyway), I thought I was settling for less. Turns out I was discovering something way more interesting.
The whole thing started when I was reading about environmental impact of food waste and got obsessed with using every single thing I bought. No more letting herbs wilt in the crisper drawer, no more buying specialty ingredients for one recipe then never touching them again. I started asking myself: what can I make with just what’s actually in my kitchen right now? The answers were surprising. Roasted vegetables with nothing but olive oil, salt, and pepper became this revelation—each vegetable tasting completely like itself instead of getting lost under layers of complicated seasonings.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, there was definitely a learning curve. My first attempts at simple cooking were legitimately boring. Steamed broccoli with no seasoning isn’t minimalist, it’s just sad. But once I figured out that minimalist doesn’t mean flavorless—it means intentional—everything changed. Quality over quantity became my mantra. Instead of buying five different oils, I invested in one really good extra virgin olive oil that could handle everything from salad dressing to sautéing garlic.
The environmental angle kept me motivated when I got frustrated. Every ingredient I didn’t buy was packaging I wasn’t throwing away, resources I wasn’t wasting, carbon emissions I wasn’t contributing to. My small apartment made it easy to see how much stuff accumulates—when you’ve got limited cabinet space, you really think twice about whether you need both smoked paprika AND regular paprika (spoiler: you don’t, just get the smoked one, it’s more versatile).
What surprised me most was how creative this approach forced me to become. When you’ve only got a few ingredients to work with, you start paying attention to technique in ways you never did before. How you cut something matters. How long you cook it matters. The order you add things to the pan matters. I learned that caramelizing onions properly transforms them into something completely different than just cooking them until they’re soft. Same ingredient, totally different result, just based on patience and technique.
My go-to shopping list now fits on a sticky note. Eggs, olive oil, garlic, lemons, whatever vegetables look good, maybe some chicken thighs if I’m feeling fancy. Good bread. Sea salt and black pepper. That’s basically it for a week of meals. My friends think I’m depriving myself, but honestly? I eat better now than when I was trying to follow complicated recipes with fifteen ingredients.
The money thing is huge too, especially on my nonprofit salary. When you’re not buying random specialty ingredients that you use once, grocery bills drop dramatically. I probably spend less than half what I used to spend on food, and I’m eating fresher, more seasonal stuff because I’m not locked into specific recipes that require specific things regardless of what’s actually good right now.
Here’s what I’ve figured out about making simple food taste incredible: salt is magic, acid brightens everything, and fat carries flavor. Those three principles can transform basically anything. Roasted vegetables with good salt, finished with lemon juice and olive oil? Restaurant quality. Scrambled eggs cooked slowly with butter and finished with a tiny squeeze of lemon? Better than any complicated omelet I’ve ever attempted.
The other game-changer was learning to see leftovers as ingredients instead of… well, leftovers. That roasted chicken from yesterday becomes today’s salad protein. Those extra vegetables get blended into tomorrow’s soup. Yesterday’s rice becomes today’s fried rice with whatever’s in the fridge. It’s like cooking with a puzzle mentality—what can I combine to make something new and interesting?
I’ve also gotten really good at improvising, which never happened when I was following complex recipes step by step. Last week I made this amazing soup with literally just carrots, ginger, and coconut milk because that’s what I had. No recipe, just tasted as I went, adjusted seasoning, trusted the process. It was better than anything I could have found in a cookbook because it was exactly what I wanted at that moment.
The tools situation is similar—less but better. I’ve got one really sharp knife that I actually take care of, one cast iron pan that handles everything from eggs to cornbread, a wooden spoon, and a decent blender. That’s pretty much it besides basic plates and bowls. My parents keep trying to buy me kitchen gadgets, but honestly, what would I do with a specialized avocado slicer when I’ve already got a knife that works perfectly?
My studio apartment kitchen is tiny, but it’s efficient in ways my parents’ huge kitchen isn’t. Everything I need is within arm’s reach. There’s no digging through cluttered drawers looking for the right tool because there aren’t that many tools to choose from. Cleanup is fast because there aren’t many dishes involved. The whole process from starting to cook to finishing dishes is maybe thirty minutes, even for a “fancy” meal.
The hardest part initially was letting go of the idea that impressive cooking requires complexity. I was so conditioned to think that real cooking meant following elaborate recipes with tons of steps and ingredients. But some of my favorite meals now are incredibly simple—perfectly ripe tomatoes with good salt and basil, bread with really good butter, eggs cooked exactly how I like them. These aren’t compromise meals, they’re perfect meals that happen to be simple.
Dating has been interesting though… I’ve definitely had people come over and think my kitchen is sad or that I don’t really cook because I don’t have spice racks and gadgets everywhere. But then I make them dinner with my four ingredients and they’re like, oh, okay, you do know what you’re doing. It’s just a different approach than they’re used to.
The environmental benefits keep me motivated on days when I’m tempted to just order takeout or buy some processed convenience food. Cooking simply means less packaging waste, less food waste, more seasonal eating, more local ingredients when possible. It aligns with literally everything else I believe about living lightly on the planet.
I’ve started writing about this stuff because I think other people my age might be interested in cooking this way but don’t know where to start. Most minimalist cooking advice seems aimed at people who already know how to cook everything and are scaling back, not people who are just learning. But starting simple is actually easier than starting complex—you make fewer mistakes, waste less money, build confidence faster.
The key insight I keep coming back to is that limitations breed creativity rather than stifling it. When you can use anything, you don’t appreciate the unique properties of individual ingredients. When you’re working with just a few things, you discover what each one actually brings to the table. You learn that garlic tastes completely different depending on how you cut it, how long you cook it, whether you add it early or late in the process.
My parents still don’t totally get it—they keep offering to help me “stock my kitchen properly”—but they can’t argue with results. That pasta dinner I made them was legitimately delicious, and they’ve actually asked for the “recipe” multiple times since then. (Recipe: cook pasta, save some pasta water, sauté sliced garlic in olive oil until golden, toss pasta with garlic oil and pasta water, add salt and pepper and fresh herbs if you have them. That’s it.)
This approach has made me a better cook overall because it’s taught me to really pay attention to what I’m doing instead of just following instructions. I know how my stove behaves, how long different vegetables take to cook properly, how much salt actually makes a difference. These are skills that transfer to any kind of cooking, but you learn them faster when you’re not distracted by complicated techniques and long ingredient lists.
The sustainability angle remains important to me—every meal that uses fewer ingredients, creates less waste, and focuses on seasonal produce is a small step toward the kind of food system I want to support. It’s not going to save the world, but it’s living according to my values, which matters for my own sense of integrity if nothing else.
Nicholas’s a sustainability worker in Seattle who sees minimalism as climate activism. He writes about consuming less, living simply, and building a life that aligns with environmental values rather than material ones