No need for knives out—just a grab a fork or spoon and dig in!

By

Mimi Young

Editor

Mimi Young is an editor and pastry chef. She has also curated and written numerous recipe roundups for Serious Eats.

Published February 03, 2026

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

Anyone who has been to or hosted a Super Bowl party knows it can be a messy affair—chips flying and dips plopping at every touchdown or missed play, sauce stains on every surface—you get the picture. Sure, you can opt for appetizers and bite-size snacks to minimize collateral damage, but that’s hardly satisfying.

What you need is hearty fare that’s relatively easy to prepare and even easier to eat—ideally contained in one bowl. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with 12 one-pot recipes perfect for your Super Bowl gathering. They include a classic chili, loaded baked potato soup (have you ever tried eating a fully loaded baked potato at a Super Bowl party?), baked ziti, and New Orleans–style jambalaya—enough options that you can make more than one or two and set up a buffet. How’s that for easy Super Bowl entertaining?

Serious Eats / Qi Ai

Being dedicated food nerds, we’re not in the habit of dispensing superlatives willy-nilly, so when we say this is the ultimate chili, we’ve got the receipts to prove it. This recipe takes a methodical approach to achieving the perfect balance of complex chile and robust beefy flavors— from choosing the right combination and toasting of chiles to browning and braising the short ribs whole. Trust the process—it’s totally worth the effort.

Serious Eats / Robby Lozano, Food Stylist: Margaret Dickey, Prop Stylist: Christina Daley

Building layers of flavor is the key to this hearty, comforting one-pot dish, made with mostly pantry staples. This means cooking the vegetables in the same pot with rendered sausage fat, then browning the tomato paste and blooming the spices before adding the lentils and stock. Adding the escarole just before serving preserves its color and texture.

Serious Eats / Greg Dupree

Here, the high pressure and temperature of a pressure cooker (such as an Instant Pot) efficiently tenderize short rib chunks, melting the collagen to thicken the sauce, deepening and melding layers upon layers of chile and meaty flavors, while shaving off hours of cooking time. Coffee, dark chocolate, and fish sauce add even more complexity to this remarkably easy chili.

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

This hearty vegan stew gets its depth and complexity from toasted dried ancho, pasilla, and arbol chiles, and canned chipotles in adobo sauce—for a harmonious balance of sweet, smoky, and fruity notes—combined with a powerhouse umami trio of soy sauce, Marmite, and tomatoes. Sweet potatoes offer a tender, creamy sweetness, while hominy provides a nice chewy bite.

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Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez

While I love me a fully loaded baked potato, it doesn’t compare to this silky-smooth soup version in how deliciously and effortlessly it “gets in my belly,” particularly as I’m watching TV. Microwaving the potatoes while the bacon crisps and the onions sauté, then putting the cooked potatoes directly through a ricer, streamlines the process. Sour cream in the soup base provides a tangy richness, melding seamlessly with the sharp cheddar to simulate the loaded potato experience.

Serious Eats / Fred Hardy

Made with smoky andouille sausage and pork belly with tender beans and braised kale in a spicy Cajun-style broth, this is the kind of simple one-pot stew you make on a lazy Sunday when a) you’d rather park yourself on the sofa than spend time cooking and cleaning up, and b) you want to bank a few future meals. Bonus is that the flavors only improve with time. I’d say that’s a touchdown.

Serious Eats / Eric Kleinberg

Where a pressure cooker (e.g., an Instant Pot) really shines is in this recipe, which takes only 15 minutes of hands-on cooking to deliver the depth of flavor and yielding texture of a long-simmered stew. Chunks of well-marbled pork shoulder are first browned in the pressure cooker, along with quartered tomatillos, roughly chopped onion, garlic, green chiles, and seasonings, then sealed and cooked under high pressure for 30 minutes. With nothing more than water from the vegetables to steam, you get a thick, intensely flavored sauce of puréed cooked vegetables and residual juices blended with a bit of fish sauce to boost umami.

Photographs: Vicky Wasik. Video: J. Kenji López-Alt

Seriously, why choose (unless you have a deep and unabiding love for unnaturally orange processed cheese powder) to make macaroni and cheese from the blue box when you make a pot of creamy, gooey, cheesy, macaroni gloriousness with three ingredients in about 10 minutes?

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Serious Eats / Greg Dupree

A quick sauté of pancetta and onions, and this rich, flavorful stew of fall-off-the-bone tender chicken, lentils, and carrots comes together in about 30 minutes. Add a splash of sherry vinegar and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil for a bright finish.

Serious Eats / Jen Causey

This New Orleans-style jambalaya features tender chicken thighs, smoky andouille sausage, shrimp, and tomatoes. Baking the jambalaya instead of cooking it on the stovetop, as it’s traditionally prepared, eliminates the need to stir it midway and prevents the rice from scorching. Adding the shrimp and scallions at the final cooking stage keeps the shrimp plump and juicy and the scallions fresh and bright.

J. Kenji López-Alt

How do you streamline a skillet pasta that’s already easy to put together? Simple, just soak the pasta while you prepare the sauce, then cook it through in the finished sauce. Add dollops of ricotta and cubes of mozzarella, and a sprinkling of freshly grated Parmesan, then pop the skillet in the oven until everything is bubbling and the cheese is wonderously ooey, gooey, and stretchy.

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

Whether you call it Beefaroni, chili mac, or Johnny Marzetti, this classic is the epitome of nostalgic comfort food. One taste of tender macaroni, tomato sauce, Worcestershire-seasoned ground beef, and irresistibly melty pockets of mozzarella cheese, and you’ll forget all about the boxed stuff of your childhood.