This image shows a recipe for one skillet cheesy beefy macaroni. More people are cooking at home these days, and when they do eat restaurant food, they’re often looking for comfort food, experts say. (Cheyenne M. Cohen/Katie Workman via AP)
In homes where adults are working from home and kids have shorter school days, the dinner hour may well start an hour earlier this fall, Williams predicts.
“The family meal is back – and it’s happening across all three meals. Home is the epicenter of all activity, and meals are a big part of that,” she says.
Searches for family-friendly recipes on Allrecipes are up 34{c33c21346ff5e26ab8e0ae3d29ae4367143f0d27c235e34c392ea37decdb8bed} from last year. Searches for breakfast recipes are up 35{c33c21346ff5e26ab8e0ae3d29ae4367143f0d27c235e34c392ea37decdb8bed}, and lunch up 45{c33c21346ff5e26ab8e0ae3d29ae4367143f0d27c235e34c392ea37decdb8bed} in page views. “We are making many more meals for ‘we’ rather than ‘me,'” Williams says.
Other trends include simpler recipes, recipes with fewer ingredients, one-pot meals, sheet-pan meals, finger food and pantry-ingredient recipes. Vegan and vegetarian cooking is on the rise, she says. Tofu and tempeh searches, which have declined in recent years, are now increasing; grilled tofu was a popular search on Allrecipes this summer.
Homemade pizza “is going crazy — family pleasing, creative and fun, a good alternative to takeout,” says Williams. “People have become more comfortable with yeast, and people are also buying pizza ovens.”
So, which appliances are riding these new waves? Multicooker sales are up, as are recipe searches for Instant Pot recipes (68{c33c21346ff5e26ab8e0ae3d29ae4367143f0d27c235e34c392ea37decdb8bed} higher than this time last year on Allrecipes.com). Air fryers and slow cookers are popular.
And sales of bread makers were up 800 percent in April compared with the previous April, Seifer said.
