Caroline Chambers, who writes the hit Substack newsletter “What To Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking,” used to almost always feel like cooking. She learned lovingly from her mother growing up in North Carolina and later started her own catering company after moving to San Diego with her husband. She even published a cookbook in 2018.
Then she had kids.
“When I had my first son Mattis in 2019, I suddenly understood what all my friends and family were talking about when they said they didn’t feel like cooking,” Chambers reflects.
Now, Chambers has built an entire brand around the concept and recently released a bestselling cookbook based on her newsletter, titled none other than “What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking.” The book features 100+ recipes that draw from her newsletter’s greatest hits, plus some brand-new dishes.
Chambers’ work is a holy grail for people who love delicious food yet don’t have the time to make a fuss about it. She attracts people like me — enthusiastic cooks who are too exhausted by parenthood to hang out in the kitchen — and aspiring chefs who are intimidated by navigating recipes with a million ingredients or esoteric techniques. Chambers welcomes us into our own kitchens, and makes it unstressful, fun, and tasty.
Now amidst an 18-city tour to promote her new book, Chambers recently caught up with me between stops to tell all about how she got her start, built a community, and refined her cooking philosophy.
Earning Her Chops
For most of her life, food had a well-earned place in the center of her life. Chambers grew up in the kitchen on her mom’s hip, learning how to turn ingredients into delicious dishes in their Winston-Salem, North Carolina home. She says, “at breakfast we were plotting what we were eating for lunch, and at lunch, we were planning dinner.”
When Chambers married her then-Navy SEAL husband in 2012, the couple moved from North Carolina to San Diego. “His schedule was so erratic, and I wanted to work in food, so I started a catering company having very little idea what I was doing,” says Chambers. Thrown in the fire of dinner parties and baby showers, she learned quickly.
“I got my chops in the cooking world, and I got to see what food resonates with people,” she remembers. Much of what Chambers loved about her job then is what she treasures now: “getting to cook for people, getting to chat with people about food.”
After a stint in a professional test kitchen, Caro struck out on her own as a freelancer, developing recipes for various publications and food brands while working on her first cookbook, “Just Married.”
Building Community
After she had her first kid, however, Chambers found her formerly boundless kitchen enthusiasm wane. “I was constantly scraping for my next paycheck, trying to take care of my baby, and thinking, ‘cooking is the last thing I want to do,’” Chambers says. She pitched a “What To Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking” cookbook that same year, and, she says, “every publisher rejected the concept because I didn’t have a following.” Even though she had published “Just Married” only a handful of years before, the publishing world had become increasingly focused on the platform size of its authors.
Chambers took the publishers’ rejection as a challenge and focused on growing her Instagram and newsletter from scratch. The “What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking” newsletter (now known as “WTC” among fans) started in the early COVID days and has since grown into the heart of Chambers’ career. She settled into a go-go-go cycle of creativity and promotion, developing and publishing recipes every week. Her growth was fast and steady.
Now, with 228,000 subscribers and counting, her newsletter is the biggest recipe hub on Substack. She charges an annual subscription of $50, about the price of a cookbook, and has earned a loyal following for good reason — each week, she delivers a foolproof, highly delicious recipe with a whole bunch of variations and options.
“I haven’t missed a week in four years,” she says. “Tuesdays and Wednesdays are development days; Thursdays are writing days. People are paying, so it has to be really good, like the very best recipe they can find on the internet.”
Making Cooking Doable
The WTC library is comprehensive and accessible for newbies and experienced cooks alike. She has kid-approved meals, freezer friendly meals, and “meals that show off your cooking skills.” Dishes like one-skillet chicken and gingery rice with spicy (or not!!) peanut curry sauce and sheet-pan poblano steak fajitas feel very Chambers-esque. They tend to feature bold flavors and have plenty of options for mixing and matching. They often make exceptional leftovers. Chambers also takes timing very seriously, equipping her recipe testers with timers so that her 15-minute and 30-minute claims are accurate.
Alongside her recipes are stories from her life, with a warm tone that is sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartwarming, and always refreshingly candid. Chambers shares the birth story of her second son Calum with the following preamble: “Calum’s birth was pure hell, and that’s what’s reflected here, no sugar coating. If that sounds fun to read, CONTINUE! If not, beat it!”
Chambers also offers meal plans, aka “recipes that are interwoven to make cooking 10 meals incredibly efficient. For instance: Make a sauce on day one and use it three times throughout the week.”
For Chambers, ease and flexibility are serious priorities. “You never need to go to the store if you’re missing a spice,” she urges. Her recipes include substitutes not just to save her readers extra grocery runs, but to build up their confidence.
“By the time you’ve made a riff, you’ve invented a recipe — you have the validation, and you’re incentivized to cook again. I’m giving people ownership over their own recipes,” she says.
Chambers is offering her readers a blueprint for the kitchen, a way forward when it all feels overwhelming. She wants potential cooks worried about their kitchen chops to understand “that it’s not that serious,” she says. “If your kid runs outside, and you need to chase them, just turn off the burner. You can turn it on again later and start over — nothing has to be perfect; make it work for you.”
When I spoke with Chambers, she had five more stops left on her book tour. She was relishing the opportunity to talk with people in real life and bond over food, just like in her catering days. She was also busy planning her newsletter’s recipe for the next week, and her theme still rang true: “With three young sons, I don’t feel like cooking more than ever.”
Get Caroline’s recipe for Cheesy Sweet Potato & Beef Flautas:
Makes 12 flautas
I love sweet potatoes cooked in savory ways. Here, we shred them and cook them with ground beef and lots of warm spices to create a tender, super flavorful flauta filling. Flautas are traditionally fried, but we aren’t busting out the deep fryer with this recipe; we’re simply spraying them with some cooking oil and baking until the shell becomes shatteringly crisp. I always make some sort of dip — mashed avocado, or a creamy dip made from yogurt or sour cream — and that’s the entire meal.
Ingredients
1 pound sweet potatoes
1 pound 80/20 ground beef
1¾ teaspoons kosher salt, plus more as needed
1½ teaspoons ground cumin
1½ teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon onion powder
12 (8-inch) flour tortillas
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
Nonstick cooking spray
½ head iceberg lettuce
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon lime juice or any clear vinegar
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.
Peel the sweet potatoes and grate them on the largest holes of a box grater.
In a large skillet over medium-high heat, cook the ground beef, using a wooden spoon or spatula to break it up into tiny crumbles, until a bit of fat renders and collects in the skillet, about 3 minutes. Add the shredded sweet potatoes, salt, 1 teaspoon of the cumin, 1 teaspoon of the chili powder, the paprika, garlic powder, and onion powder. Cook, stirring often, until the beef is cooked through and the sweet potatoes are tender, 4 to 5 minutes more. Stir in 2 tablespoons water during the final minute.
Meanwhile, stack the tortillas and warm them in the microwave for a few seconds until flexible. Fill each tortilla down the center with the beef mixture, then sprinkle on the cheese, dividing it evenly. Roll them up tightly and place them seam side down on the prepared baking sheet.
Coat the flautas with cooking spray, then bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until crispy and browned.
Meanwhile, thinly slice the lettuce. In a medium bowl, stir together the sour cream, lime juice, the remaining 1/2 teaspoon cumin, the remaining 1/2 teaspoon chili powder, and a pinch of salt. Taste and adjust the seasoning as needed.
Serve the flautas with the sliced lettuce piled on top, dolloped with the creamy chili sauce. Eat the whole mess with a fork and knife.
RIFF: Practically any leftovers can become flautas! Chop up leftover meat and/ or veg, throw some cheese in there, roll it up, and bake.
SWAP: Don’t love sweet potatoes made savory? Use russets here instead.
PHOTO CREDIT: Photos by Breana Janay Smith and Eva Kolenko for Flautas
