What to cook on a snowy day

A snowy day is a cook's gift. The slow, heat-filling dishes that feel like too much effort in summer suddenly make perfect sense — and there's nowhere you need to be, so the long simmer that a stew wants is no longer a problem but a pleasure.

The best snowy-day cooking does double duty: it feeds you and it warms the house. A few hours of something slow in the oven turns the kitchen into the cosiest room you own. Here's what to reach for when the snow is falling.

Slow things that warm the house

The signature snowy-day dish is something that lives in the oven or on the hob for hours. A stew, a braise, a ragu, a pot of chilli — these ask for time more than skill, and time is the one thing a snowed-in day has plenty of. As a bonus, a few hours of low oven heat does more to warm a kitchen than any radiator.

Don't overthink the recipe. Brown some meat or vegetables, add aromatics, cover with stock or tinned tomatoes, and leave it alone. Almost any combination, given enough time, turns into something deeply comforting.

Cook from what you already have

Snow is the perfect excuse not to go to the shops. Most of the best cold-weather food is built from cheap storecupboard staples anyway — the kind of slow, frugal cooking that turns very little into something that feels like a lot.

• Lentils, tinned tomatoes and an onion → a pot of soup
• Whatever vegetables are wilting → roasted on a tray with oil and salt
• Pasta, garlic, chilli and good oil → aglio e olio in ten minutes
• Flour, butter and fruit → a crumble for afterwards
• Tinned beans, spices and stock → a quick chilli or dhal

End on something baked

If you do one extra thing, bake. A crumble, a tray of cookies, a banana bread, a simple cake — it's not about the sugar so much as the warmth and the smell, both of which fill a house better than almost anything else. A snowy day that ends with something warm out of the oven is a snowy day done right.