One-Ingredient Upgrades For Your Favorite Foods

There are only so many bowls of frozen tortellini a person can eat before the pasta starts to taste eerily like cardboard. And after a while, even the holy grail of leftover Mexican food becomes tiresome. Yet, we stick to eating this stuff for fear that anything more interesting will require too much time, effort, and leave us at risk of meal failure.

Our favorite solve? The one-ingredient upgrade, which is really all it takes to make plain foods taste like something you’d order off a restaurant menu. Case in point: A package of ramen goes from dorm-room desperation to a rich noodle dish with a sprinkle of Hidden Valley Original Ranch Salad Dressing & Seasoning Mix, and a box of couscous becomes an exotic main dish with the addition of sun-dried tomato pesto. Keep these sneaky game-changers as well as the others ahead on hand, and your desire for delivery will be but a distant memory.