It’s common to feel rushed at dinnertime and opt for easy options, such as fast food or frozen meals, even if you’re sharing a meal with just one other person — such as a partner, child, friend, or parent.

If you crave variety and want to spice up your routine, plenty of scrumptious, small-batch dinners take very little time to prepare and are incredibly healthy.

Interestingly, home-cooked meals are associated with improved diet quality, and family meals lead to healthier diets and less weight gain in children and adolescents (1Trusted Source, 2Trusted Source).

Here are 2 nutritious and scrumptious dinner ideas for two.

1. Chicken-quinoa bowl

This quinoa bowl is packed with protein.

In just a 3.5-ounce (100-gram) serving, quinoa provides all of the essential amino acids, a good proportion of omega-6 fats, and 10% of the Daily Value (DV) for folate (3Trusted Source, 4Trusted Source, 5Trusted Source, 6Trusted Source).

Chicken is not only low in fat but also high in protein, with 3.5 ounces (100 grams) of breast meat offering 28 grams of protein and 4 grams of fat (7Trusted Source).

2. Sesame-tofu ‘fried’ rice

The healthy secret about this fried-rice dish is that it’s actually baked.

Plus, tofu has been linked to multiple health benefits, including improved fat metabolism, heart health, and blood sugar control (9Trusted Source, 10Trusted Source, 11Trusted Source, 12Trusted Source, 13Trusted Source).

This recipe is vegetarian, although you can swap the tofu for chicken or shrimp if you prefer.