I cooked like Em The Nutritionist for a week - and fell back in love with one-pot cooking (and her Le Creuset)

Em The Nutritionist's recipes are scroll-stopping every time. And when your job is cooking for most of the day, that's saying something. My feed is basically wall-to-wall food content, and still, it's always Emily English's that make me feel inspired and excited to cook.

This time, it was her Le Creuset collection that got me; not just because it looked effortlessly classy sitting in her kitchen (though it did, next to matching salt and pepper mills and a stunning meringue utensil jar), but because it looked like exactly the kind of low-effort, high-reward set-up I'd been missing. She was showing heritage cookware doing the work so the food and the cook could shine. Healthy, delicious meals, a one-pot stop for midweek dinners: what's not to love?

So I decided to test the theory properly. I picked five of my favourite recipes from her cookbook, So Good Express, got my hands on the same kit, and set out to cook my way through a week of her meals. What I got back wasn't just an aesthetically pleasing kitchen, it was my love of simple one-pot cooking. I'm living life according to Emily English from now on.

Em The Nutritionist Edit

In Em's videos, you'll spot a lot of kitchen staples. She has a Ninja air fryer (the DoubleStack, if you're wondering) and a chopping board that is the envy of the whole internet (no exaggeration here, of course), but the bits that caught my eye were her Le Creuset collection. It's stylish, it's chic, and clearly does a good job:

Meal 1: Beef and Ricotta Meatballs in Ragu

Meatballs is a classic and it's also where the Le Creuset Shallow Casserole is really in its element, switching between the hob and oven. Em makes the meatballs from scratch in her recipe, so I toasted the spices and fried some onion and garlic in the base of the pan to add in to the beef. Then, once I'd rolled the meatballs, he wide base of the pan gave them lots of room to brown properly, rather than steaming them in their own liquid.

The ragù is also whipped from scratch, making brilliant use of the enamel non-stick, which made frying the base and simmering really easy. I noticed the steady, gentle heat across all the sauce when it simmered, which means I didn;t need to constantly stand and stir to stop things catching. The wide rim also made it easy to nestle all the meatballs back in without splashing sauce everywhere. With a grating of parmesan and some fresh basil leaves on top, I could have imagined myself in a nonna's kitchen in Italy.

Meal 2: No Layer Gnocchi Lasagne

I couldn't resist testing a gnocchi lasagne recipe. It's such an unusual, but undeniably delicious twist that is signature Em. Again, it's a one pan take on the dish itself, which means the pan has to do a lot of jobs in quick succession. The Le Creuset went from browning mince on the hob, straight through building and simmering the ragu, to holding a ricotta-Parmesan topping in the oven, and finally under the grill to go golden and bubbling, all without ever leaving the pan. I was thrilled that there was no decanting into a separate baking dish, no washing up extra trays in between: just one, beautiful Le Creuset.

On a practical level, the wide, shallow shape meant the mince browned properly rather than steaming, and the sauce reduced down evenly with plenty of surface area. Once it moved to the oven, the heat retention kept everything bubbling gently rather than drying out at the edges, and it came out from under the grill glossy and evenly coloured rather than scorched in patches. It also went straight to the table looking the part, which is half the point of a dish like this.

I saw some sauce catching at the sides - which is all part of the effect - but it made me worry about washing up. However, the enamel lets all the dirt and grease slide off in the sink. If you do get some stubborn bits of burn, Le Creusets work well with soaking and leaving ovenight. I've cremated many a Le Creuset and made it back to shiny status.

Meal 3: Super Glow Salad

Now, I love a warm and hearty meal, but Em the Nutritionist's salads could tempt me any day of the week. She uses her Le Creuset to toast sweetcorn in the pan, coated with spice and some olive oil, until they get a blistered look and smoky taste. It's a really simple way to elevate the simple sweetcorn in your bowl and comes with a side of some more plant points.

For the rest of the salad, there's obviously no direct heat involved , but the casserole doubled nicely as a mixing and serving vessel. The wide, shallow shape meant the leaves could be tossed properly with the green sauce without bruising, rather than being crushed together in a narrow bowl. I took my pictures in sections, because it looked so pretty, but the messy mixing still looked and smelt delightful. It's a nice example of the pan pulling double duty beyond the hob, which feels like a useful point to make for readers who might balk at a "casserole" doing salad duty.

Meal 4: Orzo Alla Nerano

This is a dish built from a couple of separate elements, which really test a Le Creuset. I've had a big glut of courgettes, so was thrilled to see a recipe using one in Em's book. You start my chopping and dry frying the courgettes to give them the brown look. This really exposes how well a pan transfers heat across the base and, as expected, the courgettes coloured almost completely evenly. At the edges some were a little paler, but it eas easy to move them around. Em says to leave them to cool, covered in seasoning, so the salt and pepper mills got a good workout before I turned to the pasta.

Orzo alla Nerano lives or dies on getting a silky, emulsified sauce rather than a claggy one, and the casserole's heat retention did a lot of the work here. Because the pan stayed consistently hot even off the direct flame, the cheese melted smoothly giving a beautiful melted texture. The shallow shape also meant the orzo cooked in an even layer rather than clumping in the centre, so there was a lot less babysitting than a deep saucepan would need. Serving up with parmesan and lemon made this as light and refreshing as it was delicious. I made big portions for all of these - and this is the one that was devoured in one sitting.

Meal 5: Baked Cod with Fennel and Olives

I strayed from the cookbook here, because I spotted Em using her Le Creuset on Instagram and couldn't resist testing this one out. It's another great example of the casserole going straight from hob to oven. The onion and garlic got a good toast before reducing the tomato sauce and adding in the fennel olives, and capers. Then the whole thing finished under gentle oven heat without needing to switch pans, which meant no faff, no extra washing up, and the cod stayed moist rather than drying out, likely helped by the tight-fitting lid trapping steam.

I'd fallen out of love with one-pot cooking (and cooking in general) this summer: it's been so hot, and life has been busy. But Em The Nutritionist inspired me to dig out my Le Creuset, add a few extra pieces to the kitchen, and get back to my classics. Now I feel properly back on track.

The Shallow Casserole is such a hero product to have in any kitchen, moving from hob to oven to table, without a single extra pan to wash up. It's a style that suits Em's meals, and clearly suits me too. These aren't just beautiful camera props: they're hard-working pans built for everyday life.