A one-pot meal is a dish cooked entirely in a single deep vessel, such as a Dutch oven or stockpot, usually by simmering or braising rather than the quicker stovetop sautéing of a one-pan meal. The method suits stews, braises, rice dishes, and pasta-based meals, where slow cooking tenderizes tougher cuts of meat and lets starches and sugars from vegetables thicken the cooking liquid into a rich sauce. Ingredients typically go in at staged intervals, and the pot does most of the work while the dish simmers largely unattended, which also means minimal cleanup. Examples span the globe: beef stew, jambalaya, chili, paella, and cassoulet in the West; Japanese nabemono and Korean sundubu-jjigae hot pots in East Asia; and Mexican pozole or Colombian ajiaco in Latin America. One-pot dishes often taste better a day or two after cooking, once the flavors have had time to meld, making them well suited to batch cooking.