The trick for me is to apply engineering to the kitchen. You can actually enjoy really elaborate meals if you simply make more each time and utilize pyrex+freezer. Why make only 6 servings of spaghetti when there's still 50% free space available in your instant pot? (that 'max fill' line is but a polite suggestion :D) Planning ahead, logistics, etc. can make all the difference in the world.
Imagine spending one hour in the kitchen to only feed yourself one time. That would be peak insanity to me today. I used to live it for about a decade myself. Ate out about every other day as a consequence. Ordered in a pizza once a week. Today, I eat out about once a month. I haven't ordered a pizza in 3+ years.
I absolutely hated cooking until I learned about terms like "mise en place" and realized that manufacturing/lean/six sigma principles work just as well in my kitchen as they do on a factory floor. Also, tools like the humble pressure cooker can take your 2 hour process cycle down to 20 minutes. It arguably tastes better in many cases too. Cooking is not a mystical process. Much of it (not all) is science and engineering. You can robotically produce incredible meals. And I argue you should - The food on America's shelves and restaurants is only worsening in my estimation.
When It's really bad I just buy multiple costco rotisserie chickens, some frozen veggies, put food on plate, microwave, cover in sauce, eat. Add in premier proteins, fit crunch, and clif builders and you can shop for like 2 weeks in a single run and not die.
My "I cant be bothered" template is the following. is essentially pick one from each category
* 1/2 LB (225g) veggies
* 1/2 LB or 1 fruit
* 1 protein
* Caloric load if I'm not trying to lose weight
* Condiments / spices to taste
Veggies: Frozen mixed (peas, carrots, corn, green beans, soy beans), pre-roasted costco bags, "california mix" etc. Frozen veggies often are nutritionally superior to fresh due to halting nutritional decay.
Protein: look for 35-70g protein -- 1 skin on chicken breast, 2 boneless skinless chicken thighs, ~150g tilapia, 1 tin of tuna, 1 pork chop/steak, 1 egg + 300g whites, 1 hand size of salmon, 1/2lb shrimp
Calories: 1 slice of bread, 1/2c cooked rice, 1 cup cooked pasta, 1/2 avocado, 1/4c mixed nuts
Sauces / Condiments: Bachan's Japanese BBQ, Kinder Honey Hot BBQ, Kinder Lemon pepper (esp. for tilapia)
Edit: Would love recommendations for other sauces that allow me to squeeze a nationality of cuisine over my template to make it taste like that country's food (kinda).
In a weird way, this also serves as a training manual for becoming a good cook. Take plain ramen and understand its cooking process through different methods. Now build a sense of how to flavor and season food by adding additional ingredients. What is a potato and how do you cook it? Solid, back to basics stuff.
At the other end of the spectrum is an absolute classic of the genre, Slater’s Real Fast Food:
It’s a bit more omnivore forward — lamb chops grilled in yogurt is a favourite — and comes from a time when these books were aimed more at young Islington professionals rather than Amazon drivers.
Any non-wealthy single person faces an uphill battle to both 1. earn a living 2. take proper care of themselves. In the Middle Ages people invented a rather neat solution for this problem: go live together in a big building, work together, pray together, cook together and call it a monastery.
We had other solutions for a while too: get married and have one person do the more-than-fulltime job of homemaking.
But that role disappeared because corporations needed more cheap worker-units and politicians needed more GDP, so they rode each others' coattails to eliminate that role. With each homemaker now a worker-unit, there are twice as many worker-units but employee costs are the same, household income is the same, twice as many taxes, twice as many cars, more spending, more consumption - it's a win-win for the ruling class, while family-units and non-wealthy individuals lose.
You can tell how good a job corporatists and statists did at eliminating and vilifying homemakers by observing how furiously most moderns rebuke even the mere suggestion that the role was A Good Thing.
Reminds me of a non satire student cookbook where recipes are sectioned by what utensils and cooking appliances you have at hand. E.g. one pot, frying pan, etc. all the way up to, well a normal kitchen.
As a student myself I’d appreciate all those recipe sites to have a filter by appliances. Seems half of recipes involving meat requires a stove I don’t have.
Chatgpt is REALLY good at coming up with reasonable recipes under arbitrary constraints. You have X ingredients and Y minutes to cook a meal for Z persons, with ABC cookware. It'll do it.
My food for when I can't be bothered is pasta with canned pesto sauce (+optional parmesan). Can eat it every day.
Another a bit more involved option is pasta with checkpeas: https://www.seriouseats.com/pasta-e-ceci-pasta-with-chickpea...
What's yours go-to recipes?
Tray bake: just throw any potatoes, veggies and meat (replacement) in a single layer on a baking sheet with some oil, and spices and put it in the oven until it’s done. Maybe toss it around halfway through.
For meat we use anything from
chopped-up Italian sausage, bacon strips, chick peas, chicken wings to an entire chicken.
Veggie wise anything from classic roasting veggies like carrot, oignon and pumpkin to broccoli, beans, zucchini…
Spice the laziest is just dried rosemary. But I also like some southern spicy bbq rubs, plain garam massala. Or just plenty of garlic.
It has become much easier since we have a “proper” oven instead of a cheap countertop one, as it is much faster and heats up more easily.
Yeah, this even works well when you cook for a family.
If you have pasta left from the day before and don't mind sweet dishes you can fry the pasta with some butter and eggs (scramble with the pasta) in a pan and add some sugar. Pretty sating meal...
In a late hour after work delirium I like to eat air fried pre-seasoned chicken or turkey breast with toasted gray bread and arugula with some balsamic vinegar and olive oil. The latter usually only when I have the energy left or there is some already clean in the fridge... Is of course only for lazy people when you have an air fryer. The 15 min of waiting are enough time to toast the bread and to put the salad into a bowl and season it. In Germany you can buy cheap organic pre-seasoned poultry in most supermarkets...
Washing the vegetables is the most labor-intensive part. Coarsely chop things, stir in your salt and pepper, toss a few bay leaves in, load in the chicken parts, HIGH for 25min, and you're technically good to go. I cook bone-in-skin-on chicken, so I pick the bones and gristle and skin, and stir the chopped/gently pulled meat back in with the rest of the stew.
If I feel like I need more greens in my diet, I'll add a block/half bag of chopped frozen spinach. Chile if I'm feeling spicy.
Do some rice in a rice cooker. When that’s done, slap a good helping of kimchi in a hot frying pan (no need for oil). Let it sizzle for about thirty seconds, then crack an egg in and muddle it up some. When it’s nearly done add the rice. Add a bit of sesame oil at the end if you feel fancy. Eat.
I got through a kilo of kimchi a week this way when I was a depressed 20-something living in a share-house abroad.
We meal plan every week, but when I'm feeling less bothered I lean on a few dishes. They're not quite as simple as pasta plus jarred sauce, but from practice I can go from knife to table in 30 minutes, with basically no dishes.
Turns out you can poach chicken breasts by covering with an inch(ish) of water, bringing them to the boil, popping a lid on, turning the heat off, and letting sit for 30 to 45 minutes (depending on size).
It tastes better than most other methods of cooking chicken breast other than stewing. Optional extras include salt, whole peppercorns, and roughly sliced lemon. If the chicken breasts are freakishly large and weigh more than 350g you might need to halve them. Lasts a couple of days in the fridge but the texture is better fresh.
Aglio e Olio - Literally takes 4 ingredients, and (Italians will hate me for this) can be spruced up easily with other stuff available in your pantry, be it chopped up chinese sausages, peppers, olives, shrimp, or leafy greens.
Moroccan Shakshuka - Eggs, Tomatoes, Peppers, Spices - Slowcook and lap up with a nice piece of bread. What's not to like? Again, very easy to spruce up to ensure you don't feel like you're eating the same meal everyday
Russian pelmeni (e.g. meat dumplings) with sour cream. Meat for protein, dough for carbs, plus milk fat. Tomato and cucumber salad for fiber with olive oil - and I am good for the day.
I often make ~ 3 days worth of noodles for dinners.
Do a night with bottled tomato sauce. I like Classico in Canada (often “diluted” with a can of diced tomatoes). Sometimes I fry some onions first. Top with some red beans.
Another a nights with canned tuna and whatever chopped vegetables I have.
Maybe a night with just butter and cracked pepper and some vegetables as a side. Beans make a good protein.
You can also make cheese pepper pasta easily. Make pasta, leave some pasta water and add pecorino cheese (shredded), then some pepper.
Easy and good so you don't always have to use canned sauce.
Another (easiest) option is to just add cold pesto to the pasta.
Straight-to-wok noodles with some chopped mushrooms, a standard sauce mix and then stir in a spoonful of Lao Gan Ma at the end. Takes about 10 minutes to prepare and cook.
If I have more time, I'll make my own sauce using stock, curry powder, tomato puree and soy sauce.
Add canned tuna in spring water (drained) and some cheese ... completely delicious (to me). One off guilty treat (for me), turbo carb fatty meal for others.
I say this as an Italian, because legend wants we love pasta and we all eat it every day almost religiously, pasta is the worst way to cook a quick and healthy meal in my opinion.
Sauce must be really good to enjoy pasta, pesto especially should be eaten fresh, it's true that here in Italy you can eat it at a fresh express pasta place for like 5-7 euros (more like 7-9 in a big city), it's not really that expensive, but still not that cheap either considering it's pasta, and cooking it at home requires a lot of preparation and attention IMO. You can't leave pasta unattended.
So here they are my go-to recipes for when I don't wanna be bothered:
- in summer: caprese salad, which is tomatoes + mozzarella + olive oil + basil + origan. you can add olives or capers if you like them, my favourite variant is with anchovies. Or you can have ham and melon. Or you can have mozzarella and ham and all the combinations you can think of: caprese + ham, caprese + melon, melon + mozzarella + ham etc. All of them take 5 minutes top to prepare, they're all delicious.
- fish: swordfish, tuna, mackerel, salmon, sardines etc. you can buy them steamed, grilled, smoked, marinated or in oil, they come in cans, jars or you can buy them at fresh food counters. not all of them come suuuper cheap, but they are usually affordable enough, and most of them are as cheap as pasta, especially the canned versions. you can heat some steamed/grilled mackerel fillet in the oven or in the microwave, add an herb sauce and it's like being at the restaurant.
also buying it fresh at the fish counter is an option, they prepare it for you so you don't have to and most of the time you just cook it in a pan for a few minutes in half a spoon of olive oil.
- everything with beans. I love beans, I could live just by eating beans every day of my life. my favourite kind is borlotti beans, you can eat them straight from the jar, we have a lot of high quality packaged beans which are also very cheap, like less than 1 euro for a 250 grams jar. My go-to recipe with beans is beans and tuna salad. It's simply borlotti beans + canned tuna + olive oil + some vinegar + some raw red onion. You can replace beans with your favourite legumes, for example chick-peas. you can also replace tuna with some other canned fish, like the aforementioned steamed or grilled mackerel.
- chicken: buy chicken breast, pound it a little bit and grill it for a few minutes, add olive oil and you're done. if you feel fancy, marinate it with some lemon juice, herbs and half a glass of white wine, put it in a covered glass bowl and leave it in the fridge over night. grill it at lunch the day after.
- caponata: which for the Italians who might read this, here I use as an umbrella term for a mix of vegetables. Take the vegetables you like, for example peppers, aubergines and zucchini. cut them into sorta like cube shaped pieces. put them in a pan, add olive oil, add some tomato sauce if you like it, cook it as much as the hardest vegetable requires, stir it from time to time.
what's really important in my opinion is cook/prepare your meals at least once a day. At least eat some food straight from the kitchen, if you are not the cook.
Avoid eating delivery/pre-cooked/processed food everyday.
You'll be doing something for yourself and you'll feel much better.
Take your time to cook for yourself but also for other people, it's never time wasted.
I used to cook with a trick invented by an italian woman, called "vasocottura" (then my microwave broke, possibly because of that).
You basically put food in a sealed glass jar, and cook it in the microwave for 6 minutes. The air inside will slip out through the seals, resulting in a near vacuum effect. The food will keep cooking for circa 20 minutes while it cools down. Then you can either warm it up in the microwave until the seal unlocks or put the food in the fridge (depending on the food type it will last from a few days to a few weeks thanks to the vacuuming)
Not every dish comes good (and the vegetables soften considerably), but the flavor is incredible (thanks to the vacuuming) and it takes 20 minutes total without no human handling. You also can batch preparation, while one jar is cooking, you can prepare the following ones, and have up to 10 dishes ready in 1 hour of active work.
The hardest part of cooking is often the mental load of "what am I going to eat?". Infinite choices. To pick one is to deny all the rest. What do I even have? What could I make that's worth eating?
At the start of the pandemic, my wife and I began solving this problem with meal planning.
Every Saturday morning, when we're at a pretty high energy level, we decide on lunch and dinner for the next seven days. Including when leftovers will be eaten. Then I go buy the groceries needed for those meals. We keep the schedule in a shared word doc. The system has evolved over time but the core idea of pre-planning the decisions has always been there.
Now there are no decisions to make. It's Thursday night and you're exhausted? You are having sausage pasta. That's the plan. Get cooking, it's easy and you have everything.
If you read the description of the linked book and feel you relate to it, I cannot recommend this strategy enough.
Cook a big batch of food with spreadable consistency (e.g. bolognese sauce, hummus, lentil daal, mixed vegetable puree) in an electric pressure cooker. Ideally this should all be done in one pot.
Pour the food into an aluminum roasting pan, greatly increasing its surface area to volume ratio.
Take a plastic storage box of similar shape to the roasting pan but slightly larger, put lots of ice in it, and add just enough water to cover the ice.
Float the roasting pan full of food in the ice bath. Let the food cool to below room temperature, stirring occasionally to speed this up. Keep the storage box lid on while not stirring. This shouldn't take more than about half an hour.
Spoon the food into silicone muffin trays, and put it into the freezer.
Wait for the food to freeze, take it out, transfer it to plastic bags, and return it to the freezer.
This makes convenient blocks of food that can be defrosted by microwaving. I make batches of 24 at a time. One is enough for a snack/side dish, two a small main, three a regular main, and four a large main. They can be mixed for variety. The easiest complete meal is a bowl of rolled oats, water, and frozen blocks of food. The whole thing can be reheated by microwaving (rolled oats are sold already cooked), and because the frozen food was cooled so quickly I'm not worried about food safety if it's not thoroughly reheated. Yogurt/pickles/etc. can be added for more variety. I think the ice bath and aluminum roasting pan are necessary, because it's otherwise difficult to cool large batches of food. The silicone muffin trays double as giant ice cube trays when they're not being used to freeze the food. You could probably use metal muffin trays instead, but silicone makes it easy to remove the frozen stuff.
I just canceled my HelloFresh subscription, because the meals took too long to make, occasionally some ingredients were missing or wrong, I had no space to store all the ingredients that were delivered, and I hated the amount of cleanup I had to do afterwards. This cookbook is exactly what I need.
I wish I could just take one pill a day (or three) for nutrition (and satiating hunger) and not have to eat meals at all. That would be amazing, not to have to deal with food. Buying, preparing, ordering, over eating.
Here is a great ramen recipe from a classic reddit thread that my glance over the book failed to spot:
>Creamy chicken flavored preferred but regular chicken will do.
>With drained noodles and with the flavor packet add black pepper, garlic, Parmesan cheese, butter and just a bit of milk to make it creamy and sauce like.
Since they didn't include measurements, this is what I ended up using:
1 pack creamy garlic seasoning
1/4th cup water
1/2 tsp garlic grilling salt blend
1 tbsp butter or margarine
2 tbsp parmesan cheese
I laughed at the title before I even read it. Am I going to be disappointed if I read it?
You know back in the day I remember 'the anarchist cookbook' along with all kinds of other somewhat legally dubious online literature, such as phrack magazine, 2600, erowid, thehive.ws;
And bizarre euphemisms such as SWIM (someone who isn't me) peppering the tales of free long distance telephone calls, dumpster diving, and synthesis of (most likely scheduled) hallucinogenic, entheogenic psychoactive chemicals. Hahaha. Those were the days!
These days I'm so leery of ubiquitous surveillance I likely wouldn't even dare search for those things (tor be damned, eyes everywhere, can't trust anything!)...heavy sigh
On a finer point: I really wish they hadn't scheduled Salvia because of the seeming hysteria that resulted from some people who had unfortunate outcomes while apparently using it. Such a powerful spirit plant!
By that logic alcohol should have been Schedule 1 LONG ago. My suspicion is 'the ruling elites' like to schedule anything that can allow people to unlock higher abilities, or bring more power to themselves. So, sadly, beneficial plants and chemicals are thrown in with actually dangerous addictive ones...:( Fucking tragedy.
My hope is one day its glory will be restored in the same way that we're seeing with psychoactive mushrooms happening now to some extent. Good old Salvia--you meet entities on that trip, too! To me they literally seemed like tree/plant/forest spirits, and when on it, like I, oops I mean, like SWIM, was "inside the plant network".
Easy and delicious, and only 3-4 of the ingredients are perishables you need to get. The rest are pantry items:
* ~2lb sirloin (flank if you have money to burn)
* Some soy sauce
* Sesame oil
* Onion powder
* Garlic powder
* 2 white onions
* Peppers of some kind (I like shishito for this, and something really spicy if I’m not cooking it for my family)
* Scallions (if you want, there’s already onions)
* Baking soda
* Corn starch
* Beef bouillon paste
Cut the streak in thin slices across the grain, think stir fry size. Toss in a bowl with onion powder, garlic powder, soy sauce, baking powder, and sesame oil. I don’t measure when I cook, but I’d guess maybe 2 tbsp of onion powder, 3 tsp garlic powder, 3 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tsp sesame oil, 3 tsp baking powder. Eyeball it and toss well to coat the meat evenly. If it seems like too much, do less. You can always add stuff later.
Let it marinate for a while, 1-4 hours usually. I do it a few hours before I want to cook, it cooks fast. Meanwhile chop the onions and peppers.
Heat some oil in a Dutch oven or other large pot. When it’s hot put the beef in and brown it for a few minutes.
Add the onions and peppers and toss for a few minutes and let them cook.
Next prepare two cups of the beef bouillon paste according to its directions. Add it to the pot and mix everything.
Finally, add about 3 tsp of cornstarch to a small bowl and about an equal amount of water. Mix it until there are no more lumps and before it settles out again add it to the pot and let it simmer a little longer, or until the sauce is almost thick enough. It’ll thicken more as it cools.
Many here will really appreciate the nice recipe, however you're missing the point of the cook book. People who are looking at this cook book are definitely not going to spend 1-4 hours waiting for marinade. They barely have 1-4 minutes of effort in their tank.
* Buy pre-marinated diced beef from the store
* Buy pre-diced frozen veggies
* Buy microwave rice
1. Oil in pan
2. Beef in pan, cook for 1-2 mins
3. Veggies in pan, lower the heat to 75%
4. Cook for 5 mins and optionally add soy sauce and maybe some chicken powder (Knorr's)
5. Add microwave rice to pan, cook for another 5 mins while mixing
6. Serve
Total time: Under 15 mins, one pan used. Prep time: 0 mins, other than shopping.
How many commenting / voting actually followed through and downloaded the content? The content itself is a mess (they admit to it) and sensible alternatives are an easy first pass.
The link is worth looking at and the recipes aren't bad. But "so you don't die" is hyperbole and you can survive on less.
I live in a food void and cooking is a passion. The link isn't bad, but it's approach is over the top.
My wife and I are both good cooks, but have been pressed for time. However, 3-4 years ago we basically stopped eating out, largely because of just how expensive it is.
I changed my perspective around that time from "food is a chore" to "food is a luxury", and started trying to "go the extra inch" and try to make some nicer meals.
Tonight was extra special, being our 5 year anniversary, so I: Grilled a couple steaks, caramelized 3 onions and used the fond with some wine, tamarind, miso paste and beef stock to make a pan sauce, baked some potatoes and roasted some carrots. The left over onions and pan sauce I turned into a salad dressing for the week.
It takes some work, but once you dial in the basic chemistry of cooking, things start to become second nature.
Makes you realize that having an electric kettle, a microwave, a turkey-sized oven and a four burner range - all in the same room - is not mandated by the laws of physics.
And now I'll go and buy some frozen spinach. Just like those noodles from instant noodles, should be extremely versatile.
[+] [-] bob1029|2 years ago|reply
Imagine spending one hour in the kitchen to only feed yourself one time. That would be peak insanity to me today. I used to live it for about a decade myself. Ate out about every other day as a consequence. Ordered in a pizza once a week. Today, I eat out about once a month. I haven't ordered a pizza in 3+ years.
I absolutely hated cooking until I learned about terms like "mise en place" and realized that manufacturing/lean/six sigma principles work just as well in my kitchen as they do on a factory floor. Also, tools like the humble pressure cooker can take your 2 hour process cycle down to 20 minutes. It arguably tastes better in many cases too. Cooking is not a mystical process. Much of it (not all) is science and engineering. You can robotically produce incredible meals. And I argue you should - The food on America's shelves and restaurants is only worsening in my estimation.
[+] [-] maerF0x0|2 years ago|reply
My "I cant be bothered" template is the following. is essentially pick one from each category
Veggies: Frozen mixed (peas, carrots, corn, green beans, soy beans), pre-roasted costco bags, "california mix" etc. Frozen veggies often are nutritionally superior to fresh due to halting nutritional decay.Fruit: Apple, orange, banana, Water/other melons, Straw/other berries
Protein: look for 35-70g protein -- 1 skin on chicken breast, 2 boneless skinless chicken thighs, ~150g tilapia, 1 tin of tuna, 1 pork chop/steak, 1 egg + 300g whites, 1 hand size of salmon, 1/2lb shrimp
Calories: 1 slice of bread, 1/2c cooked rice, 1 cup cooked pasta, 1/2 avocado, 1/4c mixed nuts
Sauces / Condiments: Bachan's Japanese BBQ, Kinder Honey Hot BBQ, Kinder Lemon pepper (esp. for tilapia)
Edit: Would love recommendations for other sauces that allow me to squeeze a nationality of cuisine over my template to make it taste like that country's food (kinda).
[+] [-] gorgoiler|2 years ago|reply
In a weird way, this also serves as a training manual for becoming a good cook. Take plain ramen and understand its cooking process through different methods. Now build a sense of how to flavor and season food by adding additional ingredients. What is a potato and how do you cook it? Solid, back to basics stuff.
At the other end of the spectrum is an absolute classic of the genre, Slater’s Real Fast Food:
https://www.nigelslater.com/real-fast-food_bk_25
It’s a bit more omnivore forward — lamb chops grilled in yogurt is a favourite — and comes from a time when these books were aimed more at young Islington professionals rather than Amazon drivers.
[+] [-] random_upvoter|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VoodooJuJu|2 years ago|reply
But that role disappeared because corporations needed more cheap worker-units and politicians needed more GDP, so they rode each others' coattails to eliminate that role. With each homemaker now a worker-unit, there are twice as many worker-units but employee costs are the same, household income is the same, twice as many taxes, twice as many cars, more spending, more consumption - it's a win-win for the ruling class, while family-units and non-wealthy individuals lose.
You can tell how good a job corporatists and statists did at eliminating and vilifying homemakers by observing how furiously most moderns rebuke even the mere suggestion that the role was A Good Thing.
[+] [-] quickthrower2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Savely|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carabiner|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plufz|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erik_seaberg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coolvision|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Saturn5|2 years ago|reply
For meat we use anything from chopped-up Italian sausage, bacon strips, chick peas, chicken wings to an entire chicken.
Veggie wise anything from classic roasting veggies like carrot, oignon and pumpkin to broccoli, beans, zucchini…
Spice the laziest is just dried rosemary. But I also like some southern spicy bbq rubs, plain garam massala. Or just plenty of garlic.
It has become much easier since we have a “proper” oven instead of a cheap countertop one, as it is much faster and heats up more easily.
[+] [-] chromanoid|2 years ago|reply
If you have pasta left from the day before and don't mind sweet dishes you can fry the pasta with some butter and eggs (scramble with the pasta) in a pan and add some sugar. Pretty sating meal...
In a late hour after work delirium I like to eat air fried pre-seasoned chicken or turkey breast with toasted gray bread and arugula with some balsamic vinegar and olive oil. The latter usually only when I have the energy left or there is some already clean in the fridge... Is of course only for lazy people when you have an air fryer. The 15 min of waiting are enough time to toast the bread and to put the salad into a bowl and season it. In Germany you can buy cheap organic pre-seasoned poultry in most supermarkets...
[+] [-] MengerSponge|2 years ago|reply
Washing the vegetables is the most labor-intensive part. Coarsely chop things, stir in your salt and pepper, toss a few bay leaves in, load in the chicken parts, HIGH for 25min, and you're technically good to go. I cook bone-in-skin-on chicken, so I pick the bones and gristle and skin, and stir the chopped/gently pulled meat back in with the rest of the stew.
If I feel like I need more greens in my diet, I'll add a block/half bag of chopped frozen spinach. Chile if I'm feeling spicy.
Serve with lime. It's so much better with lime.
[+] [-] qubyte|2 years ago|reply
I got through a kilo of kimchi a week this way when I was a depressed 20-something living in a share-house abroad.
[+] [-] maccard|2 years ago|reply
[0] https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1021485-one-pan-orzo-wit...
[1] https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020291-vegetarian-mushr...
[+] [-] strken|2 years ago|reply
It tastes better than most other methods of cooking chicken breast other than stewing. Optional extras include salt, whole peppercorns, and roughly sliced lemon. If the chicken breasts are freakishly large and weigh more than 350g you might need to halve them. Lasts a couple of days in the fridge but the texture is better fresh.
[+] [-] madmax108|2 years ago|reply
Moroccan Shakshuka - Eggs, Tomatoes, Peppers, Spices - Slowcook and lap up with a nice piece of bread. What's not to like? Again, very easy to spruce up to ensure you don't feel like you're eating the same meal everyday
[+] [-] throwaway154|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SergeAx|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JimBlackwood|2 years ago|reply
It’s simple, quick and oh so good. Enough time to make a really quick salad in between too.
[+] [-] Scoundreller|2 years ago|reply
Do a night with bottled tomato sauce. I like Classico in Canada (often “diluted” with a can of diced tomatoes). Sometimes I fry some onions first. Top with some red beans.
Another a nights with canned tuna and whatever chopped vegetables I have.
Maybe a night with just butter and cracked pepper and some vegetables as a side. Beans make a good protein.
Fast, cheap, easy. Nutritionally complete-ish.
[+] [-] sureglymop|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeusk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shever73|2 years ago|reply
If I have more time, I'll make my own sauce using stock, curry powder, tomato puree and soy sauce.
[+] [-] LightBug1|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dubeye|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhb|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grokas|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peoplefromibiza|2 years ago|reply
Sauce must be really good to enjoy pasta, pesto especially should be eaten fresh, it's true that here in Italy you can eat it at a fresh express pasta place for like 5-7 euros (more like 7-9 in a big city), it's not really that expensive, but still not that cheap either considering it's pasta, and cooking it at home requires a lot of preparation and attention IMO. You can't leave pasta unattended.
So here they are my go-to recipes for when I don't wanna be bothered:
- in summer: caprese salad, which is tomatoes + mozzarella + olive oil + basil + origan. you can add olives or capers if you like them, my favourite variant is with anchovies. Or you can have ham and melon. Or you can have mozzarella and ham and all the combinations you can think of: caprese + ham, caprese + melon, melon + mozzarella + ham etc. All of them take 5 minutes top to prepare, they're all delicious.
- fish: swordfish, tuna, mackerel, salmon, sardines etc. you can buy them steamed, grilled, smoked, marinated or in oil, they come in cans, jars or you can buy them at fresh food counters. not all of them come suuuper cheap, but they are usually affordable enough, and most of them are as cheap as pasta, especially the canned versions. you can heat some steamed/grilled mackerel fillet in the oven or in the microwave, add an herb sauce and it's like being at the restaurant. also buying it fresh at the fish counter is an option, they prepare it for you so you don't have to and most of the time you just cook it in a pan for a few minutes in half a spoon of olive oil.
- everything with beans. I love beans, I could live just by eating beans every day of my life. my favourite kind is borlotti beans, you can eat them straight from the jar, we have a lot of high quality packaged beans which are also very cheap, like less than 1 euro for a 250 grams jar. My go-to recipe with beans is beans and tuna salad. It's simply borlotti beans + canned tuna + olive oil + some vinegar + some raw red onion. You can replace beans with your favourite legumes, for example chick-peas. you can also replace tuna with some other canned fish, like the aforementioned steamed or grilled mackerel.
- chicken: buy chicken breast, pound it a little bit and grill it for a few minutes, add olive oil and you're done. if you feel fancy, marinate it with some lemon juice, herbs and half a glass of white wine, put it in a covered glass bowl and leave it in the fridge over night. grill it at lunch the day after.
- caponata: which for the Italians who might read this, here I use as an umbrella term for a mix of vegetables. Take the vegetables you like, for example peppers, aubergines and zucchini. cut them into sorta like cube shaped pieces. put them in a pan, add olive oil, add some tomato sauce if you like it, cook it as much as the hardest vegetable requires, stir it from time to time.
what's really important in my opinion is cook/prepare your meals at least once a day. At least eat some food straight from the kitchen, if you are not the cook. Avoid eating delivery/pre-cooked/processed food everyday.
You'll be doing something for yourself and you'll feel much better.
Take your time to cook for yourself but also for other people, it's never time wasted.
[+] [-] tacone|2 years ago|reply
You basically put food in a sealed glass jar, and cook it in the microwave for 6 minutes. The air inside will slip out through the seals, resulting in a near vacuum effect. The food will keep cooking for circa 20 minutes while it cools down. Then you can either warm it up in the microwave until the seal unlocks or put the food in the fridge (depending on the food type it will last from a few days to a few weeks thanks to the vacuuming)
Not every dish comes good (and the vegetables soften considerably), but the flavor is incredible (thanks to the vacuuming) and it takes 20 minutes total without no human handling. You also can batch preparation, while one jar is cooking, you can prepare the following ones, and have up to 10 dishes ready in 1 hour of active work.
Here is a video: https://youtube.com/shorts/ccyOSIvqtgQ?feature=share
Don't try it without further investigation, since not every jar will work without breaking itself or the microwave.
[+] [-] danjc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JanSt|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mabbo|2 years ago|reply
At the start of the pandemic, my wife and I began solving this problem with meal planning.
Every Saturday morning, when we're at a pretty high energy level, we decide on lunch and dinner for the next seven days. Including when leftovers will be eaten. Then I go buy the groceries needed for those meals. We keep the schedule in a shared word doc. The system has evolved over time but the core idea of pre-planning the decisions has always been there.
Now there are no decisions to make. It's Thursday night and you're exhausted? You are having sausage pasta. That's the plan. Get cooking, it's easy and you have everything.
If you read the description of the linked book and feel you relate to it, I cannot recommend this strategy enough.
[+] [-] mrob|2 years ago|reply
Cook a big batch of food with spreadable consistency (e.g. bolognese sauce, hummus, lentil daal, mixed vegetable puree) in an electric pressure cooker. Ideally this should all be done in one pot.
Pour the food into an aluminum roasting pan, greatly increasing its surface area to volume ratio.
Take a plastic storage box of similar shape to the roasting pan but slightly larger, put lots of ice in it, and add just enough water to cover the ice.
Float the roasting pan full of food in the ice bath. Let the food cool to below room temperature, stirring occasionally to speed this up. Keep the storage box lid on while not stirring. This shouldn't take more than about half an hour.
Spoon the food into silicone muffin trays, and put it into the freezer.
Wait for the food to freeze, take it out, transfer it to plastic bags, and return it to the freezer.
This makes convenient blocks of food that can be defrosted by microwaving. I make batches of 24 at a time. One is enough for a snack/side dish, two a small main, three a regular main, and four a large main. They can be mixed for variety. The easiest complete meal is a bowl of rolled oats, water, and frozen blocks of food. The whole thing can be reheated by microwaving (rolled oats are sold already cooked), and because the frozen food was cooled so quickly I'm not worried about food safety if it's not thoroughly reheated. Yogurt/pickles/etc. can be added for more variety. I think the ice bath and aluminum roasting pan are necessary, because it's otherwise difficult to cool large batches of food. The silicone muffin trays double as giant ice cube trays when they're not being used to freeze the food. You could probably use metal muffin trays instead, but silicone makes it easy to remove the frozen stuff.
[+] [-] bob1029|2 years ago|reply
> because the frozen food was cooled so quickly I'm not worried about food safety if it's not thoroughly reheated.
This is something I picked up on. My meals go straight from 200F+ to freezer. I don't really even let the containers cool down first.
[+] [-] tcmb|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ehPReth|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] molticrystal|2 years ago|reply
>Creamy chicken flavored preferred but regular chicken will do.
>With drained noodles and with the flavor packet add black pepper, garlic, Parmesan cheese, butter and just a bit of milk to make it creamy and sauce like.
Since they didn't include measurements, this is what I ended up using:
[0] Source https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4a5ni8/whats_you...[+] [-] ralferoo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keepamovin|2 years ago|reply
You know back in the day I remember 'the anarchist cookbook' along with all kinds of other somewhat legally dubious online literature, such as phrack magazine, 2600, erowid, thehive.ws;
And bizarre euphemisms such as SWIM (someone who isn't me) peppering the tales of free long distance telephone calls, dumpster diving, and synthesis of (most likely scheduled) hallucinogenic, entheogenic psychoactive chemicals. Hahaha. Those were the days!
These days I'm so leery of ubiquitous surveillance I likely wouldn't even dare search for those things (tor be damned, eyes everywhere, can't trust anything!)...heavy sigh
On a finer point: I really wish they hadn't scheduled Salvia because of the seeming hysteria that resulted from some people who had unfortunate outcomes while apparently using it. Such a powerful spirit plant!
By that logic alcohol should have been Schedule 1 LONG ago. My suspicion is 'the ruling elites' like to schedule anything that can allow people to unlock higher abilities, or bring more power to themselves. So, sadly, beneficial plants and chemicals are thrown in with actually dangerous addictive ones...:( Fucking tragedy.
My hope is one day its glory will be restored in the same way that we're seeing with psychoactive mushrooms happening now to some extent. Good old Salvia--you meet entities on that trip, too! To me they literally seemed like tree/plant/forest spirits, and when on it, like I, oops I mean, like SWIM, was "inside the plant network".
[+] [-] nkrisc|2 years ago|reply
Let it marinate for a while, 1-4 hours usually. I do it a few hours before I want to cook, it cooks fast. Meanwhile chop the onions and peppers.
Heat some oil in a Dutch oven or other large pot. When it’s hot put the beef in and brown it for a few minutes.
Add the onions and peppers and toss for a few minutes and let them cook.
Next prepare two cups of the beef bouillon paste according to its directions. Add it to the pot and mix everything.
Finally, add about 3 tsp of cornstarch to a small bowl and about an equal amount of water. Mix it until there are no more lumps and before it settles out again add it to the pot and let it simmer a little longer, or until the sauce is almost thick enough. It’ll thicken more as it cools.
Serve over rice or whatever you want.
[+] [-] Daneel_|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmspring|2 years ago|reply
The link is worth looking at and the recipes aren't bad. But "so you don't die" is hyperbole and you can survive on less.
I live in a food void and cooking is a passion. The link isn't bad, but it's approach is over the top.
[+] [-] ark4579|2 years ago|reply
5 star. chances of my survival increase by 7%.
if only there was a github page for this where i could create PR to add recipes and/or puns.
p.s. it's gonna be a treasure trove for most people with ADHD.
[+] [-] linsomniac|2 years ago|reply
I changed my perspective around that time from "food is a chore" to "food is a luxury", and started trying to "go the extra inch" and try to make some nicer meals.
Tonight was extra special, being our 5 year anniversary, so I: Grilled a couple steaks, caramelized 3 onions and used the fond with some wine, tamarind, miso paste and beef stock to make a pan sauce, baked some potatoes and roasted some carrots. The left over onions and pan sauce I turned into a salad dressing for the week.
It takes some work, but once you dial in the basic chemistry of cooking, things start to become second nature.
[+] [-] asah|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] memefrog|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdp2021|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drbig|2 years ago|reply
And now I'll go and buy some frozen spinach. Just like those noodles from instant noodles, should be extremely versatile.