Cooking for yourself

[Colour Scientist]

*shrugs*

It's never really been an issue for me.

I tend to just make enough for myself for one meal, any leftovers are usually negligible, I very rarely reheat food. If I did, I'd probably use the oven but I honestly can't remember the last time I did that. If I have leftover pasta or something like that, I'd just have it cold.

Whaaaaaaaat? When I was a kid my mum would make like a vat of soup, and that's all we'd eat for days. I still make things in bulk. Generally lasts a week- week and a half if I skip meals. Fancy cooking every day!

Anyway OP: Boil pasta. Add milk... and don't complain.

We were the opposite. My mom worked a lot and she would either pick up ingredients on the way home or I'd have to make something for myself.

I'm really bad at grocery shopping in bulk, I just buy/cook as I go. Like, if I wanted stir fry, I'd buy enough veg/meat/whatever else to make two but I'd cook two separate meals on each day, rather than making one big one and reheating half.

 

[Euryalus]

-snip-

No not really, the microwave lacking was mostly a joke for a thread about recipe ideas xD

I mean I don't cook super often, but I don't eat hot pockets every night either.

 

[Euryalus]

-snip-

No, I mean the "dessert" pies. Mince pies aren't very common in the US... at least where I am.

 

[Euryalus]

-snip-

I'm more like manic. If I make something I make a ton of it so I can have it for lunch the next few days. The aforementioned potato salad and sloppy joe meat is an example... though with sloppy joe you obviously don't leave it too long you know? >.>

-snip-

Like buttered spaghetti noodles or? Haven't had those in a while. I tend to just throw cheese and prego on it and make spaghetti.

 

[manic_depressive13]

Like buttered spaghetti noodles or? Haven't had those in a while. I tend to just throw cheese and prego in it and make spaghetti.

Sure, except instead of butter it's just pasta swimming in milk. It's an old family recipe. I used to think everyone ate pasta like this until recently when I discovered no one eats pasta like this.

 

[Colour Scientist]

Like buttered spaghetti noodles or? Haven't had those in a while. I tend to just throw cheese and prego in it and make spaghetti.

Sure, except instead of butter it's just pasta swimming in milk. It's an old family recipe. I used to think everyone ate pasta like this until recently when I discovered no one eats pasta like this.

I have never heard of anyone eating pasta like this. XD

 

[freaper]

I'd say make yourself a plate of pasta, but it's so ridiculously easy to make with premade sauces it's almost an affront to cooking. Seriously though, Carbonara:

1. Throw some bacon/ham cubes in a buttered pot, and let them turn crispy pink.
2. Take the pot off the fire once the meat's done and add 1-2 eggs per person, together with some parmesan cheese.
3. Mix that shit.
4. Let it sit until your pasta is cooked (don't forget to salt the boiling water when you put the pasta in).
5. Mix that shit.
6. Serve it in a deep plate. Add more parmesan and black pepper (which is where the name Carbonara comes from) if you want.

 

[Flutterguy]

Buy a 10 kg bag or rice and make stir fry every night. Nothing that tastes that good and is as easy and cheap.

Now if you have a bit more money get peanuts, egg noodles, sausage and some vegetables. Almost fully cook the egg noodles and sausage(fried) at the same time, then throw the drained noodles, peanuts and cut up vegetables into the frying pan with your chunks of sausage. Add a BAM of the spice weasel. BAM! Delicious Hungarian poor people food.

 

[ExtraDebit]

If you're lazy, you can do a chinese style "hotpot". All you need is a soup base which sells in most supermarket, and thinly sliced meat.

 

[loa]

I don't know, depends on what you like?

Try looking into thai curry.
All you need is (optional) meat, veggies, some spices and coconut milk.
Cook a big pot, freeze it and you're good for a week.
That is if you like rice and if you do, look into rice cookers.
They're pretty useful, shut themselves down automatically if the rice is ready so it's impossible to burn it and you can even cook an entire meal in them by just throwing veggies along with the rice into them.

Some spaghetti dishes such as aglio olio are also really easy to make.
Or you can be basic and make 2 fried eggs, creamed spinach and mashed potato.
Spinach and potato are just instant/frozen stuff so you only have to learn how to get the egg right.
It makes kind of a mess but is tasty and pretty much impossible to fuck up.

I would not however recommend chilli as your first cooking project.
That's how I started and it's really easy to... activate your bowels that way.
Especially if you experiment around.

 

[Flutterguy]

How do you live off of microwaving food?

I never ever use a microwave.

When I was growing up, my mom refused to even own one.

Microwaves aren't just for Easy Mac. How do you heat your leftovers if you don't have a microwave?

Put a pan on the stove and turn on your stove.

Alternatively turn on your oven and use a tray.

Its not rocket appliances.

 

[shootthebandit]

People have already mentioned my repetoire of curry and stirfry

Also roast meat (could be chicken, pork, beef or lamb or whatever is available) just roast the meat in the oven and boil some veg and potatoes and youve got a decent meal. Left over veg and potatoes can be used to make a soup

Stirfry is pretty easy. Fry some garlic in a pan, add some meat, once the meat is cooked add some veg (of your choosing), add noodles and finally add some oyster sauce

Curry is pretty easy too. Boil some rice, fry up a bit of meat (any meat will do) add curry sauce to the meat and leave it to simmer

I prefer stirfry because its healthy as you are getting meat, carbs and veg. Its cheap especially if you use turkey (which is also a leaner protein)

 

[shootthebandit]

Slap some feta cheese on a chicken fillet. Wrap with bacon. Oven for 40 minutes. Chomp chomp.

Works equally well with stuffing.

Hm, yum.

Works with black pudding/haggis if you are a northern barbarian like myself.

 

[Colour Scientist]

Slap some feta cheese on a chicken fillet. Wrap with bacon. Oven for 40 minutes. Chomp chomp.

Works equally well with stuffing.

Hm, yum.

Works with black pudding/haggis if you are a northern barbarian like myself.

I've had chicken with black pudding minus the bacon before and it was amazing.

With the bacon, it just sounds like a fry-up stuffed in a chicken...


This also sounds amazing. XD

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

Another tip: Grilling/Roasting/Broiling/Griddling a plain chicken breast may be healthy protein, but it's boring as all get out. The night before you're going to cook it, cut some shallow scoring into the top and bottom of the breast and then marinade it overnight in Italian salad dressing. When you cook it the next day, your mouth will say "thank you!" If it's not saying, "nomnomnom" that is.

Also works for pork chops.

Thought you might like to hear about this idea. If you already know about it, then at least I've let others on the forum know!

Take one whole chicken, suitable for baking. Take one medium lemon and stab it psychotically with a fork to let it begin leaking juices. Take at least 2 cloves of garlic (I prefer around 4-6, but I'm a garlic addict), peel them and chop them into large chunks. Place garlic bits and the lemon inside the chicken with a teaspoon of salt and bake in a covered dish at 350F for 15 minutes per pounds. (Always check to make certain the chicken is actually cooked through before serving, of course.)

The salt pulls the juices out of the lemon and garlic to cook inside the chicken and flavors the meat from within. Cut up, the chicken can be used for any number of dishes or eaten as-is with your choice of side dishes. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

 

[shootthebandit]

Another tip: Grilling/Roasting/Broiling/Griddling a plain chicken breast may be healthy protein, but it's boring as all get out. The night before you're going to cook it, cut some shallow scoring into the top and bottom of the breast and then marinade it overnight in Italian salad dressing. When you cook it the next day, your mouth will say "thank you!" If it's not saying, "nomnomnom" that is.

Also works for pork chops.

Thought you might like to hear about this idea. If you already know about it, then at least I've let others on the forum know!

Take one whole chicken, suitable for baking. Take one medium lemon and stab it psychotically with a fork to let it begin leaking juices. Take at least 2 cloves of garlic (I prefer around 4-6, but I'm a garlic addict), peel them and chop them into large chunks. Place garlic bits and the lemon inside the chicken with a teaspoon of salt and bake in a covered dish at 350F for 15 minutes per pounds. (Always check to make certain the chicken is actually cooked through before serving, of course.)

The salt pulls the juices out of the lemon and garlic to cook inside the chicken and flavors the meat from within. Cut up, the chicken can be used for any number of dishes or eaten as-is with your choice of side dishes. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

You can do the same with lemon and whole pepper corns. It adds mega flavour to the chicken especially if you are cooking it on a BBQ

 

[CardinalPiggles]

I've really been into fajita wraps lately.

You could cheat very easily too by just buying wraps and sauce, then you just need choice of meat, fajita spice and cheese.

Pasta is an obvious one too, it's extremely simple if you want it to be, or you can go crazy with it and add whatever your heart stomach desires.

 

[Popido]

Pasta sauce is very basic and can then be improvised to other recipes.

Cut an onion and throw it in the pan. Throw mince meat in there with it. Once fried, add tomato sauce. Done.

Remove the mince meat, you get napoleon. Remove onions, add water. BAM! Tomato soup.

Tortilla lasagne is also very simple to make and you usually end up with lots of it. Make the pasta sauce, buy tortillas and pile them on some ovenproof dish.

Spoiler: -snip-

 

[IamLEAM1983]

So you've never cooked? You've always nuked your food? Oh God, your cholesterol and sodium levels...

Learn to cook, my friend, and learn ASAP. You'll realize there's a lot of tasty stuff on offer that makes your microwave days look absolutely pathetic in comparison.

Here's my personal list of Easy Bachelor Pad food:

1. Steak. Learn that stove, and learn it fast if you want to impress the laydays. Learn to skip butter as a non-stick agent and give olive oil a shot. Five seconds on each side gives you a Rare steak, and a Well Done piece of meat has to be thoroughly brown. Experiment between those extremes, and perform small cuts in your steak to see how the insides are doing.

2. Eggs. Start with scrambled eggs, then learn to handle the sunny-side-up variety. Once you can manage both, stick some veggies or some beans in there, for extra proteins.

3. Rizotto. The best possible way to cook something "fancy" that actually requires only a minimal amount of upkeep. Find a place that sells Arborio rice, buy some chicken broth and prepare it. Then, get a pan out, put your rice in it, and drown it in chicken broth. Keep it covered in broth at medium to high temp for about twenty minutes, adding more broth when needed. Once the rice is thick and sticky, you're done. Serve with veggies and salads and go easy on the salt, there's always a ton of salt in that chicken broth.

For a dessert variety, replace the broth with melted chocolate.

4. Shish Taouk chicken. Find a Lebanese or Middle-Eastern supermarket (check your city's more "ethnic" corners) and buy yourself a solid pound of the stuff. It's marinated chicken, so it'll keep in your freezer for a long time. Portion out what you want to keep - and make sure to ask the butcher to trim the fat for you, if you want to keep things simple.

Get your pan, non-stick it up with some butter or olive oil, then cook the chicken until it's almost well done. Make sure there's no pink stuff left, 'cause you're looking to avoid salmonella! For the same reason, never leave chicken to thaw out in the open if you aren't going to use it within five hours.

5. Kraft Dinner, Hamburger Helper et al. Follow the directions, and try and use them as side dishes, only.

 

[Idlemessiah]

Spaghetti Bolognese. Requires 2 hot pans, a tin of chopped tomatoes, some ground meat and seasonings. Maybe a cheese grater too.

Put 2 pans on to heat up. One with a little water, oil and salt and one with just oil.

At the same time, boil the kettle (it heats up way faster than a full pan of oily water!)

Add hot water to hot water and chuck in spaghetti. Break spaghetti in half and it'll cook a bit faster!

Now the spaghetti is in, start timing.

Throw some chopped onion and mushroom into the hot oil pan to brown up. Stir to prevent sticking.

After about 30 seconds throw in ground meat. Beef, turkey, pork, whatever!

Stir until all browned.

Now throw in a tin of chopped tomatoes. Its cheap and its basically like a jar of bolognese sauce without the seasoning.

Stir.

Don't forget to stir the spaghetti too!

Chuck some herbs into the meat! I just buy supermarket value mix tubs that have a bit of everything in.

Add garlic if you want.

Add some wine too if you fancy.

But if you have Worcester sauce or something similar, DEFINITELY add that!

10 minutes have now passed. The pasta is just about done, The meat is nearly ready. Grate yourself some cheese ready to put on top!

At this point, if your sauce is looking watery, add something to thicken it! A teaspoon of flour works, but thats boring. I like to crush up a Weetabix since they add bulk to the meat, making it go further.

OK! Now drain your pasta! Put it back in the pan with a knob (hehe) of butter and toss (pffhaha!) Now put it on the plate. Spoon up some saucy meat and dump some cheese on top!

If you made plenty of meat up then you can eat this for 3-4 meals, you just need to boil up some fresh pasta each time and
reheat a portion of the meat

This is my go-to "can't be arsed today" meal as I can go from empty counter top to sitting down and eating in less than 20 minutes.