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Cheap, simple recipes for bad cook
pots+pans
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Title says it all really. I'd like some recommendations for easy to cook, healthy food, and some tips on cheap eating in general. I'm a university student, last year I spent far too much on shitty food. Thanks.
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In the morning you throw spices, water, meat and vegetables into a crock pot and turn it on low. In the evening you have several days worth of delicious slow-cooked food.
You can google recipes for whatever kind of meat you feel like eating.
Burritos are really easy and decently healthy as long as you don't use cheese and sour cream, I didn't. I would just use half pound 90 percent lean beef, 2 cans black beans, some cilantro to taste, adobe seasoning to taste, and onions, peppers and whatever else you want in it. I would cook the vegetables with the hamburger and then add the beans, that way it is easier to reheat and much more portable. Don't forget to season the vegetables too.
Crockpots also let you buy very "low quality" meats and veggies. By low quality I don't mean gross or nutritionally void, but rather the tougher cuts of meat and the fibrous, tough veggies. Which are really, really cheap. Stew beef is very tough to just cook up in a pan, but in a stew? Very tender, and the fat and sinew renders away to flavor everything else.
I just cooked a beef and turnip stew yesterday. Dice one big onion, cut 1.5 lbs of turnips (the little round guys with the purple tops) into approx .5 inch squares, chunk about 3 tomatoes, add a lb of stew beef (chunked). Add about a tbsp of butter, 2 tbsp of salt, 1 tbsp of thyme, 1 tbsp of basil, some garlic if you want. I also added some red wine (1 cup) and balsamic vinegar (1/3 cup), and then enough water to just barely cover everything.
Turn it on low in the morning, eat it 8-10 hours later.
At the grocery store buy 1-3 lb bag of penne pasta (usually 85c to 1.50$), Grated Parmesan, or a blend. (1-3$), spices (Oregano, dried basil, and salt and pepper; price varies tip, buy bulk at a store like whole foods, cheaper here.), butter or butter substitute (not oil!), a fresh tomato.
Boil 1 lb pasta according to directions on the package (the salt is for the boiling of the water)
Dice tomato (cut it into squares)
Drain pasta return to pan
over low heat
Stir in 1-2 tbsp butter
Stir in 1/4 cup grated cheese
add oregano, basil, pepper to taste (about 1/2 tsp of the green spices, and a few shakes of the pepper)
Garnish with tomato and serve.
buy warhams
Ingredients:
4lb Chunk of beef (I like to use Outside Round roasts, they cost about $10 for a 4lb'r, and gives you about 8 hefty servings of meat)
1 tbsp black pepper
1 tbsp seasoning salt (regular salt would suffice)
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tbsp sugar
2 small cans of beef stock
Optional: Flour (1-2 tbsp)
Water
1. Turn on the oven, 350F.
2. While the oven heats up, Mix your dry ingredients in a small bowl. This is your "Rub".
3. Remove your Roast from it's packaging, and set it on a sheet of tinfoil. Take some paper towel and pat it somewhat dry.
4. Pour some of the Rub onto the roast and Rub it on with your hands, rotating until you've coated all sides of the Roast. If you wind up with a bit of excess Rub, just discard it.
5. Set the Roast on the rack in the roasting pan, or just on the bottom of the pan if you don't have a rack.
6. Put the roast in the oven, uncovered, for 30 minutes.
7. Take the roast out, and pour the two cans worth of beef stock into the bottom of the roasting pan, and then carefully cover it with tinfoil (shiny side in) crimped over the edge of the roasting pan. turn the oven down to 300F and return the roast to the oven for 3 additional hours.
8. Remove the Roast from the oven, and place the roast on a cutting board, still mostly covered by the tinfoil (I like to just pick it up through the tinfoil with my oven mitts). It needs to sit for about 20 minutes, and the tinfoil and internal heat will keep it warm.
Optional: GRAVY (Mmmmm, Gravy)
All the leftover juices in the bottom of the roasting pan can be converted into delicious gravy with a minimum of effort. Just put the pan on the stove top on a large burner at medium-low heat. Since the stuff currently in the pan is like pure essence of beef, simply thickening it would create very strong (and probably a bit salty) gravy. I usually add about as much water as half of the existing contents (so if it looks like I have about 2 cups of beef juice, I add about cup of water).
Sprinkle in a bit of flour, the amount can't be determined exactly, but it's usually about 1tsp per cup of liquid. Use a whisk or fork and mix it in to the stock, adding a bit of flour at a time until the gravy approaches gravy consistency. During this process it pays to be conservative in your flour amounts, Add, mix, simmer a minute, mix again, and if it still looks a bit watery add a bit more flour, repeat. Stop adding when the gravy gets close to where you want it, and just stir and simmer to bring it the final few feet.
Some of her recipes may seem a little above your head, but she uses step by step photos so you know exactly what you're supposed to be doing at all times. Yes, she uses butter and bacon, but these recipes are still better for you than the local McDonalds or Pizza Hut.
PSN Hypacia
Xbox HypaciaMinnow
Discord Hypacia#0391
http://titlisbusykitchen.com/
Both of these people will hook you up with the easy and the delicious and often times the health.
That recipe calls for a machine roller and cutter, but you can do just as good a job rolling and cutting with a knife.
http://whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com/index.php
Credit goes to whoever posted this link last time this kind of topic came up.
Well that is just goddamn amazing.
I'm not sure if you'd consider it simple- each individual part of it is simple, but doing it all at once and keeping an eye on everything can be a bit tricky.
I'm sure a lot of dishes are a lot more simple, but I like it because I can do all of it within a half an hour, all the ingredients can be bought all at one spot and can be stored for a long time without going to shit, and makes a perfect amount of food for a one person meal, and I'm waaaay too impatient and lack the foresight to make anything that has to cook for hours.
Stove
Oven
George Foreman Grill (you should have one of these if you're a student, they're very convenient. A real grill would work too, I guess.)
Microwave (for defrosting)
Kitchen knife
Cutting board
Fork
Pot
Saucepan
A bowl
1/2 cup measuring cup
Oven mitts
A cookie sheet
Ingredients (This is all shit from Trader Joe's):
Freezer bag of chicken frozen chicken breasts
Red Thai Curry Sauce
A freezer bag of bell peppers and onions
A bag of white rice
A pack of Tandoori Naan bread
The individual not-hard cooking parts:
1) Boil the rice
2) Defrost and grill chicken
3) Heat curry sauce and peppers
4) Chop chicken and coat in sauce/peppers
5) Bake naan bread
6) Serve by spooning rice and chicken/peppers onto naan bread, fold bread in half, and eat.
More detailed, but more confusing version:
1) Plug in your George Foreman Grill.
2) Put your cookie sheet in your oven, then heat it to 400 degrees. You can start on these other things while it heats up.
3) Pour 1/2 cup white rice into pot, followed by a little bit more than one cup of water. Cover pot with lid, set on stove at med-high. Move on to step 3.
(Note: Don't worry about the lid jiggling and sputtering when it reaches boil. The rice is done when the water has all been absorbed into the rice/evaporated. Once this happens, take the pot of rice and just set it on an unheated burner while you go about your business. If you let it sit too long on a heated burner, the rice will burn, so keep an eye on it.)
4) Start heating your saucepan at low-med temp on another burner.
5) Get out a chicken breast and defrost it in the microwave.
6) Once defrosted, slap it onto the George Foreman, which presumably is heated by now. Set your microwave timer for 7 or 8 minutes, the chicken should be done in roughly that time.
7) Get out your bag of peppers and onions, and throw a handful of them onto the saucepan.
8) Pour about 1/3rd of a bottle's worth of curry sauce into the saucepan. Stir with fork every couple of minutes.
9) Get your cookie sheet out of the oven. Get out your naan bread. Put naan bread onto cookie sheet, put back into oven. The package says to heat for 1-1.5 minutes, but I've found it's better if you give it 1.5 minutes, flip the bread, and then give it another 1.5 minutes. Once it's done, get it out and stack them on a plate, pancake style. This will keep them warmer than having them spread out.
10) Your rice should probably be just about done at this point. Take it off the burner.
11) Your chicken should be just about done at this point. Take a knife and cut it open in the center and make sure it's white in the middle- if it's pink, give it some more time.
12) Once the chicken is done, take it off the grill and cut into cubes about 3/4" around. Toss the chopped chicken into the saucepan with the peppers. Stir a bit so the chicken is covered in sauce, then give about a minute of cooking. While it's simmering, now's a good time to unplug the George Foreman and clean out the George Foreman.
13) Pour the chicken/pepper mixture into a bowl.
14) Take your pot of rice, bowl of chicken, and plate of naan over to where you'll be eating. If you don't have potholders, you can use your oven mitts to protect your table when you sit the pot of rice down.
15) Serve by spooning rice and chicken/peppers onto naan bread, fold bread in half, and eat.
Man, that sounds really complicated now that I've written it all down. I've probably scared you off, haha.
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second this
she cooks simply and everything she makes is so good
it's not some of the healthiest food in the world, but it is SO GOOD
Break the woody ends off a bundle of asparagus spears and the tender ends with lemon juice and olive oil. Lay out on a cookie sheet with some chopped garlic.
In case you're really as bad a cook as you claim, how to chop garlic:
Broil on cookie sheet for about six minutes.
Remove and eat.
Works well as a green vegetable side for hamburgers.
HOW TO COOK HAMBURGERS: SAMMYF'S SURE-FIRE MOIST HAMBURGER RECIPE.
In a mixing bowl, combine 1-2 lbs ground beef (approx. 90% lean) with the following:
1. Salt (to taste)
2. Black pepper (to taste)
3. Chili powder (about 1/8th-1/4 teaspoon)
4. Ground cumin (about 1/8th-1/4 teaspoon)
5. One clove chopped garlic
6. One egg, the white only*
*After cracking egg shell into two halves, transfer the yolk back and forth between halves over the mixing bowl, allowing the white to drip down into the meat.
Mix all the ingredients together using your hands to knead the spices and egg into the beef. The beef should be consistently slippery when properly mixed.
Next, begin adding Italian breadcrumbs to the beef, a 1/4 cup at a time. Knead into meat as before. Continue adding breadcrumbs until they stop blending easily into the meat/egg; the meat should begin to achieve a vaguely-gritty consistency now. A LITTLE OVERKILL IS OKAY -- you want a lot of breadcrumbs because they'll absorb all the moisture that gets cooked off the ground beef.
Take a modest fistful from your egg/beef/breadcrumb mound and roll in into a ball. Flatten the ball between the palms of your hands to make a patty about an inch or so thick. Continue until all of the beef has been used to make patties.
You can grill or fry in a greased pan on medium heat. Probably about four-six minutes per side, although it's actually pretty fucking hard to burn this because all the moisture gets retained.
The two biggest problems people make when they end up with dry burgers is 1) overmixing the ground beef. This makes it denser and gritty. When mixing in ingredients one should only mix just barely enough to get a somewhat even distribution of your added ingredients. 2) Not shaping the patties right. Most people make thick patties that are the shape they want to the burger to end up, and usually end up with some form of hockey puck for a burger. Forming a patty that is thinner in the middle than the edges will ensure that by the time the burger is done, everything will have cooked perfectly evenly and a flat and even burger.
Also using beef leaner than 85% often gives cause for dry burgers. I prefer using 80% myself.
it works out well
If you want to make this a little more interesting, you could try parchment baking it. Just wrap the whole thing in parchment paper with a little lemon juice and olive oil, and the veggies steam along with the chicken/fish. Works really well.
I often do that with fish and then put the whole thing over white rice.
Also, meatballs. Although I'm not particularly clear on how it's a problem if one fantastically-delicious meat product is kind of like another fantastically-delicious meat product.
And that's why you use the egg white. Less fat, still moist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO8EiScBEjA
You could freeze it too, I suppose, last you a while, and hot damn, it's good.