I am trying to cook at home a lot more in order to save $ and eat healthier. Unfortunately most recipes are for 4 or 8 servings and it’s not always easy to pare it down. Have you ever found a good cookbook that’s for one or two servings?
Also, I have the “basic” spices (e.g. garlic, oregano, garlic, lemon pepper, garlic, paprika, garlic, ginger and garlic), but are there any less common spices you use a good bit to give an extra dash? I’ve been mainly a “meat & taters” country cook and want to broaden my repertoire.
There’s a new magazine out, called “Taste of Home’s Cooking for Two.” It’s quarterly and only just started, but I picked up the premire issue and it all looked good. I have to admit I haven’t cooked anything out of it though.
But there are a lot of recipes, and they all look yummy.
Not a cookbook per se, but you can scale recipes at allrecipes.com. Just be careful; it doesn’t work well for all recipes (for example, those that are more “chemistry-dependent” like baked goods) and I wouldn’t recommend scaling a recipes from, say, 20 servings to 2. But it’s probably safe to cut a recipe for 4 or six servings down to 2.
Or you could just fill up your freezer. Leftovers rock!
I live by myself, but I always make 4 servings. I’ll either eat them all over the next 4 days, or eat one serving and freeze the rest so I have something to eat when I’m in a hurry. Stews do well in the freezer, as does a meal of rice, meat, and gravy. My favorite cookbook is Easy Meals in Minutes by Time Life, because it has a lot of world cuisine that has been idiot-proofed for my level of skill, and because nothing takes longer than 30 minutes to prepare.
Spices: paprika for poultry or sausage meals, rosemary for potato meals, and curry and allspice for Indian cooking.
Recipelink.com has a special area here filled with decent recipes for one or two servings. And I know it’s an obvious thing to say, but doing a Google search on “cooking for one” pulls up loads of sites. (Really, there are so many recipe and cooking sites on the 'net you’d think that’s what it was designed for. Well, that and porn, right?)
As for spices: Parsley adds a nice fresh “green” flavor to soups and stews. If you don’t think you’ll use the fresh stuff fast enough, get dried. If you’re unfamiliar with the flavors of individual spices and want quick shortcuts, don’t be afraid to use the premixed blends:
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[li]“Italian Seasoning” usually has sweet basil, oregano, marjoram, thyme, and maybe some rosemary. Nice sprinkled on garlic bread before toasting, and good for seasoning tomato dishes. Also you can sprinkle it with a bit of salt and pepper, oil and vinegar on a salad for a quick Italian vinaigrette.[/li][li]“Poultry Seasoning” is primarily rubbed sage, but will often also have marjoram, thyme, powdered bay leaf, and other herbs. Use some to add more flavor to chicken, turkey, or pork flavor. Sprinkle it on the outside of a chicken before roasting, or use it to season stuffing. Good on a pork roast, too.[/li][/ul]
Also worth mentioning:
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[li]Bay leaves - Be sure to pick up some of these. Drop one in at the start of braising time for pot roast, stew, or soup.[/li][li]Saffron - It’s kinda expensive, but you only need the tiniest pinch in a big pot of rice to make all the rice turn beautiful yellow and take on a rich, exotic flavor.[/li][li]If you make homemade chicken soup, you’ll want a small tin of turmeric. It doesn’t have very much taste on it’s own, but you know how chicken soup tastes better when it’s really yellow? Turmeric is a natural yellow coloring. I use about half a teaspoon in a pot of soup just for the color.[/li][li]Whenever you use celery, and you don’t want to use the leaves, cut them off and dry them out. Then put the dried leaves in a small jar and keep them on hand for soups and stews and stuff when you want some concentrated celery flavor without the gritty celery seed they sell in the spice aisle or minced celery stalks.[/li][/ul]
I just wanted to add that Gourmet magazine does a monthly feature of “Gourmet for One” which offers some lovely simple-yet-delicious ideas, and often includes a little dessert recipe.
On a related note, I find that recipies that I find tend to require enough (or high quality enough) ingredients that even if I were to eat it over multiple days, the cost per serving is still very high, even compared to frozen stuff.
Can any of the sources listed above help with that?
From my single days I can heartily recommend “One is Fun” by Delia Smith (Britains favourite TV cook). The recipes are easy to follow, dont require lots of skill or exotic ingredients and alsways work.
Dr.J’s got a book called Serves One that’s got awfully yummy-sounding recipes in it. I’ve never used it (I prefer to claim ignorance of most things cooking-related and make other people do it for me whenever possible), but I think he used to use it a lot when he lived alone.
Leaper, it depends on what sort of recipes you’re looking for, and what sort of ingredients you’re talking about. You can pretty much spend as much as you want cooking, but you can also learn to cook easy, tasty, reasonably nutritious meals that cost less and are more tailored to your specific tastes than frozen stuff. A lot of the cost of cooking is the original stocking of the pantry, but quite a lot of stuff lasts over many, many recipes. That drives the cost of each recipe down quite a lot and thus drives the cost per serving down. This is especially true of dry goods like flour, rice, sugar, spices, etc.
So what kind of recipes are you finding, and what kind of food do you want to be able to make?
Maybe you could try portioning it out and putting it in the fridge/freezer before sitting down to eat? It might help keep you from taking bigger than usual portions and eating seconds if you make it inconvenient for yourself. Plus it’s less work you have to do after dinner.
Those little disposable tupperware thingies are my best friend. I just divide the food into individual portions. That way, I have to thaw out a whole second container just to get a little more food.
Another trick I use it to cook on the last day of eating leftovers (does that make sense?) I’ll thaw a frozen meal, eat it, and then cook. That way I’m not tempted to eat any of what I’m making, and it has a chance to make it into the freezer.
Nobody at our church buys rosemary. We’re a couple hundred miles north of Sampiro, but the parish hall has three enormous rosemary bushes in front of it, from which people take clippings as needed – it grows so well that there’s always more than enough for everybody.
Don’t underestimate the flavor added by browning. It is easy to make a bit of roux to add flavor to even a meat and potatoes meal, just mix fat and flour and whisk in a skillet until it is the color of a penny.
I’m in the same boat as you. It is tough to cook for one.
On the weekends I sometimes make a stew in a crockpot/slow cooker. Then I can eat that on and off all weekend.
Or
Buy frozen dinners. Not the Hungryman but the healthier ones. (watch out for sodium) This way I get a meal with veggies and the portions are smaller than I might make for myself. (which is a good thing)
Oh and I like Sage. It has a nice smell and it is good with beef.
if you cook anything with tomatoes in it, you need basil. The tomatoes best friend. You’ve got lemon pepper, which is Man’s best friend. Add some crushed red pepper flakes, a selection of hot sauces, and you are good to go.
