Help an idiot cook! (what simple meals can I make?)

Cafe Society
21

– Pasta –

Fill a big pot 3/4 with water.
Bring it to a boil.
Drop in the pasta.
Cook it for the time listed on the pasta package, stirring occasionally.
Pour it in a strainer.

– Jarred Pasta Sauce –

Open jar.
Pour sauce in pot.
Heat on low.
Pour over pasta.

– Rice –

Add rice and water to pot in amounts listed on the rice package.
Bring it to a boil, stirring occasionally.
Cover and reduce heat to low.
Cook it for the time listed on the rice package.

– Can of Black Beans –

Open can.
Pour beans into pot.
Heat on low.
Serve with rice.

– Frozen Vegetables –

Put in bowl.
Microwave a couple of minutes until hot.
This gives you two basic meals:
Pasta + Sauce + Vegetable
Rice + Beans + Vegetable

I still make these as emergency dinners when I don’t have time for something more complicated. They’re dirt simple, but they get you used to the rhythm and routine of cooking. And once you know how to do these, you can start branching out:

[ul]
[li]Steamed fresh vegetables instead of frozen.[/li][li]Adding chopped up sausage to the beans.[/li][li]Sprinkle some shredded cheese on the beans.[/li][li]Making your own pasta sauce with garlic, oregano and canned tomatoes.[/li][li]Coq au vin with braised chard and a raspberry truffle reduction.[/li][/ul]

22

There are also cookbooks intended for bachelors or college students who don’t know how to cook.

23

You can make fish.

What you need:
something you can put in the oven. A cookie sheet works. One of those square glass pans your mom made meatloaf in works better.
Tin foil (optional but it makes clean up easier)
Fish. Whatever you like.

Line your dish with foil. Turn your oven to 450. Put your fish on the foil. If there’s more than will fit in one layer, wrap that in foil and stick in the fridge or freezer for later. If you’ve got stuff, you can sprinkle some spices on there. As long as you don’t pour the whole jar on, pretty much anything is good. (my dad likes to put cinnamon. My dad is weird, but it tastes pretty good on catfish or other white fish).

Leave it for about 15 minutes. The package of fish might have heating suggestions, but 15 minutes is a good place to start. If it looks raw, leave it in longer. If it looks like it’s getting there, stick a fork part way in and twist it. The fish should flake and the inside should look done.

While you’re waiting get out some veggies. Most things you can steam in the microwave if you don’t like them raw. Chuck it in a bowl with a little bit of water (a couple of tablespoons worth). Maybe some garlic salt. Cover it with something (I usually use a small plate). Nuke on high for about a minute. Check and nuke more if it needs it.

Add some toast. Look, you’ve made a healthy meal for yourself.

24

Tomato, White Bean, Bacon soup

1/2 pint of cherry tomatoes
1 small onion
1 celery stalk
3 slices of bacon
1 tin of white kidney beans
2 cups of chicken broth

Cut bacon into small pieces and put in medium/large pot on medium/high heat
While that is cooking rough chop the vegetables and 1/2 the cherry tomatoes
When bacon is cooked take out half (put on a small plate for later) and put in vegetables
Turn heat to medium and let cook for about 10 min.

While vegetables are cooking drain the beans and put in a small pot with the 2 cups chicken broth.
Bring to a boil and then simmer until the vegetables are done.
Pour broth/bean mix into the vegetable pot and simmer for 5 min

Either use an immersion blender or dump 3/4 of the pot into a regular blender and let it go until you have the consistency you like. Put back in the pot and add salt and pepper to taste then spoon into bowls. Crumble the reserved bacon into the bowl.

Makes about 3 bowls and is great with a baguette or crusty roll.

25

I claim some small authority on this subject, being a confirmed old bachelor who can’t fry water.

Check out The I Hate To Cook Book by Peg Bracken.

26

I make a lasagna, cut it into single servings, and freeze. Don’t use previously frozen ingredients for this. You should only freeze something ONE time. If you freeze it a second time, it’s likely to taste dreadful. Or make a batch of meat sauce and freeze in single servings. Then, as you get the craving, nuke it (in the kitchen, not from orbit) or heat in a saucepan, and make fresh pasta. Mix up some ricotta cheese and some of the shredded Italian mix cheese (it has mozzarella, provolone, parmesan, and romano cheese all grated and mixed together, in a zipseal bag). Mix that up with cooked pasta and meat sauce. I like to use bowties/butterflies or wagon wheels. Bake at 350 until all nice and bubbly.

Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Cook Book and the sequels to it are dated, but most of the recipes can still be used. Her daughter put out an updated version that pulled recipes from the original and sequels, which is also quite useful.

27

I made Tikka Masala last night, it was awesome. I followed the recipe exactly as is, except I use a little more cayenne.Served on basmati rice. My placed smelled great, and it tasted even better.This one is definitely a keeper , and will be going into weekly rotation.

It looks like a complicated recipe but it’s mostly spices . Just prep your ingredients based in line with the steps of the recipe.

28

Is the important question. If you’re just learning, you may as well stick to things that you will want to eat when you’re done.
Basic cookbooks are good (Betty Crocker, How to Cook Everything, the Joy of Cooking). There are cooking tv shows that are geared toward beginning cooks that might help, too if you’re a visual learner.

Ramekins, but it doesn’t work very well. But you can make 1/3rd of a regular lasagna recipe in a bread pan rather than a 9x13, which leaves fewer leftovers, but otherwise works correctly.

29

If you want to move forward, there are a couple of things you need to get:

  1. A big sharp kitchen knife.
  2. A spatula with slots in it.
  3. A frying pan.

You need to start playing with the knife, chopping vegetables to begin with (even if you’re not remotely vegetarian, working with raw meat is IMO kind of gross, especially if it’s got the bones in; vegetables are an easier way to start cooking). Chopping an onion into reasonably small pieces is pretty important for most recipes.

Once the vegetables are chopped, you need to play with sauteing them, which just heating a couple tablespoons of oil in a frying pan that’s at medium heat and the putting the veggies in and pushing them around with the spatula. You’ll get better at it as you practice, but that’s the real basic part. Sauteing vegetables creates some really tasty flavors (caramels and maillard reactions, I think, but whatever, they’re tasty).

If you can make yourself a pan of sauteed onions, the sky’s the limit.

Edit: good lasagna is not a beginner’s dish. Work up to it. Here’s a kickass macaroni and cheese recipe that’s fairly easy; the hardest thing in the recipe is stirring the mixture and taking it off the heat as soon as the cheese is melted.

30

Watch some cooking shows. You need to be able to correlate the directions given to what is actually going on. I highly recommend Good Eats. Worst Cooks in America has Anne Burrell and Bobby Flay teaching people who don’t know thing one about cooking how to put together food and have it taste good. You need to be familiar with what things like saute, boil, fold, mix, fry, bake, etc actually mean because the technique used can make all the difference.

31

I like to make thing with ground beef.

1 Set a frying pan pan on a burner on your stove.
2. Turn heat on. my burner goes from off (0) to 10. I set it on 7.
3. crumble meat into pan.
4. wash hands.
5. stir meat with a spatula or slotted spoon when you hear it sizzle, split the big pieces into
little pieces.
6. sprinkle in any of the following:
garlic powder
season all or season salt
worchestershire sauce
chili powder
can of drained mushrooms
chopped onion
chopped pepper, bell, jalapeno, whatever
7. wait a minute or three. stir again. stir and wait until you can’t see pink. cook another minute or two, to be sure it is done.
8. pour in a glob of salsa, a squirt of BBQ sauce and/or a squirt of any mustard for sloppy joes.
8a. pour in a can of chili beans, or a can of black beans. Hamburger and beans, best with corn bread.
8b. pour in some hamburger helper and follow the directions.
8c. pour on some canned spaghetti sauce for a meat sauce. leave out the worchestershire in this case
8d. pour in a pack of taco seasoning and a bit of water. Taco meat makes a good sandwich, even if you have no tortillas.

I recommend you get a beginner’s book for terms and techniques. Then follow the directions on pakages. When you feel more confident, experiment, play around. See what you like, remember how you did it.

32

You need to get a Rocket Grilloff eBay. I got one of these second hand on a whim, and I love it. It takes the guesswork out of cooking meat and you don’t have to thaw stuff or worry that you forgot to thaw stuff.

It would suck for a family (you can only cook so much meat at once) but for a single person who just needs to have their meat cooked and not deal with mess afterwards, it’s the bomb.

While you’re waiting for your meat to cook is when you do something like heat up fries or boil veggies.

Oh yeah - steam-in-bag veggies, in your frozen veggie case. Buy them. Love them.

33

I used to be a single guy cooking for one on a tight budget, I loved these(my whole tips would be too long to type sorry).

Grab a wide variety of cheap veggies, put in fridge. Get some lunch meats and canned tuna, and some cheap french bread. Boom homemade subway subs, no five dollars gone for one.

I used to love cooking a couple of pounds of potatoes, peel if you want, then mash with a pinch of salt to taste and throw in half a pound to a pound of whatever cheese you like.(cheddar works great). Put on low heat and mash and stir til the cheese has all melted into the potatoes. You can also mix in bacon pieces or some cooked ground meat if you like, chives and onions or other veggies too play around. CHEAP, delicious, and filling.

If you want to cut back on high calorie salad dressing try italian or oil/vinager, oil/vinager also makes a great dressing to spice up subs.

34

I have no idea why I didn’t think of that (except for the fact that I’m kind of an idiot as if that wasn’t obvious.) I can make a whole recipe (which is normally 1 9 x 13 pan and one 8 x 8 pan - it’s my mom’s recipe and doesn’t lend itself well to splitting up so I can’t do a 1/3 version - I’ve tried - it was ugly) but prepare it in several small aluminum loaf pans instead and which I can then freeze - one pan would be PERFECT for husband and me. JEEZ. I am a moron. :smack:

THANK YOU BOTH!

Oh - by the way, Red Barchetta, let me know if you want my lasagna recipe. You’ll have a TON of stuff for your freezer, but it’s DARN good.

Last question before I dig through my cookbooks/recipe box - are you willing and able to invest in staples like cornstarch, flour, vinegars, spices, etc. - essentials is what I guess I’m trying to get at. I’d hate to give you a recipe for something that would have you spending eleventymillion bucks on just to get the ingredients for for one meal, know what I mean? Especially if the ingredients are not something you’ll use again before they go bad.

(Thanks again to amarinth and Lynn - my husband will now have the lasagna he’s been begging for which I didn’t make unless one of the kids was home because it made too much!)

35

Chili-mac. Take a package of Mac & cheese (here you can use the generic, but Kraft is best). Make it without the milk and a little less butter. Take a can of good chili*. Mix the two. Makes fantastic leftovers.

  • no beans is best, but the extra fiber is good for you.
36

Here’s an easy (and very non-authentic) “chili” recipe:

1 lb ground beef
1 onion
2 cans of pinto beans and/or kidney beans
1 can of Niblets corn
1 small can of mushrooms (optional)
One can of plain tomato sauce
Chili powder
Drain the canned vegetables in a colander.
Peel and chop up the onion. (You can make the pieces as small or large as you prefer.)
Put a little oil, butter or (my favorite) leftover bacon grease in a frying pan over medium heat. Cook the onion in the frying pan until it’s getting soft. This will take maybe 5 minutes.
Add the ground beef.
Stir and break up the ground beef until it’s brown.

Put everything in an oven-proof bowl or casserole dish.
Add about a tablespoon (or more, to taste) of chili powder.
Add salt to taste.
Add the tomato sauce.
Mix well.
Bake at about 325 degrees until it’s hot, about a half hour.

Tastes great reheated the next day, too, and can be frozen in portion sizes.

37

My husband dearly, dearly loves opening up the freezer and pulling out a bag of spaghetti sauce or a homemade lasagna.

Cooking a big batch of stuff, and then freezing it in single servings, is one of my favorite cooking hacks. There’s a bunch of people who like to do this, and some have it down to a science. In many cases, you don’t need a special recipe, you just have to divide up a regular recipe that will make four or six or eight servings. I love homemade burritos, for instance, but I don’t eat them that often, so I’d get one or two meals out of a bag of tortillas. If I make a couple dozen burritos and freeze them individually, though, it’s only going to take a little more time to do this as opposed to making two or three burritos, and this way, I’ve got entrees or snacks in the freezer, ready to be zapped and plated with a side dish. I know WHAT’S in those burritos, and they are healthier than just about any commercially made frozen burritos.

For the OP, this might be a bit too ambitious at first. I’ll offer up one of my brother’s favorites instead. He cooks about 8 to 12 ounces of bulk sausage*, drains off any grease, and then pours a jar of spaghetti sauce in the pan and lets it simmer. Personally, I’d add chopped onion, mushroom, bell pepper, and garlic, but John doesn’t tend to cook as much as I do, and he will also eat spaghetti five nights a week. Anyway, he will cook up a fresh batch of spaghetti each night, and reheat some of the sauce, until it’s all gone. The OP might want to freeze some of that sauce, especially if he doesn’t like spaghetti THAT much. To make garlic bread, you can use ordinary white bread, and brush on some olive oil or melted butter, and sprinkle some garlic powder on it. Or sprinkle on Mrs. Dash Garlic and Herb mix. Then put this under the broiler until it’s lightly toasted. Keep an eye on it, it WILL burn. You can also use a toaster oven for this, but again, keep an eye on it. Hot dog buns or sandwich rolls are even better for this. And it’s OK if the bread or rolls are stale.

This means that he either cuts the casing off of sausage, or he uses one of those chubs of breakfast sausage, and he puts it in a pan and pokes at it with a spatula until it breaks up, and then he stirs the meat until it is all brown and no pink remains. He’s used Italian sausage, both hot and sweet, venison sausage, and breakfast sausage, in any flavor. You can also use ground beef, it’s just that John really, really likes spaghetti sauce with sausage in it.

38

Can you cook a hamburger? Buy ground beef already formed into patties, or make it yourself. Cook in a frying or saute pan over medium to medium-high heat until browned, flip over, and cook until browned on the other side. Voila!

39

Take a look at The 4-Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss.

It starts at the beginning, assuming no kitchen knowledge or skills at all. There are lots of step by step photos showing things like the correct way to cut and peel food. And it’s structured like a lesson book, starting with very simple meals with minimal ingredients, and introducing a new skill with each meal.

It does digress into craziness (there’s everything from how to catch and cook a pigeon in a park, to recommendations for hunting rifles) but if you need, say, precise step by step instructions for making scrambled eggs, complete with photos of all the ingredients and every step in the process, then you might like it.

40

A good place for you to start might be YouTube. I bet there are lots of “how to” type videos up there. I’m also pretty sure there are cooking channels on Roku and other streaming devices that might have some good videos.