White-Trash / Bachelor Cookin'

Cafe Society
21

Grilled cheese: two slices white bread, two slices 'murican cheese, one slice bologna

butter or mayo (sound weird but I’ve heard it’s common) the grill sides of bread. Put cheese on bread and bologna in between. Stick in a George Foreman or similar until cooked. It just may be glorious. Mine were.

3 Ingredient Sloppy Joe’s: I use sesame seeded hoagie rolls, but a hamburger bun will do. Brown one pound of ground beef. Add one bottle of Heinz or other chili sauce (next to the ketchup) and cook two minutes. Put that on the bun, devour.

Lazy man’s deviled eggs: Hard boil eggs and peel them. Sprinkle salt on egg and a squirt of mustard. Close enough.

Better deviled eggs: Hard boil eggs and peel them. Cut eggs in half lengthwise and remove yolks. Using a medium ziplock bag, collect yolks, add mustard, mayo, salt and pepper to taste. Use less than you think you need, then add more.

Mash all ingredients together until smooth, a rolling pin or similar may help. Once smooth, cut the tip off the bag and pipe into the empty egg white hollows. Sprinkle with paprika if you want.

Bachelor pasta: Cook a bag of extra wide egg noodles. After cooked you can add butter and a bit of salt and be done (Marge Simpson’s favorite food).

I like to cook the noodles, heat up some peas, dice bacon, then combine with the noodles along with a good dose of mozzarella and some Parmesan, salt and pepper. It’s close to a Carbonara, but is really just a good food to gorge on.

French dip: Get some good sandwich rolls (this is the tricky part, but is the most important). Get some Swiss, provolone or similar. I use Swiss for some reason. Get some roast beef, deli or at least “deli-like”. Also get a package of Au Jus, or try one of those mini-jugs of it, I find the powder to be ok.

Get the Au Jus to a boil, then get the meat and cheese on the bun and put it into the toaster oven. Cook until nothing is burning and everything is hot. Dip in Au Jus and enjoy the beefy flavor. Every one like-a the Jus.

22

drewtwo99’s special bachelor chow

2 or 3 Russet potatoes
1 can spam
1 large onion of your choice

Dice potatoes, spam and onion into bite-size chunks.

Heat a skillet with plenty of oil to high temperature. Boil the potatoes in the oil until they begin to turn golden brown. Do not over stir!

Put in onions and spam at approximately the same time, once the potatoes are starting to turn golden.

Let it all cook for another few minutes.

Serve with a bit of salt, pepper, or my favorite, crushed red pepper. Yummy!!!

23

Female here, and I like cooking fancy sometimes, but for solo meals I rely a lot on grabbing something out of the fridge or freezer or cupboard or garden and eating it with minimal preparation.

And that not infrequently includes Campbell’s condensed vegetable beef soup eaten undiluted and unheated with a teaspoon straight out of the can, so I think that validates my “bachelor cooking” credentials if anybody was doubting them. :cool:

Anyway, decent homemade bread is surprisingly simple:

  • 2 cups warm water in a VERY big bowl or pot. “Warm” as in the water doesn’t feel either hot or cold if you splash a bit on the inside of your wrist.

  • Mix in 1 tablespoon sugar.

  • Sprinkle on top 1 tablespoon (or packet) active dry yeast (NOT bread machine yeast, that’s for kitchen gadgeteers). Slosh the water around gently so the yeast gets wet. Let the bowl sit in a warm place for a while (5-15 minutes) so the yeast goes all quietly explody and foamy like a chemistry experiment.

  • Throw in 1 tablespoon salt and about 1.5-2 cups flour (any combination of different flour types but at least half of it should be white flour, unbleached if you like that but it doesn’t really matter). Beat the crap out of it with a wooden spoon, and I mean BEAT it: keep whacking and dragging the goop round the sides of the bowl/pot till it gets rubbery and stringy.

  • Let it sit in the warm place about half an hour to an hour so the proto-dough swells up. If it gets crusty on the bottom, your warm place is too warm, so stick a potholder or something between the surface and your bowl.

  • Dump another cup or so of flour into the bowl and don’t bother turning it out onto a bread board or anything fussy like that, just wrestle it around right in the bowl or pot with the spoon and then your hands, adding more flour bit by bit as you work it. It will feel dry and dusty when you add flour and then get sticky again as the flour gets absorbed. Knead in the bowl (push down/away on the dough with the heel of your hands, pull it back with your fingers, and repeat, turning the dough a quarter-turn every few times) until it’s smooth and springy. Don’t be gentle with it, it’s a ten-minute upper-body workout if you do it right.

  • At this point, you can divide the kneaded dough in half, put each half (which will make about one regular loaf) into a ziplock freezer bag, and stick them in the freezer with something heavy sitting on them so they don’t rise too much before freezing. When you want to bake, take a frozen dough piece out of its bag and pick up where you left off, as follows:

  • Put a one-loaf ball of dough into a large clean bowl that you’ve greased with a bit of butter or oil, wipe the bowl around with the dough ball to get its surface greased, cover the bowl with a wet cloth or cling wrap, and put it to rise in the warm place. If you just took the dough out of the freezer it will take longer because it has to thaw before rising (and it won’t be very ball-shaped, either). Leave it about an hour for fresh dough and two or more for frozen, till it’s about doubled in volume.

  • Slam your fist into that sucker and let it deflate. Shape it into whatever approximate loaf shape you want and put it on a greased baking tray (or make it rectangular and put it in a greased loaf pan, pushing it well into the corners). Let the shaped loaf sit in the warm place until it’s about doubled again. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 375 F.

  • Put the pan in the oven. Let it bake about 40-50 minutes until it’s as brown as you like it (the bottom will be golden brown and will sound kind of hollow when you knock on it with your knuckles after picking up the piping hot loaf in your other hand WITH A POTHOLDER OR OVEN MITT, you’re not goddamn Superman). Let it cool on a rack or board or cloth about 10-15 minutes before slicing it. The texture is sort-of-French-bread-ish crusty/chewy because there’s no fats, egg or milk in the dough, but it is GOOD.

The recipe can be doubled or tripled if you’ve got a big enough bowl or pot for mixing, and once you get used to doing this it’s really no trouble at all. About half an hour’s actual work, plus some waiting and checking over the course of a few hours, will give you one or more weeks’ worth of bread, and if you freeze extra in individual-loaf portions you can have fresh homemade bread at a few hours’ notice whenever you want it. Makes great garlic and/or herb bread too, and impresses the hell out of dinner guests.

24

Ramen. The noodles are good but the broth is worthless. Chicken noodle soup. The broth is good but the noodles are mush. Combine the two.

25

My bachelor son likes sticky chicken rice:

1 box rice-a-roni
1 can cooked chicken boob
1 bag frozen mixed veg

Follow directions on rice, add drained chicken and veg at the simmering point.

26

Rolling pin
Muffin in a can
Hamburger or sausage.
Shredded cheese
Seasoning

Fry your meat.
Add seasonings (or veggies of your being smooth)
Open bread mix and spread on a wax sheet, or flour covered surface in a square. Bonus points for a clean surface.
Spread meat mix evenly on the dough leaving about 3/4 inch border.
Put cheese on top of the meat mix.
Roll it up like a cinnamon roll and pinch the edges to keep the cheesey goodness in.
Try not to make the rolls too big or the inner dough will not cook. Although I haven’t tried this with cookie dough mix…

27

Candy chicken chunks.

Chicken chunks, thawed
Egg batter
Kids cereal

Crush cereal to almost dust (my nieces and nephew love my fruity pebbles)
Heat oven to 350
Coat chicken in egg batter and then cover in cereal dust.
Repeat until all chicken is covered.
Put chicken on a cookie sheet or other oven safe thingy.
Cook for about 50 minutes. smaller chunks will require less time and thicker pieces will require more.

28
  1. One package Winn-Dixie Hot n’ Spicy Ramen noodles
  2. One slice American processed cheese food product (individually wrapped type)

Cook the noodles, drain, place in bowl. Add slice of cheesy stuff and the whole seasoning packet. Stir until combined- add hot water to adjust consistency to desired gloppiness. Eat with joy and reverence.

29

As a former bachelor with a solid white trash (albiet some Native American admixture) genealogy, I can use the terminology I want. It’s like Americans of Enhanced Melanin Production being able to use “niggardly” without being pilloried by the ignorant.

Anyways, here’s another one I remember from my bachelor days:
Refried Beans ‘n’ Stuff
One can of refried beans, glop into large bowl
Add leftover partially dried rice from rice cooker (preferably has been sitting for less than 3 days, don’t use any blue or grey parts)
Nuke until hot
Add cheddar cheese while still hot so cheese partially melts
Stir in leftover salsa that’s been sitting in the fridge (Don’t use if there’s visible mold, do use if it smells slightly fermented)

Optional; add leftover chicken, ham, etc. and/or appropriate vegetables all quickly heated in the same pan with a bit of oil.

My roommates and I used to barbecue a lot after one of us bought a grill. Spicy barbecued chicken wraps, steaks, and meat-vegetable kebabs were our usual go-tos. Fast, fun, and damn good, with minimal prep.