I’ve never been much of a cook, but it’s something I’d love to try and get better at. I’ve got a growing family and as much as freezer food is serving them now, when they’re older I’d like to be able to cook them something genuinely nice.
Wraps!
This isn’t a fancy meal, but it’s healthy and fast.
Get a wrap (about 12 inches in diameter), and fill it with whatever you think is healthy. For us, that’s cucumber, tomatoes, avocado, lettuce, black beans, cheese. We’ve also included bacon, chicken, salsa, and rice. Add some seasoning, olive oil, and lemon juice.
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Anything I can make in a crockpot. I can do a pretty mean pot roast.
Now’s a good time to learn then (when they will forget your mistakes.)
Rather than specific dishes, focus on techniques. Learn to make pan sauces and your food immediately goes up several levels. Be generous with herbs and spices (those little pots you get in supermarkets are not supposed to last long). Serve white rice on the side and mix noodles in to the dish (pasta is a kind of noodle). Learn to make stock and bone broths, if you cook a whole chicken you can serve the best cuts as part of the meal, save the rest for a stir-fry or sandwiches and you can use the bones and connective tissue to create a broth that you can freeze for later. Vegetable soups are also great and can use up all sorts of bits and pieces. In cold weather you can put them in a thermos as a hot packed lunch.
If you want to make something sweet, store bought rolls of filo pastry can be quite good these days, add some fruit, fresh or tinned, and cook.
Experiment, most importantly. If you don’t know how to cook with something, find people from where it comes from and see what they are doing with it.
Costco short ribs in the instant pot. With the random Asian spices I have in my pantry. Freezer to table in 50min. The instant pot is my favorite tool.
I make biscuits and homemade gravy from either sausage or bacon grease (whatever I happen to cook up that day).
Anything casserole. Beef stew, Reuben or golumpki. Just dump stuff in a pan or slow cooker.
This one:
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/keith-youngs-chicken-cacciatore-recipe-1946896
You want to cut the quantities in half, the batch is absolutely huge if you do the recipe as-written. It basically cooks enough chicken cacciatore for an entire team of firemen.
It’s a flexible and forgiving recipe, though. You can play around with it, do substitutions, etc.
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Bean burritos.
Store bought tortillas. Canned or crock pot beans. Chopped lettuce and tomatoes. Shredded cheese. Avocado mashed with salt and pepper, and lime when I remember. Sour cream. Salsa for those who want it. Can be enhanced by adding taco meat by browning some ground beef and adding taco seasoning.
1 pot spaghetti “non-carbonara”. Cook 130g spaghetti while whisking an egg with some good pepper and fresh-grated parmeggiano. Drain noodles, keep a little bit of the noodle water in the pot. Noodles back in, egg-cheese goodness on top (no heat, just the hot noodles and warm pot). Mix until everything is creamy. Enjoy.
Lately, I’ve been eating a lot of farro instead of rice, pasta or oatmeal. It has a nice nutty taste and chewy texture that I like.
Mix it up with some veggies like sliced carrots and chickpeas for a complete meal.
https://cookieandkate.com/roasted-carrots-recipe-with-farro-chickpeas/
https://www.thekitchn.com/one-pot-farro-carrots-chickpeas-recipe-23012504
Farro is great. For a side dish I tend to cook it in spiced broth (chicken or beef depending on the main course) instead of water. Another one you might like is kamut.
My first suggestion is to learn to cook and use a whole chicken.
Take a whole, air-dried chicken, remove the gizzard package (if present) and season liberally with a poultry seasoning blend (or whatever—salt, pepper, garlic powder, rosemary).
Bake, starting at 450 for 10-15 minutes, then at 325 for an hour and a half.
Eat the legs and thighs, reserve the breasts to us as an ingredient for chicken-anything—pasta, salad, or chicken salad sandwiches.
Boil the carcass for several hours with some more seasoning, onion, carrots and celery, then strain, reserving solids and broth.
Over the broth pot, rinse the solids with cold water, cooling them and getting everything tasty into the broth.
Pick the meat off the bones, skim the fat off the broth and recombine (or not, for stock).
Boil excess water away, until it tastes like bland chicken, then salt until it tastes good. It’s ok to use some bullion to add flavor, too.
That gives you a base that you can use to make any chicken soup. Simplest is to throw in some fresh veggies and cook for 10-15 minutes.
My current favorite cooking channels are Alex’s and Ethan’s .
The classics that I learned from are all public TV shows:
Jacques Pépin (playlist)
Mario Batali (turned out he’s a creep, but the show was amazing)
Want to impress impress at a family gathering with a relatively simple dish?
Potatoes are stupid versatile and easy to get right.
For me, my goto in this area is:
Get a pack of Yukon goldens. You could do baby reds, but don’t get Russets for this. They don’t saute well.
Preheat a saute pan or skillet to medium, cut each potato into a half or a third (bigger ones to a third) and rinse.
Mix potatoes in a bowl with about a tbsp of vegetable oil or butter and liberal seasoning of choice. There’s this parmesan-garlic blend I like, but it’s pretty hard to go wrong on the seasoning because potatoes work with basically anything.
Throw the mixed potatoes into the saute pan, add about 1/4 cup of water and cover. Cook for 10 minutes or until the potatoes are lightly seared and tender. ‘Tender’ means no resistance when stabbed with a fork.
Stir occasionally with a spatula so that they don’t stick to the pan. Add a little water when you uncover to stir, the steam is important.
Put it on a fancy plate and bam. The compliments roll in.
For a meal, add onions (or really any vegetables) and choice of protein. My goto is chicken thighs cooked separately in a cast iron.
Cheap, easy, flavorful, versatile, substantial.
We recently discovered you can do this same prep, and then just roast them in an air fryer, and they’re awesome
Nice. I’ll have to give that a shot
Baked chicken - There are a ton of these recipes but they all come down to basically the same thing: Brine, put seasoning on, cook it in the oven, let it rest a few minutes, done. It takes a little time from start to finish, but the total investment of actual effort is like 5 minutes. (I keep a little tupperware of premixed seasoning.) Combine with a tray of vegetables in the same oven and/or some rice or something. (I actually do this with skin-on chicken thighs instead, but it’s basically the same)
Steak - Learn to cook a good steak, it’s fuckin magic. Again you can find recipes online. Let it warm to room temperature first, put salt and pepper on it, sear the outside 30s or so on high heat including picking it up and hitting the edges, then lower the heat and flip it every 60-90 seconds to let it cook, and at the end dump some garlic and butter in the pan to flavor it. Let it sit a minute or two and you’re good bb.
Blueberry pancakes - Use fresh blueberries.
One pan chicken and rice! It’s a forgiving dish, and even if it does not turn out great it has never gone uneaten in my home.
Preheat a pan to medium high (medium if nonstick).
Start with chicken thighs, laid flat in a single layer with a bit of olive oil until they’re seared on both sides. Take the thighs out and put them on a plate. It’s ok if they’re not completely cooked through, we’ll finish them later.
Reduce heat to low and slowly add half a cup of warm water. Use that to deglaze the pan.
Add a cup of rice. Stir every once in a while. Add liquid as needed in half a cup increments when the rice gets too dry. You can use up to one cup of chicken or vegetable broth for flavor, but don’t overdo it because it’ll get too salty otherwise. Water is fine otherwise.
Once the rice is starting to soften on the outside but before it’s fully cooked add the chicken thighs back in to finish cooking them.
If you want to get fancy you can add chopped onion and carrots to the rice. You can also change the flavor profile by adding spices (a sprig of rosemary works well, not loose leaves unless you like the feeling of eating sticks), acid (lemon wedges served as a side, or a splash of red vinegar while cooking), or even raisins (early enough so they absorb some of the liquid and plump up).
