/ck/ - Food & Cooking

buy microwave

>>14427231
Air fryers

>>14427231
Git gud at stir-fry and use an instant pot for anything else. Simple as fuck, cheaper, healthier, and adds variety.

>>14427231
rice cooker from japan

>>14427231
Knorr brand bouillion, makes every recipe better

>>14427253
Still too much to do. Fuck that.

>>14427231
I usually make a large pot of either bolognese sauce, vegetable soup (some of that I reduce down to have some broth), other sauces and then freeze it in an ice cube tray.
Whenever I want to eat something now I just add a couple of my sauce cubes and I'm done.

Meals now are literally just boiling some pasta or whatever.

Gas station burritos and steel reserve like 9/10ths of the cooking industry eat every night.

>>14427264
why japan? whats the difference between that and say amazon shit?

>>14427253
>step one: buy a whole fucking pan and grill specifically for this shit
You're baiting right?

>>14427231
You. You are the hack.

bump

>>14427286
>>14427311
Have a cast iron? Use that instead you dumbasses. Prep as much meat/veg as you want, prepare a sauce if you want. Don't want one? Fine, season it with salt/pepper, but don't complain at it being mediocre because YOU didn't want to put in the extra 30 secs to mix a couple condiments together.
Stir frying isn't fucking hard. Just medium heat, but the protein in, cook it halfway and then add in your veggies. Cook everything through and season. Fucking morons.

>>14427231
Single-tray oven dinners like pic related.

>Chicken/fish
>Vegetable
>Maybe a starch
>Can usually cook everything at the same temperature
>Put it in and take shit out as it finishes cooking
>Easy
>Cheap unless you're a brainlet that can't chop vegetables
>Healthy
>Gives you the option to prep for tomorrow's lunch and/or multiple dinners in one move

>>14427683
how the FUCK do i use an oven? ours never worked growing up so i didnt get to try baking stuff

boiled eggs, boiled hot dogs

>>14427733
Are poached eggs as hard as they make it seem?

Low-effort, high-reward, effort-tolerant foods. Also, not caring about variety so much. Bonus for being batchable.

- Many cuts of meat. Fish reheats well and can be baked, so I slap a bunch in glass tupperware and cook it then & there. Pork (especially thicker cuts) isn't that sensitive to time (as long as you err on the over side) so I'll slap some chops on to pan fry if I'm feeling it after getting back from work. Plus pork is cheap.

- Stir-fry-ish stuff can be rewarding (for me, it's stroganoff)

- The easiest cooking is not to cook. A good portion of my diet is milk, raw vegetables, fruit, cheese, bread+butter, deli meat, and nuts. If what you're eating is nourishing, it's a meal- it doesn't have to be cooked.

>>14427303
>what’s the difference between Japanese and Chinese quality

>>14427231
>for people like me that see cooking as a chore and eat out at every opp
Take something for your depression? You need to get on top of this energy thing.

>>14427746
Hard as "they" make it seem? No it's simple which is the only difficult part, remember the heat(not boiling), stir the water before plopping in the eggo and when you do be careful not to break the yolk
Simple but delicate

i can't convince you to get off your ass, but i can convince you why its worth it to eat your own homemade food

>>14427697
Mate if you have access to a working oven and haven't figured out how to work it than I really can't help you

A working microwave helps me make sure to eat a meal everyday buddy. It doesn’t have to be good food, but hey, to just eat is good.

>>14427231
What he said >>14427805

Meat is easy, if you don't wanna fuck with steak get roasts, even easier to make very good than steak, imo. If you don't have a meat thermometer just stick to low and slow. For improved flavour salt the piece of meat at least an hour before cooking and if it's a larger piece or a roast do it the night before.
Make minimum ingredient dishes
Sunny side up egg with the side of an open faced sandwich
Or make a regular sandwich and plop the egg in there
Pancakes are an extremely good gateway into learning about mixing ingredients for a combined fantastic result and they are very simple, if you wanna go even simpler make crepes you can use an immersion blender or a regular blender to make the batter because crepes aren't supposed to rise and the machine blending develops gluten, crucial part of crepes, really well really quickly
https://www.youtube.com/c/internetshaquille
^ unironically a good home cook for simple shit without being a sad cunt, especially his older videos.

>>14427231
>chicken breast
>frozen vegetables
>quick cooking rolled oats
>fruits like banana and apples
>milk / yogurt / cheese
>sauerkraut
>tuna / deenz

>>14427311
You don't even need a wok. Any fucking pan will do.

>>14427286
Manchild days are over. Use an instant pot then if you're that fucking lazy.

>>14427253
I don't see MSG in this image.

>>14427231
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SBn1i9YqN1k

It's more fun working with a sharp knife. Even the best knives go blunt quick. It requires regular use of a honing steel which brings back the sharp edge. Once a year or so you'll need to sharpen the knife (cut a new edge)

>>14427253
I sold my instapot at a garage sale because it ruined everything. Now a cast iron dutch oven, a 12" cast iron, a wok, a small pot and a large pot are all you need ever.

>>14429515
I use my steel the opposite way as this with the blade pointing away from me.

>>14429555
Yeah I've seen it done a few ways

>>14427231
Cook a big batch of sausages and store them in the fridge then microwave when ready to eat.
You can then make meals like bangers and mash for dinner or have a sausage sandwich whenever your hungry.

when I really can't be bothered I put 1-2 chicken legs in a cast iron pan, pour frank's over them, maybe put an onion in there too, whole, not peeled or anything because fuck it, and bake the whole thing at 400F for an hour. I dip the chicken in greek yogurt. Maybe I put some garlic and oregano in the greek yogurt, maybe I didn't. If I want vegetables I dip raw bell pepper or cucumber in the greek yogurt as well.

>>14427935
Kek

>>14427231
Option A: Find a wife/girlfriend who is willing to cook for you.

Option B: Make enough money to eat out most days, it's expensive but you seem dead set on not trying to cook.

>>14427231
Get married to a white women who can cook.

>>14427231
Fast food threads
There are plenty of them

KYS

>>14427231
I would appeal to your frugality.
Cooking is a chore, but you're paying a premium rate for the labor if you don't do it yourself and the time you would spend cooking couldn't be billable hours.

And casseroles in disposable foil pans. Then you're just paying 50 cents or so to skip cleanup of the cookware, and your cook time is 8 minutes of putting stuff in and then an hour of doing anything else while you wait.

>>14427231
>go-to cooking hacks for people like me that see cooking as a chore and eat out at every opportunity?
buy gun
load ammunition
point towards self
pull trigger
ta-da

>>14427683
>10 min drive
>1hr grocery store
>10 min drive
>20 mins prep
>40 min cook
>10 min storing leftovers
>15-20 minutes washing everything used to prep, cook, surfaces and storage containers
>easy
>cheap if your time is worthless
lol

get a wife who cooks

>>14430168
You just sound depressed, man. I do one pan oven dinners and it takes like 10 minutes to get everything ready. Sure, buying groceries takes time, but I only do that once every 2-3 weeks. Here's my last dinner:

>Potatoes (chopped into chunks didn't even deskin tossed them in a bowl with olive oil salt and pepper and some spices)
>Stuck that in the oven on my baking sheet, let them soften while I prepped my broccoli by rough chopping off the crown
>Cut chicken breast into chunks dont give a fuck just whatever size, toss in olive oil and seasonings as well
>Broccoli and Chicken go on pan and everything finishes at the same time

Took like, maybe 30 minutes total, and that's only because I had to wait for the potatoes to cook. One pan dinners are the way.

>>14427231
Let your pots and pans continually build up in your kitchen as it mirrors your laziness and depression.

>>14427231
Dutch oven. It’s like a slow cooker for your oven but you won’t be a worthless faggot for owning one.

>>14430236
At worst, you're lying- at best, you're severely underestimating the time it takes, which is not surprising when your time is worthless.

There are very few efficient ways to cook meals in a home kitchen. One-off "pan dinners" are not.

>>14430280
Nothing says you can't make leftovers from a sheet pan dinner

>>14430286
Already covered in my original post. It changes nothing.

The real "cooking hack" is to be less of a faggot and understand that time and effort spent cooking in order to treat yourself and those you love properly is a form of meditation and represents an exceptionally valuable way to spend your time, especially in a high stress lifestyle.

>>14430168
Why are you going shopping manually if your time is valuable lmao
just get it delivered

>>14430299
I'm not and I agree, but we're talking about poorfags who call home cooking "cheap and easy".

>>14430297
And jewish pedophiles rule the Earth. Just meditate, goy.

>>14430297
Sure, if working an extra 2-3 hours for one meal after you've already been stressed all day is your way to "meditate" lmao

>>14427231
Meal prep and spices I guess.

>>14430320
Cooking doesn't take "2-3 hours"

>>14427231
Sou vide cooker or a slow cooker.
Microwave.
Rice cooker if you somehow can't cook rice.

That's it.

>>14430320
Lol 2 hours of cooking.
Have it cooking while you're at work so when you get home your prep is like 10 minutes of time.

>>14430320
Cooking doesn't take two hours, and if you know you're going to be stressed ahead of time then you can prep something ahead of time.
If you have a slow cooker you can plop something in first thing in the morning and have it ready when you walk in the door.

>>14427231
I have my maids cook for me, they're very good at it. When I come home after ripping people off on wall street it's nice to have people serving me even if it's just a can of chef boy ar dee.

>>14430342
>>14430391
>>14430399
see >>14430168
I suppose cooking doesn't take long when mom does the rest of the work, huh?

>>14430445
Ok so you don't want to cook. So why are you here? Just go buy you McChickens and fuck off. Clearly boiling water or turning on an oven is too hard for you. Buy some microwave meals, but even using that might be too hard.

>>14427231
>What are this board's go-to cooking hacks for people like me that see cooking as a chore and eat out at every opportunity?
What is the reason for the can't-be-bothered?

-too damn hungry/can't wait
Have a plan, and have a driving-home pr pre-drive snack. It can be a small bag of nuts, a banana, fig bar, an iced coffee beverage, etc, just a little blood sugar fuel. I time mine at 3PM, and follow up with a thawing frozen bottled water on the drive home.

-no plan
Have a mental list of 4 go-to easy prep meals you like to pick up at the grocery. One or two for each season.
1) Michelangelos frozen eggplant parm, french bread or sub rolls, sliced provolone, bagged caesar or romaine+croutons+dressing. If extra hungry, oven fries, steam in bag veggies and some lemon sorbet or some gelato.
2) Rotisserie chicken+
pita bread, frozen or fresh veg (sliced cucumber and tomato)
baked potato OR a pasta side OR a rice side
3) Sheet pan all at once
Shake n bake or soup mix tossed chicken/pork + potato cubes + veggies. Dinner is done while you fix a drink. Enjoy a small salad while you wait.

-too tired to clean up when I'm done
Well, eat off paper plates. Always get everything ready, plated. Immediately wash items as they're used, and do a lot of rice and one pot and sheet pan ideas, a sort of built in waiting plan. Plate your dinner, plate your leftovers to the fridge/freezer, and wash or soak. Then, eat your plate of food. It'll wait the 4 minutes it takes to not have the mess to deal with when you're relaxing.

-too actually physically tired from a job
Saturday preps/Sunday roast/Planned leftovers/crock pots/instant pots. It may be true that you're really wiped. Put something you already made from freezer to microwave and enjoy a nap when you get home. Casseroles frozen into containers or ziplocs, warmed through. Lasagna, enchiladas, pasta casseroles, saucy meaty thing served over a toasted roll or with mashed, these will build up over time.

>>14430445
>I suppose cooking doesn't take long when mom does the rest of the work, huh?
It's hilarious how a grown "man" is implying that others live with their moms when you can't even perform the most basic of human skills. Cooking is something 12 year olds can do, and yet here you are taking all this time making excuses. What's the point of making this thread? You obviously are lazy and most likely poor, and will always stay that way.

>>14427231
i will admit it, i am an older man and i have an affleck. hard to find shirts that fit ok for us guys

>>14430465
>>14430481
False on all accounts. Again, see >>14430168 and the post before it if you wish to participate in the discussion.

>>14429886
Weird, I make sausage sandwiches for your mom all the time

>>14430297
Based

i'm going to hijack op's bad faith thread
i'm trying to break out of the habit of ordering fast food every day for the sake of my wallet and my health. it's a leftover behavior from my pre-med depression and it's time to kill it. so as someone whose greatest experience with cooking was a season of hell's kitchen, my retard questions are
>How long can I store meats in the freezer? Will they ever go bad?
>Is there a way to get things like spinach or kale that don't expire aggressively fast? Or long-lasting veggies in general?
>If I do meal prep, should I put the finished meals in the fridge or the freezer? I don't know if cooking them helps at all b/c again, food retard
>Is homemade ketchup without salt tastier than store ketchup?

>>14430487
What am I supposed to see? A man child trying to justify his unrealistic idea that making a grilled cheese takes 3 hours?

>>14430445
You don't a full Costco run every fucking day you sperg, what hell.

>>14427231
hope you like disease. restaurant foods are loaded with sugar and butter. you immune is constantly stressed and your liver and arteries are clogging up

>>14430782
It's not filled with butter and butter is good for you.

>>14430635
you can literally google all of that, you stupid fuck. stop being lazy.

>>14427231
Watch some of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. You'll wanna start learning how to cook for yourself real quick.

There aren't any. Keep eating out so you can die ASAP and rid the world of your worthless existence.

>>14430826
I trust anecdotes from 4chan more than I do the billion cooking blogs that all contradict each other, which seem to be all my results are.

>>14427245
can I cook fried chicken in a air fryer??

>>14432427
You can't fry anything in a convection oven.

>>14430635
>i'm trying to break out of the habit of ordering fast food every day
Order slow food then. Order from actual restaurants, and walk from your car to their door to pick it up. Before leaving work, flick open your phone, and place your order "okay ready in 35 mins" and do something like a quick errand on the way there, or if you're home, prep a salad to go with it. Healthy is up to you. Frugal and ordering with planned leftovers in mind as well. One thing I often do is just buy smoked sliced pork or brisket at a BBQ restaurant. The sides may be a quick superfood slaw from a bag, canned Bush's beans, and my own corn on the cob. My own buns or cornbread. Suddenly it's economical, and better and homemade. The really irritating part, needing to be home all day 12hrs watching a brisket, someone else did it.

>>How long can I store meats in the freezer?
There are charts online for this. I don't keep anything butchered and sold thawed >3mo, but you can keep whole roasts the longest..
>>Is there a way to get things like spinach or kale that don't expire aggressively fast?
Keep them dry and lack of air in original bags for some items. For some uses, consider the steam-in-bag frozen versions. I use whole leaf frozen spinach in omelets, quiches. I find that store either has fresh stuff, or it doesn't.
>Or long-lasting veggies in general?
There are some vented containers which help in some cases. Line drawers with a paper towel Remove spoiling veggies fast from fridge, they outgas ripening other items.
>>If I do meal prep,
just don't. better to alternate your mood out of your freezer, rotating your leftovers
>should I put the finished meals in the fridge or the freezer?
Fridge up to 2 days only.
>>Is homemade ketchup without salt tastier
Heinz has sodium free. Tomatoes need salt. Do you require that? Acid is the answer. Use squeezes of fresh lime, lemon, orange, and various vinegars. Chutneys and relishes. Quick pickles. Look up escabeche.

>>14427253
Do Americans really use soy everywhere?

>>14433040
I make tasty chips

>>14427253
Sounds an awful lot like regular cooking.
You can buy diced/strip chicken, stir fry vegetable packs (frozen or fresh), jars of ginger/garlic or garlic/ginger/onion powder, bottles of lemon/lime juice. Fry on highest heat in regular fry pan.
Or you can buy a frozen microwave stir fry.
Of course the extra cost of all these convenience items makes it unlikely it's cheaper than just buying a stir fry at a cheap Chinese place. Especially if you go past a shopping mall after work; Chinese places package up their left over precooked food and sell it at a discount.

>>14427805
If your plan is to reheat you should err on the under side

>>14430635
>freezer meat
Depends on the meat and the freezer.
3-6 months is probably fine.
Longer and you risk "freezer burn"; won't kill you, but is less palatable
>veggies
broccoli lasts longer.
kohlrabi, cabbage, carrots last much longer.
Suggest getting a little bit of the stuff that expires quickly, and a bit more of the stuff that will keep until next week.
>meal prep
If they're already cooked, it's not meal prep, it's leftovers.
Meal prep is cutting and portioning several days worth of meals in one batch, so you only wash up the cutting board once.
Depends how and when you're cooking it. Cooking tomorrow? Fridge.
Cooking next month? Freezer.
>ketchup
No, DIAF/FOAD.
Well, maybe, but you're not there yet.

>>14430032
>and the time you would spend cooking couldn't be billable hours
This argument only works if you currently work less hours than you'd like. I'm single with no dependents, I'd take the 1/5th pay cut to work one less day a week, let alone pay someone else a portion of what I earn per unit time to do things I would have to do.

>>14427231
motivation

>>14430168
The drive likely shouldn't count, since you'd be driving to a fast food place or to a supermarket to buy microwave dinners anyway.
That grocery time can be easily halved if you learn the layout of the store and know what you want before you go in. And it should be split across a weeks or half a weeks worth of meals.
40 mins prep and cook. Less if you get good at specific dishes and prep while you cook. Probably 30 mins.
Storing leftovers is part of tomorrows much quicker meal.
Dish washer. Especially if you don't give a fuck and just keep dishes in the dishwasher after washing.

Still takes a fair chunk of time though.

>>14430297
>treat those you love
Big dopamine pay off
>treat yourself
Minor pay off, and likely mood worsening given you are tired at the end of a work day and are forcing yourself to do something you don't enjoy.
It's like exercise. Good for you. Brain dead in practice, and you feel like shit during and after. And it doesn't get better because you make the exercise harder over time.

>>14430635
>How long can I store meats in the freezer? Will they ever go bad?
3 months. But it will taste like shit before that.
>Or long-lasting veggies in general
A whole head of lettuce will last a bit if it was fresh to start with. Onions and potatoes are long lasting. Carrots aren't bad. Some veggies are best frozen (like peas), but you shouldn't be too bothered by frozen veggies in general. I find a quick fry with a touch of acid (vinegar/lemon/wine) brings the life back into them.
>If I do meal prep, should I put the finished meals in the fridge or the freezer?
Fridge is good for a week. It will taste like garbage at the end of the week. Best efficiency gains are made by prepping as much as possible at once; so freezer.
>Is homemade ketchup without salt tastier than store ketchup?
Yes but it sounds like a waste of time.

What's an easy way to make a nice curry sauce to throw some chicken in? Do I just buy some curry paste and mix it with stock or something?

>>14427231
>people like me that see cooking as a chore
>cooking hacks
there are none. hack your attitude and stop being a lazy faggot.

>>14430308
Massive cope. Just come to terms that you're a lazy manchild who wants easy made tendies.