/ck/ - Food & Cooking

Ramen+

We had to start here. The noodle /ck/ loves to hate.
Served either fully drained or soupy, it's easy to add various veggies. Add veggies in the order they will cook. Bigger, harder ones need more time.
After draining, try a splash of rice wine vinegar, or some soy sauce, or some toasted sesame oil.

Speaking of vegetables, the fresh ones:
(I've picked ones that last a while in the fridge, because duh, bachelors)
Napa cabbage/Chinese cabbage: shred for crunchy texture without strong flavor.
Bok Choy: use like name. Also available as a smaller 'Baby Bok Choy'.
Carrot: a peeler works fine to shred a carrot if you have nothing else.
Broccoli
Onion
Garlic
Cabbage/Savoy Cabbage: "savoy"cabbage is wrinkly and is a bit sweeter and softer texture than regular cabbage.
Kale: yes it's trendy but it's also easy to shred up and toss into whatever you're cooking.

*oops, for Bok Choy, that was "use like Napa".

Frozen veggies: anything and everything.
Canned veggies: most things you're gonna want to drain the juice, but it can be used depending.
Spices: never buy those little jars, which are crazy over-priced, or the big plastic containers, which will go stale before you use them up.

One-Pot Veggies

Bachelors don't want to do dishes. So cooking multiple things in one pot just makes sense. But the bachelor mistake is to boil everything to mush.
Put in the hard veggies first, like potatoes in chunks, or sliced carrots.
Add tender ingredients last, like broccoli and spinach.
3 veggies in one pot and all you need on the side is some cheese or nuts or meat and you've got a well-rounded, tasty meal.

Soup+

Any kind, doesn't matter,
Stretch one can into a filling meal by adding fresh and frozen veggies.
You're generally not going to need to add salt, but spices are good.
Soups are a good way to use up leftovers too, including crumbled stale bread.

get a lot of ground beef
put in a big pot and cook it however
cook a lot of rice
combine rice and beef (and beans and or other stuff for more nutrients)
bachelor chow for days, probably eat some vergerbles too

Veggies Part Two

Check out the veggies you've never tried before in your local markets. Try to find an asian market and check out the weirdness there.
In general, it's not going to cost much to get a little bit of this or that, and you never know what you're going to like.

Anything you can find that you like is going to give you extra nutrition and stretch your food dollar and there are a lot of combinations to try.

Pasta Salad

Boil pasta so it's al dente(a little chewy, not soggy or hard). Drain and chill in fridge.
Mix with whatever favorite salad dressing or make it creamy style (mayo plus apple cider vinegar or red wine vinegar).
Add fresh veggies: fine-cut carrot, cabbage, onion, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, tomato, etc.
Add boiled-then-chilled veggies: peas, corn, green beans, etc.
Add crumbled bacon, grated cheese, or tuna.

Pasta and Red Sauce

Making your own sauce is a good goal for a future day, but jarred sauce is cheap and fairly good.
But it's also a great venue to add veggies.
Since pasta sauce isn't fragile, it's easy to cook veggies however long they need in the sauce, and do the pasta all by itself, since it is more sensitive to being cooked right.

>>6992976
>cook a lot of rice
Rice can be a huge pain in the ass for people who didn't grow up cooking it.
The bachelor/bachelorette solution to this is to:
A. Boil regular rice in a big pot of water and then drain it when it's done.
B. Buy instance rice.

Super-Salsa

Take part of a jar of salsa.
Add diced green pepper, corn, fresh tomato, diced red onion, shredded carrot, avocado, green onion.....
Consume with chips or the gas station burrito of your choosing.

>>6993010
Good thread OP

Keep posting pls

Quesadillas

Spread refried beans(from a can) on one side of a soft tortilla.
Put a second soft tortilla in a dry frying pan (no oil).
Sprinkle shredded cheese on the tortilla in the pan, not going right up to the edges.
Add thin-cut peppers, tomato, onion, corn, canned beans, etc.
Add meat(s).
Press the second tortilla into the first so the refried beans helps stick it all together.
Flip at some point so both sides get toasty,

Pizza+

Frozen pizza.
Add diced onion, green pepper, fresh tomato before it goes in the oven.
Pull it out halfway done and add broccoli, raw garlic, kale, so they don't burn.

>>6992999
>Rice can be a huge pain in the ass for people who didn't grow up cooking it.

Lolwat?
>Put desired amount of rice in rice cooker
>Add water to correct line
>Start rice cooker

TV Dinner+

Take two matching plates.
Pop a TV dinner out of its tray onto the plate.
Add various frozen and fresh veggies.
Put second plate over first plate as cover.
Microwave a few minutes at a time, then give a minute or two for the heat to spread evenly, then nuke another couple of minutes and so on until the center of the top plate is hot to the touch.
More tender veggies, such as broccoli, should be added midway in the process, not at the beginning.

>>6993025
>Start rice cooker
Assuming most people have rice cookers. Or the money to drop on one.
>Lolwat?

>>6993032
You can get one for ~$15 at Wal-Mart.

>>6993037
A. There's nothing wrong with boiling regular rice.
B. Instant rice is super convenient and still pretty damn cheap.

>>6993032
Rice cookers are so cheap though, you can get one for $20.

>>6993042
Feel like this is kind of getting away from the point of the thread, but your spirited championing of rice cookers is noted.

>>6992999
C. Buy parboiled rice like the majority of the world

>>6993038
>A. There's nothing wrong with boiling regular rice.
Right, except that it's much easier to fuck up until you really get a knack for it, and on top of that a rice cooker will keep your rice warm for hours.

>B. Instant rice is super convenient and still pretty damn cheap.
Not compared to standard rice.

Simple Gravy

Put one or two stock cubes in 1 to 2 cups of water.
Let them dissolve and stir until fully blended.
On a low heat, melt one and a half to two tablespoons of butter in a small pan.
Add two tablespoons of flour. Regular white flour is a good start, but you can experiment by buying small amounts of different kinds, such as spelt flour, from the bulk section of many supermarkets.
Stir the butter and flour until the mix begins to turn brown. Then add the stock water in parts, stirring to get all the flour off the pan. Keep stirring until it begins to bubble. Add various veggies, preferably ones that only need a short cook time. Serve over mashed potatoes with or without meat.

>>6993064
A. How do you fuck up boiling rice unless you dunk your head in the pot?

B. Instant rice cooks in 10 minutes. Even 5 minutes saved is 5 minutes extra to waste on the internet.

You're not a true bachelor unless you're hungover, sitting on a bowl and eating fish tendie pizza.

>>6993030
ZZ Top - TV Dinners (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-6mI708yWc

Brother's Green on youtube does a whole bunch of shit like this.

Copied Can

Buy a can of red or yellow or green curry, or a can of Indian vegetables in sauce.
Copy the vegetables in it as closely as possible. If the curry had potato and carrot then boil potato, carrot, and onion first, drain them, then add the can.
An Indian curry could match with frozen or canned peas(or both), shredded bok choy, and carrot.
Curries can be extended with chicken stock cubes in water or light coconut milk(from a can).
Serve over boiled potato or rice.

>>6993044
You can make anything with them, get two.

>>6993114
I feel like this has become a recruiting thread for a militant group.

>You can make anything with them, get two.
If I can make anything with a rice cooker, can't I just buy one rice cooker and then MAKE a second rice cooker?

>>6993110
WTF??? No Indian curry is going to use bok choy and you'd be a sucker for trusting anything on an indian label.

>>6993130
Nooooo, I know Indian curries don't traditionally use bok choy, but it's not got a flavor that sticks out profile-wise, it's just a generic "green" for texture and nutrients.

>>6993127
Yes.

>>6993032
I mean, I get your point and I've never owned one, but even still, how is rice a pain in the arse?

Spend 30 seconds googling proportions if you're not sure. Boil water, salt it if you want, or don't, not important. Add rice. Wait.

It's almost the exact same process as pasta.

>>6993142
pasta never gets stuck to the bottom of the pot or burns.
neither does boiled rice.

It's so easy and so good.

This is a terrible thread

>>6993189
You're a terrible thread.

>>6993189

Try this stuff out, it kicks ass.

This stuff is pretty awesome, especially if you don't want to spend hours prepping.