How big is your car -- do you seriously have no room at all? In a box 2 ft by 2 ft you can fit all the basic cooking stuff you'll need, easily. You don't need to get fancy. You can cook almost anything with a skillet, a pot, a spatula, cutting board, and sharp knife. If you're poor, go to Wal-Mart or Godwill and buy something cheap. I find it hard to believe that you don't have enough room or money for even the basics. And you're not going to be able to cook anything at all without at least a couple of tools. Tell us what you have, and we can tell you what you can easily/cheaply/tastily/healthily make.
Cooking for the recent graduate
- Thread starter Karalysia
- Start date
NickyJ
Retired Narrator
Banquet TV dinners. Excellent. I give it a
rating. Follow the instructions, pop it in the oven, and your good to go.
LucyDuke
staring at the clock
You need basics. If you can't even get a saucepan, you're not going to be able to cook anything worth a damn. These are not hardcore utensils, they're basics. Doesn't cost much, doesn't take up too much space... can't do anything without them.
Pasta, rice, beans, potatoes. Cheap basics, easy to cook, you need a large saucepan, a large spoon. Any kind of soup, you need a pot of some kind. You need something to bake in if you want to bake anything, something to fry in if you want to fry anything. You can possibly get by without a cutting board, but your knives will pay for it.
Pasta and rice are cheap, easy and versatile. You can buy or make a wide variety of sauces for them, throw whatever meat or veggies in, bam, meal.
Pasta, jarred spaghetti sauce, ground beef or ground turkey or cut up chicken breast, onion or bell pepper or broccoli or zucchini. Any of the meat, mix and match veggies as you like. You can cook the meat and veggies separately, or just throw them in the sauce and simmer for a while. Veggies can be fresh or frozen, any kind of pasta will do. Two pans, two spoons, maybe a cutting board and a knife or two, maybe a colander though you can drain the pasta with a lidded pan instead. If you're really lazy you can skip the meat and veggies and just pour the jarred sauce onto the cooked pasta. Hell, skip the jarred sauce and use a little olive oil and powdered garlic.
Rice, butter, chopped onion, canned corn, frozen peas, carrots, spices. Toss everything but the rice in a pan, with enough water to cook the amount of rice you're going to use, bring to a boil, add rice and reduce heat.
Jar of salsa, canned corn, canned black beans. Maybe diced onion or red pepper. Cook the diced veggies in a bit of oil or butter, if you're using them. Toss everything in the pan and heat it up. Serve over rice. You can add shredded cheddar on top. Also can roll this up in a soft tortilla.
Ramen is really crappy, but you can make it a bit less useless by adding some veggies. I like frozen peas, my roommate uses broccoli.
Grilled cheese sandwiches, you can add sliced ham, sliced roast beef, sliced tomato, maybe a fried egg. Most people spread butter or margarine on the outside of the bread, then toss it in the frying pan, cook on medium heat, flip when one side is browned. I melt butter into the frying pan and drop the un-buttered bread onto that. You'll need a spatula.
That's just some quick, easy versatile stuff that comes to mind. I make loads of rice and pasta, switching up the veggies and/or meats with what's cheap.
There are lots of good cookbooks for grownups that have no idea what to do with a kitchen. I recommend getting one of those, some basic kitchen tools (you can get most of what you absolutely need for maybe $30), and experimenting.
I knew it was not sarcasm, but misinterpretations can arise when few words are used. But talk about chances, i have to admit you were very lucky then. I still believe learn to cook it is not that hard as some people think it is. Even hard tempered Chef Gordon Ramsay makes it simple.
NickyJ
Retired Narrator
Aauuugh! I forgot the most important food! Pizza!
Luckymoose
The World is Mine
Buy a tomato plant.
warpus
In pork I trust
Banquet TV dinners. Excellent. I give it a
Those things tend to be full of sodium, cook your own damn food!
Range stew: take leftovers from previous few days' meals, put in pan, warm up, and eat. Name comes from being eaten at the end of a week on the shooting ranges when you really don't want to cart all that food home - the only time spring rolls, chilli and curry taste good together. Honest.
Failing that, good old pasta+chicken+instant sauce? I still eat that fairly often; a lifetime of canteens and boil-in-the-bag food has as good as destroyed my inner Jamie Oliver.
Failing that, good old pasta+chicken+instant sauce? I still eat that fairly often; a lifetime of canteens and boil-in-the-bag food has as good as destroyed my inner Jamie Oliver.
BvBPL
Pour Decision Maker
For my money, fajitas are THE best food to learn how to cook. Homemade fajitas are fast, easy, inexpensive, delicious, and impressive to potential mates. They are easy to accessorize and make a decent bagged lunch the next day at the office. Plus, the skills you learn in making fajitas are directly transferable to many, many recipes.
To make fajitas, get some tortillas, skirt steak, a white or yellow onion, and a bell pepper or two (red and yellow peppers are more mature and will taste sweeter, green peppers are ok). For equipment, you will need a frying pan or skillet (non-stick is probably best to start with, 9-12”
, a knife, a wooden spoon, and a range / stovetop. Marinate the steak (as below).
Take out your pan, put it on the range, squirt some cooking oil or oily salad dressing into it, and put the heat on medium high. Cut your vegetables into your desired shape, long and relatively thin like you would normally see on a fajita you buy from a vendor. Bear in mind that onions will shrink up in the heat of the pan, but peppers stay more or less the same size, so you may want to make your onions a touch larger than your peppers. The onions will also be softer. You might want to look up how to slice onions and peppers. Obviously, you’ll need to remove the seeds and pulpy stuff from the peppers and peel the onions.
Take out your meat and cut it against the grain on the basis (see below). You probably want strips of meat about 2” long and ¼” (or less) wide. Throw these in the pan and keep stirring them for 3-4 mintues, or until they go from bloody red to the brownish-gray of cooked meat. Take out the meat and set it aside, keeping the fluid in the pan. Turn the heat down to medium.
Take your onions and peppers and throw them in the pan. Stir these around for 5-6 minutes, or until the onions become translucent. Note that the skin of your peppers may darken a bit, but this is actually a good thing because it means the sugar in the peppers is caramelizing. Once the onions are translucent, add the meat back to the pan with the veggies and stir that around for a couple minutes.
Serve on tortillas topped with your favorite toppings. Cheese, salsa, sour cream are favs. For a really awesome kicker, mince some fine cilantro, it adds a great kick to the dish.
*Note regarding skirt steak: Yes, skirt steak is called a steak, but it is not a Delmonico by any means. It is far less expensive than actual steaks. It does, however require two tricks to learn to cook properly:
1.) You need to marinate your skirt steak before you cook them. Skirt steaks are pretty tough by themselves, but marinating them makes them very nice. Ideally, you’d want to marinate your steak for at least 2 hours; marinating it overnight is preferable. The super easy marinade is some Italian dressing (not the creamy kind), slightly more advanced is the juice of a lime or two, some salt and pepper, and some crushed or pressed garlic. Either way is fine for starting out and there are plenty of premade marinade as well. Throw your marinade and skirt steak in a Ziploc bag, throwing the bag in the fridge, and giving it a shake and turn once in a while over the course of the marinade.
--Tip: If you don’t have time to do a proper marinade, take a fork and punch holes with it into the steak before you put it into the marinade. This will cause the steak to marinate more quickly.
2.) You need to cut skirt steak against the grain. Meat has grains the same way wood does, and skirt steak grains are long and strong, contributing to the toughness of the meat. To reduce the toughness of the meat, slice the steak perpendicular to the grain of the meat, this will shorten the fibers and give the meat a superior mouthfeel. In addition, when slicing skirt steak, you should slice it at about a 45 degree angle, not straight up and down. This is called cutting on the bias and it makes the meat more tender and it just looks better on the plate as well.
*Note on pan overcrowding: It is common for journeymen cooks to overcrowd pans when they are cooking. This isn’t what you want. In general when you are cooking, you want at least 15-25% of the pan’s surface empty.
To make fajitas, get some tortillas, skirt steak, a white or yellow onion, and a bell pepper or two (red and yellow peppers are more mature and will taste sweeter, green peppers are ok). For equipment, you will need a frying pan or skillet (non-stick is probably best to start with, 9-12”
, a knife, a wooden spoon, and a range / stovetop. Marinate the steak (as below). Take out your pan, put it on the range, squirt some cooking oil or oily salad dressing into it, and put the heat on medium high. Cut your vegetables into your desired shape, long and relatively thin like you would normally see on a fajita you buy from a vendor. Bear in mind that onions will shrink up in the heat of the pan, but peppers stay more or less the same size, so you may want to make your onions a touch larger than your peppers. The onions will also be softer. You might want to look up how to slice onions and peppers. Obviously, you’ll need to remove the seeds and pulpy stuff from the peppers and peel the onions.
Take out your meat and cut it against the grain on the basis (see below). You probably want strips of meat about 2” long and ¼” (or less) wide. Throw these in the pan and keep stirring them for 3-4 mintues, or until they go from bloody red to the brownish-gray of cooked meat. Take out the meat and set it aside, keeping the fluid in the pan. Turn the heat down to medium.
Take your onions and peppers and throw them in the pan. Stir these around for 5-6 minutes, or until the onions become translucent. Note that the skin of your peppers may darken a bit, but this is actually a good thing because it means the sugar in the peppers is caramelizing. Once the onions are translucent, add the meat back to the pan with the veggies and stir that around for a couple minutes.
Serve on tortillas topped with your favorite toppings. Cheese, salsa, sour cream are favs. For a really awesome kicker, mince some fine cilantro, it adds a great kick to the dish.
*Note regarding skirt steak: Yes, skirt steak is called a steak, but it is not a Delmonico by any means. It is far less expensive than actual steaks. It does, however require two tricks to learn to cook properly:
1.) You need to marinate your skirt steak before you cook them. Skirt steaks are pretty tough by themselves, but marinating them makes them very nice. Ideally, you’d want to marinate your steak for at least 2 hours; marinating it overnight is preferable. The super easy marinade is some Italian dressing (not the creamy kind), slightly more advanced is the juice of a lime or two, some salt and pepper, and some crushed or pressed garlic. Either way is fine for starting out and there are plenty of premade marinade as well. Throw your marinade and skirt steak in a Ziploc bag, throwing the bag in the fridge, and giving it a shake and turn once in a while over the course of the marinade.
--Tip: If you don’t have time to do a proper marinade, take a fork and punch holes with it into the steak before you put it into the marinade. This will cause the steak to marinate more quickly.
2.) You need to cut skirt steak against the grain. Meat has grains the same way wood does, and skirt steak grains are long and strong, contributing to the toughness of the meat. To reduce the toughness of the meat, slice the steak perpendicular to the grain of the meat, this will shorten the fibers and give the meat a superior mouthfeel. In addition, when slicing skirt steak, you should slice it at about a 45 degree angle, not straight up and down. This is called cutting on the bias and it makes the meat more tender and it just looks better on the plate as well.
*Note on pan overcrowding: It is common for journeymen cooks to overcrowd pans when they are cooking. This isn’t what you want. In general when you are cooking, you want at least 15-25% of the pan’s surface empty.
Thanks sir.
aelf
Ashen One
How the hell did you survive on meal plans? I learned to cook because I'd rather do so than eat disgusting campus food.
Start out with canned food. For example, what I do is to chop up some garlic and onions, fry them in a pan, add a can of tuna and add soy sauce and sugar to taste. Tastes fine and I'd wager it's pretty nutritious too.
Start out with canned food. For example, what I do is to chop up some garlic and onions, fry them in a pan, add a can of tuna and add soy sauce and sugar to taste. Tastes fine and I'd wager it's pretty nutritious too.
That has no carbohydrate at all and probably has salt coming out of its ears; it's appalling from a nutritional point of view.
aelf
Ashen One
Obviously, I eat it with rice. How much salt it has depends on you - I said to taste. I don't know what you guys eat in the British Army, but if you think that is appalling then you must not know what campus food is like.
holy king
Deity
holy king
Deity
actually, you need 30% of your intake to be fat. (10-15% proteins and 50-55% carbohydrates)
what you mean are essential amino acids. you get those from proteins.
North King
blech
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2004
- Messages
- 18,165
Different culture, yo.
Also, someone said something like, "I haven't learned to cook yet, so I probably never will," which strikes me as completely ludicrous. Cooking is seriously not that hard, guys. Look up recipes, look up terms you don't know, get ingredients, cook.
It's hard to get ideas for easy recipes, admittedly; that is basically the point of this thread.
holy king
Deity
one where kids get so much pocket money they can eat out every day/get something cooked for them every day by someone not at work?
more like different social class, i guess...
