I need your help comrades!
I am moving on Saturday. And I need some ways to make meals. I don’t care which culture, the more diverse the better.
Here are some factors I kinda need:
- not too expensive to make (money and time)
- not a weird consistency like salad (sensory issues of autism) bread or steak has the perfect consistency
- I don’t taste that well, so the taste should be rather intense (like steak)
- vegetarian (because I think vegan will be too hard with my requirements) if it isn’t vegetarian I also take recepies but it would be better if it would be (so not stake after all)
Here are examples kind of like this:
- pizza
- pasta with tomato sauce
- garlic bread
pls pls reccomend 🥺
EDIT: Please also drop non vegitarian options, if you cant think of vegitarian stuff. My requirements are so many, it will be difficult to find something that will meet all requirements.
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Lots of beans and bean-like foods (chickpeas, lentils, peas, soy beans) can be made into a variety of shapes. If you have a pressure cooker you can even cook them relatively quickly in mass and freeze most of it for later. No idea how much that costs in your country, but it’s supposed to be cheap.
You can just make regular bean “soup”, or you can “fry” them in a pan (specially lentils). You can eat chickpeas like popcorn or you can mix them with flour and something sticky (overcooked rice if vegan, egg whites otherwise) and make burgers. Just remember to put something oily like olive oi or butter for taste.
You can also do some really low-nutrition despair foods by mixing wheat flour, salt, water and butter, and frying that in a pan. It’s not healthy, but it’s filling and easy to make, tastes like bread. But of course, if you add to this you can make other cool stuff like pancakes (less salt, lots of sugar, baking powder).
All of the fried stuff get a very homogeneous consistency so they might be fine for your sensory issues.
On the matter of taste, you just need a lot of seasoning.
Rice, lentils and tomato sauce does the job for me. It’s my go to lunch. Cheap, easy to make and very nutritious. Buy tomato sauce with spices already added or add the spices you like.
I buy these trailmixes at the grocery store that are an assortment of nuts and dried fruit. They are a little over 5 USD a bag and contain about 1800 calories per bag.
These are not the absolute simplest recipes, but they are nutritious, flavorful, inexpensive, take a shorter time to cook relative to other Indian recipes due to the prep ahead of time, and will serve you well. https://myheartbeets.com/category/method-cooking-style/onion-masala-recipes/
Egg fried rice is cheap, easy and vegetarian. If you cook your veggies with garlic, onion and chillies, and you top it off with soya sauce you’re gonna have an intense taste lol. It might be a ‘weird consistency’ though, since it’s quite soft, but you’ll have to be the judge of that.
Bananas are pretty cheap right? Idk but they’re delicious and can be made into bread, cookies, or chips if you have them too long.
Look up texturized soy recipes. Ill give you one later.
Potatoes are incredibly nutritious, cheap, and can be cooked in a million different ways! From extreme simple fried slices, to more fancy double scooped baked potatoes, there are plenty of ways to incorporate it into a diet!
Beans are about the cheapest and best vegetable you can eat. High protein, high fiber, and versatile. Cook up a bunch of beans, mash some of them, mix in a bunch of taco seasoning and stuff in a wrap with some cheese and rice. Super filling and delicious. Add some seasoned taco meat if you want.
Tamar Adler taught me how to love beans: https://ciaosamin.blogspot.com/2015/01/tamar-adler-on-beans.html?m=1
I lactoferment them. Reduced carbs and increases soluble fibers and protein availability. Pretty neat stuff.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8882373/
Black bean burgers or at least the patties have a nice consistency and strong flavor, curries in general are cheap, fast, and can be vegan or not vegan and are also strongly flavored.
My suggestions would be:
- vegetarian chili
Can just use beans and no meat. Intensity of flavor is up to your taste I usually go with rather spicy but it can be mild too. Can take a bit of time but if you make one large pot it can last days and just needs to be reheated
- shakshuka
Relatively easy to make and is rather flavorful. Again here spice level is up to you
Both of these go well with bread, rice, or potatoes
How short are you on time and do you have access to at least a stove, a frying pan, a pot, a knife and a cutting board? Because sometimes when moving you may suddenly find that everything is already packed and/or disassembled.
In general, assuming that you have at least a few basic tools you can always make rice or pasta, add a few vegetables and a very basic sauce and spice it to your liking. You can hardly go wrong.
For example, you can get a basic rice and coconut curry done in under an hour (minus the time to go to the store and buy ingredients). All in all, the actual cooking part should take no more than half an hour, the rest just depends how skilled you are at cleaning and cutting vegetables. Here’s my recipe:
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1a. Go out and buy some rice, a can of coconut milk, some garlic, a couple of onions (shallots work too) and a few vegetables of your choice (two bell peppers and two or three carrots work well, but you can also go with broccoli or zucchini, green beans or cauliflower, mushrooms or baby corn, or really pretty much anything).
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1b. If you don’t have spices at home also buy either a blend of curry spices (something with ginger and cardamom is nice and gives a pretty intense taste) or pre-made curry paste if you can find it in your local store.
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- Peel and finely dice a few cloves of garlic and one onion, cut the remaining onion and the other veggies into bite sized pieces (if you went with bell pepper take out the seeds and stem, and for the carrot wash thoroughly or peel it)
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- Put your desired quantity of rice and double that amount of hot water (for instance 250g of rice and 500ml of water) in a pot, salt it and once it starts to boil set a timer for ten minutes. Once the time is up take the pot off the heat and put a lid on it to keep the steam in.
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- In the meantime heat a few spoonfuls of oil in a large pan and roast the diced garlic and onion in it for a couple of minutes.
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- Add the rest of the veggies and stir fry for another five or so minutes (until they are no longer raw but not so long that the veggies get completely soft).
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- Add in the coconut milk and spices (and optionally a couple spoonfuls of tomato paste/puree if you have some), mix everything together and let simmer for another few minutes until the sauce and veggies have the desired consistency (if you don’t have enough liquid from just the coconut milk add a bit of water as needed).
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- Season to taste with salt and pepper, and bonus points if you have some fresh green/spring onions (“scallion” for the Americans) that you can quickly chop up and garnish the whole thing with, and maybe even some sesame seeds.
If you are eating it right away serve it with the rice on the side, else if you are planning on storing it in the fridge to eat over the next day or two (the quantities i recommended here probably make about three to four portions so you will have leftovers to reheat) then just dump the entire contents of the pan into the pot with the rice (but obviously don’t do this if you use a rice cooker!).
If you need it to have some more protein and are ok with eating meat you can roast some diced chicken breast in the pan in step 4. Otherwise i guess tofu or chickpeas work too as a vegan option (i strongly recommend chickpeas here, because no offense to tofu lovers but tofu is just kinda boring to me).
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Dice up a sweet potato into an oven safe pan and toss with olive oil, salt and pepper, and whatever spices you like (I like to use paprika, chipotle, cayenne). 400 degree oven. After 25 minutes take it out, create some space, and crack some eggs in the space (may have to add a little more oil). Bake for 5-7min, depending in how done you like your eggs.
Easy healthy breakfast that fits in one pan and doesn’t take too long. You can prep the sweet potatoes the night before and do other things while it cooks. I like to add an avocado too at the end.
I regularly eat rice, tofu, and a bunch of vegetables stir fried, relatively easy. You can also fry it to reheat it and add more stuff and seasoning, soy sauce, nuts, whatever. Pretty easy.
Are you able to do an initial semi pricey investment to set yourself up for future meals? Cause there’s some recipes I have that cost like a dollar per meal but you gotta pay like $30-40 in groceries to have all the stuff. You’ll stretch that money to its max but there’s an initial investment. If you’re looking for cheap and easy but you can’t spend ahead that’s a different category. Also how good are you at food? Cause if say you have solid knife skills a lot of veggie stuff is quick and easy where if you don’t it isn’t as much. I’ve got a few but need to narrow things down a bit
I can make those initial investment without to much issues. But I have like no kitchen skills. Also no knife skills.
Okay, nothing wrong with that. I’m about to go to bed but can throw some recipes at you and just some general guidelines to work with like being efficient with your food and having a few meals that share ingredients. Pastas are an easy start, pizzas are easy af aside from dough but you can make a solid pizza out of grocery store naan or even pita bread. Any Flatbread thicker than a tortilla really. Burritos are also a huge one. If you have some jars and fridge space pickling is fun as hell and easy. Bowl of stuff with rice or potatoes depending on the stuff is also a good fridge cleaner.
My main overall advice is don’t be intimidated cooking wise. Unless you’re baking recipes are guidelines and even though it probably won’t be just right the first time, it’s pretty hard to make food you like with ingredients you like that you won’t find at least okay and by tasting you’ll have a general idea of what to fix the next time you make that dish and you repeat that over a bunch of meals and you’ll be fine. I’ll give some easy options that have shared ingredients and some ways to make em a bit nicer. Spices are your friend big time.
