grocery store shopping

Buy this.

$6 The Four Ingredient Cookbooks-Three Cookbooks in One!

http://www.amazon.com/Four-Ingredient-Cookbooks-Three-Cookbooks-One/dp/0962855030

As a single dude I normally eat out because its hard to cook for one and its cheaper for the most part. But I used to cook every day. That book has a lot of super easy stuff in it. Most of it tastes great.

1300 Posts!!

 

I do almost all our grocery shopping, and “real” cooking. Really for bachelor chow: Ramen cup, canned soup, canned pasta, canned chili, bread, lunch meat, and cheese would be a good start. Hard to screw these things up. Cereal also has very good vitamin content.

 

i just do what the box tells me and it's a 1:1 ratio on the box
Straight from the minute rice site:

 

hey Jeff try hamburger helper. When my wife and I are hungry and wanna eat quick, thats what we make. Theres several different flavors and they all taste awesome IMO, all you need is milk and some ground beef. Super easy, Super quick, and super good.

 

yup, different recipes use different amounts of milk/water but they all use 1lb of lean ground beef. Good shit when you dont feel llike cooking much, which is almost everyday for me. LOL

 

According to your age you:

1. Shouldn't need to worry about this, your parents will cook stuff for you

2. Shouldn't be drinking beer

 

ahh I see. Ive never made minute rice, is it different than regular rice? I usually make spanish style rice which requires frying it first, then adding tomato sauce, chicken bouillon, and 2x the amount of water.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgMrX3r27KU

Watch This. Fucking Hilarious.

 

It may or may not actually be rice. All I know is that it's super easy and quick.

 

AH here's how i was doing it..

1. boil water with rice
2. turn off burner
3. scrape a bunch of shit out of the pot
4. throw everything out.

THANK YOU i will add this to my que.. my bday is next week!

W00t on 1300!

See.. i mess up ground beef.. but i think if i try and not burn it i can be okay.. i always worry about undercooking meets. Im obviously gonna try a bit more this time around. Thanks!

Yes true - i should still be eating string cheese and crackers and complaining about broccoli and wanting ice cream... Hm.. maybe i should just eat like i'm 10

 

Learn to stir fry. Cheap, healthy, fast.

Equipment: good knife, wok or 12" non-stick skillet.

Basic Seasoning:
soy sauce
rice wine (shao hsing) (dry sherry will also do)
toasted sesame oil
oyster sauce-- this is the most expensive of these items
rice vinegar
hoisin sauce
Dark soy is also useful but you usually need to visit a specialty grocer. You should visit an asian grocer for these anyway as you get much better quality at a better price.

All of those keep pretty much indefinitely.

fresh garlic
fresh ginger
oil-canola, corn, peanut, safflower, even generic vegetable oil is fine.

Learn to chop vegetables. The sharp knife helps a lot. Carrots and onions are used a lot and tricky for most people to chop well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C79WRZrZ-ys
http://www.reluctantgourmet.com/cut_onion.htm

Do all the cutting prep before you start. Stir fry leaves no time for last minute prep during cooking.

Marinate the meat, generally a good splash of soy sauce and equal splash of rice wine. Add about a tablespoon of cornstarch and mix. Let marinate about 15 minutes.

Mix up the sauce. A basic brown sauce like in the Chinese restaurants: 2 tablepoons oyster sauce, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon rice wine, 1/2-3/4 cup low sodium stock or water, 1 tablespoon corn starch. Mix all this together well. The corn starch will settle out before you use it so you'll have to do a final stir before you add it to the wok/pan. Some additional fresh garlic is good to make a garlic sauce.

Heat the pan on high. Add a little oil, stir fry the meat till it's almost done, remove from pan. Wipe pan clean.

Put pan back on heat, add a little oil. When HOT, add the vegies and cook until crisp tender. Add the minced ginger and garlic now and toss to mix. Return the meat to the pan, stir to combine. Stir the sauce mix to get the corn starch back in suspension and drizzle around the outside edge of pan. Stir until sauce thickens and coats the food. serve immediately. A little sesame oil over the top is nice.

Unlike restaurants, it shouldn't be swimming in sauce, just coated.

Lots of vids on youtube. Search on Martin Yan.

 

Spaghetti is the easiest in my opinion. Here's your list.

Ground hamburger -$4.50 lb, I buy organic, if not probably $2.50 lb
Spaghetti Sauce - $2.50 I like any low sodium sauce
Spaghetti noodles - $1

$8 bucks total, for probably 2-3 meals, $2.66 per meal is not bad.

I like to make my own meatballs, but you can just fry the ground meat. You could even add a loaf of French bread for $1. Easy!!

 

Here is a good one for those who don't like to cook easy to prepare and put it in the oven not hard at all.

Rice krispire chicken
Pour some rice krispies in a bowl (kellogs cereal)
Melt a stick of butter in sauce pan (sorry some cooking for those that can't boil water)
Pack of chicken breast
dumd butter into a bowl put the chiken in the bowl covering it with butter
next put the chicken in the cereal and cover.
put chicken on a cookie sheet or a pan for oven, repeat with rest of chicken.
set oven to 350 and cook for about an hour or until chicken cooked through.
enjoy.

Trying to those with limited cooking ability an option instead of eating the same stuff all the time. I know after eating chicken for 4 months straight I have not had any chickn since being back home.

 

never tried that

 

Its easy man. I usually start in the meat section. Then follow the outer perimeter inside the store. So around to the milk aisle, then cheese. Then circle back and get some vegetables and fruit. Get some bread, pasta. Snacks. I wouldn't recommend going up and down every aisle. Thats where most of the junk waste of money filler crap is at.

Buy enough meat to last a week so you can just put the leftovers in the fridge so you won't be cooking over and over every night.

Start looking up recipes of food you like online and go buy the shit at the store. Practice making them. Soon you'll have a nice collection of seasoning/sauces and shit. The more meals you make for yourself the better you'll be at cooking and knowing how much to buy and what size portions.

 

You can usually find a decent roast at Safeway for a good price. Put it in a crock pot. Buy some crock pot seasoning and throw it in there with some water and olive oil. I usually buy some bell peppers and slice em up and throw it in there. Potatoes, jalapenos, chilies, let it cook all day while mixing it every hour or so.

Crock pot cookin is the easiest thing out there. You can't really mess it up. the longer it cooks the more tender the roast is and more flavors are released.

 

when i was single, i ate the same thing just about every week or so.

spaghetti
hamburgers
hot dogs
shake and back chicken and instant potatoes w/green beans
frozen lasagna
pork chops with potatoes

throw in a occasional pizza or chinese and you got yourself a 2 week routine that is fairly cheap and easy.

here's a simple recipe that last about 2 days.

3 pork chops bone in or boneless
3 potatoes
1 onion
1 carrot
1 green pepper
couple of mushrooms if you like
salt
pepper

lay pork chops in foil lined pan in a triangle shape

o x o
x o x

x = pork chop o = potatoes

Cut potatoes ALMOST in half both directions and pack with butter.
lay them in the empty spaces.

salt and pepper pork chops

cut onion and lay DIRECTLY on top of pork chops

then cut carrots and green pepper and mushrooms up and just scatter them in the pan.

Fold the foil over and seal the edges.

400 for an hour and your done.

Awesome. can also use steaks, hamburgers, chicken, whatever meat you like. Pork Chops work the best imo.

 

I freeze just about everything. I usually only grocery shop once a month and spend about $100-150 on stuff that will last me all month. Then go back once a week or every other week for milk, cereal, bread, OJ, bananas, etc..stuff that runs out quick.

I usually buy a lot of chicken and grill it. I buy the big thing of boneless skinless chicken breasts I think its usually about 6 breasts. When I get home I slice them into two thin breasts (thaws fast, cooks fast, smaller portion) then I put them into ziplock freezer bags and freeze them. Then I can take them out a few at a time and reseal the bag. Thaw them in cold water in the sink for about 30ish minutes.

I also will buy pork chops and sirloin steaks for when I get bored of chicken. Freeze those too. I usually only eat a steak maybe once a month.

I also buy lots of lawrys marinades. I like variety they offer bc I can't stand eating them same thing over and over again. I will switch to a different marinade every night they have tons of different marinades. Plus you only need half the bottle. I marinade the meat for about 30 minutes, then baste it on the grill with the rest. Then the other half of the bottle I dont use I put in the fridge to use later.

For sides I alternate between frozen veggies, pasta, or rice. I usually buy rice-a-roni long grain wild rice if i'm eating rice. For pasta I buy the liptons pasta sides (usually enough to feed two) I alternate on what kind of pasta I wanna eat. If I do veggies I usually cook them in my cast iron skillet with a little garlic, salt, pepper on the the grill with the meat on the rack.

If I don't feel like cooking dinner I usually eat a PB&J (lots of crunchy peanut butter) with a smoothie. I buy the assorted frozen fruit, mix that with a banana, orange juice, and some blueberries.

My only "junk" food is I like the Publix premium thin crust frozen pizzas. I will make those occassionally. I usually add lots of garlic and pesto to the white spinach pizza (MMM tasty).