Black beans on the crock pot:
- 454g of dry black beans
- 1 onion, diced
- 1 teaspoon of garlic powder
- 4 bay leaves (big)
- 1 piece of dried kombu
- 2 carrots, sliced
Add everything to the crock pot, with 6 cups of water. Cook for 5 hours on high. Once it's done, add 2 teaspoons of salt and mix well.
I make this every Sunday, and eat throughout the week with fresh rice, salad, nuts, and some protein (tofu or soy in my case). It's delicious and nutritious.
Here to introduce you some of the easiest comfort Korean food: Kimchi Fried Rice!
Stir fry some leftover kimchi with some salt and some soy sauce and some olive oil(you can skip that tho). Put cooked rice after 1-2min and cook for another 3 min.
If you don't like Kimchi's strong flavor this is definitely the way to try. There's plenty of recipies online and honestly it's a recipie that just couldn't go wrong.
As a college student, I live off of that.
In winter I find soups are great dishes with minimal effort. I chop up some root veg, roast it in the oven until it's soft then mix it with some liquid and blend it. You can use whatever you have on hand (carrots, squash, pumpkin, sweet potatoes) and you can vary the liquid as well. I usually use vegetable stock but coconut milk works well. Add some spices to the vegetables when roasting or just stick with some salt. Then just serve with the nicest bread you can get hold of and eat!
In summer, I always enjoy pasta dishes with some kind of pesto. All you need for a normal pesto is garlic, toasted nuts, oil, an Italian hard cheese and basil. Pine nuts are traditional but cashews are more readily available (and cheaper where I live). If you've got a lemon, squeeze some juice in as well. The last month or so has been wild garlic season so I've foraged for the leaves and used it in place of both the basil and garlic. Carrot, beetroot and radish leaves are good too (plus others I haven't tried that I'm sure will also work) or you can roast beetroot or pepper and blend them into the mixture. I just serve this with some pasta, vegetables and cheese (normally feta) and you can make the pesto quite quickly while the pasta is cooking.
Fried rice. It takes a good bit of technique, but I was able to practice a lot and get good at it while living somewhere where I had a high temperature wok burner. Now that I have the technique down, I can manage pretty well in an ordinary skillet on an electric stove, and it's super easy and quick once you know what' you're doing.
Lentil soup with rice. My wife calls it her favorite comfort food.
What I do is:
Preheat a dutch oven with a little olive oil over medium heat
Dice 2 small/1 large yellow onion
Chop (don't peel) 2 small/1 large yukon gold potato
Chop a couple of carrots and sometimes a couple of celery stalks
Start the onions cooking down first (sometimes adding just a touch of brown sugar)
After a little bit I add the rest of the veggies and a lot of cumin powder
Wait until all the veggies are getting a just bit tender/browned, stirring occasionally
Add a little bit of white wine and scrape off bits at the bottom of the pot
Add 4 cups water and 4 teaspoons Chicken Better than Bullion
Add more cumin, a bit a ground cardamom, ground coriander, and garlic powder
Let it boil a bit for the veggies to get even more tender
Add 1 cup red lentils and simmer
At this point I start cooking some white rice in my instant pot, takes about 15 minutes
Just about when the rice is done, the lentils should be soft, so take an immersion blender and blend until smooth (should still be a little chunky)
Salt and add bit of lemon juice and/or white wine vinegar to taste
Serve over the rice, garnish with some fresh parsley if wanted
Ok writing it out maybe not the absolute easiest dish -- but I think its pretty simple and most of it is totally on auto-pilot. Totally delicious and the leftovers are amazing too.
Chilli is maybe not super super easy to make, but you can make a ton of it, freeze the rest and eat it every day / every other day in a different style, one day burrito, one day nachos, one day with rice, etc etc.
Japanese curry is always a nice comfort food.
Cook whatever pasta you got. Throw some silken tofu, plant milk, nooch, salt, pepper, and some kind of fat in a blender, taste and add whatever flavor you feel like. Cook some garlic, throw sauce in, add spinach, tomatoes chickpeas, or whatever veggies you want and stir the noodles in. Add more pepper. Usually the sauce is ready by the time the noodles are done so its very quick. Plus its got a bunch of b12, protein, iron, etc depending on what you put in.
latte with oat milk + cig 👩🍳🤌
(suppresses appetite and tasty, honestly ditch the cig even, i haven’t eaten in days)
I’ll do a simple stir fry. Diced chicken breast or thigh (salted and peppered) I’ll stir fry them and lightly mix in some sauce (sometimes a Thai sauce or general Tso sauce). I’ll also add some veggies, mostly broccoli and mushrooms but sometimes peppers and peas. And also I’ll make some rice as a side dish.
Hamburger gravy over rice is good delicious comfort food and you can mix it up with add-ins pretty easy
The basic idea is:
- Brown 1lb of hamburger, 80% or 93%, your choice, but don't drain
- Dump in a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup
- Cook up 3/4c of white rice
Spread the gravy over the rice in a tupperware or pyrex container, stick it in the fridge, and later you can cut it out like a thick casserole and heat up. It looks gross but your tongue will love it. The hamburger gravy keeps the rice from getting crappy like it usually does in the fridge.
I like to double up the burger and rice but keep the single can of soup, and mix in a bundle of green onions, 16oz white mushrooms, 4 habaneros, a half a yellow onion, a couple cloves of garlic, and some celery or carrots or anaheim pepper slices or something for a little crunch. Still super easy to make but less salty, a bit of spicy kick, very yummy. Still will look pretty gross haha, but I swear it tastes amazing, your body will crave it.
Skillet Chicken Bulgogi is my go-to for a quick and easy meal. Cook some rice alongside it, and you have an easy way to make several days of food.
West Indian Red Beans and Rice. The cookbook it's originally from, Moosewood Simple Suppers, has a bunch of fairly easy vegetarian/pescatarian recipes. I use it all the time.
Slice up about a third of a can of Spam into slabs, and cook them in a pan until brown and crispy. Then cook up some basic ramen. After the Spam is done, make a simple over easy egg. Put it all together, and you've got a simple and pretty cheap meal thatll keep you full until Gabriel's horn sounds
Pasta salad!
You only cook noodles. Lol
Noods, vegetables (cucumber, onion, celery, raddish, carrots), and a mayo and salt&pepper sauce. EZPZ
For more flavor use chipotle mayo.
I like to also add tuna sometimes.So tasty.
So. Much. Pasta.
Here are two more:
- Cook spaghetti; drain and set aside
- In pasta pot, heat generous amount of olive oil
- Add sage leaves; fry until almost crisp
- Add fresh chopped garlic; continue to fry until sage is crisp and garlic bits are brown
- Remove from heat; spaghetti back onto pot and toss. Add salt to taste.
- Serve
3 ingredients (excluding salt, olive oil, and water) and it takes about 15 minutes.
My second current favorite is cous-cous. You just use whatever you have handy. You just add in butter, raisins, almond slivers (or almost any combination of fats, sugars, and protein you have in the cupboard) and cooks in 5 minutes, with no fussing or stirring. The deliciousness-to-effort ratio is insanely high.
Mmmm Kraft dinner + tuna
the grilled cheese sandwich ease/pleasure ratio is hard to beat.
Rice with bacon, onion and cheese.
Cut bacon and onion into small pieces. First, cook the bacon and onions until the bacon is crispy and the onions start to brown. Then, add the raw rice, and make sure every grain gets coated with the bacon fat. Then add the water. Cook the rice normally (until all the water is gone). Turn off the heat, and cover for a few minutes.
Get shredded cheese (not from package; either buy at deli or shred it yourself) and/or cut mozzarella cubes. Sometimes I use both, since shredded cheese is salty and mozzarella is more bland.
For the leftovers, I will add a beaten egg.
For extra ease, you can replace raw onions with dehydrated onion and bacon with salami/pepperoni.
Usually wraps filled with salad, black or red beans, tomatoes, paprika and tofu.
Simple burritos/tacos. Cumin and Chilli powder roughly 50/50 (makes a basic taco seasoning), and ground beef in a pan. Mix well while cooking and put on either hard shell tacos or inside a burrito with whatever toppings.
just a simple chicken breast with a side of asparagus.
i like to marinate the chicken by slathering it with a mix of mayo and barbeque sauce, and letting it marinate for 12-24 hours. then I cook it on an iron skillet with those raised grill bits until it's done. I cook the asparagus next to it towards the end, along with some fresh-chopped garlic. (fresh/frozen mixed veggies also works). serve with some wine if you have it.
simple and cheap.
Chicken Rice pilaf. Dice 1 onion, brown it it in a big pot with olive oil. Cut 2 chicken breasts into bite sized cubes and add it to the pot once onion is browned. Shed 3 carrots and put them in the pot. Clean 2 cups of rice and put it in the pot, add water to just barely cover the rice. Add about 1/4 Tbs of salt and 1/4Tbs of pepper. Simmer for about 15 minutes. Peal 8 garlic cloves and insert them into rice. Simmer for 5 more minutes or until all the water is gone (be careful not to scorch the bottom)
This is a heavy modification of https://momsdish.com/recipe/222/uzbek-plov Uzbek people will probably lynch me for this 😅
Spaghetti aglio olio
When I'm a bit lazy my go to dish is pasta with gruyere cheese.
If no cheese left, some rice with leftover from fridge.Tuna Tomato Pasta
Boil some spaghetti and simmer some jar marinara.
Saute a bunch of garlic. Then drop in a few anchovies and cook until dissolved. Add some crushed capers and chili flakes. Add the cooked pasta and stir to coat then start ladling in the marina until it's as saucy as you like. Then dump in a can or two of good tuna packed in oil and stir around until combined.
take a little bit of every vegetable and whole spice you have, coarsely chop and stir fry it all up in a big pot with the most aromatic ones first using some olive oil, add some rinsed and sorted lentils and some water or broth, add iodized salt to taste, bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer for 1 hour. optionally top with some kefir and serve with whole grain bread or some white rice and more vegetables on the side if you want.
Rabdi. It is made with just milk and sugar.
I like to do pasta with cream sauce
Fry some chopped bacon in a pan until its as crispy as you like it. Like 5+ strips is probably good. Dice an onion, chop some baby portobellos, and mince about 5 cloves of garlic (I love garlic) while the bacon is frying. When it's nearly done, add the onions and a ton of butter and a bit or olive oil, add some salt, and go heavy on the black pepper, thyme, basil, oregano, maybe some sage and rosemary if you want.
Add the garlic, and 300-450g minced pork, and sprinkle some cayenne pepper and a small amount of fennel seeds (if you have em) on top. Combine it all together as best as you can, then add the mushrooms. While that's going, chop up half a bell pepper and slice around 10-12 cherry tomatoes in halves from top to bottom, adding them as you go and stir it around. While the tomatoes are cooking, smash them with your stirring spoon or whatever you're using to get the tomato juice out into the meat.
When it's all cooked, add about 250-300ml crème fraîche and stir it all around. Taste it and trust your taste buds to see what it needs. Things I'll usually add are some more cayenne, more butter, and I always need more salt. Sometimes more of the herbs too, maybe even garlic. Just add & taste little by little until it's delicious. Let it simmer, you can add a bit of regular cooking cream if you want to thin it out a little. Maybe more butter. A pinch of MSG if you have it. While the noodles are cooking, add a bunch of spinach, stir it around, and turn off the heat.
It goes really well with tagliatelle, or other flat noodles. Anything with a lot of surface area, really. Top with a bunch of parmesan and fresh chopped parsley.
This came out longer than I thought, but it's super easy. I just have a bad habit of oversharing details.
Risotto is pretty easy when you get the hang of it. It also doesn't require a lot of other ingredients, if you have a slice of ham in the fridge you'll be fine.
Either spaghetti carbonara (any old pasta with a cream sauce, mushrooms, onion, bacon/pancetta, and parmesan); French onion soup; or Welsh rarebit.
Cai fan - pronounced tsai fan 3 ingredients: rice, bok choy, and a bag of Chinese sausages.
You cut up the sausage, toss it in the rice cooker alongside the rice and just set that to cook rice.
Then you cook the cut up bok choy in a pan for a few minutes. Mix the bok choy in with the rice/sausage when the latter is done cooking.
Ez. I wish I knew about this in college...
This thread is oops all pasta, so here is one that isn't. Take a head of cabbage and quarter. Remove core and slice into half inch to inch strips. Dice a whole onion. Simmer the onion in a large pot with some butter. When it is cooked add in cabbage, a can of diced tomatoes and salt. Slice about 2 lbs of polish sausage and add to pot. Cook for as long as you like. Should serve 5-6 people.
For a snack, peanut butter cornflake balls.
Melt peanut butter and corn syrup together
Crush cornflakes (or cereal of your choice)
Mix the melted peanut butter mix and cornflakes together.
Form into balls and place on a wax paper covered flat pan and put in the refrigerator to cool for at least an hour.
I was trying to edit my post for formatting and accidentally hit delete so I’m re-posting…
Not a full meal but a quick snack I recently discovered
Cheese crisp:
-preheat non stick skillet on medium heat
-put a flour tortilla in skillet
-top with shredded Mexican blend cheese
-cover until cheese melts
You can also add other toppings (pickled jalapeño, etc). Quick, easy, and delicious
I've gone vegetarian, but my old go to for a special meal that took basically no effort? Boiled pot roast.
You take a pot. Any kind as long as it fits the roast. You put the roast in. Add seasoning. Add water. Let it boil for a few hours. When you're ready to eat it it's probably long since finished. Yeah, you can put it in a crock pot or an oven pan or whatever but I didn't have those. Used this method to make corned beef brisket as a Christmas thing for awhile.
Now that I'm vegetarian? Hamburger helper. Fry some vegetarian hamburger. Add pasta. Add water and seasoning. Let simmer til done.
Baked ziti. I'm a vegan, and cashew cheese sauce is super easy to make, and its very wuick to throw some sauce and pasta together snd chuck it in the over.
I've got a simple recipe for meatloaf that I got from my dad, and he got from his mum. I'll lay it out below.
700g mince 5% fat
~45g oatmeal
1 large egg
1 medium red onion
1 pack streaky bacon
3 good squeezes of ketchup
10g brown or demerara sugar
A splash of olive oil
Fresh ground pepper to taste
Mix mince, egg, and chunky diced onion, add oatmeal to make the mix a bit drier, should be able to make a small ball and not leave any on your fingers. Line a metal loaf tin with the bacon so the strips hang half out over the edge. Pack the mince mixture in tight. Mix the ketchup, sugar, and olive oil. Spread half over the top of the mince, then wrap the bacon over the top and spread the rest ofthe ketchup mix. Crack pepper over top to taste. Cook at 170°C for ~30mins, probably less. Pull it out when internal temp hits ~70°c as residual heat will finish the cooking while it rests for 10mins.
Yogurt dill dip. I use this recipe. It's an incredibly flavorful dip, sauce, or salad dressing. I made a batch of six cups recently for a family & friends dinner where it worked as dip for pita chips, topping for meat, dressing for salad, and topping for broccoli.
Here's a carbonara dish:
Ingredients
-
500g/1lb pasta
-
1 brown onion, finely diced
-
2-5 cloves garlic
-
1 capsicum
-
1 punnet white button mushrooms, thinly sliced
-
2 egg
-
1 cup grated cheese - plus extra for serving
-
1/2lb / 100g shaved ham (or bacon), roughly chopped
-
1 courgette, grated
Steps:
-
Bring a big pot of salted water to the boil (plenty of salt) Cook pasta in pot of boiling water for until just tender (depends heavily on which pasta, check back of pack for cooking time, and take a minute or two off then eat a test piece to see if it needs more). Reserve 1 cup pasta cooking water, then drain. Return pasta to put with a drizzle of olive oil to prevent sticking. Set aside.
-
While pasta is cooking, heat a little oil in a medium frying pan on medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic, and cook for 2-3 mins until softened. While onion cooks, remove core and seeds of capsicum and thinly slice.
-
Add capsicum and mushroom to pan with onion and cook for 2-3 minutes, until just tender. While capsicum and mushrooms cook, whisk egg in a small bowl. Add cream, salt, and first measure of cheese then mix to combine. Set aside.
-
Add ham and courgette to pan with mushrooms and cook for 1-2 minutes, until warmed through . Reduce pan heat to low-medium.
-
Add 1/2 of the reserved pasta water and cooked, drained pasta to pan and stir to coat. Add egg/cream mixture and mix well to combine. If you would like more sauce, stir through more pasta water. Allow sauce to gently heat through for about 1 minute - don't overcook or egg will go lumpy. Season with salt and a generous amount of black pepper.
To serve: divide creamy carbonara between plates and sprinkle over remaining cheese.Personally I leave out the mushroom (no one in our house likes it) then cover in tomato sauce (kind of like ketchup). Probably some sort of crime to do this though.
-
Pan-fried tofu and garlic with a dash of soy sauce.
Mine changes every few months, depending on energy levels. Right now it's scrambled or boiled eggs with toast.
In the winter I was obsessed with making a cabbage & random vegetable soup. I just shredded the cabbage, cut up and sauteed various veggies in olive oil (carrots, potatoes, parsnips, celery root, etc), put in spices (pepper, thyme, paprika, bay leaf, and whatever else seemed fun), then added the cabbage and waited until it lost some volume, added hot water/stock, boiled for 30-40min. Towards the end I might add some bell peppers or broccoli or other vegetable with a short cooking time. After removing from the stove, I did a couple pulses with the immersion blender to thicken the soup while leaving whole veggie bit inside. Finally, I topped with lemon juice after serving.
bhel puri
This is one of my goto's if I want something quick
Low Sodium Ribeye Fajitas
edit: could also use chicken breast instead of ribeye. I just made it that way last night.
Seasoning: (adjust to taste, I don't do these exact amounts every time) * 1 tsp cumin * 1/2 tsp oregano * 3/4 tsp garlic powder * 1/4 tsp onion powder * 1/4 tsp pepper * optional: dash of red pepper flakes mix together seasoning ingredients in small bowl * 1 ribeye steak, sliced * sliced red bell pepper * sliced green bell pepper * sliced onion * optional: sliced jalapenos * olive oil( I'm usually lazy and buy fajita pepper and onion mix at Kroger that's already sliced )
Fry your slices of steak in some olive oil until they're about halfway cooked and then add the bell peppers and onion. When it's near done add in the seasoning mixture. Serve on tortillas with sour cream or however you like it. Quick prep and cook time!
French toast with a little Nutella and bananas
Roast brussel sprouts:
- quarter brussel sprouts until you have enough to cover the bottom of a cast iron or carbon steel oven safe pan without crowding; a glass casserole dish will also work
- toss in cooking oil of choice, salt, pepper, herbs of choice, e.g. herbs de provence
- 420F for 30 minutes, stirring at 10 and 20 minutes, optionally sprinkling with shredded parmesan at 20 minutes
End result should be crisped on edges. Probably the side dish I've made more than than any other.
Beer cheese Mac and cheese no measuring required (all ingredients are sold/packaged in the exact amounts needed for this recipe)
Ingredients :
- 12oz can/bottle of beer (lagers or ales work best, avoid dark beers)
- 8oz package of cream cheese
- 1lb bag of shredded cheddar
- 1lb box of elbows or whatever pasta you want
Steps:
- Cook the pasta (I'm assuming most people already know how to cook pasta) and perform the rest of the steps at the same time while the pasta is cooking
- Pour entire bottle/can of beer into a large pot and bring to a boil.
- Turn heat down to medium-high and wait for the foam (if any) to settle a little bit
- Put entire package of cream cheese into the beer, use a wooden spoon/spatula to break it into smaller chunks as it melts, until it is mostly melted
- Add the shredded cheddar a little bit at a time until the entire bag is in the pot
- Continue to stir and break up chunks until all the cheese and cream cheese is melted
- Turn heat to low for the beer cheese, and finish cooking the pasta if not already
- Mix in cooked pasta into beer cheese pot
This serves 4-5 people, but it leftovers pretty well so don't be afraid of having extra
As this is sort of a basic recipe, its easy to add optional extras too it as well. Some of my favorites are diced jalapeno, crumbled bacon, bits of steak, or broccoli
I made coffee jelly recently. It was really easy to do, the hardest part being the whipped cream (my arms 😭). And when I finally got to eat it I'd realised that I found my favourite dessert. Thank you Saiki K for introducing me to this heavenly flavour 🙏 (even though it took me over a year to finally get around to making it).
I like to make a stir fry with hokkien noodles Start with some frozen stir fry vegetables and some oil. Once the veg is mostly thawed, I'll add some kind of protein, usually eggs. The egg gets scrambled then fried in a large skillet on med-high heat until it starts to brown, then flip and repeat. Don't move the egg around while its cooking, it should be like an omelette. Roll up the egg and cut into thin strips and mix with the veg, add the noodles and cook for a minute. Stir in your sauce of choice, usually I use teriyaki or black bean sauce.
Done in <10 min
Chili. Not a ton of work but always delicious. Best bang for the
buckwork.Just crack an egg or two on a pan. Grate some cheese on it (not sure on the English name of the cheese I use, but not all of them will work as well). Depending on how I'm feeling that day I might cut up some sausage on top as well. Season with a fuck ton of salt and black pepper.
You can either eat it directly off the pan with slices of bread or throw it inside two large slices of bread and eat it like a sandwich. If you're going for the second approach make sure you cook the egg well, otherwise you're gonna be making a mess.
@Npenplz
I make toast and put an easy cream sauce (fry some flour in butter, add milk or half and half and salt/pepper) and deli ham and boiled eggs on it. My mother used to make this for my brother and I as young children.Easy: tuna salad sandwich. Not cooked tho
Cooked easy: Reina pepiada. Venezuelan arepa, really easy to make. You'll need arepa flour, stringy savoury cheese, rotisserie chicken, avocado and herbs. Hardest part is making the batter pancakes. Not venezuelan though, so don't think this is authentic.
pasta with spinach sauce. I've always got some frozen spinach chunks in my freezer, so it's a matter of defrosting, adding sour cream and some garlic and letting it simmer for a while, and I'm ready to go.
