it is no secret that I am not much for the cooking. to be fair I’m not much for the eating either. traditionally it has been my gf who has cooked for us both. trouble is she has bougie tastes and the food she makes for us, while usually delicious, is a. expensive b. labour intensive and c. not very good for us.
anyway the point of this message is: what are your best Meals For Three People? preferably that can be made with ingredients that are a few days old (we go to the store once a week, usually), don’t take TOO much time or skill to make (so I can make them myself after a work day) and aren’t straight up terrible for you (ideally I would like to involve at least one vegetable)
we don’t eat cow/pig/etc. we do eat birds and fish.
: stews in general are really good for this, fish isn’t much for stewing but birds are pretty good for it (just put the meat in a little later than you might put in a ground animal). stews with meat + root veggie + stock + herbs + 90 minutes of simmering = fantastic. generally we simmer the meat for an hour with the herbs, then the veggies with it for another 30 minutes. bird meat probably wants a little less time on its own, but honestly it’s difficult to overstew meat unless you’re doing it for hours and hours and hours
you can probably also substitute the lamb/beef in shepherd’s pie with ground chicken, though the texture seems. bad. fish is genuinely a lot easier than it sounds, especially something like salmon. that can be pretty easily lathered with a sauce and baked until flaky for something good, add a side and it’s generally not gonna be that expensive for 3 people (especially if it’s frozen fillets rather than fresh) and the veg can be a side, especially roasted veg (again, roasted root veg is the bomb)
quesadillas are really good and REALLY easy, especially with chicken: a bag of shredded cheese is pretty cheap, you can pick up and cook bulk chicken thighs fairly easily, and you can add bell peppers and onions for the veg. since the ingredients are cheap and you can put pretty much whatever in them, they’re super easily customizable too (like adding salsa or tomatoes or pretty much whatever)
chicken parm is also really good: if you can find frozen, breaded chicken cutlets premade you can just slather tomato sauce on top, add a generous amount of shredded parm, and stick it in the oven for however long
more forthcoming, but im posting this so you can think about it/respond
roast/bake some chicken thighs with butter, lemon/lemon juice, and some like onion and garlic. make some rice to go with it, and maybe some broccoli. plate it up and pour the sauce the onion and garlic and lemon created onto the chicken and rice and you’ve got a tasty meal babey. chicken thighs are a really good choice for meat since they’re hard to overcook, and even if you do it’ll still be good.
also seconding GhostQueens on stews and soups. a chicken and rice soup with just some chicken, carrots, onion, celery, and store bought broth + rice is lovely. you can even buy a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken and then shred the meat in to make it easier. honestly if you have any sort of meat + broth + vegetable laying around you can probably very easily throw it into a pot and make a pretty decent soup. like chicken + broth + salsa or pico de gallo and some cilantro or something and bam you got a soup right there.
if your store has pre-made chicken sausage or meatballs that’ll also make for a good quick cheap pasta meal. you can just add a store bought sauce of ur choice and then kick it up with some spices.
Also a followup - this one-pot chicken & rice dish Fucks severely. I haven’t looked much at the rest of the recipe blog but they probably have other good Cheap options. Very good flavor for relatively low cost & effort (tho the chopping can add up)
Dropping by with some of my Chinese pantry meal faves. Admittedly they’re a little skewed bc so many of them rely on pork as a staple protein, but there’s a couple that adapt well.
Scallion Oil Noodles
Chinese version of pasta aglio e olio. You fill your pan with alliums (scallions, shallots/onions, leeks if you’re a fan), salt, and oil, and then toss a bunch of cooked noodles/pasta in it. Cook the whites first, then add the greens. Traditionally made with salt pork, but if you can get dried shrimp for your pantry, those are also a perfect substitute. I like adding finely chopped mushrooms as well, bc they take up the salt and add a lot of flavor
Tomato Egg
Literally what it says on the tin. Get a bunch of tomatoes, chop them up, stir fry until mildly wilted, then pour in a bunch of whisked eggs and scramble them together. The amount of egg is always 1+the number of people. I prefer the eggs firmer (and also with a splash of cooking wine) but you can literally do the scramble part however you like. Usually I have these over rice with some blanched/stir fried vegetable.
Egg Fried Rice is a more advanced cousin of Egg Tomato that has also been my staple for Using Up Leftover Shit. You can toss so many vegetables in there. If you wanna chop up a bunch of chicken you’ll also have a great time. Shrimp will be a better pick than finfish because it won’t fragment quite as badly, but assuming you have leftover already-cooked fish, you can toss that in after all the raw stuff cooks.
The main tip for fried rice is that much like PEMDAS there is an order of operations as to what gets cooked first. I start with meat (heavily salted), which is then removed so that the rest of the veg can cook in the residual oil. Veg goes from longest to shortest cook time (onions → carrots → bell pepper → leafy greens/peas as an example). Egg goes second-to-last, followed by the rice once the egg is fully solid. One downside to making this at scale is eventually your arm can get tired after tossing all the combined ingredients.
Edit: Also! One of my favorite ways to cook fish is just. Salting both sides, then steaming it with ginger and one stalk of scallion. It is extremely easy to do, but unfortunately Does require that you have a setup for steaming. Pan frying is an option I also like, but works best with filets that have skin on them.
One-Skillet Greek Lemon Chicken and Potatoes
Prep time:10 min Cook Time: 26 to 30 min
Servings: serves 6
ingredients:
1 kilogram of gold potatoes
2 lemons (1 1/2)
5 cloves garlic
6 bone in skin on chicken thighs
1 and 1/2 teaspoons salt
3/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
23ml olive oil
1 tablespoon dried oregano
directions:
Arrange a rack and heat the oven to 200 celcius (400 fahrenheit on the original recipe).
bring a medium pot of salted water to a boil
quarter the gold potatoes, thinly slice a lemon and remove the seeds from the slices; cut the second lemon in half and reserve it for later. thinly slice 5 garlic cloves. pat 6 bone-in skin-on chicken thighs dry with paper towels and season with 3/4 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper.
drizzle 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil into a ten inch or larger oven safe skillet. add the chicken, skin side down. cook undisturbed over medium heat until the skin is well browned and crisp, about 15 minutes.
meanwhile, add the potatoes to the boiling water and cook until fork tender, about 10 minutes, then drain
transfer the chicken to a plate, skin side up. add the potatoes, garlic, oregano, remaining salt and pepper to the skillet. cook, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are lightly browned in spots, 3 to 5 minutes.
Nestle the chicken on top of the potatoes and top with the lemon slices. roast in the oven until the chicken is cooked through 8-10 min. squeeze the juice from a half of the reserved lemon over the chicken and potatoes.
I had to redo some of the measurements to convert them so hopefully they came out alright
: I need to post about this cuz it’s deeply baffling.
There’s a local Fancy Brunch Place that does seasonal menus, local fare, all that jazz, super bougie, super expensive, pretty tasty. The kind of place that automatically adds a 20% tip for you no matter what. It’s a cool place, just pricey.
Anyway, their current menu features a scallop dish served on risotto made with farro instead of rice. Farro is a kind of wheat, a fancy kind of wheat, the kind of wheat health nuts go nuts over cuz it’s “ancient” and expensive.
This is not my confusion.
My confusion is that the dish is labelled as gluten free.
The dish which contains farro. A wheat. Which famously contains gluten.
Am I the idiot? Do I not know how gluten works? Is farro a magically unglutened wheat? Does somebody know what’s going on here, or have they forgotten they put wheat in their dish as a main component? I’m so confused.
Looking like, based on cursory research, that it is definitely NOT gluten-free. Why they would claim that is uncertain, although one article did mention that the structure of gluten in farro is different from other, more common grains and so tolerance for it will likely be different for someone with Celiac’s than other grains would be, but still, not gluten-free.
we were making cornbread in class so we brought stuff to make it cheddar jalapeño cornbread, was a big hit with everyone. i just wish i had cut the sugar since it was kind of a sweet recipe. still pretty good tho!!
: stews in general are really good for this, fish isn’t much for stewing but birds are pretty good for it (just put the meat in a little later than you might put in a ground animal). stews with meat + root veggie + stock + herbs + 90 minutes of simmering = fantastic. generally we simmer the meat for an hour with the herbs, then the veggies with it for another 30 minutes. bird meat probably wants a little less time on its own, but honestly it’s difficult to overstew meat unless you’re doing it for hours and hours and hours
: I need to post about this cuz it’s deeply baffling.
