How does Veeky Forums cook for one person? I only recently started cooking all my meals but it's really hard to find recipes I can cut down. It's especially hard to shop because I end up with so many leftover ingredients.
Are there any Veeky Forums bachelor approved recipes and methods for preparing single serving meals?
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You need to freeze things. Make 5 different meals on sunday, divide and freeze. You'll have food for a couple of weeks.
Also consider freezing your leftover veggies and making your own stock. Even thinks like cilantro stalks can go in.
Also consider making something elemental the first day, like steak or chicken, then the next day cooking the leftovers into something new, like chili or burritos.
What's wrong with leftovers for a couple days? Are you one of those faggots?
Stews, soups, anything that can hold a couple days.
Proper food storage.
As
Have stated a good freezer can let you keep many cooked foods indefinitely. I had made a ton of corn on the cob two weeks ago and I am still eating them.
As with a relatively airtight container you can store plenty of dry goods as well. Pasta, beans, and cereal come to mind.
If space is super tight you need to get creative. Canned tuna is about the cheapest convenience protein you can get. (Whole wheat) pasta is the cheapest complex carb you can get. Milk is the cheapest blend of fat/protein.
As someone living the same lifestyle, if you cook with the intention of keeping leftovers you end up eating the same two meals for an entire week. For the rest of your life.
Unless OP is poor, I wouldn't recommend that path.
Not OP, but I personally hate most foods leftover because they taste awful cold or re-heated. I have to have fresh-made meals, so when I cook I do it in single-meal portions. Because of the nature of ingredients, I'll have enough for several meals, I'll just make each meal individually. Of course, this also leads me to get burned out very quickly and I go through depressing periods of either eating out or falling back onto boring easy foods like sandwiches.
Describe your resources and the way you used to cook.
One reason to invest in a food saver as well.
i make mostly sandwiches, slow cooker stuff, chili, and things that i can scale down to only need 1 (2 if they are small) chicken breast
That's why you cook at least 5 meals.
Also OP, every single vegetable that is starting to look like it passed its prime, goes into stews or soups. You need to start thinking out of the box. Forget about recipes.
Usually I start cooking at 6, cut up half a fennel (leave the rest for next dinner) a carrot, capsicum, cabbage or leek or whatever and either toss them with olive oil salt & pepper and put them in the oven or sauté something while I pan fry some lamb chops or bake a fish in the oven or whatever and everythings ready for serving at 7.
single office drone here
cook meals for 2 (and try not to remember how happy ashley made you in the process) and eat the left over the next day for lunch. repeat forever
>trying to be happier after breakup
>decide to start weaning myself off Veeky Forums starting with /b/
>come to Veeky Forums
>this is the first thing I see
thanks for the feels trip
At least you got trips for your trip
Veeky Forums clearly missed you
/b/tards are barely human underage retarded crap
Single oldfag guy here, have been cooking for myself for 15 years now. The main point I can give you to take away is this: get used to eating the same ingredient a few meals in a row. You will also occasionally throw something out, but don't sweat it - you've probably only lost like 50 cents worth of cilantro or a dollar worth of some other thing that doesn't freeze well - it isn't a big deal.
Don't bother joining a CSA or a Costco/Sam's Club/BJ's type place, as it's a huge waste of money for you. If someone gifts you a membership or they have a free promo, then go for it and buy non-perishables like toilet paper by the 50-pack or buy things that you can freeze if you won't be eating it all.
Unless you're an autist or some insanely busy person, don't be one of those idiots that meal preps. Eating the same shit 5 days straight every week is miserable. Cook pasta and make enough for one leftover meal - maybe to take to work the next day for lunch. Make a pot of rice, and refrigerate the leftovers - use it as the base for two other dishes later in the week.
Most of all, understand that you can prepare one ingredient a number of ways. My local farmer's market had squash & zucchini on sale for a quarter each, so i bought six. I've used it in stir fry, tikka masala, omelette, bolognese sauce and as fritters (pic related). Dunno what I'll use the last one for, perhaps a repeat in a meat sauce for pasta.
Most vegetables, which let's face it, should be a big mainstay in your diet, are versatile and often interchangeable. Grains are easily reheatable or at least microwaveable and can also be made with tons of different flavors.
Buy a lot of spices and learn how to use them in various applications. Without walking to my kitchen, I can tell you my spice shelf has at least 25 different products on it. Changing things up helps a ton.
The path to redemption has to start somewhere.
Better coming here then other boards.
I will echo this.
I will add a key part of cooking for yourself is to *enjoy* what you eat. Which means don't ever think you can eat something 5 times in a week. Only ever make that many portions if it is something that can be frozen for a month or more with minimal change.
It doesn't matter how cheap the meal is if it makes you unhappy you will get lazy and eat something else anyway. It is OK to have a common ingredient but you cannot do whole meals like that.
I make bulk meals for the week that center around a protein, an easy carb (rice, pasta), and as many veggies as I can get in there. So last week I made chicken beans and rice. Coat 5 lb of chicken thighs with Sazon dry mix, oven at 400 for 50 minutes, let it cool and shred meat off the bone and portion out. Make a vegetable-heavy ham hock black bean feijoada which involves onion tomato parsley peppers, celery, and beans. Braise the hocks in stock for like 3 hours with all the veggies, shred the meat up, and portion out. From there I make rice every day and I eat deliciously albeit repetitively.
>chicken thighs with Sazon dry mix, oven at 400 for 50 minutes
>chicken thighs... oven at 400 for 50 minutes
>oven at 400 for 50 minutes
>50 minutes
they come out better, I've played around with it. Obviously there's people who say you should take the chicken out once it hits 165 but I see value in leaving it in beyond that point. It becomes crisp, the skin primarily but the outside of the meant also gets a little chewier, almost like bark. The fattiness of the thigh keeps it moist, but yeah I intentionally cook thighs beyond what most people would do
I think if I had to cook for myself instead of others I would eat more healthy. Then again, getting big pieces of cheap cuts and turning them into a few hour odread of a damned good home-cooked meal would be much more rare.
Oh the perks of living with the family where they buy the food and you make the meals.
...
Master the art of leftovers
I also oven bake chicken wings at 400 for ~1hour for buffalo wings. Again for the crispiness, I honestly prefer to eat them this way rather than fried traditionally. The dehydration makes them soak the sauce up readily but they still stay crunchy
Any tips about freezing meals?
I make a meal which tastes nice hot but the next day, a few days later it tastes absolutely awful.
What am I doing wrong?
You disgust me
Google my man
What do you guys do to reheat frozen meals? Microwaves seem to ruin it.
try thawing it in the microwave then finishing it in a toaster oven. I personally just use a microwave to thaw and then cook it
>Buy box of shitty frozen burgers
>Contemplate making complex meal
>Realize you will regret it as soon as you start making it and then you will have no option but to keep going
>Make frozen burgers instrwd
Might depend on the meal so give examples and people will be able to give specific advice.
Personally, the only frozen meal that I ever have is leftover pasta sauce so when I use that I'll cook fresh pasta and pour the defrosted sauce over the pasta in a pot on the stove and stir it through until it's warm enough to eat.
I don't own a microwave, so if it's a soup it goes on the stovetop, anything else it goes in the overn.
In general, though, I just have a whole bunch of different mix and matches for stirfry in my freezer. Three large bags of different mixed vegetables that I put together myself, several kinds of meat, all kinds of different spices and sauces, and a couple different kinds of pasta/rice in the cupboard. There are enough permutations that I almost never get bored with it. The only thing that gets me to branch out is the inevitable craving for cheese.
Speaking from someone forced to eat only via microwave for 6 months I will say the largest weakness of the microwave is that it dries out food or heats it unevenly.
So first heat food at 70% at most, 50% if needed. Secondly on your plate / bowl use a damp paper towel to help keep moisture. There are specific plastic dishes that help with this (they have high sides allowing easy draping). The nuclear option is to add a bit of butter/oil to help aid moisture as well.
I am 100% incapable of cooking single serve meals, I always end up with minimum two serves (usually big ones too)
Anyway I live on my own but my gf is around probably half the time, so I typically cook enough for dinner + a couple days of leftover meals 3-4 a week. If she wasn't around I would probably only need to do 2-3.
Best advice I can give you OP is to not fill your fridge chockers with perishable meat and veg, keep hardy stuff like potatoes onions rice and carrots in bulk and do small shops throughout the week for what you need for a the next couple days. Get used to thinking about what food you have and what you need to use up and when and you'll rarely need to chuck anything out.
Like other anons said, you can use up extra veg and bones etc by making stock (easy and cheap), learn some soups and risottos etc to use it up. I have a bag in the freezer that I chuck my leftover veg bits into until I've got enough. Optional though, stock is cheap and if you're savvy enough you'll only be putting the bits you don't want to eat in (plus maybe some celery and onion you bought purposefully)
Frozzen vegetables + buy unpackaged meat, fish...
If you are 1, why buy a whole plate of chicken breasts imted of going to the meat shop and getting only what you need?
Same boat. Leftovers are okay but not great. Once a week or so I either go out or get a frozen dinner from the grocery, just to change it up. Otherwise I often eat the same thing 3-5 days in a row.
There are some recipes where there will only be enormous portions made. I freeze these. Recipes where you need one of each of like 5-6 different veg. Invariably huge amounts of leftovers and you can't really scale it down. Time intensive stuff like rice and beans I also make in a big batch and just freeze. There's also things you buy like a pack of lunchmeat or a loaf of specific bread, where you cannot just buy smaller portions. Because grocery stores hate single people since we don't spend a fortune on nappies and impulse buys to shut the kids up. If the ingredient is specific enough you may only have one or two uses for it, where you will have to eat the same meal all week long. Many things actually cannot be frozen. Many things are also perishable. Result--you must learn to embrace leftovers. Yeah, try freezing salad or fresh bread or something. Tell me how that turns out...
Get gud quickly. Whereas if a family made a bad dish, they have one bad meal. If you make a bad dish, you have 4-5 bad meals awaiting you unless you want to throw money in the trash.
Also don't cook by recipes. Learn to make dishes out of whatever you have laying around that needs to be used. Stews, one-dish bakes, etc. are good ways. You can also get creative.
I hate that most grocery stores only sell things in massive portions. Like some stores will ONLY sell you lettuce in a 2 or 4 head pack. Or an entire bag of this or that. If you go to the store where you can pick your own veg one by one, it will be more expensive per veg. But counting the waste from the bulk sizes you're better off one-by-one.
if youre an american and you have low standards of food
the answer is cook a big pot of chili or some shit, freeze it, and eat that for a week.
if you are not an american and like food,
here is the answer
only buy things for what you eat that day, ie dont plan far ahead, shop daily, otherwise 100% you will waste lots of food/money
abuse pastes and cans. although we can make better ourselves, its often cheaper and more convenient.
and also doing this means you can keep an eye out for sales, saving you money
to give an example my next meal will be putanesca. except the sauce was a 50% off barilla bottle of napolitana. ng for putanesca right?
well then i bought a can of tuna, which is puttanesca flavour. that can bring out enough caper flavour without me having to buy capers. i then bought just a small amount of olives [w chilli oil] from the supermarket deli, like 40grams. so now i have all the stuff i need for the sauce for like, 25% of what it would have cost to buy all the ingredients seperately.
also, you have to be aware you cant really fight what you want to eat sometimes. if you feel like ramen or something, go and eat ramen. otherwise youll just feel awful.
yeah what this guy said too
what should be in your fridge or other storage is stuff that lasts.
soy sauce, fish sauce, vinegar, oils, etc, are all musts. you can probably pick up cheap lemon juice and other things- this lets you flavour something that you might otherwise be disappointed with the lack of quality ingredients in.
basically the emphasis here is adapt daily and compromise
thinking you can make economic long-term plans eating the same crap every day is really soul-destroying, even if you do manage to actually follow through.
Do you also scrape the tasty bits out from under the element? Nothing like straight carbon!