Cooking For One

[SamuraiJack]

Does anybody here cook for just themselves?

If you do, what are the techniques you use to prepare a meal? (Shopping, preparation, leftovers, lunch, etc..) What meals do you cook?

I've found it hard to cook for just one person, because the portions are meant for more than one person and you end up eating the same thing for a couple days. Not only that, but vegetables go bad, and bread becomes stale, so you have to go shopping at least every couple days. Cooking takes at least half an hour, cleaning takes 15 minutes. Shopping takes 45 minutes.

In the end, I figure it's easier just to eat from Subway everyday.

[ellencho]

What the hell are you cooking that takes so long to prep and clean up for? Cooking for one isn't so bad. You can make omelettes, pasta, your own pizzas, soups, steak, chops - I'm listing shit off the top of my head, but it's not so bad. You can even make wings for one without all the mess.

[SamuraiJack]

What the hell are you cooking that takes so long to prep and clean up for? Cooking for one isn't so bad. You can make omelettes, pasta, your own pizzas, soups, steak, chops - I'm listing shit off the top of my head, but it's not so bad. You can even make wings for one without all the mess.

Mainly stirfry with meat and vegetables. Rice.

Gotta marinate, wash, peel/cut vegetables...

How long do you spend on average to shop (include travel time), prep, cook, clean? How often do you go shopping?

[vsoy]

Grilling food on BBQ is pretty quick. Marinate your meat the night before or in the morning. Sometimes I use the Freshsaver vacuum to speed up marination. Fire up the grill first thing when you get home. Steak is done in 5-7 minutes depending on cut and how well done you like it. Supplement with salad, baked beans, rice, etc. You can grill veggies (marinate with olive oil) too and you've got a meal. Leftover meat can be cut up the next day for fajitas. You can probably pick up a little smoky joe real cheap now that summer is almost over and who says you have to grill in the summer? Some apartment complexes have a communal grill by the pool area. I lived in one apt where the cleaning crew that cleaned the common areas also did the grill everyday so no messy grill clean up.

Crockpot is another fast meal. Throw stuff in the morning and have something waiting for you when you get home. Ribs, soups, pot roast, chili.

I make a lot of food mostly on weekend, save some for dinner and lunch the next day and freeze the rest. Spaghetti, lasnga, calzones, chili, dumplings, kotlets (persian ground meat patties).

I hate shopping so I buy a lot of food from Costco even though it's just me and the hubby. We're little pigs and we eat everything. I find the produce at Costco tends to keep longer than what you get in the supermarket and much cleaner. For example, a bag of 5-6 Romaine lettuce hearts will be good for a month. The spinach is triple rinsed and it's often cleaner than what I can get it and it's ready to go for stirfry or salad.

The supermarket produce is constantly misted down with water and this accelerates vegetable deterioriation. If I get something like lettuce from the supermarket, I try to blot it down with paper towels or let it air dry before putting it in the crisper or else I'll get some nasty rotting shit a few days later. Unless it's the weekend or I have a lot of time, I usually buy vegetables that are easy to clean and require very little prep like brocolli and beans. Frozen veggies (edamame, corn, peas, mix) are time savers too.

Another time saver, and I say this tongue in cheek, don't do dishes after dinner! I am so tired after working a full day, making dinner, portioning out lunch for the next day, the last thing I want to do is clean dishes. I usually do them the next day when I'm more energetic or the day after that.

[DijabutiA]

Trader Joes was a life saver for me this summer. I got like all my food from there. I did the pasta thing for like a week. Did end up eating that for like 3 days in a row. I ate a lot of the mini frozen bowls from Trader Joes. They are preservative free, etc, and taste good. I did that for lunch everyday.

I ate pitas for like a month; lunch meat, spring mix, cheese, in a pita. I lost like 10 pounds. I got sick of eating that shit though. Its hard to do the fresh stuff, b/c you have to eat it everyday otherwise it will go bad.

[ellencho]

vsoy is right, crockpots are an excellent way of cutting down on cooking time. All you do is set it up the night before, refrigerate, and then set the ceramic unit in the crock pot base in the morning and by the time you get home, you'll be rewarded by the smell of your dinner, ready at your whim.

You might want to stop by your local library, or even check online for crockpot or slowcooker recipes. The name crockpot is actually owned by the Rival company who produces them, so generally CP recipes are labelled as slowcooker recipes.

In terms of shopping, I shop ~ 3 times a week tops. I don't shop on the weekends if I can avoid it, including Friday when everyone and their mom is stocking up for the weekend. I like to do my shopping on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sometimes if we run out of milk or something I"ll do a mini run for little extras, but I'm usually well prepared. My entire shopping trip, including driving doesn't take more than 45 minutes to an hour per trip.

A good thing you can do before you go shopping is to have a list handy of what you'd like to eat that week. If you don't have good ideas on what you want, you can always look at supermarket circulars (lots of markets have these available online) and check what sorts of meat or veggies they have on sale, and then center your meals for the week around them.

And lastly, I always do my dishes the same night (I have a touch of the OCD and leaving dirty dishes drives me CRAZY). But usually it's just a couple of plates, utensils and serving dishes. I cut down on the dishes I have to do after dinner by cleaning as I cook. If I make a stir fry for example, I'll have lots of little bowls filled with various ingredients. As I use them, I'll rinse them out in the sink and put them in the dishwasher. By the time I'm done cooking I should only have the dirty pan I cooked things in, a serving spoon, and the dishes and utensils we used for eating.

[vsoy]

Ellen hit on a good point about shopping and being prepared. If you keep your freezer/ pantry well- stocked, buying a lot stuff on sale, then you don't have to spend so much time shopping. Sometimes I buy a bunch of family packs of pork chops or chicken breasts and freeze them in portions big enough for dinner and lunch the next day. If I have a lot of time, I'll even cut up the meat, marinate and freeze them in baggies.

Another tip I like to use is to shop on the way home after the rush hour. I tend to work late and I miss the crazy soccer moms who are trying to pick up something for dinner. 7-9pm not so bad and there are still a decent number of cashiers.

[minbo]

When you cook for yourself, the freezer is your friend. What you have to get really good at is food storage, both uncooked ingredients and finished products. There is nothing wrong with using frozen, canned or preserved vegetables and fruits in many recipies. Certainly fresh is best, but frozen is far better than rotten.

For storing vegetables, what I found worked the best for me is to wash the vegetables when I get them home, thouroughly dry them and place them in a ziplock bag with a paper towl and squeeze out all the air. The lack of air slows down the rate of decay of the vegetables and the paper towl which I replace every few days if it becomes damp controles the humidity in the bag. I can usually keep fresh leafy vegetables for a couple of weeks. I have one thermometer in a cold spot and one thermometer in a warm spot and maintain a temp of the warm spot at about 37 degrees F.

I don't really eat meat, but when I do buy it, usually when cooking for guests, I take the meat, cut it into single portion sizes, wrap them in freezer paper and then put it in a freezer zip lock bag, again with all the air squeezed out. The freezer paper keeps the moisture in the meat and prevents freezer burn. The ziplock freezer bag also keeps the moisture in the bag to prevent freezer burn. Then put blue painter's tape on the outside of the bag and label with contents and date. The same thing for fish. If you truely keep the meats frozen and package them properly, the meat will be good for an indefinate amount of time. They will loose flavour even properly packaged, but you can easily keep any meat fresh and good tasting for a minimum of a month. I keep my freezer at about 10 degrees F, I use one thermometer at the front of the unit.

I cook in large servings. After I cook the servings I take the leftovers and place it into disposable tupperware in single serving sizes. I keep out the servings that I expect to eat within a week and freeze the rest. Use painter's tape to label and date the food Frozen, the cooked food should again last at least a month, though I tend to not let it go beyond that.

[vsoy]

Talking about freezing food, this is going to sound like an infomercial but I'm not getting a cut from the manufacturer. :lol:

I use the Foodsaver from Tilia for fast marination, freezing meat, storing bulk cheeses, coffee, nuts, etc http://foodsaver.jardendirect.com/default.ad2

They have really fancy ones with a built in cutting mechanisms that take up a lot of counter space but my second machine is a relatively simple model 550 that I got at Target. The machine evacuates air from the propriety bags (which are reuseable a couple of times) and wide mouth mason jars. They have these ridiculously expensive containers too but baggies and mason jars are much cheaper. If sealed properly, food can be stored for months.

It is a bitch sometimes and sometimes a used bag just won't evacuate and seal properly. So I just curse, threaten the machine and use a new bag. But when it works, it works beautifully.

I"ll have to try painter's tape to label things for the freezer when I forget to steal a roll of laboratory tape!

[seoulbrotherno1]

Luckily, seoulbrother is the stir-fry guru (he's also the solo-eating guru as well), so lemme give you some hints:

Chop your stir fry meat (be it chicken, pork or beef) and package it into single serving-size packs. Use one for tonight's cooking, toss the rest into the fridge.

Who says you need to cook all the stir fry veggies you buy in one meal? Just use what you need for tonight and toss the rest of the chopped stuff into the fridge. That way, you cut down on the prep time and you can cook yourself fresh stirfry whenever the mood strikes you.

As long as you got some rice in the pot, you are good to go whenever.

Also, make a week's worth of pasta. That's right, boil a whole assload (two packs) in a gargantuan pot. Drain it all and toss it in the fridge. It'll be good for a week. Toss it into some heated sauce, and you are good to go. Fry some bacon, chop it up finely, toss in the noodles and mix in two scrambled eggs (don't forget plenty of good parmesean cheese!) and you have a solid carbonara sauce. -OR- Cover the bottom of the pan with the thinnest layer of oil and toss the noodles on top. Press down into a flat "pancake." Brown the bottom, flip it over, and repeat. Now you have a noodle pancake that is crispy on the outside and chewy in the middle. Top with your favorite stir fry -that's good eating.

To keep your stir-fry's different, try mixing up the sauces. You have your basic marinade of: garlic, soy, sesame oil, green onion, chili, sugar, and alcohol.

The most basic sweet and sour sauce consists of equal parts ketchup (that's right, mutherfucking ketchup!), vinegar, sugar, and water.

A tangy Hoisin-based sauce can be made from Hoisin, a lil' bit of vinegar, some sugar, a dab of sesame oil, and chili (optional).

Experiment by tossing some ginger, peanuts, or cilantro into the mix every now and again.

Prepare ahead of time, avoid monotony, and keep it quick and dirty -these are all secrets to dining alone.

sb1

[Charlie]

Costco is great for single people. For quick meals, I load up on frozen foods - precut chicken filets, individually wrapped salmon steaks, beef patties, frozen gyoza, stir-fry veggies, etc. Their pre-made salads are pretty good. They also have fresh fish that can be cut and frozen in indiv portions for steaming.

The biggest timesaver is freezing individual portions of rice in small tupperware containers. At first, I thought rice wouldn't come out well after freezing, but it's not bad. Just use a little less water when cooking.

[SamuraiJack]

The most basic sweet and sour sauce consists of equal parts ketchup (that's right, mutherfucking ketchup!), vinegar, sugar, and water.


Thanks for the tips. Actually in my recipe, I use canned pineapple juice instead of vinegar. Pineapples slices taste awesome in sweet and sour sauces.

[ellencho]

I have a good cooking for one recipe I've been tinkering with for the past week for oven baked hot wings. It takes a while for the chicken to bake but it's super easy to put together. Also, I like this recipe because it eliminates having to stand in front of a hot pot of oil. It works best if you have non-stick reynold's wrap foil. If you don't make sure you rub a decent amount of oil onto your wings.

A pack of chicken wings
Some non-stick reynolds wrap or foil
oil (not olive or sesame though)
salt and pepper
1/4 cup of hot sauce
1 Tb brown sugar
1 Tb butter
1 tsp of cider vinegar

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Take the wings, sprinkle them with salt and pepper and give them a rub down in oil. Place the wings about an inch apart on a foil-lined cookie sheet and let bake in oven for 45-60 minutes depending on how big your wings are, turning once halfway during cooking. They should look something like this.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v250/ellencho/IMG_1705.jpg

Meanwhile, to a pot, add your hot sauce, brown sugar, butter and cider vinegar. Let it come to a simmer. Yay it's done.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v250/ellencho/IMG_1707.jpg

Once your wings are done, transfer them to a bowl and pour the sauce over them.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v250/ellencho/IMG_1708.jpg

Here's a semi-close up pic of the wings. Serve them with whatever condiments you like. Blue cheese dressing, carrot and celery sticks, etc.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v250/ellencho/IMG_1713.jpg

And as a special bonus, I wondered how it would taste if I oven roasted some pork ribs and then tossed them in the same wing sauce. So I roasted some ribs for ~75 minutes and added the sauce. They were pretty good. I think it worked well. The boyfriend even gave his greasy paw stamp of approval.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v250/ellencho/IMG_1709.jpg

[.vhg//ALITA]

I don't know if anyone mentioned this yet, but sandwiches are a GREAT way to keep yourself eating for one during the week. They're easy to make and really flexible in what you put in them (I would use this as a light lunch/snack only, though).

It might be hard to come up for ideas, but for me, I usually use Colombo sandwich bread, heated in the oven for 350 about 3.5 minutes. After that, I put on a little butter, mayo, mustard, and some Italian vinagrette. To top it off, the main part is pepper jack cheese and just whatever sandwich meat you want ^_^ good stuff <3

[dragon]

Yeah! Drunk-dude-left-to-his-own-devices-down-home-cooking!

1 Can Bush's Baked Beans
2 Hot Dogs
3 Pieces of Toast

Nuke da beans fo' li' 3 min's, set aside.
Nuke da wienahz fo' 1 min, put in beans.
Smother da buggah wit da kine, mustahd, ah?
Season da beans fo' taste (pepper 'n shit, ah?)
Toast some bread den go grind!

Garans Plennnny Ono!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v14/dragonlord/Miscellaneous/GasHeaven_00.jpg
*urp* *fart*

[Dialectic]

I sense the birth of a new culinary GENIUS!!! :P

Great photos, y'all. Post more in the GALLERY!!!!

[ellencho]

dragon, I don't know if you have a gf or anything, but I pity her nose if you two share the same bed after that meal. (unless of course she's into that sort of thing)

[dragon]

dragon, I don't know if you have a gf or anything, but I pity her nose if you two share the same bed after that meal. (unless of course she's into that sort of thing)

LOL! Nah! Nothing steady, just dating around, but...no...that's not a meal I would eat around "polite" company. Just something I whupped together after a night of drinking. You know you want some. :wink:

[ellencho]

Course I want beanie weenies. My mom never made them but they used to serve that to us at summer camp and every now and then I find myself craving them in my old age.