What are some simple foods to cook for someone who just moved out?
This is not for me, but I want to post some questions in this tribe to help generate discussion; plus, I really think this can be a helpful post for anyone!
You can only make ramen, Kraft Dinner or Hot Pockets so much until you spend money on fast food/restaurants just to add variety. Cooking is a valuable skill for anyone to save money and to eat delicious food!
What are some simple, easy recipes that you would recommend to a student or someone who just moved out from there parents? What sort of foods should they be looking for at the grocery store? What should they stock up in their fridge? Any help and ideas for what to cook/buy is appreciated!
8 years ago by Boop
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Potatoes are pretty cheap and you can make all sorts of different items with them, baked, fried. Canned tuna is cheap also, can make casseroles or sandwiches on the cheap. Hamburger helper is another cheap meal. Salads are awesome and healthy, buy fresh and it's real cheap. Rice and beans are super cheap and not that hard to make. It really depends on what you like and how much time you have to actually cook something.
Invest in a rice cooker. You can buy a decent one for less than $30 at Walmart. Get a huge bag of rice, around $10-20. I eat rice almost every day. Just add a some salt and pepper to the cooked rice and it goes well with chicken or fish. To make it richer, you can add onion, butter and garlic salt. Fried rice is also delicious. Just put cooked rice in a pan with oil (I like to add in some minced garlic too), and fry. Green onion is a great addition, or throw in peas/corn, add scrambled/fried egg to top. And soy sauce is great with it too!
Buy canned beans. You can make chili or cowboy beans with a few other ingredients. Black beans go well with salads; you can buy a box of quinoa and make mexican quinoa salad. Or you can mash them and fry them to make refried beans. Throw them in a flour tortilla and add cheese and you've got a burrito.
Canned tuna or salmon are also pretty cheap protein sources. You don't need to cook them again. Mix them with rice, throw them in a sandwich or even a salad. Or even make burgers with them.
My go-to cheap (pretty much the price of a pack of ramen!) and quick meal, that feels like real food, is aromatic peas with couscous.
Get a frying pan with a little oil, add a spoon full of garlic paste/smooshed garlic, a teaspoon of cumin and a teaspoon of turmeric, some salt and a lot of black pepper, fry that up for a minute. Then add a chopped onion, fry until soft. Then add frozen peas. Mix it all up and leave it to cook, stirring occasionally. In the meantime, put some couscous in a bowl, about a cup, add hot water to cover the couscous, with about half an inch extra water on top, then cover with a plate. Leave that for about 5 minutes, in the meantime finish the peas off with some more pepper. When you're ready, fluff up the couscous with a fork, mix everything - done! If you have too many peas, shove them in a box of some form and you have your own microwave couscous mix ready to be deployed at any time.
The other comments are great recommendations. Just to add to them if you can afford the step up to pasta from ramen you can do a lot with it. Also 5 lb bags of frozen chicken is our go to for nights where I just don't feel like cooking an elaborate meal. You can even pan fry on low without thawing. Then it can go in pasta or add potatoes or rice really anything.