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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2838 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 31, 2023

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It's december 31- I'll start a New Year's resolutions thread. For myself, I'm going to seriously cut back on fast food by eating at home whenever possible. I expect to facilitate this through better meal planning and prep, specifically by having an under-20-minute meal in the fridge available so that working late doesn't result in a run for a burger or fried chicken, and planning a menu every Saturday.

An aside on new year's resolutions- almost all of them fail. My view on the matter is that this is because they are vague and don't actually have goals or mechanisms. "I'm going to get in shape" is not a plan, it's a vague sentiment. "I'm going to go to the gym three times a week and skip deserts except on Sundays and special occasions" is a plan, and unlike the previous version, might actually happen.

So, Motteizeans, what are your New Year's resolutions, and what are your plans to accomplish them?

What do you have in mind for under-20-minute options? I have more or less the exact same failure mode, and I’ve been relying on my girlfriend to have reasonable food available.

Soup is good. Set aside a day and devote it toward food prep (ideally during winter, since the heat from cooking will also help lower your heating bill). For soup, you can either freeze it or can it. If you plan to freeze it, buy a bunch of small freezer boxes so you don’t need to thaw a week’s worth of soup at a time. Then cook the soup as normal, divide it among the boxes, and you’re all set for weeks or months into the future. If you prefer to can the soup, make sure you slightly undercook the soup before putting it in the canning jars, as the canning process will continue cooking the soup. This is especially important for any soup with diced vegetables or beans in it, since the vegetables and beans will all turn to mush otherwise. Again, I’d recommend using smaller rather than larger canning jars, unless you’re trying to cook for a family.

You can do the same with plenty of other foods as well. Can some roast or diced ham, or freeze some shredded pork or chicken, and you’ll always have a quick main dish on hand. Then add some vegetables (either canned or fresh) and a baked potato, and you’ll have a pretty complete meal.

For quick “fresh” meals, I tend to rely on various types of sausages. Fry up a couple of brats on the stove, heat up some sauerkraut and baked beans, and you’ve got yourself a ten-minute meal.

My setup is the following: grab a bag of frozen chicken thighs from Aldi. Pour low-sodium Italian dressing in the bag, let it sit in your fridge. Pull out a thigh and slap it in a panini-maker or a George foreman grill; cooks in less than five minutes. Combine this with a simple salad or humus and baby carrots.

Keep burger meat around, it's way easy to form it into a patty, throw it in a pan with some salt on it and cook it for 4 minutes each side. Truly, the same thing goes for steaks and pork chops, too (though without the patty-forming step), and then you can even add some wine afterward, reduce it for a minute and add a cornstarch slurry to make a pan sauce.

Always having pre-cooked sausage in the fridge with a reasonable side option. So far I've got ramen in pasta sauce(turns out it's just pasta), having frozen vegetables in the freezer, stir-frying apples, or grilled cheese.

It makes my cajun self feel a little humiliated to rely so much on already-cooked food at home. But it's much faster than cooking chicken thighs and incorporating a roux into stock or anything of the sort.

Stir fry with a home made scratch sauce takes about 15 minutes with practice, maybe 30 without or if you have to slice the vegetables instead of using a pre-packed mix. There's a few variations you can spin on it too (add peanut butter = ersatz satay, switch the meat for cashew nuts, switch noodles for rice, etc).

2 parts soy sauce
2 parts ketchup
1 part vinegar
1 part honey
Five spice / garlic granules / chilli powder to taste
Adjust to taste.

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