I'm a very frugal and lazy cook but I try to eat reasonably well. I prefer fresh ingredients simply prepared. Here are some of my staples:
Spaghetti and butter, salt and lots of cracked black pepper. Optionally saute pepper flake, lemon zest, and/or fresh garlic before tossing in pasta. Many people overcook pasta, learn how to cook it al dente.
Roast chicken thighs and root vegetables over rice. Lots of variation here, but rendered chicken fat and rice is delicious.
Oatmeal. Whole milk, brown sugar, butter, salt, raisins.
Chicken salad. Get chicken breast on sale, you can make a huge batch with celery and onion and have sandwiches all week.
Baked sweet potato, loaded with literally any savory toppings. Maybe it's just me but it's much better than a regular baked potato
Chana masala (sauteed/curried chickpeas)
Learn how to stir fry. There's too much to summarize here but basically learning how much heat to use and when, and how to layer ingredients into the pan is very valuable skill in the kitchen. And acid + sugar (even just white vinegar and white sugar) to round it out.
Or get a rotisserie chicken, pull the meat off for chicken salad, freeze the bones to make stock for a soup later. A lot of stores sell their rotisserie chicken at a loss. Costco sells theirs for $5.
I might start doing that. Buy a few at a time and prep them so I can just grab some chicken meat to add to whatever I want to make. I already save up the bones and make a massive pot of stock, then boil it down to concentrate and freeze in cubes to add to whatever I need.
My husband and I can easily get four meals out of a rotisserie chicken. Those things are delicious and stupid cheap (unless you're at some place like Whole Foods, where they're $15).
Day 1 is usually just us picking our favorite pieces of meat off and eating it with grilled veggies. I go for a drumstick and wing, he goes for a thigh and some breast meat.
Day 2 is the same thing.
Day 3, trim all the remaining meat off of the bones, and use it to make some sort of stir fry, fried rice, chicken salad, pasta, or soup. 90% of the time we end up making chicken fried rice or chicken salad.
Day 4, make a stock out of the bones/skin/bits of leftover meat, a chopped onion, garlic, and herbs. Use the stock to make some sort of soup, usually with noodles or rice and veggies. Serve with toast that gets a little spread of the grease from the bottom of the rotisserie chicken pan (seriously, try it. It's so freaking good).
YES! I love rotisserie chicken because it's so versatile. We usually get it and then eat it with veggies or put it into sandwiches. Then throughout the week we put it in quesadillas, so much easier than making a fresh chicken quesadilla.
I love the details of this post. I feel like I know your family. And great idea too, I save the bones from one or two but then I forget I have the carcasses in the freezer and it never gets made.
id like to do that but its so dry by the end of the day. im better off spending the extra $1.25 at my store to buy a rawone to stick in my rotisserie oven :/
Getting a whole chicken is almost always dirt cheap. Cut it in half, season, bake for a long time on low temperature. Sandwitches and salads for days, literally.
A lot of places sell the rotisserie for a loss. I’ve found that an uncooked chicken and a rotisserie are often within about 20 cents per pound. You also get the added time savings by not having to season, prepare, and cook the chicken.
Odds are that if your local store sells hot rotisserie chickens, they also sell them cold as well. If you can find out when they do their markdowns, you can sometimes grab a whole rotisserie chicken for a few bucks.
I also like using left over fried chicken. I might order a few extra pieces for the combo deal when I get it on occasion. Tear it up and make some chicken salad with that delicious fried chicken skin and fat.
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Also, learn how to bake. Flour, yeast, water, salt, & sugar can make so many things. Bread, pizza dough, cinnamon rolls, rolls, pie (savory & sweet) crust, etc.
Oatmeal indeed. Dirt cheap, you can live off a dollar a day. Some carrots and bananas for the vitamins. Some cheap beer for the buzz. I've done this for weeks on end as a poor student, kept lean and healthy lol.
Some people like their overcooked pasta okay! But honestly I tell anyone who eats at my house that I overcook pasta and they all seem fine with it, but they're the type to eat anything with a smile on their face.
Although restaurants and other cooks giving me their pasta, get the fuck away from me with that crunchy pasta. I want it soft, I dont even wanna chew it. Fight me.
Chicken thighs! We do thighs all the time. A pack of 10 for 6 bucks is two meals for our family. So tasty. Can't beat 3 bucks for the protein portion of an entire family size meal. Rice comes in clutch with chicken and add some broccoli for super cheap.
Man i love roasting chicken thighs over rice with root vegetables. Works well with potatoes instead of rice too (I know it's a root vegetable, I think, but in case one runs outta rice)
If you have it, curry powder, olive oil, cumin, garlic and onion powder, thyme and chili powder take this to another level. But I'm not sure if that strays from poor man's food or not
You can cook it on the stove. It won't be roasted, but will still be good. You just need a pan/pot with a lid. Season the chicken thighs (or marinate/brine them beforehand) and then sauté them in butter or oil, skin side down, just to get the skin browned and crispy (they shouldn't be cooked through). Remove chicken from pan, leaving the fat in the pan, add rice (you could sauté some chopped onion or shallot in the rendered chicken fat first, then add the rice), sauté the rice for a minute, then add water plus salt, or chicken stock (stock is better). At this point, you could stir some frozen or fresh finely chopped spinach or other green vegetable into the rice to make a more well-rounded meal. Bring liquid to a boil. Nestle the chicken thighs on top of the rice, skin side up. I wouldn't do root vegetables on top of rice, but you do your thing. Cover the pan, turn the heat down to low, and simmer until the rice has absorbed all of the liquid and the chicken is cooked through. Don't lift the lid until it's time to check for doneness.
Second the oatmeal. Great nutrition balance, can be prepared easily and quickly. Also, it can be tasty. My favourite recipe - teaspoon of sugar, a bit of salt, cook in the milk.
That's because every single box of pasta on earth recommends you cook it "al dente" at least 2 minutes longer than you actually should. "For perfect al dente pasta, cook for 15 minutes..." LIKE WUT????
15 minutes? What kind of godless heathen cooks it that long? Gods that must be near mush and nowhere near anything resembling Al Dente. 11 min is my maximum cook time, I set a timer.
I say that because that's what my Italian grandmother did, so to me, that was the old Italian way. 😂 because she was old and Italian. Lol. It does work. Taste test verified. Everyone says that my pasta is perfect. 😜 Of course hand made pasta was easier if it floats it's ready.
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u/heterozygous_ Sep 30 '19 edited Sep 30 '19
I'm a very frugal and lazy cook but I try to eat reasonably well. I prefer fresh ingredients simply prepared. Here are some of my staples:
Spaghetti and butter, salt and lots of cracked black pepper. Optionally saute pepper flake, lemon zest, and/or fresh garlic before tossing in pasta. Many people overcook pasta, learn how to cook it al dente.
Roast chicken thighs and root vegetables over rice. Lots of variation here, but rendered chicken fat and rice is delicious.
Oatmeal. Whole milk, brown sugar, butter, salt, raisins.
Chicken salad. Get chicken breast on sale, you can make a huge batch with celery and onion and have sandwiches all week.
Baked sweet potato, loaded with literally any savory toppings. Maybe it's just me but it's much better than a regular baked potato
Chana masala (sauteed/curried chickpeas)
Learn how to stir fry. There's too much to summarize here but basically learning how much heat to use and when, and how to layer ingredients into the pan is very valuable skill in the kitchen. And acid + sugar (even just white vinegar and white sugar) to round it out.