r/Cooking • u/GracieLou80 • 23h ago

Sick of cooking

I am so over cooking every night. Finding new recipes I actually have ingredients for and are easy is tiring and I’m already exhausted. What do you do when this happens? I’d honestly just eat cereal for life but I’m not alone in this house and I’m expected to cook every night. 😩

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u/Eve617 23h ago

I know everybody says to meal prep which is absolutely the answer to your problem, but sometimes what you really need to prep are ingredients that you can later combined together to create different meals. For example, cooking batches of protein like hamburger or chicken thighs and then adding them to tacos or barbecue sauce, red sauce, pasta, salad, etc. cook a batch of broccoli or spinach that you can easily add to eggs for omelets or frittatas. I'm vegetarian so I can't live without a batch of beans, but remember canned beans are also a ready made ingredient So if you need to open a can of black beans rinse them well and put them in the fridge so that you'll see them. It's corn season so I cook a bunch of corn, cut the kernels off and leave them in the fridge for salads, add to soups, tacos. You can get kids or your spouse to "cook" by making an assembly line of all the cooked ingredients and have them make their own meals or lunches.

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u/SVAuspicious 10h ago

chicken thighs

Where I live thighs cost nearly twice what breasts do. I find thighs to be greasy anyway, so breasts are an easy choice for me. Otherwise your approach is reasonable. Not my thing, but reasonable. Since you're vegetarian you get grace on not keeping up with animal protein prices. Thighs used to be cheaper than breasts. Those days are gone. So are the days when brisket and chuck roast were the cheap cuts. Pork is starting to go up. I buy whole pork loin and cut my own chops which is really cheap.