cooking for people who have no idea what they are doing (or are just, like, real depressed)
Okay, I’m a professional cook, but also, I get depressed. This is the cooking I do when I’m depressed, because I need the simplest path to a whole meal.
This is not for vegetarians, because, while I wholeheartedly support people choosing vegetarianism, and also enjoy cooking for vegetarians, for me, the simplest path to a meal includes meat. Perhaps when I am less depressed I will work on options.
A lot of recipes focus on achieving food that is in some way special, using special techniques, or using a precise list of carefully measured high-end ingredients… and that’s not this, this is all the parts of cooking that are not those things.
Meats
Starches
Veggies
Sauces
Breakfast/Snack
For a whole week you’re going to want
3 kinds of meat, with five portions each. So, for example, five chicken breasts, 10 sausage links, and 2-3 pounds of ground beef. Other possibilities include pork chops, salmon, some kind of steak, whatever.
You’re going to want up to 3 starches. Honestly I usually stick to just rice, but you can go with rice, potatoes, and pasta. If you want to use quinoa or polenta or something, thats on you.
And, you’re going to want about 3 types of vegetables, again, about 5 portions each – and try to stay green. So personally, I usually get 5 medium zucchini, 2 medium heads of broccoli, and then either yellow squash or mushrooms. A bag of salad greens is also a good option, and I have an easy way to make a good salad, which I will do as a separate post.
Next pick something easy that works as either breakfast or a snack. For me this is a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a bunch of bananas. Sometimes it’s nice to have an additional option here, like cereal or yogurt.
Last, you’ll want 2-5 sauces in bottles. I would definitely recommend a low sodium soy sauce be one of them, and maybe a BBQ sauce for the other. I usually also include worcestershire and sriracha but go with whatever you want, teriyaki sauce, A1, whatever you know you’ll eat. Hell, you can use Italian style salad dressing as a cookable sauce if you really want.
Oh, and If you don’t already have some at the house, you’ll need pan lube: butter and/or some kind of cooking oil.
Okay! we’re done shopping! Affordability isn’t the main focus here, but is undeniably important – I live in a very expensive area, this shopping trip is going to feed me well for a week and costs me about $100 bucks. When I was living in Alabama, it probably would have cost me more like $70. You won’t need to get stuff like the sauce and rice and peanut butter every week, so you’re definitely looking at a monthly grocery bill of something like $300 depending on where you live, and that’s not too bad.
hell no, I’m depressed, the only prep I’m doing is putting two packages of meat in the freezer and the rest of this stuff in the fridge. You CAN box or bag each portion of meat separately so you can really alternate what you eat – me, I’m gonna eat chicken for two or three days, then beef for two or three days, etc.
and listen, don’t fuck around with microwave settings or running water on things to defrost them. If you package the meat all up separately, just move a portion from the freezer to the fridge each time you cook dinner. Or, if you do like me, move the whole package when you go to cook your last portion of the previous stuff, and just deal with the fact that it will probably still be a tiny bit frozen when you go to cook next.
Tip: When you cook dinner, you’re going to make enough for lunch. That just leaves you one small meal - I often smear peanut butter on a peice of bread and wrap it around a banana like a taco - fast, easy, practically no dishes, relatively healthy
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Cooking (this is going to take about 25 minutes)
ONE frying pan, medium size w/ lid
ONE boil pot, medium size w/ lid
knife, a spatula and a cutting board.
If you want to be fancy, you can include a big spoon. Looks like this
No matter what the specific ingredients you’ve chosen, the basic format is going to be:
Start your starch
heat pan, put meat in the pan
flip meat and add veggies, cover with lid
remove meat and add sauce
finish starch
put everything on a plate
while it is still too hot to eat and you are standing in the kitchen anyway, wash the like, 4 dishes you’ve gotten dirty.
eat.
Okay, before you even get everything else out, start your starch. For rice this means rinse the rice and put it in the cold water and set it on high heat, for pasta this means put your salted water on the stove on high heat. For potatoes, you can use my perfect mashed potatoes recipe (I’ll do that as a separate post) or, honestly, you can wait until you’re halfway done with the rest of everything and microwave the sucker for like 8 minutes. I would never do that in a restaurant, but trying to feed my lethargic depressed ass? Absolutely.
easy rice: Fill your smallest coffee cup with rice, put it in the pot. Rinse. Fill the same cup twice with water, add to rice. Bring to a boil, give a good stir, turn heat all the way down, put a lid on it for something like 15 more minutes.
Okay, now lube your pan. Butter, olive oil, whatever. You’re probably looking at an amount more than a teaspoon and less than a table spoon of whichever you use. Personally I try to use as little olive oil as possible, so I pour a large coin sized amount (a quarter in the U.S.) into the pan, ear off a piece of the paper towel I’m going to use as my napkin for the evening, fold it up tight, and sort of paint the oil around so a little goes a longer way.
Pan lubed? Great, turn your burner on. highest heat will work but is not ideal, medium heat will work better but is still not ideal. Halfway between the two is perfect for chicken, a little hotter for beef, a little lower for fish.
Now remove two portions of your chosen protein (that way you’ll have tomorrow’s lunch too). By the time you get the packaging open and stuff, your pan is probably hot. If it’s not, let it get hot. You don’t want the oil to start smoking (warning, butter will burn faster than oil) but if you shake a single drop of water off your finger into the pan, you want it to sizzle.
If your pan is hot, put your meat in. The more you do this, the more you’ll perfect the timing, but you’re going to cook it for ~about~ 7 minutes before you flip it, maybe a couple minutes longer if it’s chicken or pork, maybe a couple minutes less if it’s beef.
Now that your meat is in, prepare your veggie. Rinse it off, cut off any part of it you don’t want to eat, and then cut what’s left into pieces the size of a large bite. Don’t worry, it’s going to get a little smaller when you cook it. Take your time, you’ll probably finish in less time than the meat needs.
Time to flip your meat? Great. Do that, and then dump your chopped up veggie in the pan. It does not matter at all if the pieces are not touching the bottom of the pan -probably most of them will not be, a bunch will be on top of the meat, that’s fine.
Put a lid on it. Now add your pasta to the water, or put your potato in the microwave, or check your rice. If following my perfect mashed potato recipe, mash now.
Rice tip, checking: eat a grain, you want zero crunch. If it’s not done and there’s no liquid, add a splash of water and stir. It it’s done or close to done, but it is still very wet, give it a big stir and leave on the stove with the lid off for a couple minutes.
Your meat still has like, at least 4 minutes, so rinse off your cutting board and chef knife, get out a plate, table knife and fork.
Meat done? Great. Take the meat out of the pan, leaving the veggies in. Add sauce to the pan. I like to also use a little wine, because it’s usually already in the house, if you have some and want to, pour a large swallow of wine in the pan with the sauce. I’ll often mix a couple sauces, like worcestershire and soy (makes something similar to teriyaki) or hot sauce and BBQ
Stir the sauce around with the veggies. This, called deglazing, is an important step for two reasons, 1: it will get up a lot of the flavorful stuff that has stuck to the pan and make your sauce better, and 2: it will make washing the pan much easier. Okay, put the lid back on for one to two minutes, maybe stir a couple times. Basically you want the sauce to stain the veggies.
Your starch should be done, turn off the burner, put a portion on your plate, and stick the rest in a ziplock or tupperware or something. Go ahead and throw the second portion of meat right in there with it.
Turn off the stove and scoop the veggies onto the plate, and pour the sauce from the pan over everything.
Now, while it’s too hot to eat, and you’re standing in the kitchen anyway, wash the pot, pan, and spatula. It should be very easy because of the way you used the sauce and because nothing has had a chance to harden. This usually takes me about 2 full minutes.
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OKAY! it’s been 20-25 minutes, you’ve got dinner and tomorrow’s lunch (just add another cut up veggie, pour a different sauce on, and put it in the microwave for two or three minutes) AND there’s no danger of dishes piling up on you :) You can even add “washing last night’s plate and fork for use tonight” to where you rinse the cutting board to really keep it full circle.
It’s not gormet. It IS accessibly healthy, affordable, and easy.
If you are extra depressed, forget the starch and use more veggies; this cuts what little work there is by up to half
Using this format, you can have three good meals per day and only spend 30 total minutes a day in the kitchen — including clean up! (dishes piling up tends to exacerbate my depression and makes cooking your next meal harder)
And it’s easy to give yourself a wide variety, from soy glazed chicken, zucchini and rice one night; to steak, mushrooms and pasta the next; followed by BBQ pork chops, brocoli and potatoes… I suck at math but there’s probably a hundred options
Just to recap, because I know I was very detailed and this might seem overwhelming, once you read through the above to answer any questions you might have, simply
-Start your starch
-lube & heat pan, put meat in the pan, about 7 minutes
-flip meat, add veggies, lid, about 7 minutes
-wash knife and cutting board
-remove meat and add sauce to veggies, re-lid, 1-2 minutes
-finish starch, refrigerate extra meat and starch
-put everything left on a plate
-wash pot and pan
-eat.
