The Student Room Group

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Reply 1
Get a good quality student cook book (Caz Clarke's books are good) and learn to cook some of the recipies in the summer before you leave for Uni.
Reply 2
Probably best to experiment with stuff before you go there and all. I'm on a gap year and have spent aaaaages pretending to be Jamie Oliver in the kitchen. Practise makes perfect and all that lark. Not that I'm much better than when I started!

Eggs are generally easy to do (scrambled/fried/hard boiled/omlette etc etc) and there's the student cliché that is beans on toast. Pasta's not too hard to do either. I'm sure there's a website in someone's sig regarding student recipes too, but I can't remember what it is....
This is the main use of my gap year...
I reagerly await any recipe lists...
Reply 4
i eat far too much risotto - i just love it tho :biggrin:
I tend to cook proper meals from scratch tho i.e. lasasgne, chicken in a variety of different sauces made from scratch. theres loaaaaads you can do. just need imagination.
Pasta.
Eggs.
Bread.
Milk.
Meat.
Sauces.
Veg.

Get them and you're sorted.
Reply 6
you'll survive fine. Pasta is bloody easy to cook (most freshers tend to live off a lot of the stuff, I did in my first year at warwick).

Also halls there have decent kitchens etc so its pretty easy to cook food.
Reply 7
I eat loads of jacket potatoes, just shove them in the microwave for 5 mins, oven for 20 and then put anything in them, chicken with pesto sauce is yummy, or bolognese, or just cheese, or whatever
Reply 8
Beelzebub
I eat loads of jacket potatoes, just shove them in the microwave for 5 mins


:puke:
Assuming you're not vegetarian and can eat beef....a basic bolognese type mince & tomato affair. Make it by the bucketload and freeze it in portions...

Add some chilli powder and kidney beans and you have chilli con carne (sortof)
Add some spaghetti and you've got bolognese
Add some pasta sheets and cheese sauce and you've got lasagne

:biggrin:
Spaghetti bolognese:

* Finely chop a large onion. Cook in oil until soft and transparent.
* Add minced beef and stir until it has turned from red to brown.
* Add a tin of chopped tomatoes and a big dollop of tomato puree and season with salt and pepper.
* Add any of the following ingredients, depending on what you like and have in your kitchen:
Red pesto, red wine, crushed garlic/garlic puree, HP sauce, button mushrooms, ketchup (if you're desperate).
* Keep on a low heat while you cook the spaghetti in water with a pinch of salt and a dash of oil.
* Serve.

Chilli con carne:

* Finely chop a large onion. Cook in oil until soft and transparent.
* Add minced beef and stir until it has turned from red to brown.
* Add a tin of chopped tomatoes and a big dollop of tomato puree and season with salt and pepper.
* Add chilli powder to taste.
* Add a chopped green pepper and a tin of kidney beans.
* Cook on a low heat while you cook the rice.
* Serve.

Lamb hotpot:

* Finely chop a large onion. Cook in oil until soft and transparent.
* Add diced lamb and stir until it has mostly turned from red to brown.
* Add gravy made from gravy granules. (Instructions on tin, cheap Sainsbury's version as good as Bisto.)
* Add tinned carrots and cooked frozen peas.
* Serve with boiled potatoes or just eat out of a bowl like baby food if you're feeling stressed or lazy.

Chicken in tomato sauce: (Exactly what it says on the tin...)

* Finely chop a large onion. Cook in oil until soft and transparent.
* Cut chicken breast into chunks and cook until the flesh has turned white and no pink patches remain.
* Add a tin of chopped tomatoes.
* Add mushrooms, peppers, peas, sweetcorn, olives, or basically anything which takes your fancy.
* Serve with rice or potatoes.

Pasta with clam sauce:

* Finely chop a large onion. Cook in oil until soft and transparent.
* Add a tin of chopped tomatoes.
* Drain and rinse a tin of baby clams, then add to the mix.
* Serve with pasta or rice.

Chicken in white wine sauce:

* Chop chicken breast into chunks and fry in lots of butter until the flesh is white and cooked through.
* Blanche some button mushrooms in boiling water and rinse to make sure they are clean.
* Add white wine or cream sherry to the chicken and leave on a very low heat to absorb flavour.
* Add creme fraiche to make a light and creamy sauce.
* Add mushrooms and cook for a little longer until the mushrooms are soft.
* Serve with rice and/or potatoes and green veg.

Pasta Salad:

* Cook pasta in salted water with a dash of oil.
* Drain and rinse in cold water.
* Transfer to large bowl and add salad cream or creme fraiche to moisten. (Mayo will be too heavy.)
* Add cooked frozen peas, sweetcorn, chopped peppers, pieces of tomato, piece of chicken, ham, or whatever you fancy.

Macaroni Cheese:

* Melt a large chunk of butter in a saucepan.
* Add some plain flour to make it into a smooth paste.
* Add milk gradually, stirring each time until it is completely amalgamated into the mixture, until it is light and fairly runny.
* Add grated cheese until the mixture is the flavour and consistency you want.
* Keep stirring at all times to avoid lumps.
* Add cooked pasta, stir mixture until it is completely covered, then transfer everything to an ovenproof dish.
* Sprinkle grated cheese on top and bake in a hot oven until the top goes crispy.

Bread pizza:

* Toast a piece of bread very lightly on both sides. Baguette, naan or ciabatta is best; sliced will do.
* Coat toasted bread with tomato puree.
* Cover tomato puree with grated, sliced or crumbled cheese.
* Add your favourite pizza toppings.
* Cook under grill until cheese is melted.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Cooking is easy and the best way to learn is by experimenting. Toasties and baked potatoes are always easy options. Cheese, baked beans, tuna and sweetcorn and chicken and pesto are good fillings.

Tomato puree, garlic puree, olive oil and different types of pesto are good things to have in your cupboard, as they can brighten up pretty much anything.

Buy frozen vegetables; that way they never go off and you can use exactly what you need. Frozen peas are great, and you can buy mixed veg frozen from most supermarkets. Buy chicken breasts frozen and defrost them in the fridge if you have the foresight to get them out in advance and in the microwave if you don't. If you buy fresh chicken breasts, you will probably end up freezing them, and then when you want them you will have to cook however many have decided to freeze together, as you will never be able to separate them, no matter how hard you try.

Be careful with chicken. Make sure you always cook it thoroughly. If it's pink in the middle, it's not cooked. Never defrost something and then re-freeze it, because you might give yourself food poisoning. However, if you defrost something, cook it and then re-freeze it afterwards (i.e. in the form of a chicken curry or something) then it's fine.

If you have room, freeze bread. If it's in the freezer, it won't go off or go stale, and other people are less likely to nick it. It only takes a few minutes in a warm kitchen to defrost a slice of bread.

Onions are your friend (unless you don't like them). If you learn to chop them finely and cook them on a low heat for long enough, they'll be fairly unnoticeable, but they are pretty much the foundation of most cooking sauces, unless you want them to be completely bland.

Tinned tomatoes are also your friend. At 15p a can, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than buying ready-made sauces, and with salt and pepper and a dash of anything else you have lying to hand, your own sauce can taste just as good, for a fraction of the cost. Over three years (and beyond) you will save a lot of money. You're probably saving about 50p every time you cook, which probably means at least one beer voucher a week! :wink: It will also contain far fewer artificial colourings, flavours, preservatives and general crap.

You will eat a lot of pasta. A portion of pasta, when dried, is roughly one and a half handfuls. Two handfuls if your hands are tiny, one if they are huge.

Things which will get nicked:

Milk, bread if you leave it out, squash, ketchup and other sauces, cheese and butter from the fridge.

If this bothers you, buy milk in one pint bottles and keep one in the freezer, freeze your bread (good idea anyway), keep squash in your room and wrap cheese in foil and pretend it is something else. You probably can't do anything about butter or ketchup. I never know which is mine any more anyway.

Very long post, hope there's something useful in it! :smile:
Ditto on the butter and cheese...grrr
Reply 12
I have a cupboard that I keep my non-freezer or fridge food in, and also butter and bread that's not in the freezer in, and I've padlocked it. Never had bread or butter nicked :biggrin:

Pasta is your new god basically. I probably have it three times a week or so. Stirfries are also quite good cos they're about the only way I get vegetables. Quite often I get reduced ready meals (i.e. they're about to go off, but you can stick them in the freezer if you don't want them that day). Rice is also handy.
One thing I've been doing either with my bf or a friend is to get stuff on buy one get one free and split the cost (I would only buy one normally, don't have the room for two, this way I get one half price).

I'd not done much in the way of cooking before I went to uni and I've been fine :biggrin:
Just one tip - if you're defrosting chicken fillets in the microwave, make sure the microwave is set to defrost and not maximum :redface:
my chicken curry is gorgous...taken from a student cookbook which i recomend...nosh 4 students...

chicken breast
1 chicken stock cube
4 tsp curry powder (mild)
2 cloves of garlic
1 onion
2 tsp plain flour
1 mug water
half mug of natural yoghurt

* fry the onion and chicken until browned (and garlic)
* add water
* add chicken stock, flour, curry powder to water
* simmer for 15-20 mins
* add natural yoghurt, allow to heat for 1 min but do not boil!

serve with rice and it is really gorgous, impressed my boyfriend and family when i came home lol

--------------

and dont worry bout stuff getting nicked, i have only ever had one egg go missing and that was probebly an accident.
My essential recipe for university...

.5 Shots Stolichnaya Red Vodka
0.75 Shot De Kuyper Triple Sec
2.5 Shots Cranberry Juice
1 Teaspoon Caster Sugar
0.5 Shot Lime Juice

Ah, the perfect Cosmopolitan :wink:

Gets me through :smile:
Reply 15
My essential recipe is a kettle, a microwave and a packet of noodles.
Reply 16
Fluffy's Vodka Jelly:

Litre of Vodka
Packet of Jelly
Boiling water.

Make up jelly, season to taste with vodka! Voila!
Reply 17
Beans on toast, egg on toast, cheese on toast, bacon, sausages (I can so tell I'm going to get fat!) Try simple stuff first and get your parents or something to teach you to cook!
thank goodness I've always been able to cook! my only fear is that the fresh ingredients I use for my Italian, Indian and Chinese will be unaffordable and I will starve to death. I will have to convince my stomach that canned things really are food........ :eek:
my grandma brought me a student cookbook for xmas woohoo its so good