I need help with food!
So I’m going off to uni come September (hopefully) and I’ve realised that my cooking abilities aren’t exactly great. What kind of meals are easy to cook at university, and are still mildly healthy (and cheap!) ?
Original post by mae_is_confused
So I’m going off to uni come September (hopefully) and I’ve realised that my cooking abilities aren’t exactly great. What kind of meals are easy to cook at university, and are still mildly healthy (and cheap!) ?
Pasta based meals are very easy to do, there's a lot you can make with it like spag bol and chicken. there's plenty of videos for cooking on youtube that you can follow as you do things.
Japanese food!
A lot of it is easy (<10 ingredients, not horrendously time sensitive), quick to cook (usually <30 minutes, not much longer on your first try), fairly cheap (£1.50-£2.00 for a good sized portion), and it's pretty healthy (plenty of veg and it's you can pretty much use whatever kind you want providing you know a little about how to prepare it).
Try Butadon and Katsu Curries to start, the former is short and quick, the latter takes about 1hr if you make the sauce from scratch but you could easily do it in 20-30 mins with a ready made mix, but is pretty delicious and will introduce you to some cooking techniques which are a bit more advanced than your average student's repertoire, but not too difficult e.g. making sauces and shallow/deep frying.
If you can plan ahead then try marinades, there are quite a few recipes out there which will require you to make a quick marinade then chuck stuff in the fridge for maybe an hour, though some recipes will take longer to marinate, but once you get to cooking it will be pretty quick.
You can also kinda wing it. Once you have an idea of what spices and combinations of spices are good, you can make something with some flavour with minimal preparation, then just have some assorted veg, rice, or bread on the side.
As a general note, try and stick to rice based meals. It's cheap as hell (get a 5kg bag for less than a tenner and it will last you all year), it's quick to make at ~20 mins, and it's healthier than alternatives such as chips or bread.
Like claire said, there's always spag bol. It's quick and easy, it's reasonably healthy, you have good control over portion size as you can easily store leftovers and you can do meat or no meat, even the good pre-made sauces are pretty cheap, go for Loyd Grossman when it's on sale or Ragu if they have it. You can make your own fairly simply but honestly you don't save that much money, especially if you use quality ingredients, and it takes a decent amount of time, particularly if you're doing it properly.
A lot of it is easy (<10 ingredients, not horrendously time sensitive), quick to cook (usually <30 minutes, not much longer on your first try), fairly cheap (£1.50-£2.00 for a good sized portion), and it's pretty healthy (plenty of veg and it's you can pretty much use whatever kind you want providing you know a little about how to prepare it).
Try Butadon and Katsu Curries to start, the former is short and quick, the latter takes about 1hr if you make the sauce from scratch but you could easily do it in 20-30 mins with a ready made mix, but is pretty delicious and will introduce you to some cooking techniques which are a bit more advanced than your average student's repertoire, but not too difficult e.g. making sauces and shallow/deep frying.
If you can plan ahead then try marinades, there are quite a few recipes out there which will require you to make a quick marinade then chuck stuff in the fridge for maybe an hour, though some recipes will take longer to marinate, but once you get to cooking it will be pretty quick.
You can also kinda wing it. Once you have an idea of what spices and combinations of spices are good, you can make something with some flavour with minimal preparation, then just have some assorted veg, rice, or bread on the side.
As a general note, try and stick to rice based meals. It's cheap as hell (get a 5kg bag for less than a tenner and it will last you all year), it's quick to make at ~20 mins, and it's healthier than alternatives such as chips or bread.
Like claire said, there's always spag bol. It's quick and easy, it's reasonably healthy, you have good control over portion size as you can easily store leftovers and you can do meat or no meat, even the good pre-made sauces are pretty cheap, go for Loyd Grossman when it's on sale or Ragu if they have it. You can make your own fairly simply but honestly you don't save that much money, especially if you use quality ingredients, and it takes a decent amount of time, particularly if you're doing it properly.
Original post by mae_is_confused
So I’m going off to uni come September (hopefully) and I’ve realised that my cooking abilities aren’t exactly great. What kind of meals are easy to cook at university, and are still mildly healthy (and cheap!) ?
There are cookbooks tailored to students to help you start out in the kitchen. Look for those in WH Smith’s! I didn’t start from scratch but it’s great for basic recipes too like pancakes, macaroni cheese and even soups.
ignore this forgot to quote whoops!
(edited 5 years ago)
Original post by mae_is_confused
So I’m going off to uni come September (hopefully) and I’ve realised that my cooking abilities aren’t exactly great. What kind of meals are easy to cook at university, and are still mildly healthy (and cheap!) ?
don't know why but i just went to edit my post and it deleted it all again so frustrating!!! I'll try to retype it again later :// but basically my suggestion is stir fries
(edited 5 years ago)
Original post by mae_is_confused
So I’m going off to uni come September (hopefully) and I’ve realised that my cooking abilities aren’t exactly great. What kind of meals are easy to cook at university, and are still mildly healthy (and cheap!) ?
Fish and vegs lol
Any meat with vegs are easy. Just boil the vegs and cook the meat on both sides, add some spices if you want (optional), all cool.
Stuff that are oven-cooked are easy too.
Uni is a great time to learn to cook!
Pasta dishes, like someone else has said, are good. It's very versatile- spaghetti with meatballs and a tomato sauce is a classic, pesto pasta with chopped peppers and onions is good, I do a pasta that has 'green veg' (so petit pois, asparagus, broccoli, spring onion....whatever I have leftover from other meals!) with tuna and cheese. That's it and it's yummy. You can also do a lasagne which is really easy and cheap. You can get the sauces and pasta cheap from ALDI and then you basically just assemble it. You can freeze it in tupperware and it'll last a while as well.
Other things are a chili - fry off some beef and onions, add chopped tomatoes, baked beans and kidney beans, add some chili powder and chopped bell peppers then simmer down to a thick consistency and serve with rice. You can get curry sauces in a jar that are often nice.
Other recipes I cook a lot:
* Low fat pork and apple sausages (any sausages will work) with roasted sweet potato, red onions, peas and instant gravy
* Paprika chicken (sprinkle a chicken stock cube and paprika and a little oil over a chicken breast and wrap loosely in tin foil so the excess moisture can escape) with some roasted veggies (I use bell peppers, tomatoes and courgette- just drizzle with oil and stick in the oven for 20 mins) and cous cous.
*stir fry- you can get frozen packs of stir fry veg which is easier and faster than chopping a load of veg (and if you buy the ingredients fresh you may end up eating stirfry every night for a week!) which you can have with chicken or pork pieces
*fajitas! Fajita seasoning on chicken strips, cook some peppers and onions, stick it on a tortilla with sour cream or salsa or whatever takes your fancy!
The best thing you can do is decide what you fancy to eat before you go shopping and buy things that will go with them.
Don't overcomplicate cooking, it can be as easy as you like and you can learn to simplify recipes. You'll learn as you go
Pasta dishes, like someone else has said, are good. It's very versatile- spaghetti with meatballs and a tomato sauce is a classic, pesto pasta with chopped peppers and onions is good, I do a pasta that has 'green veg' (so petit pois, asparagus, broccoli, spring onion....whatever I have leftover from other meals!) with tuna and cheese. That's it and it's yummy. You can also do a lasagne which is really easy and cheap. You can get the sauces and pasta cheap from ALDI and then you basically just assemble it. You can freeze it in tupperware and it'll last a while as well.
Other things are a chili - fry off some beef and onions, add chopped tomatoes, baked beans and kidney beans, add some chili powder and chopped bell peppers then simmer down to a thick consistency and serve with rice. You can get curry sauces in a jar that are often nice.
Other recipes I cook a lot:
* Low fat pork and apple sausages (any sausages will work) with roasted sweet potato, red onions, peas and instant gravy
* Paprika chicken (sprinkle a chicken stock cube and paprika and a little oil over a chicken breast and wrap loosely in tin foil so the excess moisture can escape) with some roasted veggies (I use bell peppers, tomatoes and courgette- just drizzle with oil and stick in the oven for 20 mins) and cous cous.
*stir fry- you can get frozen packs of stir fry veg which is easier and faster than chopping a load of veg (and if you buy the ingredients fresh you may end up eating stirfry every night for a week!) which you can have with chicken or pork pieces
*fajitas! Fajita seasoning on chicken strips, cook some peppers and onions, stick it on a tortilla with sour cream or salsa or whatever takes your fancy!
The best thing you can do is decide what you fancy to eat before you go shopping and buy things that will go with them.
Don't overcomplicate cooking, it can be as easy as you like and you can learn to simplify recipes. You'll learn as you go
Beans on toast: Heat can of beans and add to toast.
Fry some sausages and some eggs in a frying pan.
Simple soup: throw in a stock cube in a pan with veggies and heat up.
Fruit (buy close to end date - they'll be even cheaper). Bananas, apples and pears are cheap.
Fry some sausages and some eggs in a frying pan.
Simple soup: throw in a stock cube in a pan with veggies and heat up.
Fruit (buy close to end date - they'll be even cheaper). Bananas, apples and pears are cheap.
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