Here, try eating just a small amount of this. I dare you. I don't think it can be done.

I can go through a lot of it in something like a pasta dish, but in salads I'm okay with just a bit of it, to vary the textures in the salad and punch it up. Too much of it in a salad can make feel like, OH I'm lovin' this! but then Blecch! Could I take the last few bites back? I can get overloaded on the salt and fat.

So for those of us who don't cook.

I can do: rice, spaghetti, chicken and fish.

All of this is plain and boring - so I slice up some tomatoes and cucumbers and then devour it because by the time I'm done cooking, I've likely been starving for hours already.

Where do I go from here?


Please don't give me soup recipes or anything that requires more than a University student would have. I've heard that garlic + tomatoes + spaghetti = good. I tried it, it was good.

That's the simplicity I am looking for - something a 5 year old could do. Please share.

Get a frying pan

take raw chicken, cut up. Cook it. (can use a precooked roast chicken from market - tear off chunks)

slice up an onion
put lots o' butter into pan, heat (not high heat )
saute onion in the butter
add chicken to sauteeing onion (not high heat )
add soy sauce, sugar, garlic powder, pepper (don't get crazy )
if you want fancy, add splash of your mom's white wine or bunch of drops of sesame oil

Serve over cooked fluffy rice. Have a green veggie with it.

I'm not sure what you mean by what a university student would have. Do you mean in terms of cooking utensils, or pots and pans?

I'm just wondering because soup is ridiculously easy and you can often cook it all in one pot. Plus if you get a slow cooker the work is even less; you don't even have to stir and usually you're advised against it. I make my lentil soup in slow cookers and pressure cookers all the time. Is it just that you don't like soup? Or don't have a big pot?

By the way, I'm not sure why it would take someone hours to cook some fish.

I will make one preliminary suggestion: You can drastically change the flavor of a dish by spicing it differently and/or using different herbs. Chicken cooked with rosemary comes out tasting very different from chicken cooked with thyme, for example. One of the most fun and useful things someone learning how to cook can do is get a big spice rack or just read up on different herbs and spices on the net and then try them out, one by one. Most guides tell you which herbs/spices go best with what kind of food. So you won't be totally without guidance.

Those spice racks go on sale at department stores all the time, too. I just keep the bottles when empty and refill with more of the same.

Another tip: Mexican supermarkets often have spices much, much cheaper than anywhere else. You can buy them for half the white boy price or less sometimes.

Also a great source for fresh vegetables and fruits.

By University student - I mean I don't have garlic powder, or peppers, or much of anything. Anything that takes more than 30 minutes or requires more than a few ingredients that can be used for other stuff on regular basis (like vegetables) - I also probably won't have because my storage space is insanely limited, both fridge and not.

I won't cook soup because I don't wanna be eating it 4 days in a row and I realize soups are usually cooked in fairly large quantities.

So I go with vegetables, fruits, rice, spaghetti, chicken and fish, nuts of a wide variety, bread, jam, honey, juice, water, waffles. That just about sums up what I have I bought some plum sauce to make my chicken less boring and it tastes YUCK, so I guess I need them herbs?

Spices/herbs sounds like exactly what I'm looking for. With one exception - I do not eat anything spicy. So does that limit it to just herbs then?

Also, can someone share how the asian restaurants cook their rice with vegetables in it? It's so effin delicious

I made this for lunch today and it is sooooo easy and tasty that you wouldn't believe it. It is a huge step up from a plain burger.

I didn't have parsley on hand so I skipped it. It literally takes 5 minutes to mix and form the patties. I don't do the dual saute pan method. I cook three minutes on each side on med-high, then two minutes on each side covered on med-low. So you're talking 10 minutes, from start to finish. I eat them without the bun. Most of the ingredients will keep long term, so once you buy them you will have them on hand to use over and over again.

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2...rs-recipe.html

Lamb Burgers
- makes 4 burgers -

Ingredients
1 pound ground lamb (I use 1.5 lb)
1 teaspoon capers
1/2 teaspoon white wine vinegar
1 Dijon mustard
Pinch of parsley, chopped
2/3 kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
4 buns
Canola oil (I use olive)

Procedure
1. Gently mix together the lamb, capers, mustard, parsley salt, and pepper. Form into 4 loose patties.

2. Get out two saute pans. Place one of medium-high heat and the other medium. Pour in a tablespoon or so of canola in each pan and swirl to coat the bottom. Set a couple patties in the very hot pan. Cook for two minutes on each side. Then transfer to the cooler pan and cook for another 2 minutes, but just on one side. Repeat with the other patties.

3. Stick the patty in a bun and top with what you like. Yogurt works well, as does ketchup.

Hi, I'm Sarah, I'm a cheeseaholic. But I am also lactose intolerant, so I'm pretty much limited to goat and sheep's milk cheeses. The choices of goat and sheep's milk cheeses seem to have exploded over the past couple of years, which makes me very very happy.

I didn't think cheese had lactose in it.

It does. It's a milk protein, and cheese being made of milk, you can't escape it.

Lactose is a milk sugar. I thought cheese was usually made out of casein and fat and the lactose is removed/lost in the process.

I just looked it up. It varies by cheese. But most are pretty low in lactose. I really thought they didn't have any though.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homep...er/percent.htm

Alex, most spices aren't hot, so you have tons to choose from. Definitely one of the easiest and more fun aspects of cooking, because spices and herbs change flavor so dramatically, and there's really nothing much to using them. In my soup recipe I effectively "toast" them a little by dumping them into the onions I'm sauteeing, to help get them to express all their oils, but most recipes don't even require that much.

I'd say you should get some staples on hand that aren't very perishable, and experiment from there. Herbs and spices we covered, but things like onions and potatoes and fresh garlic can last for weeks and you don't need to put them in the fridge. Heck put them under your bed if you have no room. Rice and pasta lasts almost forever. The rest of your vegetables you can buy in small quantities as you need them. There's almost always a use for a lemon, too.

You should also get some other basics, some of which you probably already have. Salt, pepper(treat yourself to fresh ground, it is so much better), sugar, soy sauce, olive oil, plain white vinegar. If you do a lot of frying and like breaded stuff, flour and/or cornstarch. Both are good thickeners for sauces and gravies too. Butter(it's actually healthier than margarine and ditto on the thickening).

For stripped-down set of pots and utensils:

-- One big frying pan(not one of those little omelette ones). Cast iron is ideal and is non-stick if you treat it right, but you can get by with almost anything.
-- One pot that is one to 3 quarts for boiling stuff like rice etc. or making small batches of soup and sauce(yes you don't have to make tons of soup)
-- Optional pot big enough for things like boiling spaghetti noodles without them all clumping up
-- Optional real small pot for small amounts of sauces
-- Wooden cutting board for vegetables and regular meats
-- Optional plastic cutting board for chicken only
-- Spatula (don't ruin your pots buying the wrong kind)
-- Long-handled stirring spoon (I like the really thick wooden ones)
-- Chef's knife for chopping meats and vegetables
-- Small paring knife for safe and precise work on veggies/fruits
-- Ladle for handling liquids
-- Two (not one) thick cooking gloves
-- Collander to help wash vegetables and strain pasta from its boiling water
-- Cheap kitchen towel or two, to keep your hands dry(safer when knifing around)
-- Pot holder/rest so you can put pots on the counter without ruining them
-- Big meat fork for turning and picking up big pieces of meat
-- Optional tongs for doing the same thing without piercing the meat; also great for corn cobs etc.
-- Plate or some such that you can rest your utensils on while cooking so you don't leave drips and stains all over your counters.

If you have those basics, there's already a lot of variation you can get in your meals by just picking up your choice of meat and veggies and playing around to see what you come up with. Potatoes and onions, for instance, are incredibly versatile and can lend all kinds of variations to simple dishes.

And don't forget there's nothing wrong with simple, clean foods at all. Don't think you have to get all fussy to make excellent food.

Yep I made a DOH!, it's a sugar of course. But there's really no place for it to go.

Glad to find out that cheese is full of nutrients! It's a major staple in my diet.

Hey Blarg, <3

That's quite comprehensive and I was surprised to find out I have the large majority of all those.

My mother has been such a boring but good cook that herbs/spices never really occurred to me until I moved out.

I don't know anything about soy sauce or white vinegar but I'd imagine it's pretty simple stuff


So it sounds like my mission is to find some herbs/spices, soy sauce, white vinegar, flour and add potatoes into the mix.

Is there a noobie kit of herbs/spices I should go out and buy? I'd imagine there are a few bottles or containers of each that I can get from any supermarket? What would they be called?


Also, I'm really set on making some Thai tasting rice - the one with little vegetables in it. I've seen some frozen vegetable bits, already cut up sold in supermarkets. Is that how it's done, or do I buy fresh vegetables and cut them up into small pieces?

Looks like I'll be a frequent participator in this thread, lol

Are you sure your lactose intolerant and not allergic to cow milk? Goat milk has a lot more lactose than cow milk, so this doesn't make sense.

Usually, the harder the cheese, the lower the lactose level. I can eat a whole brick of Parmesean without much of a problem. But a little brie and I'm in trouble. (Thank god for lactaid pills, because brie is delicious.

The clear winner for fresh tomatoes is:

- slice them up
- place slices on top of slices of fresh mozzarella (the kind that had to be plucked from the salted water by an old italian man behind the deli counter)

Top with
- julienned fresh basil
- kosher or sea salt
- fresh ground black pepper

Drizzle with olive oil right before serving/eating. Have balsamic vinegar available for those who want to add it. Serve with hot crusty Italian or French bread.

mmmmmmmmmm

Asians often prefer jasmine rice. You'll probably like it too. You can find it easily in Chinese and other Asian markets. Sometimes American markets try to charge a big premium for it, sometimes not.

As far as noobie kit of spices, a spice rack with say 15 to 25 spices can often be found on sale for 20 bucks at department stores. If not on sale, you can expect to pay anywhere from 10 to 20 bucks more than that, but you'd be pretty unlucky not to find one for 30 bucks or less. Just watch out they don't try to cheap out on you by inserting too many blends of pepper or salt. These are just cheaping you out. You don't need your salt from a spice rack, and if you have to have black pepper in it, one jar is enough. The good black pepper is fresh ground anyway. It makes a big difference in flavor.

If you read the paper daily or check sales every week, you will find a good spice rack for a good price without having to wait too long. Or just walk into a nearby department store or two, to see how the prices run.

You can also find some spices for cheap in warehouse stores like Smart & Final. By the way flavored vinegars are fantastic and extremely expensive in American markets. Same thing with rice vinegar. You can find both on the cheap, same brands even, at Smart & Final. Unlike regular vinegar, rice vinegar is a pretty much zero calorie dressing that has enough flavor, while still being light, that you don't even need oil or much of anything else to boost it.

Also, I think a big big slow cooker is an excellent thing for a college student to have. You can make roasts in it and all kinds of things pretty much unattended(you're even advised not to lift the lid). The meat will come out very tender because of the slow cooking, so even cheap cuts of meat come out great. And it's your perfect one-pot meal too. Most have timers too, so you can put something on in the morning and come home to a hot meal, or let it cook overnight then toss it in the fridge in the morning. Huge time saver, just really handy. Plus the spices and herbal flavors really tend to stand out because they are locked in with the food and their oils don't have a chance to evaporate. You can get a really good one of these for anywhere from 25 to 40 bucks depending on sales. It'll pay for itself in no time by making you happy to eat at home, and healthy.

Forgive my silly question, but when you refer to a slow cooker, you're referring to something that looks like this:





If so, the advantages are:

- Leaving unattended (YAY!)

- Can cook both rice and meat at the same time? (o_O)

- Fewer pots/don't have to bother with a stove


We got a rice cooker here that has to have 2 cups of rice and 3 cups of water - it's pretty annoying since the rice comes out way too mushy for my tastes, so this looks much better.


Is there a book or two you'd recommend for people who are just starting out? I don't want to bog this thread down with "how much salt?" or "what kind of spice?" every 2 days and feel that I really should do some research - point me in the right direction?

I have the slow cooker you pictured on the top. Thanks to Blarg, I've been using it for about 6 months now. Don't know about the rice. But it's great for meat and soups. I just toss the ingredients in, the morning or night before. Turn it on before I go to work , and have a nice meal ready when I come home. The slow cooker itself will come with a lot of recipes and there are more on the internet.

You don't really need a stove at all. Sometimes I brown the meat ahead of time, but you don't have to. I'll also go one step farther than Blarg, and say that cheap cuts of meat actually taste better than expensive ones when cooked in the slow cooker.

One spice I'd recommend for meat is cumin.

As far as how much salt/spices to use, that's really up to your own taste. Experiment. Cooking is not like baking, the ingredients don't have to be exact.

I wonder if all the cooking shows have scared people away from cooking. To make the shows interesting they have to use some complex skills and ingredients and tools. But it doesn't have to be that way.

A lot of great tasting meals are very easy to prepare. Put some meat in a skillet, flip it over, add some vegetables near the end and you're done cooking. Have some fresh fruit for dessert and you've got a tasty nutritious meal.

Tony, this sounds delicious. Do you place the mozzarella slice on top of the crusty Italian bread before serving it?

What tsearcher said.

Good point about not needing a stove. One of the points I was going to bring up but decided my post was too long already was that a really nice thing about a slowcooker is that it doesn't heat up the whole house the way an oven can. Ovens generate so much heat and can still give it off for a long time after cooking, so using them on a hot summer's day can be really unappealing, not to mention hard on cooling bills. Especially when you have one of those genius kitchens that puts the stove right next to the fridge, making the fridge labor like crazy and a single use of the oven very expensive. I lived in an apartment with one of those genius kitchens once and it was probably costing me three to five bucks to use the oven and wearing out my fridge's compressor too.

Hmm. From my very preliminary research, goat milk has less lactose than cow milk, but I didn't realize how close it was. Thanks very much for bringing this up, because it's going to spur a lot more research on my part. I was diagnosed quite a while ago and haven't really done any in depth research into it in a long time.