I understand why cooking for one person can be a dread and a chore. Fresh grocery items spoil quickly, and over-cooking leads to leftovers and wasted food.
You don’t have to feel the pressure of cooking fancy meals for yourself, you can create something delicious and nutritious in under three minutes using what’s already in your pantry.
When I create quick and easy meals, I gather the ingredients from the pantry that I’d like to use, and apply a basic cooking method to them.
I can find my protein source from a can of tuna or chicken and sauté onions or other vegetables with the pre-cooked ingredient. Adding a flavorful sauce is easy when you keep a jar of salsa in the cabinet.
There’s no shame in cooking for one from the pantry. It’s the food television shows and celebrity chefs that place this pressure on you. I say, “if it’s good to you, then it’s good”.
The enjoyment of food and cooking is a very personal issue, it doesn’t have to be time-consuming or fancy. When you can create flavorful meals in just minutes, you’ll find greater love of cooking and seek to expand your cooking interest from there.
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No recipe – like much of the stuff I’ve cooked over the years it was originally just an experimental pantry-raid throw-together . Purely by luck, it turned out good the first time, and thus has been repeated over the years…and it gets made a bit differently every time.
The whole reason I was attracted to the WebCooking Classes was to increase the success percentage of my experiments (which was quite low – not a big problem as a bachelor, but when cooking for a family, the success rate needs to be pretty high).
Since finishing the WebCooking Classes I find most of my “experiments” come out pretty good – no longer “purely by luck” but more like “mainly by knowledge”. Thanx, Chef Todd!
Thank you, Emmett. You are now FREED from recipes and inconsistent cooking!
Congratulations!
Avocado is great heated (but if you include something acidic it’ll discolor quickly. I do a soup with sauteed onions or shallots, avocado pureed with lemon juice, chicken stock, a couple splashes of either soy sauce or WhatsDisHere sauce,all heated together just barely to a simmer. Drizzle with a bit of mexican crema or creme fraiche and you’ve got a smooth, rich soup perfect for cold evenings. But if you go into it thinking it’ll taste like warm guacamole, you’ve got another think coming!
I’ll have to try that, it sounds great, Emmett. Thanks for the inspiration! (I won’t ask you for a recipe, I’m sure you burned it).
I was astonished when I saw the avocado go into the pan. Aren’t you not supposed to heat avocado??
Thanks for the video.
Hey Dee Dee! –
Who says you can’t heat avocado? Some celebrity chef? Unless there is a Food Police Squad, I’m going to do whatever I think tastes good in my own kitchen.
That’s the fun, excitement, and discovery of cooking.
On the weekend I cut up large quantity and variety of veggies all at once and then portion them out in ziplocks and store those in the refrig to be used as needed over the next week. I do this for use in cooking for my family but the same concept works just fine cooking for a solo muncher. Thus I can put a flame under my cast iron skillet to start preheating it, holler up the stairs that “Breakfast is served!” and then prepare eggs scrambled with sauteed, onions, bell peppers, fresno chilis, hot sauce, a bit of mexican crema and topped with fresh cilantro in less time than it takes hungry teenage boys to rise, take a leak, fail to comb their hair (or in any other way make themselves presentable to the world) and stumble downstairs.
Proper prior prep prevents poor performance.
Your description of the process shows the basis of why I love your kind of cooking — your process calls for pulling out the things we would “like to use” and not what we “should be using” according to a recipe or according to general “accepted” ingredient combinations. If I want to smash up some avocado with some whipping cream and mix it in with my vegetable broth cooked quinoa with veggies – because that’s what I HAVE at the moment – I can! (And it was yummy!) I can FINALLY cook actual meals for one!
Yes Patte!
You gain control over your food choices when you learn to cook, whether fancy or simple, if it’s good to you it’s good.
Thanks for the kind comment.
Sure beats “bachelor salad” (wedge of iceberg lettuce, bottle of dressing, eaten over the sink so there are no plates/utensils to clean up).
That’s classic, Emmett!
Funny how the “bachelor salad” is haute-cuisine in many restaurants. The bleu cheese wedge is a fading trend right now in restaurants, but was commanding a great price for a while.
Come on, chef Todd… this is cheating. It might have taken 2:20 to sauté it, but considering all the peeling and cutting before, and the cleaning up afterwards, it will surely take a multiple of that time.You’ve basically taken everything ready-cut, canned, or portioned, and just heated it… I get your point, that it is not complicated to do it… but seriously… heating something in 2 mins is not the problem… all the prep and cleanup is. Peeling, Cutting, Dish washing and drying… Unfortunately, “cooking for one” includes all that. Thanks god your videos focus on making that much easier, too.
Hey Daniel!
With practiced knife skills, chopping an onion should take under 2 minutes, same for dicing an avocado, but I get your point. I AM showing some serious short-cuts, a starting point for those that don’t cook at all. If that’s the start of someone’s journey, I’m thrilled, because then they’ll explore this simple procedure further, adding knife skills, substituting something more imaginative than canned tuna, and ultimately learning to cook!
Sometimes the videos are serious and “heady”, other times simple and straight forward. But, I always appreciate your feedback.
I’ve taught numerous people this exact technique and have been told this one method has opened up “a world” of quick cooking ideas for them. It’s a great way to send someone off to college with this knowledge allowing them to stay out of the cafeteria if they choose. And for newlyweds, there’s better ways to spend their time than slaving over a stove trying to create some recipe they saw on television. This one method will free cooks to explore their own tastes; how much better can that get?!
Ward
2011 Alumni
Yes, Ward this is not the fanciest cooking, but for something quick and/or simple the pantry is the place to start. College cooking is a great example, thanks