Cooking in College....

life_is_music

Hey
So i've moved away from home and my diet hasn't exactly been varied!

I've mainly been eating frozen pizza's and Knorr pasta (sauce and pasta, just add water).

I'm looking for a few easy and cheap recipes to cook for one person that's going to be someway healthy!

Thanks in advance

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

You're going to break the bank if you keep on like that!

Try have eggs for brekkie once a week (scrambled and boiled are insanely easy I'm not going to insult you by telling you how to do them)

Beans on toast: You can buy the tesco value beans and throw in some chilli/curry powder and a teensy bit of soysauce/brown sauce while you heat em and you have a tasty tin for 34c

Noodles:The instant ones, but have stuff with em, cheese, ham, chicken, chopped tomatoes, whatever

Oh, and do try get your five a day, makes a huge difference

Tree

Learn to make a tomato sauce. Great base for a bolognaise, random pasta dishes, pizza base and so on. you can freeze it in portions.

Make a quick pizza using pitta breads for a base and you're newly learned tomato sauce and what ever's in the fridge. then use the other pitta breads for sandwiches, making garlic bread, instead of rice w/ some nice indian food.

The basic tomato sauce with a bit of chilli makes a nice chilli sauce, you can do whatever you want to it.


My basic tomato sauce,

Fry off some onions, add some garlic, (add carrots and mince here for my bolognaise)
lash in a can of chopped tomatoes, and two tablespoons of tomatoe purée, and loads of black pepper (i'd add sweet chilli sauce and pesto to my bolognaise too, or leave these out and throw in some chilli and kidney beans for chilli sauce)
Cook it for at least half an hour, the longer the better w/ tomatoes i find, a bit of sugar is also a good idea, add sweet chilli sauce or honey or brown sugar and bob's yer uncle.

Tomato sauce is also savage w/ chopped up fried sausages and heaped up on pasta.

somethingwitty

Ratatoullie

Fantastic dish that a French host family showed me, you will get hooked and its so easy.
Chop 1 onion. 2 tomatoes and slice half a courgette. Get some streaky bacon and slice up into little pieces.
Get a pot. Cook the onions. Add the bacon. Cook it. Then add in the tomatoe and courgette. Stew this on a low eat for 45 minutes.
This is ridiculously easy to do and one of the best meals you will ever have.

Then stirfrys. Just cut up some chicken breast cook fully and then cook some sliced peppers onions carrots whatever veg you want. Get yourself some soy sauce and add it and its great. These are really easy to do after one or 2 goes and taste great.

Serve both with rice.

xfirefishx

Cooking your own food works out so much cheaper. And also maybe try making some packed lunches.

Obviously there are all sorts of sandwiches but I often make my own salads the night before...
*rice with sweetcorn and chopped ham (with a little bit of mayonaise to bind it together and keep it soft for the next day).
* sliced tomatoes, tuna and some spinach leaves with some balsamic vinegar, olive oil and pepper. You can add a couple of olives or some sweetcorn - whatever you fancy.

For cheap evening meals, I often make pasta. Fry up some bacon or turkey (one of the cheaper meats) with some onions, oil and some dried herbs, garlic or chilli (cheaper than buying the fresh option), chuck in a tin of chopped tomatoes and a little water. Then allow the sauce to thicken by cooking on a low heat.

Or for winter evenings, make a veggie stew. Chuck some sliced potatoes, cabbage, courgette, onion or whatever vegetables and/or meat that you like into a big pot with a tin of chopped tomatoes, some water and some tomato ketchup (it's nice honestly!) and just let it cook on a low heat for a while. It's delicious with some bread and tastes even better the next day.

You can really just experiment with so many different things. Just figure out what veg and meat you like and can afford and fry it up with a little bit of oil. Chuck in tomatoes, a scoop or two of pesto or a bit of a jar of sauce for a pasta dish or put in some soy sauce, oyster sauce or a jar of sauce for a rice dish.

Agreed with the cheap noodles thing - just buy a packet of Koka noodles or something and throw in some small chopped up veg while it's cooking. It's good to get your five a day.

If you find that your veg goes off before you can use it. Don't be afraid of frozen veg (Lidl do some great stuff) or tinned vegetables (I love chick peas, all kinds of beans etc). They do actually taste quite nice!

foxylady5160

Good olde Irish Stew works wonders while in College and I make it using knorr vegtable soup or the beef and vegatable. Very very nice. Plus you can add in any veg you wish and get about 2days out of it. Plus previous night left overs tasters nicer the following day. You don't have to buy a bag of potates use the baby potates only 99c in Lidl and the diced beef ~(not stewing beef: too tough)Oyou can ask the butcher to give you €3 worth you'd be surprices how much its stretches. Think of all the nrg you will get from it.

jdivision

Buy some peppers, onions, courgettes, aubergines, cherry tomatoes, anything like that really. Cut them up into relatively similar size portions, throw into a baking tin with some olive oil and then bang into a pre-heated fan oven at about 180 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Then throw in some garlic and chili oil, a small bit of soya sauce, some chilli flakes and tobasco sauce and put back into oven for a couple of minutes. Eat with anything really and it's good on its own too.

Another one is potato wedges:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/crispypotatowedgeswi_12611.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/healthypotatowedges_2207.shtml

If you had a blender you could make a salsa with the recipe I outlined above and dip the wedges in it.

The key thing I'd agree with above is learning your own tomato sauce, seriously you can use it with anything. Stir frys as another poster pointed out are great too. For the stir frys, just buy some Sharwood or blue dragon noodles and boil a kettle of water. Throw them in and just leave them there while you cook the rest of the stir fry. By the time that's done the noodles are good to go. if you get sick of egg noodles, try udon (my favourite and cheap in any of the Asian markets) or rice noodles

Tree

Did we say soup? Soup is fantastic now that's it's f'in freezing out. Made 8 portions today, served w/ bread and butter makes a massive meal, and you can throw it in a thermos and bring to college

Pigletlover

Could you get a few friends to chip in and take turns cooking a proper meal a couple of nights a week? In Dunnes last week they had large chickens or loins of pork for €6, both would easily feed 4 people, Aldi have 2kg bags of potatoes for 69c, 2 fresh sweetcorn 69c and a 1kg bag of carrots for €1.19. For less than a tenner you have a meal for 4 people. It's cheaper to cook for a few people than for one. Lasagne or spaghetti bolognese are other relatively cheap meals too. Alternatively you can cook in bulk and freeze in protions.