Chairface Chippendale’s got a gun!
Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?
- Thread starter Snarf Zagyg
- Start date
Learn to make bigger meals and how to love* leftovers. When I was in law school, I’d typically cook 4 servings of a dinner type meal, and eat leftovers for 3 days. The casseroles, chicken or fish dishes worked out great, but doing a big pot of red beans and rice involved…unpleasant externalities.
* or at least tolerate
Scribe
Legend
dragoner
KosmicRPG.com
They were awesome books, and the boxed set was very cool.
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
We were the same for years. The trick that worked for us was instead of storing leftovers in the fridge, store the cooked components in the freezer. Defrost and reheat the individual bits and combine them.This has been my problem my entire life.
I just hate it, every time.
For example, we do a chicken tinga with rice. Make the tinga and freeze pre-measured portions. Make the rice and freeze pre-measured portions. When we want it again, defrost and reheat the portions. It's almost indistinguishable from freshly made 90% of the time. Only works for certain dishes, of course. This also lets us make big batches and space out eating the same thing so we don't get sick of it and toss the leftovers.
Another freezer trick:
Buy your ingredients (esp. veggies) in largish batches. Dedicate ONE day to prep the freezable ones for future use, storing them in small containers like rolled up chubs in ziplock freezer bags.* That translates into one day of cleaning up knives, cutting boards, and your kitchen in general.
Then you can cook a lot of things on a daily basis, saving time by just grabbing stuff from the freezer and throwing it in a pot. I could start a “Bachelor’s Gumbo” started in 30 minutes pretty easily.
So, I have 2 freezers: one is dedicated primarily to leftovers, the other is at least half ingredients (cooked and uncooked) like sliced green or yellow onions, minced garlic, sliced mushrooms, broccoli, cauliflower, homemade sausage, meatballs, and so forth.
* I like chubs because I can easily break off chunks off of them when I don’t want to use the whole bag.
Buy your ingredients (esp. veggies) in largish batches. Dedicate ONE day to prep the freezable ones for future use, storing them in small containers like rolled up chubs in ziplock freezer bags.* That translates into one day of cleaning up knives, cutting boards, and your kitchen in general.
Then you can cook a lot of things on a daily basis, saving time by just grabbing stuff from the freezer and throwing it in a pot. I could start a “Bachelor’s Gumbo” started in 30 minutes pretty easily.
An okra-based chicken & sausage gumbo. It got its name because I streamlined & simplified the process for people who don’t cook often. Essentially, it’s a “dump” dish, in which you’re throwing cans of stuff in a pot:
Canned chicken stock
Canned stewed okra (has okra, tomatoes & onions)
Canned chicken
Smoked or Country style sausage
Seasonings (as mentioned above)
Cooked rice
Basically, start cooking your rice in one pot. Then slice your sausage, brown it in your gumbo pot, then deglaze with the chicken stock. After that, just start dumping stuff in and season it.
The hard part is getting your preferred seasoning right.Everything else- besides slicing sausage- is open a can of ______ and dumping it in a pot over medium heat, no special skills required.
Canned chicken stock
Canned stewed okra (has okra, tomatoes & onions)
Canned chicken
Smoked or Country style sausage
Seasonings (as mentioned above)
Cooked rice
Basically, start cooking your rice in one pot. Then slice your sausage, brown it in your gumbo pot, then deglaze with the chicken stock. After that, just start dumping stuff in and season it.
The hard part is getting your preferred seasoning right.Everything else- besides slicing sausage- is open a can of ______ and dumping it in a pot over medium heat, no special skills required.
So, I have 2 freezers: one is dedicated primarily to leftovers, the other is at least half ingredients (cooked and uncooked) like sliced green or yellow onions, minced garlic, sliced mushrooms, broccoli, cauliflower, homemade sausage, meatballs, and so forth.
* I like chubs because I can easily break off chunks off of them when I don’t want to use the whole bag.
I go the opposite direction and have a bunch of recipes that I know will take me no longer than 15 to 20 minutes to cook, which would be shorter time than me ordering out and waiting for delivery. My favorite is a Thai dish called Pad Kra Pao which is stir fried pork with Thai basil, and it’s one of those dishes that you can riff on and sub in/sub out meat, veggies as you please. It’s the ultimate weeknight dish and pretty healthy.
The Soloist
Hero
My wife and I have been doing that for 30 years. We have a series of 20 minute recipes. We cook for four and eat the left overs at lunch the next day or we freeze them. If neither of us wants to cook we take something from the freezer. We do longer gastronomic recipes on Saturdays and Sundays.
Same for us on the leftovers - having one night of leftovers is great because we’ll often love the dish but not enough to want something multiple nights in a row. Sunday is our “let’s do something that takes time” night.
Ryujin
Legend
It also pays to be selective about what you make large batches of. Not everything is good after being refrigerated or frozen, but some things (to borrow a lyric) are even better the second time around. If I make a curry or chili, a short stay in the fridge tends to improve it. The spices mix more thoroughly, or something, and the flavours are better. Make a big batch of rice, portion it, and keep that separate for the carbs.
Similar Threads
