Easy cooking

[oyceter]

commodorified's Cooking for People Who Don't blog carnival is up!

I've been skimming over some posts to try to get back into the habit of cooking. So far, I've done two holiday-meal-ish things since November and promptly remedied that by eating out all the time or scrounging.

I started cooking a lot more Chinese food in the winter of 2010, and though I read a fair amount on cooking, I had to figure out a lot of shortcuts from my sister because there aren't that many English-language resources online that have good "quick Chinese cooking" advice. So... maybe some of this will be useful to someone?

I tend to be shorter on time and energy than money, which is reflected in the tips. I also only cook for one to two people at a time, and I've discovered that I'm absolutely terrible at things like buying in bulk and then storing in single-serving containers in the freezer unless I am 100% on in terms of mood and energy.

This also assumes having the basic ingredients and tools for basic Chinese cooking and relies heavily on the freezer and the microwave.

• I like putting about two handfuls of frozen in-shell edamame in a bowl, sprinkling maybe a tablespoon or more of water in the bowl, and then microwaving for 1-2 minutes to steam them. Toss with sesame oil, salt, and pepper. (I like shelling edamame myself, but I suspect you can do the same for shelled edamame with some variations on water and microwave time. This gets one bowl and a pair of chopsticks (for mixing) dirty.


• Stir-fried veggies require comparatively minimal ingredients and prep (for stir fry, at least). Usually I wash green veggies, chop, heat oil in a pan, throw in some very coarsely chopped garlic, thrown in veggies, dump in some water, put lid on and steam, then toss in some salt later. Pea shoots are very time-intensive if you want to get the non-edible curly bits off. Cabbage is fairly easy: chop into quarters, slice the stem bit off, chop a bit more. Pre-chopped broccoli from a supermarket is more expensive but extremely fast. This usually gets a chopping board, a knife, a spatula, a frying pan, and a dish dirty.


• Frozen onion pancakes! My extremely lazy meal consists of two of these with egg. Fry up the pancake on both sides. Put pancake on plate. Beat an egg. Pour egg into frying pan that is still hot from pancake, swirl around till it's kind of round and about the size of the pancake. Put pancake on top of egg. You can eat this with various sauces, like sriricha or oyster sauce, but I kind of just like it plain. This usually gets a frying pan, a dish, and a spatula dirty. (I have reused the frying pan before washing to fry more pancakes too.) ETA: When I have no energy for frying, I put the onion pancake in the toaster oven and smear a bit of oil on both sides. Doesn't quite taste the same, but it is edible.


• I like hitting up people who makes their own dumplings or bao and sell them on the side, or people who know those people. I've definitely seen this in Bay Area, but I don't know how prevalent it is outside of Bay Area. The stuff is usually tastier than the ones in the supermarket. I also go to dumpling restaurants, which will usually have frozen dumplings for sale as well (at least in Bay Area?). I think dumplings aren't usually sold pre-cooked, whereas bao have usually been pre-cooked and then frozen.


• Frozen pre-cooked bao + microwaves = yay! I usually wet a paper towel and squeeze off the excess, then wrap the wet towel around the bao and microwave for about a minute. Yay no dishes! Also, the steam slightly loosens pre-existing gunk in the microwave, and you can wipe it off more easily if you want.


• I try to slice ginger and freeze when I can. Peeling optional, though washing is good because I use the ginger straight from the freezer. Frozen ginger is soggy upon thawing, but if I'm using it for stir fry or soup or stew, it doesn't matter that much. (Although! When you throw the frozen ginger into your oil for stir fry, the frozen water will make oil splatter a lot.)


• I like cooking instant noodles in a pot because then I can crack an egg in. The egg usually reaches the half-solid half-liquid yolk state about 2 minutes in on my stove. If I have washed veggies around, I try throwing those in later to each something non-preserved. (Also, if you cook in a small enough pot, you can eat out of the pot and not get a bowl dirty.)


• I like taking white rice home from restaurants. Half the time I don't get around to eating it, but during the times I actually have food but no rice, it's nice to just microwave instead of waiting for the rice cooker.


• Easy pickled cucumber side dish: smash some Asian cucumbers up with the flat of your knife (or chop them! I like the texture of smashed ones and of course the act of whomping them). Put in container, pour in some rice vinegar, add some salt, add some smashed garlic cloves. Close container, shake, refrigerate for as long as you want to get the flavor right. I like this for summer.


• ETA: I usually don't get around to this, but sometimes my mom buys me meat and she does it, and it is awesome. She'll buy meat for stir fry (usually beef flank or pork loin), then cut it into the correct sized strips for stir frying (roughly an inch or two wide and long, usually so it's a very long strip that slices into little rectangles), then wrap each section in plastic wrap and freeze it. When she takes it out to cook, she'll defrost them but only maybe by a third or so, because it's easier to cut the little strips for stir frying when the meat is still mostly frozen.


• ETA2: tofu in those juice-box-like packages last a very long time and doesn't need to be refrigerated. Also, for a really quick meal, sometimes I do cold soft tofu on a plate and pour Japanese sesame dressing on top. Other very fast meals of unknown nutritional value include heated rice, soy sauce, and either teriyaki nori or kim.

Comments

[phi]

Yeah, so many of my cooking shortcuts assume plenty of money and no time/energy,which is why I didn't participate in the carnival.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who eats out of a pot to avoid having to wash a bowl!

[oyceter]

Heh, if you have any more shortcuts, I would love to hear them! I was writing this up and thinking, "OMG people will read this and be absolutely horrified by how I eat."

My general sense of the carnival was that it had a pretty large scope for "food security," as long as you're not "This is the only way to do it!!!!" I think I posted because I vaguely remembered people talking about cooking tips for when you're low on spoons, which sometimes goes with other types of cooking tips but sometimes doesn't.

Which is to say, you should totally post though only if you feel like it!

[inkstone]

I was writing this up and thinking, "OMG people will read this and be absolutely horrified by how I eat."

No, we won't! I do most of these things myself!!

[oyceter]

Excellent!

I wanted a more non-Western-food-centric tips section, since a lot of mine only make sense if you're making Chinese food.

[phi]

A big one for me is to make chutneys in huge batches when I have time/energy. I line an ice cube tray with plastic wrap, fill the cubes up with chutney, and cover with more plastic. Once the chutney freezes I pop out the cubes and cut apart the plastic and put it all in a giant freezer bag. One ice cube worth is perfect for me to have as a condiment with rice. Also, I can put up huge quantities of chutney when herbs are cheap at the farmers markets in the summer, which saves money in the winter.

Another is that one of the biggest impediments for me making curry is that chopping and frying onions takes 20 minutes, and that's just horribly overwhelming to me when I'm depressed. So I make huge batches of caramelized onions in my dutch oven when I have the time/energy/undepressedness. I fill freezer bags half full with the onions, and press out all the air, and freeze them flat, so they make big square sheets of cooked onions. So when I want to cook, I just break off a chunk of onion to use as the curry base.

I hate cooking enough of a meal to freeze and eat later -- I get sick of eating it, and then forget about it, and then rediscover it months later and it's just a mess. So for me, saving time is about lowering the energy barrier to start making something new, instead of having ready-to-go meals in the freezer.

[oyceter]

Okay, I need to do that freezing in ice cube trays to put on rice thing!

I also once made so much curry by mistake (bought too many vegetables and wanted to use them all up because I know how rarely I have energy to cook) that I was sick of it in a week, even though I still had two giant tupperwares left.

But yeah, a lot of it for me is actually about lowering the barrier, ergo my focus on how many dishes get dirty... I always talk myself out of cooking by thinking about how much work it'll take to clean up the kitchen afterward =(.

[thistleingrey]

I do some of these, too, including eating dinner out of the pot if what's there or what's heated up from leftovers is single-serving sized. I didn't post because I don't feel as though I've enough to share.

One thing I do related to your instant-noodles idea--minus the instant noodles, since I don't eat much wheat--is to cook soba while (optionally) pan-frying a bit of salmon or microwaving some frozen or leftover meat, then slice up some Japanese or Persian cucumbers or some bell pepper. Put the soba on top and add a tablespoon or so of ponzu, then mix. Not as nice as with the proper dipping sauce, but buckwheat has some protein even if one has no meat around. (During years when I'm not strapped for cash, I buy the pricier soba that has more buckwheat, less wheat.) This is ten minutes at most and can be done with a toddler underfoot.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I felt kind of stupid about posting, except when I was reading through all the posts, it was pretty clear that most people were talking about a... primarily not Asian diet. And I think what gets categorized as "low energy" depends a lot on what your staples are in the kitchen, since obviously a recipe with soy sauce and ginger for me is going to have a much lower threshhold to entry due to my refrigerator contents than a recipe that calls for butter or milk (which I almost never have and only buy for specific baking or cooking needs).

I did not realize buckwheat had protein! That is really good to know, actually.

[thistleingrey]

Yes, very much agreed. When I was growing up, my mother cooked specifically Korean food about once a week, but I've been realizing that her treatment of mainstream-US foods had a subtle E Asian-compatible bent. No cheese atop roasted root vegetables, no bread around for making breadcrumbs/etc., and water for cooking oatmeal (until cooking it in milk became the only way that my daughter is willing to have milk at home, and she's still at an age when she ought to have some)....

Not a ton, but more than wheat does! Largely by not being a grass (grasses = wheat, rye, barley, millet). Quinoa, also not a grass, likewise has somewhat more protein.

[troisroyaumes]

Linked this post on my Tumblr but will link again here for anyone who'll be interested in tips (this time from a Korean cooking blog): time-saving tricks.

[oyceter]

Sweeeet, thanks!

[oyceter]

Just went through that and OMG so doing that for garlic from now on! I wonder if it works for roughly chopped but not quite minced too?

[troisroyaumes]

Don't see why it shouldn't!

It's a trick my mother uses as well, although she always puts the garlic through the food processor instead of mincing by hand.

[glass_icarus]

My roommate started using our neglected coffee grinder to mince things! SO MUCH QUICKER OMG (also makes more reasonable portions for a solo/two-person cook, & much easier to clean).

[vi]

Those tips are great! I'd never thought of freezing ginger or garlic, and now I have a chunk of ginger in my freezer which helps me include it in my dishes more often, wheee!

[princessofgeeks]

all this is fascinating.

after watching my sister cook for a few weeks, i have adopted her genius trick of using chopsticks for things like frying bacon and turning it, frying meatballs, etc. Anything I used to use tongs for.

Chopsticks are soooo much easier!

I never would have thought of this.

Thanks for the post.

[phi]

Yes! I learned this when I was cooking frequently with a Taiwanese roommate a few years ago. She was baffled by use of spatulas for everything and I picked up the habit of using chopsticks from her.

[oyceter]

When I was a kid, I couldn't figure out how people beat eggs without chopsticks until I saw someone using a fork!

Oh!! And for people with access to them, Japanese dollar stores/hundred yen stores (Daiso, etc.) are an incredibly good source of cheap cookware. I got a gadget to shred scallions and another one to shave pieces off veggies or julienne them quickly, since a lot of Chinese cooking needs to do that fast, and they were a dollar each. Also that is where I got my giant cooking chopsticks.

[glass_icarus]

Ahaha, I use chopsticks for EVERYTHING. Plus, they shave off a little cleaning time if you do them when you're washing your hands (admittedly I keep more skin-friendly dish detergent in the house). xD

[vi]

Thanks for posting this; it's useful to me! Your way of cooking noodles (and eating from the pot) is exactly mine, ahaha. The picked cucumber side dish is something I'd like to try now. ^^

Hm, my/my family's Chinese cooking shortcuts:
- Mince garlic in a food processor, put it in a jar with oil, and keep it in the fridge.
- Used to chop a whole bunch of spring onion and keep it in the freezer -- but I've started growing spring onions by putting the roots in a jar with water on a sunny windowsill.
- Kitchen scissors are my friend - means I can just chop things directly into the pan (even if non-Asian people think it's odd I'm always using scissors)
- Adding preserved radish to stir-fries to add interest. <3 I like that here they're just 85 cents, pre-minced, and keeps well in the fridge.
- I like using my rice cooker to make one-pot dishes, such as claypot chicken rice (although I don't add as many ingredients as that recipe does, and I combine/omit steps)! Having lap cheong in the fridge is nice for chopping into other things too.

[oyceter]

Oh yay, I'm glad it's helpful! I luckily have a small pot that is the perfect size for single serving instant noodles!

I LOVE kitchen scissors! I never used them much until I watched a Korean friend of mine cook, but they are such a nice alternative to taking out the knife and cutting board.

I keep meaning to learn how to do one-pot rice dishes! My mom used to chop up veggies (usually qing gang cai I think) and then mix them into the rice to make veggie rice. I'm not sure if she cooked them or salted them before or not, but it was a nice way of adding veggies without much extra energy.

[glass_icarus]

:D! ♥ I really, really love single-pot cooking; noodles (instant or not) work REALLY well for that sort of thing! But more often I like to cook things that don't take longer than 15 minutes, because usually by the time I cook I am a) starting to get hungry, and/or b) tired.

My mom does her homemade pickles in lemon juice, rice vinegar, & a bit of sugar with (or sometimes without) the smashed garlic, if you like them sour-sweet.

Oh! Also, if you use dried mushrooms a lot, the water that you soak them in makes a great base for soup.

[oyceter]

Ooooo yes to mushroom soaking water! Ditto with the water you use to soak the little dried shrimp things too!

[littlebutfierce]

Other very fast meals of unknown nutritional value include heated rice, soy sauce, and either teriyaki nori or kim.

I eat a fair amount of reheated rice w/lots of kim chi & soy sauce!

Sometimes for instant ramen I'll rip off a few pieces of whatever greens we have in the fridge to put in (& if I'm feeling energetic, har, chop part of a carrot). I never make instant ramen on the stove, b/c lazy, so I'll just shove them in the bowl & stir & put a saucer on top & then everything is cooked fine, hahaha.

I'm sure I've had some concoction of silken tofu mixed up w/spices & smeared on toast once or twice, but I am fuzzy on the details.

[oyceter]

I have never tried tofu on toast! I should though, that sounds convenient and fast....

[yiduiqie]

Freezing galangal and curry leaves also works!

Did you know that hot firm tofu + sesame oil + spring onions is an actual dish? (from the Cultural Revolution). Tomato eggs is another super low effort Beijng recipe.

Other things: I make my own curry pastes, so I'll often make a whole heap and then freeze them in ice-cube trays to get the right sizes; my favourite fast meal of dubious nutritional value is rice noodles with garlic and frozen vegetables (this does require a wok though so it's not super lazy/low effort); precooked and frozen bao or jiaozi cooked in the microwave is the best.

[oyceter]

Tomato eggs! My dad used to make those all the time for himself in college (though not as a Cultural Revolution thing, since he was a Taiwan student in the US).

[executrix]

Also, fried rice is SUPPOSED to be made with cold leftover rice, so the restaurant rice is great for this.

For stir-fries, I love to start off with chili-garlic paste and finish with a tiny bit of sesame oil. I do have hot sesame oil but they are not kidding about the "hot" part.

[oyceter]

I am usually too lazy to do fried rice, since there is so much chopping involved, though I have eyed the frozen "stir fry" mixes in the freezer section in the US....

[executrix]

I know that it is heresy, but I *never* do mise en place (having all the ingredients chopped before I put the frying pan* on to heat. It seems a lot less daunting if I can get the oil heating, add the chili garlic paste, slice up the first ingredient while that's heating, tip it in, etc.


*I'm far too idle to take proper care of a wok, so I use a big frying pan, comforted by the fact that I just have an ordinary gas stove, not a super-hot Chinese restaurant stove.

[oyceter]

Hee! I tried to not do mise en place, and then I realized my chopping skills are not fast enough to do that /o\.

[executrix]

One advantage of NOT having a wok stove is that stuff goes slower...

[hesychasm]

Ohhhh, excellent post. Thank you so much for sharing -- I am making note of some of your tips, especially noting what dirty dishes you end up with. I'm one of those people who likes to wash up while things are cooking/stewing, to save on the time required after the meal which is when I usually like to chill.

My mom does the minced garlic in oil in a jar as well (saw a comment above) -- she just keeps it refrigerated for, god, probably a long long time.

Are there really not a bunch of Asian cooking posts in the food carnival? Now I'm thinking of doing one.

[oyceter]

OMG I am always so deterred by the thought of doing dishes that one-dish meals are the best!

I didn't see that many Asian cooking posts in the carnival! Actually, I didn't see any that were specifically on Asian food, and though a lot of posts had tips that could be used for Asian food, a lot of them were also very.... "stuff I don't eat that often." I highly encourage more posts!

recipe that can be done on a hot plate/stove, written out so that cooking newbs can understand too!

[automaticdoor]

My new favorite soup is sort of a slightly more sophisticated (and gluten-free) version of your noodle soup with egg from above. If you're vegetarian, just use veggie stock. Vegan? Veggie stock and skip the egg business. You might want to chop up some tofu and put it in at the very end though.

Heat chicken stock (or veggie stock!) with a few dashes of GF soy sauce (or regular if that's not a problem for you), a spoonful of minced ginger or ginger paste, a dusting of black pepper, a shake of powdered mustard if you have it, and a few squirts of sriracha (rooster sauce, hee) to taste. NOTE: You can eliminate any of those flavorings if you don't have them or don't like them, but they're really good in combination. Use a good-sized pot and enough chicken stock to feed the number of people you're serving. You want about 1-2 cups per person, depending on how hungry you are. Make sure your pot can hold all the stock! Bring to a boil. Generally, that can be accomplished with your burner on medium-high.

Put in rice noodles from a packet. They're sold in the international section of the supermarket or at any East Asian grocery store. Use about an inch/2.5 cm in diameter worth of noodles per person. As in, if you're holding the noodles in a bundle in your hand, the diameter of the bundle is the measurement I'm talking about. Let these boil for about 8 minutes or so. Watch them. You don't want them to get mushy. After about 6 minutes, you might want to start trying them to see if they're to your taste.

Non-vegans: During the first 6 minutes the noodles are cooking, get out 1 egg (or 2 if you're super hungryyy) per person and crack them into a small bowl. Use a fork, whisk, chopsticks, or something else to whip them up until they're all combined, as though you were making scrambled eggs. The whites and the yolks should be totally together and you shouldn't be able to see what's what.

Okay! Now your noodles are probably done. Quick, turn down your burner to low! (Vegans, this is where you probably want to add in your tofu to get it heated up and nommy. I'm not a big tofu person, so I'm not sure how long it should be in there. Maybe Google or look on the packet or someone else please comment?)

For non-vegans: Now comes the trickiest part of the whole thing. Don't worry though. You're going to be just fine. Have a spoon in one hand, a long handled spoon like a ladle or wooden spoon or the spoon you're going to use to scoop it out preferably so that you don't get a steam burn, but whatever works. You could even use a long knife as long as you were careful not to scrape your pot or a stick from the backyard that you sterilized or whatever. Just something to stir your pot with that's going to keep your hand high enough out of the steam so you won't get hurt. Use your stirring implement to get the soup stirring. Make a sort of whirlpool thing. Not so stirry that it splashes over the side, but good and stirring. Now, slooooowly pour your egg in. (If you think you're going to have trouble pouring out of your bowl without getting it all over the place, maybe put it in something with a spout like a liquid measuring cup first.) Keep stirring while you pour!

Once you finish pouring, let it simmer for about another minute and then take it off the heat. You will have what looks suspiciously like rice noodles combined with a sort of egg drop soup! That's what it is.

Things that would be good as a garnish raw or that you could add in to cook right after you turn down the burner: thinly sliced white mushrooms (I believe in rinsing them first. Not everyone does. Go with your heart/how grungy they look?); thinly sliced green onions

Thing that would be good as a garnish right before eating after it's in your bowl: cilantro (if you like it, I know this has divided families and ruined friendships)

Thing that you could add if you're intermediate/advanced in the kitchen using the broth as a way to poach it: thinly sliced chicken strips (or maybe other meat?)

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

Re: recipe that can be done on a hot plate/stove, written out so that cooking newbs can understand t

[oyceter]

I am so trying this! Especially since it looks like it only gets a pot dirty and you can eat it straight from the pot! (Also, I have a ton of rice noodles sitting around my pantry...)

Re: recipe that can be done on a hot plate/stove, written out so that cooking newbs can understand t

[automaticdoor]

Yep! If you want to do the egg and don't want to get a bowl dirty, you can always crack it in and not stir it as you suggested in the instant noodles thing. Of course, if you do the bowl thing, you can always wash it out quick and then use that to eat the soup from and pop the pot into the fridge for eating later if you've made more than you can eat at one go.

[kake]

Thank you for this! I was very aware when writing my carnival post that it was heavily influenced by the things I'd been eating the week or so previously (since I wrote it in a rush due to having mistaken the due date), which was basically All Lentils All The Time.

Things I do to make it easier to cook Chinese food:

• I have pre-portioned pork mince in the freezer, usually in 75g packages, which is enough to make e.g. ants climbing a tree 螞蟻上樹 or mapo tofu 麻婆豆腐 or fish-fragrant aubergine 魚香茄子 for two people (which is the minimum number I'm usually cooking for — for more people, use more packages).
• Similarly to my suggestion for overcoming inertia by just going and chopping an onion and figuring out the rest as I go along, another way to overcome inertia is to measure out some rice into the rice cooker bowl and just start washing it. I find the process of rice-washing is quite calming to a frazzled mind, and even if I don't come up with an exciting dish to serve with it — hey, I still end up with rice, and I can eat that!
• Packets of spicy shredded kelp and various pickles are handy to have in the cupboard. They work as an instant extra vegetable dish if I need to stretch the food on hand to serve an extra guest. They also work as a way of adding greens to e.g. instant noodle soup. (I am also now going to use your edamame idea for quick extra vegetable dishes.)
• Frozen beancurd keeps for ages and is a totally legitimate foodstuff (though in restaurants I've only had it in hotpot). Goes spongy, soaks up sauce much better. I just freeze it myself, don't know if you can buy it pre-frozen, but you can just stick the package straight in the freezer.
• In an emergency, you can make tomato eggs 蕃茄炒蛋 with ketchup instead of actual tomatoes.

For Indian food:

• Make ginger-garlic paste (peel and grind them together in the food processor), divide up, and freeze in small packages.
• Buy or make crispy fried onions and store them in the freezer.
• Buy frozen parathas and have them on hand always. As well as just cooking them from frozen, you can defrost them and use them as a sort of pastry.

[oyceter]

This is great, thank you!! I really should do the pre-packaged pork mince thing, it would make life so much easier....