If you have an instant pot, dal tadka is relatively easy. It's a 1-pot meal and you can make as much as your pot is rated for at a time (so 3-4 liters in the normal ones. It has amazing flavor and doesn't technically require any fresh ingredients because you can freeze curry leaf, use canned tomatoes, and buy or make your own ginger garlic paste in advance. It's simple enough that I do no prep - instead, I prep as I cook. It takes about 7 minutes to do the sauteing part, then you add water and dal and set the thing to pressure cook for 12-15 minutes. After that, it's done! All in all, you spent 7 minutes of effort and can otherwise just wait. Clean-up is almost non-existent.
You can use this strategy with a lot of pulse dishes. Frijoles negros, chana masala, rajma, chili, Goya beans (you can use your own spice mix)... if it needs to thicken just keep it in the pot and sauteed again for 10-20 minutes.
Salt and pepper tofu can take just 5-10 minutes when you get good at it. It's just four ingredients and some spices.
Just made soy curl satay, a peanut sauce, and rice. Used a tiny saucepan, a frying pan, a bowl, and a cutting board. Very easy cleanup, tastes fancy. Took about 20 minutes altogether.
Any stir fry dish that doesn't require cooking everything separately (so usually not Cantonese) is basically a one-pot meal.
Roasting literally anything is usually very easy, just makes one tray of dishes.
Any dish where you fry aromatics and spices in an oil, then develop a sauce out of it, then add water and rice and steam the whole thing together tends to be pretty simple to clean up and tasty. Paella, peas and rice, Spanish rice, Mexican rice, some biryanis.
A lazy one is crazy easy.
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Heat a few tablespoons oil in a pan. Not to hot. Medium.
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Add a tablespoon or two of red Thai curry paste or similar. Stir so that it turns the oil red, cooks a little. Should take 30-60 seconds.
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Add half can of coconut milk.
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Add 2-3 tablespoons of peanut butter.
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Add a little sugar - maybe a quarter or half teaspoon.
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Add a little soy sauce.
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Add salt to taste.
Now just cook it until it reduces from a thin curry to a sauce.
Done!
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i just made japanese curry. super easy. throw any veggies you have into a pot and saute them with some oil. (I usually have a bag of frozen mixed vegetables that I put in). throw in the japanese curry cubes from the store and pour in the amount of water it tells you too.
eat it over rice. it's very good.
Get an instant pot and just search for recipes. Most of the preptime is minimal and cooking it is mostly toss it all in and walk away for half an hour. I juggle full time employment and virtual first grade and its been an absolute godsend. My go to meal when I have no idea what else to do is a southwestern chicken and rice dish that I can prep in less then 12 minutes and will finish cooking in less then half an hour and even with a family of three can yield at least two more leftover servings.
If I could have only one appliance in my kitchen it would be a high power wok burner, but the close runner up would be an instant pot. You can make dry beans in <2 hours without even having to baby them or presoak over night.
Fried rice is a super easy way to do massive bulk food that lasts. I make rice, fridge it, then go buy whatever frozen veggies at the grocery store. Fry the rice, add the veggies. At the same time, I make up a batch of crispy tofu to dump in there.
Rice expands 3-4 times its volume, so 3 cups of rice is 9-12 cups cooked, and it goes even higher as you add veggies and tofu. 15 cups or more of food at the end for maybe an hour of work all in, and very very cheap while hitting nutrition needs.
I am here to share tofu opinions.
There's lots of great ways to cook tofu, different techniques that produce great textures.
For fried rice, you can crush it into pieces using the flat part of a chef's knife (or your hands), then fry at fairly high temperature with about a tbsp of black salt and 1/8 two tumeric. This will create a great protein sourc for "egg" fried rice. You can do the same thing but use other spice (five spice, salt, msg) instead of black salt if you don't like the eggy flavor.
If you want to simply fry tofu, the key is to have a hot enough pan, use enough oil, and be patient for it to naturally release from the pan. You can make very good tofu by just slicing it like bread into .5x2x3 inch blocks and using this method, flipping once.
Pressing is not necessary for frying. Pressing is most useful if you are going to use a marinade - it's like squeezing a sponge and then using it to soak up the marinade. Many people will tell you to press in order to fry, but this is because they're using too little oil/too low of heat/not waiting long enough, leading to the tofu sticking.
You can make blackened tofu by just adding a blackening spice coating to the tofu. Make sure the area is well-ventilated.
Dry tofu is good thinly sliced, stir-fried with celery.
You can make tofu super spongey by freezing it slowly, then thawing it.
You can make tofu have an almost meaty or mushrooms texture by freezing it / thawing it twice
The special sauce for a fried tofu banh mi is just Maggi sauce.
Any sauce with sauteed soy sauce is good on tofu. You can add any of these things in different combinations for a good sauce:
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veggie oyster sauce
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chili oil
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doubanjiang
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sesame oil
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sesame paste
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chopped pickled peppers
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black vinegar
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a little rice vinegar
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a peanut sauce
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anything from lao gan ma
Tofu can even be good barely cooked. Mapo tofu is great, surprisingly easy. You just end up pre-boiling the tofu for a bit, then simmer in sauce.
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Depends on what I've got in my freezer left over from other recipes. It's quite versatile since you can put most anything in. Most recently it was corn, peas, broccoli, and edamame.
I always hated tofu until I learned to press it to remove moisture. Makes it firmer and more able to take corn starch.
Anyways, I cut it into small cubes, toss in corn starch, and fry in oil until golden brown. While frying, I put together a marinade/sauce, then add it to the pan to coat and thicken when the tofu is done. I haven't gone much into pre-cook marination since I like to spend time doing other things.
This is basically my go-to as well. I bread the tofu beforehand and add spices, as well as some soy sauce at the end. Fridging the rice seems important after cooking it - it needs to dehydrate somewhat.
Good vegs to put in there: onions, finely diced carrots, peas.
vegan chilli is my lazy meal prep of choice
2 tins of tomatoes
2 tins of beans (i like to have one of black, one of kidney)
diced carrots
sliced mushrooms
a fuckton of onion
chopped chillies
spices of choice (or beefed up chilli powder)
lemon/lime juice
dash of cinnamon
block or two of dark chocolate when it's almost readytakes about 40 mins and yields 3~5 days of chilli that freezes well, depending how you use it, (by itself, over fries, over rice etc.)
I've started using lentils instead of meat, it's pretty fucggin good
yeah, lentils are great, could never get them to work for me in a chilli though
oil in the pot, heat it up to a good frying temperature
chuck in the onions, carrot and mushrooms
when the onions go translucent, chuck in the spices and chillies
give it a couple of minutes, stirring frequently
dump in the tomatoes and beans (straight from the can is the way i do it, no draining or anything)
add the lemon or lime juice and the cinnamon
bring it to a boil, then drop it to a simmer
stir it around a bit
put the lid on
wait ~15 mins
give it another stir
lid back on
~15 mins
stir again
lid back on
~10 mins
chocolate in
stir around
lid back on
take off the heat while getting containers readyi think it's just to reduce the amount of fluid in the dish, but in a chilli you kinda want it wet
no problem
:geordi-no: planning how thick your chili will be while you're cooking it
:geordi-yes: just throwing a handful of tvp into the watery chili when it's done
Beans are your friend
Buy a bunch of dried beans (I like black beans, but you do you), put them in a pot with some aromatics (you know, garlic, onions etc.) wrapped up in a little cheesecloth satchel
Fill the pot with enough water to cover the beans and bring that biz to a boil, pop a lid on it and let it sit for an hour
Then you got plenty of beans to do with as you will
I divvy them up into separate containers and that way when I want to do different things with them, I can season them further for that particular thing.
Lentil Curry! I also really like lentil soup. One pot spaghetti with some shredded veggies or white beans added.
As a fellow lazy person I just made something amazing last week!
Here's the recipe I loosely followed
I basically just cooked an entire bag of dry lentils for 15 minutes, drained, then eyeballed the extra virgin olive oil / fresh parsley / salt.
It was like 10 minutes of on-hands cooking, 5 of which were just experimenting with flavors (mainly adding cayenne randomly). Then I just put it in a massive tupperware and ate it cold for lunch every day for a week, sometimes on toast, sometimes on a salad, sometimes on its own. HIGHLY recommend because of how easy and cheap it was.
I love this recipe for Vegetable Korma by Ethan Chlebowski . It's super healthy, flavorful, and easy to make in large batches. And if you substitute for any kind of non-dairy yogurt, totally vegan.
There are two main vegan "cheese sauces" there's one made with potatoes that I personally think tastes a little better, but the oatmeal version is undeniably less effort. You don't even really need a fancy blender. My mid tier Walmart one does just fine.
You really do just hit blend - high 5 or 6 times and it will create enough heat in the sauce just with the friction of the spinning blades to effectively cook it.
I think that recipe is a little much. I usually halve it or quarter it, and usually have some to throw away at the end of the week still. There are a thousand variations on this recipe too.
Rice chads rise up.
Sushi rice, coconut-lime rice, risotto? All really good.
