Re:Food security and the coming storm
by disgruntledphd2 on Sunday May 29, 2022 @01:33PM
(#31550960)
Get a slow cooker. This allows you to arbitrage earlier time to do prep (before work, or during a break if WFH), set it up and forget about it for a few hours. As a bonus, it tends to taste good even if you don't pre sear or saute the ingredients.
+1 for the slow cooker. You can buy a smaller 2 liter one if you are concerned about space. There's a lot of benefits:
* Prepare huge amounts of meat (in the smallest one you can prepare up to a kg of meat). * Very simple meal prep. Plop some meat, throw some salt in, add some sauce (soy sauce, spicy or whatever you prefer), add some liquid (water usually) and turn it on. 5 minutes or less. * It never boils, so the water level never rises, avoiding spills (or having to even worry about it). So you can leave it overnight for the 8+ hour cooking process. * You can transform cheap, tough cuts of meat (like Gulash soup meat) into fantastic tasting dishes.
One of the best things about a slow cooker is that the meat softens up, it uniformly absorbs all seasoning, and it makes the meat release its best fatty flavour.
Pasta + bechamel is easy, you can't do this 5 nights a week. I'm moving away from carbohydrate-rich main dish, more to grains and pulses. A slow-cooked shoulder of pork, like a cassoulet, is easy, yet still takes time to roast, then the meat separated from the connective tissues, the fat, then a stock reduction, then the beans. I offer it as an example of cheap, easy, tasty, and time and labor intensive dish. You need some greens to serve with it, and you can't prep greens 5 days ahead. I also don't want to eat this 10 meals in a row.
Edited to add: I find Gordon Ramsey YouTube videos quite instructive, his menu is simple and tasty. I got a lot of mileage out of his techniques.