Your favourite simple to cook recipes?

I like pancakes.

yes, that was relevant.

There’s rice and beans, which is always good.

Mac & cheese is super easy.

Skillet with a lid
Cheap cut of meat
1 sliced potato laid around the sides of the meat
1 tablespoon of flour sprinkled over the whole
½ cup of salsa
enough water to just come up to the sides of the meat
cover and simmer slowly for about a half an hour then remove the meat and stir up the potatoes in the ‘gravy’, add into flour tortillas

Brie and Greens sandwiches… Delish and easy.

You’ll need: Whole grain bread, olive oil, garlic clove, brie cheese, tomato, and baby spinach or other mixed greens, dijion if you want.

1.Brush a small amount of oil on one side of the bread, then chop a garlic clove in half and rub it over the oil. Put a small amount of the mustard on the other side if you want.
2. Heat a skillet to medium/low
3. Place 1 slice of bread on skillet, oil side down. Put thin slices of brie (or thick, if you really like it and don’t care how melty it gets) on the bread. Top with a slice of tomato and the greens. Put the rest of the bread on top, oil side up. Flip it over after a minute or two. Just be careful not to let it burn- the oil makes it cook quick.
4. Eat.

I like to cut the sandwiches in half and serve with minestrone soup.

For this time of year: Roasted butternut squash with maple syrup. Peel a butternut squash (this takes a while so make sure you have a good peeler). Cut it in half lengthwise. scoop out the seeds and throw them away (or toast them if you like toasted squash seeds). Cut the butternut squash into chunks (however big you’d like…smaller cooks faster). Put it in a big pyrex baking pan. Drizzle olive oil over it, add a little bit of salt (you can always add more later), mix it up with your hands so that the olive oil and salt coat the squash. Cover the pan with aluminum foil. Roast it in the oven at 350 degrees for about half an hour, until the pieces are soft. Then add a few tablespoons of maple syrup over the squash, mix it up, and serve. The maple syrup gives it a really yummy flavor.

Any time of year – stir fry. Chop up veggies…saute some onions, garlic, zucchini, carrots, red peppers in olive oil. Add soy sauce or any other bottled sauce that you like. Serve over rice.

Or, rice and beans – heat up a can of black beans. Mix in some salsa, and maybe some canned corn. Serve over rice with some sour cream or plain yogurt.

This one is simple and oh so awesome! I added browned pork sausage and green onions to it and it was amazing!

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Restaurant-Style-Hashbrown-Casserole/Detail.aspx

Orzo with Shrimp and Feta. Super easy, and great to serve for dinner guests. They’ll never know how simple it is. Serves 6 easily.

All you need in the way of kitchen gear is a knife, a cutting board, a skillet, and a pot to cook the pasta. Any kind of big bowl will do for serving.

You’ll need about a pound and a half of large shrimp, peeled. 8 ounces of uncooked orzo pasta, 4 ounces of crumbled feta cheese, two cloves of minced garlic, two medium tomatoes, chopped, and two tablespoons of chopped fresh basil. Also some butter, about a tablespoon, and fresh ground black pepper to taste.

First, cook the orzo according to the package directions. It only takes about 8 minutes once the water boils. Meanwhile, melt the butter and saute the shrimp for about 3 minutes, or until it’s just pink. Add the garlic, tomatoes, and basil, and cook and stir the shrimp for another minute. Drain the orzo, and toss it with the shrimp mixture and feta cheese in a large serving dish. Serve, and prepare for lots of oohs and aahs. The feta melts and combines with the juices from the shrimp and tomatoes to make kind of a creamy sauce. It’s even pretty with those fresh tomatoes and basil. If you do the prep ahead of time (all the chopping and peeling the shrimp), it only takes a little while to throw together. The only thing I wouldn’t chop in advance is the basil, or it will wilt and darken.

Serve it with some good bread and a quick salad. Even the leftovers are yummy.

I make curries all the time. I like them because you don’t really need an actual recipe. You can cook them very haphazardly and they still turn out very tasty. I’m sure there are actual names for these recipes, but I don’t know them.

Yellow chicken curry
1 onion
about a pound of chicken, cut up into any size pieces
fish sauce
soy sauce
1 ginger root, finely diced
1 clove of garlic, finely diced (Or you can go to the Asian grocery store and get pureed ginger and garlic that come in tubs. These are awesome to have around)
Some kind of spicy peppers, if you want.
cooking oil

Marinade the chicken in the fish sauce, soy sauce, ginger and garlic. Chop up the onion and saute it in the oil until it’s soft, then add the chicken and marinade and cook it until the chicken is cooked through. If you add peppers, cut them lengthwise and just throw them in the pot. Cover the whole thing and let it simmer for about 15 minutes, and eat it with rice.

You can make a great curry with red meat in a lot the same way. First, saute an onion, then add the minced garlic. (No ginger, different flavors here.) Add the meat- about a pound of chopped lamb, goat, beef, or something like that. Once it’s browned, the onions and garlic and everything should start turning mushy and sauce-like. Add the chicken stock and let it simmer for about an hour until it starts to thicken up, then add about half a pound of baby carrots and one cut up potato and let it simmer some more. Voila!

When I lived with one of my friends she loved Korean barbecue but we could never afford it, so I made this dish a lot. You need some kind of big lettuce, some kimchi, scallions, garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil, thinly sliced beef and rice. Marinate the beef with sesame oil, soy sauce and sliced scallions and make the steamed rice. Then get out a skillet or a wok and turn the heat on HIGH, and put some oil on there. Pan-sear the beef- low cook time, high temperature. You will want to turn on the overhead fan for this. Use the lettuce leaves like tacos and wrap up some meat, rice, and kimchi. It’s not the same as having meat grilled at the table for you, but still pretty good!

Oh, yeah- making rice. Start with some white rice and wash it several times until the water is clear. Put the rice in a pan- you want a ratio of about 1:1 of rice and water. Boil it until the water is mostly gone, then put it on low heat and cover until the rice is nice and fluffy.

My other favorite thing to make is apple crisp. I love things I can make without recipes. Peel and cut up a bunch of apples and stir them in a big bowl with brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, vanilla, or whatever you want. In a smaller bowl, mix up a bunch of oatmeal, a little flour, brown sugar, and butter until the mixture is mostly clumpy. Cover the apples with the topping and bake it for about 20 minutes.

@MissAusten I’m gonna try that for dinner on Sunday! Sounds good!

Another thing that’s really simple is roast chicken.

Buy a whole chicken, remove the giblet packet from the inside, and rinse the entire chicken, inside and out, with water. Pat it dry and plop it into a roasting pan. If you don’t have a roasting pan, just use a baking dish.

Brush the outside of the chicken with olive oil, then generously sprinkle it with salt, pepper, oregano, garlic powder, basil, and paprika. If you like it a little spicy, use some red pepper as well. Peel a couple of cloves of garlic, cut them in half, and stick them inside the chicken. You can also stuff a halved lemon, onion, or apple into the chicken.

Pour about two cups of either water, chicken broth, or white wine into the bottom of the roasting pan. Put the lid on. If you’re using a baking dish, just cover it tightly with aluminum foil. Put it into a 350 degree oven until it reaches an internal temp of 180 (I think that’s the right temp, you might want to look it up). If you want the skin crispy, uncover the chicken for the last 15 minutes or so. I usually buy a large roasting chicken with one of those button timers that pops up when it’s done. Roasting it covered with all that liquid tends to cook the chicken faster, but it also helps it not dry out. When it’s done, the chicken will look like it’s falling apart.

Then, you get the leftovers for all kinds of easy dishes. Chicken salad, chicken pot pie (I have a super easy recipe for that as well), chicken fried rice, chicken sandwiches, chicken soup. There are so many possibilities! You can very easily make your own chicken broth with the carcass after you’ve eaten the chicken. Just put the bones into a big pot, cover with water, add whatever veggies you have around (I usually use onion and carrots), garlic, a bay leaf. Cover and simmer for a couple of hours. Strain, cover, refrigerate, skim off the fat. Use the broth to make soup (very easy) or add flavor to rice.

If you like meatloaf, buy a box of Lipton Onion Soup mix and use it to make the meatloaf recipe on the back of the box. It’s really good, and then you have meatloaf sandwiches. You can also use the meatloaf as a base for a shepherd’s pie.

The great thing about cooking is that once you get started, you learn that you can make all kinds of good food without tons of effort. This cookbook is wonderful for anyone starting out. It explains everything with lots of pictures. :)

Raw steak.

* flexes *

raaaaaaaaggghhh

We call this Cuban Chicken in my family, but it is not Cuban at all. It is a recipe my mom’s Cuban girlfriend gave her years ago.

4 skinless bone-in chicken thighs that have been out of the fridge for 20–30 minutes
1 can campbell’s cream of mushroom soup
¼ cup orange juice
¼ cup water
1 cup sliced mushrooms
salt
pinch of garlic

In a frying pan that has a cover (not sure what to call that pan? The one with straight sides? But you can improvise if you need to, 10 inch diameter more or less would be good) empty entire contents of soup can, water, orange juice and pinch of garlic. Mix together and then additionally mix in the mushrooms. Start cooking at medium high heat. Salt the chicken and then add it to the pan and cover. Once “soup” is bubbling, reduce to medium heat and cook approximately 30 minutes turning chicken twice. If sauce starts to dry out add some water, it is not a thin sauce, but you don’t want it to cook out so much that it might burn, or if it seems runny you can take the cover off towards the end of cooking so it thickens.

Serve over rice.

HInt: you can add some white wine to the recipe if you like.

Pot Roast Bake
1 big can Dinty Moore beef stew
1 tin of 12 biscuits

Pour stew into a casserole dish, place biscuits on top (cover as much as you can, it’s ok to flatten them out a bit) and put in the oven at 350 for about twenty minutes.

Potato Soup with bacon
pack of pre-cooked bacon, crumbled.
four potatoes- cubed.
cup of milk
stick of butter
salt and pepper, onion powder, garlic powder.

Fill medium pot halfway with water. Toss in potatoes. Boil until done. Mash the potatoes a bit (the water will get murkey and thicker) but don’t make mash potatoes :)

Turn heat to medium and toss in milk, butter and bacon. Simmer for about half an hour. Add spices and mow down.

Adjust level of water and milk for the size of your pan.

Easy Peach Cobbler
Bisquick
Sugar (about 2 cups)
Canned peaches- 2 big cans with slices cut into chunks.

Make bisquick recipe for biscuits but add a bit more milk- about half a cup more. Toss in the peaches and sugar- stir.

Put in oven at 350 for about 35–45 minutes. For extra pizzaz add sugar sprinkled on top before baking.

Jello Cloud

Mix a box of Orange Jello, a container of Cool Whip, a container of Cottage Cheese.
Mix in a drained can of Mandarin Oranges. Keep it cold.

Thats it. Very fast side dish that’s perfect for BBQ’s, and tastes great!

@Haleth – woah. I’m going to ask my mum if I can make that.

Chicken salad. You can either boil and pull your own chicken or use canned. Either way, just add a couple of ingredients based on your tastes, refrigerate and you’re done.

Rosemary potatoes. Red potatoes, chopped into chunks, boiled until just tender, throw them on a cookie sheet with EVOO, a couple of cloves of chopped garlic, some rosemary, salt and pepper. 450 for 35ish or more until they smell and look done. You can serve this with anything, including chicken fingers from the freezer section of the grocery.

Broccoli salad. 1 cup mayo, ½ cup sugar, 2 tsp vinegar. Mix that with broccoli florets in bite sized pieces, bacon, chopped red onion, shredded cheddar cheese. Refrigerate for at least an hour.

Onion dip. 2 cups mayo, 2 cups shredded swiss cheese, 2 cups chopped vidallia onions. Mix together, 350 for about 45 minutes. Serve with wheat thins or triscuits.

Apple crisp. Peel and chop apples, put a variety of things on top depending on the recipe, pop it in the oven, done.

Chocolate stuff

Adapted from Alton Brown:

Set oven on broil. If you have a modern oven, make sure one rack is above the other. Make a “snake” out of a piece of aluminium foil to hold the oven door ajar. Take two sirloins (or one if it’s just you), salt and pepper to taste. Rub in a bit of olive oil.

In the heated oven, place the steak directly on the top rack. Broil for 5 minutes, then flip and broil the other side for 5 minutes. I stopped here, because I like my steaks rare. For medium: Move the top rack to the highest place it can go in the oven. Broil one side of the steak for 3 minutes and then flip, broiling the other side for 3 minutes.

Result: One sirloin steak cooked to medium doneness. Adjust broiling times for rare or well-done steak and type of steak. Thinner steaks need less time.

Chop up some mushrooms, zucchini and other tasty squash, toss them in a pan with some water and salt on medium/medium-high, leave for about 8–10 minutes. Enjoy!

10 oz. bag of cranberries, 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, pinch of salt. Put water and salt into pan, apply medium heat, add sugar and dissolve all of sugar in water. Add fresh cranberries. stir and keep heating until berry skins crack. Reduce heat, mash berries with potato masher (not the German hand grenade, the kitchen tool) and simmer for about ten minutes. Remove from heat, let cool in glass dish, put in fridge for 30 minutes, serve with any of the chicken or turkey recipes above.

I saw Paula Deen do this as a snake for Halloween but I think it’s a good idea…

take a can of crescent roll dough, pinch all the perforations together so they don’t separate. Roll the whole piece out so it’s a little bit thin. Brush it with a little bit of mustard, and then put some of your favorite lunch meats/cheese/veggies in the middle. Roll it up nice and tight, paint a little egg wash (just beaten egg) over the outside, and bake until golden brown. I think this would also be yummy if you used jarred pizza/spaghetti sauce and put your favorite pizza toppings in the middle. Insta-calzone.

Soup. I think I eat soup something like 40% of the time. Here is one of my favorites.

Chicken, Spinach & Gnocchi Soup

16 oz gnocchi
4 c chicken broth, low sodium
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 tbsp unsalted butter
16 oz bag of baby spinach leaves
2 c shredded cooked chicken
salt & pepper
pinch sugar
parmesan (optional)

Bring med saucepan to a boil over high heat, then salt generously. And the gnocchi and cook, stirring occasionally, until al dente (about 3 min). Drain and set aside.

Meanwhile, put ¼ c of the chicken broth, garlic, butter and sugar in a large sauce pan over med low heat, bring to simmer and cook, uncovered until garlic is tender (about a min).

Add spinach and let wilt for about 30 sec. Add remaining broth and chicken and bring to a simmer. Stir in gnocchi and bring to a boil.

season with salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle with parmesan if desired.

I take short cuts a lot. Like I buy meatballs from my butcher, dust with flour, and roll them around in hot oil for about fifteen minutes. Meanwhile bring a pot of water to boil. Pour off the oil, replace with jar spaghetti sauce and simmer, covered. Put spaghetti in the boiling water for ten minutes, then put it all together with a little grated Parmesan cheese.

Another think I find easy that most people think is hard is chicken. I do the same thing, but instead of meatballs I take chicken breast haves, cut them in half to make them even thinner (a butcher would probably do this for you), dust in flour, dip in an egg beaten with a couple tablespoons of water, then coat with bread crumbs. I add spices to the bread crumbs: pepper, thyme, rosemary, oregano, marjoram depending on what I have on hand, but you can by seasoned bread crumbs and skip that. Then just put the chicken in a skillet with a third cup of hot olive oil for three minutes on a side.

Or, roast chicken, scary I know. Just pull out the neck and giblets, rinse the whole thing, rub with salt, brush with melted butter, put it in a roasting pan, optionally toss chunks of potato, carrot, and onion with olive oil and scatter around the chicken, stick the whole thing in a 425 degree oven for about an hour for a four pound bird. Whole dinner is done, and most of the cooking time you spend doing something else.

You might like one of the recipe books by Sandra Lee, she uses prepared stuff with some fresh ingredients for quick meals. Not sure all of the products are available where you live (I am assuming you are outside of the states from your original question). Here is her website http://www.semihomemade.com/cooking/

I made chicken dip tonight…

8oz cream cheese (softened), 8 oz mayo, 1 large can of chicken, 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese, 1 small can of green chillies. 1 chopped jalapeño optional. Mix together, put in 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. Simple!

@avvooooooo Chicken comes in cans? O_O

@Beta_Orionis: Yeah, much like tuna. It’s okay on a budget hehe

@poofandmook Oh thank goodness. I was imagining something more along the lines of a quartered roasted chicken floating in some strange fluid!

@Beta_Orionis: eeeew

@poofandmook my thoughts exactly

@Beta_Orionis Here is chicken in a can. Just like canned tuna, it comes with water in it. VERY easy to use in many recipes.

You guys are awesome. Thanks for sharing your recipes!

I’ll be trying out most of these on my next payday. Of course, not all of them on the same day, that would be silly ;) I’ll probably experiment with some of the recipes too. I like to try and get creative whenever I can ;)

Spaghetti bolognaise man! It’s good and it takes no time at all. I’m as bad as you, I have Foyer cooking skills (wink @acidlogik ) but once I learned to brown mince I discovered I could cook a whole bunch of things.. Spaghetti and shepherds pie being my favourites. Don’t let anyone tell you that you have to use fresh meat and the like, it can be pretty intimidating to work with and theres no need when you can raid the freezer at Netto hehe and if all else fails, just wing it! Who knows you might invent something awesome =)