Wecipe Wednesday - September 29, 2021 - Learning to Cook
Welcome back to Wecipe Wednesday. I volunteered to lead a return of this longstanding regular thread at r/loseit at least until the end of March 2021. Since no one has stepped up to take my place yet, I'll keep going until I run out of recipes.
I'll include the ingredients list, nutritional information along with other hints. Some recipes are vegetarian/vegan, others not so much.
Post your favourite healthy recipes here to share with the rest of the loseit community! Recipes don't have to fit this week's theme at all, they should just be something that you can eat reasonably frequently while actively losing weight.
Due to the spirit of the sub, please try to include the calorie and nutritional information if at all possible. MyFitnessPal has awesome recipe calculators you can use!
For the most part, I target my meals to have a component in the 350-550 kcal range. My breakfast and lunch tend to be right around 400 kcal each and dinner can be a bit heavier, or include a side dish to bring the calories up a bit. When I was eating 1650 kcal/day the breakdown was roughly 400/400/600/250 for breakfast/lunch/dinner/snacks.
Anyhow: enough background on to the recipes!
Learning to Cook
A comment from /u/BertSacklin in the Q+A thread and several later night text threads with my oldest son prompted this week’s post.
We've already covered many no-cook meals that you can easily assemble at home. Sandwiches, salads, etc... where cooking isn't required.
How did you learn how to cook and what are the minimum resources you need to equip a kitchen to cook for 1-2 people?
I would argue that the minimum toolkit should be:
- A decent sharp knife. Preferably a something like a 6-8 inch Chef’s knife
- 2 cutting boards (one for veggies one for raw meat)
- Non-stick skillet ~8-10”
- 2-3 qt/liter pot (I prefer this one not to be non-stick myself)
- Cookie sheet/roasting pan something that is oven safe and can go in the oven
- Spatula/turners that are compatible with your non-stick pan (nylon/silicone)
- Canola Oil (I am so not a fan of spray oil, it kills cookware).
- Salt and Pepper
Check your local thrift stores, Buy Nothing, Everything is Free and Freecycle groups for any of these items you don’t already have access to, or you can buy each item at a reasonable quality for ~$20. Try to get the cutting boards new, and resist the urge to spend any money on a beat up used non-stick pan (they probably got rid of it for a reason). You can get something better as a starter pan for the cost of 1-2 meals out. (Bought a $12 pan recently at the supermarket for such an application). Bonus if the skillet and pot can share a lid.
Stainless, carbon steel and cast iron can all last forever. Cast iron in particular is really inexpensive and over time can get most of the benefits of non-stick without the limitations, go ahead use a metal spatula, but you do have to learn to take care of it. Keep it clean and dry and well seasoned and periodically strip and re-season, but that should be your next pan after you've been cooking for a while.
And that's enough to make a whole lot of things!
That's basically all I started with in my new kitchen post-divorce and re-learning how to cook for myself.
Then it all boils down to deciding what you want to cook and potentially adding additional seasonings. Note that you can get many seasonings free from your local Buy Nothing groups if you want to experiment. People are constantly moving and tossing what they have in their kitchens. Note also that many of my early recipes were Instant Pot based, mainly because I wanted things that I could time-shift the preparation time to way before dinner. If that's important for you or you already know you like lots of stews and soups, get a multi-cooker first instead of the skillet and pot.
Anyhow: This week's recipe was a new one to me driven by the availability or lack thereof of certain ingredients. I had 4 long Asian eggplants from the CSA to get rid of. I was planning a Thai green curry with some lemongrass from our yard. Yet. the supermarket was out of the green curry paste I needed. Sigh. Back to the drawing board.
Found an old bottle of Teriyaki sauce in the fridge. So pivot from Thai to Japanese-ish.
https://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/spicy-chicken-and-eggplant-stir-fry
1 cup jasmine rice [640 kcal] 1 lb chicken breast tenders, cut into 1-in. pieces [750 kcal] 3 tablespoons canola oil [360 kcal] 2 tbsp toasted sesame oil [240 kcal] 0.33 cup teriyaki sauce [150 kcal] 2 lbs Japanese eggplant, cut into 1-in. cubes [120 kcal] 1 bunch scallions, sliced, white and green parts separated [10 kcal] 1 tbsp chopped garlic [0 kcal] 1 tbsp chopped fresh ginger [0 kcal] 0.5 tsp crushed red pepper [0 kcal]
TOTAL: 2270 kcal/4 servings = ~570 kcal/serving all in. Right on target for my 600 kcal core evening meals.
If making this for the first time with the minimal toolkit above for 1-2 people, I'd buy some pre-cooked rice and cut the recipe in half you you can use the 8-10" fry pan. You can skip the sesame oil and fresh ginger to begin with or buy the garlic and ginger already minced in a jar. Scavenge the red pepper flakes from a pizza place if you don't already have some, or buy a jar if you think you'll use it regularly.
How'd you learn to cook? Anything I didn't include in the essential list above that you found you needed?
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