Cooking for One / New Cook

[brucew]

Oooo. I forgot about this cookbook: Cooking Comically: Recipes So Easy You'll Actually Make Them by Tyler Capps. There's a companion web site too.

Geared more towards students and down-home cooking versions of finger food, it's still nice because it teaches a lot of technique visually through photos overlaid with comics.

[zetroc]

Another thing I learned from Bourdain's writing that helped me greatly was the concept of mise-en-place. Simply put, you prep everything for a recipe and lay it out on the counter before you actually start cooking. Having an array of small bowls with your prepared ingredients beside the stove will help you learn without panicking - when the recipe says "add 1/4 cup diced onion" you won't have to scramble to peel an onion, dice it, measure it, and then add it to the pan; you'll just reach for the bowl that has 1/4 cup of diced onion in it. I can't tell you how much this helped me.

[BShow]

Often times when I'm lazy and want something fast, I'll make breakfast for dinner. Skillet up some bacon or sausage, use the rendered fat from the meat and some butter to fry a couple eggs, and serve with steamed rice from the rice cooker or some toasted bread. If I'm feeling healthy I'll saute some frozen peas with the meat fat and olive oil.

Talk about an easy meal. Quick, easy cleanup, no leftovers, and most of all, delicious.

breakfast supplies are always on hand in my household. not so much for breakfast as it is for an emergency dinner. The kids think its a "special occasion" eggs and sausage are cool. I like sausage over bacon in my kitchen because its cleaner and doesn't stink up the joint. biscuits or pancakes from bisquick are passable and very easy in a pinch. If you jack something up, just remember, almost anything is good if you drown it in pure maple syrup. Friends dont let friends use aunt jemima.

[David Tollefson]

My 14-year-old considers "breakfast for dinner" to be a treat.

[robin3mj]

My 14-year-old considers "breakfast for dinner" to be a treat.

At JMU, D-Hall did breakfast for dinner every Thursday. Awesome home fries and they had individual Belgian waffle makers. The eggs were maybe a bit sketchy until drowned in hot sauce.

My buddies and I had a song we would sing as we waited to swipe our card on the way in.
It consisted solely of the lyrics "breakfast for dinner" to the tune of La Cucaracha.
I still get the song stuck in my head during rides sometimes.

[ericpmoss]

Rachel Khoo has a bunch of YouTube videos for recipes that can be done in tiny kitchens with minimal tooling called "My Tiny Paris Kitchen".

Unlike a lot of the Gordon Ramsay and Raymond Blanc recipes (which are really great tasting), these don't require nearly as much technique to come out well.

For Thai recipes, including how to make various pastes from scratch, check out PailinsKitchen channel on YouTube, as well. Again, a minimum of technique and tools, but the results look great.

Oh, and this looks like fun, random recipes: http://cooking.nytimes.com/68861692/...imes&smtyp=cur

[Mabouya]

Become a vegetarian.

If you don't use meat cooking is so much easier. (and healthier for both you and the rest of the planet)

[choke]

I'm single and cook most of the time. The crockpot, rice cooker and wok are your friends. There are a lot of easy recipes in the Feedzone Cookbook.

[maunahaole]

When you get a chance, go look at the Cooks Illustrated Best Recipe cookbook. It has some good basic recipes in it. What is better in it is that they have little sidebar sections on hows and whys of how stuff cooks and why some ways are better. We have never met, but the linear an logical fashion in the way they explain it will speak to you. Once you nail a couple of basics, the rest comes pretty quickly.

[Animus Cycle Fab]

As said before, rice cooker and wok are great for single cooking.
Fast, easy / no clean up, versatile!

Some really good stuff in here.
I learned to cook real food for myself using this. It showed me that I didn't have to be a culinary master to make high quality meals for myself. (not cooking for 1 specific)
Feedzone cookbooks as well

European shopping style helps with food waste if applicable to your area.

[steve garro]

Do you like Thai food? It takes about 15 minutes to make a good Thai curry as long as you have access to the right ingredients.

Another twist is you can take 4 potatoes, 3-4 carrots and some frozen peas, chunk the P&C into 1" chunks, and stab them a few times each with a fork, and then nuke them in a bowl until they are easy to stab the fork into, firm yet yielding - about 10min.

Set aside.

Now take a few chicken breasts, cube into 1/2" chunks and brown, and have an onion sliced which you will add after maybe 2min with 2T of curry as noted, cook until translucent and fragrant, maybe 5min total, now add two cans of coconut milk with the carrots and potatoes and the peas, bring to a boil, let sit 5min & serve - really good!

- Garro.