
Ask HN: Preparing food is a chore. Any suggestions? - mentos
I tried Soylent last year for about 3 weeks for every meal. I know thats crazy but I was very curious to experiment and see if it was possible. I had no problem with the taste, but by the end I was losing weight and had caught a cold so I ended the experiment.<p>I went a few months doing cereal for breakfast and ordering lunch&#x2F;dinner from seamless.com but recently I have been trying to eat healthier and cheaper. Currently I am ordering pre-made meals from freshdirect.com which has a great selection, the food tastes great and preparing is as simple as 4 mins in the microwave. Unfortunately I am still suffering from insufficient calories (I&#x27;m a 29yo 5&#x27;11 160lbs ectomorph). I think if the portions were 10-15% larger I would be content but right now at $10 a meal I&#x27;m not satisfied.<p>So my question is does anyone have any suggestions for cheap, great tasting, easily prepared food? I guess a competitor to freshdirect with larger portions is what I am asking for.. but curious to hear what HN does.
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moron4hire
Prep early in the week. Cook component foods that take longer to cook in bulk
(rice, potatoes, large quantities of meat). They don't take a lot of prep
time, but they can severely skew cooking time of other meals because they take
longer than other things to cook.

If you're eating rice, you should combine it with beans to get the complete
protein. Buy canned beans only, the bags are a waste of time.

Mix and match components at meal time, adding fresh vegetables (onions,
peppers, tomatoes, etc.) and seasonings as you go. You can create an
incredible variety this way that takes no more than 10 to 15 minutes to
prepare for every meal, 5 if you're really crushing it.

Also, a pork shoulder in a crock pot, covered in seasonings, salt, and beer
and set to cook all day Sunday is _less_ than 5 minutes of prep time for
probably more meat than you can eat on your own for every meal before it
spoils in two weeks.

Don't overlook spices, salt, and fat. I find the reason most people don't like
their own homecooked food is because they don't season it enough. I can't
think of a single dish that I make that does not get at least some salt in it,
even the few times I make candies. Garlic is similarly overlooked. And don't
fear fat. Fat is flavor. You need a little to keep things interesting. I
personally prefer butter, sesame oil, and filtered bacon fat, as they have
strong flavors so not as much is needed.

~~~
mentos
Hey thanks for the suggestion, I think adding a crockpot to my kitchen will go
a long way and ordering preparing the food myself will be much cheaper.
Greatest concern is the prep time but I'll try and see.

~~~
moron4hire
I think people don't like cooking at home because they don't season things
properly and then are stuck with a lot of food they don't like. And even if
they do, they've made a large amount of one meal and get burnt out eating the
same thing for three days. To have variety seems to take cooking full meals
every night, which is a lot of work.

You have to think like an industrial kitchen. A restaurant doesn't cook every
meal for every customer 100% from scratch as they are needed. Not even the
highest of the high end restaurants do that. But they also don't have vats of
fully prepared food sitting around to get gross and dish out at the last
minute.

You are similarly one person having to cook for 21 people every week: you, 3
times a day, 7 days a week. The ways you would make that work for cooking for
21 people in one meal are the ways you make it work for cooking for one person
over 21 meals.

The key is to break a set of common recipes down into key, bottleneck
components that keep well. You cook them 80% of the way in bulk, then cook
them the last 20% when you need them.

You can also combine some of your prep-time per meal into your prep-time for
the week. It takes no more time to cook 6 chicken breasts in the oven as it
takes to cook 1, but if you want chicken breast for dinner tonight, you might
as well cook 5 more. Then the next day you can slice it thin to have on a
sandwich for lunch, dice it up and mix with spices for tacos, mix with mayo
for chicken salad, put on top of salads, etc.

If I'm chopping onions, I often only want half the onion, but I will chop the
whole onion and stow the half I don't need because I'll probably need half a
chopped onion the next day, too. Rice takes about 15 minutes to make,
regardless if it's 1/2 cup or 2 cups. I can only eat 1/2 cup in a meal, so I
make 2 cups and stow the other three servings.

When I make tacos, I usually make a LOT of ground beef with taco seasoning.
Don't buy the packets. Taco seasoning is just spicy cornflour gravy. You make
a spicy, erh, soup with whatever ingredients you like and then thicken it with
cornflour. Now you're never out of taco seasoning. And taco meat goes great
with eggs in the morning.

The next time you're at a restaurant, pay attention to the side dishes and see
how many of them are either the same or are different variations of similar
components. There is huge variety from few inputs in permutation.

~~~
mentos
Hey really appreciate you taking the time to follow up. I agree with your
points and I think it will take a bit of work to find those core building
blocks that can be combined to achieve variety but should be worth it long
term.

It would be cool to have a website that listed 5 of these main ingredients at
the top and listed all of the meal combinations beneath. Imagine like
RiceChickenBeanTacoMeat.com know of anything with similar intentions?

