

Ask HN: Food hacks? - sillysaurus3

I haven&#x27;t seen a dedicated thread for food hacks, so I thought I&#x27;d submit one and see what happens.<p>There are many readers of HN who don&#x27;t have much money or time to prepare food and could benefit from knowing how to do so cheaply or quickly.  So what are your ideas?
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brudgers
Cheap, quick, nutritious. Pick two.

If you substitute, efficient preparation for quick, then:

\+ The slow cooker. Put it in the morning. Eat it in the evening.

\+ The freezer. Spend a day cooking multiple portions. Eat better during the
week.

Both work well with soups.

Really cheap and relatively fast and fairly nutritious: lentils take about
twenty minutes.

Fast and easy pasta - couscous. In a pinch, don't even need to boil the water,
just put water and couscous in a bowl.

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kliao
+1 for Slow cooker. Just cooked a 5 pound organic free range whole chicken
($13) which should last at least 5 meals. Washed chicken, added some fresh
ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil, water. Total prep time about 15
minutes. Slow-cooked for 3 hours on high.

5-minute freshly steamed leafy greens (kale, spinach, collards, mustard
greens, etc.). No need to chop, just rip off a handful, wash, throw in a small
pot, put on lid, turn on low heat for 3 min. Ready to eat.

Canned sardines for cheap, instant, healthy protein.

Capellini pasta (very thin) cooks in 2 min as opposed to thicker pastas which
might take 10 min.

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SoftwareMaven
People undervalue nutritious food, especially for powering our brains which
ultimately enables our hacker culture. Our brains are mostly saturated fat,
yet we eat low fat. Tanking blood sugar limits mental processing, yet we eat
tons of sugar, sending blood sugar levels on a roller coaster ride. Better
yet, ketones (an output from using fats as energy) and medium chain
triglycerides (MCTs) provide better! more consistent brain fuel. Resistant
starch powers our gut biome, leading to increased production of
neurotransmitters, again, providing positive effects in the brain.

My hack is simple: eat a very high fat diet that provides ample saturated fats
coupled with coconut oil for the MCTs. Limit processed carbohydrates and
sugars to keep energy levels consistent. Eat all the bacon because it's
delicious, and fits as part of a brain (and heart[1]) healthy diet. Finally, I
add resistant starches to keep my gut biome happy, which helps keep the 1% of
human cells in my body happy.

1\. Multiple meta-analyses over the last five years have concluded saturated
fat is not the cause of heart disease (older studies that led to that
conclusion were _really_ bad). In fact, new studies are showing it increases
LDL size, reducing the inflammatory effect small, dense LDL has on arterial
walls, ultimately leading to heart disease.

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eshvk
Constraint for time and money: Ramen

Contraint for time: Scalability. Buy chopped vegetables. Buy ground meat. Buy
a lot of Pyrex ware. Buy a slow cooker and a food processor. Use evernote to
organize recipes. Plan it out so that all the cutting takes place at once.
Immediately soak used utensils and cover them with baking soda. Finish off,
pack and plan out food for the week.

~~~
thenomad
Scalability: also, buy a very large pot and a very sharp knife. Invest some
time - a few hours - in learning good knife techniques.

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omilu
Korean kimchee jiggae - One step more advanced than ramen, way more
nutrituous, and never gets old, my kids favorite food and they are 3 and 4. 3
ingredients: 1\. old kimchee (must be OLD! to the point you don't want to eat
it raw cause it's so rotten tasting. Buy a gallon for $12 let it sit in your
fridge for at least a month, or leave it on the kitchen counter for 2 weeks)
2\. Pork (I prefer the thin pork chops with bone) 3\. Tofu. Procedure: Dump a
few (1 - 2) cups of kimchee in a soup pot with some of the kimchee juice, add
the pork chops, add water to cover. bring to a boil, simmer for an hour, chop
up the tofu and add it, then eat with rice on the side. Keeps for a long time
in the fridge cause the kimchee is acidic, at least 1 - 2 weeks no problem.

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loumf
Here's pg's recipe for feeding a crowd (you can freeze in batches)

[http://adam.shand.net/recipes/rice_and_beans/](http://adam.shand.net/recipes/rice_and_beans/)

This reddit comment has some cheap recipes

[http://www.reddit.com/comments/cidla/i_have_13_until_my_next...](http://www.reddit.com/comments/cidla/i_have_13_until_my_next_pay_check_in_15_weeks_so/)

He's not kidding about how delicious Pernil is -- just reading it again makes
me want to make it this weekend.

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atom-morgan
My favorite food hack (time only): bulletproof coffee [1].

Blend coffee, grass-fed butter, and MCT oil or coconut oil. Personally, I do
1.5-2 cups of coffee, 3-4 tbsp of grass-fed butter, and 2-3 tbsp of MCT oil or
coconut oil.

It's good for you, it saves more time in the morning if you usually cook, and
it makes you feel a lot more energized and focused. I don't like starting my
day without it anymore.

[1] [http://www.bulletproofexec.com/bulletproof-coffee-
recipe/](http://www.bulletproofexec.com/bulletproof-coffee-recipe/)

~~~
mrfusion
Sounds cool! Lots of questions:

Do you need to worry about buying special coffee? That page seems to imply
regular coffee has toxins?

Also where do you buy grassfed butter?

Do you really have to use a blender? That would definitely sap any potential
time savings for me.

~~~
atom-morgan
1\. From what I've heard, the mycotoxin thing is a bit overblown. Joe Rogan
had Dave Asprey (Bulletproof Exec) on his podcast and at a later date, Rogan
decided to get a friend to test coffees. From those tests, apparently the
toxin levels weren't much different between Whole Foods coffee, local
roasters, Starbucks, etc. I don't think super value brands like Folgers were
included in this though. My recommendation: Buy coffee from a local roaster
(see: hipsters) who care about their trade or a quality brand from a retailer
like Whole Foods.

2\. Grass-fed butter is a little hard to find depending on where you live.
I've had the most luck in Whole Foods and Publix (I live in Atlanta).

3\. You don't _have_ to but I think you get the best consistency with one. You
may have to melt the butter first and mix it in but I'm sure you could do it
just fine stirring with a spoon. It saves time for me since I used to make a
full breakfast every morning.

~~~
mrfusion
Thanks! Also why coconut oil instead of olive oil?

~~~
atom-morgan
Saturated fat. Here's a comparison:
[http://bit.ly/1hp75PR](http://bit.ly/1hp75PR)

I imagine it'd taste horrible too :)

~~~
mrfusion
So why do you want saturated fat?

~~~
atom-morgan
Let's avoid a wall of text: [http://bit.ly/1prhQuR](http://bit.ly/1prhQuR)

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Emelia
Baked chicken beasts: This recipe is only moderately quick and cheap, but it
is extremely simple and gives consistent results. Also, most of the time is
inactive baking tine.

Requires: chicken breast, plain Greek yogurt, Italian bread crumbs (they come
in a large canister)

-Preheat oven to 425

-Spread Greek yogurt all over raw chicken

-Roll yogurt covered chicken in bread crumbs

-Put the chicken breasts on a foil covered baking sheet and cover the chicken with foil (foil is on top and bottom)

-Bake about 25 minutes (internal temp 165), varies depending on how thick the breast is (cut them in half if in a rush)

I like to do multiple chicken breasts early in the week and reheat them for
meals. The beauty of this recipe is that the chicken turns out really moist.

For quick clean up, line the baking dish (I use a cookie sheet) with foil.
Then when they are done you throw the foil out and the dish is clean.

