Recipes for People Who Don’t Know How to Cook

I’d highly recommend the cookbook from Chabad called “Spice & Spirit”. The recipes are fairly easy and don’t contain too many ingredients. Usually community cookbooks (such as from shuls and yeshivas) are also a lot simpler then things like Kosher By Design, which I still find intimidating.

These days you can easily google for recipes – one day I did “Shabbos salads” and came up with quite a few. And from them I also found a link to a foolproof pareve cheesecake: 2 pkgs PLAIN tofutti cream cheese;

There is a cookbook called “dining in” that is becoming very popular. It has simple recipes with even simpler ingredients. No fancy spices, or things that you don’t even know how to pronounce. It’s lovely. Enjoy it.

Caramelized chicken:

Chicken

paprika

garlic powder

oil, for sauteing

2 large onions, cut into rings (i put in more than that cos the onions come out amazing)

50 grams margarine, melted

3/4 cup (light) brown sugar

1 and a half tablespoon soy sauce

Preheat broiler (grill). Position chicken in a single layer in baking pan.

Sprinkle with garlic powder and paprika. Broil for 8-10 mins.

Meanwhile, heat oil and saute onions.

Then add meted marg, brown sugar and soy sauce and stir into onions. Pour mixture over chicken.

Cover baking tin and bake on 350 for 1 and a half to 2 hours. Remove foil and continue baking uncovered for another half hour till the chicken is dark brown.

Enjoy!

It’s all about experience with techniques, familiarity with ingredients, the ability to follow directions and a willingness to make mistakes.

Watch Ratatouille. Repeat to your mantra “Anyone can cook. If a freakin’ rodent can become a chef, I can serve up tasty meals.”

To start from zero go to Amazon and snag one of the used copies of The Impoverished Student’s Book of Cookery, Drinkery and Housekeepery. It can save your life. It saved mine. You will learn everything you absolutely need to know and how to do it on no money.

Get yourself a Kitchen.

Then learn to cook.

Start off simple and work up. Build on what you know.

For instance, first you learn the simplest things like boiling. Now you’ve got spaghetti, rice if you don’t have a rice steamer (who doesn’t have a rice steamer?), dumplings, eggs, mashed potatoes and a few other basics.

Then learn how to stir fry/saute. That lets you make a huge variety of quick, simple tasty meals from whatever is at hand. Take a diversion into actual frying with side trips to pancakes and blini.

From there it’s a tiny step to braising. With that you have nearly infinite soups, stews, chili, ragouts and so on.

Learn the basics of your oven. There’s your cholent, roasts, baked squash, casseroles, pies, and whatnot. At the very least, baked goods are a lot tastier when they’re heated up in the oven. When you’re feeling overconfident you can try your hand at baking bread. Watch out for Rapture of the Yeasts.

After that it’s just a matter of experimenting and practice, practice, practice.

Keep a copy of The Joy of Cooking in your kitchen. Yes, a lot of the recipes aren’t kosher. Just avoid them. You will have reference material to last a lifetime.

I agree with anuran that the Joy of Cooking is a terrific reference. It has a very detailed index & contains enough detail that you feel confident trying new recipes or even improvising from them.

1 cup long grain white rice (Basmati, Jasmine, Texmati, etc.)

1 1/2 cups water or flavoring liquid

Add 1/2 cup water to the pressure cooker and position the cooking rack in the bottom. Put the rice and the 1 1/2 cups water or other or flavoring liquids in a stainless steel bowl that fits inside the pressure cooker. Use Foil Helper Handles to help position, and remove, the bowl from the cooker. Lock the lid in place and bring to 15psi, reduce the heat to the lowest setting that will just maintain that pressure. Cook 4 minutes. Remove from heat and let the pressure drop naturally. Open the lid and remove the bowl from the cooker, and fluff rice with a fork before serving.

Or . . .

4 cups brown rice

5 cups water

pinch sea salt

Wash the rice and put in bottom of pressure cooker. Add water and salt. Cover and bring to pressure. Put a flame tame under the pressure cooker and lower heat to medium (enough to maintain pressure). Cook 45 minutes.

Best rice ever.

Bodek

I make rice like you!! 🙂

Sounds good oomis!

Iranian-style rice cooked with a dill and a little bit of butter, then mixed with a few lima beans is delicious. And the beans and rice make a complete protein.

cook some rice with some oil and a soup cube. (you could stop there, and that does taste good, but hear me out)

in a pan sautee an onion…throw in 2 eggs…some soy sauce…and you now have pure awesomeness