What are some easy to prepare staples that require 5 or fewer ingredients?
What are some easy to prepare staples that require 5 or fewer ingredients?
Should be tasty, filling, and have 5 or less ingredients, preferably easy to prepare.
Chicken Parmesean
INGREDIENTS
- Chicken (burger) patties
- Marinara
- shredded cheese
INSTRUCTIONS
- Bake patties at 420 for around 15-17 minutes on each side (flip and put back in, 30-35 minutes total)
- cut up patties into many bite-sized pieces
- Put pieces in mason jar and add shredded cheese and marinara and shake the hell out of it
- Eat out of mason jar with fork
Chicken Teriyaki
Ingredients
- Chicken thighs with skin on
Teriyaki sauce
Equal parts:
- Sake (buy the cheapest one you can find)
- Low sodium soy sauce
- White sugar
Instructions
- Mix the sauce. I typically make a lot of the sauce and put it into a squeeze bottle.
- Butterfly the chicken thighs
- Heat a large pan on medium high heat. Add chicken with skin side down. Cook flipping occasionally until chicken is golden and skin is crispy.
- Coat the chicken with teriyaki sauce. Add more sauce as necessary. You want the sauce to become thick and shiny.
- Move chicken to a cutting board and let sit for about a minute.
- Cut chicken into strips and serve over rice.
Tteokbokki
- Rice cakes
- Water
- Gochujang (Korean hot pepper paste)
- Sugar
Add the rice cakes, water, sugar and gochujang in a pot. Cook until the rice cakes are soft (10-15 minutes)
Optional 5th ingredient: green onion, hot chili flakes or cheese
3 Envelope/Packet Roast https://lmld.org/three-envelope-roast/
While optimally you'd use a slow cooker for this, you could also figure out how to do slow and low in an oven without too much fuss if that's all you've got.
Macaroni & Cheese can be made with just macaroni and cheese... But it'll be really crunchy if you don't also use water to boil the macaroni before adding the cheese.
I like my macaroni and cheese teeth-shatteringly crunchy and clumped in a solid block of pure cheddar.
Beans and rice is nice. No bullshit.
Pick your rice, pick your bean or beans. Cook em up as per standard methodologies, spice to taste.
The other three ingredients can be almost anything at all. A slab of meat, some spices, and some cheese to top. Or some diced onion to top with.
I'm assuming you mean other than salt and pepper, because if they're counted, it's only three ingredients left at all because salt is mandatory, and pepper damn near it.
If you're excluding all seasonings from the five ingredients, it opens up even more.
Cook the beans with your choice of pig products. Cook the rice as normal. Caramelize some onion for on top, then make some cornbread with the other two ingredients. Or cook the rice up with some mango and/or pineapple. No shit, goes great with some well spiced beans.
Make up some basic chowchow to go with them instead. You can crank out a passable one with three ingredients.
You can't really get anything more filling, or easy. It's cheap, and can serve as the bulk of any diet while supplementing with things to fill the nutritional gaps.
Can I ask a huge favor? Can you reformat this to look like mine, I actually want to try this and I think it will be easier to apply if you provide some hard specfics in place of the more general parts
Lots of good info here, I'd owe you one and it would go a long way to helping people apply this thread 🙏 it would be awesome if this thread could be like a recipe book
Rice:
1 unit of rice to two of water. 1 cup of rice is roughly three servings of cooked rice, depending on the type of rice and how big you want the servings.
Bring the water to a boil, salt moderately. Add in rice, stir gently. Cover, reduce to simmer.
Depending on the rice, cool for 15-20 minutes, then remove from heat and let stand until all water is absorbed and rice is tender. Sadly, there's no way to be more precise because there's so much variance between varieties of rice, humidity, and elevation. It's one of those things that you'll have to figure out what works for what you have, and then you'll know what to do exactly after that.
Beans:
Even more variable. The type of bean determines the details because some kinds of beans have to be boiled for at least a half hour, or you can die. But if you just do that for all types, others will fall apart and be unpleasant.
However, there's a few basics that apply across the board. Salt the water for cooking. It improves the overall texture, and keeps the beans from splitting or otherwise not reaching the right internal state before the outside splits. But even that depends on the type of bean.
Soaking isn't actually mandatory for all beans, though it is for kidney beans for sure. So always, always know what you're cooking and follow safety procedures for that type of bean.
The process, however, is basically the same. You boil for the recommended time, then reduce the heat. Generally, any spices will be added at that point. Any meat such as a ham hock would be added at this point as well.
All beans are going to benefit from black pepper, garlic and onion. Powdered garlic and onion are not only acceptable, but can be better because the flavor they provide in that form is different. White beans can handle herbs better than darker beans, whereas darker beans tend to take well to spices like paprika, cumin, and coriander. Bay leaves work well with pretty much all of them, as do "hot" spices like cayenne, if you enjoy the heat at all.
But go easy at first. Add the seasonings in, get a brief taste of the water, and let them go for a while, until there's some color to the water from the beans. Add more if needed, then check again ay the end of the recommended cook time.
My personal favorite is pintos, cooked with a smoked ham hock. I use sage, black pepper, paprika, garlic and onion powder, a hint of cumin, and let them cook until very soft. If you want to stay vegetarian/vegan, skip the ham hock and use smoked paprika instead. But that smokiness is bomb with pintos.
Po' boy's chowchow
1 onion, 1 small head of cabbage, 1 red bell pepper. Vinegar and a bout a quarter to half cup of sugar are mandatory. allspice, and mustard seeds are highly recommended. Cayenne or paprika are optional. The sugar levels are largely preference based, but a bare minimum is necessary for the pickling, so you can't skip it entirely. Allspice is going to be just a pinch or two for this amount, and maybe a tablespoon of mustard seed.
Cut the cabbage in two, save one for cooking on its own.
Finely chop the cabbage. Pieces should be close to minced, well under a quarter inch.
Do the same with the onion and pepper.
Place in a non reactive container and salt well. Then sit it in the fridge overnight, or about 6 to 8 hours.
After that, drain the mix, rinse it, then drain thoroughly again. Taste, the ensure the flavor isn't too salty.
Put all of that into a pot and boil it. Once it gets to a boil, cut the heat to a simmer and cook for about ten minutes.
As this is going on, prepare your container/s. a batch this size will usually fit in a quart jar with a little room left over. You don't have to use a jar for such a small batch, but if you aren't going to eat it a lot fairly fast, you really need to follow proper canning procedures, and that's going to use a jar, so that's how it's usually done. It's a pickled product, but can still spoil eventually, and you want the storage container sterile if possible.
So, if you're going to be consuming it slowly, you'll move the mix into jars for canning by boiling. Which is a whole processing thing that isn't going to fit here, but it's very standardized and easy to find instructions on.
But, if you'll be chowing down on the chowchow fast enough, any clean container will do, just make sure it's sealed well. It is edible immediately after cooking, but it's better chilled and allowed to rest overnight.
It's important to note that the amount of cabbage involved varies by the size of the head of cabbage. You may need to adjust how much you cut off of the head so that it's the right amount after the salting and draining. A small head cut in half is usually going to end up under a quart, once it's been salted. But small is a vague term, and I've never bothered to measure one; I just grab the right size and adjust on the fly.
Also, this is po' boy's chowchow. It's the bare bones version of things. The recipe my family uses adds in tomato, more bell peppers, and more spices. My own version of that uses three colors of bell peppers, red, yellow, and orange. I do one white onion and one Vidalia. I also make an extra hot version that adds jalapenos to the mix, plus a healthy dash of cayenne. Chowchow is a southern staple with as many variations as there are families, and there's commercial brands out there.
You may also notice that none of that is really a recipe at all. That's because it's more about the process than any specific ingredients or steps. Even the chowchow, which is pickled, I don't really measure much because it's going to vary depending on the produce. You can't have precise sized of vegetables usually, so you adjust things to the central ingredient, which is cabbage. But the bare minimum batch is going to end up being governed more by the onion and pepper sizes since you can't really get much smaller with those. You get a feel for it over time. You start cutting the onion in half for a smaller batch size, and you fuck up the spices because they don't scale down very well past the batch size of this guide. That's extra true if you're using cinnamon, nutmeg, and/or clove (which some recipes do use all of those, on top of the allspice).
Marinara Ingredients: Oil Onions Crushed tomatoes Italian seasoning Pasta (+water for cooking) Instructions: Make pasta according to instructions, sauté onions in pan, add tomatoes and seasoning, simmer for a bit, add pasta noodles. Tasted better than anything pre made, easy to make right for beginners, and can grow with your skill. Add toppings like cheese, replace pasta water with chicken stock, add a bay leaf, add a dash of sugar and a little sliver of butter… I didn’t include garlic because of minimizing ingredients and the onion is more important for texture but garlic (fresh minced or bought in the little jars) can go a long way to improving this.
Lemon basil pasta Ingredients: Lemon juice (fresh squeezed is great in the winter, but honestly just a bottle of it works fine. Obviously you get the quality you pay for) Butter Pasta (+water for cooking) Basil Onion Instructions: Add butter to pan, melt it up till it’s all bubbly and delicious, add onions and sauté. Once those are nice and soft, add pasta noodles, basil and lemon juice. Pro tip: add a little of the water from your pasta. The starches help thicken the sauce. Just like a tablespoon at a time. Or don’t and it’s still good.
This one’s also easy to make, improved by garlic and chicken stock, and can grow with you. I like to add asparagus, bell pepper, garlic and sometimes finish it off with some arugula and fresh grated parm.
Better instant noodles Ingredients: Instant ramen packet Egg Green onion Tofu (or a protein of your choice, I like tofu) Instructions: Take a ramen packet, cook in a shallow pan with a little less of the water. Cube or thinly slice your tofu, slice your green onion how you like and add it on top. Once noodles soften, crack an egg on top, place a lid on the pan and turn the heat down a bit. Cook until the egg is the doneness you like. Eat directly out of the pan over the stove at 4am like a goblin.
Idk if you count salt and pepper as ingredients but I would recommend cooking with both.
Happy cooking!
https://youtu.be/WcGYBX6Ucvg?si=AXh4q0c0XmVSRvvn
Joshua Weissman did a really good 3 ingredients video Ive linked on YT.
It depends on how much are you willing to use pre-prepared ingredients. There is a huge variety of quality frozen dumplings where I live, the instructions are - boil for 10 minutes, and done!
Highly recommend getting into Whole nuts (seasoned and unseasoned), Dried fruit (raisins, craisins, cranberry, etc.), Granola clusters (store bought or homemade), Sunflower kernels, Croutons, Jellies/jams, Nut butters, Candied Chiles, Pretzels, Chips, Shredded coconut, And anything else that would seem to fit into a salad, oatmeal (hot/cold, instant/overnight), yogurt parfait (so many flavors available and variety with greek/non-greek yogurt), cereal (chex, cheerios, cookie crisp, cinn toast crunch, etc), chia pudding, popcorn etc.
Main point is to have a bunch of 'healthy' ingredients on hand that you can add to a base or even just throw together in a little bowl to snack on. Add what you feel like at the moment, you could even make kind bars knock offs with a muffin tin.
No need to shy away from 'unhealthy' additions since the point to add nutritional value to treats. Not take them away.
https://www.powerhungry.com/2016/06/13/sweet-spicy-nut-clusters/
Use recipe as a guideline for how to make kind bar knock offs, choice of ingredients is whatever you have at home.
TLDR; Get ingredients that have multipurpose and treat them like earning new colors to paint with. Your tastebuds are your canvas, keep them interested with switching it up.
Bonus! If you make too much, you can set it aside (assuming its not gonna get soggy) and have a pre-prepped snack for latter 😉
Double bonus! So much less clean up, everything should be able to chuck into the dishwasher and/or you can even reuse your bowl if it was only dry snack
Water + pasta / rice + salt
Veggie Pasta, serves 2:
6oz Fusilli or similar pasta 4oz Fresh Mozzarella cut into bite sized pieces, or buy the pearl sized version. 1.5 cups your favorite tomato sauce. I make a maranara for it, but you can use store bought if you want. 1 red onion diced 2 med carrots diced 1 celery stalk diced 4oz bacon chopped Parmesan Regianno for serving. (Not the crap in the green can, get the real stuff.)
Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain in a colander.
Cook bacon in a skillet to desired doneness, save a tablespoon or so of the grease after cooking. Remove to paper towel lined plate. Sample bacon to make sure it's OK.
In now empty skillet add the onion, carrots and celery. Cook till all veggies are softened. Sample bacon to make sure it's OK.
Add sauce and reserved bacon to skillet to the veggies. Be sure to sample bacon before adding back to the skillet, to make sure it's OK. Once the sauce is heated, add the pasta and fresh mozzarella to sauce and veggies. Once warmed through divide between two plates. Serve with the Parmesan at the table.
I make this dish for my wife and I several times a month. It's about 30 minutes from getting everything out to cut, to putting it on the table depending on your knife skills.
For breakfast, which I usually either skip or do leftovers or whatever:
I don't know what to call this:
Ingredients:
• eggs
• cooked white (brown probably works too) rice (I usually have it with leftover rice rather than fresh cooked)
• sweet chili sauce (I usually use Mae Ploy)
Amount of ingredients used can vary depending on taste or amount available. I usually use 2 eggs per person as that's how I was taught. I also never measure amount of rice used or sauce either. Just use however much looks good so I have enough of all 3 ingredients to go together.
Instructions:
-
Make rice if you don't have leftovers
-
Scramble eggs. Don't season
-
Add eggs to rice
-
Add sauce to taste
-
Mix and enjoy
Though, I also know a pretty good non-meat pulled-pork recipe as well, for a decent dinner. Don't know whether I could call it vegan or vegetarian or what because it requires BBQ sauce.
Ingredients:
• Jackfruit (I used to be able to go to a shop nearby to find cans of flavorless jackfruit in brine, but I think they stopped selling them sadly. You want the flavorless stuff)
• BBQ sauce (of your choice. Make sure you get enough to cover all the "meat")
• Buns
Instructions:
-
If you got canned stuff in brine, strain it
-
Shred the jackfruit in a bowl
-
Add BBQ sauce to jackfruit
-
Mix together to give it the taste of the BBQ sauce
-
Heat and serve on buns (I usually just heat it in the microwave for a couple minutes or so, so it's heated through)
I absolutely love that jackfruit recipe because both my older brother and dad love it. They're picky eaters who would absolutely never eat it again if they knew it wasn't actually meat.
-
Bowl, spoon, cereal, milk
I just riff on
- Genmai (japanese short grain brown rice)
- protein (I cook 1 or 2 types to last me the week)
- some veg (your choice, frozen or fresh)
- freshly-shredded cheese
- some kind of sauce. Sriracha is the thing of choice recently
Cook the meat in advance with whatever spices. Same for the veg. I just microwave the protein+veg; add sauce, cheese, and rice; and then eat
Chickpeas, mushrooms, tomato paste, taco seasonings, fat of your choice (butter if you aren't vegan)
Bake the chickpeas and then smash them, mince the mushrooms. Bring together and sautee in olive oil with tomato paste, seasonings, incorporating your fat. Add salt to taste.
Makes a fantastic taco filling. Garnish with whatever you like.
Do you have a crockpot? If so, there are many.
My favorite is the classic Mississippi pot roast:
- 2-4lb pot roast (it's a beef cut, "bottom round roast" or "chuck roast" work great)
- Half stick of butter cut into chunks to spread them out
- Packet of ranch dressing seasoning
- Packet of au jus gravy seasoning
- Pepperoncini peppers from the jar, and some of the liquid if you want
Crockpot low for 6 hours then shred and eat however you want. So you have to plan in advance but the prep itself takes 60 seconds.
What is potroast, could you edit/clarify what that is :)
Out of all the forgettable foods, it's easily my favorite. I never think to make it, I don't think about it period, but sure enough every single time someone makes it, it's delicious.
Guy below me is correct, typically potatoes, carrots, onion, some people serve it over rice which is real good too.
Jar of curry sauce, can of coconut milk, sliced potatoes, sliced onions, and some kind of protein sliced. Also cooking oil, but I never really see that as an ingredient, it's part of like, salt, pepper, spices, etc.
Slice ingredients into thin strips, cook in oil (or whatever fat) until things are softer. Add curry sauce, add coconut milk, then simmer until fully cooked. Serve over rice if you have some. Or over pasta. Or just eat. Can add more ingredients if you want.
Honey Sriracha Chicken (bulk recipe, but scales well if you want to make a smaller batch)
5 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs or breasts
1 cup Sriracha
1 cup honey
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup lime juice
Throw all ingredients in crockpot for 4 hours on high or 6-8 hours on low. Shred. Makes absolutely bomb tacos. It also makes quite a bit of sauce; I like to use the extra to cook rice to have with.
Lazy enchiladas
2 cans refried beans
1 can chili (or roughly equivalent amount homemade chili if you've got it on hand)
1 lrg can enchilada sauce
8-10 medium Tortillas
Combine
1 bag shredded cheese
Optional - diced green chilis, tajin, garlic powder
Combine chili, beans, and optional ingredients if using. Put a couple heaping spoonfuls in each tortilla and roll like a burrito. Put in lightly greased casserole dish. Pour on enchilada sauce and top with cheese. Bake at 350 F until bubbling and cheese is starting to brown. If you've got sour cream on hand, top w sour cream. Tasty, cheap, and stupid filling.
I've really been enjoying a grain called "Farro" recently. You boil it in salty water like pasta or rice. Trader Joe's has a "10 minute" version, but traditional farro takes around 30 minutes.
Once boiled, you can garnish it however you'd like. I make a sweet version with dried cranberries, butter, and Penzey's "Pie Spice". But you can also make savory versions with root vegetables or carrot medallions and chickpeas.
Can you format like mine so people can standardize :)
Thanks and Sorry and thanks, no obligation, might not work out but I wanna try for folks
I mean, it's not really a "recipe" per se.
You put water in a pot, add a little salt, boil it, add farro and continue boiling for 10 to 30 minutes depending on if you have the fast cook variety or the "normal" variety.
Once done, garnish to taste, you can really add whatever you'd like.
Flavor is nutty, like a grain, texture is more like rice.
America's Test Kitchen has a salad recipe with Asparagus, Sugar Snap Peas, and Tomatoes.
(they paywall their print recipes so the video is the best I can do here.)
1 1/2 cups rinsed whole grain farro
2 quarts boiling water
tablespoon of saltBoil, reduce heat to a simmer, cook 20 minutes, strain.
Really, you don't need much else, like rice. Butter, salt, pepper, olive oil. Good eats.
They take it farther by adding 6 ounces each of asparagus, sugar snap peas, cherry tomatoes and feta.
Mini pizza
These mini pizzas are a cheap, quick and easy meal to make. They are also very satisfying in taste if you like pizza.
Ingredients
-
One small round pita roll (flat tortilla rolls are a cheaper and less less caloric alternative)
-
Pizza sauce (regular spaghetti sauce is an OK cheap substitute)
-
Shredded cheese of your choosing. cheddar or pizza blend are good ones.
-
(Optional) spices like garlic, oregano, or dry hot peppers, black pepper, ect
-
(optional) topping like pepperoni, mushrooms, onion, jalapeño peppers, ham, ect
Procedure
Put the pita roll(s) on a baking sheet. Apply pizza sauce or similar substitute with a spoon spreading it evenly around the pita roll.
Apply optional toppings like pepperoni, onion, pepper, ham, ect
Then layer the shredded cheese of your choosing. make sure to cover the roll and toppings evenly . Don't be afraid to use a extra handful!
Turn oven on to conventional bake at 350°f and let the mini pizzas cook for 10 minutes or until they get crispy. Check them at the 6-7 min mark.
Remove from oven, apply optional spices while cheese is still hot and let them cool for a minute or two.
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Black bean tacos: Can or two of black beans Taco seasoning Water Tortilla of your preferred size and material
Mix seasoning, water, and beans Cook to reduce Put on tortillas
You can get fancy if you'd like. Sour cream, cheese, noodles, and salsa are favorites in my house
Wraps are usually just "Tortilla, protein, and whatever you can throw on it" and can be made in seconds with no planning
cannot
Can? Autocorrect might be on the fritz
Thanks otherwise, i usually do
- tortilla (carb)
- meat (protein)
- lettuce
- tomato
- potato-based something
- cuccumber
- dressing (fat)
Can*, yes.
My personal lunch wrap recipe is Tortilla, chicken, shredded romaine, fried onions, and some pepperjack cheese. Throw on some basic dressing just before eating
Love that you put seconds.
You ever seen that guy speedrunning a wrap or burrito? I forgot which it was.
Lemon Fettuccine Alfredo.
Ingredients:
- 9 oz fettuccine
- Juice and zest of a lemon
- 1 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
- 6 tbsp butter
- 1 cup freshly grated parmesan (or more)
Seasonings (not counting these):
- Salt to taste
- White pepper to taste
- Nutmeg to taste
Instructions:
- Cook pasta al dente. Drain.
- Stir 1 cup cream (set aside remaining 1/4 cup) and lemon juice in a large skillet.
- Add butter to lemon cream mixture, heat over medium just until butter is melted, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat.
- Add pasta to cream sauce and toss.
- Add remaining cream and parmesan. Add zest and seasonings. Toss over low heat until sauce thickens slightly.
Note: Must use freshly grated parmesan. The pre-grated stuff will be gritty and not melt properly. And 1 cup of parmesan is just the minimum. Add as much you desire. Follow your heart.