The Lazy Gourmet

[vonbach]

Omelet with ramen noodles. Add some hot sauce. Feeds college kids on a budget.
Also Honey and spicy brown mustard makes very good sweet and sour sauce.

[Buster's Uncle]

Beef and chicken bullion are not an optional cooking supply, and not expensive or any trouble to add.  Many boiled dishes can benefit, including vegetables.

My brother discovered that trick about 25 years ago - I kept wondering why the green beans he was boiling smelled so good.  This one is especially essential for bachelors and college kids and the like, who don't spend a lot of money or effort on cooking at home - also nutriments added to pastas..

I got my mother doing this with the noodles in the stroganoff, and it improved the quality dramatically (cooking the noodles together with the meat/gray on low for an hour or two is also key fir more than one reason).

Also?  Sometimes you just crave a quick microwave soup at night (or for someone sick) w/o fooling with opening a can.  This is cheaper, too.  -I totally kept bullion on hand in my renfair camping days, when I was living on not much more than peanut butter sandwiches

[vonbach]

Adding chicken broth to rice adds a lot to the flavor. I sometimes do this.

[Buster's Uncle]

I even do that when I'm boiling chicken to cook with rice - too much would taste fake by comparison, but a couple of cubes in a big pot enhances the flavor a little.

[Rusty Edge]

Adding chicken broth to rice adds a lot to the flavor. I sometimes do this.

I normally do this. I'm glad you brought it up! A simple substitution.

[Buster's Uncle]

Doesn't hurt spaghetti noodles a bit, either.  Sometimes you can really taste the pastiness of the pasta if the sauce is a little thin, and some beef bullion in the water while boiling the spaghetti helps.

[Elok]

Again?

Four great fasts per year, two of them in the summer rather close together.  Fortunately they're (usually) both short, so it's like one with a break in the middle.

Korean Beef Bowl

Slightly modified this from an internet recipe.  For every pound of ground beef, you want a third of a cup of brown sugar, a quarter cup of soy sauce, a tablespoon of hot sesame oil, and a bit of ground ginger.  If you don't have ground ginger, I can confirm that other types work fine.  Anyway, mix the sugar, soy, oil, and ginger (if powdered) together into a slurry while the beef browns.  Once it's brown, add three cloves of minced garlic and cook very briefly--about a minute--to activate it.  Raw ginger, in slices, should go in at the same time if you didn't have powdered.  Either way, once you smell garlic you chuck on the slurry and cook for maybe five minutes, stirring occasionally.  Serve the end result over rice.  It's hot, sweet and salty all at once, I love it.

[Unorthodox]

Kinda sorta fits here.

I'm making tomato sauce today. (and likely the next few saturdays)  While it's too time consuming to really call it lazy, it DOES make future tomato based meals lazy.  Can or freeze.  You'll need to salt to taste when you USE the sauce though.  Recipe from a Sicilian lady. 

This is an easy, if time consuming recipe.

25 lbs tomatoes. Personally, I like Roma. We grew about half our own last year, hoping to do better than that this year.

Just wash and quarter those and throw them into a nice big stock pot with the following:

1 cup of olive oil
3\4 cup of red wine
1\3 cup of herbs. You can use what you like, We used Rosemary and Basil in ours.
Head of garlic, broken into cloves
2 large bell peppers
1 large onion
Couple of Bay Leaves

Take a potato masher and just crush all that together, then bring it to a boil and simmer it down until a good amount of the juice is gone. The house will smell divine.

Now, if you want to be all traditional like you can run this mixture through a tomato strainer…personally…god made blenders to make such jobs easier. So, strain or blender it into a separate bowl.

Once it’s all strained/blendered simmer some more if you are too runny, or can/preserve it via your most comfortable method.

There you have a fantastic base to make into pasta, pizza, or other sauce.

I have a stick blender now, so it's SUPER easy.  No separate bowl nonsense. 

[vonbach]

My brother makes stuffed chicken. He bones it dices green olives and puts them under the skin and
puts paprika and lemon zest on the skin. The cat gets the olive bottle lid and lemons make great cat repellant.

[Buster's Uncle]

Not fast, but very cheap and low-effort:

Big pot of water and chicken on simmer for two hours(+) - less if you must, and don't prefer the chicken boned.

I season with salt, black pepper, a touch of garlic, a lot of sage and moderate basil - moderate/heavy parsley don't hurt anything, either, but I'm not sure it helps.  Spice to your own tastes, and those of anyone else you anticipate partaking.  I do throw in two cubes of beef bullion for good measure, and sometimes some margarine if I think the chickens were too skinny.

Boiling chicken is not the very best cooking smell ever, and the basil pays off in how much better the house smells, alone.

Leave that sucker simmering for a long time, being careful not let unwatched pot issues happen, like boiling over or boiling off all the broth and burning everything.  A little experience will allow you to leave it unattended for the two hours while you run your forum, a kind of cooking I specialize in.

Timers that make a noise you can hear where you'll be are a very good idea for these put-on-and-wait dishes...

When the broth has boiled down to about two cups (or whatever is appropriate to the amount of chicken and how much rice you'll want, and so on) and the chicken is boned, measure the broth and add half that volume in rice.  Follow the instructions on the rice.

Guy protip on boning boiled chicken:  Do not pick through the pot for the bones to remove - remove all the chicken onto a plate and put only the meat back.  You'll find a lot less tiny bones in your meal later that way.

-If you want vegetables in, add them about an hour before you estimate you'll be ready for the rice.  Boiling them as long as the chicken will turn them to mush.

Do try the garlic, sage and basil -delicious, according to the proportions your tongue prefers- and don't forget the salt and pepper; it's not nearly as good if you add them while you eat.

My writeup makes it sound involved, and it's not: pot, water, chicken, spice, simmer, bone, rice.  Eat.  Rub belly.

[Unorthodox]

boiling any kind of bones is putrid.  :sick:

[Buster's Uncle]

They were inside the chicken parts when they showed up, I'm afraid.

About 24 years ago, I DID boil the chicken bones leftover from this dish some more to soften them for my brother's big dog and make a broth to pour over his food....

[Unorthodox]

They were inside the chicken parts when they showed up, I'm afraid.

All the worse.   Believe we've covered my issues with fowl carcasses before. 

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm not remembering a chicken story.

This food thread is probably not the right place, anyway.

[Unorthodox]

Just don't care for anything with bones or skin in/on it.  Turkey day is a challenge.