Can you expand on "very little effort".
I think we may have very very different ideas of what that means.
I think we may have very very different ideas of what that means.
Lentils
Vegetables of your choosing
Maybe two potatoes
One or two average sized chorizos
A bit of salt
A bit of olive oil (something else if olive oil is expensive in your area)
A bit of cooking wine
Little bit of curry
If you don't have soup from previous stuff, you put one of this chicken soup pills, IDK how to translate to english, this how it looks: https://pepekitchen.com/articulo/nueva-presentacion-de-las-p...
Fill with water, fire and forget until it's done.
You can make it way tastier and more elaborated but this is the most lazy and basic plate, and still tastes good. Well, you still have to cut stuff for a few minutes, if that's any effort.
And I don't think I've ever seen that here in the UK, although I have come across it on the internet beforehand, during a bit of a seach on OTS meat stock and such a few years back.
My go-tos are the Knorr Stock Pots and Concentrated Meat stocks, which seem to have similar ingredient lists to yours.
If I'm cooking a vegetarian meal that needs stock I use Miso paste.
I'd still suggest that Oxo cubes are different beasts to the cubes up there - again, i think Knorr would be an equivalent, as un-British a brand as it is.
Not a fan of Oxo - weird composition and not very nice or meaty taste, to me anyway.
Also below are few more varieties of vegan lentil recipes: https://www.rainbowplantlife.com/blog/how-to-cook-lentils-in...
Not as good as home made by a long shot but it is a LOT better than those bouillon cubes (what you refer to as "pills")! Please don't use those ever again, lol
There's one broth brand, Aneto, that actually tastes quite good. I see they even have an english website: https://www.caldoaneto.com/en/caldos/caldos-basicos-en/
Even seasoning doesn't have to require chopping, smash a piece of garlic, don't even dice, throw it in, delish.
I only ever make a full 1 lb bag of dried lentils or beans at a time, what you don't eat immediately stores well in a 1 gallon zip lock bag and keeps for longer than a week. Dish out half cup at a time and hit briefly in microwave.
Lentils (and split peas) are the easiest legumes since they don't even require thinking ahead. But beans with a $60 slow cooker are arguably even lower effort.
I don't even eat oven-cooked premade meals because pre-heating the oven and cooking it takes so long by the time it finishes I could have driven somewhere and bought + ate food already.
This might sound terrible, but since I was 16 and living on my own I've never eaten food that required cooking. Came up with entire mealplans of stuff you can buy that's pretty much ready to eat.
Okay, ready to get grossed out?
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Breakfast (~$3.00, 600kcal, 50g protein)
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- Eggs, cracked on a plate/bowl and put in the microwave to cook over-medium, with salsa and cheese
- Greek yogurt/Cottage cheese
- Oats with milk and some sort of fake sugar and flavor extract (vanilla, almond, pumpkin)/cinnamon, etc, sometimes with whey
- Fresh cucumber with no/lowfat italian vinagrette
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Lunch/Dinner ($4.00, 500-800kcal, 60-80g protein):
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- 12oz Canned chicken breast + turkey chili + cheese + tortilla chips
(OR)
- 12oz Canned chicken breast + canned field peas & snaps + green beans
For years I also only owned a single plate/bowl and spoon and eat every meal with it, then washed it and put it back when I was done to avoid having to do dishes.
But getting into pre-cooked food is like a bad habit, so easy to fall out of the practice, because "just tonight I'll go grab some pre-made stuff instead, and tomorrow I'll make more meals."
Friendship over with other appliances, microwave is my new best friend again ;^)
I also do a salad with lettuce, tomato, boiled chicken dices, onion cut in small pieces, vinegar, olive oil and soy sauce (Kikkoman is good and cheap enough). You mix everything very well so that the sauce impregnates everything. After it's been in the fridge it tastes even better.
It's just a little imagination, you can make tasty dishes with very little money. And if you're a lazy guy in the kitchen like me, tupperware's a given.
And yeah haha, it's just sheer laziness and lack of discipline. I've eaten what my coworkers often affectionately refer to as "cat food" (bowl of canned meats and peas/carrots or chili) for most of my adult life so my bar for taste is pretty low lmao.
I would say it's a "price I pay for the convenience" but I know damn well I could buy an Instantpot and throw a bunch of food in it + push a button and have meals for days, in the heat of the moment it always just seems easier to go "welp, I'm hungry _now_, and this garbage food is r-e-a-d-y-t-o-e-a-t so we've got ourselves a plan." haha.
- The pre-sliced chicken breasts are more expensive than the canned by weight
- You have to get out a pan, do the whole process, and then clean the pan and put it back, plus clean whatever mess you made during.
- And then the chicken will go bad if you don't end up eating it after a few days, unless you freeze it
- At which point, if you want to un-freeze it, now you have to wait for the damn thing to thaw again =/
Canned chicken breast also isn't that bad to be honest. If you've never tried it, it goes really well with burritos, tacos, salads, chilis, etc. (Just don't try to eat it by itself, with no condiments. Really bland.)