Ask HN: Food hacks? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Food hacks?

12 pointssillysaurus315 comments

I haven't seen a dedicated thread for food hacks, so I thought I'd submit one and see what happens.

There are many readers of HN who don'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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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.

+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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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...

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

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/

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.

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.

Thanks! Also why coconut oil instead of olive oil?

Saturated fat. Here's a comparison: http://bit.ly/1hp75PR

I imagine it'd taste horrible too :)

So why do you want saturated fat?

Let's avoid a wall of text: http://bit.ly/1prhQuR

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.

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