Singleton without a slow cooker!

Kellerina

Thanks to freightexec2009 for the tidy friday pan fry idea as found some others on there too! Everyone thanks so far for your ideas, they're all helping a lot, like the idea of the spicy lentil too as never cooked with them so will give this a try for definite

I love simple soups as sometimes think they are over-complicated and like ones where I don't need to blend them, chunky ones are best so mashing sounds good to me CCP.

You have all been a gr8 help, the bf might even pay a visit from his mum's house!

hotcookie101

I always used to make big loads of stews and bolognase sauces and just freeze them in bags. I would do beef with tons of veg (carrots leeks onions mushrooms, sometimes parsnips and turnip etc, with the cheapest stewing steak from the butcher) and just cook in the oven for 3-4 hours, at about 140, usually used beer as the liquid (as always had some around ) but sometimes just water, or stock (I am very careful with stock cubes-find them very salty, only ever use half the recc amt of stock cube for recc water)

Mince-yeah bolognase, chillis shepherds pie (I loved these cos would make up loads in little silver trays with the mash on top, I don't know about you, but I could never be bothered with the hassle of making mash for just one person)

Soups-you don't need a blender-have them chunky (veg all chopped up small with barley and lentils one of my faves) or mush with a masher, or use a cheapo stick blender if you can get one. Just had lunch of a roasted veg soup-leftover butternut squash, red onions, garlic and new spuds that had been roasted with chilli around a chicken, just heated up with water and blended-it was really good)

Cooking for one is easy enough if you have freezer space (and its SO nice to get in from a busy day and just stick a home made meal in the oven, without having to spend hours prepping it!)

I completely agree with other posters that slowcookers do not equal old style, you don't have to have one, and food thats cooked slowly in oven does (IMHO) taste better, but I can see why they are useful for people who want to eat a meal as soon as they come in-I do have to prep food and cook, so sometimes we dont eat until an hour or so after we get in (and i often work past 730 ) but I am used to that, and tend to have stuff prepped from days off, or made so only need to reheat But I would buy a blender first over a SC every day

Kellerina

Nigel slater recipe (BBC):
Description

A dish of roast vegetables turns up time and time again in my kitchen. It is useful to have around as a salad or a pasta sauce but if neither sauce nor salad fits the bill, then I use the melange of roast vegetables for a summer soup.
Ingredients

200g/7oz tomatoes
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
2-3 small summer carrots, sliced into short lengths
1 small bulb fennel, halved and sliced
2 large cloves garlic, thinly sliced
3 tbsp olive oil
1 medium courgette, thickly sliced
1.5 litres/2½ pints hot vegetable stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 bay leaves
100g/3½oz small dried pasta shapes
tight heart of a summer (pointed) cabbage, shredded
small bunch of basil, torn
extra virgin olive oil, to serve
30g/1½oz parmesan, grated

This is a Dig In recipe
Method

Set the oven at 220C/425F/Gas 7. Remove the stalks from the tomatoes and discard them, then put the tomatoes in a roasting tin. Peel and roughly chop the onion, then slice the carrots into short lengths, halve and slice the fennel and add all to the tomatoes. Peel the garlic and slice it thinly, then toss it with the vegetables and the olive oil. Roast for forty to forty-five minutes, until the vegetables are soft and pale gold.
Tip the vegetables into a deep saucepan, add the thickly sliced courgette and pour over the stock. Season with salt, pepper and the bay leaves. Bring to the boil, then turn down to a simmer and leave to cook for twenty minutes.
Bring a large pan of water to the boil, salt it and add the pasta, letting it cook until it is tender but still has some bite - probably about nine minutes or so.
Shred the cabbage, grate the parmesan, tear the basil into pieces. Check the seasoning of the soup, then stir in the cooked and drained pasta, the cabbage and half the basil. Continue to simmer for five minutes or so.
Ladle into warm bowls, spoon over a little extra virgin olive oil, then scatter over the remaining basil and the grated parmesan.

Primrose

If you live anywhere near a real butcher who is prepared to give you chicken carcasses (they normally throw them out) you have a source of very cheap food. Make chicken stock (simmer the carasses for 1 hour with chopped vegetables). When cool, remove the cooked chicken bits from the bones to save for mixing with mushrooms to make a chicken pie, or with spices & pulses/beans to make a curry, and the stock will be a lovely base for Minestrone, leek & potato, or lentil soup.
A stick blender is wonderfully useful for whizzing up soups if you don't want them with chunky bits in. They are easier to store when purreed as you can freeze them in empty plastic milk bottles. (A one pint one will store two portions of soup). Just leave a small space at the top for expansion when frozen.

Primrose

Leek & Potato Soup
One large leek
One large or 2 small onions
3 medium potatoes
Chicken stock or a stock cube

Chop Leek & onion into small pieces & fry until soft in a saucepan.
Add the potatoes chopped in small cubes. (The smaller they are, the quicker they cook)
Add a pint or more of chicken stock. (Most soups are pretty variable in quantity)
Cook for 20 minutes. If you want this soup thicker, purree with a stick blender when cooled.

If you Google "soup recipies" you will find hundreds on the internet.

RAS

Primrose wrote: »

If you live anywhere near a real butcher who is prepared to give you chicken carcasses (they normally throw them out) you have a source of very cheap food.

My butcher told me that carcasses in winter have more meat; he simply cannot sell the chicken wings outside the barbie season.

So two carcesses yielded 4 wings , a lot of breast meat, meat round the spine which I detached first. Plus the bones and lots of fiddly bits of meat for soup.

Primrose wrote: »

A stick blender is wonderfully useful for whizzing up soups if you don't want them with chunky bits in.

In the absence of electrical means, pour the stock into a bwl them mash the veggies really well, pour the stock back in, mix and re-heat or store until required.

Olliebeak

For people who don't want/like a slow cooker, can I please 'sing the praises' of Pressure Cookers .

Once you get used to them and the timing of things, they can be more versatile than SC's AND you can be more spontaneous about what you want to eat .

Kellerina

RAS and Primrose thanks!! The carcass idea is great, not sure where a butcher is near me but will have a scout around and there is def one near where I used to live

Have already started getting bits for my recipes from here so will add the leek and potato to it when I get my veggies at lunchtime today. You're all a great help, much, much appreciated

missychrissy

I live on my own and work night shifts and I find my slow cooker wonderful. I set it going in the evening before I go to work and then cool and box into one sized portions when I come in from work. However, when I was a stay at home mum with 4 sons, I used a pressure cooker to cook the same foods I now prepare in the slow cooker. I also cooked more 'on the hob dinners' because I had the time to do so.

I have found that different circumstances favour different styles of cooking. I think the important thing is the nutritional value of the food that you are producing.

Kellerina Have you tried freecycle? I am sure there will be people that have unwanted kitchen equipment and you may be able to obtain a liquidiser, slow cooker, pressure cooker if that is what you fancy. If it doesn't work out then freecycle it again.

Foggy

I have been living on my own for a few months now after 20 odd years of living with. I got the slow cooker, remoska, pressure cooker, breadmaker and blender pretty quickly.

To be honest I use the slow cooker mainly for slow roasting meat joints. For example Lidl were selling off pork loin joints for £1.69 (from £3.49) last month so I bought 4. I cooked them with passata, carrot, onion, celery, bay leaf. This gave me nice tender meat and a soup base which I used with lentils/water to make a fantasctic tomato and lentil soup. I then had the pork separately which went on things like homemade pizza topping, risotto etc. Keep an eye out for deals on here or HUKD, I got mine for £7 I think.

The breadmaker is great. As well as tasty fresh bread it does pizza dough, banana bread and loads of other things I haven't tried yet. It cost me around £23 from tesco when it was on half price and they had also sent me a £5 off £20 voucher.

I love the pressure cooker for making stock and broths. I'm not sure what else to do with it but I'm sure there's other stuff.

The remoska was a 'welcome me to my kitchen' thing which was presided by a hundred laps of Lakeland while I decided whether to shell out. So far I'm pleased. I started on Jacket Potatoes - which I couldn't justify having the oven on for ages just for a meal for me. It is excellent for toad in the hole, liver and onions, curries, potato wedges, spag bol,chilli, roasting whole chickens, all for not much 'cooking' money. I realise it's a bit of an investment but worth having on a list of 'would like to haves'

Get your freezer tubs from poundland and get organised. I think the secret to eating cheaply but healthily is to hunt out veg when they are cheap. I find I'm moving more toward being a veggie as time passes. It's tasty and it's cheap! Lidl often have bags for 29p. It's brussel sprout and pasta soup for me today! Watch out for things like bags of quorn being sold for 79p and get in there. Excellent freezer food for adding to loads of things.

Use google for recipes. Just type in ingredients you think can go together and add the word recipe. I ususally find something.