5.3 KiB
I occasionally cooked during High School, however, college was my first real experience cooking on a daily basis. Since I have lived to tell the tail, I want to share some of the recipes that I created which got me through my first two years of college.
Level 1: Cooking in the Dorms
Being stuck in a dorm room you are limited to only being able to use the microwave. Desperate times calls for desperate solutions.
Ramen Pizza
This recipe surprised me as to how it turned out. You start making this by microwaving the ramen noodles for about a third of the instructed time in a normal bowl of water. When you place the noodles in the bowl, make sure to not break them apart. Quickly take the romen noodles out of the bowl, dry, and place on a plate to prevent overcooking. Next you slather the ramen noodles with your desired pizza toppings and place in the microwave for around 2 minutes.
Ingredients
- Ramen noodle packet
- Pasta or pizza sauce
- Cheese - preferable shredded mozzarella
- Peperoni or any pizza topping you can get
Omelet In a Mug
Life hack: you can cook scrambled eggs in a coffee mug in the microwave. The resulting eggs are abnormally fluffy and taste a little strange, but, it makes for a quick dinner. It just so happens that you can also cook hot dogs in the microwave.
When I stumbled upon this recipe and clung to it since it was fast, cheep, and most of the dinning places on campus were closed by the time I got out of work. To make this you crack and mix two eggs in a coffee cup. You then microwave the coffee mug, mixing the eggs every 30 seconds. Half way through cooking the eggs, you add a diced hotdog and some shredded cheese. Once your eggs have all cooked, you can add a healthy dosage of salsa. Voila, you have an omelet which can compete with whatever they are serving at the dinning hall.
Ingredients
- 1-2 Eggs
- 1 Hotdog
- Cheese
- Salsa
Level 2 Cooking with no Time
Once you get an apartment you can advance from cooking in a microwave in the dorms. Being a college student, time is very scarce I found the following recipes to be very fast and easy. These recipes are also very forgiving in the sense that you can change the directions and ingredients and still end up with something really good.
Chili
It is very hard to make a bad chili. All you essentially have to do is gather/prep all the ingredients and plop them in a crock pot and cook for 6-8 hours on low. You don't have to cook this in a crock pop, however, it takes more time to prepare on the stove since you have to monitor it while it cooks. I usually saute the onions while I cook the ground beef so that it cooks in the grease of the beef. The average prep time for this recipe is around 20-30 minutes. However, if you made this vegetarian you can cut the prep time down to a mere 10 minutes.
Ingredients
Recommended
- 1 sauteed sweet onion
- 1/4-1/2 lbs browned ground beef
- 2-3 cans of beans: I usually use chili and baked beans
- 1 can of diced tomatoes Optional
- 1 can of corn
- 1 pepper
- Minced Garlic
- Mustard
- Ketchup
- Chili Powder: to taste
- Pepper Flakes
- Brown Sugar
Poor Mans Chicken Parmesan
I call this poor mans chicken parmesan only because it uses chicken patties, this actually tastes really good. To prepare this you slather chicken patties with pasta sauce and cheese and then cook normally in the oven. While the chicken patties cook, you can cook your pasta noodles and sauce. You serve the pasta noodles with the sauce topped with the cheesy chicken pattie.
Ingredients
- Chicken Patties
- Pasta Sauce
- Pasta Noodles
- Cheddar Cheese
Soup
This is a easy recipe which has so many combinations. I usually make some form of a chicken soup, the rest of the ingredients are entirely dependent on what I have in the kitchen. You will have to play around with the ingredients to find the perfect combination, however, I have not found a combination which did not work with me. Similar to chili, you just put all the ingredients in a crock pot and let cook on low for 6-8 hours. From experience, I would recommend putting in spices like garlic and basil during the last hour of cooking to keep their flavors sharp.
Ingredients
- Bag of Frozen Chicken Strips
- 3-4 Diced Potatoes
- Chicken Stock Whatever of these you have
- 3 Diced Carrots
- 1-2 Diced Onions
- 1 can Diced Tomatoes
- Can of Tomato Soup
- 1 Can corn
- Diced Pepper
- 3 Stalks of Celery
- Mushrooms
- Minced Garlic
- Basil
- Salt
- Pepper
- Brown Sugar
Potato Casserole
For this recipe you cut all the vegetables and place them in a large baking pan with the chicken. If you want, you can also mix in some seasonings like salt, garlic, pepper, and basil. Then you then mix everything together with some canola oil. Cook this casserole in a 350 degrease oven for around 30 minutes. Briefly take this out of the oven and top with cheese and ranch dressing and place back in oven for another 10-15 minutes. If you are really cheap, you can make this with hot dogs rather than pre-cooked chicken strips.
Ingredients
- 4-6 Peeled and Cubed Tomatoes
- 1-2 Diced Onions
- Bag of Chicken Strips
- Minced Garlic
- Chopped Carrots
- Canola or Vegetable Oil
- Ranch
- Sour Cream
- Cheeses