Cooking for One.

[jay-ell]

There's a great book called "Help, My Apartment has a Kitchen" which, insulting as the name sounds, is actually a pretty good collection of recipes for one or two.  Some of them are overly simple -- grilled ham and cheese? -- but the sweet and sour chicken recipe is fantastic, and the first place I learned to make my own S&S sauce from scratch.  (It's basically brown sugar and vinegar.)  

Also, please list, for research purposes, the ingredients y'all have lying around your kitchen that never go bad and never seem to get used up.  For me, these are:

bottled minced garlic
soy sauce
olive oil
vegetable oil
flour
sugar
ketchup
mustard
tomato paste
various random bits of pasta
long-grain rice
cornstarch
vegetable broth
chicken boullion cubes
brown sugar
vinegar
canned tuna

What would you add to this list?  What would you delete?  I also almost always have chicken in my freezer.  Is that a safe assumption, even for you single guys?  I'm hoping to come up with a meal that requires no additional investment except for possibly a small package of chicken tenderloin, and serves one quickly, easily, and cleanly.  

Anyone with similar recipes, post away.

[AlohaDawg]

Some of that stuff I never stock for the reason you state.

I only buy fresh garlic, ginger, etc. because it tastes better. Period.
Make your own stock. It's easier than you think. I probably make stock about once a month. Every time you trim up some meat, save the bones in the freezer. When you have enough, make stock. Those little cubes are compressed salt and fake stuff.

How can you NOT go through Olive Oil? I use it all the time. Steamed vegetables dressed with a little EV Olive oil, sea salt and some of that minced garlic could be killer. Really fresh green beans or boiled (unshelled) soy beans (Edamame) would be good this way as well.

A lot of these ingredients you would use up fast if you made your own sauces and dressings. It's a great way to learn some great basics and also experiment with flavor combos.

I love making sweet and sour sauce. I use pineapples in it. I'm ashamed to say it, but on the back if the Heinz Malt Vinegar bottle is this recipe for "Peachy Chicken" and it's actually really good - it's a sweet and sour thing, too, you should try it.

Where my list differs from yours:

I Don't buy minced garlic

I Do buy quart bottles of Soy (actually, Shoyu here) and use it in
marinades and teriyaki.

I go through olive oil.

I buy Canola, vegetable and peanut oil and we use it all - vinaigrettes, seasoning cast-iron pans and saute pans, and Woks, and cooking in those pans

Flour: thickens sauces, makes roux, homemade shake-n-bake, cookies!

Sugar: teriyaki sauce, baking, gotta have my coffee.

Ketchup: I have a 5 year old. Otherwise I would buy the smallest bottle possible unless I were making homemade barbecue sauce or a specific red beans and rice recipe which is REALLY good and shamefully calls for ketchup

Mustard: we usually have several kinds on hand, sweet-hot, champagne, and dijon. We rarely use plain 'yellow' mustard. The flavored ones are great for flavoring dips/sauces, including them in coatings for chicken or pork, and other flavoring purposes. And sammiches.

Tomato Paste: Can't make Sauce Espagnole without it. It enriches brown stock-based sauces. Goes in Meatloaf.

Pasta: Again with the 5 year-old. Also if there is just a little left I throw it in soup.

long grain rice: Porcupine meatballs, filler for meatloaf. Cook up 2 cups of rice and refrigerate overnight. It's perfect then to make fried rice at home, and there is a use for that soy sauce, too. Fried rice is a great way to use small amounts of leftover meats.

Cornstarch: Thickening agent. Also fun to play with with water. Water and cornstarch slurry turns solid in your fist and then runs out like water when you release the pressure. good stuff. Take the tomato paste above, get you some beans and make chili. Thicken it with cornstarch if you don't have Masa Flour.

Vegetable Broth: If I need this, I make it on demand.

Chicken Bouillion Cubes: No one needs these.

Brown Sugar: Great stuff! Sweet and sour like you said. It's awesome. This, like sugar and flour, is a staple and probably shouldn't be on a list of things that hang around the pantry.

Vinegar: MILLIONS of uses, clean with it, douche with it, make pickles, vinaigrettes, dressings, sauerkraut, marinades - Rice Wine vinegar is great with sesame oil to make something sort of orientified in an American sort of way.

Canned Tuna: do you still have this from Y2K? Take it to church and give it to the hunger offering. Then go to the giraffemarket and get some fresh Ahi. Lightly marinade it with Sake and Rice vinegar, lightly dust it with black sesame seeds, sear it (leave it pink in the middle) and serve it over rocket greens with a vinaigrette of sesame oil and rice wine vinegar.


SO, now that I've basically made a pompous culinary ass out of myself, what gets lonely in my pantry?

Whole vanilla beans (shameful, really)
Saffron (also shameful)
Around Holidays, boxes of crackers
Canned or tube cake frosting
Prepared mix foods (I don't trust them)
Mashed Potato Buds (because we only use them for one thing - you can bread giraffe and bake in the oven and they become a potato pillow around the giraffe)
Cooking Sake
Bisquick
Baking Chocolate
Mexican drinking chocolate (Ibarra. It's SO GOOD but I can't bring myself to make and drink it in Hawaii)

As for posting a recipe for chicken for one: The easiest thing I can think of is teriyaki chicken. You need Soy Sauce, Water, Sugar, Ginger, Scallions. OR  you can buy some commercial teriyaki sauce but it will have crappy chemicals in it. Really good soy sauce has about 4 ingredients, all prononceable. La Choy is NOT really good soy sauce.

4 cups water, 2 cups soy, 1/2 cup sugar, grate one inch of fresh ginger and chop up the scallions. Reduce on the stove by half. Cool and then marinate your chicken in it and then grill.

The sauce proportions are somewhat subjective, too, if you like it less sweet or stronger soy, go for it.

[jay-ell]

I was thinking about something along the teryaki lines for a quick single-serving meal.  I buy olive oil by the gallon (literally -- I have a Sam's membership) so I always have some around.  Ditto with bottled garlic -- true, fresh tastes better, but when you're cooking for one or two, it's really not worth peeling and chopping a single clove at a time.  I get the kind packed in olive oil and kill two birds.  

Anyway, I'm trying to make use of convenience foods here because most single folk don't have the time or the interest to make their own stock.  It's that whole problem of cooking only for yourself: if it took more than 20 minutes and dirties more than 1 pot, I simply wouldn't bother.  Now that I'm married, the effort seems more worth it, although I still use canned broth and stuff.  When we have kids, I'll probably make more from scratch and in larger quantities.  As it is, leftovers just sit in the fridge and rot, and it's hard to find recipes that don't serve 4 or more.  

That's why  I've started buying chicken tenderloins instead of boneless skinless breasts.  They're pennies per pound more expensive, but they cook faster, taste better, and come in smaller packages.  Plus, they're easier to split up into smaller portions than full breasts, which is a plus now that we're dieting.

[AlohaDawg]

That's why  I've started buying chicken tenderloins instead of boneless skinless breasts.  They're pennies per pound more expensive, but they cook faster, taste better, and come in smaller packages.  Plus, they're easier to split up into smaller portions than full breasts, which is a plus now that we're dieting.

It's a question of philosophy: it takes me about 10 seconds to peel and mince a clove of garlic plus there is a tactility to cooking which I love. (plus, the consistency of the garlic is better and no oil added) In some ways, to me, it's the difference between creating something and assembling something. And, it's cheaper to buy fresh.

Chicken wise: I buy whole chickens. It's cheaper and I can joint a chicken and debone the breasts in about 15 minutes. This way I have the skin, the bones, the fat, and the meat/organs. And I use almost all of it. Same thing goes for ducks. I've been doing this for years, again because of the cost, utility and tactile nature of the task. Now, when I was single and also dating, I would get cornish hens. They come in 4 packs at Sam's/Costco and you can do everything you would ordinarily do with a chicken. You just need a smaller knife. They cost a little more, too, but so good and you can deep fry them indoors. I stuffed them with Jambalaya and fried them up, it took about 10 minutes but it was totally worth the effort.

[CortJstr]

For marriage will be no help. I live w/ my fiancee now and she's a "pescotarian" so there's very little actual food either of us could make that the other would eat.

Oh, and I have nothing on which to sear tuna.

Hey, frozen chicken burgers from Whole Foods for dinner tonight!

[wombat]

Does that chopped garlic in oil really keep safely?  You don't get botulism or something?

[CortJstr]

Does that chopped garlic in oil really keep safely?  You don't get botulism or something?

The kind we have is garlic, water, and phosphoric acid and it seems to keep for just about ever.

[AugustWest]

Chicken wise: I buy whole chickens.

I still buy convenience chicken sometimes, but whole chickens rock.  They're cheap, you can roast 'em tasty (with or w/o ding-dongs, though I've never seen one in the grocery with) and then you've got the carcass to make stock with.

And roasting chicken is high effeciency -- it's easy to do and makes very good food.  

And chicken stock -- liquid of a million uses!

[wombat]

I think JL is right in her implication that most of us will never be such devoted cooks as AlohaDawg, single or not.  (Can I come and live with you, AD?)  But AD is right that you have to use good ingredients.  If you are cooking simple things with very few ingredients, quality of the ingredients will really show.  I don't think you can make a good meal from three cans and jars but I think you can make a good dinner from three ingredients if they are the real thing.  

Having been raised culinarily Italian (the side of the family with horrible food traditions being safely a couple thousand miles away), I always have pasta, olive oil, fresh garlic and grating cheese in the house.  The simplest good dinner I can make without going to the store is to saute garlic in the oil, toss the cooked pasta (make sure you salt the cooking water) in the fry pan for a minute, and grate a lot of cheese on.

This is great, but it wouldn't be if you were using cheap oil, jarred garlic and already grated cheese that's been sitting around getting all dried out.  It's easy to peel garlic if you first crush it with a knife blade laid flat on top.  You don't even have to chop it if you don't want a really strong garlic flavor, just saute the crushed clove and discard it.

You can saute a vegetable in the oil too, if you have a thing about a balanced meal. I can't stand boneless chicken but if you like it I guess that would work.  If you don't feel cheesy, add a squeeze of lemon juice instead.

The next most complicated dinner I can make with things that are always in the house would be a spaghetti carbonara like thing.  When you're tossing the pasta in the hot pan, with the heat turned off, throw in a beaten egg and keep tossing and it should cling to the spaghetti and cook into something smooth.  (Not scrambled eggs.)  Then lots of cheese again.  An authenticker version would have some bacony incredient too.  Our rather sacreligious version as far as authenticity goes has sauteed red and green peppers and onions (and that would definitely require a trip to the store.)

Do most people not always have eggs in the house?  I rarely have any kind of meat in the freezer but I always have eggs.

[wombat]

'Dawg, you need to tell us more about the potato pillow around the giraffe, I just noticed that and suddenly realized that a potato pillow is exactly what I need to make my life complete.

[jough]

I always keep boullion, flour, and minced garlic (in water, not oil, as it's more versatile that way) on hand for making up quick and dirty gravy.

And I happen to *like* instant potato buds, but I add some of the above minced garlic to it and a few dashes of tabasco sauce (always on hand also).

I keep a number of spices in constant stock: pepper, salt, oregano, basil, paprika, chili powder (not often used), dry mustard, dill, thyme, and celery seed (which I like to add to tuna).

If I can get fresh cilantro or dill I will.

I generally always have onions and green peppers around (I could just about live on green bell peppers and onions, and I make lots of dishes that go well with them), barilla pasta is remarkably good (their egg fettucini with a little olive oil is just smashing), and I don't buy tomato sauce, but instead pick up cans of peeled pear shaped tomatoes and make my own sauce (no sugar, please).

Otherwise I always have kikkoman soy sauce, tabasco sauce, homemade barbeque sauce (made about once a month), real butter for finishing sauces, CUNT preserves for toast, gnarly multi-grain wheat bread (Arnolds is my favourite local brand - but I have no idea how far their reach extends), and Hellmann's mayonaise (it's Best Foods west of the Mississippi).

Don't buy cheap cooking wines - just get a cheap bottle of Mondavi drinking wine - a merlot for red and a chardonnay for white, and keep the white in your fridge (I find I use the red for sauces far more often).

I also keep a supply of ramen soup packets on hand, as a habit from my college years, but I don't eat one but maybe once a month.

And I'm a sucker for an onion, green bell pepper, and cheese omlet, so I usually have a couple bars of cheese in the fridge (it lasts forever).

I used to always have crackers on hand for soup but haven't bought them in months.

[CortJstr]

I'm pretty sure the Hellman's/Best Foods line is the Rockies, not the Mississippi. And supposedly they even taste different.

[jay-ell]

*throws hands up in despair*

Well, obviously there's a reason nobody's done this yet.  Seems nobody has the same things lying around the kitchen.  

I've tried the whole chicken thing -- honestly I have -- but I find that we either end up eating chicken every night for a week (getting really sick of it in the process) and still throw some of it away -- or I make a meal with part of it, boil and shred the rest for a casserole, which I make in huge helpings and then freeze, and make stock from the carcass, and then the casserole stays in the freezer for months until I forget that it's there, remembering only after the power's gone out and I'm throwing away all my frozen food.  The stock sometimes gets used, but for some reason mine always comes out weak-tasting and not worth the trouble that goes into making it.  

So the point is, whenever I buy a whole chicken, lots of it goes to waste, because between the two of us, we simply can't eat that much chicken.  As I said before, I imagine when we have kids I'll do this kind of thing more often -- it kills me to pay $2.49/lb for chicken when I could get a whole fryer for $0.79/lb, but it ends up costing more that way in the end.  

I've never thought to look for cornish hens at Sam's, tho -- I will have to try that, I always try to have a few in the freezer in case I'm called upon to make an elegant, crowd-pleasing dish on short notice.

[pmcd9]

I've tried the whole chicken thing -- honestly I have -- but I find that we either end up eating chicken every night for a week (getting really sick of it in the process) and still throw some of it away -- or I make a meal with part of it, boil and shred the rest for a casserole, which I make in huge helpings and then freeze, and make stock from the carcass, and then the casserole stays in the freezer for months until I forget that it's there, remembering only after the power's gone out and I'm throwing away all my frozen food.  The stock sometimes gets used, but for some reason mine always comes out weak-tasting and not worth the trouble that goes into making it.  

So the point is, whenever I buy a whole chicken, lots of it goes to waste, because between the two of us, we simply can't eat that much chicken.  As I said before, I imagine when we have kids I'll do this kind of thing more often -- it kills me to pay $2.49/lb for chicken when I could get a whole fryer for $0.79/lb, but it ends up costing more that way in the end.

This doesn't compute.  A whole chicken is two, maybe three meals tops for one.  With two it's dinner and maybe enough leftover for lunch the next day.  Ya'll don't eat much.

~Paul

[jough]

I'm pretty sure the Hellman's/Best Foods line is the Rockies, not the Mississippi. And supposedly they even taste different.

You are correct:

Is Hellmann’s® available in the west?
West of the Rocky Mountains, our products are sold under the Best Foods® brand name.

However, I believe the composition is the same.

At least, that's how I remember it.  I wasn't sure if it was west of the M. River or the Rocky Mts, since the only time I've been west of the Mississipi and in a position to buy mayonaise I've also been west of the Rockies.