The moment in a student’s life when he or she runs out of frozen or pre-prepared meals and does not know what to do next is a truly traumatic one. Yes, beans on toast or tuna pasta are both perfectly feasible options but who wants them? (Again). But – amazingly – there is another way: actually learning how to cook. The art of producing fine food on a student budget in a small kitchen may sound hard, but in reality this is not the case. With a little creativity and skill it is perfectly achievable.
The first step is to shell out on some decent hardware. The first item I would buy is a slow cooker, or a crockpot. Versatile, and most importantly, easy to use, the slow cooker can become one of your best friends. It can be filled with dinner’s ingredients, switched on and then simply left for a few hours until you are ready to eat. While the possibilities of how to use it are endless, my favourites are; soups, sauces and stews. Even the toughest meat cuts are reduced to buttery tenderness after twelve hours in the slow cooker.
As winter approaches, vegetable soup would be a perfect “first cook” to try if you decide to invest in a slow cooker. Simply cube a selection of your favourite vegetables (I like onions, carrots, courgette, sweet potato and parsnip) and lightly sauté in olive oil with garlic powder and mixed dried herbs until they begin to soften. Once this is done pour into the slow cooker and fill with water. Stir in a couple of dessert spoons of chicken soup powder, turn on and return in ten hours. For extra body, I add chickpeas, lentils and barley. Some people like their soup chunky, whilst others cream it with a handheld blender. The choice is yours.
Fresh tomato sauce is another option. When cooked for long enough, tomatoes will effectively dissolve, so you won’t need to add water to a base sauce. First fry an onion until soft with herbs and spices of your choosing (oregano and garlic are good), then add to the slow cooker with chopped tomatoes. A good ratio of onion to tomato is 1:2. Peppers fried with the onion can also be nice. This sauce should be ready within six hours so if you have afternoon lectures, this is a great recipe to make before leaving the house to only return around dinnertime. So much better than whatever comes out the jar…!
If cooking with meat, it is vital to first “brown” it in a frying pan to ensure that flavours are sealed in. Surprisingly, it takes root vegetables (especially carrots) longer to cook than meat so they need to be thoroughly sautéed before being added to the slow cooker. To maximise the flavouring from spices, always add them during the initial frying. It is only at high temperatures that their essences are released, and a frying pan is often the best place for this. So now you have no excuses – get cooking!
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