Total Beginners’ Recipes
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Five essential cooking skills to master before you leave home
Whether you’re heading to uni or to your own flat, a certain ability to feed yourself will undoubtedly come in useful! Here’s our list of bare minimum skills needed to make a handful of cheap, healthy, easy meals. If you can do it all already, give yourself a pat on the back – you’re unlikely to develop scurvy when you leave home!
1) How to make toast without a toaster.
For the moment when the toaster breaks and all you have in is very stale bread. Or if you are like me, for the moment after the communal toaster in student halls caught fire and self destructed. (NB if you don’t empty the crumb tray, eventually, your toaster might catch fire).
Step one: Turn on the grill to a medium-ish sort of temperature. No need to be fussy.
Step two: Put the bread on the highest shelf in there. Supervise to make sure it doesn’t go black or catch fire.
Step three: Turn over when top side is the shade of toast you like. (NB toast will be hot at this point)
Step four: Take out. Eat.
2) How to eat baked beans
The prototypical student food, beans are excellent because you can eat them cold, straight from the can, so work in an emergency situation. However, if you want them hot:
Step one: Put beans in a bowl and put the bowl-with-beans into the microwave (NB do not put a tin into the microwave. It will explode.
Step two: Heat on high for around two minutes.
Step three: Test. If they’re hot enough for your taste, eat. If not, stir, heat for another minute, and repeat.
Perfect for adding to toast, baked potatoes, or even pasta.
3) How to make pasta
Dried pasta is great as it always has the instructions on the packet. Follow them.
Step one: Follow instructions until pasta is cooked. (NB Do not let your pan boil dry. Make sure the pasta is always covered by water, because water evaporates and if it all evaporates, your pasta will taste like burning.)
Step two: mix in something tasty to make it more of a meal. Examples include grated cheese, cherry tomatoes, tuna or pesto.
Step three: eat, and revel in how easy it is not to just order a Maccy D’s every night.
4)How to make a baked potato
If you want a crispy skin, it’s a bit more complicated as the spud needs to go in the oven. About 1h should do it, depending on the size of your potato. You also don’t have to prick it before putting it in the oven. However, if you want a jacket potato the easy way, use the microwave.
Step one: Pick a potato the size you want to eat. They don’t shrink very much in cooking.
Step two: Stab it all over with a fork so it doesn’t explode in the microwave. Aim for at least 5 good stabs.
Step three: Put it on a plate in the microwave. Heat on high. Ten minutes should do it, but it depends how big it is, so stick a dinner knife in it. If it feels like the texture you want to eat, remove and do so. Otherwise, keep heating till it’s ready.
5) How to scramble an egg
For those moments where you have no oil to fry it.
This one is actually harder than it seems as eggs are notoriously temperamental. However, they’re also delicious, healthy and cheap, so it’s worth trying!
Scrambling is relatively easy:
Step one: break into a cup and wave a fork around until it’s a consistent texture.
Step two: if you have any yummifiers such as butter, milk or pepper, add some now. A splash of milk, a lump of butter the size of your thumb or a good grind of pepper will be more or less right.
Step three: put mug in microwave for a minute at a time, beating after a minute to stop it turning into one giant lump.
The alternative method is to put the mixed up egg into a pan and heat it, stirring constantly until it’s the texture you like. Perfect for if your microwave packs up or if you want a slightly less bouncy texture of egg.
Combine with any of the above to make a more varied meal!