Food ideas for teenage boys to self organise

[Starstruck2020]

Hi, I’m looking for quick and easy ideas for snacks and meals teenage boys can prepare and make for themselves. Need to be low budget, and not overly processed if anyone can help me out with ideas?

So far I’m thinking nuts, apricots, boiled eggs, jerky, baked beans for snacks.

A wrap. Top with a couple of spoons of tomato based pasta sauce. A handful of spinach or rocket and a handful of grated cheese. Pop under the grill for a few minutes until the cheese melts. Roll up and eat as a wrap or cut into wedges like a pizza. Or top with another wrap and slice into wedges for a quesadilla.

Apple slices and peanut butter

Toast with cream cheese and pickle.

Sliced ripe bananas frozen in a nutribullet with a spoon of peanut butter, spoon of cocoa powder and a splash of milk. Whizz it up and its like ice cream.

Teach them to make a couple of basic one pot pasta meals op.

Bacon and eggs, scrambled eggs on toast, homemade pizza on flat bread, couscous salad.

Spaghetti carbonara- Aldi do the packs of pancetta, pasta, grated cheese, egg.

Absolutely anything, there's nothing impossible for such an age, so whatever foods they like to eat and are cheap, teach them how to?

It just seems rather backwards, start from the food they enjoy eating then learn how to make it.

Can of tuna. Done.
Was always my ds’s favorite after school snack!

Cheese on toast?
I love a sort of quesadilla. Pop a wrap in a non stick frying pan ( no oil). Sprinkle on some cheese. Add toppings-chopped peppers, tomato, chicken/ham, whatever! Sprinkle on more cheese. Top with another wrap. Toast both sides. Cut up and enjoy, yum.

Do you have a toastie machine? The possibilities are endless there!
Plus all possible ways of cooking eggs.
Crudités, breadsticks and dips
Soup

Also jacket potatoes and toppings

Trying to think of what my teenager likes:
Crumpets
Bagels and marmite
Porridge and chopped banana
Beans ( microwave for ease) on toast
Noodles in miso with a bit of leftover chicken and some frozen peas
Tuna and small tin of butter beans with bit of vinaigrette. I like it with rocket- he's not so bothered.
Tuna sweetcorn mayo- whole meal bread
Very easy chilli- brown the mince, add passata carton with chilli already in, small tin beans.
Heinz creations spicy chickpeas?? too processed??
Tinned mackerel

Microwave sponge cake/pudding.

Weigh one or more eggs (before cracking them), and add the same weight of s/r flour, butter/marge and caster sugar. Mix well. Microwave for a few minutes in a bowl with a plate over it. Turn out and eat.

For extra excitement, put syrup /jam /fruit /Nutella in the microwave bowl before adding the mix... Soaks right into the cake.

(actually, the correct order is mix butter and sugar then add the eggs then add the flour)

Baked potatoes with tuna mayo/tuna and sweetcorn/baked beans and cheese/chilli.
Cheese and crackers.
Sausage rolls.
Beans/scrambled egg on toast.
Potato cakes.
Frozen waffles with baked beans/fried egg.
Super noodles with tuna.
Toasties.

Crisps

You can teach them to cook normal meals like anyone else. Neither 'teenage' nor 'boys' excludes them from normal cooking.

Thank you so much! These are fantastic ideas and really helpful.

Would food for teenage boys to self organise be any different than that for teenage girls?

I sound pedantic but why specify boys? I am genuinely curious - do they eat or organise themselves differently?

I imagine the OP has teenage boys at home rather than Girls so it is them than need fed rather than a pair of ficticious girls. Boys do tend to eat more in general too.

It does read like the fact they are boys is important to the question though.

There's no reason they can't be as capable as teenage girls in the kitchen. What they can make themselves depends on their age and what they've been taught so far.

Teach them to cook pasta, chilli, curries especially veggie ones as it's good training for when they are independent. Can of mixed beans (Aldi 45p) can of chopped tomatoes (Aldi 35p) an onion, tsp cumin, tsp chilli, Indian food aisle of supermarket, frozen garlic (world food section) and fresh coriander (get them to grow it in pots) served with rice. Costs pennies per portion, super healthy.

Mine also cook omelettes, and the ubiquitous noodles

What do they like eating? Get them to find out how to cook that.

And insist that they tidy and wash up after themselves.

Omelettes and eggy bread. Eggs are their friends.

@saccade I am working with some teenage boys who are wanting some help in looking after themselves, and I was was trying to come up with some ideas that would really interest them and be something they could put together themselves instead of grabbing a handful of biscuits, or just not eating . My own children are a bit younger and (truthfully) I’m crap and boring with ideas, so I wanted to know what “real people” with boys thought, as all I could come up with were baked beans (which they don’t like) and smoothies (which they don’t have anything to make a smoothie with). I did look on the internet but what I found wasn’t as practical as the awesome mumsnetters

Loving the ideas especially the eggs, pastas, baked potatoes and toasties.

And yes. I’m hoping with some encouragement they are going to be very capeable young men