What do you cook when you can't be bothered to cook?

[theneverendinglaundry]

I need a few easy dinners ideas with little or no preparation. I am so fed up with meal planning, shopping for meals, cooking meals, cleaning up after meals....I cook almost every night and would just love a few freezer/cupboard/packet things to make life easier some nights.

Am thinking of having the freezer stocked up with mash and other variants of potato. Jacket potatoes are mindless enough to make and also very cheap, so they're on my list too.

What do you cook when you can't be bothered to cook?

Pasta with pesto, frozen pizza, beans on toast, fish fingers and chips, scrambled eggs and yes to jacket potatoes!

Not something I would freeze but I did carbonara this evening.
Other go to meals:
Sheppards pie
Bangers and mash
Spag bol
Pork chops
Pasta stir through
Curry

Pasta with ready made tomato and mascarpone sauce (comes in a jar or fresh) plus grated cheese or frozen pizza with some cut up veg.

cheese/beans on toast

frozen pizza

fish fingers/chicken nuggets

mince with peas (add straight from frozen in a pan with the mince and fry) with buttered bread

Can you batch cook beforehand in 1 day so you just defrost things from the freezer? Lasgane, bolognese sauce, cottage pie? or

• Use a jar of curry sauce or Chinese style sauces so you just need to chop meat and veg. Throw in noodles
• Mac n cheese from a packet- cooked in the microwave. Sometimes I'll throw in frozen sweetcorn, peas and/or ham/bacon
• Pot noodle with added veg
• Home-delivery!

Here is a link of a similar question being asked a few days ago:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/3958401-Shit-On-Toast-and-other-favourite-meals

Chicken goujons with wraps/pita bread and salad.

Sliced corned beef, mash and beans.

Tuna, cheese & mayo in a wrap/pita pocket and toasted.

Smoked sausage, potato waffles, beans.

Tortellini & pesto.

Pie with mash and beans.

Smoked salmon linguini (cream cheese, Parmesan and a little milk) with peas.

Linguini with bacon, asparagus, mushroom & a drizzle of oil and Parmesan.

I also have an instant pot, so soups and stews are quick and easy and can be made in advance with little effort.

Just put some chicken legs in the oven lying on some thick chips of waxy potatoes ..season with salt pepper lemon juice and oregano ..Cook for a while...and serve with salad.
Or leave out the potatoes and just serve with bread and salad....

Carbonara
Stir Fry
Roast veg tart using ready made puff pastry

Well, the other night I had a banana, a chocolate bar, a packet of crisps and a glass of wine, and it was lush!😆

Scrambled eggs on toast.
Omelette with salad.
Jacket potatoes with cheese and salad, cheese and beans or cheese and coleslaw, particularly if you start them off in the microwave and finish in the oven.
Vegetarian frozen hotdogs.

Some of the ideas on here are proper cooking, in my opinion. I'm the sort of person who sometimes can't be arsed to grate cheese for pasta or throw a bagged salad on a plate, or add mustard AND ketchup to a hotdog roll (the mustard I get can't be squeezed out of the container).

Thank you for the replies so far! I've written down your ideas into the back of my meal planning notebook. Yes, that's how I usually roll, which is probably why I'm experiencing meal planning burn out.

I forgot about all those jars of tracy made sauces. I could just get a bag of frozen chicken breast and frozen veg and bung them on with a curry sauce or sweet and sour! Genius!

@Aebj

Not something I would freeze but I did carbonara this evening. Other go to meals: Sheppards pie Bangers and mash Spag bol Pork chops Pasta stir through Curry

I’d consider all of them to be ‘actual cooking’ meals, when I think the op was either looking for something that takes care of itself or speedy.

@seriouslyretro yes I would consider a lot of those cooking! But great ideas for ready meals from Iceland, nonetheless 😂

I have salad, pickles, dressing and a piece of meat, maybe with some oven chips. Very easy and quick.

Tuna olives and feta cheese

Packet of Curry Noodle & grated cheese

I have an omelette maker and I can do amazing fluffy omlettes in five mins. ( I have a lovely fancy hob but I cannot cook an omlette on it )

McCoy’s Crisp in a wrap with cheese 😂

sausages (cooked in oven) and (ready made) mash
fresh pasta and salad
Kiev and chips
chicken tonight in slow cooker with micro rice
Southern fried chicken wraps

SOme take a littlew time but no more effort than open oven door.

I batch cook and freeze portions of everything so when I can’t be bothered I just heat up a tub of curry/spaghetti Bol/soup etc.
But if I don’t fancy that just bread, cheese, salad, humus etc or beans on toast.

Hummus and pitta...I'm happy with this for dinner but dh would not consider it!

Good quality supermarket pizza

Toasted sandwich

Frozen fish and chips

Pasta bake
Omelette with salad (or chips and beans the kids like!)
Jacket potatoes
Something on toast
Pitta pizzas (pitta/purée/cheese/ham)
"Beige" dinners which mainly include nuggets/fish fingers/chips

Some great ideas on here - I'm taking them!

I might be selling ice to eskimos but did you know you can buy cook straight from frozen meat from Iceland? I only discovered this recently. So using jars you can make all sorts or curries, chinese, spag bol etc really quickly and with no 'cooking'. Also freeze bread so it's always on hand. And eggs are a great filler. I found white bread in freezer today and had French toast for first time in forever, topped with melted cheese and some bacon and beans. Bloody delicious.

And you can buy frozen mash too!

I usually cook pesto pasta.
Or I buy a pre-cooked chicken and have salad and new potatoes

Pasta, fresh pesto (which I buy ready-made but it's so much nicer than the pesto from jars) topped with roasted cherry tomatoes and parmesan.

Egg and chips.

Jacket potato and something and salad.

Pasta with pesto and veg/ham mixed in (cook veg eg broccoli in same water)
Oven pizzas
Freezer treats! - eg Kievs, Fish Cakes
Salads - eg mozzarella and tomato with crusty bread
Omelettes! So good, a recent discovery, ready in minutes
Cous cous
Sausages
Chicken pittas (stir fry chicken, shove in pittas, with yogurt, salad etc)
Tray bakes (eg halloumi, chorizo, and new potatoes and peas). Shove it all on a tray, voila!
Quesadillas (wraps with stuff in, eg cheese and tomato/ham/spicy stuff, do in pan)

Tbh when my kids were younger the vast majority of the meals we had were like this

I usually try to cook at least one portion more than I need for the freezer, so there's always a low-effort dinner in there - curry, bolognese, shepherds pie etc.

But sometimes I can't even be bothered with eating a nice meal, even if it hasn't taken any effort to cook it, in which case I will have a boiled egg and buttered bread.