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?

Freezer crap, ready meals or something I've bulk cooked.

My cba attempt at cooking usually involves turning tinned beans into some kind of chilli/spag Bol/casserole.

Fry 2 onions. Chuck in 4 tins of beans - it doesn’t matter what type - kidney beans, black beans, butter beans or (rinsed) baked beans.

Add a couple of tins of tomatoes, a splash of water, a stock cube and either:
*Mixed herbs for a casserole taste
*Tomato purée for more of a spag Bol flavour
*Cumin, paprika and chilli for a chilli

It’s the easiest meal ever, super healthy, cheap, takes minutes. Have it on rice, pasta, noodles, in a wrap, on its own hot or cold.

I always have a stock of individual portions of chilli and bolognese in the freezer. Have it with microwave jacket potatoes/pasta/rice depending on time.

Other quick dinner, bag of salad leaves, feta or halloumi cheese and a pouch of microwave rice and grains, mix all together with salad dressing.

Pesto pasta with ready cooked chicken

I have only recently tried cooking a chicken in a slow cooker. Chop up some carrots, celery & onion bay leaves salt & pepper. Comes out so tasty & 5 mins prep. I serve it in sandwiches, wraps, pasta quesadillas. So easy & so good. I also make 2 batches of soup a week & freeze in individual portions.

• Salads made hearty with tinned tuna, beans, leftover pasta or rice.
• grilled salmon or other fish, rice, steamed veg with ginger dressing
• pasta carbonara
• pasta with fresh tomatoes and garlic infused olive oil
• steak, salad, boiled new potatoes
• if I have leftover rice, egg fried rice with lots of finely chopped veg
• risotto (just bung into pressure cooker and get fantastic results)

When I really CBA (and take out isn't an option) I do sandwich competition. Put out bread, butter plus any sandwich fillings I have in and everyone has to design their own sandwich. Anyone who enjoyed their sandwich is the winner.

Also all the bung it in the oven options like;
Frozen pizza (plus bag of salad)
Fish fingers, waffles, frozen peas
Chicken goujons, chips, peas

And the toast and... Options like
Boiled egg and soldiers
Tin of soup and toast
Cheese toastie
Mushrooms on toast
Beans on toast etc...

My 10 minute supper is salmon steaks (I buy sides of salmon on special offer , cut them into steaks and freeze). You need a large frying pan if you are doing this for two, or two frying pans for more people, but I think you miss something if you don't cook it together. Finely slice a half a fennel put it in a hot pan with a smidge of vegetable oil. After a couple of minutes shove the fennel over a bit and add whole baby tomatoes , and the seasoned salmon and cook for about 8 minutes turning the salmon over after 6. Turn the vegetables too. Push the salmon and vegetables to one side of the pan and add a really good couple of handfuls of baby spinach to wilt down a bit try to keep everything a bit separate but sharing body fluids if you know what I mean. put a good dash of teriyaki sauce over everything and cook for a few more seconds.That's it really, I sometimes make extra then the following day do some couscous and add the salmon, fennel, tomato and spinach mix to it for a salad.

Sorry if you think its cooking, it really isn't, the only thing you need to do is slice the fennel and season the salmon, and it's only one pan, one knife and one chopping board to bung in the dishwasher wash.

I always have bags of home made tomato sauce in the freezer. Put sauce in a pan on a low heat to defrost. Take frozen (shop) falafel out of their packet, they defrost fast. Start some water for linguine or other pasta in another pan, when the sauce is defrosted and heating up add the felafals. Make sure they are heated through. Veggie not meat balls.

Cheese and onion crisp sandwich in white bread and proper butter.

Fresh pesto on sourdough
Mushrooms on toast
Pancakes

hippofrog finally someone who understands that whipping up some salmon and couscous with a fresh green salad on the side is not ‘not cooking’!

I sometimes batch cook con carne when I can be bothered and freeze it. Then it's there for when I can't be bothered or if we get home late from a day out or something.

Amy’s Soup and a chunk of baguette and butter .

My new favourite snack is jam and butter on bread after seeing it eaten in an afternoon tea on Dads Army.

Delish.

Roast a load of vegetables, add a bit of pesto and cheese.

I declare a fend for self night. Or SDS as I note on our weekly menu.
Se debrouiller seul

Avenging totally agree, the vast majority of these meals sound the sort of thing I cook when I can be bothered to cook. I'd love to know what these posters do cook when they cook properly . Assume it's a full three course meal with home grown veg at the very least.

Not cooking to me means toast or cheese and biscuits.

Yes cheese on toast...peanut butter on toast....sardines on toast. ....
Anything on toast really....

Most of the above still involve cooking though.

Me, I just declare it is a salad evening and everyone makes their own.

I hardly call putting something straight from the fridge in an oven "cooking". Grilling salmon is not cooking. It involves simply unwrapping, putting in oven, and adding a bit of seasoning.

Cooking, to me, involves processing food and multiple steps to come up with a final product which is an amalgam of a variety of ingredients. If I were to cook said piece of salmon, I would either marinate it overnight in a mixture of ginger/soy/garlic/mirin/miso then grill, or coat it with something and pan fry it. I would make a sauce for it involving several ingredients and possibly reduction.

Taking raw meat or fish and cooking it or chopping vegetables is cooking as far as I'm concerned.

When I can't be arsed, to be honest even unwrapping the raw chicken and getting it on the baking tray and waiting for it to cook is too much effort for me.

So chopping veg for a salad would be cooking?

That's just semantics. If you look at cooking as purely the application of heat to food then sticking a ready made pizza in the oven would count as cooking whereas preparing a salad would not be, but the salad would involve more effort.

but the salad would involve more effort

The point being though, that it is not me making the effort. The other family members are just left to get on with it...... hence no cooking, no preparing, no effort from me.

The alternative is getting one of them to cook something, although DH can't cook AT ALL, the DD's are very good, and often cook a family meal of stir fry or risotto or pasta or similar.

@Ragwort

Avenging totally agree, the vast majority of these meals sound the sort of thing I cook when I can be bothered to cook. I'd love to know what these posters do cook when they cook properly . Assume it's a full three course meal with home grown veg at the very least.

Not cooking to me means toast or cheese and biscuits.

I gave a couple of my not really cooking recipes up thread. to satisfy your curiosity I did what I think is proper cooking last night. I made a Nigel Slater broad bean and pasta recipe.

I had to de pod the beans, cook them ,then take the skins off to make them look pretty.

I had to slice up some peppers, some garlic and some red chilli and cook down in some oil until tender. I also put some tomatoes in that weren't in the recipe because I don't let anyone tell me how to cook, not even Nigel.

I had to chop parsley.

I had to cook some pasta.

Then combine everything.

I think I count it as cooking because it needed three pans, some preparation, some of it just for effect, and stuff taking different times to cook so I had to work out timings.

It probably took less than 20 minutes, including de podding the beans, but I did think I had cooked.