Uni Recipes - Please add to this! Anything cheap and easy to prepare

[Ventress]

Hi all,
As we discussed on the year 13 thread, our young people are sometimes not the best with preparing cheap and healthy meals so this thread is give them some ideas 😊

Please join me in adding your ideas and recipes 😊

Here we go…

Similar to the last post but put a medium whole chicken breast side down in the air fryer for half an hour on 200, then flip it over so breast side up, I usually put foil over the ends of the legs/wings at this point and cook at 200 for another 20 mins.

Much cheaper way of buying chicken. Strip from bones while still warm as much easier. Can be used in anything chicken related, sandwiches, salads, pasta etc etc.

Make stock with bones adding an onion, celery, carrot., seasoning. Chicken and sweetcorn soup is great and very easy. Will post recipe if I remember after work!

Chicken is just so versatile isn’t it!? I think showing DS how to roast a chicken, then strip it for broth and soup and stir fry/ramen would be a very productive use of time!

Thanks for the recipes they are great 😊

Those really cheap noodles can expand in to a substantial meal. One chicken breast can feed 4 people.

1 pack of noodles
Chicken breast, or goujons or left over cooked chicken. Cut in to chunks.
Selection of veg - left overs, frozen or buy from a shop, ideally an Asian grocer - chopped in to about 1/2 inch cubes.
Boiling water
Soy sauce - or oyster sauce
Oil

Ideally a wok but a frying pan will do.

Heat the oil and add the chicken, keep it moving to cook through.
Add the veg and keep stirring, if you need more oil add it to the side of the wok so it heats as it runs down.

Open the noodles and throw away the sachet of 'seasoning'.
Put the dry noodles into the wok and add boiling water.

Stir for a couple of mins and serve with soy sauce or what ever else you have.

OP I have a copy of 'Victory in the Kitchen' it's a collection of the WWII instruction leaflets. It might be a useful resource for students because it shows you how to adapt ingredients to what you have available.

The downside is that it being WWII the measurements are in imperial

I also think dumplings are worth learning how to make, once your DD/DS has mastered the suet dumplings you can look at Asia, China and even Scandinavia.

Thank you @sashh, that is really helpful. I’m sure our competent yp can convert imperial (worries a little 😂) DS is going to uni (hopefully) in central London so lots of ethnic food shops around his halls 😊

noodles are a great idea, thanks

Those really cheap noodles can expand in to a substantial meal. One chicken breast can feed 4 people. Buy the pack of just noodles instead.
Blue Dragon Pad Thai Rice Noodles 200g.Fine Egg Noodles They're cheaper than the ones with seasoning. I get them from the £1 shop.

DS18's current favourite lunch is 200g diced chicken breast mixed with a tiny bit of olive oil and some seasoning - peri peri or similar and air fried until cooked through, with edamame beans and potato wedges or in a wrap with salad and tzatziki (wedges cooked in the other drawer of the air fryer. He makes it every day here for his lunch and I'm sure he'll be doing it at uni but it's nice to get some other ideas!

I went to school when our recipes were metric but we had to buy in imperial

Shorthand is 1 oz is25g until 4 oz when you add another 25g so4 oz is 125g and the same with 250g.

Use an online ounce to gram converter.
1 ounce is 28.35g

But that gives weird amounts. How many people have scales that can measure 28.35?

Can they just “round up”? I would - I’d take 28.35 and round up to 28.5, or 29 if the scale’s don’t do halves.

Use scales that measure in grams and convert an oz to 28g. @sashh .

My ds said the most useful thing he learned from me that impressed people at uni was that he could make a cheese sauce from scratch without measuring or weighing. Just a regular roux sauce, but he used it a lot apparently!

@thisoldcity , my mother made sure I'd mastered that one.

One useful tip is to know what ingredients you can knock up a meal from when you've not got much in. Things like eggs, onion, mushrooms, tin of tomatoes, butter, flour, milk, pasta and rice.

I also had a meal at a friend's house once, who had about 35 guests. She only had pasta and fresh basil but made enough for everyone.

I essentially lived on sausagemeat stuffing and vegetables. I'd make a loaf tin and have it hot with vegetables for dinner and cold in salad sandwiches for lunch. Boring, but cheap, filling and nutritious.

That is genius! It's even better than my brother's staple ' instant noodles omelette?

If you get hold of a cookery book from the 1970s they will list ingredients in both metric and imperial but they use the 25g = 1oz. You can't mix them though.

So a simple sponge is 100g or SR flour, sugar, fat and 2 eggs or 4oz of SR flour, sugar and fat and 2 eggs.

Both will make a sponge cake. To make a perfect sponge you should weigh the eggs and use that as the weight for the other ingredients.

I'm old so when I was doing cookery at school our recipes were in metric but the shops were still using imperial. It was similar with sewing, metric patterns but you had to convert to yards to buy the material.

https://www.dovesfarm.co.uk/hints-&-tips/imperial-to-metric-conversion-tables

I do have a couple of fantastic Delia cookery books. I suspect the are imperial and metric.. They are also full of butter! I am not I’ve giving these to DS! I will send DH to the book storage in our attic to hunt out the books.

I must admit I rarely use weights and measurements or bake!

Great thread

Do not use 'I can't believe it's not butter' or similar for frying (or baking). When frying, use groundnut oil if you want a buttery taste.

Good tip @BleedinglyObvious.
I have an easy one - asparagus tortilla

left over boiled potatoes
eggs
asparagus (or whatever you chose)
mushrooms
onions

cook down the onions until soft and squishy,
add the potatoes and fry off.
add the whisked eggs (Minimum 3 eggs)
and fry off moving the eggs around the pan until solid,
cover the top of the frittata with Parmesan cheese ( or similar) and grill it,
cut into pieces and eat with salad

If you are buying pans I recommend getting good stainless steel saucepans and a large stainless steel wok lidded frying pan (mine was from Argos).
Not all stainless steel is equal.
I have a non-stick omelette pan but I've looked after it.

@Ventress ,when do you add the asparagus/mushrooms?

Doh , silly me @BleedinglyObvious! I add them before the eggs so that they get fried off a little before I add the eggs.

Sounds delicious and easy. @Ventress . Keep 'em coming!

Breakfast: peanut butter on toast with sliced banana on top - maybe a pinch of cinnamon and a drizzle of honey. Bowl of plain Greek yoghurt with/out berries

Lunch: cheese omelette (or similar) - can be eaten hot or cold. An apple

Dinner: stir fry noodles with protein and/or veg. Only needs onion, garlic, ginger and soya sauce. Or a jar of LKK chilli garlic sauce - a little goes a long way