Desperate Straits
Cooking 101.

Now I know a lot of you are students and a lot of you have bugger all cash '’cos you fritter it away on tuition fees and the like but an easy way to save money, and stay healthy, is learn to fucking cook. You don't have to aspire to be a Delia, but any mong can learn to cook tasty, healthy food.

Lesson One.

You can boil almost anything. Any meat, any veg, can be cooked by boiling the fucker. It's not hard. Fill a pan with water, stick in your veg, stick it on the heat and wait for it to boil. When it does, turn the heat down a bit, cover it with a lid and wait. This method might not produce tasty food but it'll be safe to eat. (And the meat might be tough as old boots, but you can still eat it.)

Lesson 2.
Now you've mastered fire, try boiling cheap stuff. Noodles (and *not* the Bachelors Super-Noodles, or Pot Noodles) are dirt cheap - under 10p a pack in even expensive supermarkets. Empty them into boiling water (see lesson 1) and boil away. You can, if you're a chemical junkie, add the packet shit that comes with them but I wouldn't recommend it. It's far better to add your own flavours ands textures. I like to add various pulses to noodles to give them a bit more texture. Sweetcorn good as are most tinned beans. (But not baked beans 'cos that’s fucking disgusting)
Noodles cook very quickly, less than 4 minutes so it's a quick meal.

Lesson 3.
Now you've mastered noodles, try your hand at rice or pasta. Same technique, just boil it for longer. Around 20 minutes, depending on the type. And rice and pasta are again, cheap as fuck. A large bag of rice can easily last you a full term. One thing *not* to forget is to wash the rubbish after cooking. This will get rid of the excess starch and it won't stick together on your plate.

Another tip with R&P is that you can prepare it well in advance of your meal. Once cooked, drain the water off, wash it and leave it in a covered pan. When you're ready to eat it, simply boil a kettle and wash pour it over your R&P and it’ll be instantly reheated. I use a sieve but you can just do it in the pan.

The sad thing about rice and pasta is that it's utterly, utterly tasteless. You can eat it, and it'll fill you up, but my God it's boring by itself. So this brings me onto sauces.

Lesson 4.
Sauces are a piece of piss. Basically take 1 large onion (ask the girl in the supermarket to point them out to you) and chop the fucker to death. Into weeeny little pieces and then add to a large pan with a small amount of oil. I prefer olive oil but, too be honest, any oil will do. Then add lots and lots of chopped or crushed garlic. Use fresh garlic and not the powdered crap. Then turn the heat on - gently - and cook the onions and garlic until the onions start to soften. If they start to go brown or black you're using to much heat you moron. Once soft, take off the heat. Then open two tins of chopped tomatoes. Any brand will do as long as they're cheap. Expensive tinned tomatoes taste exactly the same as cheap ones so use your head. Then guess what we do now? Yup. We boil the fuck out of it. And this is the time to add the stodge to thicken it up. Don't use flour. I don't care if it's corn flour, just don't use it. Pour in about a mug full of green lentils and stir in. You can also add a couple of tins of red kidney beans and a small can of Sweetcorn if you feel the need. If you're a veggie, you can skip the next part and go straight to the spices. For real men, now's the time to add your meat.

Now pretty much any kind of meat can go in at this point. Minced beef, pork or lamb. Turkey mince, chicken - you name it, it can go in. About a pound of the cheapest meat you can get will be about right. Now stir this shit in until it's evenly distributed.

Spices. This is pretty much a guessing game that you'll get better with over time. One thing that *has* to go in is chilli. Not chilli powder but dried, crushed chilli. You can pick this up at any Asian supermarket for about a 10th of what you'll pay in a normal supermarket. And if you use the Schwarz range of spices well you're just a stupid cunt who's happy to pay waaay over the odds. How much you add is purely down to taste. How hot do you want it. I also like to add Paprika and Cardamon seeds but that’s just me.

And now you wait. About two hours on a low heat stirring about every 20-30 minutes. If it gets too thick or starts to stick, just add a small amount of cold water.

And that’s it. Enough chilli to last you a week. But for fucks sake, keep it in the fridge and keep it covered. Chilli which isn't kept in the fridge goes moldy-fungusy so fast it'll make your head spin.

And last tip. Never, ever keep cooked rice for longer than a couple of hours. There's a certain bug who's waste products (yes, shit) don't break down under heat so even if you boil the fuck out of cooked rice you can still get very, very sick.

And I've absolutely know idea why I've written all this and what the fuck it has to do with the question.

Cheers

P.S. This chilli is even better the day after than it is on the day it's cooked. It's also excellent cold.
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 7:15, 29 replies)

Well in
That 'article' should be laminated and placed in every student kitchen in the land.
(never-right -getting it wrong since '78, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 7:34, closed)

Fuck me,
that was like reading the crossed workings of Delia Smith and Dog the Bounty Hunter.

This should be chiselled into a stone tablet and handed to Moses.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 7:49, closed)

agree!
one of my own pet hates about students is their inability to use common sense to cook food. Even worse is when "men" claim they can't cook.

I've been asked where i've learnt to cook, and i always tell them that living away from home now a couple of years i've learnt to cook for myself.

stuff like a large bag of spud, around a few quid for a few kilo's can be kept in a cardboard box some where dark and dry for months on end. They sometimes grow roots, but still edible, as long as they're not green!
( schizophrenic_sheep, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 7:51, closed)

Legless identity revealed
Having opened a restaurant and employed homeless people in the kitchen, boosted sales at sainsbury's, then gone on to sort out the state of school meals, he's now solving the "student food" issue by the medium of the internet. Jamie, j'accuse...
( writerblock ... embedding disabled by request on, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 8:38, closed)

I Should Really Do An Article
On the humble spud. Big 4st sack of the fuckers for a fiver and you're set for three months. I could cook spuds every night for a month and never repeat a recipe.

Cheers

And me Jamie "blem-face" Oliver? Do me a favour. Not as long as suicide is still an option. I mean, have you seen his wife?
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 8:50, closed)

As a student
I lived on cheap meat (often liver!) from the butcher, fresh fish and pasta. Cost me next to bugger all and was quite healthy too.

My flatmate, as I've mentioned before, also spent little on food. But he ate mostly chips...

I wish he'd seen Legless's post at the time.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 9:03, closed)

Lesson Five
Liver. I love liver. Liver and onion gravy with mashed spuds is like touching God. On the willy.

But back to lesson five.

If you do make your chilli too hot - easily done - then you can dilute it and cool it down by boiling another pan of spuds, mashing them and stirring the mash into the chilli. Not only do you get added fibre, but it'll take the fire out of the chilli. Obviously you can add other veg to this shit if you feel the need but mashed spuds are the one to tone it down a tad...

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 9:10, closed)

Cheap tinned soup
Not filling on its own but when cooked pasta, rice or potatoes are added, can make quite a filling meal.

Students don't know their born nowadays.
( girlinthehole, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 9:22, closed)

The Rice bug
Bacillus Cereus is the bacteria most strongly associate with rice food poisoning, esp. at chinese restaurants. Tis in the air, settles on the rice and has a field day with the starch. Then with your intestines.
(StyX is staring at you, yes YOU!!!, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 10:22, closed)

I agree
I don't know why the fuck you wrote that either.....Sorry, but I now scroll down past any posting of length just to check if it's one of yours matey. And now we have cooking lessons! WHOO HOOO!
(wino.NZ The Ayatollah of rock n' rolla..., Mon 19 Nov 2007, 10:24, closed)

k2k6's cheap meat
I was fortunate enough to be a fresher in 1995/6, just when the BSE crisis started to hit. Result: lots of cheap mince in the shops, thence in my trolley, thence my freezer. Never did me any harm...


*begins to twitch*
*grinds teeth*
*dies*
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 11:17, closed)

Re: Cold Chilli...
Its also Stunning in Toasties...

Speaking of Toasties.. Roast Beef, Horseradish and Brie Toasties are the Mutts Nuts.
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Mon 19 Nov 2007, 11:26, closed)

Oo-er, I didn't know that about not keeping rice for more than 2 hours.
I've been saving leftover rice and eating it the day after for ages.
( Bob Todd whee, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 12:39, closed)

Keeping rice
if you take the rice and stick it in a airtight(ish) container pretty quickly adn stick it in the fridge then it's alright for a day. (advice off some vaguely decent site, not just "i'm not dead yet")
However if cooked rice has been sitting out of a fridge uncovered for more than an hour don't touch it.

The chilli idea has kept me going for 4 years of uni and counting, also use curry/italien/chinese spices or sauce jars (if you're lazy) to make 4 different dishes. Mix these well with pasta, tatties, rice, naan bread, torrtilas, nachos etc it never gets (too) boring.
One last thing is for veggies, quorn can almost pretend to be meat esp in a big pot of shit. People hardly ever realise i'm serving something that is practically vegan food, suckers.
(Malcav, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 13:41, closed)

Ahh
But then we find out that you've been cheating us and its: "In the pot they go..."

Tastes a bit like pork...

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 14:19, closed)

Give this man...
...his own TV series.
( Amos E Wolfe makes vinyl signs and things like that, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 14:59, closed)

Old fashioned I know
but I blame the parents. My daughter is 13 but can already cook rice and pasta dishes, make soup and rustle up a pretty good quiche. She also knows how to load and run the washing machine, how to iron the clean clothes and general housework.
I left home fully capable of looking after myself and I'll make sure she does too!
Rant over
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Mon 19 Nov 2007, 15:10, closed)

.
A better option for attractive students is to become a high class prostitute, then they can eat food from the "taste the difference" range and/or get takeaways from top-notch restaurants like the Ritz.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 15:33, closed)

£8 buys you...
oxtail
potatoes
carrots
parsnips
water
beef stock cube
put in oven for two hours
eat for a week
( Madam Marlboro wonders if you've found her yet, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 15:45, closed)

Slow cookers are great
Get a chunk of meat, some veggies, and a can of condensed soup. Chuck it into the slowcooker. Turn it on and go to class. It'll be done when you get back. Lasts a while too. Chicken + cream of asparagus is good. You can also add rice/noodles.
(evil_penguin_17 Robots of Doom... Attack!, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 16:14, closed)

Nice
Prints at exactly one page, too...
( laminasni isn't., Mon 19 Nov 2007, 18:23, closed)

Rice
Soon-to-be-ex has just eaten his old takeaway rice that has kept in the fridge for 2 weeks. Muhahahaha!
(biscuitsocks random gene expression, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 19:42, closed)

*saves*
This is excellent. Can I also suggest a slow cooker? couple of quid from a carboot. Fill with diced meat (drain all juices in too), chopped spuds, other veg, some herbs. About half fill with water. Turn on before work. Come home to house smelling of nice stew. eat. Put remenants in fridge. Reheat for next week, perhaps with rice or pasta.
On the rice thing: done reheated rice, no side effects. Either lucky or bullet proof immune system from eating all sorts.
( Greenbat, Mon 19 Nov 2007, 19:49, closed)

Another excellent one
Cous cous. Ah, cous cous. I practically lived on it during my final year at uni and saved a shitload of money. I put everything in that- chicken and pepper (excellent), venison and assorted veg (also lovely) and if times were hard, I dissolved some tomato and garlic puree with a pinch of salt and pepper into some boiling water, added cous cous... instant meal. It's a shame I can't even look at cous
( jim_bob can herd cats., Mon 19 Nov 2007, 23:47, closed)

Cous-Cous
Is also excellent but requires skills that may be beyond the average student. They have to be able to measure dry cous-cous and wet water. I think that is too advanced for the majority of them.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Tue 20 Nov 2007, 2:55, closed)

Wait jist a doggone minute
I never heard this about bug shit making rice go bad. I make big pots of basmati and jasmine to mash up the next day with kasha and rye flakes for kids' breakfast (like oatmeal) all the time. It will keep for 10 days. Is this only a British thing? (god I fucking hope so)

Should I stop feeding the kids this?

British chilli MUST be a different dish from American chili, cause man, I have never seen anything but chunks of beef, black and pinto beans, tomato, garlic, hot peppers and onion in chili.

Lentils? In chili? OMG, blasphemy! Lamb and urrrg! corn? Oh sweet Jesus, please don't smite Legless. Forgive him, Lord, he knows not what he doos
(TDub Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides on, Tue 20 Nov 2007, 6:22, closed)

Cooked Rice
www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=COOKED+RICE+FOOD+POISONING&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

Lots and lots of hits in google for food poisoning. It's not a British thing - this bug lives everywhere. And it's not the bug that hurts you - thats harmless - it's the waste products from the bug as it munches on your lovely cooked rice. In other words, it's shit. As I said before, it doesn't break down with heat, so re-cooking your rice isn't going to make you any safer.

It looks like you so far you've been lucky :)

And next time you cook a chilli - try substituting lamb for beef. You might be suprised
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Tue 20 Nov 2007, 7:51, closed)

Ah
I might add I was one of the few students on my campus with full possession of various life skills including DIY, cookery and knowledge of the iron and washing machine. Fuck's sakes... I was the only one in my hall capable of using a spirit level!
( jim_bob can herd cats., Tue 20 Nov 2007, 17:24, closed)

anyone
who cant work this stuff out for themselves deserves to die, or eat pot noodles, which is much the same thing. my gods! what are we coming to! students? if you cant figure this out then breathing and walking must be a challenge. forget your sociology degree, the bugs in legless's rice have more of a chance.
(lazy killer robot found that beer tastes better when your older, Wed 21 Nov 2007, 1:50, closed)