How to Kill it in the Kitchen When You Hate Cooking
5 tips for making great food with minimal effort
A big challenge of adulthood is the never-ending soul-sucking cycle of trying to figure out what to eat for dinner every night until we die. This is especially painful for those of us who don’t like cooking. Unfortunately, we need to eat to live and ordering takeout every night is not financially plausible for most of us. So, I have compiled a guide to nailing a big chunk of adulting: cooking.
These are my lazy, but effective methods for cutting corners, cooking faster, and cooking as little as possible. If you hate cooking, don’t panic. An easier future awaits you.
1. Master the ingredients
My strategy for learning how to use different spices and foods together is 100% trial and error. I don’t usually look up recipes, and I don’t write any down either. I will have a basic idea of what I want to make, and I’ll just go for it. If it’s something completely new and I have no idea what goes into it, I’ll skim a few recipes online and measure with my heart.
If you’re a competitive person, the goal of creating a perfect dish might pump up your motivation to get into the kitchen a little more. When a dish goes bad, you can figure out what went wrong and adjust for next time. If a dish is delicious but not quite perfect, you can usually figure out what it’s missing. This takes longer, and although it may seem like way more work than following a recipe, it’s important because it’s an investment in your future lazy self.
This method forces you to learn which flavors complement each other, which spices are your favorites, and which textures go well together. After a while, you won’t need recipes at all. You’ll be able to throw a dish together with no plan and even make it taste good. You’ll wow all your friends. This is the minimal effort life we’re after.
2. Prep your food
I would like to make one thing clear: I am not going to tell you to meal prep. People who do it say it’s easy, but they are liars. Meal prepping requires an insane amount of planning and effort, more than is worth it. I am here to tell you to prep your ingredients.
If you have time when you get home from the store, rinse all your produce right away. Chop them too if you feel like it, and then put them back in the fridge so they’re ready to go when you want to make something. Cook up a big pot of rice and quinoa so you don’t have to cook your grains later either. It’s essential to do this right away. If you leave it for later, I’m willing to bet money that you won’t do it at all. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had toast for dinner because I didn’t prep my vegetables.
Toast for dinner sparks a counterproductive chain reaction. My vegetables rot in the fridge and end up in the garbage. My motivation to cook dies, and next week I don’t do groceries. I live off of instant noodles for seven days. I feel like shit. Avoid spiraling this way at all costs.
Prepping your ingredients means you’re setting yourself up for success. Knowing you can grab whatever you need from your fridge makes cooking a hearty meal as easy as a TV dinner. Almost.
3. Make your meals healthier
Besides cooking, an important part of adulting is making sure you’re being at least kind of healthy. Spinach is my secret ingredient for meals that are exactly kind of healthy. These versatile little nutrient leaves are amazing for two reasons. You can put them in pretty much anything, and they take almost no effort to use. They come in a bag pre-rinsed, and they’ll absorb whatever flavors you cook them in. Minimal effort and you get to feel good because you ate a vegetable.
If you already know you don’t like spinach, don’t give up. This tip could still work for you. Try experimenting with it a little. Think about what it is about spinach that bothers you. Is it the flavor? Is it the texture? Are you subconsciously clinging to an early childhood hatred of vegetables?
For me, it was a texture issue, so I got creative and tried out different ways of preparing it. The method I landed on was to rip off the stems and slice the leaves like you slice basil. An easy fix, and a world of difference. I eat spinach all the time now in chili, soup, pasta, stir fry, quinoa bowls… the list goes on.
If you want to try this with another vegetable and you don’t know where to start, try heavy seasoning and roasting. Once you get one vegetable right, like carrots, any other root vegetable will likely taste good cooked the same way.
4. Portion like you’re feeding an army
Don’t worry about the size of your meals, because the idea of cooking for one is ludicrous. Do you want to be cooking every day? My guess is absolutely not. If you want to spend less time cooking, this is critical: if you live alone, cook for a family of four. Better yet, don’t portion at all. Just make a lot of whatever you’re making.
I used to make enough dinner to last me the week, but I found eating the same meal for days in a row would bore me to tears. Even if I had managed to create a culinary masterpiece, I ended up hating it. I found the sweet spot to be 2–3 extra meals from one dinner. This way you can mix and match different leftovers to avoid eating the same food two days in a row.
Bonus tip: invest in some good tupperware.
By the time I get to the weekend, I have lots left to pick from so I usually don’t cook at all. I get to enjoy my days off without doing my least favorite chore. I am living the dream.
5. Clean as you go
Cleaning is arguably worse than cooking, but unfortunately, it has to be done. If life has taught me anything, it’s that doing dishes every day is actually kind of a lifesaver. Also, wipe your counters. And your stove.
If there is any common deterrent to cooking yourself a meal, it’s a dirty kitchen. It’s really challenging to get anything done when there’s a mountain of crusty dishes in your sink, or crumbs and old sauces dried on to your stove. Before I met my boyfriend (who loves to clean), it took me hours to clean my kitchen on the rare occasion I decided to take the time. This, of course, is because I had a week’s worth of mess making itself comfortable on my cooking surfaces.
When you clean every day, cleaning becomes easier. I spend about 10 minutes in the mornings washing extra dishes and wiping down my stove and counter. That’s it. You can avoid hours of work by taking care of the little things every day. If something spills, clean it right away before it dries on. Rinse your dishes as soon as you’re done with them. Most of these things take less than a minute and will give you the gift of never having to deep clean again.
You should take no shame in wanting to make adulthood a little easier. We have a lot to worry about, and if there are shortcuts, we want them. If we hate cooking but have to cook or we’ll die, we want the easiest methods. We want good food with minimal effort.
An important step on your journey to reaching this goal is learning how to cook. You don’t need to become a master chef, but you do need to develop your skill a little. If you can hit a 6/10, you’ll be golden. Your food doesn’t have to be fancy. It just has to taste good.
