10 cooking hacks for better, cheaper, tastier food without a real recipe
4 min readJun 23, 2020
- Add a sweet potato or two to your mashed potatoes for extra vitamins and creamier mash with less (or no!) butter and milk. Season with paprika and parsley. Think about how to add a sweet potato to everything.
- Make pancakes with a mashed overripe banana, an egg, a splash of water or milk, a sprinkle of baking powder, and the flour you need to hold it all together. No need to measure — be bold! Top them with nut butter and a drizzle of syrup. Think about how to add a banana to everything.
- My mom starts almost every recipe with onion and garlic sautéed in oil. You can start with this flavorful base and add almost anything for a quick, satisfying meal — try turkey sausage and greens, mushrooms and cooked pasta, asparagus and eggs, bacon and cabbage. Sauté it all until it’s the appropriate texture and dump into a bowl. Put some Parmesan cheese on top if you want.
- You can make almost any vegetable into a fritter for a nice hot portable little lunch. Saute some greens until soft or use leftover steamed/roasted winter squash/broccoli/etc, saute some onions and garlic, and beat those together in a bowl with an egg. Add pepper, salt, herbs (I like sage with squash and parsley with greens), and a bit of crumbled feta or queso fresco, and then mix in enough flour or breadcrumbs so everything holds together. Fry patties in a little olive or canola oil until brown on both sides. Serve with a sauce of your choosing (sweet chili is always nice).
- Throw sturdy vegetables like carrots or sweet potatoes (peeled and chopped) into a pot of rice you’re cooking for a one-pot meal. By the time the rice is done the vegetables will be partly boiled, partly steamed, and wholly ready to eat. I like to cook red lentils together with some rice, carrots, onions, garlic, and Italian herbs, then mix in some shredded cheddar cheese when it’s done cooking (or better yet, pour it into a baking dish, toss the cheese on top, and broil for five minutes). One of the heartiest, cheapest, easiest meals to make on a winter evening.
- Think about food groups and flavors; as long as they’re fairly balanced, don’t be afraid to experiment. I try to have two vegetables and a protein, at minimum , plus a grain or starch most meals. Balance your salty, spicy, sharp, herbal, sweet/mellow, and acid flavors, throw in something crunchy or creamy for textural interest, and you’re good to go! Think avocado toast with feta + sprouts + dill. Ginger lentil curry (dal) + brown rice + a dollop of yogurt. A whole sheet pan of sweet potatoes, kale, and tofu roasted with oil and salt, with peanut sauce + scallions. Sautéed collard greens and garlic + sriracha + a fried egg on top.
- On that note, a good sauce or condiment makes almost any old thing delicious. A good chipotle mayo, herbed sour cream (try 1 bunch cilantro + 2 jalapeños + 1tsp onion powder blended with 8oz sour cream), peanut sauce (some combo of peanut butter, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil, and chili), or brown butter with lemon is all you need to make your fish sticks/ sweet potato fries/pork chop/steamed broccoli truly excellent.
- Cook grains in a big batch and think of ways to repurpose them. Got rice? Try fried rice, yes, but also tamago gohan, warm rice with milk and honey for breakfast, or one of those variations on a cold rice bowl that millennials love so much. Try savory oatmeal if you haven’t already. And don’t get me started on what you can do with cornmeal mush or polenta (hint: fry it up with some garlic, collard greens, and cherry tomatoes).
- On that cornmeal note, consider the overlooked food traditions where you’re from . The Americas have a gorgeously rich tradition of cornmeal-based foods, from corn pone, frybread, and corn tortillas to spoonbread, hush puppies, grits, and mush. Many of these were (and still are) traditional staple foods for Black, Hispanic/Latin American, and Indigenous people in the Americas, and have been overlooked by mainstream American food culture in favor of more “European” foods. Dig into the food heritage of your region, and go from there.
- Above all, start by stocking your kitchen with simple, fresh, seasonal/local (when possible) ingredients that you actually like and look for new ways to combine them. For me, that means 70% of my dishes start with either collard greens, garlic, ginger, sweet potatoes, asparagus, tofu, peanut butter, carrots, or all of the above. Let’s get cooking!
