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Hack a meal in 10 minutes or less. No ramen allowed

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Re: Hack a meal in 10 minutes or less. No ramen allowed

#31

Actually, Spaghetti can be pretty quick if you have enough people to eat it all. Put some noodles in water over the stove. Grab a can of sauce and put it in another pot on medium. It really depends on the size, but it could be ready in about 10-15 minutes for a small amount. If you're entertaining on short notice or limited prep. time it works too. Give yourself about 20 minutes and then you're set for serving yourse…

Pasta in general can be done quite nicely in the time it takes to cook the pasta (which should never be more than ten minutes). As the pasta cooks, chop up some vegetables and fry it. Maybe with some cream or some minced meat or something else.

Healthy and quick.

Re: Hack a meal in 10 minutes or less. No ramen allowed

#34

Actually, Spaghetti can be pretty quick if you have enough people to eat it all. Put some noodles in water over the stove. Grab a can of sauce and put it in another pot on medium. It really depends on the size, but it could be ready in about 10-15 minutes for a small amount. If you're entertaining on short notice or limited prep. time it works too. Give yourself about 20 minutes and then you're set for serving yourse…

>10-15 minutes

You are overcooking it. Six to eight minutes is enough. If you ever go to Italy, you will see what I mean. Their normal cooked pasta is 'al dente' for non-Italians, and their 'al dente' is ... soaked in warm water. But good anyway. And do salt the water generously.

Re: Hack a meal in 10 minutes or less. No ramen allowed

#35
post #34

Actually, Spaghetti can be pretty quick if you have enough people to eat it all. Put some noodles in water over the stove. Grab a can of sauce and put it in another pot on medium. It really depends on the size, but it could be ready in about 10-15 minutes for a small amount. If you're entertaining on short notice or limited prep. time it works too. Give yourself about 20 minutes and then you're set for serving yourse…

>10-15 minutes You are overcooking it. Six to eight minutes is enough. If you ever go to Italy, you will see what I mean. Their normal cooked pasta is 'al dente' for non-Italians, and their 'al dente' is ... soaked in warm water. But good anyway. And do salt the water generously.

Italian 'al dente' is a trip. I hardly believed it at first, but it is tasty.

Re: Hack a meal in 10 minutes or less. No ramen allowed

#36
Chop vegetables into small chunks, fry them for a little while (add apices at will), then add some water (just enough to make them not burn and allow steam to develop) and cover with lid. Let stew for a couple of minutes. Add tomato sauce or soy sauce or coconut cream or... Combine with rice or noodles or...

Re: Hack a meal in 10 minutes or less. No ramen allowed

#37

Actually, Spaghetti can be pretty quick if you have enough people to eat it all. Put some noodles in water over the stove. Grab a can of sauce and put it in another pot on medium. It really depends on the size, but it could be ready in about 10-15 minutes for a small amount. If you're entertaining on short notice or limited prep. time it works too. Give yourself about 20 minutes and then you're set for serving yourse…

Boil water, cook pasta (not spaghetti but something like rotini). Cook Campbell's soup (Chicken with dumplings) on separate burner. Drain pasta, toss soup over. It's not a healthy meal but it will do in a pinch.

Re: Hack a meal in 10 minutes or less. No ramen allowed

#38
Take any fish fillet about 1/2-3/4 inch thick. Sprinkle with the seasoning of your choice. Stick it in a toaster over set to 400 degrees. (Put a sheet of tinfoil in the baking tray and you won't even have any cleanup.) It will be done in ten minutes. While you are waiting, boil 1 cup of water. Turn off the heat and throw in 2/3 cup of couscous. This should put you at about the five minute mark. Throw a veggie of your choice in the microwave. Everything will be done, hot, tasty and nutritious at ten minutes. It's pretty foolproof and east-cleanup too. This is pretty much our standard dinner most nights. (And I'm not even doing a startup right now!)

Re: Hack a meal in 10 minutes or less. No ramen allowed

#39

Actually, Spaghetti can be pretty quick if you have enough people to eat it all. Put some noodles in water over the stove. Grab a can of sauce and put it in another pot on medium. It really depends on the size, but it could be ready in about 10-15 minutes for a small amount. If you're entertaining on short notice or limited prep. time it works too. Give yourself about 20 minutes and then you're set for serving yourse…

Spaghetti is always an option as my cuppoards rarely have anything else, including sauce. Quick and dirty alfredo is always a good substitute. melt a tablespoon of butter in a sauce pan, add flower and stir till it becomes a thickish wad of dough, add milk (At this point it looks real thin but it will thicken) add garlic (salt or powder if you have no cloves), parmigan cheese, and cracked black pepper.

Re: Hack a meal in 10 minutes or less. No ramen allowed

#40
post #33

Egg and rice (from the fridge) :P I cook the bestest eggs in da whole world. I cook it better than Chuck Norris. Seriously, I do.

Cooking eggs can take 10 minutes (start from cold water, then at 10 minutes the yolk is semi-solid), but to do it properly you need 20 minutes to half an hour at least.

At 62 - 68 degrees centrigrade, that is.

If the temperature gets any higher, the egg white gets rubbery and the yolk grainy. We think of this as the way eggs should be, but if you've ever tasted a properly cooked egg you'll know those are much, much better.

(oh, and salmonella bacteria die at around 60 degrees so that's not something you should be worried about with this technique).

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