Hi, so a friend told me to share my family's food on this subreddit while we were making lunch, apologies if my post is formatted wrong or something :/
We study in a really high income area where food is priced like NY housing, and since the meal plan is also almost theft and also makes me miss home, I've developed a lot of low cost low effort asian dishes! I tend to make dishes by eye so I can't really tell say these recipes are exact, but the nice thing about these dishes is that it's really hard to screw them up! Let me know if you like them. YMMV
Lunch ($3-4/meal): Carrots + egg -- $1 for a carrot, $4 for a dozen eggs. dice carrots and simmer on one side of pan. Make scrambled eggs on other side of pan. After scrambled eggs are mostly set and carrots are leaking carrot oil, mix. Carrot and egg volume should be 1:1. There are a lot of variations on this dish with a variety of vegetables found in asian ethnic stores, but I don't know the names of them in english, lol. Oh but I know it tastes pretty good with celery. $2 per serving.
Bell pepper + shrimp -- $7 for 10 shrimp, $1.50 for a bell pepper. Chop pepper into long thin strips. Pour oil and add garlic then throw in shrimp. Cook until red. Throw in pepper, add a little water. Put on lid and cook for 5-10 minutes, add water as necessary. $2.75 per serving
Spinach + tomato + ginger soup -- My own personal recipe! Start with tomato, cut into slices and make it like you would tomato sauce, but with a lot more water. After its soft and skin is coming off, put slices of ginger (no ginger powder that shet nasty) and all the vegetables you'd ever want. I go with seaweed, wood ear (?), asian cabbage, spinach in that order. Make sure that each ingredient is almost cooked before you move onto the next. Also dried tofu strips and shrimp (you don't actually eat the shrimp here, you cook it into the soup to give it more flavor and then cook the shrimp in another dish later) are really good with these. I add in black vinegar for a crab meat taste. This one is pricer to make but the serving count is so large (1 week of side dishes) that it events out to $3 per serving.
Zucchini -- $1.50 per zucchini. Chop hotdog style into slices, cook in thin layer of oil until rind is mushy and edible. Delicious and super cheap! $1.50 per serving.
Oyster mushroom + jalapeño -- Half pound of oyster mushroom is $4 at hmart, which is really pricy imo, so I don't make this often. Cook oyster mushroom in oil and half/whole sliced jalapeño (depending on spiciness tolerance) until you smell the aroma, then add in chinese spinach $2 for one plant or some other big dark green leafy plant, cook until the fibers are no longer crispy. $2.50 per serving.
Pork + beet stew -- Goddam expensive but my own personal recipe. Take pork slices, drain blood and rub in soy sauce and pepper snuff. I have this one pack I've been using from some random greek family store...but I'm p sure any will do. Pour in a little oil and fry. Then after white stuff and nasty meat smell goes away, add ~5 cups of water, 2 garlic pieces, ginger (optional). Then add, in order, sliced beets, bell pepper (green, orange, yellow, red), enoki mushrooms, asian cabbage. Should be in layers. Add in enough water that the top layer is covered and keep adding water as necessary. Cook with lid on. Meat is $8 for like a quarter pound, $2 for 2 bell peppers, $1.5 for enoki, $1 for half a small cabbage for like 3 days. $4 per serving.
Onions + minced pork -- Cook pork in a lot of oil. Add a little soy sauce cause meat smells bad. Add sliced onions (should be long strips) and cook in the oil. Cook until smells sweet. No minced meat available at my hmart, so idk now much it would cost.
Asian cabbage + tofu + bone -- Cut azn cabbage into thin long half-strips. Cut tofu into rectangles in tofu container and freeze overnight. Let thaw. Cook bone in oil with garlic (again not that powder shet), then add water, add tofu and cabbage together since it takes about the same time for both to cook. Cabbage should be limp. $2 for tofu, $1 for half cabbage, $3 for bone. $2 per serving. Do NOT eat outside because everyone looks at you weird...
Sweet radish salad -- Take white radish, slice very, very thinly. Sprinkle sugar on top. Done. $2 per radish, $0.5 per serving. Appetizer.
Kimchi -- Kimchi is tricky because I've never made the sauce before. Usually I buy the $6 spicy calamari takeout at hmart and then use the leftover juice to do this. Warning, using leftover juice is really dangerous! Make sure you pour the juice out before you eat the calamari or else you might get some bad stuff in your kimchi if the temperature and duration isn't right. Peel asian cabbage until the leaves are yellow and cute enough. Then peel those and wash them carefully and cut them into slices. Take an old jar and throw spicy sauce and cabbage in there. Add carrots or radish if you want to. Add a little water and a little salt, then stick into refrigerator. Use big leaves for something else. Wait for 3 days and you have cheap-o non korean made kimchi. $6 for calamari and $1 for half cabbage. $2 per serving + calamari. Appetizer only.
Rice -- I buy rice from hmart because transportation cost + price of buying it from anywhere else makes all other options too expensive. $10 for a 5lb bag. Serves enough for 1 person up to 2 weeks if eaten daily, 1 month if eaten not so often. Pour water and rice to 2:3 ratio and cook for 20 min on low heat, add water as needed.
Cauliflower -- idk how to make this right but apparently if you do its pretty good. Mine taste bad so I won't talk about it. $2 for cauliflower, $0.66 per serving.
Dinner($3-6 per meal):
Fancy ramen -- egg, seaweed (purple seaweed), bean sprouts but I don't really like them, scallions, actual chicken or chicken flavoring, spicy sauce (optional), wood ear (optional). Make chicken on oil, wood ear, or beansprouts if you're gonna use them. To be a good person ,wood ear must be soaked in water for 24 hours before use, idk why but my grandma always said you'd get food poisoning otherwise. Never happened to me. Make the $1 ramen by boiling for a long time on low heat and they will start looking either like puffy styrofoam or thin professional ramen. I've had success with either the Nissin or the Maruchan brand, idr. Turn heat to medium, make a hole in the ramen and crack the egg in the hole. This makes a nice boiled egg in the ramen. Finish by adding seaweed and scallions. Averages out to $3 per serving.
Chicken -- Add a little oil and a garlic piece, fry chicken skin to get chicken oil out, fry actual chicken in chicken oil mix. Should smell savory. Add soy sauce if you've screwed up somehow and turn into chicken fried rice, otherwise add salt. $10 for 6 pcs, $3 per serving.
Dumplings/Baozi/Wonton -- Buy dumpling shells or make your own if you have a free day. Buy minced pork. Buy scallions and asian onions, else, go to your nearest forest/park, pick a spot that no animals have likely peed on, and pick onion grass. Wash these and mix minced pork, salt, soy sauce, scallions, and asian onions in a big pot. Fold dumplings/wontons/baozi out of dumpling shells (for baozi you probably need to make your own shells) and then add them to large pot of boiling water. $4 per serving + dumpling soup.
Eggplant -- Never could make these right. Never. Had some in Taishan and I could figure out the ingredients but not the cooking style. Also could not find a good recipe in the traditional chinese style. Waiting for Gordon Ramsey to do this. For the bad version: fry in a lot of oil for a long time. $2 per eggplant, $0.5 per serving.
Noodles + Meat sauce -- Get the expensive meat sauce and the expensive meat, or else you're gonna have a bad time. Cook 1/4lb of meat in a lot of oil on low heat until white stuff is mostly out but meat is still a little pink on the inside. Mix 2 tablespoons of sweet bean paste with 2 tablespoons of water. Pour over meat and cook until not raw anymore. Make noodles from that cheap $1 pasta. $2 per serving, need to eat with some vegetables.
Fish (got from restaurant in NY that closed recently, lol) -- Spicy hot pot seasoning, one fish (any type is ok but I like really fresh snapper or yellow croakers at any freshness), cook both together with water. $3 for fish, $0.2 for a little bit of seasoning packet. $3.2 per serving
Butterfish -- 2 butterfish, scallions, ginger, sake, sugar. Mix the spices together with some sake at the bottom of the pan. Add fish on top and cook one side and then the other, make sure to flip the fish as soon as you see the skin start to come off. $4 for fish, $2 for spices. $6 per serving. Pricey but cheaper than crab or lobster imo
Mussels -- Buy bag of mussels. Put in water for a while to get rid of sand. Steam in pot with scallions (large chunks), sake, jalapeños or korean pepper until cooked and smells good. $12 for bag of mussels so $6 per serving. If you don't like seafoody smell then here's a tomato sauce I got from a restaurant: tomato, sugar, anise. Cook with 2-3 mussels. Squeeze lemon on top. I like this on baguettes more than on mussels though.
Drinks($0-1 per meal):
Lemonade -- best lemonade I had was in a moroccan restaurant. Lemon was cut out like an orange, mashed up, mixed with coarse grain sugar and a tiny tiny bit of cinnamon, then frozen. Blend frozen block of lemon until you get shaved ice lookin' thing, add rose petals and water as you need it. Add mint. $1 per serving.
Iced tea -- I have a lot of green tea that I get as gifts...Boil green tea, add a little block sugar. I like my iced tea really diluted. Stick in refrigerator. Almost free per serving.
Hope this helped someone!
Submitted July 28, 2017 at 01:35AM by cerwisc http://ift.tt/2vNA7IH EatCheapAndHealthy
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