Navigating a kitchen can be stressful for first-timers, whether it’s feeling like you don’t have the right ingredients or the right tools. Here are some essential stock for your kitchen, as well as tips for how you can save space and double up on utility.
One of the joys of cooking is that you can prepare each of the food groups in an appetizing manner to you. When grocery shopping, make sure you hit across the macros: chicken, beef, beans, or tofu for protein, fresh or frozen vegetables, and pasta, rice, couscous, or quinoa for grains. A less nutritious and, therefore, way more delicious way I like to pad my meals is with stuffing. Stuffing is my absolute favorite Thanksgiving food, and it was a mental health game-changer when I realized I could have stuffing outside of November, too. If executive dysfunction is getting to me, a quick meal of raw vegetables like carrots, stuffing, and chicken will put me together in 10 minutes or less. A satisfying and colorful meal will have elements of each food group, but don’t fear that all of these elements will triple your prep time. Couscous is as easy as ramen to prepare and takes the same amount of time.
Speaking of ramen, here are my top add-ins to level up your instant ramen. First, never use the whole seasoning packet, if at all. This adds so much sodium to ramen, and you can easily get great flavor with the seasonings you have in your cabinet. I’ll typically add soy and/or teriyaki, paprika, sesame seeds, red pepper flakes, whatever I can get my hands on that adds salt and spice. Chilies or gochujang go a long way by adding dense flavor and color. My other staple add-ins are frozen spinach and egg, which turn instant ramen into a much more flavorful and nutritious meal. After the ramen is done cooking, I turn down (or off) the heat and add a handful of frozen spinach to bring down the temperature. At a stable simmer, I add the egg and stir quickly to make sure it doesn’t clump up. This mostly has to do with adding the egg at the right temperature (a process I learned by feel and trial and error), but if you beat the egg and pour it in from a bowl instead of cracking it directly into the pot, you may also have more luck.
You don’t need huge frying pans and soup pots if you’re cooking for one. Smaller cookware gives more manageable portion sizes and lets you control the temperature more easily; big portions need to be stirred more frequently to ensure even cooking. But be careful of adding too much to your small pan, you’ll have the same issue of uneven cooking if it doesn’t fit. For utensils, my go-to is a flexible spatula. This can be used to stir, spoon, taste, and press — it’s a great all-around tool. Plastic utensils are necessary to preserve non-stick cookware; only use metal on stainless steel and cast iron if you don’t care about superficial scratches.
Salt is needed in pretty much every dish, but if you add too much, often citrus like lemon or lime juice can be used to balance out the flavor profile. Taste your food often throughout the cooking process; use all of your senses to determine first if it’s still raw and then whether there’s enough seasoning. I find people usually underseason rather than overdo it. Especially with colorful spices like paprika or turmeric, there should be a distinct color change after seasoning.
My number one tip is to practice! You can’t expect perfection on the first try, and there are always little quirks of your own kitchen and tools —following a recipe exactly may not always work. You need to rely on your own intuition of when to turn off the heat and how much seasoning to add. You’ll also become more familiar with the seasonings and dosing that you like, and you’ll be making Michelin-star meals in no time.
