Why don’t you already have chopped onion in your fridge for when you’re feeling lazy? Be kind to your future self when you have the time and motivation. I chop a sweet onion or two every weekend and use it throughout the week on whatever. Gotta do peppers a couple times a week though. I put that stuff in everything.
Why don’t you already have chopped onion in your fridge for when you’re feeling lazy?
I don’t have a pre-chopped onion in my fridge for the same reason why you probably don’t have 20 different kinds of pen refills, inkwells and nibs to go with your collection of dozens of various pens. I do a lot of writing. I don’t do much cooking.
Not really, he is just explaining that some veggies add a lot of taste for very little effort. People watch cooking programmes and think that you have to spend an hour cutting stuff up to make it worthwhile. Or that you have to spend a fortune on herbs to make it taste nice. When the reality is that just adding a single vegetable can do wonders for the taste. Onions are just the most versatile and one of the quickest to prep/cook.
Almost everything sauteed or simmered starts out with at least onions, sure. I interpreted it, though, as “this person saying he takes no effort but they’re chopping vegetables and cooking something vs throwing some stuff in the microwave”. Hard to know with no context.
Sagan is missed. Really enjoyed watching the Cosmos series. Something about the way he speaks and his anecdotes…rare person who can communicate to any audience
You want lazy onions? They sell bags of frozen, already chopped onions. Just throw them in the pan. They take longer to get cooked but not but much.
Add a bag of sliced, frozen bell peppers and you’ve got a base to start adding those frozen beef cheesesteak sheets. Slam some sliced American on it at the end and you’ve got a cheesesteak mix. (Please don’t kill me, Philly). Throw that on whatever bread you’ve got laying around. It’s lazy and fairly cheap (if you get the steakums at the discount grocery).
You people put in a lot of effort. My lazy meal is a can of chicken (the kind you don’t have to use a can opener on) and as many raw vegetables and nuts as it takes.
If I want to put in some effort, pre cooked rice pouch, can of chicken, a can of vegetables, and a can of tomatoes. Anything more than that definitely isn’t lazy.
I have so many categories of “lazy meal” because it all depends on what kind of lazy I’m feeling.
Don’t want to stand around a hob or worry about burning something? Slow cooker mushroom rissoto or freezer soup (during the month I add odd bits of unused veg and fresh herbs into a zip lock to make vegetable soup with, this means on a lazy day in just dump the whole bag in, pour over some water, press a button and walk away)
Don’t want to chop things? Roast sweet potato with canned corn and lebneh/yoghurt/sour cream (stab the yam with a fork and “roast” in the microwave for extra laziness)
Don’t want to wash up crockery? Cous cous, Walnut, and cranberry/sultana warm salad (it can be prepared in the same bowl you eat from, which can also totally be a disposable container)
Don’t want to wait for something to cook? A slab of cold Japanese tofu with pickled radish & carrot, cucumber, spring onion and whatever sauce (soy, ponzu, teriyaki, etc)
Another “quick cook” go to is what I call “fakers pho”. I have pho stock cubes, and a ready to serve shiritaki hot pot noodles. So I just boil the kettle, pour the water over the noodles and cubes, add raw mushroom or tofu (if you had rotisserie chicken in the fridge that would be perfect to rip into) and rip up some coriander & spring onion from outside.
Then there’s “don’t want to do anything” which is a carton of up-and-go (a pre-made meal replacement shake basically) and a banana or raw carrot to munch on.
But at a certain point my laziness will be bad enough that “bedtime for dinner” sounds good to me.
To be 100% honest, that’s just the way to go, lazy or not.
After years of only making baked potatoes in the microwave, about two years ago I decided, “Fuck it, I’m over-achieving today. I’m gonna make real baked potatoes. Baked. In the goddamn oven. Like a real chef. Hell yeah.”
It was awful, took forever, had to bake the snot out of them, and in the end they were horribly overcooked on the outside and still ‘fookin RAW’ in the center.
Complete waste of time and effort.
I could have made them AND ate them AND cleaned up…TWICE, in the time they spent in the oven.
I’ll never do baked potatoes any other way than the microwave ever again.
This is my opinion too - you might be able to convince me to roast it in the air fryer, but I’m more likely to cook it in the microwave and then just do a minute in the air fryer to crisp it up (our oven’s broiler/grill is broken, otherwise I’d crisp it up under that)
Unless I’m making jacket potatoes for more than 5 people (in which case a big baking tray in the oven makes sense) the microwave is just so fool proof for a cooked spud.
My go-to “lazy” meal is a Caesar salad with salmon. Wash the romaine lettuce leaves, stick them in a bowl. Add store-bought dressing (don’t make your own), store-bought croutons (don’t make your own), and grate some Parmesean cheese (less lazy than using pre-grated, but it loses flavor too quickly for the pre-grated stuff to be worth the money). Salt & pepper the salmon fillets, add some flour. Melt some ghee in a pan on medium-high, sear the salmon for 3m30s/side (start with the skin side up).
The whole thing takes under 10 minutes. Some of you will complain this isn’t lazy, but look what I compare it to!
My least lazy meal is a meat lasagna.
White Sauce
1.5l milk
1 onion, thickly sliced
3 bay leaves
3 cloves
100g butter (clarified butter or ghee works too)
100g plain (all purpose) flour
3g grated nutmeg
2g salt
2g MSG (not traditional, but Uncle Roger would be disappointed if you skipped it in any savory dish)
5g black pepper
5g long pepper (older style, predates the introduction of black pepper to Italy. More aromatic, less pungent, can skip)
about 400g dried lasagna sheets
50g Parmesean, finely grated
Steps:
Start the white sauce. Put the milk, onion, bay leaves, and cloves into a saucepan and bring very gently just up to a boil. Turn off the heat and set aside. Grind the salt, MSG, black pepper, and long pepper together into a fine powder in a mortar and pestle.
Start the red sauce. Put the oil, celery, onion, carrot, garlic, and pancetta or guanciale into a large pot. Gently cook together until the vegetables are soft but not changing color. Add the beef & pork mince, the milk, and the chopped tomatoes. Using a wooden spoon, stir together and break up the lumps of mince against the sides of the pan. When it’s mostly broken down, stir in all the herbs, the stock cubes, and the red wine. Cover and cook for 1 hour, stirring occasionally to stop the bottom from catching.
Uncover the red sauce and let it gently simmer for another 30 minutes to 1 hour until the meat is tender & saucy. Taste & season as desired.
To finish the white sauce, strain the milk through a fine sieve into a temporary container. Using the same pan, melt the butter and then, using a wooden spoon, mix in the flour and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in the strained milk gradually. It will thicken at first to a doughy paste, but keep going slowly adding milk to avoid lumps. Bring to a gentle simmer, stirring constantly (if you have lumps whisk it to break them up). Cook a few minutes until thickened. Season with salt, MSG, black pepper, long pepper, and nutmeg.
Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/gas 4. Spread a spoonful of the meat sauce on the base of a roughly 3.5l baking dish. Cover with a single layer of pasta sheets, snapping them to fit if needed, then top with a quarter of the white sauce. Spoon over a third of the meat sauce & scatter over some Parmesean. Repeat the layers—pasta, white sauce, meat sauce, and Parmesean—two more times to use all the meat sauce. Add a final layer of pasta, the last of the white sauce, and the remaining Parmesean. Sit the dish on a baking sheet to catch any spills and bake for 1 hour until bubbling, browned, and crisp on top.
Do the dishes while the lasagna bakes.
Serve the lasagna.
That takes about an hour for the mise en place, and around 3 hours 10 minutes for cooking, total 4 hours 10 minutes. That makes it a weekend-only meal.
[Camera fade in on a full-body shot of me standing in my kitchen, my hands tented smartly in front of me.]
Hi everyone, welcome back to my food channel. You don’t want to cook a full balanced meal every night, sometimes you just want something quick! So today I wanted to show everyone my go-to lazy meal.
[I rip open a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips with my teeth and just start pouring them vertically into my mouth. Many of the chocolate chips do not go into my mouth, they just fall straight down, bouncing off the floor and out of frame. Some get caught in the folds of my clothing, occasionally rolling off onto the floor and bouncing out of frame. Most unsettling are the ones that fall into my mouth and then are carried out again by their own chaotic momentum, covered in microscopic flecks of my saliva, sticking to my shirt or splattering on the floor.]
[This continues for much longer than you’d think, as I empty the entire 1-pound bag without stopping.]
[I release the empty plastic bag, which drifts to the floor. The camera zooms in on my eyes, where tears are just starting to be visible. Fade out.]
Chopping one onion is hard? That’s maybe a minute of work to add a lot of flavor. I don’t generally do that for lunch, but I’ll absolutely chop up a couple of baby carrots, chop a couple green onions, scramble an egg or two, and mix it in as I fry up some leftover rice. Add some soy sauce, a few spices, and you’ve got some serious flavor with 5-10 minutes of work.
The hardest part of that is having leftover rice on hand.
Yeah but that’s a basic meal, good quality, not like, anything approaching award-winning, but you put some effort in it. It’s not a lazy meal.
My (definitely not recommended) lazy meal is eating ramen dry because the effort to cook it is just too high right then. A classic one is a pb&j. You could keep canned soup on hand.
If a meal requires me to wash dishes beyond a single utensil and bowl/plate, it is not a lazy meal. Which is fine, yours sounds great. It’s just not lazy.
Anything that necessitates cleaning the knife, cutting board, and skillet is not lazy. Especially because in order to wash those things the sink has to be empty which means the dishes have to be done. That’s a lot of pre and post reqs for “lazy”.
Not that any of that is particularly hard. A meal with a chopped onion can certainly be fast and easy, but I couldn’t argue that it’s lazy.
If you’re cooking for one person or two, it absolutely is lazy, unless the kitchen is a mess beforehand. But given that it’s not, washing the knife and cutting board quickly right after you put the onions in the pan takes like 10 seconds, and it’s time you would be standing there waiting anyway. You’re not spending any extra time or doing almost any extra effort. And chopping itself will take you like a minute or two if you’re going slow.
Saying Italian cuisine is American because they use tomatoes… Is like saying American cuisine is indo-europ-africa-asian because they use pigs, cows and wheat.
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