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Thanks for the info, this'll help a ton! I was already considering getting a cheapo rice cooker but at your suggestion it does look like a similar sized pressure cooker is only about 40 bucks, and that'll work for everything you're suggesting. Didn't even know you could make yogurt at home, going to have to give that a try.Get an electric pressure cooker (e.g. Instant Pot). Use that to cook dried beans. It's also good for making soups and sautéing stir fry dishes. Pressure cooking is "set it and forget it" unless you haven't added enough water and the contents burn, and generally reduces cooking times. Get a cheap rice cooker, or get used to making rice on the stove, or figure out how to do it in the pressure cooker (adding oil or using broth in place of water helps). Find bulk pinto, black, or kidney beans, aiming for $1/lb or less. Start at Walmart, try an ethnic store if you have to. At the end of cooking, you can mash up beans to make them creamy. There are various meat choices for beans, such as pork or smoked turkey, or ground beef or turkey for chili.
You may find that some soups, curries, etc. are too wet, especially since pressure cooking is not reducing the liquid much. You can simmer, or add some corn starch or other thickeners.
Hummus is a dip that goes well with rice, and that can be your whole poverty meal. You want a food processor, a cheap source of tahini, and a good recipe or the experience to wing it. You can also make white bean (cannellini beans) hummus, or baba ganoush (roasted eggplant) with no other changes. Garbanzo beans take much longer to pressure cook than other beans, about an hour + cooling time.
Consider making yogurt from milk in the pressure cooker if it has that function or easy instructions for it. More ghetto methods can be used but might be a little more work to dial in right. Buy the clearance milk. You can strain your yogurt to make it into a premium product and get separate whey juice, or use it in its sloppy default state.
I like these as a quick "eh, don't fucking feel like cleaning my cookware and/or don't feel like cooking at all" meal sometimes. Their firewok ones are better, but I usually only get those when on sale.Nissin hot and spicy chicken flavor ramen View attachment 8131777
I think Bulleit is too mild to cook with against strong flavors like chocolate. There's only so much hard liquor you can add to cooking (a single shot is about it for even a decent sized batch). So I want something more harsh and since you pretty much lose any sophisticated undertones, something like Old Grand-Dad does fine.View attachment 8137106
Bourbon blondies! Some blondies can be very dense and cakey but these were gooey and delicious. I used 2 tablespoons of Bulleit bourbon, but I don't know if the flavor comes through at all against the delicious chocolate and butter. I might make them again on Thanksgiving since my family likes to keep things low-key and easy. It would be fun to experiment with other bourbon options.
Fun hack: you can make ground chicken or turkey pretty beefy-tasting (especially if you're already adding chili/onion/garlic powder and cumin) with a teaspoon or so of Better Than Bouillon beef base per pound of meat. Just make sure that you don't add salt until after you put the BtB in.I made burritos today. I usually use ground beef for the meat filling, but I used chicken this time. They were pretty good.
This reminds me of a classic that I still make from time to time, which is sauerkraut mashed potatoes served with kielbasa. Stupid easy and they just work really well together, with the kraut's acidity being a perfect counter to the fatty sausage and all mellowed out by the potatoes.Easily feeds a family of 4 for under 12$ if you add in more potatoes than kielbasa you can stretch it further on a budget
The pulled pork omelette with some onions and peppers and mushrooms is so damn good.When we make too much pulled pork, we'll put it into quesadillas, make an entire tray of nachos as a meal, mix it into a breakfast egg scramble, or put it into a crock pot soup/stew.











