A lot of people have picked up obscure hobbies and learned new skills during quarantine, but many have also learned how to cook. After staying home all day and not eating out, quarantine isn’t the best time for people who don’t know how to cook (aka me). Fortunately, there’s no better time than now to start learning. Instead of Doordashing your next meal, try to make some of them at home! Here are some easy to make meals that I’ve tried so far! Disclaimer: I am in no way a chef; I just added things that I thought tasted good together with the help of my mom.
- Hard Shell Tacos
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I absolutely love hard tacos, and it’s so easy to make. You basically just assemble together the ingredients you want and eat it. The only tough part is dicing or cutting up the ingredients, which I personally simply do not have the patience for. Other than that, it’s pretty easy!
I just buy ready-made hard taco shells and heat them up a little in the oven. Then I add ground beef and taco sauce mix into the pan to cook it along with some flavor to the meat. I like to add tomatoes, lettuce, and cheese to my tacos. After I add the cooked beef to my taco shells, I pile on the other three ingredients in addition to some more taco sauce (which I found in my fridge from Taco Bell).
- Chipotle Steak Rice Bowls
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This is also another easy version to get homemade. My go-to Chipotle order is white rice with steak, salsa picante, romaine lettuce, sour cream, and shredded cheese. To make their infamous cilantro lime rice, just add the three together to your liking with some salt and mix! After getting the seasoning right, I like to mix in the sour cream and lettuce. After plating this, I add the diced tomatoes and grilled steak cut into bite-size pieces. The picture below isn’t exactly what I described, but as I said, you can add whatever you want to your burrito bowl. Be your own Chipotle worker.
- Cold Rotini Pasta Salad
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This is the OG swimmer pasta dinner dish (gotta carbo-load!). When I swam competitively, my team would have pasta dinner potlucks the night before meets so all the swimmers would load up on carbs, and pasta salads were the most common dish; I felt like I was in heaven. It’s also a healthy dish! I miss them, so I decided to make my own.
The point of rotini pasta salad is to make it as colorful as possible. You can technically use whatever noodle shape you want, but the spiral rotini hits different (especially the ones that come in many colors). Just make sure the pasta isn’t overcooked. In a giant bowl, add your chilled cooked pasta, and any other [bite-sized] ingredients you want. I like cucumbers, grape tomatoes, black olives, broccoli, and red bell peppers. Finish by mixing them all with an Italian vinaigrette, which you can also handmake or just buy from the store.
- Bubble Tea
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You can’t forget a drink with your meals. Stop spending money on boba that isn’t even made with real ingredients!! You can make so many more drinks by doing it yourself with the same amount of money. Get black tapioca balls (~$5) and cook them by boiling them with brown sugar in water. While waiting for it to get the right chewy consistency, make your milk tea. As the name implies, add milk and tea (I prefer whole milk and green tea) to a shaker and mix them together! Don’t forget to add a bit of sugar, but it’s up to you. Pour into a glass, add some ice cubes, and your now-cooked tapioca balls! Super easy and delicious!
- Vietnamese Spring Rolls
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Get rice wraps and put in warm water to soften. Then you just add whatever ingredients you want and roll it like a burrito. For my first try, I added shrimp, cucumbers, and cilantro (which were the only ingredients I could find in my house at the time so my rolls were really skinny). You can add other things like other meats, carrots, rice noodles, etc. Do whatever makes you happy just don’t forget to make a sauce or it’ll taste really plain! I suggest a cilantro-based sauce with garlic to make a kind of vinaigrette to spread in the roll in itself. Peanut sauce is good for dipping!
- Sushi (w/o raw fish)
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Surprisingly easy to make, all you need is a bamboo sushi rolling mat which costs like $3. It’s also easier to start out not making the sushi inverted like in the picture. Lay a big piece of seaweed on your rolling mat, and smear with rice (make it a thin layer or else it’ll explode when you try to roll it). Then add long pieces of egg, cucumber, crab sticks, and avocado. Roll all these together, and bam you have a long sushi roll. Be careful when cutting it with a knife so all the filling doesn’t fall out. Make a dipping sauce with 1 part soy sauce, ¼ water, and 1 drop wasabi; not too salty or spicy! Fun fact: if you season the rice with vinegar, you get sushi; if you season with sesame oil then you get Korean gimbap (I do neither since I find that makes the seaweed get soggier faster).
- Garlic Bread
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This is a really quick and simple breakfast food. I just buy a loaf of french bread and cut it into smaller pieces. You just have to melt butter in a bowl then add in parsley and grated garlic. Then get a spoon to smear on top of the cut bread and toast it in the oven. Genuinely takes less than 7 minutes to make, and I had four pieces this morning.
- Blueberry Pancakes
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Another breakfast food! With everything being at home, there isn’t much motivation to get up early to eat breakfast, but this is something worth getting up for. Pancakes are easier to make on a griddle, but a nonstick pan on a stovetop works well too (you would just need to add butter to the bottom). Just mix pancake batter with water until you get the right consistency (more water for flatter pancakes; less water for fluffier ones).
I like adding more water just so the blueberries show up better. Instead of adding the blueberries to the mix, pour a circle of batter on the girdle (set at 250° – 300°), and sprinkle the blueberries on top. Then pour a thin layer of batter on top. After the first side is cooked to the color you like, flip it over. Once they’re done, add syrup and whatever fruits you want!