How To Cook Delicious Food, When Your Refrigerator Is Empty
I think, we can all agree, that when you are a student, your life can be tough. It’s hard to find a job, you need to study all day and sometimes you don’t have money. These all can influence your life, especially food ration. You can’t eat fast food all the time – it will ruin your health. But good and healthy food can be expensive, and I’m not even speaking about lack of time.
If all this situation sounds familiar to you, don’t worry – I prepare some good advice for you how to cook and eat properly. For that, I spoke with some students from different university to find out their secret of good eating.
Maxim, Saint-Petersburg State University
Usually in a money-lack situation, pasta helps me out. Of course, when there is absolutely no money and time, you can use instant noodles, it’s really cheap. One problem – you can’t eat it every day, you can get tired of it.
Therefore, I try to introduce diversity into the “pasta”. To do this, I take a pack of pasta, as well as the cheapest mayonnaise or ketchup.
Boil the pasta, put it on a plate and season it with mayonnaise or ketchup. If the pasta is still left, then you can later reheat it. You can eat directly from the pan - so as not to wash the extra plate.
Sometimes, as a substitute for mayonnaise and ketchup, you can use the “soup cube”. It must be dissolved in hot water in the proportion indicated on the package.
Julia, Moscow State University
Of course, you have to save on products. But still I want to eat not only cheaply, but also tasty and healthy. Therefore, from time to time, I add various “vitamin” salads to my food. And it’s not at all necessary that they include only cucumbers or tomatoes, which, unfortunately, are sometimes quite expensive.
For such salads, you can use, for example, budget products – cabbage and carrots. So, buy a small swing of fresh cabbage and a few carrots. You need to chop cabbage and grate the carrots. Mix all this, salt to taste and add a small amount of vegetable oil.
Catherine, The Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia
I am not a vegetarian, so sometimes I really want to eat meat. A very easy to prepare and cheap option is chicken. It will not be difficult to cook it deliciously.
You need to buy a whole chicken in the store, frozen, as it usually costs less. Before cooking it must be thawed.
A salt spills out onto a baking sheet. Fine salt cannot be used, as it will soak the chicken too much.
The whole chicken is placed on a baking sheet with salt. If some seasonings are available around somewhere, then you can add them, but this is not necessary.
Place the pan in the oven over a large fire. Cook for one hour. And that’s it, the dish is ready. A dish prepared in this way resembles grilled chicken to taste. And it grabs for more than one day.
Peter, Kazan State University
Very tasty, healthy and cheap food can be prepared from the liver. You have to buy beef or pork liver, pork - cheaper. The liver must be cut into small pieces and roll them in flour. Then put them in a pan and fry on low heat for 2 minutes on each side. Do not fry for longer, as the liver will become dry. In principle, the liver is ready.
In the middle of frying, you can fill the pan with water. Then you get not only a fried liver, but also liver sauce, which can then be added to rice, pasta, buckwheat porridge and potatoes.
Anna, Saint-Petersburg State University
I usually cook myself vegetarian cabbage soup with sauerkraut.
I take 3 or 4 medium-sized potatoes and cut them into several pieces. Then I throw them into boiling water in a pan. It takes about 10 minutes to cook the potato. During this time, I cut the onion and one carrot, then fry them.
Then I put sauerkraut and fried onions and carrots in a pan, add salt and pepper.
All this is boiled for about an hour, after which you can eat.
The advantages of such cabbage soup are that they are cheap and do not require storage in the refrigerator, even in the summer.
Text by
Kamilia Safiullina