I Have no experience in cooking.?

Question

ok i'm 16 and mostly my brother does the cooking. My mom used to do all the cooking but she passed away 2 years ago and my dad is an asshole who doesn't cook or do anything. So my brother is going off to college so I need to learn some quick easy and cheap meals fast so anyone have any suggestions? P.S.-My dad does not give money for food so thankfully I get disablilty checks, but i don't want to spend to much of them because I need to save up for college and a car. So I guess i want to work about 200$ every 3-4 weeks

Answer 1

I raised 4 kids on a 50$ a week budget for food. I suggest looking online for cheap easy recipes and FOLLOW THEM EXACTLY. It's gonna be a trial and error thing but it is not as hard as one would think. I bet I know a hundred ways to use hamburger, and tuna. Also, when it comes to things like chicken, you can go cheaply with roasting a whole chicken, and it's fairly simple to do. Simply "stuff" it with a little butter and herbs like sage, oregano, garlic, salt and pepper. Bake at 350 for about an hour depending on bird size. Cut the leg at the thigh to see when its done. It will be done when its not "bleeding" and more. That and a cheap box of stuffing will make a great meal. Or mashed potatoes and make gravy by using the "juice" left from cooking the chicken and thickening it with some cornstarch. ( make sure u add a little water to the cornstarch first and slowly add to juice.
You can make your own version of hamburger helper, by buying noodles(cheap enough) adding the browned beef and a cheap pkg of powdered gravy mix...presto beef and noodles.
Tuna casserole can be made by buying mac and cheese and adding a can of tuna.
You can do pigs in a blanket by using hot dogs or sausages and rolling out can biscuits and wrappng them around the hot dogs, then bake at 350 til brown.
A cheap can of beef stew with can biscuits layed on top and baked makes a good casserole too. Bake it about an hour on lower temp(300).
Take any leftover meat and add veggies to make a great soup. If you need more ideas just ask....

Answer 2

Sorry about your loss dude. First off, get the recipes from your brother that you like. Second, try and plan ahead so you can get several meals out of the leftovers - for instance, I'll take a good sized chuck roast and make a pot roast one day, then use the broth to make up a bunch of vegetable soup and the leftover meat becomes hot roast beef sandwiches and BBQ Beef. Roasting a chicken is pretty easy and the leftovers can become chicken salad, hot chicken sandwiches or cut up in a stir fry.. If you have cable you might check out some of the shows on the Food Network - like 30 Minute meals that have some simple but tasty ideas. And to help save money avoid overly processed food like prepackaged ham. Also, if your store has a "used meat bin" (where the price has been reduced because it is close to the expiration date) by all means shop it - the meat is just fine so long as you use it or freeze it within a few days.

Hope this gives you some ideas on how to get started. Learning to cook is a great idea because you can eat healthier and a lot cheaper than living off of fast food and the microwave. Plus ladies LOVE a guy who can cook!

Good luck to you!

Answer 3

If nothing else, learn the 'face' method or something similar. You imagine a face on the plate. The top half are the two eyes, the bottom the mouth and chin. One eye is meat, the other a carbohydrate rich vegetable (potato). The rest of the face is colourful vegetables. Make your meat portion 100-125 gm boned (this is hard in the US, I am told, because meat portions typically are cut larger than this). The rest of the portions should then fall into place.

ps - I learnt to cook when I was a single dad, and my kids survived my culinary education. I learnt cool things like mince wasn't the only meat that I could cook and that vegies were important and that scrambled eggs don't have to have black bits.

Don't give up hope on your dad, it takes time to get over some things.

Answer 4

Here are some items that don’t cost very much money to make.
Soup! (any sort of soup is very cheap to make and it would do you at least 5-6 serves.
Stir fry is another cheap healthy thing to make… all you need to buy is a $2-$3 bag of frozen veggies and chicken or beef on special for like $3 and you will have about 3-4 serves.
Pasta is very cheap to make (any sort)
If you walk around the supermarket you will find lots of things on specials and ideas will just pop in to your head.
If you need any recipes just search for them off google they have heaps!
Good Luck

Answer 5

Get in the kitchen w/ your brother and learn what he does. Also ask some of yoru friends' parents (who cook) if you can come help them cook and learn from them.

Your dad's bound to have to eat...! What does he eat?

Don't give up on college, eitehr. It's your only way ouuta there. You can get grants and loans. Grants you don't have to pay back! Even if you graduate owing some money, you've still graduated!

Answer 6

your best bet is to buy items you put in the oven. Example they have tyson Chicken patties and beef steaks you buy in the froven food section. and for a side dish they have rice packages you put in the microwave. But if you crusie the frozen food section at your local grocery store you can find numerous items that just require you to put it in microwave or oven.

But if you really want to learn to cook its all experimental. watch food network or buy a cook book. once you burn a few things you'll get the hang of it.

Answer 7

there is diffrent flavors in hambuger helpers,buy the hamburger helpers and fozen french fries.just read the directions on the boxes. buy plenty of hamburger meat and there is even frozen fries that you can cook in the oven or you can get them for the microwave.simple and cheap meals.it only takes about 15 minutes to cook hamburger helper.. and I dip my fries in ranch dressing instead of ketchup.

Answer 8

get cook books they will make your life a whole lot easyer. or dig out your moms old ones. Every mom has atleast one

Answer 9

http://www.thriftyfun.com/Recipes_Cheap%20Meals_833_844.html

http://www.cooks.com/rec/search/0,1-0,easy_cheap_meals,FF.html

these will both help a lot