I thought the lazy-part was that you don't buy any ingredients from the store before you need them in the cooking process?
My wife and I have what we call 12 minute meals. They're not quite 12 minutes, because usually you've got to boil the water in the kettle first, but - they're meals that you can make and cook in the time you make macaroni, rice or spaghetti. A simple carbonara, a simple "cheats casserole" (Fry off some mince & onions, throw in some veg, cover in gravy, serve with rice), or a Macaroni Cheese (Done the proper way - grate cheese over the macaroni, mix).
Except for the Mac&Cheese, all of them require chopping an onion. I'd count them as relatively lazy meals that are also tasy and can feed a family.
My go to lazy meal.
$5 Costco cooked rotisserie chicken. Pull the meat off the bones.
Frozen bell peppers/ onion mix
Fajita seasoning seasoning
1/2 cup Rice w/ a few spoonfuls of salsa, butter, add salt / pepper to taste
1 Can O beans.
Fry up the veggies w a little oil, add cooked chicken, season w fajita seasoning lightly, remove / put in a bowl.
In the same Pan as the chicken, cook the beans.
Takes like 10 minutes n u got fajitas with only 2 pans to clean. Can I make a way better version taking 5x as long? Certainly, but do I want to? Usually no.
My lazy meal is a bit cost prohibitive if you don't have the equipment, but if you have an instant pot, a rice cooker, and an air fryer equivalent, it's super easy to make orange chicken with stir fry veggies, using all stuff you can get ready at the grocery store.
I just throw rice in the rice cooker, frozen veggies and about half a bottle of premade sauce (like $1 at Aldi) in the instant pot, and breaded chicken, like popcorn chicken, in the air fryer, then wait. Mix the chicken in with the veggies once it's cooked, and then serve over rice.
If you do non-breaded chicken, you can even cut out the air fryer, and just cook it with the veggies. Either way, you just have to set the instant pot to zero minutes at high pressure, and it'll be cooked
I don't get it. Chopping an onion is basically nothing. It takes like 2 minutes.
If it takes longer than 10 minutes to cook, it's not lazy. Spending 2 minutes chopping an onion means you only have 8 minutes left to actually cook the onion, plus everything else you're cooking up.
I think there's an important distinction as to which meal, a lazy breakfast is a raw bagel, a lazy lunch is bread and deli meat (or microwaved single meal), dinner is frozen pizza or some rice and meatballs
My lazy meal is pasta with tomatoe sauce. Add basil and raw garlic if you get fancy with it :D Parmesan if you are the rich kind of fancy
Sriracha, mayo, bread, nooch
Yes chef
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.
Just steam and eat the onion, it's actually delicious
If you held a gun to my head and told me to eat an onion I would pull the trigger
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.
Being a bachelor, I often chop an onion and end up with like 4 or 5 meals worth of onion chops, so a lot of "lazy meals" are "get some chopped onion out of the fridge."
Some people are just so fast at cooking. My roommate makes the same food in a quarter of time I need and I guess it comes down to me spending so much time confused and doing unnecessary things.
That's what proper kitchen tools are for.
I have a vegetable chopper.
Lid off, onions in, lid on, turn ten times, chopped onions.
Get yourself tools that allow you to be lazy without compromising on quality
Have to disagree. If you're being lazy, buy frozen chopped onions. As long as you're not going to chop more than two onions, a kitchen knife will be faster than a chopper. Also, I hate monotask-tools. They sit in the drawer taking space 95% of their life.
My go-to lazy meal is rice, a can of baked beans, and a can of spam. Make the rice, dice the spam and fry it in a pan, then mix everything together.
I call it Bachelor Chow
*Now with flavor!
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