Tag Archive for 'rice'

Frugal Friday: Preparing Your Own Skillet Meals in Advance

Published by Hal on January 19, 2008 in Frugal Friday. 0 Comments

This post is provided courtesy of the Simple Dollar. Trent doesn’t know it, but since all articles on his site are in the public domain, I’m yanking it for use here, while I’m traveling this weekend (which is also why this has been posted on Saturday–oops!). If you like this content, and you want to know more about personal finance from an everyman’s perspective, check out his site!  (Original source)

Many busy familes (even on occasion, our own busy family) often resort to prepackaged skillet meals in order to get a hot, prepared meal on the table quickly at dinnertime. With both parents getting home at five or later and a desire to get a meal on the table early enough so that there is some semblance of a family evening, it’s not surprising that the ease of preparation, the speed, and the relative healthiness of prepackaged skillet meals have become popular.

There are a few problems here, though:

Prepackaged skillet meals are often very expensive for what you get. Skillet meals are almost always at least $6 and often cost significantly more than that. Pick up five of them at once and you’re talking a bill of $35 or so. The food in the bag often adds up to less than a pound in total weight.

Such meals are often laden with preservatives and “industrial” ingredients. As a rule of thumb, if I don’t know what that ingredient is, I don’t like to eat it. Using that rule, pick up pretty much any prepackaged meal you can find and read that ingredient list. My stomach is flopping.

Such meals are often not very healthy in terms of fat, sodium, etc. These meals are designed to be tasty, not to be healthy. Based on the nutrition facts on these items, I’d have to say that most of them don’t worry about healthy too much at all.

I generally like most of the prepackaged skillet meal offerings, I just wish they were healthier - and preferably cheaper. As a frugal parent, I’d like to find a better solution to this situation. I’d like to have a healthy and tasty meal that I could prepare quickly.

My solution? Make a whole bunch of them in advance.

All you have to do is find a good skillet meal recipe, quadruple the recipe, prepare all of the ingredients, then fill four freezer bags with the meal. Then, when you’re ready to eat them, get that bag out of the freezer, thaw it, and then cook it in the skillet until it’s nice and warm. Done!

You can find countless skillet recipes online. My usual technique is to cook the meat in advance, then add all of the needed ingredients to the ziploc bags. Here’s an example:

Trent’s Beef and Vegetable Skillet Meal

The normal recipe involves the following:

3/4 lb. lean ground beef
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped green pepper
3 1/2 cups diced tomatoes
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1 cup peas (frozen ones are okay)
1 cup chopped carrots
1 cup uncooked rice
1 1/2 cups water

I add everything but the ground beef to each bag. Then, I cook up three pounds of ground beef and drain it, then add a quarter of that beef to each ziploc bag. On the outside I write “beef and vegetable skillet - simmer 40 minutes” on masking tape (so I can reuse the bag for another meal later) and I toss the bags in the freezer.

When I come home, I get out a bag, run it under hot water for a bit so that I can easily get the contents out, then I put it in a skillet on high until it’s just barely boiling, then I drop the heat until it stays just barely boiling. I cook it for about forty minutes or so, then it’s ready to serve.

A similar philosophy applies for pretty much any skillet meal you might prepare. They all work pretty well.

Making skillet meals in advance actually makes for a great weekend afternoon project that saves money and helps you to eat healthier. The meal above is really healthy - it’s loaded with vegetables and, if you cook lean ground beef and properly drain it, it’s very low fat, too.

Plus, the ingredients all together cost only a bit more than one ordinary skillet meal. Compared to the cost of four typical skillet meals, the needed ingredients save about $15, and you can have the bags ready to go into the freezer in less than an hour. That’s $15 saved (compared to prepackaged skillet meals) even without considering the positive health effects - quite a bargain in my eyes.

Recipes: Pork Curry in a Hurry

Published by Hal on January 8, 2008 in Hal's Hint and recipes. 5 Comments

This recipe is a tribute to my good friends, Robert and Mary Lee, and their Chicken Curry in a Hurry. They prepared it for me once, and I had the recipe, but I don’t any longer :) I do know that their chicken curry did not have the same base as mine, but that doesn’t mean it was any less tasty!

Ingredients:

  • Oil
  • 1 pound of pork, cubed (I had chops on hand)
  • 2 cups of green beans
  • 1 bell pepper, cut into strips and cut again to be bite-sized
  • 14 ounces of coconut milk
  • 4 teaspoons of red curry powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon of onion powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder
  • 2 teaspoons of sugar
  • 2 tablespoons of lime juice

Directions:

  1. Start some rice and let it cook while you’re working on the pork curry.
  2. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat.
  3. Add a tablespoon of oil and the pork; cook the pork until it is no longer pink inside.
  4. Remove the pork from the heat and set aside.
  5. Add a tablespoon of oil to the skillet and add the green beans; cook for about 3-5 minutes, until the beans are heated through.
  6. Add the bell pepper and cook for another 3 minutes or so, until the pepper is heated through, but still crisp.
  7. Add the coconut milk and curry, onion, and garlic powders. Stir to combine.
  8. Add the pork back to the skillet, and heat through.
  9. Just before serving, add the sugar and lime juice and stir to combine.
  10. Serve along side or on top of fresh rice.

This recipe was actually inspired by a recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens cook book, but I changed a lot of the ingredients to things I had on hand. If you want more color, you can use a red or yellow bell pepper–they are just so expensive this time of year, and I didn’t have this dish planned when I went shopping last night, so I opted for the green variety. If you can’t find coconut milk, or it’s too exotic for you, you could also substitute plain yogurt. I also really like the taste of curry, which is why there is a lot in the dish. You can tone it down to your tastes :)

Hal’s Hint: Don’t blindly follow the directions for cooking your rice! If you do, you might end up burning it. A good rule of thumb is 2-to-1 liquid to rice. Bring the liquid and the rice to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and cover. Check periodically; the rice is done when there are tubes, like in the picture, and you can no longer see liquid easily. When it’s done, turn off the heat and just let it hang out. Any liquid left in the bottom, which there shouldn’t be much, will absorb into the rice after about 5 or 10 minutes. To make your rice more flavorful, you can use stock instead of just plain water.

Leftovers: Beef Stew over Pumpkin Risotto

Published by Hal on December 16, 2007 in leftovers and recipes. 1 Comment

One of the best things about cooking at home is the next day and leftovers. This is also a great way to save money while you’re cooking–make it once, eat it twice!

I made a beef stew the other night and after a few days it got much better. I made Pumpkin Risotto last night. I needed something for lunch (and I’m still debating dinner) so I thought I would combine the two.

Basically, I put one serving of the risotto in a bowl, then covered it with the chunks of stew, then the stew liquid. I microwaved the bowl for 4 minutes at 60% power, sprinkled some shredded Parmesan cheese over the top, and this was the result:

Beef stew over pumpkin risotto

Yum!

What are your favorite left overs?

Recipes: Bourbon Pork

Published by Hal on December 10, 2007 in Hal's Hint and recipes. 2 Comments

I love bourbon–it’s actually one of my favorite liquors. I’d love to style a restaurant with bourbon as the key ingredient. Keeping that in mind, I looked for a bourbon glaze that I could us with some pork chops we picked up from the grocery the other night. I found one here, that I modified slightly to fit my particular available ingredients.

Bourbon Pork

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup bourbon
  • 3 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 1/2 cup onion, grated
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar (light or dark–I used light; the recipe above called for dark)
  • 1/2 cup butter, melted
  • 1/4 cup honey
  • 4-6 boneless pork chops, trimmed and cut into about 1 inch cubes
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • rice
  1. Combine the bourbon, garlic, onion, brown sugar, butter, and honey in a large bowl. Whisk together.
  2. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
  3. Add the pork to the skillet and allow to brown (Hal’s Hint: Take the meat out of the fridge at least 10 minutes before you put it in the pan. Once it’s in the pan, LEAVE THE MEAT ALONE! Let it hang out for about 5 minutes before you attempt to turn it. If you don’t, the meat might stick and tear or won’t brown as quickly).
  4. Add the bourbon glaze and allow to come to a boil.
  5. Stir until the glaze is reduced by about half.
  6. Serve with cooked rice.

(Hal’s Hint: I like to add spices to my rice to make it more aromatic. I added a stick of cinnamon and three small bay leaves to this batch of rice, making it a little sweeter and full of flavor. Remove these before serving.)

Bring the glaze to a boil and reduce by half.Serve along side aromatic rice.Another view.

My thoughts: My wife really liked this. I thought it was a pretty good interpretation of a bourbon sauce dish you’d get at a Chinese-American restaurant, so I call this “Carryout at home.” However, it was too sweet for my tastes. My wife and I suspect this is because I used 1 cup of sweet stuff (1/4 cup of honey, plus 3/4 cup of brown sugar). I did this because I needed more liquid to carry the flavor of the bourbon and I didn’t want to grate another onion–I had grated one, plus the half of one from last night’s dinner. In hindsight, I probably could have done without, used water, or added something savory (like diluted soy sauce–1 tablespoon soy sauce to 3 tablespoons water).

Regardless, I thought it was tasty. It was just too sweet for me usually. I have another bourbon glaze I’d like to try, but it’s more like a barbecue sauce so I’ll need to wait until I have a brisket or some ribs. Plus, my wife doesn’t like barbecue sauce much, so I’ll need to a new guinea–I mean, taster :).