Students and yo-pros answer the question.
When your bank account is in the negatives and you have more dish soap than olive oil, even Marco Pierre White would call it a day and order a Thai takeaway.
Cooking as a student, or in your first few years out of home can be like navigating a minefield. It never seems to quite turn out like the picture in the book, the budget’s next to nothing and the wine match is sub par.
What are your worst flat meals you’ve ever eaten, cooked, or thrown in the bin after a single mouthful? We found some students and young professionals who were willing to share their most harrowing cooking adventures.
*Disclaimer: We do not recommend these meals as part of anyone’s dietary intake. If you’re looking for some basic healthy recipes, try these.
1 - PORRIDGE EXOTICA
“My flatmate made this when he came home from town really cooked one night. He wanted porridge but he also wanted crunch so he added some Dorritos and Nutrigrain.” - Robinson, 21, Wellington.
Photo: John Lake/The Wireless
Ingredients: One sachet of porridge, Dorritos and Nutri-Grain.
Method: Add the oats and milk/water to a small saucepan. Bring to the boil over a medium heat. Simmer for about 5 -7 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Sprinkle Dorritos and Nutri-Grain on top.
2 - EGGS BUDGETDICT
“Back when my weekly grocery allowance was $30 and Ploughmans bread was but a dream. I like the finer things in life like eggs florentine and green salad. I had several friends over at my flat on a Saturday evening after town and I felt a responsibility to provide. So, I cooked up a feast of eggs benedict, aka budget white toast bread, poached eggs and Best Foods mayonnaise (the number one hollandaise substitute), and a salad, aka Grain Wave (sour cream and chive flavoured) crumb salad. In my eyes it was the perfect marriage of flavours.” - Annie, 21, Christchurch.
Photo: John Lake/The Wireless
Ingredients: Eggs, bread, mayonnaise, and Grain Waves.
Method: Fill pot to the brim with water and boil. Once at boiling point stir the water like a mad man and drop the eggs into a blissful seething hot spa. Let them sit in the water for a cool 3 minutes.
Whilst your egg is sitting in the water, quickly prepare the bread in your toaster, till golden brown nevermind if it caramelises and becomes charred. Spread mayonnaise lovingly and thickly over the bread as it if is hollandaise.
Place the toast on the plate and plop the egg on top serve with a side of Grain Waves.
3 - NO MONEY ALA FRANKFURTER
“I didn’t want to spend any money.” - Nick, 20, Wellington.
Photo: John Lake/The Wireless
Ingredients: Frankfurters, onions and bread roll
Method: Boil hot water in a pot, add frankfurters. Cut onion and put in pan with oil. Cut bread rolls long ways. Once skin is peeling off the frankfurters put them in the bun, and shove onions on top.
4 - GLUGGY RICE AND BURNT MEAT THING WITH OIL
“I was tired, it was 10:30, I wanted to go to bed.” - Sam, 20, Wellington.
Photo: John Lake/The Wireless
Ingredients: Crumbed schnitzel, arborio rice and oil.
Method: Get a cast iron pan too small for your schnitzel, try frying the schnitzel in the too small pan. Fill the too small pan with oil and decide to deep fry it. Let the bread crumbs fall off the beef, and burn.
Boil arborio rice till half cooked.
Serve.
5 - THE ONLY THING IN MY PANTRY UNTIL PAYDAY, WITH SPICES
“I couldn’t be bothered walking to the shops, and by this point I didn’t care. I would never tell my parents I cooked this.” - Lucy, 20, Christchurch.
Photo: John Lake/The Wireless
Ingredients: Baked beans, rosemary, salt, thyme, cumin, paprika.
Method: Pour baked beans into bowl, put all the spices in the bowl and mix in. Microwave till you can hear the contents hit the sides of microwave walls.
6 - MINIMAL EFFORT SURPRISE
“It was all I had at the time” - Mava, 26, Wellington.
Photo: John Lake/The Wireless
Ingredients: A few mushrooms, a few crackers.
Method: Cut mushrooms and put on crackers.
7 - THIS WAS GOING REALLY WELL AND THEN IT WASN’T STIR FRY
“I was home alone, usually we cook as a flat, and they'd all talked about making a stir fry, but we never had it together and I thought it seemed simple enough but it was awful. I'm actually not a bad cook though just when it goes wrong, it goes very wrong. Never buy dark soy sauce by mistake - let me tell you.” - Florence, 21, Auckland.
Photo: John Lake/The Wireless
Ingredients: An assortment of carrots, broccoli, beans and other vegetables (or just buy a frozen stir fry vegetable mix), onion, dark soy sauce, sesame seed oil, tofu, udon noodles.
Fry some onions till soft, take onions put in separate bowl. Then fry the chicken with some hoisin, ginger and bit of miso. Once cooked add the onion in and the vegetables. Bring to a simmer. Throw in the udon noodles like it’s nobody’s business.
Put a lot of dark soy sauce in thinking that it is normal soy sauce . Turn your stir fry into a dark salty sea of shame. Try eating it, then give up and order takeaways.
8 - TOUGHER THAN LEATHER
“I couldn’t justify spending money on decent foods or spices when there was clothes and shoes to be bought. But there were still meals to be made. I had some tough meat that pained my jaw to chew, in and amongst a hard ‘steamed’ (uncooked because I have the patience of a two-year-old) carrots drowned in soy sauce – the only sauce I had in the cupboard” - Emily, 21, Auckland.
Photo: John Lake/The Wireless
Ingredients: Frozen steak, baby carrots and soy sauce.
Method: Defreeze the shrunken steak and fry it till it reduces in size like a dried out sponge. Steam the carrots half done. Soy sauce is the sauce of champions and goes with everything.
Make sure you use a sharp knife to cut the steak and if you have braces take them off before eating.
Sit on your couch and contemplate what you’ve done.