10/23/2005
Broke Ass! (tm) Cooking: When Time Is Money
Okay, so you've been following the Broke Ass! (TM) philosophy and all is well as far as cash flow is concerned... but sometimes sitting down and cooking a meal for 3 dollars takes up about 15 dollars of your time... so to speak. So what do you do when the bills are piling up, you're working two jobs, you have kids to take care of... and you're suddenly hungry? You've got the food, but where's the time?
Well, if you think you can't spare a half an hour, I have to start this article by saying you're full of crap. In the spirit of Killthecrap.com... well... lets get started.
It's time to let go of the idea that failure is imminent when you're poor, nothing much is guaranteed in life, including failure. Take on the attitude that life is simply tough when you're poor. Difficult things require creative solutions, nothing more. If you can handle creative solutions, then you're good to go.
With that said, there is a way to cut down the length of time required to cook some of the meals that we've listed here on killthecrap.com.
The following are a few techniques I've used to cut the cooking time down as much as scientifically possible, they are listed in no particular order, I recommend either bookmarking this page or printing this out so you can read it again or reference it later.
Dicing an onion: Usually what people do when dicing an onion is they cut it vertically into strips, then they drop those strips down flat and cut the new pile vertically again to julienne (julienne is a type of cut used in cooking, mcdonalds fries are julienne cut) Then they gather that bunch up and cut them vertically again into small cubes.
Instead try this: Take the skin off the onion, leave the end of the onion on (the part where all the dried remnants of roots and what not hangs that most people cut off first) start your vertical cuts just in front of the root end . Twist the onion 90 degrees so those vertical cuts are now facing horizontally, again, make vertical cuts straight down, now rotate the onion so your blade is perpendicular to your cuts, and again, cut vertically. Even, uniform cubes will start to fall off. While this sounds like it's the same process as mentioned above, you shave off probably 75% of the time spent chopping the onion by doing it this way. What that means is better food due to more uniform pieces (food tastes a certain way depending on how it's cooked, if all the cubes are close to the same size and shape, you get a uniform flavor, if not, the flavor seems "off") also, since you did it faster you don't have to worry about tearing up over it. And on top of that you saved time, for most people, that's probably about 5 minutes saved.
Boiling Water: when you boil water, first the stove has to heat up the pot holding the water, then it has to heat up the water. Water heats up slower then metal. What I do, is I put the pot on the stove on hi heat, then I stick the water in the microwave for 5 minutes. By the time the water is done, the pot is hot, so I'm throwing hot water into a hot pan, if your regular tap is especially hot, that speeds the process up even more. This saves you anywhere from 3-5 minutes of cooking time.
So far, if you needed to boil water and chop an onion, you'd have saved 8-10 minutes, so what normally took you a half hour only takes you twenty minutes. Now think about how much time you save by cutting your veggies while the water is boiling.
Multi Tasking is something a lot of poor people have trouble with. My only theory on this is that it sucks so bad being poor that you're too pissed off thinking about bills, the things you want but don't have and the person you want to be but aren't yet to think about much else, therefore you appear disorganized, when really you're just distracted.
A large part to saving time is your mindset at that time.
Let cooking be your time to relax. Only think about cooking when you're cooking. Only think about bills when you're paying them. Only think about work when you're working. Because emotional things like relationships, dating, sex and personal growth tend to be on our mind most of the day, we can't afford to add in so many other things. So when you cook, just cook, forget everything else, why? Because when you're cooking, all you can do is cook, you can't work while you're cooking unless you're a chef, so because all you can do is cook when you're cooking, cooking is all you should be thinking about.
Cooking Pasta And vegetables at the same time: Use the boiling trick we talked about earlier, once you've gotten the water boiling, take your metal strainer (hopefully you have a metal strainer, you can buy them at the dollar store these days... for a dollar) place it on top of the pot, throw the vegetables in the strainer, and put the lid on top of the strainer. You'll be cooking the pasta while steaming the vegetables. If you want to fry the veggies, try steaming them first while you heat up the frying pan, frying them lightly after they've already cooked in the steamer takes away that "heavy" taste oil tends to impregnate in vegetables, it also reduces the risk of burning the veggies in the first place. Also, feel free to throw spices into the strainer all you want, things like salt, basil, parsley, even rosemary, sazo`n and other things improve the texture and flavor of the pasta as well as your veggies. You'll be eating food that tastes gourmet, even though it was made Broke Ass!. And that's what Broke Ass! Is all about.
Speed Cutting: Now, rich bastards can afford things like salad shooters and the "set it and forget it" rotisserie and crap like that, but we can't afford shit... so the juice man's juicer just really isn't an option, in fact, most automatic appliances just aren't practical. That's when the digits come into play. Our hands take the brunt of the work. So if you must, learn to do it well. This is true for anything. There are two types of speed cutting as far as I know, there's what I call the "Yen can Cook" Method, named after the first chef I ever saw use the technique. And the "Rock and Roll" method. Ya ever see the food network? The chefs cut the food by wacking the knife up and down so fast it sounds like a Mac 10 Spraying led from the hands of your local wanna-be gyangsta. That's the "Yen can Cook" method. Basically, it starts with a very sharp knife, bend your pointer finger tightly closed (kind of like how a lot of people try to POP open things like the seals on asprin bottles and that sort of thing... or like a Wu-Tang Flying Crane Single Knuckle Strike, for the crappy kung-fu movie fans) and use that bent finger as a guide to avoid slicing your own hand open, remember BROKE ASS PEOPLE CAN'T AFFORD INSURANCE!!! Never let the blade raise above that knuckle, don't move the blade, move the food. Push the food under the blade as you chop chop chop. And finally; rhythm... if you don't got it... this may not be your preferred speed cutting method. Practice that, yes it's time invested, but investments yield healthy returns, you'll invest an hour of practice to save 24 hours over several months.
The "Rock and Roll" method is much easier to learn, but a little slower then the Yen Can Cook approach. Buy a "chef's knife" if you don't have one yet... spend at least 10 dollars on it... but spend the ten at a place like Wal Mart where you're ten bucks goes farther. (Yes Wal-Mart is the Devil... but unless you have some land to make your own veggie garden and start farming pigs or whatever... you'll just have to wait till you've moved up a step in life to stop shopping at walmart) The chef's knife has a curve in the blade, this is where the rocking and rolling comes into to play. Basically, mount the tip of the blade on the cutting board/counter and just rock the blade back and forth. Again, take your bent up knuckle and use it as a guide to keep from cutting yourself, being careful not to raise your blade too high and... yes... cut your guide finger off. Again, move the food, not the knife. It's basically like putting your training wheels on for learning how to do the yen can cook method. Start with this, and every day for a few pieces of food, try to Yen-Can-Cook-it a little bit.
Tenderizing Meat: The point of tenderizing meat is that it breaks the bonds holding the proteins so tightly together. This allows air space to form throughout the meat, allowing flavors to penetrate, making the food easier to chew and cut at the dinner table, as well as be that much more flavorful. Usually people take a spiked hammer and stick it in a zip lock baggy and pound it out for about five minutes. That's fine and dandy, but now the damn baggy's no good and ya just wasted money. Instead try one of two approaches: The Rolling Pin; take a rolling pin, and pretend the meat is dough. The second approach is controversial, but highly effective. Known as the "The School Yard Approach", you wrap the meat in saran wrap, put it in a baggy, wrap the baggy in two paper towels (still connected to each other) drop it on the floor and STOMP ON THAT SHIT like it made fun of you all through grade school. Two or three stomps and when you take it out of it's protective wrapping not only is it MORE tenderized then anything a stupid little gay spiked hammer could have done, but you FEEL better. Vent your anger and stress whenever, and however you can in a constructive way and you'll be saving time in more then just cooking. Feel free to punch the shit out of that chicken breast if stomping it out doesn't make you feel better.
Cooking Rice and Spaghetti Right The First Time: One great way to save time, is to not fuck up in the first place. A very popular thing people do, I'm not sure why, is they put a certain number of cups in a pot and boil it when cooking rice, and they cook it till there's no more water. Most of the time, unless you've gotten good at cooking that way, rice at the bottom burns. This is wasted food, and wasted time now that the cleaning process has become more difficult. Treat your rice like it's pasta, put a lot of water in there, I'd say double what most people use. Cook it till it's tender and then strain it. You can still season it and flavor it, even how they do it with Spanish/Indian/Asian type specialty flavored rice. You'll simply drain the excess water after the rice has finished cooking. When cooking spaghetti, or rice, be on top of it. Check it constantly. There's a window of opportunity with both foods where it's at its best, from there, hesitation makes it mushy, and haste makes it crunchy. Move the pasta and rice around regularly, allow it to move, taste it frequently and monitor it for that optimum flavor. Doing it right the first time, saves time in the long run. Trust me.
Extremely Great Sandwiches that also save you time:
This is a quick, easy way to speed things up while getting better flavor out of your sandwiches. Make any sandwich you want. Wrap it in saran wrap, put it on a plate, then put a frying pan with a weight on it, on top of the sandwich packet. Let that sit overnight. The best thing is make 5 sandwiches. like this, you've got five great tasting sandwiches. for five days work. No thinking in the morning while you're tired is needed, just grab and go.
What does the weight do? Well, while it does make the sandwich flat, that's not really it's main goal. The main goal is to cause the flavors to mix and blend with each other creating a much smoother tasting sandwich A few tips: put condiments in the center of the sandwich, not on the bread, put lettuce up against the bread, then your meats and cheese and mustard/mayo or what have you. I recommend a small pinch of salt and pepper as well, just to act as a flavor enhancer.