Get a crock pot, OP. It is 100% impossible to fuck up a meal in a crock pot. It's like game genie for when you're just learning to cook. Just take some meat, some veggies, literally any flavor of thing you like, and throw it into a crock pot, put it on high, then go to work. When you come home, every single time, delicious food, always. A full meal in a crock pot can be had for like maybe $15, and it'll feed you for days.
Trust me, it is absolutely impossible to fuck up food on a crock pot.
Give you an example of a meal with a crock pot -- buy 2lbs or so of pot roast out of your grocery store, grab some baby carrots and potatoes and mushrooms, and head to the spices section of your store and look for these:
Throw all the ingredients into the crock pot on high and let it cook for 8 hours. When you serve, open a can of green beans and maybe make some white rice, and serve together. Bam, meal for days for under $15. There are tons and tons of things you can make with a crock pot. Chili, stew, pot roast, cheese dips, broccoli and rice, etc.
Take out and especially tv dinners are loaded with salt, you'll be very unhealthy to eat that way. They're also expensive. It's so much cheaper and easier and even healthier (although not that healthy) to eat with a crock pot.
Was going to suggest the instant pot thing. It's dead easy to make healthy, delicious home cooked food.
My mom makes some pretty awful pork chops, but that doesn't mean pork chops are bad. I went to someone's house once and their mom had baked some pork chops with apples and it was the single greatest pork chop I've eaten in my damn life.
I hope you meant low not high, otherwise you gonna ruin your meal by cooking on high for 8 hours. This is the pot roast with sweet potatoes and carrots I made yesterday, cooked it on low for 7 hours.
The way he's shot down all advice about this basic adult skill means the latter
Try some easier stuff OP I mean like the basics of basics so it's damn near impososble to waste your money. Think of it this way too... How many months, years, days, whatever, have you spent extra on take out or TV dinners. A few dollars lost in practice is nothing compared to the overall savings of learning to cook
This. Even a simple sandwich can be tasty with the right ingredients.
oh so the OP is a giant manchild who is lookin to justify not trying in life?
you can make more than soups and pot roasts in a slow cooker, especially an instapot.
the power of technology. I will always advice people to learn WHY recipes are the way they are, like why saute the onions/garlic, why you dont put file into the gumbo until its cooked, or why you dont cook Pasta for longer than so-and-so minutes, etc. But there's so many easy time saving ways to make food now. There's millions of recipes for something like the Instant Pot.
I've turned even the cheapest TV dinners into real amazing meals. The trick is to use the oven and use the ingredients as part of another meal. The sweet and sour chicken ones are a breeze to work with. I usually just use a cast-iron on the stovetop for those then finish in the oven. Best part is, you don't really need to add salt thanks to upping the ingredients. Then again, I like to tinker.
