You can pressure steam potatoes in an instant pot, it takes 18 minutes =)
For me it was succotash. Super quick, cheap, vegetarian, and a complete protein
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2026
80 points (98.8% liked)
Ask Lemmy
41081 readers
1538 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world
7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.
8) No Bots.
Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Salsa. And you don't even need to cook anything.
Chop up tomatoes, sweet onion, a bit of fresh pressed garlic, lime. That's the base. Then just add whatever else. Peppers, spring onions, cilantro (which I personally don't add because it tastes like soap to me), parsley. Then to taste add a bit of salt, dash of hot sauce. A pinch of sugar can bring things out depending on the tomatoes.
Adding a bit of sour cream and/or avocado right before you eat it gives it an interesting twist.
You can keep it in a mason jar in the fridge for about a week. Probably longer but it never lasts more than a day or two in my house.
Rice. The amount of cheap simple meals you can throw together if you have rice is ridiculous.
Rice on its own is bland, but adding a lot of salt, or any other flavorful sauce can make it a pretty enjoyable meal.
When I visited Japan, it was the standard replacement for breakfast cereal even in hotels, and it makes a lot of sense.
Yesterday I made a quick peanut sauce and chopped up some veggies and boom, instant rice meal
Last week I made Käsekuchen (German style cheesecake) it was easy to make and delicious!
Edit: I followed this recipe: https://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/539641151173978/Kaesekuchen-aus-Bayern.html
I recently made the Basque version of this and it was amazing.
https://spanishsabores.com/burnt-basque-cheesecake-recipe
Good cheesecake is easy to make, great cheesecake is very difficult. It's the only cake I struggled with because I refused to adjust my grandma's recipe but I didn't have her know-how. The temperature, acidity, moisture and fat content of the quark, gently folding the beaten egg whites into the dough... It was worth it though, it's still my favourite and nothing comes close.
I have always stayed away from cheesecake because there are two styles. The soft type I did not know existed until my dad bought some for me on a trip at a restaurant (I was a kid). I spit it out and said this is not cheesecake. Of course, he made sure that that was the style that was always bought in the house from then on in. All I know is one is soft and icky (to me), the other is a lot firmer sort of like cheese. Is there a way to determine which is which as I would like to get some more again, but the correct type.
It's funny because I would be the same way, yet our grandparents probably adjusted their recipe all the time.
Dangerous though. I put on so much weight when I was cooking a tray of flapjacks for myself weekly.... So easy!
Nigella Lawson's Minestrone in Minutes.
3 cups broth, 1 cup tomato sauce, 1/2 cup soup pasta (orzo, ditalini, etc.), 1 can of white beans. Throw it all in a pot and cook until pasta is done. Season however. Herbs, a parm rind if you have one, a garlic clove or powder, red pepper flakes etc.
Easy af, quite healthy considering its all pantry items, and super satisfying. Its grown up spaghettios essentially and super easy to scale up to feed a crowd. Its my favorite "I dont wanna cook" meal.
Cheat's Carbonara. I was practically making it for dinner every night anyway. Start with a basic recipe of spaghetti with olive oil and nutritional yeast. The only change is, don't pour out all of the pasta water, and add a beaten egg or two with black pepper. Tastier, and more protein too, with almost no additional effort. Parmesan is probably more to most's taste, but I like nooch.
Edit: if your eggs are refrigerated you'll probably need to put it back on the heat for like a minute or two. Accept that you'll overcook it a few times until you get the timing right.
Thank you!! I'd never thought of using nutritional yeast with pasta. Yum.
It has that cheesy taste but more of a dry texture, so it needs a touch more olive oil. It doesn't melt either obviously but I prefer it that way :)
Risotto. It's not hard at all, the only semi difficult part is that you have to stir frequently.
rice krispie treats
Crepes
If I can make these everyone can and they're delicious
these are not easy to make without them falling apart.
Sometimes leaving the dough to rest for a couple minutes before frying solves this problem. It gives the gluten time to form. If it doesn't help, your recipe might be bad.
what do you mean by fry. you do a skillet with butter no?
Skillet and oil. What do you call it other than frying? English isn't my first language.
Butter's smoking point is too low for the temperatures involved. I fry on high heat, a couple seconds per side.
maybe that is my problem. I though butter was traditional but maybe im not using high enough heat. I guess when I think fry I think like sitting in oil. Almost deep frying. as opposed to a light coat. but yeah I guess fry an egg. I don't think its your english as much as my common word usage. I always remark my worst grades in school was foreign language and my second worst was english.
Before oil became common, lard was used - again, because of the high smoking point. The amount used is minuscule and actual lard (not bacon) doesn't have a very strong aroma.
Do you add any fat to the dough? Fat is common in recipes but if you want really thin and supple crepes that don't fall apart, there should be next to no fat.
And if there's too much oil in the pan, it might prevent the crepe from sticking together.
I wish I could just give you a recipe but I've been eyeballing it for the past 30 years, since I learned it from my mum, who was also eyeballing it.
Well it's quite easy i'll give you that but it's soooo long to cook when you have a bunch of people home.
Baked onion. Literally just bake an onion, in the peel. Eat it with salt.
I need instructions for this 🤔
I think I'll pass. Does sound easy, though.
It's really really good. It's like french onion soup, it doesn't juat taste like on onion, it's creamy buttery and tastes really nice.
I don't think I've ever made them in an oven but I I've made plenty in a camp fire wrapped in foil the same way as potatoes.
I had that in mind and decided to just give it a try, wrapped some in foil and tossed them into the oven. They turned out sweet and jammy and quite delicious.
can't you do the same in an oven?
Yes, but it uses a lot more energy to do it in an oven.
Caesar dressing.
About the same time with a regular oven. Then put on a bunch of great toppings like sour cream, butter, green onion, salsa. Used to make them a lot. Dont do it anymore because im lazy.
True, Air fryers are simply countertop convection ovens, but the form factor makes "ovening" stuff way easier and appealing. The fact that I don't have to bend over, mess around with big hot trays or racks, heat up and clean a big-ass oven for two potatoes, or any 1-2 serving size dishes makes baking a couple of potatoes appealing again.
The air "fryer" moniker is a marketing stroke of genius.
BTW, baked potatoes are trivial easy to make in a microwave, and can be given a toasty finish if you have a microwave/grill combo.
Also, air fryers use less power to do something like a baked potato assuming you're just doing 1 or 2.
I rediscovered how quick couscous was to make, just boiling water, less than 10mn, no dishes. When i eat alone, i often eat couscous seasonned with watever i have on hand, a bunch of cream/oil/liquid to make it less dry.
No dishes? Do you pour the couscous and boiling water into your cupped hands?
Well you can use whatever you want for this, used plate, aluminium plate from yesterday takeaway, something that does not necessarily imply washing it immediatly after, unlike most things i use to cook. But yeah fair point
Several types of soup. Also if you make soup for lunch you can eat it again the next day, so (e.g holiday or work from home) you only cook half as much as you would do.
If you're commuting to work, you can also bring your soup and drink it there, and it's way more price efficient than buying some food on site.
Air fryer Baked Potatoes are so easy to make, the I wished found out when I got an air fryer a while back. All you need is a potato, olive oil, seasoning, & foil to make. The only downside, it takes almost an hour to make in the air fryer
Air fryers are remarkable because you can make about everything more easily than you can without the airfryer. Instead of grilling meat in the electric grill (top half of oven), you can airer it on a baking tray and it makes clean-up easier.
Sweet potato fries, or any sort of roast vegetable, can be done easily with less oil and no gas usage from using the oven. Sweet potato stuff makes a great healthy snack for all occasion - no more tanking up on sugar!
You can cut the time in half if you use a microwave first. Prick the potatoes all over with a fork and place in a silicone tray then microwave on full for 10-20 minutes depending on size (check that it's soft inside with a knife.) Cover in oil and seasoning then air fry on full for about 15 minutes. The silicone tray allows you to transfer from the microwave to the airfryer with minimum mess and fuss (so not essential.)
For me though, it's homemade pittas. So much better than the flat discs of carboard they sell in the supermarkets. Takes a bit of time for proving, but I like to make a large batch and freeze a bunch, or keep some dough in the fridge and have a second meal with them later in the week.
https://akispetretzikis.com/en/recipe/1990/pites-gia-soyvlaki
Salmorejo.
https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/salmorejo
This recipe is very close to what I do, the only differences are that I go easier with the garlic, I don't add any water and I use more oil.
PD: I don't dice the tomatoes, I grate them so I can discard the peels.
Meatballs: mix minced meat with cream cheese and season it to taste. In a pirex (or simliar container) mix a can of pealed tomatos with heavy cream and italian seasoning. Now form meatballs from the minced meat and add it to the tomato-haevy cream mixture. Add cheese on top of verything and bake it for about 35-40 mins at 220° C. When it comes out, you can enjoy it with pasta you boiled separately. (I mostly use tortelini).
Best part you can even make it vegan if you replace all ingridients 1 to 1 with vegan alternatives. It used to be one of my favourites when I was omnivore and still is one of my favourites as a vegan.