6 Tips for Single Cooking: How to Easily Cook for One Person
by Lyssa Myska Allen, founder of DailyHap.com
Instagram gets slammed for people posting photos of their food. Well, you know what? I do it (see the evidence above), and here’s why: I’m single, and I cook for one. If I make an extravagant dinner (almost never) or a new dish from Pinterest (still not that often), I’m the only one who gets to enjoy it. I’ll eat it for dinner, and lunch the next day, and dinner again, and maybe even breakfast. Because that’s just how it is cooking for one. So I share it on Instagram just because I want to share it—in almost all cultures, sharing food is sharing love.
In that spirit, here are some cooking-for-one tips:
1. Cook less. It’s a pain in the butt, but so is eating spaghetti sauce every day for a week. Make less food, and you have to eat less of it.
2. Freeze. I find this to be an annoying but true tip. Immediately package up some of that spaghetti sauce and freeze it, so you feel absolutely no obligation to eat it. You’d be surprised at what will freeze: sauce, cookies, casseroles, meat, cheese, and more—check out this crazy list http://andreadekker.com/freezable-foods/.
3. Experiment. Hey, only one person is going to go hungry tonight if your experiment fails!
4. Embrace the weird. So you like mustard on zucchini noodles? Sweet potatoes with cheese? Raw broccoli dipped in honey? Eat it. No one can judge you. [Note: I have not eaten any of these combos. But if you do, you should eat them in front of others if you want, their judgment is their problem, not yours.]
5. Cook in one pot. There’s no you-cook-I’ll-clean deal going on in this single kitchen, so don’t be afraid to limit the amount of dishes you’ll have to do later. Good candidates for one-pot cooking include stir-fry dishes, scrambles, stews, soups, and pastas.
6. Snack attack. A few snacks add up to a full meal—don’t be afraid to count it! Think a few of your fave apps combined (hummus, olives, hard cheese, grapes) or a charcuterie board (salame, cheese, nuts, dried fruit).