Cooking for yourself

This is a very straightforward guide to cooking for yourself. Especially when all you have in the fridge are eggs, butter, and leftovers. Credit for at least half of these recipes goes to Alex and Jason and the internet.

These recipes are listed roughly in order of difficulty and time of day. They're short, so please read each of them until the end. The ingredients in each of the recipes are listed roughly in order of priority.

Contents

  1. Fried eggs
  2. Omelets
  3. Pancakes
  4. Okonomiyaki
  5. Egg-fried rice
  6. Garlic noodles

Start with fried eggs. Fried eggs are easy.

You can do a lot of things with eggs. We will start with the humble fried eggs.

Tools:

Ingredients:

Instructions:

  1. Put butter in the frying pan. Turn on the stove to medium heat. Let it heat up.
  2. Crack the eggs into the frying pan.
  3. Add a pinch of salt.
  4. Cook how you like it.

Fried eggs are easy to work with, so there are a lot of different ways you can make them. The essential ingredients are the eggs, some kind of fat, and seasoning.

Ingredient substitutions and additions:

Instruction variations:

Omelets are like fried eggs but you can put more things in them.

After you master fried eggs, you can try incorporating cheese to make American omelets.

Applicances:

Ingredients:

Instructions:

  1. Combine the eggs and salt in a bowl.
  2. Put butter in the frying pan. Turn on the stove to medium heat. Let it heat up.
  3. Pour the eggs into the frying pan. Let them cook for a bit.
  4. Add cheese and other things you like. Let them cook for a bit.
  5. Fold the eggs in half.

This is a good way to use up leftovers. I like to add mushrooms, spinach, and pork bits to mine. Meat usually takes longer to cook than the eggs, so you have to heat them up a little bit before you put them in the omelet.

Pancakes are another easy breakfast food.

This is a recipe for pancakes from scratch, since that means you can use the ingredients for other things too. You can also follow the instructions on a box mix. The ratio of each ingredient is important, so there are some guidelines below.

Tools:

Ingredients:

Instructions:

  1. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Those are the dry ingredients.
  2. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. Add the milk, butter, and eggs. Those are the wet ingredients.
  3. Put butter in the frying pan. Turn on the stove to medium heat. Let it heat up.
  4. Pour the batter into the frying pan. Let it cook for a bit. Flip it when it looks right.
  5. Serve with syrup.

Baking powder is a leavener, which means it makes the pancakes fluffier. You can also use baking soda, but you have to add an acid like vinegar or lemon juice to make it work.

You can also mix in a tablespoon of sugar with the rest of the dry ingredients if you like your pancakes sweet.

Okonomiyaki "grilled as you like it" pancakes

Okonomiyaki is a Japanese savory pancake made from cabbage. I think it's actually easier to make than regular pancakes, but the ingredients are a little less common, so you have to prepare ahead of time.

Tools:

Ingredients:

Instructions:

  1. Combine flour, baking powder, chopped potatoes, dashi, and salt in a bowl. Those are the dry ingredients. If you have time, let it rest for an hour.
  2. After letting it rest, add eggs and chopped cabbage to the bowl.
  3. Put butter in the frying pan. Turn on the stove to medium heat. Let it heat up.
  4. Pour the batter into the frying pan. Then layer other things you like on top.
  5. Let it cook for a bit. Flip it when it looks right.
  6. Serve with condiments and toppings.

*We're using potatoes as a substitute for yamaimo (Japanese mountain yam), which is a traditional ingredient in okonomiyaki. This is because yamaimo is hard to find in the US. It's very much not recommended[1] by some recipes, but I think it's fine. Some people recommend doubling the amount of baking powder and adding 2 beaten egg whites instead.

Remember those fried eggs? You can mix it in with rice.

Egg fried rice is another one of those dishes that you can add anything to.

Tools:

Ingredients:

Instructions:

  1. Cook the rice in the rice cooker. Don't add too much water, but don't forget to wash it first.
  2. Put butter in the frying pan. Turn on the stove to medium heat. Let it heat up.
  3. Estimate how long it will take to cook each ingredient, and then add them to the pan in order. My order is usually bacon, rice, and then eggs.
    a. With bacon, you want to render the fat out first. Just cook it slowly at low heat with a splash of water. It'll crisp up eventually.
    b. With rice, you want to cook it in fat until it's a little crispy. I use the bacon grease from before. You can add oyster sauce and soy sauce once the rice is good.
    c. With eggs, you want to make a little pit in the rice, and let the eggs cook in there for a bit. Add salt to the eggs to give it a bit of a punch. Then you can mix it all together.

We're ready to try the NYT garlic noodles recipe!

I really love Kenji's garlic noodle recipe from the New York Times. It's simple and delicious.

Tools:

Ingredients:

Instructions:

  1. Put butter in the frying pan. Add a lot of garlic. Let it cook for a bit for flavor. Add sauce and stir. Remove from the heat.
  2. Boil water in a pot. Add the spaghetti. Stir. Cook around 2 minutes short of the package instructions.
  3. Add the spaghetti to the frying pan. Cook on high.

That's it! This is a very simple recipe. You can also add Parmesan cheese at step 3, or top it off with scallions at the end.

  1. "NEVER use this as a substitute! ... We're not making potato pancakes!" - Just One Cookbook ↩︎