5mo ago

What's your favorite quick, tasty, and healthy meal?

I used to own an instant pot. Those are great. I gave it away when I moved and now I just have a regular pressure cooker, which is also really great.

My quickest and easiest, but still yummy thing to make is chickpeas. I soak them overnight. Pick out the ugly ones. Drain the water. Barely cover them with fresh water (since they’ve already soaked, they don’t need tons of water). Then I heat the pot on high until I hear the pressure noise, switch it to low heat, and let it cook for 15-20 minutes. Then I turn off the heat and let the pressure out naturally.

Once they’re done I sometimes just eat a bowl of them with nothing more than olive oil and salt. Yum.

One of my other favorite dishes is a bit more elaborate but still simple and healthy: split pea soup. I don’t soak the peas but I do rinse them. I put them in the pressure cooker with a bay leaf, chopped garlic and onions, diced potatoes and carrots, and I'll cover the whole thing with a decent amount of water. Then, like the chick peas, I’ll let the pressure hiss, then put it on low heat for 15-20 minutes. I let the pressure naturally release.

Sometimes I’ll sautée even more onions and garlic in a separate pan with avocado oil on low heat for a while, until they look like they’re getting caramelized (fucking yum).

When the soup is done, I’ll remove the bay leaf, add the extra onions and garlic (if I did that step), add some salt, then use an immersion blender. It’s SUPER IMPORTANT to remove the bay leaf if you use an immersion blender.

Then when I eat it, I put a decent amount of olive oil and make sure the salt level is tasty. Even better if I have spicy olive oil around :)

61 comments

I'm assuming you're vegan?
If what you're looking for is a quick vegan dish, here's something I learnt in Japan - baked avocado.
Open a ripe avocado lengthwise and remove the seed. Take a sharp knife and cut a grid-like pattern into the avocado, going as deep as possible (careful not to puncture the skin!).
Now, pour some soy sauce of your liking (ideally not a thickened one, and with a moderate saltiness level) into the cavity. You don't want to fill it completely, that would be overpowering. Maybe about 1/3 of the depth, just enough to allow it to seep into every crevice when baking.
For the baking process itself, crumble up some tinfoil to make a stand for the avocado halves, you want them to remain as level as possible. Bake them on 350F / 175C for about 20-25 min, you want them to be soft but not burned.
Once done, decorate with sesame seeds and either spoon them out directly (that's the Japanese way) or spread on a toasted sourdough bread, sprinkle some smoked paprika and chopped chives & coriander over it, and enjoy.
Vegetarian option: Crack an egg into the cavity (on top of the soy sauce) 5 min into the bake. You want about 15 min left for solid eggwhites with a still semi-runny yolk. Mix it up and spread on bread.
Omnivore option: Fry some bacon beyond crispy, crumble it up completely, and drizzle the bacon bits on top.
- Wow my mouth is watering now...will try this when I get avocados. Thanks for enlightening me!
  
  Enjoy! It's really good stuff, hope you like it!
- This sounds fucking incredible, and I will be trying this as soon as I have avocados again.
- Dang that sounds good, this vegan is grateful to you.
- Just for you I dug out my book and found the URL!
  https://www.popsugar.com/fitness/node/30787252/print
  (Cert's expired, but it's legit.)
- This sounds amazing.
- Where do your avos come from? The ones I have access to are sad little things that won't accommodate a whole egg.
  
  Some local market, they are quite large. Think they are from Malaysia.

someone mentioned rice and beans but im going to specifically say rice and lentils. dry lentils will cook up with rice in a rice cooker along with the rice with no extra steps. just rinse the rice and dry lentils (or don't but uh, modern food can have some nasty chemicals) put in the cooker with the usual two cups of water for each cup of solids. Add anything handy you can for flavor be it seasoning or veg or sauces or whatever. Literally cannot think of a simpler meal to make and its ingredients don't need canning or refrigeration necessarily. Just need the rice cooker for convenience.

Rice and beans and in the instant pot with a pinch of Goya Adobo, maybe a bit of sour cream when it's done. Delish, cheap, easy, low cleanup, and good for ya.
- How do you do rice and beans together? I know I could GTS but I like people's personal take on things.
  
  (This makes 2 servings)
  I put one cup of dry beans (either pinto or black) in the pot with three cups of water and cook for ten minutes.
  Then I quick-release and add the seasoning and 1 cup of rice, and also usually a cup of frozen veggies, stir, and cook for fifteen minutes, followed by another quick-release. Dish into bowls and add sour cream, cheese, nutritional yeast, whatever you like.
  Takes about 40-45 minutes in total, but the vast majority of that is downtime that you can use for other things. Less than five minutes of actual prep/hands on time.

Banana

I make one massive salad with romaine, cucumber, and red pepper and keep it in a Tupperware, then dole it out one bowl at a time every day for a week and add a hard boiled egg, black olives, dressing, and chickpeas.
- Finely chopped celery and parsley, grated carrot, quartered baby tomatoes, drench in olive oil, a bit of white vinegar, and plenty of lemon.
- I do this too. Though instead of a hard-boiled egg, I like to fry one so the yolk is still a little runny, and put it on top.
  Recently, I've been making a vinaigrette with olive oil, vinegar, dijon mustard, salt/pepper, honey, and Lao Gan Ma spicy chili crisp. It's pretty damn good.

Poke bowls: rice seasoned with rice vinegar and soja sauce, cucumber, a fruit, chicken or smoked salmon cut in stripes, season with soja sauce or mayonnaise. One can get fancy with avocado, exotic fruits, tuna, whatever. Everything goes.
Cutting half a cucumber and a fruit is easy, slicing a package of salmon too, and one can consume chicken or meat leftovers. One can do all that meanwhile the white rice boils. Bonus points if you have a rice cooker.
- Is soja sauce the same as soy sauce? Google seems conflicted about it.
  
  Yes. In Germany it's called Soja sauce. Same thing.
  
  Yes, soy sauce. Typo :)
- Try it with sesame seasoning too! Tastes so good

Blackened shrimp or chicken burritos. Yes, shrimp. It's $16 for 2lbs. at Aldi, and it's quality meat. My wife and I get 4-8 meals for that, the rest amounts to about $2, if that.
Sear the tortillas (corn or flour, you do you) in butter or margarine for a few, throw it on the plate.
Fry up a few shrimp in a cast iron pan, drench in black spice to taste. (Black spice: Cayenne, chili powder, paprika, black pepper, salt, cumin, powdered garlic, onion powder, mix to taste and add whatever else you like. White pepper is the shit if you can afford it! Use the cheapest bulk crap you can buy at the ghetto grocery, nothing fancy or it will be too spicy, too many strong favors.)
Dice onions and chop some tomatoes, cheap lettuce if you like.
Throw your choice of shredded cheese on top of the cooked meat, pile on the rest of the ingredients.
Bring your own salsa, but I'd recommend something with a bit of acid like a tomato based sauce. Want it hotter? Much on some dehydrated chile árbol peppers (between bites!) from the Mexican store. Stupid cheap for a year's worth of heat.

Bell peppers & beef is my current favorite. It's as simple as browning some beef, putting rice in the ricecooker, and making a simple sauce to cook the peppers in.

Brussel sprouts, cut in half. Olive oil/butter, salt pepper garlic. Roast or fry. The best part is how they long they last in the fridge. Both cooked and uncooked.

I've been making overnight oats with chia seeds. Oats, oat milk, chia seeds, a little sugar. Stick it in the fridge for 2-12 hours. Chop up some bananas, blueberries, strawberries, really whatever fruit you want. Add sunflower seeds or some ground up pistachios and a bit of Greek yogurt. It's so freaking good, and so fast, and I can grab it whenever and eat while I study

Beans on toast.

Shakshouka! So easy, so tasty, so cheap, and can switch out basically any ingredient for whatever you have lying around! Worth looking up if you don't know it :)
- Damn, came here to recommend this and Chili Sin Carne.

Pizza.
That's not healt-
If I decide I want to live to be old enough to get dementia and have to wear a diaper, I'll let you know.

If you boil rice, just check some veg on top so it steams, then add seasoning when it's done. Bish bash bosh.

Beans and rice!

Oatmeal, add just water or use milk and add fruits.

Rice Burritos
Set up pot for loose Rice
Put the vegetables in the same pot and a bit extra water
Add Curry Paste
Cook like it says on the Rice
Maybe add Coconut milk
Put in Tortilla, maybe add some salad
3 minutes of vegetable peeling while the water starts to boil, 10 minutes of unsupervised boiling, maybe 5 minutes stirring. You only need to clean 1 pot, and it's cheap.

idk if this counts as cooking but arugla, sea salt, and half a lemon topped with real balsamic vinegar and hazelnuts if I got em and maybe a slice of parm. The key is real balsamic which can be hard to find in the states - it should have only 1 ingredient; grape must. Shit is delicious. I could eat it every day.
- Add some pear and you got yourself a restaurant salad.

Marry me chickpeas! https://www.noracooks.com/marry-me-chickpeas/
- These look delicious! I can’t wait to try them.
  
  So very good!

Pan-fried broccoli and almonds with a little bit of oil.

Beans, rice, and greens, using canned beans, is fast and feels so healthy to eat.
Grits with tuna was my mom's go-to and I love that too.
Expensive and too much packaging but the bagged salad kits, topped with a can of tuna, leftover chicken, garbanzo beans or a fried or boiled egg is also an occasional quick meal for us.

Cacio e Pepe doesn’t take much ingredient wise or timewise. Another fairly simple pasta dish I’ve been making a lot is kenjis San Francisco Vietnamese noodles. It’s pretty similar, just with a soy fish sauce mixture that’s added in
- Pasta isn't particularly healthy, but it's not bad in moderation.
  
  I wouldn’t think of it as unhealthy, especially with home prepped sauce/toppings. Though after posting this I did notice the call out for healthy specifically, which I would tend to think of more so as high fiber and or high vegetable dishes.
  Not necessarily quick, but low effort, I’d go with congee. Boil rice, roughly half a cup to 5 or 6 cups water, reduce to simmer until a velvety porridge . I usually do 1.5 or 2 cups at a time though, and have plenty of leftovers. Top with soy, fish sauce or what takes your fancy, and whatever roasted vegetables you want. Really you could add anything and not go wrong. Not necessarily quick , but low effort and pretty set it and forget it

Soondubu, doenjang jigae (I add gochujang for some spice). Both Korean soups.

Frozen veggie with curry sauce.
Takes les 5-10 minutes to prepare, Is tasty, adding curry is magic bullet to improve taste It's veggie, so pretty healthy

Tomato pasta.
Boil a pot of water, and add your pasta. In a separate pan/pot, throw some cherry tomatoes in with some olive oil and cook on a medium/high temp. The skin will char, and it breaks down the juice will come out. Add some.garlic (sliced, crushed, whatever suits), and after 30 seconds throw a splash of red wine in with a stock cube and let it reduce to a jammy consistency. As things get dry, add some of the pasta water to keep things jammy. Once the pasta is a minute from being done, throw it in with the sauce and cook until everything is done. Add some basil at this point if you want, and maybe some chilli. Lunch is done in 10 mins.
Another fave is Tomato and Pepper Soup. Cut some big tomatoes, an onion, and a pepper (equal numbers of these), along with some garlic cloves in their skins, and put in a ceramic container to go into the oven for 30-45 mins. Once done, blitz in/with a blender until smooth (make sure the garlic is out of the skins first), add some stock, and finish with some cream, and you're done. It's much slower, but takes maybe 5 mins of effort.

Garden peas / Petit pois. Stick em in a pot, add some vegetable stock, dump a can of chopped tomatoes in there, boil for 30 mins. Add maybe some rice and lentils.
I could eat that all day.

If I have to cook, ground beef burritos. I could make that in my sleep. Get some rice going in the rice cooker. Saute diced onions, add minced garlic when those are translucent and smell good, add the beef when the garlic smells good, add spices once the beef is mostly browned. I add lemon juice at the end to deglaze. Toss on a tortilla with some sour cream, a huge handful of chopped cilantro (no soapy taste here, just lemony freshness), the rice, and lots of home-canned salsa.
But really, if I want something quick, I'm not cooking. I love eating some crusty bread with hummus. I buy big bags ciabatta buns and keep them in the freezer. Just a few minutes in my air fryer and they come out basically freshly baked.

Premaking stuff thats easy to grab and eat is my preference. Chicken Salad, fruit salads, just in a bowl in the fridge and grab it when you want some. For something hot hard tacos are great. The shells take 3 minutes in a toaster oven to cook, and you can premake the taco meat be it chicken, beef, etc then toss some cheese, and pico de gallo on there and youve got a meal in under 10 mins. Just fruit in general too. Oranges, bananas, apples, grapes. Its easy to just grab when hungry for something small.

Dunno if it fits your definition of healthy, but here's what I like to prepare for lunch sometimes.
Choose one protein, either chicken, hard boiled eggs or a can of flaked tuna. In a mixing bowl, I add : chopped bell pepper, chopped sweet pickles, chopped green onion, some fruit like a chopped apple or grapes cut in half, chopped spinach, some feta cheese cut in small cubes, or mozzarella works too, and some sunflower seeds. At the end, add a spoon or cream cheese and mix everything together. Fill a pita bread with the mixture. And enjoy!

I have a 5 liter pot. I'll make a big batch of chili/stew/soup and freeze it in pint size containers. Right now I have portions of lentil soup and chili sitting in the freezer. It takes me five minutes to microwave.

Pho Ga (using chicken thighs), with various toppings and vermicelli rice noodles. Takes about 45 all in, if you're efficient, whilst being delicious and healthy.

I haven't done it, bit I believe that with a pressure cooker you don't need to soak the chickpeas.

Granny Smith apple

When I don't feel like proper cooking but want a half-decent(-ish) meal:
I begin frying sausages in a pan. As they're frying, I chop them up with the egg flip. Before they get actually cooked, I throw on a tin of tomatoes. Then I add basil, salt, pepper, curry powder... whatever's available and fits the mood. When the sausages are cooked (basically braised), I throw it onto a plate and eat it. Very quick and easy, fairly healthy (you can tweak it to make it healthier if that's your thing), and (when I get it right) tasty.

Salmon and asparagus. 😃

Pulao, I'm assuming Punjab-style: Brown half a chopped onion in oil in the pressure cooker, toss in some spices from the dabba to let them get fragrant, then add basmati rice and chopped veggies. Put the cover on, get it up to pressure for a couple of minutes, then natural release. Top with a couple spoonfuls of curd (yogurt), and it's delicious.

61 comments