What's some easy recipes that only use non-perishables?
I'm getting really tired of my food expiring before I make anything with it, and I want to quit buying anything that can't be frozen or last several months in the cupboard.
Not specific answers for recipes, more of here's some fundamental ideas look online, so for example if I said flour, water, yeast, salt that is bread. Remove yeast you have crackers. Add baking soda you have soda crackers. Add olive oil, you have pizza dough exct.
Flour
Water
Beans
Oats
Nuts
Wheat Gluten
Oil
Dried fruit
Dehydrated vegetables
Sugar
Salt
Rice
Oats
Peanutbutter
Jelly
Tyme or other spices
Lentils
Corn meal
Baking soda
Vinegar
Baking powder
Yeast
Coffee
Tea
Dehydrated meat?
Now, I don't know your situation but if you need food and you are in a financial bind not just looking for stuff that doesn't expire. Check out your local food bank/pantry. There's no shame in that.
Personally I do a lot of canning and foraging for things. So food storage is pretty important. I don't buy a lot of groceries. There are a lot of options for long lasting food, but too many to share.
I definitely would look up homesteading and some recipes from that.
Ah, I'm not doing this because of money or anything. I'm just getting frustrated whenever I buy an onion for a recipe, and it goes squishy before I can actually cook the thing. If I can get rid of all the stuff like that from my diet, then I'll be happy.
Thanks for the homesteading suggestion, though. I'll keep that in mind when I'm searching for recipes online. That community might also have some nice tips for how to live like this.
Canned milk, jarred tomato sauce or pesto, pasta, frozen vegetables, frozen shrimp or chicken. Cheese lasts a while and you can put it in the freezer if you don't care about texture (such as for cheese sauce). Whole wheat pasta is a while grain and decently healthy and significantly more filling than white pasta. You can make white sauce or mac and cheese with the canned milk.
Most meat can be frozen when packaged without fair (look for tubes instead of flat packages). Flash frozen vegetables are pretty good. You can also portion and package meats for the freezer yourself, it just takes a while and you may want to get a vacuum sealer.
Dry whole grains and dry beans or legumes are the good basis for vegetarian diets, and together will make a whole protein. Just don't forget B12 or also eat meat. Both whole grains and legumes go bad after about a year on the shelf but will last much longer in the fridge or freezer (depending on how bulk you are buying). Oils will also go rancid eventually, especially olive oil or sesame, I keep those in the fridge too but they will last a few years like that.
I want to note that non-whole grains last longer, such as white rice or white flour, due to the oils and proteins (and most of the nutrients) removed.
Soups and stews can be made in advance, portioned for a few meals and frozen. You can use meat, beans, canned tomato for chili. Lentil soup doesn't always need much else aside from stock and seasoning.
If you make or buy fresh bread, you can let it completely cool, then slice it, then put it in as air tight a bag as you can and freeze it. This is great for toast but not as great for sandwiches. You can do the same with bagels, defrosting them in the microwave until still cold and then put them in the toaster. Frozen bagels make for decent sandwiches, maybe because they are already supposed to be chewy.
A soup portion with a side of grain or bread is pretty filling and delicious.
You can probably freeze Burger buns and treat them as I've described bagels, using them for burgers. Pickles are jarred and last a long time in the fridge.
"American cheese" lasts a very long time in the fridge. Unwashed eggs lasts about a month out of the fridge and a few months in the fridge. Use some frozen sausage for breakfast sandwiches.
Frozen vegetables usually have a slightly cooked texture, so cooking them is better. Roasted broccoli or cauliflower from frozen is pretty good. Served with a side of beans and rice with a baked chicken breast from frozen and that's a big delicious healthy meal. Don't forget to season and maybe use hot sauce.
Spam musubi is a popular snack in Hawaii that's also entirely pantry food. I love spam but not everyone does; if you want pantry meals though chances are you would be okay with it.
Vegetarian chili. Chick peas, various beans, tomatoes, and a jar of spaghetti sauce. Get some frozen precut onions and sweet corn, or whatever you're into. Good standby meal, takes 20 minutes to put everything together and it tastes even better left over.
Season with garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, and chili powder. Add a little brown sugar (or white) as well to cut the acidity.
Stick the water and frozen stuff in a pan and bring to the boil, stick the rice in and bring back to the boil with the lid on, boil for one minuite and turn the hob off/take off the heat and don't move the lid. Don't touch it for fifteen minuites. Fluff and serve
Thankfully most spices are shelf stable so as long as you find some spices you like you're also good for years. I personally couldn't live without cumin or garlic powder.
Lentil soup. The only fresh ingredient is the greens (and you can freeze them to use later). The finished soup can be frozen.
2 cups black beluga lentils (or green French lentils), picked over and rinsed
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
1 28- ounce can crushed tomatoes
2 cups water
3 cups of a big leafy green (chard, kale, etc), rinsed well, deveined, finely chopped
Boil the lentils for 20 minutes, drain and set aside.
Saute the onion until soft
Add everything else except for the greens; bring to a simmer
Stir in the greens and cook for another couple of minutes
Casseroles are what you want for the long shelf life plan. Most are ground meat and canned/frozen vegetables/soup. Most also freeze well, so you could pre make and reheat them when you want them, especially if you don't want to spend a week eating the same casserole. You can get a bit more variety than just pasta and sauce or Mac and cheese this way.
Most every ingredient in bread (cake, cookies, pancakes, etc) can be stored long term if you want to just make bread when you need it, but that is a lot of effort.
Vegetarian chili - canned or dry beans and lentils, tomato sauce, canned veggies if you want. It's versatile enough that you can make it differently every time.
Since you're open to frozen, you can cook almost everything. Applebees entire menu almost starts frozen.
There's relatively few things in the culinary world that cannot be frozen. It's like, a really small list. Like, you're not really supposed to freeze bread, it does change it a little. But you can. And you won't notice the difference in french toast or a panini.
It seems pretty limiting from my perspective. Can't use milk or eggs or cheese, and most dipps don't freeze either. Can't use lettuce, most vegetables and fruit become tasteless as soon as their frozen, and bread can only be frozen once or twice before it becomes inedible, and it takes two full days to thaw each time.
Most of my diet is noodles of various kinds, soups, and frozen meals.
What would you suggest? Applebee's doesn't operate in my area, and I've never been to one. What kinds of food would work?
Is this the US we're talking about? And what kinds of foods do you like?
You're right that there is a list of things that cannot be frozen, ingredient-wise. But when you compare the size of the list of things that can be frozen vs cannot be, you will find the "can be" list is many, many times larger. While clearly you will still need some non-frozen things, milk and lettuce are excellent examples, these are the exceptions, not the rule.
You can cook almost everything. If its a food dish (just about), you can make it from 98% non-perishables. So, we're gonna have to narrow it down here unless you just want me to start listing the worlds foods one by one.
I agree with beans & rice, that is the framework for a million great meals.
Whole canned tomatoes are very helpful to have around. Also canned coconut cream and the little cans of curry paste.
Triscuits crackers and nuts are good things to have on hand if you need snacks with calories.
If you are willing to buy lemons, oils, spices, and onions and garlic, you will be able to have a very vibrant and delicious healthy diet with canned or dried beans, canned tuna and sardines, canned tomatoes.
Most recipes can actually be made from non perishables. Meat can almost always be easily frozen and you can either buy frozen veg or cut some up to throw in a freezer bag. Additionally you can use canned veggies too. You can also freeze minced garlic and ginger in ice cube trays as well.
For cheeses you can buy them pasteurized so they remain sterile until opened. You can also sterilize a lot of things very easily. Put food into a glass jar, boil in the microwave and cap very tightly (it's gonna be hot!). Make sure on the lid that the center has sucked inwards so you know there's a vacuum. If it hasn't then it's not gas tight and will mold.
For fresh herbs try to put the stem in a small cup of water if possible. If you find the herbs going bad then chop them up and let them dry in open air on a sheet, put into a spice bottle and use later.
There are some videos about freezing your ingredients, and food by Ethan Chlebowski on YouTube.
Oh and if you really want to go crazy you can get a can of nitrogen gas. If you have any dry ingredients in the pantry that go stale or taste oxidized you can fill an air tight bag with nitrogen gas. You can also do this with dry spices and an air tight spice jar. Otherwise spices will lose their flavor overtime and after 6 months or so you're basically sprinkling dust on your food
Yah, pasta is such a great dish. It lasts forever and you can use it in so many ways. Most of my diet is just variations on the typical "pasta with sauce" formula.
An easy way to add some vitamins and fiber, buy a bag of frozen broccoli cuts or other cut veggies and throw some in the boiling water when your pasta is almost done. When they froze it they cooked it a little, so you're really just heating it up while your pasta finishes cooking. Use a rubber band or something to close the bag if you're only using part of it. You can do this with frozen peas, cauliflower, green beans, or other veggies, but not soybeans/edamame! They have to be cooked separately to be sure they're fully cooked, or they can make you sick.
Unlike canned, frozen vegetables retain the nutrients of fresh. And you're not opening the drawer to find they've gone moldy.
I'm having a hard time figuring out, if these exist elsewhere, but over here, I can buy dried soy shreds, which are really great for pasta.
Here's a product I can buy over here, to give you an idea.
So, those are roughly meatball-shaped. There's also smaller one's which kind of work in sauces like minced meat.
They don't taste like meat, more like wheat, but they give you the same protein and chewiness and can be kept in a cupboard basically until the end of time.
(although the latter only if you don’t take it out of the jar).
I mean that is true for most (all?) non-perishable food. If you treat it in the wrong way you can make it spoil faster. Otherwise it probably wouldn't be digestible at all.
If you're willing to spend a weekend making, ramen stock freezes very well in pieces.
The stock goes into the plastic soup containers, the meat can be bagged and frozen, many veggies work well frozen (thinking corn), I buy seaweed chips for the nori, the noodles are also bought frozen, and all that's left is an egg to prepare.
Basically anything canned or dry would last for long. Stuff like pasta or dry vegetable would last for long. Canned vegetable also (but some taste pretty bad), Wine and beer also last for a while. (Now I can recommend a recipe of pasta with canned mushroom and a white wine sauce, should almost be good)
Rice, beans (canned or dried - dried lasts "forever" basically), canned or tinned meats or dried meats. Most hot sauces (Louisiana). Pasta. Pasta with 'tinned' sauces. etc.