My lazy meal is two ham and cheese sandwiches. When I have more time on my hands, I might make some ramen. The fanciest I’ll go is mac and cheese.

You want lazy onions? They sell bags of frozen, already chopped onions. Just throw them in the pan. They take longer to get cooked but not but much.

Add a bag of sliced, frozen bell peppers and you’ve got a base to start adding those frozen beef cheesesteak sheets. Slam some sliced American on it at the end and you’ve got a cheesesteak mix. (Please don’t kill me, Philly). Throw that on whatever bread you’ve got laying around. It’s lazy and fairly cheap (if you get the steakums at the discount grocery).

My go to lazy meal.

$5 Costco cooked rotisserie chicken. Pull the meat off the bones.

Frozen bell peppers/ onion mix

Fajita seasoning seasoning

1/2 cup Rice w/ a few spoonfuls of salsa, butter, add salt / pepper to taste

1 Can O beans.

Fry up the veggies w a little oil, add cooked chicken, season w fajita seasoning lightly, remove / put in a bowl.

In the same Pan as the chicken, cook the beans.

Takes like 10 minutes n u got fajitas with only 2 pans to clean. Can I make a way better version taking 5x as long? Certainly, but do I want to? Usually no.

You people put in a lot of effort. My lazy meal is a can of chicken (the kind you don’t have to use a can opener on) and as many raw vegetables and nuts as it takes.

If I want to put in some effort, pre cooked rice pouch, can of chicken, a can of vegetables, and a can of tomatoes. Anything more than that definitely isn’t lazy.

Lazy is relative.

Ordering food delivered is the laziest.

My go-to “lazy” meal is a Caesar salad with salmon. Wash the romaine lettuce leaves, stick them in a bowl. Add store-bought dressing (don’t make your own), store-bought croutons (don’t make your own), and grate some Parmesean cheese (less lazy than using pre-grated, but it loses flavor too quickly for the pre-grated stuff to be worth the money). Salt & pepper the salmon fillets, add some flour. Melt some ghee in a pan on medium-high, sear the salmon for 3m30s/side (start with the skin side up).

The whole thing takes under 10 minutes. Some of you will complain this isn’t lazy, but look what I compare it to!

My least lazy meal is a meat lasagna.

White Sauce

1.5l milk
1 onion, thickly sliced
3 bay leaves
3 cloves
100g butter (clarified butter or ghee works too)
100g plain (all purpose) flour
3g grated nutmeg
2g salt
2g MSG (not traditional, but Uncle Roger would be disappointed if you skipped it in any savory dish)
5g black pepper
5g long pepper (older style, predates the introduction of black pepper to Italy. More aromatic, less pungent, can skip)

Meat Sauce

45ml (3tbsp) olive oil
2 celery sticks, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, peeled & crushed
140g cubetti di pancetta or guanciale
500g beef mince
500g pork mince
2x 400g cans chopped tomato
200ml milk
2 bay leaves
1 rosemary sprig
2 thyme sprigs
1.5g dried oregano
2 beef stock cubes
500ml red wine
2g salt
2g MSG

Lasagna

about 400g dried lasagna sheets
50g Parmesean, finely grated

Steps:

Start the white sauce. Put the milk, onion, bay leaves, and cloves into a saucepan and bring very gently just up to a boil. Turn off the heat and set aside. Grind the salt, MSG, black pepper, and long pepper together into a fine powder in a mortar and pestle.

Start the red sauce. Put the oil, celery, onion, carrot, garlic, and pancetta or guanciale into a large pot. Gently cook together until the vegetables are soft but not changing color. Add the beef & pork mince, the milk, and the chopped tomatoes. Using a wooden spoon, stir together and break up the lumps of mince against the sides of the pan. When it’s mostly broken down, stir in all the herbs, the stock cubes, and the red wine. Cover and cook for 1 hour, stirring occasionally to stop the bottom from catching.

Uncover the red sauce and let it gently simmer for another 30 minutes to 1 hour until the meat is tender & saucy. Taste & season as desired.

To finish the white sauce, strain the milk through a fine sieve into a temporary container. Using the same pan, melt the butter and then, using a wooden spoon, mix in the flour and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in the strained milk gradually. It will thicken at first to a doughy paste, but keep going slowly adding milk to avoid lumps. Bring to a gentle simmer, stirring constantly (if you have lumps whisk it to break them up). Cook a few minutes until thickened. Season with salt, MSG, black pepper, long pepper, and nutmeg.

Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/gas 4. Spread a spoonful of the meat sauce on the base of a roughly 3.5l baking dish. Cover with a single layer of pasta sheets, snapping them to fit if needed, then top with a quarter of the white sauce. Spoon over a third of the meat sauce & scatter over some Parmesean. Repeat the layers—pasta, white sauce, meat sauce, and Parmesean—two more times to use all the meat sauce. Add a final layer of pasta, the last of the white sauce, and the remaining Parmesean. Sit the dish on a baking sheet to catch any spills and bake for 1 hour until bubbling, browned, and crisp on top.

Do the dishes while the lasagna bakes.

Serve the lasagna.

That takes about an hour for the mise en place, and around 3 hours 10 minutes for cooking, total 4 hours 10 minutes. That makes it a weekend-only meal.

“Lazy” is relative.

Some people are just so fast at cooking. My roommate makes the same food in a quarter of time I need and I guess it comes down to me spending so much time confused and doing unnecessary things.

A lazy meal must have at most two items to clean up, including the cutlery

[Camera fade in on a full-body shot of me standing in my kitchen, my hands tented smartly in front of me.]

Hi everyone, welcome back to my food channel. You don’t want to cook a full balanced meal every night, sometimes you just want something quick! So today I wanted to show everyone my go-to lazy meal.

[I rip open a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips with my teeth and just start pouring them vertically into my mouth. Many of the chocolate chips do not go into my mouth, they just fall straight down, bouncing off the floor and out of frame. Some get caught in the folds of my clothing, occasionally rolling off onto the floor and bouncing out of frame. Most unsettling are the ones that fall into my mouth and then are carried out again by their own chaotic momentum, covered in microscopic flecks of my saliva, sticking to my shirt or splattering on the floor.]

[This continues for much longer than you’d think, as I empty the entire 1-pound bag without stopping.]

[I release the empty plastic bag, which drifts to the floor. The camera zooms in on my eyes, where tears are just starting to be visible. Fade out.]

My go to lazy meal (actually I have it everyday now). INSTANT oats + milk powder + peanut butter + hot water + mix TF outta it. Gains for days baby 💪🍼

Edit: I’m so lazy that I use one spoon to first transfer the oats to the bowl, then the milk powder, and only then the peanut butter. Use the same spoon to mix and eat. Only wash the spoon and bowl later 😆

Lazy meal example for me:

In the morning, frozen diced potatoes, frozen diced onions, frozen crinkle carrots, frozen stew meat, liquid campells stew seasoning, toss all of it in a slow cooker… turn it on (for extra laziness, use a slow cooker bag so you don’t have to clean it after).

At dinner, spoon it into bowls (or if I feel fancy and like putting some effort in, hollow out some bread bowls), eat.

Then the next day throw it in the microwave for two minutes, eat it again for lunch. Do it again for dinner. Cumulative work is about 10 minutes for three meals, and the only dishes are your bowls and spoons (if you used a slow cooker bag).

Being a bachelor, I often chop an onion and end up with like 4 or 5 meals worth of onion chops, so a lot of “lazy meals” are “get some chopped onion out of the fridge.”

Here’s my go go lazy meal:

*drinks water*

Sriracha, mayo, bread, nooch

Chopping one onion is hard? That’s maybe a minute of work to add a lot of flavor. I don’t generally do that for lunch, but I’ll absolutely chop up a couple of baby carrots, chop a couple green onions, scramble an egg or two, and mix it in as I fry up some leftover rice. Add some soy sauce, a few spices, and you’ve got some serious flavor with 5-10 minutes of work.

The hardest part of that is having leftover rice on hand.

“this simple meal only requires about 5 minutes of prep work”

Proceeds* to list off atleast half an hours worth of shit to do prior to cooking