It depends on how much are you willing to use pre-prepared ingredients. There is a huge variety of quality frozen dumplings where I live, the instructions are - boil for 10 minutes, and done!

Veggie Pasta, serves 2:

6oz Fusilli or similar pasta 4oz Fresh Mozzarella cut into bite sized pieces, or buy the pearl sized version. 1.5 cups your favorite tomato sauce. I make a maranara for it, but you can use store bought if you want. 1 red onion diced 2 med carrots diced 1 celery stalk diced 4oz bacon chopped Parmesan Regianno for serving. (Not the crap in the green can, get the real stuff.)

Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain in a colander.

Cook bacon in a skillet to desired doneness, save a tablespoon or so of the grease after cooking. Remove to paper towel lined plate. Sample bacon to make sure it’s OK.

In now empty skillet add the onion, carrots and celery. Cook till all veggies are softened. Sample bacon to make sure it’s OK.

Add sauce and reserved bacon to skillet to the veggies. Be sure to sample bacon before adding back to the skillet, to make sure it’s OK. Once the sauce is heated, add the pasta and fresh mozzarella to sauce and veggies. Once warmed through divide between two plates. Serve with the Parmesan at the table.

I make this dish for my wife and I several times a month. It’s about 30 minutes from getting everything out to cut, to putting it on the table depending on your knife skills.

Wraps are usually just “Tortilla, protein, and whatever you can throw on it” and can be made in seconds with no planning

I just riff on

• Genmai (japanese short grain brown rice)
• protein (I cook 1 or 2 types to last me the week)
• some veg (your choice, frozen or fresh)
• freshly-shredded cheese
• some kind of sauce. Sriracha is the thing of choice recently

Cook the meat in advance with whatever spices. Same for the veg. I just microwave the protein+veg; add sauce, cheese, and rice; and then eat

Chickpeas, mushrooms, tomato paste, taco seasonings, fat of your choice (butter if you aren’t vegan)

Bake the chickpeas and then smash them, mince the mushrooms. Bring together and sautee in olive oil with tomato paste, seasonings, incorporating your fat. Add salt to taste.

Makes a fantastic taco filling. Garnish with whatever you like.

For breakfast, which I usually either skip or do leftovers or whatever:

I don’t know what to call this:

Ingredients:

• eggs

• cooked white (brown probably works too) rice (I usually have it with leftover rice rather than fresh cooked)

• sweet chili sauce (I usually use Mae Ploy)

Amount of ingredients used can vary depending on taste or amount available. I usually use 2 eggs per person as that’s how I was taught. I also never measure amount of rice used or sauce either. Just use however much looks good so I have enough of all 3 ingredients to go together.

Instructions:

0. Make rice if you don’t have leftovers

1. Scramble eggs. Don’t season

2. Add eggs to rice

3. Add sauce to taste

4. Mix and enjoy

Though, I also know a pretty good non-meat pulled-pork recipe as well, for a decent dinner. Don’t know whether I could call it vegan or vegetarian or what because it requires BBQ sauce.

Ingredients:

• Jackfruit (I used to be able to go to a shop nearby to find cans of flavorless jackfruit in brine, but I think they stopped selling them sadly. You want the flavorless stuff)

• BBQ sauce (of your choice. Make sure you get enough to cover all the “meat”)

• Buns

Instructions:

0. If you got canned stuff in brine, strain it

1. Shred the jackfruit in a bowl

2. Add BBQ sauce to jackfruit

3. Mix together to give it the taste of the BBQ sauce

4. Heat and serve on buns (I usually just heat it in the microwave for a couple minutes or so, so it’s heated through)

I absolutely love that jackfruit recipe because both my older brother and dad love it. They’re picky eaters who would absolutely never eat it again if they knew it wasn’t actually meat.

3 Envelope/Packet Roast https://lmld.org/three-envelope-roast/

While optimally you’d use a slow cooker for this, you could also figure out how to do slow and low in an oven without too much fuss if that’s all you’ve got.

Jar of curry sauce, can of coconut milk, sliced potatoes, sliced onions, and some kind of protein sliced. Also cooking oil, but I never really see that as an ingredient, it’s part of like, salt, pepper, spices, etc.

Slice ingredients into thin strips, cook in oil (or whatever fat) until things are softer. Add curry sauce, add coconut milk, then simmer until fully cooked. Serve over rice if you have some. Or over pasta. Or just eat. Can add more ingredients if you want.

Honey Sriracha Chicken (bulk recipe, but scales well if you want to make a smaller batch)

5 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs or breasts

1 cup Sriracha

1 cup honey

1/4 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup lime juice

Throw all ingredients in crockpot for 4 hours on high or 6-8 hours on low. Shred. Makes absolutely bomb tacos. It also makes quite a bit of sauce; I like to use the extra to cook rice to have with.

Lazy enchiladas

2 cans refried beans

1 can chili (or roughly equivalent amount homemade chili if you’ve got it on hand)

1 lrg can enchilada sauce

8-10 medium Tortillas

Combine

1 bag shredded cheese

Optional - diced green chilis, tajin, garlic powder

Combine chili, beans, and optional ingredients if using. Put a couple heaping spoonfuls in each tortilla and roll like a burrito. Put in lightly greased casserole dish. Pour on enchilada sauce and top with cheese. Bake at 350 F until bubbling and cheese is starting to brown. If you’ve got sour cream on hand, top w sour cream. Tasty, cheap, and stupid filling.

Do you have a crockpot? If so, there are many.

My favorite is the classic Mississippi pot roast:

• 2-4lb pot roast (it’s a beef cut, “bottom round roast” or “chuck roast” work great)
• Half stick of butter cut into chunks to spread them out
• Packet of ranch dressing seasoning
• Packet of au jus gravy seasoning
• Pepperoncini peppers from the jar, and some of the liquid if you want

Crockpot low for 6 hours then shred and eat however you want. So you have to plan in advance but the prep itself takes 60 seconds.

Chicken Teriyaki

Ingredients

• Chicken thighs with skin on

Teriyaki sauce

Equal parts:

• Sake (buy the cheapest one you can find)
• Low sodium soy sauce
• White sugar

Instructions

1. Mix the sauce. I typically make a lot of the sauce and put it into a squeeze bottle.
2. Butterfly the chicken thighs
3. Heat a large pan on medium high heat. Add chicken with skin side down. Cook flipping occasionally until chicken is golden and skin is crispy.
4. Coat the chicken with teriyaki sauce. Add more sauce as necessary. You want the sauce to become thick and shiny.
5. Move chicken to a cutting board and let sit for about a minute.
6. Cut chicken into strips and serve over rice.

Bowl, spoon, cereal, milk

Marinara Ingredients: Oil Onions Crushed tomatoes Italian seasoning Pasta (+water for cooking) Instructions: Make pasta according to instructions, sauté onions in pan, add tomatoes and seasoning, simmer for a bit, add pasta noodles. Tasted better than anything pre made, easy to make right for beginners, and can grow with your skill. Add toppings like cheese, replace pasta water with chicken stock, add a bay leaf, add a dash of sugar and a little sliver of butter… I didn’t include garlic because of minimizing ingredients and the onion is more important for texture but garlic (fresh minced or bought in the little jars) can go a long way to improving this.

Lemon basil pasta Ingredients: Lemon juice (fresh squeezed is great in the winter, but honestly just a bottle of it works fine. Obviously you get the quality you pay for) Butter Pasta (+water for cooking) Basil Onion Instructions: Add butter to pan, melt it up till it’s all bubbly and delicious, add onions and sauté. Once those are nice and soft, add pasta noodles, basil and lemon juice. Pro tip: add a little of the water from your pasta. The starches help thicken the sauce. Just like a tablespoon at a time. Or don’t and it’s still good.

This one’s also easy to make, improved by garlic and chicken stock, and can grow with you. I like to add asparagus, bell pepper, garlic and sometimes finish it off with some arugula and fresh grated parm.

Better instant noodles Ingredients: Instant ramen packet Egg Green onion Tofu (or a protein of your choice, I like tofu) Instructions: Take a ramen packet, cook in a shallow pan with a little less of the water. Cube or thinly slice your tofu, slice your green onion how you like and add it on top. Once noodles soften, crack an egg on top, place a lid on the pan and turn the heat down a bit. Cook until the egg is the doneness you like. Eat directly out of the pan over the stove at 4am like a goblin.

Idk if you count salt and pepper as ingredients but I would recommend cooking with both.

Happy cooking!

Macaroni & Cheese can be made with just macaroni and cheese… But it’ll be really crunchy if you don’t also use water to boil the macaroni before adding the cheese.

Black bean tacos: Can or two of black beans Taco seasoning Water Tortilla of your preferred size and material

Mix seasoning, water, and beans Cook to reduce Put on tortillas

You can get fancy if you’d like. Sour cream, cheese, noodles, and salsa are favorites in my house