5 Random Things I Prep to Survive the Week

all right so over the last decade of some pretty intensive home cooking just naturally I've created these little hacks and types of preparations that give me almost a leg up as a home cook and these certainly aren't things you're going to be learning say in a culinary school because their true home cooking survival skills so today what I'm going to be doing is showing you five of my favorites that I continue to use on a weekly basis that give me the ability to pump out endless meals at home all right up first one of my favorite little cooking cheat codes is just having pre-cooked beans or legumes in your fridge and we're not talking about the canned stuff because when you get the canned stuff one the flavor is just not going to be as good as freshly cooked and two the texture generally going to be a little more mushy out of a can which is fine for some uses but not as dynamic as a home cooked Bean when you can control the texture and I'll show you why right now so of course you can do this with any type of dried Bean or legume product two of my favorites are chickpeas and white beans just go-to's over the years for me and the first thing we have to do is soak them and just a reminder these are going to expand a lot so I'm just going to fill up the jar container about a third or a quarter of the way and then just cover the rest of the container with water and let them soak for at least six hours but I'll just let these go overnight in my refrigerator for 24 hours and boom now they are fully hydrated and ready to be cooked so I'll just take out a pot first I'll pour in the chickpeas and just add a little extra water turn the heat on a medium and this is an important reminder from my own personal experience to not forget that lid because you're cooking these beans for around 30 minutes you're going to lose a lot of moisture and I've forgotten to let a few times in my past leading to an absolutely scorched and just demolished pan you do not want that so just make sure the lid's on there and I will set the timer for 30 minutes so these chickpeas have been cooking for exactly 30 minutes and you can see they're not breaking apart at all some of them have lost this little outer shell which is totally fine but really the point of success that I'm going for is when they're keeping their shape like this but they're still like if I push it that's still tender it's going to break apart still pretty easily and then of course tender to taste so I'm just going to turn the heat off you can save all this chickpea liquid of course and make things out of it during in them and then just package them up there you go lots of fun things we can do with these now same thing goes for these beans right here and you can see there is a very thin line between overcooked and tender even some of these are starting to break apart just a little bit so I could have pulled it maybe five minutes earlier I'll drain these off as well and it's just impossible to get beans like this in a can they just don't exist at least I haven't found them I mean those are good just plain honestly so good so much flavor and once you have your cooked beans or legumes they're gonna stay fresh in your fridge for at least four or five days just like if you were to open a can and pop that in your fridge and now comes the fun part which is finding ways to use them and it won't be hard trust me when they're in your fridge you will find ways a few of my favorites are just sprinkling them on a salad especially in the winter when you're down like fresh ingredients this can really help bulk up a salad and make it nice and Hearty of course adding them to a soup or stew or Curry is another great use but it's great that they are already pre-cooked and tender because you can do it towards the end when you know the flavor of whatever you're making is perfect so you just add them and cook it for another five ten minutes and you're good to go another excellent use that I do all the time is roasting or air frying specifically with chickpeas because now that they are tender but still firm if you season them up with some spices and some salt add a little bit of oil throw them in the air fryer they're going to get super crispy on the exterior but have a really nice tender interior which is really a great product and a perfect snack and finally I'm not sure who this will be relevant for having them in the fridge is super helpful for my life when I have two little kids and I need just a quick little meal so I could take the beans and just smash them up maybe add some yogurt boom you've got a nice little protein heavy and flavorful baby meal now my second cooking cheat code that is an absolute Game Changer something I'm calling an aromatic paste now this kind of plays in between a really simple ginger garlic paste that you would see in India and something more complex from Southeast Asia like a true curry paste it's basically just a ground up paste of the aromatics that I either have or I can find in the markets that I use to flavor up so many different meals so having said that use up whatever aromatics you can find or that you already have just like sitting in your fridge or your pantry I'm using some ginger garlic turmeric green onion and I've got a little chili paste because I couldn't find fresh chilies this time of year and I wanted some spice for the ginger and turmeric I just roughly took off some of the skin I'm fine with leaving a bit of that on and then for the green onion I'll just chop that up sticking more towards the actual bulby part the white area and I'll peel a few cloves of garlic really just trying to get equal amounts of everything there's no perfect ratio here we're just trying to get a ton of flavor in this paste now this is my spice grinder right here which cost me like twenty dollars it actually comes with a blending attachment for softer foods that aren't just hard spices and it works great for this but you can of course use a pestle mortar or a mini food processor both going to work great I'm going to add all the aromatics in and just a hit of that chili paste and just grind this up until it's a paste but honestly you can leave it a little rough as well almost like you were just chopping all of these ingredients by hand and now that we have intense aromatic flavor at the palm of our hands ready to go what do we do as the quest question well here are some of my personal favorite options number one I mean you can't go wrong with the coconut curry you've seen this many times on the channel I just fried up some onions and some fat until they were nice and caramelized then I went in with that aromatic paste I always recommend if you cook this down a little bit and remove some of those raw flavors caramelize those flavors you're going to get so much more flavor in your Curry and then I added some coconut milk cooked that down a bit I added a little bit of stock and this is a great just simple base coconut curry we're actually going to customize it a little bit later on with one of these other cheat codes another great option is making an aromatic fried rice all I did was dump a little oil in a wok add in my rice add in a nice spoonful of that aromatic paste and just cook that until everything breaks apart and it starts coating all of that rice and you're gonna start smelling things as you stir fry this those aromatic flavors are really going to come alive and start to season that rice and then of course if you want to go step further further you can just fry up a little egg in there you can add any veggie you want to customize this and then a little bit of green onion and you see this in a lot of Middle Eastern and Asian culture some type of aromatic rice just a good way to keep things exciting rather than just serving plain rice and then you can also just use this as a marinade I've got some chicken thighs right here with the skin on they're already deboned and I just slice them right in half I'll add a dollop of that paste just a little bit of vinegar to tenderize the chicken and a little bit of oil and just mix that up and add it to the chicken thigh and let that marinate overnight and then I recommend grilling those up if you can or frying them in a pan for fantastic flavorful protein option so the potato has to be pound for pound one of the most used ingredients in the kitchen we're all rumbling through a lot of potatoes but in my opinion a potato that is pre-cooked or parboiled is actually more versatile than a potato in its raw form or at least it's just easier to put to use so what I love doing when I do have some time is just pre-cooking potatoes and you'll see why in just a second so of course for this you can use any type of potato you want I've got a few russets here and I'm going to peel them which I think personally opens up a few more options with meals but you can leave the skin on if you want and then I'll slice them in half and then just slice them in Ace just like this and then I'll fill up a pot with water bring that up to a gentle boil and add my potatoes and just cook them for around 10 to 12 minutes all right so these have been cooking for just about 12 minutes on this gentle boil now you don't want them too mushy because then they'll just fall apart and you can't make fries eyes with them but if they're just slightly tender like that fork inserts in there but they're holding together that to me is a great stage for versatility I'm gonna turn this off dump off this liquid and we can just let these cool back and pan like that so once they're tender and ready to go I'll just package those up for the week and they're good in your fridge for a few days and of course the most obvious option are french fries now that we have these par cooked potatoes and that's exactly what I'm gonna do for option one because I do it all the time so I'll take those potato wedges I'll coat them in some oil a little bit of salt and pepper and some oregano and I'll air fry those at around 400 for about 10 to 15 minutes until they are perfectly crispy now another great option of just having pre-cooked potatoes is adding them to again a soup a stew a curry so that same soup from before that I added the chickpeas well throw some potatoes in there and really make it nice and Hearty and again you don't have to worry about this soup cooking for a super long period of time you've already done a lot of that work and these are all just go-to options for me but believe me once you have things prepped like this you'll just start thinking of magical ideas as they come to you when you open your fridge so for me that's exactly what happened I saw some potatoes left over in the fridge and I figured I would make some type of little fried up potato pancake thing so I just mashed up those potatoes a little bit added some egg added some spices and fried them up these prepped items are really going to work like a launch pad for your creativity so this next one is similar to the last another really simple concept but for me is an absolute Game Changer which is just having some steamed veggies on hand let me show you right so you can see got the potatoes it's just nice having options that are ready to go that aren't going to take long but specifically with the steamed veggies my favorite is broccoli it steams up so well and having this in my fridge as you can see I don't have much right now a lot of meals will be influenced by just some steamed broccoli let me give you a few examples so first we have to steam the broccoli and to prep it I'm just going to cut off all the florets and any of the big ones I'll just cut right in half so they're even with the smaller ones and then I'll take the stems and just start slicing it and turning it at the same time so you get somewhat even chunks of broccoli stem which is delicious and I basically just keep chopping until I start feeling some resistance with the knife and that's a good sign that it's just going to be too tough to steam then I'll get a pot on with just a little bit of water on the bottom I've got a steaming basket you can just boil or blanch your broccoli as well but for me this is the quickest and most efficient since you don't have to heat up a bunch of water so I'm just going to cook this broccoli for about three minutes that's really all you need and for me I'm going for that perfect Al Dente where you can Pierce through the broccoli but there's still a little bit of resistance because it's home Cooks we want maximum versatility so it's got to be cooked through so we can potentially use it in its raw form but also we don't want to cook it too long because say we have to stir fry it we don't want it turning mushy on us so you just want to hit that nice tenderness Middle Ground now remember that Curry from earlier on I said this was just a perfect base but having some steamed broccoli like this on hand we can just toss that right in there cook it for like one or two more minutes the flavors already build in the curry and now you've really leveled up your Curry and you've added a nice veggie if I've got some tomato sauce on hand and I'm building out a nice sauce for pasta I love having a veggie option like this to just throw in at the end again to just bulk it up a little bit add a little bit of nutrition and again for anyone who has kids out there a great option is throwing some broccoli in a food processor with a little bit of soft cheese I'm using ricotta a little bit of lemon juice Blend this up actually you don't need kids for this I'll dip some crackers in that or that's a really nice sandwich spread but it does make good baby food or just kids food in general all right we're going outside for this last one because I want to show you a project I'm working on plus it's really nice out it's like 55 degrees in Feb so this last one might be the easiest thing to prep of all actually I know it's the easiest one which is just pre-soaking rice noodles and having them in your fridge sounds almost dumb but trust me it will change the game for you because the easiest way to ruin rice noodles is to not pre-soak them and just like throw them in some boiling water or soup and they're going to turn Super mushy and clumped together you do not want that so I've got a package of rice noodles right here I'm Gonna Save half because I don't need all of these rice noodles and I'll pop them in a bowl with some water now your rice noodles will take at least an hour to hydrate but you can leave them in water for many hours and it will be totally fine and once they're fully hydrated and pliable you'll drain off that water throw the rice noodles in a Ziploc bag or a food container and they'll be good in your fridge for a few days with the goal of using them up in incredible double dishes like this so I'm going to make a little noodle stir fry and shout out to this home cured guanchali that I've been working on I'm gonna take a piece of this slice it up and throw that into a wok get that rendering off and then just remove those crispy bits and then in that rendered pork fat I'm gonna add some peppers and onions fry those off a little bit I'll add some mushrooms and fry those then I'll add back in the crispy pork throw in those hydrated noodles I've got this little soy based stir-fry sauce that I made I'll add a few spoonfuls of that with a little bit of chicken stock and then all you have to do at this point is just toss everything together let those noodles now hydrate all of that sauce and you'll have the perfect textured noodle stir-fry now that is how you get perfectly cooked and tender rice noodles and also a great trick if you're making a noodle soup say you're making a pho that requires rice noodles if you have these pre-soaked noodles you don't actually have to boil them you just get that broth super hot pour over the broth on the pre-soaked noodles and just cover your bowls for a few minutes and all of that steam in there is going to perfectly cook those noodles to that tenderness point that you want because again we're trying to avoid mushy and sticky noodles so that's just a great little tip and my final recipe for this video so hopefully you enjoyed I do want to show you this one project right here check this thing out so we've got the in-ground beds I've prepped for winter we've got the orchard area right here all the fruit trees they're ready for spring to pop up we've got the above ground garden beds and one thing that did really well last year were these grapes over here on this fence grapes just grow really great in Long Island so I just went all in and built this grape trellis I went Cedar Post in the ground about 24 inches some wiring actually right now I'm threading this wire three of them all the way down and I'll be able to get a good eight grape Vines here which will produce so much jelly so so much potential wine or just table grapes just a little bit of inspiration for you and you can click this video right here if you want to see more meal prep videos like this

Channel: Pro Home Cooks

Views: 559,143

Keywords: pro home cooks, mike g, mike greenfield, cooking cheat codes, kitchen hacks, time savers, aromatic paste, flavor bomb, potatoes, steamed veggies, broccoli, rice noodles, pre soaked noodles, beans, legumes, salad, soup, fried rice, curry, marinade, home garden, grapes, long island, meal prep, cooking for week, prep for week

Id: 3c9n-uvEZ8w

Length: 16min 2sec (962 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 07 2023