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Do

Fry things on medium setting. Everything fries on medium setting. Other settings are for advanced users.

Cook things for as long as they say. There are lots of corners you can cut – like most of the ingredients – but you’ll just get ill if you undercook stuff.

The washing up. Washing up is a pain. You’ll never feel like doing it, but then, nor will anyone else. However, if no-one does the washing up there won’t be any plates to eat on. If you really neglect this, one of your flatmates might end hating you, or worse, drawing up a washing up rota. This should be avoided at all costs, as it makes you feel like you’re living in a facility.

Make sure you’ve got basic cookery supplies. These include salt, pepper, sugar, cooking oil, washing up liquid, and dishcloths. These all last ages.

Take out the bins. Seriously, it’s not hard. From the horrors I’ve seen, it’s really worth the effort, even if no-one else is doing it.

Don’t

Set fire to stuff you’re cooking. If you’re forgetful (as I am) use a mobile phone alarm or something to make sure you don’t cook it for too long. I seem to mainly burn vegetables, but even these leave your flat reeking of smoke for weeks.

Let the flat have too many pans, plates and cups. I can’t stress this enough. If you’ve got lots of pans, plates and cups, nobody washes up, and the task becomes a 2 hour epic. I once had a friend bring our flat a “gift” of 90 shiny new glasses. Before the month was out, every bloody surface was covered in unwashed glasses.

Buy stuff that’s too good. That fancy Bodum quiet electric kettle might sound awesome, but one of your flatmates will get drunk and try to make a Pot Noodle in it. Tesco Value will be fine.

Leave stuff cooking and go out. This is a recipe for disaster, as you’re pretty likely to end up in the pub and forget about it.

Only eat takeaways. These are probably better than what you’ll normally be eating, but cost a fortune, and tend to make you fat. You don’t actually need to be able to cook to eat hot food.

Steal your flatmates’ stuff if you don’t absolutely know they’re fine with it. Depending on the flatmate, they’ll either hate you forever, move out without telling you, attempt to kill you, or a combination of the three.

Be too aggro to a new flatmate if they don’t do as much washing up as you do. Try to be reasonable, and if they still don’t do it – move out, they never will. I had a friend who fell foul of this one. He got so fed up with his flatmate not doing the washing up that he put the washing up in the flatmate’s bed when he was out. Upon returning from a party that night, he found all of the plates and cups smashed into pieces on his own bed, and a message reading: “if you ever do this again, I will fuck you up” stuck into his door with a knife. Suffice it to say, my friend moved out that week.

Well, that’s all I could think of for basic living. I’ll be back next week with some advice on how to cook meat with minimal effort and stave off scurvy.

Meat

Meat doesn’t actually need any sauce or complex accompaniment to taste half decent. This is one of its major advantages for student cooking. It also normally only takes up one pan or oven, and can be cooked quickly (frying or grilling) or without too much supervision (roasting).

Okay, so some readers won’t eat meat at all, but frankly I’ve always been a carnivore and probably always will be. So here’s some of the things I learned about meat as a student:

Season meat – it makes it taste better. To season meat, cover it completely in as much seasoning as seems appropriate (easy to learn, after the first few tries) then cook it however you were going to anyway. Salt and Pepper is pretty much the easiest, cheapest seasoning available, but you can get specialised steak or chicken seasoning from supermarkets. Be warned, as these aren’t always an improvement on salt and pepper. Alternatively, you could experiment with a wide variety of different things¹.

Frying steak, pork chops and chicken legs and thighs are your friend.All of these are pretty cheap, half decent bits of meat which cook quite easily. Pork Chops will normally fry or grill, and Chicken Legs and Thighs will oven cook. A lot of my friends just bought chicken fillets, but these actually kinda cost a fortune, and probably don’t taste any better.

Watch out for turkey season. Now, this was always a (dubious) treat when I was in uni. From time to time, Turkey producers would have far too much turkey, and sell massive 1.5kg joints for about £4. This is a hell of a lot of food, is not unpleasant (at least, not until you’ve just consumed 1kg of it), and will keep you in turkey dinners, sandwiches, and if you’re feeling energetic² soup.

Gravy If you’re not a confident cook, do not attempt to make your own gravy; this is an advanced skill. However, if you put in some vegetables with meat you’re roasting, the juices can make them taste better.

Vegetables

It’s a time honoured tradition for students (especially male ones) to try to avoid eating any of these. I was no exception. However, about once a month I would get sudden cravings or feel ill and strange. At these times, I reasoned that perhaps my complete avoidance of vegetables was to blame. Here’s some of the ways you can get round the whole problem of eating vegetables:

Gorge on spinach. I’m ashamed to say it, but this was my first solution to the veg problem. About once a fortnight, I’d buy a large can of spinach, heat the contents in a saucepan then just eat the lot. This would be done independent of meals (I didn’t want to sully the meat).

Peas. Peas taste okay, require just a bit of boiling in a pan (which is then very easy to wash), and can accompany just about anything. They’re also cheap and come frozen in large amounts.

Can’t someone else do it? Let’s face it, vegetables with no effort applied don’t taste as good as meat does. However, they’re a lot cheaper. One way round the problem of cooking inability here is to just buy a salad or vegetarian dish from someone who knows how to make one (salad bars, supermarket, café’s etc.). It’s much cheaper than buying prepared meat.

Roast them with meat. Ah, now, this is actually a good solution. Vegetables don’t taste great, and involve extra effort, however, carrots, parsnips, onions and small potatoes take a similar time to roast as meat does. What this means is that for minimum extra effort you get to eat a bit more healthily. You do normally need to wash vegetables, but when roasting them you can normally leave most of the skin on. This occasionally produces a slightly bitter “rustic” taste, but you can grow to like it.

Alternative solutions. I heard of one guy with a porter’s job at a hospital taking to eating slightly out of date coma patient food. Once again, I wouldn’t advise it.

Fruit

Fruit tastes okay, and many don’t produce any washing up. Remember that you need to eat fruit to avoid scurvy. The downside is that they’re sometimes difficult to get into, and normally produce some sort of litter (apple cores, skins etc.).

If you’re really lazy you can get the vitamin C you need to live from Fruit Juice drinks They’re quite cheap at the lower value end, especially value orange juice. However, you probably miss some sort of goodness from doing this, so if you’re really lazy just stick to apples, pears and tangerines, they’re easy enough to eat, and don’t cost that much.

Staples

Staple foods bulk out your meals. They normally don’t taste that good, but they’re okay. Here’s some advice on the common ones:

Rice
Rice is cheap, and generally tastes okay, but it really goes best with a meal with sauce. It can take a bit of effort to get the cooking time right as well; It’ll be crunchy and not quite edible if you leave it too short, and watery and unpleasant if you cook it for too long. Finally cooking rice involves a sieve and a pan, both of which will be covered in a tough, glue like substance if you don’t wash them straight away. Not the win.

Pasta
I’ve never liked this as much as rice, it’s bland as hell, and also really needs a sauce to make it taste half decent. However, it’s cheap and easy to cook, and doesn’t gum your stuff up anywhere near as badly as rice.

Potatoes – an old enemy.
Potatoes can be baked, roast, boiled, or fried. Especially baked and with butter and cheese they can actually taste quite nice. They’re also extremely cheap when bought in large quantities. You may wish to be careful how much you buy though.

At one point during lean times, Hugh persuaded me to buy 10 kilograms of potatoes at a tiny price, to make sure I was fed. After about 3 weeks of eating nothing but potatoes, I was thoroughly sick of them. I left the remaining 9 kilos in the cupboard thinking I’d want to eat them later. Now, potatoes, if left in a warm dark place, surrounded by organic matter (such as other potatoes) have a habit of growing. By 1 month in, our entire flat stank of potatoes, and a sizable potato plant had taken hold of the cupboard. Man, that was a pain in the arse to get rid of!

Bread
Bread is the student’s friend. It’s already cooked, you can put paté or cheese on it, or use it to hold the meat you’ve just fried. It’s pricey, and goes off quick, but it’s by far the easiest staple to use.

¹ I used to go with: Steak and Mustard (quite good), Chicken and Mixed herbs 3 (good), everything with Tobasco Sauce (results vary), Chicken with Irn-Bru (less good).
²,(which you won’t be if you’ve eaten nothing but turkey for the last 2 days)
³ They come in a box labelled “Mixed Herbs”