College cooks

>be me

Stopped reading there

>>8484509
Lots of rice, lots of eggs.

You literally just need to go to a grocery store and look at pricetags, dude. It ain't hard, but you are gonna have to get used to a new lifestyle.

>>8484509
You're gonna want to eat healthily, cheap, and filling. Some staples I would recommend:

>potatoes
>rice (in bulk)
>beans (dried in bulk)
>lean meats
>frozen and fresh veggies
>eggs
>whole grain pasta/bread/wraps

These should be the bulk of what you eat, anything else is just for flavor/variety. Learn to season/spice your shit or you will get bored quickly though. Stay away from junk, sweets, soda, even juice.

>buy pork or chicken
>cut into strips or little pieces
>put into little plastic bags, enough for one portion per bag
>add spices, sauces (e.g. soy sauce) to the bag)
>tie up the bags and put them in the freezer
>when you want to eat meat, take the bag out of the freezer in the morning so it can defrost ready for dinner that evening
>that evening you have already-marinaded meat ready to cook

invest in a crock pot

rice (in bulk) and chiken

>>8484509
>be me
Let me guess: Some shitty state university?

If you're not eating out all the time i wouldn't worry too much on your fixed budget.

Get a crockpot and learn recipes, or just learn how to cook normally (just avoid recipes that require expensive cuts of beef).

Here's a pretty good cookbook for college students: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Cooking-Two-Cookbook/dp/1936493837

>>8484509
Here's my /fit/ dinner which I have nearly everyday.

Chicken, rice and broccoli. Whilst the chickens cooking, boil the broccoli and cook rice in the microwave by putting it into a good size tub (with a decent lid) with some water.

Chop and mix it all together in the big rice tub and add some bbq sauce/hot sauce. Put it into 3 or 4 tubs and have one a day for dinner. It can last in the fridge for roughly a week but try to eat it in the first 5 days if you can. No need to add any salt and it's a very clean and great meal overall. If you don't lift you can put a small amount of chicken in and use more basmati rice to fill it out, which is cheap as fuck..

>>8486686
Forgot to mention that I use frozen chicken breasts. Just make sure you find decent ones that don't taste too dry, or have loads of water in them.

>>8484509
Hey dude, fellow college/uni student here.

The best place to start is with simple stuff like Spag Bol but always follow the recipe to begin with so you get the right technique. You wanna start making simple, easy stuff that you can put in the fridge and then re-heat when you want (or better, put some in the freezer for when you can't be bothered cooking).

At the moment I try and get a general idea of what I want to eat in the following week and I'll base my weekly shop around that, along with buying staples like fruit/veg etc.

I would strongly advise getting some kind of spice collection together. Just buy some staples to begin with (paprika, cinnamon, garam masala etc.) and get some whenever you can. Having them on hand means you've got a bigger variety of stuff you can potentially make.

Also, invest in a few good cookbooks. I ended up buying a few student cookbooks but I wouldn't recommend it, a lot of them are pretty lazy, for example one of the recipes for a curry asks for 'a jar of curry paste.'

A good book for starting out is Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course. Has loads of info about the basics of cooking, preparing etc. and has a shitload of simple recipes that are good if you're a first-time cook.

tl;dr follow recipes

>>8484509
well, I take it you live in a dorm, or some kind of apartment. this worked for me in my dorm,
dunno if the success can be duplicated though.
>make VERY aromatic foods often (chili with hoppin johns, double cooked pork stew, shit like that)
>after a few weeks, post a flyer with a price for a meal per diem, basic list of the stuff you make, and a number
>make sure the food is "homey" and geared toward the majority of your building's tenants
>wait for people to call you, tell them you're formulating a full schedule of meals, get money in advance
>get large pots and plenty of crock pots, plan lots of one pot meals.
>doesn't really matter, I found, people just want food
I did this while I was going for accounting, and I made an easy 500 a week after bills (including rent) for a little over 9 hours of work per week.
also, potato dishes are your lifeblood. love the potato, live for the potato.

>>8484578

do you defrost in the fridge or countertop?

>>8484578
This guy's idea

Then take the meat, slice it up, fry quickly and put in a burrito with cheese and rice and whatever else

>>8484509
Lots of eggs cooked any way, hashes, curries, stirfry and kraft mac & cheese for finals week.

> know how to cook
> go to college
> eat that good-good
> fuckers wanking about with ramen and McDonalds
> ask me why I don't too
> tell'm I don't like it/'s not good for you, depending on who I'm talking to
> they regularly mock that I'm silly for not liking those foods/that their foods are fine and I'm weird
I don't even like, try to get onto them about it, but it's like they feel they need to convince me I'm wrong for some reason. I basically never start any conversation about foods unless I'm asked about something, and it often rounds out to them trying to convince me that I'm either wasting money (somehow; because they don't actually know how to budget), them awkwardly joking about how bad the foods they're eating are for them, or them vehemently trying to convince me that I should just eat McDonalds because It's the American thing to do (sometimes literally).

ANYWAY
>>8484509
Get yourself a good fry-pan, and a crockpot. Between the two you can make everything from stir-fry to lasagna.
Best thing to do for your budget is cook things like chili or seasoned taco/nacho meat, and then re-heat it for several meals. You can reheat that stuff for your lunches and what not, and then just cook something new when you don't feel like whatever you've got on hand. Recommended dishes include said chilli (all kinds), taco meat (just keep a bag of tortilla chips and that's 4 lunches right there), spaghetti/lasagna, chicken stir-fry on rice. I don't really know what you like, but those are all good all-arounders, and any are good for about a week or so if you put them strait into the refrigerator.
I like to do my beef chilies on tortilla chips myself, but prefer the classic bowl approach for chicken chilly.

>>8484509
i have a rice cooker that has slow cook function, so it'll be rice,stew or soup but sometimes i'll let my asian roommate cook us some of those chinese buns, dumplings or even bread.we didn't even have refrigerator in our dorm except the vending machine.
basically you'll need
>rice - buy them in bulk. they can be store for years if done correctly
>eggs - cheap staple with good nutrients
>flour - i know this sounds strange but if you can learn how to cook them it's so fucking versatile and cheap
you can do something ahead of time too , for example a fried rice just add rice, vegs, dried meats ,a little bit of oil and seasoning and set it to cook automatically on the evening or morning. same applied with stews,soups etc.
cook them in kind of large portion to save time and money. or if you wanna go hardcore on saving money just cook an egg and top it on steamed rice
as for the rice it's up to you
>Short grain (eg. Japanese rice) - sticky glutenous that fills your stomach quickly, good for sushi if you're planning to catch some fish on your campus.
>Long grain (eg. Jasmine) - flaky rice that's relatively easy for overall cooking but sometime tasteless. this is best as it comes really cheap.
>Wholegrain - good for your health with all those fucking vitamins but also taste like shit. not that cheap for some shitty country.

For me, I'd buy a cast iron pan with a decent amount of room ( a smaller one works too) and a pot to cook rice in. A rice cooker works well too.

Working in a restaurant I've gotten into the mentality of prepping sauces and meals before hand. Ex. a few container with chicken thigh, onions, ginger, salted cod, and tofu. I'd also have a general sauce you can add to to flavor whatever your cooking. Thats a meal for 4 days, and of course changing things as you'd like.

I personally prefer to cook everyday versus reheating meals. Freezing marinades meats is also ok. If you can buy bulk bags of chicken breast/beef and defrost as needed.

Pasta,rice, beans are your friends if your budget is super strict