When I first heard rumblings about preparing to stay at home for at least two weeks without access to grocery stores, I made my plans to stock up on fresh produce along with pantry-stable ingredients for healthful, nutritious meals. Like everyone, I purchased canned and dried beans, canned tomatoes and corn, pasta and rice, adding canned tuna and salmon and an assortment of cheeses. I even bought frozen veggies and stocked the freezer with fish and a selection of meats.
Now that I had my well-provisioned pantry, fridge and freezer, what should I do with it all?
While I enjoy cooking and wanted to experiment during our mandated stay-at-home idyll, I didn’t want to spend all day, every day cooking up a storm.
The answer proved simple: batch cooking, something many of us routinely do when we find ourselves with the remains of a Thanksgiving turkey or holiday ham or roast. Cook once, create many meals.
Batch cooking, I discovered, can save both time and money, both especially critical, as many families adjust to working from home while also home-schooling kids. And so many now have lost jobs.
As our home-stay began, I pulled out my soup pot and fixed an old favorite, my hearty (and economical)10-bean soup, using spicy Italian sausage. I hadn’t planned to make so much, but it fed two of us five generous meals over several weeks.
But where should I go from here?
Looking for ideas, I ed chef Megan Leppert, associate professor and now chef-in-charge of San Diego Community College’s Continuing Education culinary arts program. I also reached out to Ocean Beach siblings Ethan Eron and Lucy Holland, who along with their mother and stepfather, Carol and Hugo Rizzoli of Cape Cod, created the $5 Foodie website.
Since so many purchased pasta for their quarantine pantries, Leppert recommended making a large-scale Sauce Bolognese, perfect as sauce for spaghetti or lasagna but adaptable as the base for soup, chili or stew. Best of all, she explained, her sauce disguises lots of veggies, ideal for parents encouraging kids to eat veggies.
“There’s tons of fresh produce available now,” she said. “Cook it up and freeze it. A chef friend grilled up lots of veggies, froze them and put them in scrambled eggs and quesadillas.
“Cut up the fruits and freeze them and use them in smoothies. Try for fresh or frozen fruits because they’re more nutritious than canned.”
People are eager to save time by making multiple meals from a single preparation, seeking new ways to plan and repurpose leftovers, she added.
Leppert, who normally teaches students through in-kitchen practicals, in the current environment has transitioned to online teaching for a traditionally hands-on program. This summer, she’ll recruit students for Adult Ed’s fall professional culinary training classes (for information, go to sdce.edu/culinary-arts), an educational bargain for students.
The concept of the $5 Foodie website (thefivedollarfoodie.com) originated with the 2008 Great Recession, explained Carol Rizzoli.
“Hugo and I were running a B&B and were concerned about our livelihoods. We started cooking very economically. The kids were incredulous that we were spending so little on food. They took the idea and ran with it,” developing the website, she said.
The concept, Eron and Holland explained, is that you can eat well for $5 per person per day. The whole family collaborates on developing tasty, nutritious recipes and menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Hugo, a retired chef, and Carol, an author and editor, contributed many family favorites and recipes they developed and collected, including the recipe for Cuban Picadillo (see below) from a Cuban friend.
Eron, a software developer who designed the website and recently added a cost calculator tool, and Holland, an art history instructor with two toddlers, grew up loving to cook with their family.
“Flexibility is important right now. We try to incorporate that into our recipes,” Eron explained. “We’re emphasizing the need to bring back the joy of cooking at home.”
Many of their recipes can be scaled up, including several soups and stews as well as the picadillo. Their marinara sauce can be tripled and served over spiralized vegetables, eggplant or pasta. And their website shows how a single roast chicken can provide three meals for a family, including chicken and sweet corn pie, green curry with lime and other variations.
Holland says she now shops only every two or three weeks, yet her family eats well, demonstrating how, with good planning, we all can, too.
Sours Larson is a San Diego freelance writer.
Batch cooking tips
Plan your meals for a week or longer. Prepare ahead anything requiring longer cooking times, such as a roast or brown rice, and portion them out. Decide on different uses and veggies to complement them.
When selecting recipes to scale up, choose favorites you know that are also forgiving — think mac and cheese, soups, casseroles — that don’t require exact measurements. Be careful doubling (or tripling) salt and other seasonings. Start with less and increase by taste.
Chop or spiralize veggies in advance and store them in containers in the fridge for use within a week. Alternately, roast, steam or grill veggies and store them in the fridge or freezer for later use in dishes.
Cook larger quantities of beans, lentils, rice, quinoa and grains and portion them out for reheating, storing in the fridge or freezer.
Use your freezer to store your extra servings. You can store many things in the fridge for four or five days, but if any longer, plan on freezing extras. While most dishes freeze well, know what doesn’t freeze, including eggs in the shell, mayonnaise, cream cheese, uncooked potatoes and lettuce.
Consider using muffin tins for single serving portions. Freeze individual servings and remove them after they’re frozen and store in a resealable freezer plastic bag.
If you plan to freeze a dish in a baking pan or casserole, line it first with plastic wrap and put the food in the freezer. Once it’s frozen, remove it and place in a resealable freezer bag. You can also freeze meatballs, hamburger patties, cookie dough balls and other foods on a tray, cooked or uncooked, this way.
Squeeze out excess air from your resealable bags before freezing to prevent freezer burn. Be sure to leave enough headroom to allow any liquids space to expand.
Defrost your foods in the refrigerator or in a bowl of cold water before cooking. Alternately, bake a casserole or pie straight from the freezer by placing it in a cold oven and allowing extra time (15-30 minutes) to cook.
10-Bean Soup
This hearty soup can be made using a leftover ham bone or smoked turkey instead of spicy Italian sausage. Consider using a single variety of beans and make it mild or spicy, or add Cajun seasoning for added spiciness. The 10-bean mixture provides a variety of flavors and textures.
Makes 8-10 generous servings
2 pounds dried 10-bean mixture
Water to cover
2 pounds spicy or sweet Italian chicken sausage, sliced if links
1 large onion or two small, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
4 carrots, peeled and sliced
4-5 cloves garlic, minced
Two 14-ounce cans stewed tomatoes
2 teaspoons basil
2 bay leaves
6-8 sprigs parsley, coarsely chopped
1 or 2 jalapeño or serrano chiles, optional
1 teaspoon black pepper or to taste
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
2 to 3 quarts chicken stock, plus added water, to cover beans and vegetables
In a 6-to-8-quart soup or stock pot, rinse and soak beans in water overnight. Alternately, place beans in a microwave-safe bowl, cover with water and heat for 15 minutes at full power (split in two batches if necessary).
Drain and rinse beans and return to the washed soup pot. Add chopped vegetables, garlic, stewed tomatoes, basil, bay leaves, parsley, (optional) chiles, salt and pepper.
Cover with stock plus added water if needed. While covered, bring to a boil. Remove cover and reduce heat to simmer. Cook about 2 1/2 to 3 hours, until beans are tender. Sauté sausage, drain and add to soup after 1 1/2 hours.
Recipe from Nicole Sours Larson.
Sauce Bolognese
Use this versatile sauce over pasta or in lasagna or as the base for braises, stews, soups and chili. Make it vegetarian by substituting vegetable for beef stock, eliminating the meats or replacing them with a meat substitute. The sauce freezes for several months. If you plan to freeze the meat sauce, set aside the freezable portion before adding the cream, since cream can curdle on reheating the sauce to 165 degrees.
Makes about 3 quarts, for about 8-12 pasta servings
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 cups yellow onion, small dice
1 cup carrots, small dice
1 cup celery, small dice
1 1/4 cups red bell pepper, small dice
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup tomato paste
28-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon crushed red chiles
1 1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
2 cups beef stock
Salt and pepper to taste
2 pounds ground beef (85/15 blend recommended)
1 pound ground mild Italian sausage
1 cup heavy cream
Heat a large saucepan over medium heat for 2 minutes. Add olive oil and warm, 1 to 2 minutes. Add onions and sauté over medium-high heat until they start to caramelize, about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning. Add carrots, celery, bell peppers and butter to pan and sauté for 3 to 4 minutes. If ingredients start to burn, stop by adding 2 tablespoons water.
Once the veggies are soft, add garlic and cook for an additional minute. (Add garlic at end of sauté process to avoid burning.) Add tomato paste and continue to sauté, allowing tomato paste to brown slightly. Add canned tomatoes, crushed red chiles, Italian seasoning and beef stock to the pan and simmer for 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
In a separate sauté pan, brown ground beef and Italian sausage over high heat for about 4 minutes; set aside.
Transfer sauce mixture to a blender or food processor and blend on slow speed until smooth. Cover blender top with a towel to prevent getting burned by the hot sauce.
Return blended sauce to the saucepan and add ground meat mixture. Simmer on low heat about 15 minutes.
To finish sauce, mix in heavy cream. Adjust seasoning to taste. Serve with pasta of your choice.
Recipe from chef Megan Leppert.
Cuban Picadillo
This Cuban version of the traditional Latin American dish features beef or pork. Black beans and white rice typically accompany this inexpensive dish, which the $5 Foodie calculates at $1.47 per serving, including rice and beans.
Makes 6 servings; can be doubled or tripled
3 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
1 pound ground beef (or ground pork, or a combination)
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 medium onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper (large), chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1/3 cup pimiento-stuffed green olives
1/3 cup raisins
15 ounces canned diced tomatoes with juices (or tomato sauce)
3 tablespoons vinegar, plus 1 tablespoon sugar, stirred together
3/4 cup chicken, vegetable or beef broth
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons oregano (dried)
2 teaspoons cumin
1/4 teaspoon cayenne powder
SIDE DISHES
1 1/2 cups long-grain white rice
15 ounces black beans, mostly drained
Optional extras: hot sauce, cilantro
In a large skillet, heat 1 tablespoon oil over medium heat until it just shimmers. Add ground meat; season with a little salt and pepper, stirring and breaking up meat with a wooden spoon. Brown meat on all sides. As it begins to brown, after 3 to 4 minutes, add onion, pepper, garlic, olives and raisins, stirring often. Continue cooking to soften the onion, about 5 minutes.
Drain off any excess fat from the pan before adding tomatoes, vinegar-sugar mixture, broth and bay leaves. Next, add oregano, cumin and cayenne. Stir well. Reduce heat to a slow simmer and cook, partially covered, about 15 minutes. Taste for salt.
While the picadillo is finishing, cook rice according to package instructions. In another saucepan over medium heat, place the black beans and a pinch of salt. Heat through, about 5 minutes.
To serve: Spoon a portion of picadillo onto each plate along with servings of rice and black beans, in equal wedge-like portions. Top with sprigs of cilantro and the hot sauce, if desired.
Recipe from The $5 Foodie website (thefivedollarfoodie.com).
