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Looking for cheap, healthy, quick recipes.  I’m job searching, busy, and broke.  Thx.

Submitted by: Nicole

A few tips for quick, cheap, healthy recipes. 

Prepping on the weekend for a week of meals is a great way to utilize the most of your time and money. Below are a few ideas that I use a lot in my own cooking. 

Roasted Chicken
Roasted chicken is a cheap and easy recipe to do on a Sunday and you can use the chicken for half the week in a variety of meals.  My favorite recipe is based off of Thomas Keller’s recipe from Bouchon. 

Ingredients: 2-3 lb. chicken, salt and pepper

Excerpts from the recipe: “Preheat the oven to 450°F. Rinse the chicken, then dry it very well with paper towels, inside and out. The less it steams, the drier the heat, the better.  Salt and pepper the cavity.  Now, salt the chicken—I like to rain the salt over the bird so that it has a nice uniform coating that will result in a crisp, salty, flavorful skin (about 1 tablespoon). When it’s cooked, you should still be able to make out the salt baked onto the crisp skin. Season to taste with pepper. Place the chicken in a sauté pan or roasting pan and, when the oven is up to temperature, put the chicken in the oven. I leave it alone—I don’t baste it, I don’t add butter; you can if you wish, but I feel this creates steam, which I don’t want. Roast it until it’s done, 50 to 60 minutes. Remove it from the oven. Baste the chicken with the juices and let it rest for 15 minutes on a cutting board.”

Brown Rice
Make a big batch of brown rice on the weekend and use in stir fry’s throughout the week.  Add to eggs and greens for breakfast, or as sides for lunch or dinner.  Here’s a favorite recipe from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition:

Very Easy “Fried” Rice

1 small onion, chopped
1 T. olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 carrot, diced
1/2 bunch scallions, chopped
1 T. ginger, grated
4 cups cooked brown rice
2 T. soy sauce
1 tsp. toasted sesame oil

Saute onion in olive oil for 5 minutes.  Add garlic and carrot and saute for 4 minutes.  Add scallion and ginger and saute for 4 minutes.  Add rice and sprinkle with water to give extra steam to dish.  Add soy sauce and toasted sesame oil.  Lower heat and cool for 5 minutes more, stirring occasionally. 

Bonus: Beat an egg together with the soy sauce and sesame oil. Pour this mixture into the pan and move it around quickly with fork to spread egg as it cooks.

Good luck! And please let us know if you come up with anything else so that it can be shared with everyone.
Catherine

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