Cooking Experiment: Ginger Beef with Trader Joe's Orange Chicken, redux

[tuftears]

No picture here, since it's essentially the same as the last time! Just my notes on cooking. For some time now I've been thinking it takes me way too long to prepare a meal, so I thought I should peer at that more closely.

Rice: washed ahead of time and set the cooker to have it done by 5:00 PM.
Meat: cut up and started marinading in soy sauce and ground pepper. Sirloin tips. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

4:50 PM: started cutting carrots (1 lb). A later start than I'd planned, but it's not like it hurts the rice to be kept warm a while.
5:05 PM: done cutting carrots, started preheating oven to 400F
5:15 PM: gave up on grating ginger, put the ground-off ginger into the steak and stirred it, then started mincing the remainder
5:24 PM: finished mincing ginger; I lightly grease a baking pan (well, foil) and put the chicken in, then put it in and set the baking timer for 20 mins. Start sautee'ing the ginger.
5:32 PM: notice that asparagus is thinner, change cutting strategy to 1.25" long pieces. That's done. Stirred the ginger a few times, it's nice gold brown now. Meat goes in now!
5:38 PM: everything happening at once, augh. Stirred meat to collect ginger bits, squeezed orange sauce out into carrots (uncovering), flipped meat to make sure it doesn't overcook. Recalled I hadn't added salt to meat, do so now.
5:45 PM: everything still happening at once. Decanted meat into small bowl, drained juice back into wok. Put asparagus into wok, season with garlic, pepper, salt. Stirred sauce into carrots, notice it's very liquid. Added pineapple chunks.
5:48 PM: things starting to calm down. Took chicken out of oven, set it aside as the carrots/sauce/pineapple need to be brought to temperature. Started cleaning and putting away dishes used so far.
5:52 PM: I have added a cornstarch slurry to the carrots/sauce/pineapple and stirred it in. Once it starts to bubble, I can mix the chicken in.
5:58 PM: relax a bit. Oops. How long has the asparagus been cooking? Turn up temperature on sauce, cover it to induce boiling. Mix beef back into asparagus, set temperature low.
6:00 PM: taste-test beef, determine it's about done, don't want to overcook it. Sauce still isn't boiling? Oops, didn't turn it up to 6 as I thought I had. Rectified.
6:05 PM: sauce boiling, yay! Mix in chicken, start stirring. Realize chopsticks aren't doing it. Switch to spoon.
6:08 PM: done!

One pound of beef, a similar amount of fried chicken, and I wound up with 7 meals-- my plate, plus six "prepared meals" for future nomming.

Comments

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

This is wise, because there is so much overhead! There are pots to be cleaned afterward, and if you were to make only enough to serve one at every meal, well, you would be forever cooking. I cook single-serving breakfasts but even there, I saute the kale with ham in batches and freeze those, and only cook the eggs fresh because they wouldn't taste good reheated.

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

I'll third this.

Not that my cooking processes are anywhere near as involved as either of yours; I'm just a lazycat. =^.^=

Pasta lunches and pizza-wraps all tend to get made six or seven at a time. Boiling a week's worth of pasta takes the same amount of time as boiling a meal's worth, and most of the other actions scale conveniently as welll.

I really should add chili or stew to the prepackaged meal list, but it a) isn't something I'd enjoy eating for a week straight, and b) doesn't reheat from freezing as well as the other two options.

Macaroni with cheese sauce didn't reheat from freezing very well either (too good an insulator for an oven or toaster oven to penetrate), which is a pity, because it _is_ tasty.

Do either of you have good reheatable-lunch recommendations? I suspect that tuftears has been spoiled by the cafeteria at work, but I can still ask. =^.^=

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Chili and stew: I put these in bottles straightaway. I've found the half-height salsa bottles fit a perfect one-person serving amount of these, and there's less worry about opening it several times once it has been sealed. Chili and stew sealed after cooking and refrigerated will keep for a couple of weeks.

When reheating most foods from frozen, I use the microwave for 5 minutes on high, stir or break apart frozen clumps, then microwave another 1-2 minutes.

I'd suggest thinking about entrees with vegetables that you'd enjoy eating. I suspect pasta and pizza-wraps give you too high a ratio of starch to nutrients.

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

Regarding microwaving, I ended up resorting to that for the macaroni experiment, but meals brought into work are usually wrapped in foil (for freezing). Wrapping them in plastic wouldn't help; most stretchy plastics (cling wrap and similar) give off un-fun chemicals when warmed up (and a microwave can outright melt them if it feels like it). Unwrapping and transferring to a plate prior to microwaving is possible, but generates either dishes or waste (depending on the type of plate). Toaster oven works well for the two items I've been using.

I'll keep the "jar and refrigerate" option in mind, if I do try chili or stew again.

Re. vegetables, my diet is heavier on starch than it should be, but I'm not going to sweat that for lunches. Meals eaten at home are where I'd compensate for that. I've gone on salad kicks in the past, but the combination of short fridge life and hassle in preparation means that I don't do that regularly. Finding an option that works long-term is a continuing backburner task, but isn't critical. Between fortified milk and cereal and the occasional bunch of bananas or carton of orange juice or bottle of grape juice bought for snacking, I'm certainly not missing anything essential vitamin-wise. My main dietary worries are getting enough protein (hence the periodic stew attempts) and keeping total calories low enough that I don't gain weight (pie binges are bad for that, but having bagels around for evening snacks was also a bad idea).

Back when I ate at the food court regularly, my diet was actually _better_ in a couple of respects: there's a good Greek place there, which gave me meat and salad whenever I felt like it. The downside is that just about anything at the food court had about twice the calories I should have been eating.

The worst thing presently in my diet is the pop machine near my office =^.^=.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Ah well, I have a bunch of RubberMaid(tm) sandwich boxes that are excellent for transporting frozen lunches. Microwave-safe containers may work well for this enterprise.

You could look at bento boxes for this sort of thing. Some will even allow you to bring hot lunch and keep them hot for some time in thermal-insulated containers.