I don’t know about you but now that I’ve been hanging out at home a whole lot, I’ve been getting into cooking with whatever I can find in my fridge. Really getting into doing a bulk cook of large amounts of stuff I can have for dinner, and then portion some for lunch and then chuck the rest in the freezer to ignore for months on end and then dig out and question its contents later. It’s extremely the perfect time to learn some new recipes.
So get out the slow cooker and all the containers you can find, buy as many cans of food the shops will allow you to buy, because the Pedestrian team have picked out their fave recipes to help keep your idle hands busy, and keep you nourished through the lockdown.
The Best Recipes For Those Bulk Cook Seshes
Alison Roman’s Spiced Chickpea Stew
If you know, you know. If you don’t – welcome to The Stew. I firmly believe Alison Roman is a wizard, and this is her dark magic at work. Sure, the NYT might have a limit on how much you can see before you gotta pay for the content but there’s always a workaround (read: other people have published it outside the paywall.)
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Cider-Braised Chicken with Speck And Barley
“This is a Donna Hay recipe. My tip is to cook off the chicken with the skin side down until it’s crispy, then peel it off and set aside to eat as a snack, or crumble over the top of the finished stew for some crunch factor. A dry cider is much better than a sweet one. Salt is your best friend. WASH YOUR GOD DAMNED BARLEY BEFOREHAND. Canned baby carrots are fine, but add them near the end so they don’t go mushy. Measure garlic with your heart, not your recipe.” – Erin, Senior Producer
1 tablespoon olive oil
8 x 220g bone-in chicken thighs, skin on
sea salt and cracked black pepper
180g speck, chopped
4 garlic cloves, sliced
1 cup pearl barley
330ml apple cider
2 1/2 cups chicken stock
200g baby carrots, rinsed and trimmed
1 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup tarragon leaves
Heat the oil in a large, heavy-based saucepan over high heat. Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper and cook for 3 minutes each side or until golden. Remove from the pan and set aside. Add the speck to the pan and cook for 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Add the barley and cider and cook for 1 minute. Return the chicken to the pan with the stock, cover with a tight-fitting lid and cook for 25–30 minutes. Add the carrots and cook for a further 5 minutes. Add the peas and tarragon and cook for 1–2 minutes or until the peas are tender. Serves 4.
Trent’s Dickead Daal
Years ago, my friend Trent livetweeted himself making a huge batch of spicy daal curry. It looked enormous, and delicious. Naturally, I tried it out and ended up making more food than I could ever eat, so a bunch ended up living in the freezer for months on end. Lost to the tundra of our sharehouse freezer.
He originally put it on Storify, but when that crapped out and deleted all the data with it, he resurrected it onto a Twitter moment for us all. Literally, I asked for the recipe and he came back to me with that.
Here it is folks! You can serve it straight away with some bread and beer. I throw down some dark chocolate. Yeh boi! pic.twitter.com/u5pOKPAm0l
— Trent Kusters (@TrentKusters) January 10, 2015
Get a big pot. You’ll need it.
Very Versatile Veggie Chilli
I made this one last night and let me tell you, it truly is versatile. Have it on rice, have it with corn chips, who cares. It’s a Jamie Oliver recipe, and he’s all about cooking with what’s in your fridge and pantry, so it’s also versatile in the fact that you can just swap shit out. Do pumpkin instead of sweet potato, or leek instead of onion. A real recipe you can just chuck whatever you find in the fridge into.
Chilli is truly the best thing to cook in bulk, so go forth and make that spicy bean.
Chelle’s Two-Tone Potato Bake
“This one is a special one, it’s my late Mum’s recipe for potato bake. I always take this to bbq’s and people go nuts for it – it really is the best potato bake. I’ve made it this week during isolation life too, because it is also the best comfort food.” – Shaunagh, Creative Project Manager
4 x potatoes, peeled and sliced into rounds
2-3 x sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced into rounds
1 x large onion
10 x bacon short cuts
1 x large cream
2 x tablespoon wholegrain honey mustard
1 x cup mixed grated cheese
1. Sauté onion and bacon, sit aside
2. Layer base of dish with potatoes
3. Sprinkle between each layer some sautéed bacon and onion
4. Repeat until the dish is full, alternating between the potato and sweet potato
5. Combine wholegrain honey mustard and cream in a bowl, whisk until throughout combined
6. Pour cream mixture over layered potatoes
7. Cover with foil and cook at 160 degrees for approximately 70 minutes
Persian Beef & Eggplant Stew
Halal Chicken & Rice with White Sauce (AKA Chat Chook)
Ok surely I’m not the only one who’s in a food-related group chat. It was originally called “Bone Appetite” that has gone through dozens of in-jokes (including trying to give our friend’s four-year-old a knife), and now is something ridiculous that I can’t talk about on main.
We have our #1 favourite recipe that we all have made at some point in time, usually dropped in the chat with a simple “making chat chook tonight, mates.”
It’s a very yum and simple chicken and rice ordeal, and I absolutely suggest you give it a red hot go.
A Very Good Pumpkin Soup
A real no-fuss pumpkin soup here, if you’ve got not heaps of time and you’re not going to sweat your ass off having the oven on for over an hour.
- Roast a 1kg pumpkin with cut up apple or pear until it’s starting to caramelise (about an hour or more).
- In a big saucepan sauté garlic, onion and celery with ground coriander and cumin seed.
- Add pumpkin to saucepan with water and coconut milk and stick blend until smooth.
- Salt to taste and serve with yoghurt and chilli.
Japanese Curry
Is this even a question? Have you used those precious Japanese curry cubes before? The humble curry is apparently seen as like the Japanese equivalent as our 2min noodles or mac and cheese from the box. No fuss, no stress, bloody delish comfort food.
Bang in as much veggies and stuff as you like. Put some rice in the rice cooker. Bulk cook some spicy, hearty curry.
Or, if you want to challenge yourself, here’s a recipe that gets you using your spice rack instead of leaning back on those precious, precious cubes.
