I’m afraid I’m a terrible cook.
To save me time because I have to work, my to go menu was to prepare a stew with ground meat, mostly chicken, and potatoes, ‘cause they’re cheap and fill you up fast. Add water and pepper, cook, done. I try to cook big batches to save time.
A friend gave me a leek, so I added it to my usual mix: now I feel I’m fuller for longer and don’t have to eat that much meat (I usually mix the same amount of meat and potatoes).
Have I been coking wrong the whole time?
What else can I add to my stews to feel full for longer, to not gain weight but to have enough energy to do my job?
Any downsides to eating less meat?
Different vegetables contain different nutrients. Some days ago I was adding some cabbage to a stew for the first time in months and felt my body rejoice. Maybe some nutrient I was lacking? Could be a case of that if you tend to only eat meat and potatoes.
Great and cheap vegetables to add are onions and leeks, and also all sorts of cabbage, and carrots.
Every body is different and it depends on metabolism and physical activity, find the amount you can add to your stew that makes you feel good!
I go through phases of eating different fruits for a few weeks at a time. Once during an apple phase, I brought a couple to work and gave one to a coworker, who then absolutely demolished it. He came back and said it’s like his body needed it.
IMO stew should be a small amount of (cheap) meat, stock, and lots of veggies.
Where I’m at they sell backs of stew vegetables for cheap: carrots, onion, turnip, cabbage. I think if you put all of those things in you have a pretty nutritious meal.
In terms of making it taste good, garlic and bay leaves help.
A handful of barley, rice or oats is a nice addition at the end of a soup. Leafy greensike spinach all chopped up are good at the end too. You wanna stop cooking them when they look more green.
You want a variety of vegetables in your food. Carrots, celery, turnips and all kinds of onions will make the food taste better and nourish you longer.
Here’s how to make soup, broken up into steps that can be done on different days:
Step 1: cook off your chicken. Take cheap cuts like skin on bone in leg quarters and bake them until they’re almost done. In the us you can get big bag for ~.50 cents a pound. When they’re almost cooked, pull em out of the oven and put them in the fridge for later.
Step 2: make stock. Sometime later, debone and remove the skin from your cooked chicken. Save the bones and skin. Take all the vegetables you’re gonna put in the soup and prepare them completely, peeling and slicing onions, carrots etc and slicing ends off celery. Save all that stuff except for potato and turnip parts. Those can go in compost or trash.
It’s easiest if you have an electric pressure cooker like an instant pot for this, but you can do it longer on stovetop if you need. Boil all the vegetable stuff and chicken bones and skin for about an hour and a half in the instant pot or stovetop. If you use the pressure cooker you’ll have rich flavorful broth, if you do stovetop you may need to wait longer for it to get good.
Strain everything out and save the stock.
Step 3: make soup. Start with a roux by melting butter then adding an equal amount of flour and whisking it together. Let it cook while you keep it whisking till it’s as brown as you like and then add your vegetables for a few minutes then stock and chicken. Salt, pepper and herbs can be added at this point and once everything is cooked you can put the handful of grains and chopped up greens in.
E: the above is perfectly fine and you will be happy with it, but if you have the time and pots&pans, you can: sear your chunks of chicken and carrots/onions and garlic to get more flavors, add the peel from ginger root to your stock for a Chinese restaurant taste, simmer your already strained stock in a pot and skim off the foam, skim and save the fat off the top for frying eggs or anything else in, add mushrooms before anything else because they take forever to cook, use bay leaves and even when you fill up every Tupperware in the whole house to store it all leave those things in they’ll keep adding flavor!
Green veggies will help fill you up and add needed fiber. You can also get good fiber from lentils.
There are thousands of stews, garlic and onion are always good for flavour, any vegetable you want, you need some protein to feel full, you can use legumes or meat, potatoes are good to have some carbohidrates in there too. With all 3 you should feel full and healthy: vegies for vitamins, potatoes, pasta, bread, whatever carbohidrate you want, and protein, meat, chickpeas, beans, lentils etc.
I’ve just been doing it because alliums taste good. So in that sense you have been cooking wrong.
