meat – Cook Instead

This recipe came out of a desire to cook something quick and tasty, and also use up all of my sad fridge vegetables (TM). We’ve been getting Oddbox, a service that sends surplus or weirdly shaped vegetables for cheap, which is great, but then we have to figure out what to do with everything.

The heat wave finally broke this weekend, which means I finally felt like cooking again for the first time in a long time. I had wanted to make a kind of cold peanut noodle soba edamame chicken bowl thing when it was hot, but it was literally too hot to even think about turning on the stove. We boiled water once for pasta and as soon as it was done we had to fill the pot with cold water to stop it heating up the entire kitchen.

I don’t know about you guys, but I feel like cold soba noodles with a sweetish peanut sauce is both delicious and extremely obvious, by this point. I never tend to worry too much about food trends (“Quiche is so 80’s!”? whatever, Gladys, quiche is delicious.) But you do tend to get bored.

So: Miso.

There’s no excuse for not knowing how to roast a chicken. If you can make mac and cheese from a box, you can roast a chicken. If you can microwave popcorn, you can roast a chicken. If you can toast a pop tart, you can roast a chicken.

Not only is it a life skill, I genuinely believe there’s no more satisfying meal. There’s a reason why literally every culture has a version. You can do it with any kinds of flavorings you want, you can do it with rice or potatoes or cabbage or noodles or all of the above. My problem with roast chicken is… none, I don’t have one. But if I had to make one up, it would be that people find it intimidating when it’s actually the least-risk, highest-reward meal I know how to make. I know you think I’m exaggerating about the popcorn thing, but I’m not.

Category: meat

Soba Noodles with Miso Butter, Chicken, and Cabbage

Roast Chicken for Dummies