Growing Pains: The Pain of Cooking

By Jack Cronin

Cooking can be a real pain, but there are many ways to relieve this stress and make it an enjoyable chore.

Dinner time in your teenage years can often be the best part of the day. Driving home from secondary school, carrying an empty stomach that’s anticipating the comfort that awaits and drooling over the thought of mashed spuds. After a long day of boring classes, there’s nothing better to lift your mood than a comforting plate of hot food. This bubble is beautiful until it pops. And then you realise your sacred comfort of the day was contingent on the labour, skill and generosity of your parents (Weeell, this is true if you were if you were spoilt and privileged…...guilty). Perhaps if cooking was an existing hobby or if you had to learn these life skills from an early age, then the transition to college was not a major shock to the system. However, for many the struggle is real! Cooking can be tough for a variety of reasons. Success relies not only on effort from yourself but also time, patience to learn and MONEY! Spending money on shopping is a growing pain in itself. But it has to be done. You can’t depend on Deliveroo or Pot Noodles every night of the week (sadly). 

So how do I do it?

What do I buy?

Where do I even start?

Firstly, breathe. There’s an array of resources and tools you can use to minimise the stress of cooking. In 2021, it’s easier than ever with the content available through online mediums. In this article, I will share the resources and people that have helped me in the last year to transition from burning oven pizzas to enjoying making simple but tasty midweek meals. Cooking is a working progress (and by God I’ve a lot to learn), I am by no means a chef but these tips have helped me to make cooking as easy, and enjoyable, as possible. So I hope they might help you too!

Shop smarter, not harder

Becoming a student, or living independently, comes with the harsh realisation that where you shop matters and filling the trolley to the brim isn’t so fun when it’s coming out of your pocket! Luckily, shops like Aldi and Lidl are more than suitable for the student budget while offering a range of choices to create tasty and nutritious meals. While cooking meals is an essential lesson when moving away from home, it’s a process that takes time. So to begin with, the ready meals available at grocery shops are a great starting point to minimise stress over cooking from scratch every night. For a shop such as Aldi, you can get traditional Irish meals such as roast turkey and ham for under five euro, so you're not breaking the bank. To maximise and gain the most from your weekly shop, stores like Aldi have Instagram accounts (@aldi_ireland) that offer a wide range of recipes to suit your individual needs. For example, Aldi has a recipe available for ‘Gluten Free Pasta & Prawns’ with easy instructions and few ingredients to buy, all available in store.

They have an app for that

Another great way to use your phone as a guide for cooking is by downloading designated apps. An app that has become a firm favourite of mine and has made cooking exciting is ‘Kitchen Stories’. This app is designed to help you manufacture the perfect meal for your day or week ahead with step by step instructions and multiple categories that suit your preferences, including vegan dishes and ‘20 Minute Meals’. They even have categories for different annual occasions such as Christmas. Selecting your meal of desire is the hardest part (so much choice!), the rest is made easy by this app. The meals are featured with a step by step guide and a video showing how it’s done. You can also adjust the ingredients list to fit the number of servings you desire.  The best feature of the app is that it allows you to create a shopping list for the ingredients that you need so all your meals and groceries required are all in one place. It makes life simple when you do your weekly shop.

Cookbooks never go out of fashion
Having technology as a primary tool in teaching and preparing meals is great but sometimes cooking can be a nice way to switch off from your phone, forcing you to focus on the task at hand. In this case, having a physical recipe/cookbook can be more beneficial. The idea of a cookbook can be off putting as it can be seen as another form of expense that the student budget and lifestyle does not prioritise. But before even thinking of buying a book, look closer to home at the resources around you. Perhaps one of your parents or grandparents is a pundit or long time lover of the kitchen and in this case would have an array of recipes up their sleeves for you to try. If this is not the case then it is likely that a relative, friend or neighbour would have interest in this field and borrowing an old cookbook or recipes can be a great starting point. Although many foreign cuisines have only become popular in Ireland in the past few decades, many traditional dinners or even baking recipes have been popular for a long time and still are. This is why gathering recipes and core weekly meal ideas is a good plan because it won’t go out of fashion. Also, planning weekly meals will become more of a habit and less of a chore. Buying a new cookbook can also be a great choice if you’re looking for recipes that will suit your preferences or dietary requirements. There are also many books on offer that suit a student budget so you don’t have to worry so much about price. For example, I recently bought a cookbook from TK Maxx (a great spot for books) for just under 10 euro. ‘The Hungerpots Cookbook’ by Bethie Hungerford (Instagram: @hungermama) features over 70 ‘super simple one-pot dishes’. Each meal is designed to serve four, which is perfect if you live with other students but also can be used as leftovers if you live with less people! The dishes range from pasta to plants and beans and also feature great dessert options. This book is perfect for students as ingredients are minimal and so is cooking time! Most of these recipes require all ingredients to be placed in a large pot at once so it’s not a big effort. The book also contains vegan and vegetarian options and each recipe can be easily tweaked depending on your taste buds! Again, this book is an example of how you can easily learn core recipes to make over and over again. I highly recommend!