When I need to eat but don’t want to put in any effort: half a cup of rice, half a cup of lentils, two cups stock (I use veggie stock, but you can use chicken, beef, etc.) Season with whatever you have in your spice drawer that looks good. Bring the water to a boil then lower the heat to low and let it simmer covered for 20-ish minutes. It’s bland but filling, lentils provide protein, it’s ready in less time than it would take to get delivery, and you don’t have to watch it. Rice and lentils will keep in your cabinet forever. You can get stock paste or boullion that keeps a long time too.
You can still have two beers, but now you’re not drinking on an empty stomach.
I do appreciate that the listed recipe is “relatively quick and simple”, but I’m not convinced by “literally the same effort”.
If it was, then why would anyone buy the millions of frozen/boxed/packeted “just put it in the oven for 30 minutes” or “just put it in the microwave for 2 minutes” meals? They’re not buying them for the high-quality taste, surely?
In my experience most of the time it’s because nobody ever taught them. They grew up with shitty parents that made them think rice and beans are only for yucky brown people.
This is low effort and cheap and relatively healthy compared to those microwave dinners though, a big bag of rice and lentils doesn’t cost much and is shelf stable for a year easily
When I need to eat but don’t want to put in any effort: half a cup of rice, half a cup of lentils, two cups stock (I use veggie stock, but you can use chicken, beef, etc.) Season with whatever you have in your spice drawer that looks good. Bring the water to a boil then lower the heat to low and let it simmer covered for 20-ish minutes. It’s bland but filling, lentils provide protein, it’s ready in less time than it would take to get delivery, and you don’t have to watch it. Rice and lentils will keep in your cabinet forever. You can get stock paste or boullion that keeps a long time too.
You can still have two beers, but now you’re not drinking on an empty stomach.
Your “no effort” meal, sounds like a lot of effort to me.
My low effort meal is “open packet, put ready meal in oven or microwave”
This is literally the same amount of effort.
I do appreciate that the listed recipe is “relatively quick and simple”, but I’m not convinced by “literally the same effort”.
If it was, then why would anyone buy the millions of frozen/boxed/packeted “just put it in the oven for 30 minutes” or “just put it in the microwave for 2 minutes” meals? They’re not buying them for the high-quality taste, surely?
In my experience most of the time it’s because nobody ever taught them. They grew up with shitty parents that made them think rice and beans are only for yucky brown people.
This is low effort and cheap and relatively healthy compared to those microwave dinners though, a big bag of rice and lentils doesn’t cost much and is shelf stable for a year easily
Massively cheaper and almost certainly better for you, yes - but arguably not as low effort as “beep beep beep, ping”.
You can make a lot and then freeze most things without much degradation of quality and then beep beep, ping the servings.