When I run out of ideas on what to cook for lunch or dinner, and I only have 30 minutes to cook and prepare everything (or an hour if I need to do a quick grocery run), I tend to follow this framework1. My meal should at least provides me with enough carbs, proteins, and fibre.

Ingredients - Main:

  • Carbs: choose one - rice, noodles, pasta, or potatoes. If I am on a low-carb diet, I either omit this, or swap it with greens (eg. lettuce heads, iceberg lettuce).
  • Proteins: choose one - chicken (ground or diced), fish (fillet), beef (ground or diced), tofu, or tempeh. Sometimes I add eggs.
  • Fibre: peas (frozen), or any veggies I can find in the supermarket.

Ingredients - Seasoning, choose one:

  • Taco seasoning
  • Korean-style - gochujang2, a bit of soy sauce, honey, and sesame oil.
  • Chinese-style - soy sauce, oyster sauce, Shaoxing wine, and white pepper.

Steps:

  1. Proteins to cook first. Usually pan-sear. Make sure you brown the proteins (Maillard reaction).
  2. If using hard veggies (eg. carrot), then put the veggies in this step. If not, add seasoning first, then put leafy greens at the end (just enough heat to wilt them).
  3. Add seasoning.
  4. Serve with your choice of carbs, and enjoy!

For dessert and additional vitamins, I usually grab any fruits available in the supermarket. Most of the time peaches, nectarines, apples, or strawberries.

  1. Apart from this mental model, in cooking, usually you should have four elements: heat, fat, salt, and acid (optional). ↩

  2. Korean fermented red chili paste. ↩