How to feast as first-years, and avoid kitchen nightmares: a fresher’s cookbook

Cooking: some people love it, others couldn’t hate it more – what is undeniable, however, is that it’s an essential rite of passage for a university student. Just as a baby owl must learn how to catch mice before it can fly the nest, you too must learn how to create and cook your own meals before setting off for the big, wide world (though hopefully not mice). It can be tough, though, and at times completely bewildering. What are the easiest meals, for when I’m in a time crunch? Where can I find the cheapest possible foods? Why does my spatula have holes in it? To answer (most) of these questions and more, I’ve provided a guide below for your convenience:

An onion can go in absolutely everything, and you can’t go wrong with it

There are two staple components for the process of cooking: the food (obviously), and the equipment, and it’s the latter which can present the greatest challenge to enterprising cooks. Yes, you want to cook the food, but in what? Right away, I want to rule out using an oven. Perhaps in your accommodation, you’ll have been blessed with a much happier ratio of ovens-to-people, but I spent my first year in Rootes, sharing two ovens with 15 people. When you want to use the oven, it won’t be free, and trying to cohabit an oven is complicated. Instead, use the hobs and fry absolutely everything, but use a wok rather than a frying pan. It’s far better for preventing spillages when your chicken begins to inexplicably melt in the pan. And whilst frying sounds awful health-wise, you really don’t need to use a lot of oil to cook anything. A single litre bottle of vegetable oil lasted me the entire year.

As far as ingredients go, these are the must-haves. An onion can go in absolutely everything, and you can’t go wrong with it. Plus, it’s a vegetable, so even if it’s the only thing remotely resembling a plant to end up in your meal, that can still be chalked up as a health benefit. Pasta and rice are your carbohydrate staples, of course, and buying a microwave rice cooker, while appearing like a frivolous waste of money, will probably save your life. Simply slamming a portion of rice into the microwave for 12 minutes will save you so much effort over the year. During particularly grim moments, rice mixed with tinned sweetcorn or precooked meat, can create the easiest (and bleakest) struggle-meal. A separate struggle-meal and personal favourite of mine, which you probably shouldn’t let anyone else see you eat for the sake of your own reputation, is the microwave grilled cheese. Toast the bread, add a square of cheese and a coating of paprika, and microwave that bad boy for 60 seconds. Et voila! I want to stress – we did not have a grill in our Rootes kitchen. If you find yourself with a grill, for goodness’ sake, use that instead.

Make your shops smaller, and you’ll avoid the awful feeling of having wasted food

Besides cooking, budgeting is the other principal life lesson that every university student goes through, and really these are two skills that go hand-in-hand. Besides the obvious – buy supermarket own brands instead of big-name branded products. Try sticking to water rather than sodas or juice. There are smaller ways you can cut down on expenses too. Don’t bulk-buy far ahead of time: expiry dates are always far closer than you think, and I’ve suffered food poisoning enough at this point to figure out they generally aren’t only a consumerist ploy. Make your shops smaller, and you’ll avoid the awful feeling of having wasted food. Additional trips to supermarkets aren’t the end of the world. In a similar vein, avoid Rootes (the grocery store, though that’s a solid rule for the accommodation too). Though they offer decent alcohol prices (undercutting Tesco for a bottle of Bailey’s by £2 last Christmas), their food prices often have an absurd markup. You’re better off making a sandwich than going to them for lunch.

Ultimately, there’s a world of knowledge that can only be conveyed through your own cooking experiences. But here are some last few assorted tips: the own-brand soups at Cannon Park Tesco are phenomenal value – five for £5 is an entire meal for £1, if you add a couple slices of toast. On that subject, a club card really is a no-brainer. As long as you actually remember to scan it (my downfall), the savings made there are great long-term. And lastly, you can save a negligible amount of money on sugar or salt because who actually uses them enough to justify buying a whole container? Instead, take home a few dozen sachets of either from Pret A Manger or Wetherspoons. It’s free, so indulge yourselves!