How much time do you spend every day cooking ?

I used to spend about 45 minutes to 1h30 every day for lunch and dinner depending on what I made.

This may seem a lot but there are a lot of steps :

Deciding what to eat, shopping because you lack that one ingredient, cooking the thing, eating, doing the dishes etc etc All of this takes some time.

When I was a student I quickly had no time at all for cooking so I instant noodles quickly began to be my go-to meal.

Obviously it's very unhealthy. I tried a lot of dishes but none matched my needs :

• fast to cook
• healthy
• effortless
• Taste

Now, What if I told you there is a recipe that's good, that requires 30 seconds to prepare, 10 to 15 minutes to cook, almost no dishwashing after and it costs me around 1.5 dollars per meal ?

Allow me to introduce to you :

The special

The special is basically a mix of complete rice, red lentils and vegetables with a bit of olive oil.

cooked inside a rice cooker (best, otherwise cook it as if you would cook rice) I suggest this one, but any rice cooker is fine, just make it has at least 1 liter/ 0,26 gallons capacity.

Basically this covers the body needs (disclosure, I'm not a dietitian so it might not fit perfectly, but who plans his meals perfectly except ill and athletes ?)

I'll explain why I picked each ingredient while explaining the recipe.

rice : 100 gr/ 3.5 oz

It's the base of the special, It provides carbohydrates and controls the the time taken to cook.

I use complete rice as it's more healthy. It takes more time to cook but we can control that.

note that you can use any rice you want.

Red lentils : 100 gr/ 3.5 oz

Lentils are my source of proteins, I use specifically the red ones because they cook much faster than the other types of lentils. If you want to use the brown ones you have to cook them separately since they take too much time.

If lentils don't suit you you can use fish, I used to pick Alaska pollock because it's cheap and it often comes in blocks of 100gr which is convenient. Don't try to use meat because we cook the ingredients with steam and meat is not great cooked this way, feel free to try though !

Salt&pepper and spices

Since everything is boiled the taste of the ingredients tends to fade a bit. So we add salt (for the rice mostly) pepper.

for the spices, I use Turmeric with curry, and a bit of pepper.

vegetables 300-400gr/ 10.5-14 oz

they provide fibers and various good things. Especially to the taste, everything is very dry so far they add water to the plate so you don't have to drink all the time.

I like to use frozen vegetables because they don't rot, they are ready to use (pre-cut or peeled etc), and they contain more vitamins and anti-oxidant than fresh

You can pick your own and make your own mix or buy a pre-prepared mix but be careful that it's still healthy.

Most of them add sugar, weird sounding names that are actually harmful to improve the taste.

My mix is : Zucchini 25%, potatoes 25% , green and red peppers 25%, broccolis 25% and a quarter of white onion.

And you're done, add water, I usually put 2 cups but you can go higher depending on the ingredients.

Cook it, wait 10-15 minutes, and you're done !

I like to put in a FÖRTROLIG (Ikea obviously) it's glass so there is no food poisoning coming from plastic that may melt a bit (at the molecular level) and directly eat from it. Once I'm done and if there is some back, I simply put the cap and put it in the fridge.

Onto dishwashing, you only have the rice cooker to clean and it's really like 3-4 movements with a sponge and you are done.!

conclusion :

What I love with the special is that basically EVERYTHING is customizable. I repeat EVERYTHING, if you still keep a good mix of ingredients to make it fill our needs you can make your own version very easily. Don't like potatoes ? Add mushrooms ! Don't like the spices ? Change em' ! the fact that it's modular is really the core value of its recipe, just make sure to not get lost in the way and keep close to the four close principles :

• Fast to cook
• Healthy
• Effortless
• Taste

Thanks for reading, I'm very new to blogging, please tell me in the comments if there are areas where I could improve, if you made your own special Post it in the comments too, I'd love to try it out !

I'm going to post a few more of those recipes that uses the special's four principles. So follow me to get updated :)