How to Cook In a Dorm Room

Summer’s over! It’s time to go back to school!

If you’re a student, that means figuring out which electives to take, how often you can bring your laundry home for your parents to do, and deciding whether a poster of Jim Belushi or Dave Matthews Band would go best in the corner.

And it means trying to eat well despite living below the poverty line.

College meal plans are expensive. You can expect to pay around $2,000 for a semester worth of food, and if you sleep through breakfast? Tough luck, you still gotta pay up, sucker!

Learning how to prepare tasty and healthy food for yourself is a great way to save some money during college, and it’s a crucial skill to learn if you want to look better, feel better, and live better.

Sure, you can go with the classic combo of microwave and George Foreman Grill, but you are pretty limited with what you can do there.

Instead, here are three better pieces of equipment that will help you to eat healthy and delicious meals no matter how cramped your quarters are.

Say hello to your new roommates.

The Slow Cooker

I’ve sung the praises of the slow cooker before, but it bears repeating.

• Slow cookers allow you cook cheap, tough meats and starches such as roasts and potatoes.
• Slow cookers require no work once they are loaded up. Just turn on and come home to a dinner ready to eat!
• Slow cookers can be as small or big as you want, depending on how many meals you’d like to cook in one session.

The wide variety of healthy and tasty foods you can prepare with a slow cooker is nearly endless. Here’s some ideas for starters:

1. Pot roast
2. Chili
3. Beef stew
4. Chicken and rice soup

A slow cooker is one of the most useful kitchen “gadgets” out there, and it’s perfect for the the student trying to eat well on a limited budget.

The Rice Cooker

Are you a poor college student? Well then, rice and beans are your new best friend!

Think of them like a deluxe version of ramen, but just as cheap.

Meals made from these two basic ingredients are found all over the world, generally made by the poor who can’t afford to eat a lot of fresh meat, vegetables, and fruit. (And if you’re paying for college, this probably describes you!)

And if that isn’t enough, most rice cookers include a steamer insert, so you can steam up veggies such as broccoli, cauliflower, and spinach.

It’s taken me a while to “get” rice cookers, but I’ve finally begun to accept their brilliance.

Think of them as smaller slow cookers that heat at a higher temperature. They do a similar job, but while slow cookers shine for cooking meat and starchy veggies, rice cookers are best cooking rice (der!), beans, and fibrous vegetables.

The Toaster Oven

The toaster oven combines all the best features of microwaves, toasters, and ovens. And gives you a lot of bang for your buck as a result. It can do all the important things that these three pieces of equipment can.

• Cook steaks, pork chops, chicken pieces, and fish fillets.
• Roast vegetables.
• Sear or toast food at high temperature.
• Reheat leftovers.

In short, a toaster oven can completely replace your microwave and George Foreman grill, and do plenty more besides.

The Best of the Rest

In addition to these three pieces of equipment, you absolutely needto have the following:

• A Chef’s Knife–For all your cutting needs.
• A Cutting Board–Get a plastic one. It works better than the cover of your textbooks.
• A Wooden Spoon–For stirring and transferring hot foods.

The 7 Rules of Eating Cheaply

Trying to eat well as a poor college student is difficult, but not impossible.

In a previous experiment, I made more than a week’s worth of food with only $48.21. I also know what it’s like to struggle to eat well when you’re broke on a regular basis.

Here are some important guidelines to know if you are going to try to save money by cooking for yourself:

1. Rice and beans are always cheaper than meat and vegetables.
2. Chicken and pork are cheaper than beef and fish.
3. Tough roasts are cheaper than thin steaks, chops, and fillets.
4. Potatoes, carrots, celery, bell peppers, and cabbage are the cheapest veggies.
5. Fruit is almost always expensive, but apples, oranges, and bananas are the cheapest.
6. Learn to love butter and other full-fat dairy.
7. Salt and pepper go a long way towards making bland food tasty.

So study hard, have some fun, but do yourself a favor and learn the important life lesson of learning how to cook while you’re at school.

You’ll save a lot of money and you’ll be healthier and fitter. And besides, sooner that you know it you’ll be out in the “real world” where you have to fend for yourself anyway.

And trust me, it’s a scary place out there!