Food

It is easy to be annoyed by the need to eat, which generally takes more effort than other human physiological needs. But it can also be a source of joy, and as with many other areas, trying to avoid learning about it leads to poor and/or overpriced results. I consume food regularly, so decided to write down some notes on it.

Dietary guidelines

There are healthy diet guidelines issued by WHO and some governments, which seem sensible: they recommend to consume a lot of fruits and vegetables (at least 400 grams per day), some cereal, meat/fish/eggs (apparently mostly as protein sources, though there are other sources as well; usually it's recommended to consume at least 0.8 g of protein per kg of body weight daily, but for certain exercise types some recommend to increase it, up to around 2 or 3 grams per kg), and dairy. They also recommend to reduce sugar, salt, and butter consumption. If you mix together and heat up sugar, salt, and butter, you get toffee or similar confections (depending on temperature and other minor parameters). Saturated fat and alcohol are also recommended to avoid, and physical activity is recommended by some of those (despite not being directly related to food).

Humans evolved to survive on available food in bad conditions, so it's not a big deal if proportions are imperfect: eating edible foods you're not sick of should keep you alive. Trying to balance them and not completely ignoring some of the food groups should be pretty healthy.

Apparently it's still unclear how useful dietary supplements (multivitamins and others) are, assuming a relatively healthy and diverse diet. Speaking of things with little evidence and a lot of marketing or followers, there also are "organic food", GMO conspiracy theories, fad diets. So beware of dubious marketing, if you try to stick to evidence/science/studies (though there is plenty more of controversy around topics like that, even around the studies: the ones people are commonly interested in, but which are tricky to study precisely).

For calculations of food nutrition, there are Recipe Nutrition Calculator and Food Calculator; for estimation of the needed calories, there are Calorie Calculator and another Calorie Calculator (which includes estimates of macronutrient needs). And a similar Macro Calculator (with more calculators on that website). Plenty more information at ExRx.net - Diet and Nutrition.

Motivation and time

Cooking (and even eating) may be seen as a chore and inconvenience, but to many even computing does look that way, and in both cases it's possible to enjoy the process, making it a hobby. There are a bunch of hacks one may attempt to reduce bothering with food (meal replacements, eating out, relying on others to cook in general), but the results seem similar to people avoiding bothering with computers: reluctance to put a bit of time and effort into learning leads to poor results and continuous frustration, while after learning the basics it's rather fun to tinker. Also as with computers, maths, and likely most of the other activities, it can be intimidating at first, but experience builds confidence and makes it easier. For increased inspiration and motivation, there are plenty of cooking videos available online. It does take some time though.

As an additional benefit, the breaks taken to make a coffee or cook something may count for the breaks commonly suggested to heavy computer users, to avoid just sitting all day long (with potential adverse effects on one's health).

To speed up both cooking and dishwashing, one can cut some corners, especially after learning which ones are okay to cut: perhaps cut vegetables into less consistently-sized and larger chunks, roll out the dough less carefully, cook faster at a higher heat, don't wash dishes too thoroughly. But one should still be careful around the dangerous stuff found in the kitchen: contamination (from meat, eggs, etc), flame, hot oil, knives.

Kitchen setup

A nice kitchen setup and handy utensils are important for happy cooking. One of the important aspects (as with most of other manual labour) is lighting: see my notes on lighting for that.

The situation with cookware is similar to that with hand tools: odd brands hiding the companies/manufacturers behind them, sometimes pretending to be German, or local to a place they are sold at, while being Chinese or Indian. With established brands there is at least a hope for quality control, even if they are manufactured in China too. There are occasional stores that pick nice cookware/brands before selling it. And it wouldn't harm to investigate which utensils you need, which kinds of those exist, the properties of materials they are made of.

Common advices in articles and videos on kitchen setup are straightforward: keep the items you need often easily accessible and easy to fetch: pots and pans hanging (or otherwise fixed in a rack) instead of being stacked and stashed somewhere, knives on a magnetic bar, oils and spices visible and at hand, not hidden in a closed cabinet. While the unused stuff shouldn't occupy valuable space.

Knives

Much of food preparation is about slicing and chopping vegetables, which can be time-consuming. To speed it up, it's a good idea to learn how to hold and guide a knife properly, as well as to keep it sharp. Here is a couple of videos demonstrating the usage basics: "Basic Knife Skills", "The Only Knife Skills Guide You Need". For basic sharpening and re-aligning, see "How To Sharpen Dull Knives".

European-style knives are made of softer steel, making them easier to sharpen. while Japanese ones are harder (and harder to sharpen too). It's generally suggested to avoid buying knife sets/blocks, since they have some knives you will not use, while taking space.

Other interesting bits of information and references on the topic are available from the Hacker News thread on "Forming an Edge".

Cookware

There is a Wikipedia article on cookware and bakeware. The most common materials:

Ceramic and other non-stick surfaces

Non-stick and easy to clean. They require non-metal tools, lower temperatures (that is, not quite suitable for searing), and they wear down over time anyway. With teflon, PTFE can be unsafe at higher temperatures, PFOA is toxic, and apparently the environmental impact of their production is pretty bad. Additionally, there are dubious "granite" or "marble" non-stick surfaces, which don't contain granite or marble, or "diamond", which apparently contain diamond dust, so care should be taken with unusual ones.

Cast iron, carbon steel, cast aluminium

Those are non-stick with seasoning, durable, cast iron ones have high heat retention and are suitable for searing (see Maillard reaction). Shouldn't be used with acidic food too much (tomatoes, wine, vinegar, lemon juice, blueberries, and see more in the Master List of Typical pH and Acid Content of Fruits and Vegetables for Home Canning and Preserving; might be hard to look pH values up online, since apparently many people who write about food started using "alkaline" and "acidic" to mean "good" and "bad" respectively) or cleaned with soap, since it can ruin the seasoning. The overall maintenance (seasoning, cleaning, not ruining the seasoning) is relatively tricky, though apparently becomes easier with experience.

Stainless steel

Durable and easy to maintain, but sticky (some employ deglazing and make pan sauces to deal with it, though even occasional scrubbing may be easier than dealing with cast iron). Clad aluminium ones are commonly used to improve heat distribution (either a sandwich/disk on the base, or clad/entire pan, which is supposedly better), though not clear how well it works. A supposedly suitable temperature to reduce sticking can be tested using Leidenfrost effect, with "water drop test". Suitable for pretty much any task, just not the best for searing.

Copper

Apparently most uniform heat and good conductivity. Commonly lined with stainless steel or other corrosion-resistant surfaces.

I am mostly using stainless steel ones (without non-stick surfaces), with cast iron only for searing. But searing is possible with stainless steel, too, and one can use a single stainless steel saute pan (or saucier; a relatively deep or tall pan) for pretty much any cooking needs.

As with most other items, picking established manufacturers seems to be a good strategy.

Discovery

Dishes

There are various ways to discover new dishes, including Wikipedia's articles on regional cuisines (e.g., Italian cuisine, Spanish cuisine, American cuisine), websites with recipes, cooking shows, and just mentions during conversations, in books, and in movies. I found it useful to not dismiss dishes and food items based on distaste for local, cheap, and/or poorly cooked versions of those, since they can be very different. That applies to store-bought dishes as well, including confections: apparently many of the odd and unpleasant ones are just unsuccessful attempts to reproduce good ones.

Along with dishes themselves, meal structures are interesting to learn and experiment with: see outline of meals and Italian meal structure, for instance. And there's usually plenty to learn about each ingredient individually (which helps to pick more suitable for a given dish or otherwise better ones); as with many other things, Wikipedia is a good starting point, and then one can proceed to reading past online discussions and/or trying and discussing them online.

Discovering that odd local foods and beverages you have never liked are not consumed anywhere else, and one can live without them, is another nice possibility.

Some websites and databases with recipes: Wikimedia Cookbook, Supercook (handy recipe search based on available ingredients), SimplyRecipes, Allrecipes, Foods Guy.

Ingredients

It's useful to look closely into every ingredient: learn about their types, find reputable brands, try and find out which ones one prefers, and possibly even order them from specialized stores.

Rather often authentic ingredients will not be available (particularly in Russia, due to the import substitution), but then it is still better to substitute them and improvise than just to give up without trying.

Cooking

There are books on cooking, including Wikimedia Cookbook for recipes, and On Food and Cooking, with nice and useful explanations of the common cooking processes (as well as some history and other bits), but plenty of useful knowledge can be absorbed from just cooking videos with explanations (though in a less systematic way). The Sourdough Framework is a seemingly nice book focusing on sourdough bread baking, though not so much on yeast-based bread baking. Here are some YouTube channels with nice recipes and occasional explanations:

Pro Home Cooks

Nice and practical everyday recipes with focus on home cooking, also explaining how things work.

Ethan Chlebowski

More of everyday cooking, also with explanations and tips.

Alex

Goes pretty deep into details and techniques, good for learning about cooking in general (and not just particular recipes).

Adam Ragusea

More of general tips and comprehensive explanations, as well as specific recipes.

Claire Saffitz x Dessert Person

Desserts. Plenty of those, with comments/explanations. But US-based, so the sugar from those recipes can be cut in half.

Gennaro Contaldo

Italian cuisine, though the videos may be strangely emotional, making a show of it. Not that much of explanations, mostly quick cooking.

Vincenzo's Plate

Features Italian cuisine too, and similarly a bit strange/showy.

Jamie Oliver

Shares many recipes.

Tasty

Many assorted recipes, apparently a part of BuzzFeed, occasional explanations. The measurements are inappropriate sometimes (e.g., flour is given by volume).

Gordon Ramsay

Known for abusing people in cooking shows, and being abused by another cook in the past, but shares many recipes, as well as occasional cooking guides.

Joshua Weissman

A weird channel: dirty jokes, weird visual and audio effects, the host sings, slaps food and himself, but shares many nice recipes and advices. I heard that this strange behavior can be explained by Austin's unofficial motto "Keep Austin Weird". Textual recipes are available at joshuaweissman.com, and they are nicer than random ones on the Internet, with ingredients for baking given by weight.

MOMables - Laura Fuentes

Recipes focusing on practicality, but still nice: one-pot dishes, freezing advices, meal preparation.

TheMealPrepManual by Josh Cortis

Meal preparation recipes and guidelines.

Epicurious

A mix of regular recipes and slightly chaotic comparisons of different methods of cooking the same dishes. The corresponding website, with articles on the subject, is epicurious.com.

NOT ANOTHER COOKING SHOW

Yet another cooking show. Mostly recipes, some guides.

Food Wishes

Relatively short videos with recipes.

Preppy Kitchen

Many nice recipes; accompanied by preppykitchen.com, which has the recipes written down (once you pass the captcha, the version for printing is more to the point).

James Hoffmann

Videos on coffee brewing and related equipment.

(Martha Stewart Living) Everyday Food

Another channel with many video recipes.

There also are shows not strictly related to learning how to cook, but food-related and interesting and/or entertaining: Townsends often covers 18th century cooking practices, Tasting History with Max Miller presents recipes from more places and periods, Weird History and other history-related channels cover topics such as historical diets and history of various food products, Food Factory and standalone documentaries demonstrate (though usually only cursorily, not getting into industrial and manufacturing engineering) food mass manufacturing processes.

There are occasional nice websites dedicated to cooking around, such as National Center for Home Food Preservation, Serious Eats.

The Sad Bastard Cookbook: Food you can make so you don't die looks amusing, though as the title implies, the recipes are not particularly exciting.

Meals by complexity

I find it useful to compose a menu of the dishes you like and know how to cook. Below is mine, with meals grouped by complexity and cooking time.

Virtually no cooking

The following dishes don't require any heating, or even much of cutting, and are mostly about putting things together (or just eating them whole):

• Muesli (granola) with milk or yoghurt, overnight oats.
• Standalone fruits, vegetables, and beans; fresh, dried, or canned. Also nuts, cheese, yoghurts, bread, ham.
• Sandwiches: depending on ingredients, they can cover pretty much all the food groups; see the list of sandwiches for inspiration. The "Why are Deli Subs better than homemade ones?" video contains nice submarine sandwich building tips. Around the time of writing, avocado toasts seem to be a bit of a fad, but they are actually nice and easy to make. Bruschetta shares those qualities, too.
• Pre-made/store-bought meals (including take-out and food deliveries).
• Desserts: oatmeal balls.
• Beverages: water, juices, milk, maybe lemonades.

Minimal cooking

The following dishes are comparable in complexity to brewing tea/coffee/cocoa, requiring just a few ingredients (hence little planning), little skill or action, and not much of attention:

• Homemade muesli/granola (e.g., mixing and baking it once in a while, then just adding milk or yoghurt to make a breakfast).
• Porridge (oatmeal and others).
• Eggs: boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, omelettes, poached eggs. Can be combined with vegetables (e.g., scrambled eggs with tomato, Stir-fried tomato and scrambled eggs, shakshouka), staple foods (rice -- omurice, potatoes -- Spanish omelette) or other leftovers (frittata). A nice protein source. See also: a list of egg dishes in Wikipedia. Similarly to meat and fish, eggs are important to not overcook: not only overcooking harms the texture, but it also leads to the release of unpleasantly smelling hydrogen sulfide.
• Meatballs. Soaked bread crumbs can be used as a binder, while with eggs there is a danger of unpleasant smell, especially if one is not careful with temperature control. Possibly cooking those in a sauce would help with temperature control though, similarly to poaching eggs or cooking them in shakshouka: water helps to limit the temperature. Store-bought ground meat simplifies the process, though one should look for a decent one in case of using it, since they tend to throw in too much of connective tissue and stuff like that in cheaper ones (which is unpleasant to eat). It is nice to add cooked onion and garlic into the meatball mixture, for better flavor and texture.
• Baked potatoes (whole, potato wedges, or "oven fries"), which are supposedly healthier than fried or even boiled ones (though those are easy too, and even quicker). Other fruits and vegetables can be baked as well. The "Why are a restaurant's vegetables so much better than homemade ones?" video features a few tips (use of salt and oil, possibly pre-heating the tray and/or pre-boiling the vegetables, higher heat, spacing).
• Baked meat or fish, too. Though fish tends to produce fishy smell, as with pan-frying (except for tuna); something like steaming may be a nicer strategy for that. But baking is well-suited for thicker beef steaks, larger chicken or turkey breasts.
• Pan-fried turkey or chicken (or other meat) pieces. Possibly approaching stews or paprikash, or simply as a way to cook those quickly.
• Steamed salmon (or perhaps other fish): potentially faster than baking, doesn't smell fishy, can be done using a single pan (e.g., as in Citrus Salmon with New Potatoes).
• Pancakes (plenty of nice recipes around; a particularly nice and easy batter consists of mashed bananas, one egg per banana, flour with baking powder added to achieve suitable consistency).
• Syrniki, a cross between pancakes and cheesecakes. One of the nice recipes includes 280 g of tvorog, 40 g of flour, up to 40 g of sugar, one egg yolk; combine those, fry on a pan a little, then bake for about 5 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius.
• Quesadillas.
• Salads: a salad dressing, vegetables (e.g., some combination of cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, avocado, olives, salad onions, etc), possibly feta/mozzarella/parmesan cheese, croutons/bread, chicken/tuna. Preparation is a bit time-consuming (takes me about 20 minutes, including dishwashing), but one can peel and chop everything for 2-3 portions at once, and just store it in a refrigerator without dressing (salt in particular, since it pulls the water out). Or even refrigerate a complete salad for a few days. Some also prepare and store dressings separately. Apparently tomatoes from sunny places tend to have a much nicer flavor; in Russia those usually come from Azerbaijan or Uzbekistan. Kumato tomatoes are fine, too. Less common is (Viennese) potato salad, and pasta salads.
• Smoothies.
• Gazpacho (basically a vegetable smoothie).
• Soups based on dry soup mixtures (including legumes, pasta, spices). Some make such mixtures instead of buying pre-made ones.
• Soups based on frozen vegetable bags, possibly along with dry or canned beans, pasta or rice.
• Pasta (ranges from plain boiling of whatever is at hand to picking good ingredients and following proper recipes, such as pasta al pomodoro, cacio e pepe, pasta alla gricia, amatriciana, carbonara, and more complex ones, and possibly even making pasta yourself). 80 (± 20) grams of dried pasta per person may be used as a reference value for a meal, though some use 150 grams.
• Store-bought frozen pizzas and other store-bought meals.
• Burgers.
• Hot dogs (caramelized onions fit well in those; related: "Layers of Deceit: Why do recipe writers lie and lie and lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions?").
• Steaks. Searing and careful inner temperature control are important, nice meat and meat cuts are desirable, such as rib eye steak or strip steak, the Aberdeen/Black Angus breed, properly aged (aging makes them darker); butter, thyme, and garlic are optional, but the butter should only be added in the very end: it contains water, so the temperature will go down to about 100 degrees Celsius, while Maillard reaction needs 140 to 165. And it is unclear whether basting is any useful. Quick and simple, though side dishes (or turning those into steak sandwiches) may take more time and effort. Some eat fat and sinew, but apparently the steaks are sold with fat to cook with/on it, and for those who like it, while it's fine to not like and trim it off: either throwing away, along with sinew, or using for cooking (probably it's a common knowledge, but apparently many also view it as an important part of meat and something that shouldn't be thrown away, so I used to be uncertain and to feel uneasy about it). Thicker steaks are awkward to cook on a stove alone (burning, leading to fumes and messing up cast iron pans, as well as possible over-searing), so they are better to either slice beforehand or finish in an oven. Beef, lamb, and pork steaks take a while to digest, so it's best to avoid eating them late (before sleep, for dinner).
• Pan-fried potatoes, also working as an easy side dish for a steak. It's commonly suggested to simmer them for 5 minutes, then fry for about 10 (can be done while a steak is resting, reusing the same pan), adding enough oil to make them crispy, and stirring occasionally to make them uniformly crispy (some call it sauteing, though it may be closer to shallow frying).
• Chicken or turkey breasts: poached (it is important to not overcook, preferably use a thermometer, and to add some salt and spices into the water, or even to use a stock; a useful trick is to take the water to a boil, and then turn the heat off, waiting for the chicken to warm up slowly), or optionally butterflied, then tenderized, marinated (commonly some oil, vinegar or lemon juice for acidity, salt, and spices to taste) or just seasoned, and pan-fried. Can be eaten by itself, used in a salad, in a sandwich, combined with fresh or cooked vegetables, and so on.
• Pumpkin soup.
• Burritos. Ground beef (or any other ground meat, or meat pieces) can be used as an ingredient for the filling/sauces (similar to a ragu or stews in general), producing protein-rich food easily, and can be stored for multiple meals (either the filling separately from tortillas, or the burritos can be refrigerated or frozen).
• Cooked cheese, such as fried halloumi (which should be cooked on a low heat, with occasional flipping, to avoid burning it).
• Dips and sauces: guacamole, pesto, allioli, mayonnaise (though raw eggs may be risky).
• Beverages: tea, coffee, cocoa. They can be enjoyable, and there is plenty of variation. Also more varied ones, with added ginger, honey, and so on; beverages akin to Ginger-Turmeric Herbal Tea can be nice, too. For coffee brewing, I like to use AeroPress, though different methods may be better for a variety, even when you have a generally preferred method.
• Desserts: cookies (including oatmeal, chocolate chip, Vanillekipferl, gingersnap), banana bread, key lime pie, cobblers and crumbles (aka crisps), cheesecake (crustless ones, including Basque cheesecakes, can be nice and nutritious: e.g., 600 g ricotta, 200 g Greek yogurt, 3 eggs, 2 tbsp flour, 1 tbsp honey, vanilla powder; pour into a springform pan lined with parchment paper, bake for an hour at 200 degrees Celsius), panna cotta (common proportions are about 1 g of gelatin per 100 ml of liquids and less than 10 g of sugar). Cookie recipes, especially US ones, tend to include a lot of sugar (and sometimes salt); depending on one's taste, it may be a good idea to reduce those -- sometimes by a half or more. To my taste, sugar content (measured as a portion of total mass) of 1/8 or 1/7 is fine, 1/4+ or 1/6+ is too much.

Many of these can be used as bases to build upon: leftovers and fruits/vegetables can be added into soups (including pre-mixed ones), on top of frozen pizzas and lasagnas, into scrambled eggs, and into other dishes. Relishes are easy to add to some of those. Stocks/broths (either store-bought or homemade) are useful for soups, needed for risotto, and one can make sauces with them.

Medium complexity

The following dishes require some planning to get and use the ingredients, some timings and attention, but still nothing fancy and not too easy to mess up:

• Risotto: just a bit more complex and time-consuming than some of the pasta dishes, and quite similar generally, but those pasta dishes are pushing the limits of "minimal cooking", so perhaps here a line can be drawn. Also as other "medium complexity" dishes, risotto is fine to reheat. A similar dish is Spanish rice (with tomatoes).
• Minestrone (with fresh vegetables): easy, but takes plenty of vegetable slicing and a bunch of ingredients for a nice one. See, for instance, a "classic minestrone" with canned beans recipe.
• Chicken soup. Takes up to an hour of active cooking (or less with experience). Can be combined with cooking poached chicken.
• Stews, ragout, chili con carne (not very different from soups though). Common beef stew advices: "How To Make the Best Beef Stew No Matter How You Cook It". Additionally, apparently fat can be rendered out by simmering longer (or simply trimming it and rendering out beforehand), and for thickening one can rely on starch from potatoes or similar vegetables. An approximate ingredient list: olive oil, mirepoix (onion, carrot, celery), garlic, red bell pepper, button mushrooms, ground beef, eggplant, zucchini, potato, tomatoes, spices (salt, paprika, black pepper, cumin, etc); takes me 2.5 hours to prepare. A chili may be considerably easier and faster: e.g., chopped onion, peppers, garlic, then ground meat, spices, canned kidney beans, diced tomatoes, salt and flour to thicken in the end.
• Casseroles. There are easier ones (e.g., Shepherd's pie), but something like lasagna (e.g., "The Best Lasagna") takes a while, since the sauces are made separately, and then it is assembled with multiple layers.
• Pizza. The ingredients are generally simple and widely available, but the dough takes time to rise, and it's tricky to transfer an assembled pizza onto the cooking surface without deforming the pizza (though there are various strategies for that; dusting the surface with the widely suggested semolina flour is indeed helpful). Another potential issue is the dough rising too much while being cooked: I noticed that happening while having possibly a bit too much of yeast, and while letting it to rise just for an hour instead of overnight. Here's the Tasty pizza recipe; the Gennaro Contaldo pizza dough recipe is 500 g strong flour, 1 tsp salt, 7 g dry yeast, 325 ml warm water; the Joshua Weissman pizza dough recipe -- 800 g 00-Tip flour, 512 g water (64% hydration, or 39%, using the definition of hydration comparing liquid content to total weight, rather than to dry ingredients), 3-5 g active dry yeast, 16 g fine sea salt; the Johnny Di Francesco pizza dough recipe -- 600 ml water, 1 kg flour, 30 g salt, 1-2 g yeast. Actually a pizza may be even pretty hard to cook smoothly and correctly, but it uses few ingredients and there are not many steps in the process.
• Pies. Sweet or savory: pumpkin pies, meat pies, small or large ones. Tarts and other similar pastry, too. I hear key lime pies with Graham cracker crust are nice, but haven't tried those.
• Small pies, hand pies, turnovers, pasties, samosas, embanadas (or empanadillas).
• Chocolate cake (e.g., a chocolate cake recipe using simple ingredients, with the sugar halved, or a chocolate Bundt cake, which is even easier).
• Cheesesteak sandwiches are nice, but unlike most of the other sandwiches, they take a rather long time to make carefully and nicely (more than an hour, if you slowly render the fat out, caramelize onions on it, cut everything thinly beforehand). Though it might be possible to do quickly, with experience, and maybe some compromises: see "The 22 minute Philly Cheesesteak".
• Paratha, a flatbread: the ingredients are very basic, and the procedure is simple, but can be tiring and take quite a bit of time to roll them out. Apparently requires practice and skill to improve on that.
• Yeast-leavened bread. Can be fairly easy, but it is even easier to get it from a store, so probably making it yourself does not qualify for "minimal cooking" -- even while it can be quite minimal, as in a ciabatta recipe (+ text version). French baguettes are made quite similarly (see also: Sandwich Baguettes, The 5 minute baguette, The Easiest No Knead Baguette Recipe; the latter uses a highly hydrated dough, more flour should be added for it to keep its shape: 464 grams worked better than 426). Focaccia seems to be among easier options.
• Eggs Benedict: not particularly hard or slow to cook, but not for regular consumption or cooking: most of other egg dishes are healthier, often easier and quicker to make.
• Chicken tikka masala. A nice dish, but may take a while to make (at least if you're not experienced in making it, fry multiple batches of chicken, and/or use fresh tomatoes for the sauce). Apparently an easier and structurally similar dish is Hungarian chicken paprikash.
• Homemade deli (lunch) meats (e.g., as in The 2 Dollar Sandwich, which is a nice sandwich): not hard to make, but harder than buying them in a store, and the result is about the same (perhaps closer to simply baked meats though).
• Fried rice. Actually pretty easy and versatile, but may take a longer time if many ingredients are used, and the rice should be cooked a day or so in advance. Chili peppers are commonly used; it is important to deseed those with a spoon (and maybe in gloves), since they do burn the skin for a few hours otherwise.
• Yogurt: adding existing yogurt into milk and keeping it warm (around 38 degrees Celsius) for hours (some recipes mention 4 to 12, some mention 7 or more). Many ways to do that, including specialized yogurt makers. So far I tried it with Activia yogurt and pasteurized whole milk, keeping it warm by placing the bottle into a pot of warm water, under a tap, and occasionally opening that tap to mix in more of warm water. The resulting yogurt tastes very similar to the starter, and it is a little thicker.
• Strudels (e.g., Österreichischer Apfelstrudel, Apple Strudel). The ingredients are simple, but it takes some time, and the dough stretching and rolling up should be done carefully. I liked dough consistency with 170 ml water, 400 g flour, 1 egg, 3 tbsp olive oil, a pinch of salt.

While these take longer to cook, many of them can be stored in a refrigerator and re-heated for a few days, so the cooking time per meal is not long.

Complex recipes

• Caramel Apple Crisp Cheesecake. Not hard, but laborious: easily takes hours, contrary to the 40 minutes mentioned in the recipe.

Planning

In addition to reducing the number of grocery store trips, planning (or sufficiently good improvisation) may help to spend less time cooking by preparing multiple meals at once, as well as to get nicer meals (with stocks, possibly sauces, and other homemade ingredients one may prepare separately and/or for multiple dishes at once). Materials on the topic can be found using the "meal prep" keywords.

When planning goes a bit wrong and mold appears, generally soft, liquid/moist, or porous foods should be discarded, while hard/firm ones may be kept after cutting out the moldy bits. See "Molds on Food: Are They Dangerous?", "Moldy Foods: When to Toss, When to Keep".

Meal preparation

Some of the dish groups suitable (and commonly used) for meal prep are soups, containers with rice, some protein, vegetables, and sauces (refrigerated or frozen), and things like burritos, possibly frozen.

Refrigeration and freezing

For cut or chopped vegetables, USDA's "How should I store cut fruit and vegetables?" suggests to refrigerate cut fruits and vegetables in covered containers; "So Fresh and So Clean: How to Store Cut Vegetables" and "Meal Prep Guide: How to Store Prepped Vegetables" are more detailed guides to refrigerating and freezing various vegetables.

For whole vegetables, I think generally one can see how they are stored in a grocery store, and store them similarly.

FoodSafety.gov's Cold Food Storage Chart is a handy general table.

Peeling

While a lot of fruits and vegetables should be consumed, and many of the fresh ones have a rather short shelf life, an additional difficulty for me is that I have rather unpleasant reaction to biting some of their skins (goosebumps and brief toothache), so peeling is needed. Some also peel them simply because they don't like the skins, and in some cases those are not quite edible.

Blanching (putting food into boiling water, and optionally into cold water afterwards) sometimes makes skins easy to peel; works with tomatoes and peaches.

A process for pepper peeling is somewhat similar to blanching: it's easier to peel after a few minutes in an oven (or a grill, or rotating on an open fire) and 5 to 60 minutes in an airtight container (which is supposed to produce moisture under its skin). Apparently some people (those cooking chiles en nogada), using certain varieties of peppers, manage to carefully stuff them after skinning, but at least with bell peppers I found it to be very difficult, tiring, and time-consuming to peel a pepper without it falling apart, whether with a vegetable peeler and knife, or open fire or an oven, steaming, and knife. A much better idea is to go slightly less fancy and just make a casserole, with pepper (if you want it) simply chopped into the mix: then you don't care if it falls apart.

A vegetable peeler is handy for carrots and cucumbers. A bit less handy (but quite suitable) for potatoes. One can use it for pepper too, but for bell pepper it works better to cut it before peeling, so that there's no concave bits inaccessible to the peeler.

Pretty much everything can be peeled (skinned) with a knife, possibly leaving a bit more waste and/or taking a bit longer than with the alternatives.

For standalone snacks, apples (with a tough skin) can be replaced with pears. Also some apples are much softer than others: ripe (yellow) Golden Delicious is among nice ones.

Safe cooking temperatures

Overcooking meat, poultry, or fish makes it tough and dry, yet it's pretty common, while undercooking is unsafe. So it's a good idea to use a thermometer, possibly to employ techniques that make it easier to reach and sustain desirable temperatures (that is, cooking longer, but at lower temperatures: poaching, sous vide). See Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart, "Keep food safe with time and temperature control". It should also be cooled quickly, and sometimes time can be traded for temperature. Here's a copy of the USDA chart, since I'm checking it often, and it'll save a click:

Somewhat related are tips on thawing (e.g., How to Defrost Fish): it's suggested to defrost in either a refrigerator or in cold water (if it has to be done quickly), but not at a room temperature.

Units of measurement

Generally 1 cup approximately equals to 284 ml (though it can be 236 or 240 ml for an US cup), 1 tablespoon to 18 ml (15 ml for US ones), 1 teaspoon to 6 (5 for US) ml. Baker percentage is both handy and important for precision (along with usage of weights for flour), but often it is not used, and then an ingredient weight chart may be useful: 1 cup of all-purpose flour may be about 120 grams, for instance. Additionally, Imperial units are often used in recipes.

Long shelf life foods

While survivalism is not my hobby, the end of 2024 in Russia feels like uncertain times, and it may be useful to be at least a little prepared for various eventualities, including food shortages, as those happen in similar situations sometimes; likely it will be too late to start preparing once they will begin.

Some lists: Long Term Food Storage List: 26 Foods with a Long Shelf Life, 32 Long Shelf Life Foods to Keep In Your Pantry, Long Shelf Life Foods – What Lasts Best, Long Life Food: A Comprehensive List of Shelf-Stable Essentials, 22 Foods That Last Up To 25 Years To Stockpile. The commonly suggested items for very long storage (on the order of 10 years) are salt, sugar, honey, white rice, popcorn, freeze dried fruits and vegetables, vinegar, corn starch, soda, instant coffee, powdered milk and eggs, dried beans and legumes, pasta, flour, whole grains, low-fat crackers, maybe rolled oats, buckwheat, canned foods. Proper storage is important, and much of that is commonly suggested to seal in Mylar (polyethylene-laminated aluminized BoPET) bags with oxygen absorbers to achieve a longer shelf life (see Oxygen Absorbers Recommended Amounts). Though real Mylar bags seem tricky to find in some places, and one may have to look into other options: food storage buckets, glass jars.