When you’re Self-Catering on your holiday, you don’t want it to be all about food, do you? So here’s five meals that take five minutes each to prepare.

Now, the five minutes that you are going to spend cooking these meals might be a bit chaotic.  You will have to do a bit of multitasking, but it will be worth it in the end when you sit down to a homemade dinner.

Some cooking needs a bit of multi-tasking

One of the easiest and most delicious meals that you can make in less than five minutes is spaghetti and meatballs.  Pick your favourite jar of spaghetti sauce and place it in a small pot on the stove to warm up.  Add a package of pre-made meatballs into the sauce.  While these two items are warming up together, boil a pot of water for your spaghetti.  Instead of using the thicker spaghetti, substitute angel hair pasta instead.  Because it is so thin, angel hair is ready to eat in a just a few minutes.

To spice up your spaghetti and meatballs a bit, take a few slices of bread and butter the tops.  Sprinkle a bit of garlic and cheese onto the slices and places them in the oven for a few minutes until they are warm and toasty.  In about five minutes, your garlic cheesy bread, angel hair pasta, and sauce will be ready to eat.

Mmmm - thad does look good, doesn’t it?

Burritos can be made with ease in five minutes or less with the help of a microwave.  Take a few flour tortillas and spread a layer of refried beans over each one.  You can also substitute black beans if you would prefer.  Drain a can of corn and then spoon out a few scoops onto each tortilla.  Take some pre-grated cheese and sprinkle it on top of the layer of bean and corn.  You can add other ingredients if you wish to do so but for simplicity, we will stick with these easy ingredients.  Once you have added all of your layers to the burrito, roll each one up tightly.  You will need to heat them in the microwave until they are hot.

Burritos. Quick and fattening

If you have a crock pot handy, you can prepare a number of meals in just a few minutes.  The crock pot will do the hard work as it cooks your ingredients for several hours.  One of the easiest meals that you can make in a crock pot requires little more than chicken breasts, rice, and Italian dressing.

Simply add approximately four chicken breasts to your crock pot and cover with Italian dressing.  Cook these ingredients for the several hours.  About a half hour before you are ready to serve the meal, add some rice to the crock pot.  This meal is easy to make and very tasty.  You can even reduce the fat in this meal by choosing an Italian dressing that is fat-free.

Bit of Chicken and a crock pot, tasty food!

Sloppy Joes are a quick meal that can be prepared with little effort.  All you need to do is grab a package of sloppy Joe seasoning and some ground beef.  Take the ground beef and cook it in a pan until it is browned.  Add in the seasoning and finish cooking the meat.  Once it is ready, just spoon the mixture onto fresh buns and enjoy.

But how do you eat it?

There are a few things that you can do to add a little more to this meal.  While the meat is browning, take a can of vegetables and heat them in the microwave.  This will certainly make the meal more nutritious to eat.  You can also substitute the fresh buns for a loaf of French bread.  Take a few slices and add the mixture on top.  Place them in a hot oven for a few minutes so that the bread gets nice and toasted. Both methods produce a delicious meal that is painless to prepare.

For a very nutritious meal, consider a quick grilled chicken salad.  Head to the grocery store and pickup a package of pre-grilled chicken.  Add a packaged salad to your cart along with any other vegetables that you might want in the salad.  If you can find pre-sliced vegetables, you will be able to save even more time when you make this meal.

To prepare the grilled chicken salad, simply put the packaged salad and vegetables in a bowl.  Add the grilled chicken to the top.  You can use a variety of different salad dressings for additional flavour although Italian is a great choice.

If it was good enough for Ceasar..

These are just a handful of quick meal ideas that can be prepared in five minutes or less.  If you get a little creative, you will find that there are plenty of ways to make cooking much easier and efficient.  The one drawback to convenient cooking is that it frequently is more expensive.  To purchase pre-grilled chicken from a grocery store is going to cost more than it would to buy raw chicken.  For some, it is a small price to pay for the added convenience of this type of cooking.

You can always save a bit of money by pre-cooking the meats that you will need for your meals yourself.  It is not necessary to cook the meat on the day that you are preparing the meal.  To save time during your holiday, spend some time on the weekend cooking the various meats that you will need.  All you have to do is freeze the meat once it has been cooked.  When you need it, simply defrost the meat and make your meal.  This requires a bit of planning but it will save you money in the end.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.