Looking for home cooking recipies for work food

pretty much anything you can think of other than seafood can be cooked up in larger batches and stuck in plastic tubs (besed to use some with locking lids) and then reheated at your leisure for consumption at a later date,

you want sausage mash n beans, make it up shove it in a plastic tub once its cooled down a bit then leave the lid off till its cold to the touch before putting the lid on and putting in the fridge, it will keep for a week in an airtight tub no worries,

pretty much the only rule is don't put hot stuff in a sealed tub or it will go funny, hell you can freeze most things once there cooked even if they started off frozen to begin with so you don't need to worry about chilled stuff getting hot in the drive, just grab a tub from the freezer and keep it in open air, it will be fine to reheat later without needing to go in the fridge at work unless the temp there is significantly over 25degrees celcius, only thing with re-heat food is make sure its stirred through and then put back in the heat, just like the instructions for a standard microwave meal from the shops

that changes if your using nasty shit like quorn or other meat substitute shit though cos plenty of it becomes poisonous if you don't follow specific rules....

hell even a roast dinner can be frozen after cooking and then reheated so long as your not doing Yorkshire pudding (it goes nasty in the microwave)

Alton Brown has an excellent website with recipes. His instructions tend to be foolproof, so if you read through them, prepare by having the tools and ingredients ready and then follow the instructions exactly you will have good food.

I'm a huge fan of Ree Drummond, but she also tends to have pictures of the food that constitute pr0m. Which makes me hungry and I overeat. She cooks for a farmer and his hands and their children, so amounts tend large.

Matt: you need to cook for the entire work week it sounds like. So whatever your weekend is- you need to find a list of things you'd like to eat that are great for "Meal prep" so that means you can portion it out and freeze some and just put some in portions in your refrigerator and take with you during the week. That way on your work days you aren't stressing about making foods and you can get rest.


As you say- you're a newb at cooking. That's fine- this is literally the best time in the history of mankind to be a newb at cooking and learning to gitgud.

The other suggestions up there ^ are great (except the MRE's LOLOL) but you need to give us a bit more information.

Is your meal situation at work provide a refrigerator or a microwave?

Do you have a standard diet?

ETC ETC.

Give use some details and we might be able to give you some recipes and more ideas.

This post reflects my thoughts exactly^TM

Someone teach him that one!

well your best bet is simple things like sausage mash n gravy or pasta n sauce or chilli type dishes,

not because there easy to cook but because there easier to sort out and cook in Tupperware using the microwave,

from defrosted a full meal takes between 2 and 4 mins to reheat (depending on the microwave) from frozen maybe as much as 10 minutes,

when I used ot work I would normally cook up a gallon of basic sauce (for me that tended ot be onions mushrooms, mince, tomatoes and tomato puree then section it down to either veg n gravy or beans and chillies or just herbs, or somewhere in between, that would normally last me a month, with the bonus I could use it eiterh as a topping fro jacket spuds (cooked at home and hten reheaded in the mircrowave) or as some kind of wrap filling, for just as a dip for some chips,

but I digress,

the biggest things to work out are what you like,

I love stews or chunky soups, but dumplings don't reheat well so need a bread roll for that one...

once you work out the sort of stuff you like getting to a point where its nice ot eat isn't difficult, just rememeber to taste it regularly whilst its cooking, and if starts tasting really bad ring a friend or family member to see if they have any advice....

since its going into a tub whilst your driving to work for an hour don't worry "dressing the plate" that some pretentious twats gone on about in their recipies, if you don't have one already get a coolbox to keep it cold in, otherwise your not going to be happy especially once the heating is on and things start going off before you get them into the fridge at work/

I do this every now and then: take any kind of ready pasta bags, ccok it ready, add two cans of tuna, 2-3 dl pasta and 2 dl cooking cream. You get food that is ready flavoured and salted, tuna adds protein and cream just makes it better tasting. Easy and quick.

This isn't a recipe. It's a shopping tip. Most grocery stores in the US sell rotisserie chicken very inexpensively. It can be quite tasty warm or cold. It typically shreds nicely with a fork. Shred the chicken and repack with the side(s) of your choice in a microwaveable container. Potatoes and gravy go very well with this as do green beans or cooked corn kernels.

Tuna, brown rice and beans with a few slices of wholegrain bread is my go to lazy lunch when I'm training for a fight.

Otherwise he's if you got the cash, a slow cooker.

yeah, when you bulk buy and batch cook you do save a lot of money, its a fantastic thing in that regard but you do have to be pretty good at self discipline to do it every month.

my wife and I used to do it years back but somewhere along the way we stopped doing it as often, probably when money stopped being as tight,

although we still batch cook to a small degree with stuff like bolognaise, chili or curry, due to the fresh ingredients but pretty much everything else is frozen ingredients so we just cook on demand most of the time now.

oh and of course since I no longer work I don't have to make myself lunch for each day so theres a lot less impetus for us to keep up the good habits of the past/

Sorry for the late reply, life got...busy. Thanks for the ideas all! I really do apreciate them all.

Get one thermos, fill with hot water, boil 3 hotdogs and put in thermos, bring buns and fixings. One unhealthy lunch but your coworkers will be envious.